Acts 17:18—“he preached Jesus and the resurrection”;1 Cor. 1:23—“we preach Christ crucified”;Col. 1:27—“this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim”;Rev. 19:10—“the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”Saving faith is not belief in a dogma, but personal trust in a personal Christ. It is, therefore, possible to a child. Dorner:“The object of faith is the Christian revelation—God in Christ.... Faith is union with objective Christianity—appropriation of the real contents of Christianity.”Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the great uncle, defined faith as“an understanding, cordial receiving of the divine testimony concerning Jesus Christ and the way of salvation by him, in which the heart accords and conforms to the gospel.”Dr. Mark Hopkins, the great nephew, defined it as“confidence in a personal being.”Horace Bushnell:“Faith rests on a person. Faith is that act by which one person, a sinner, commits himself to another person, a Savior.”InJohn 11:25—“I am the resurrection and the life”—Martha is led to substitute belief in a person for belief in an abstract doctrine. Jesus is“the resurrection,”because he is“the life.”All doctrine and all miracle is significant and important only because it is the expression of the living Christ, the Revealer of God.The object of faith is sometimes represented in the N. T., as being God the Father.John 5:24—“He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life”;Rom. 4:5—“to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.”We can[pg 843]explain these passages only when we remember that Christ is God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16), and that“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9). Man may receive a gift without knowing from whom it comes, or how much it has cost. So the heathen, who casts himself as a sinner upon God's mercy, may receive salvation from the Crucified One, without knowing who is the giver, or that the gift was purchased by agony and blood. Denney, Studies in Theology, 154—“No N. T. writer everrememberedChrist. They never thought of him as belonging to the past. Let us not preach about thehistoricalChrist, but rather, about thelivingChrist; nay, let us preachhim, present and omnipotent. Jesus could say:‘Whither I go, ye know the way’(John 14:4); for they knewhim, and he was both theendand theway.”Dr. Charles Hodge unduly restricts the operations of grace to the preaching of the incarnate Christ: Syst. Theol., 2:648—“There is no faith where the gospel is not heard; and where there is no faith, there is no salvation. This is indeed an awful doctrine.”And yet, in 2:668, he says most inconsistently:“As God is everywhere present in the material world, guiding its operations according to the laws of nature; so he is everywhere present with the minds of men, as the Spirit of truth and goodness, operating on them according to laws of their free moral agency, inclining them to good and restraining them from evil.”This presence and revelation of God we hold to be through Christ, the eternal Word, and so we interpret the prophecy of Caiaphas as referring to the work of the personal Christ:John 11:51, 52—“he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation; and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad.”Since Christ is the Word of God and the Truth of God, he may be received even by those who have not heard of his manifestation in the flesh. A proud and self-righteous morality is inconsistent with saving faith; but a humble and penitent reliance upon God, as a Savior from sin and a guide of conduct, is an implicit faith in Christ; for such reliance casts itself upon God, so far as God has revealed himself,—and the only Revealer of God is Christ. We have, therefore, the hope that even among the heathen there may be some, like Socrates, who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit working through the truth of nature and conscience, have found the way of life and salvation.The number of such is so small as in no degree to weaken the claims of the missionary enterprise upon us. But that there are such seems to be intimated in Scripture:Mat. 8:11, 12—“many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness”;John 10:16—“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd”;Acts 4:12—“And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved”;10:31, 34, 35, 44—“Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God.... Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him.... While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word”;16:31—“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house.”And instances are found of apparently regenerated heathen; see in Godet onJohn 7:17, note (vol. 2:277), the account of the so-called“Chinese hermit,”who accepted Christ, saying:“This is the only Buddha whom men ought to worship!”Edwards, Life of Brainard, 173-175, gives an account“of one who was a devout and zealous reformer, or rather restorer, of what he supposed was the ancient religion of the Indians.”After a period of distress, he says that God“comforted his heart and showed him what he should do, and since that time he had known God and tried to serve him; and loved all men, be they who they would, so as he never did before.”See art. by Dr. Lucius E. Smith, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1881:622-645, on the question:“Is salvation possible without a knowledge of the gospel?”H. B. Smith, System, 323, note, rightly bases hope for the heathen, not on morality, but on sacrifice.A chief of the Camaroons in S. W. Africa, fishing with many of his tribe long before the missionaries came, was overtaken by a storm, and while almost all the rest were drowned, he and a few others escaped. He gathered his people together afterwards and told the story of disaster. He said:“When the canoes upset and I found myself battling with the waves, I thought: To whom shall I cry for help? I knew that the god of the hills could not help me; I knew that the evil spirit would not help me. So I cried to the Great Father, Lord, save me! At that moment my feet touched the sand of the beach, and I was safe. Now let all my people honor the Great Father, and let no man speak a word against him, for he can help us.”This chief afterwards used every effort to prevent strife and bloodshed, and was remembered by those who came after as a peace-maker. His son told this story to Alfred Saker, the missionary, saying[pg 844]“Why did you not come sooner? My father longed to know what you have told us; he thirsted for the knowledge of God.”Mr. Saker told this in England in 1879.John Fiske appends to his book, The Idea of God, 168, 169, the following pathetic words of a Kafir, named Sekese, in conversation with a French traveler, M. Arbrouseille, on the subject of the Christian religion:“Your tidings,”said this uncultured barbarian,“are what I want, and I was seeking before I knew you, as you shall hear and judge for yourself. Twelve years ago I went to feed my flocks; the weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock, and asked myself sorrowful questions; yes, sorrowful, because I was unable to answer them. Who has touched the stars with his hands—on what pillars do they rest? I asked myself. The waters never weary, they know no other law than to flow without ceasing from morning till night and from night till morning; but where do they stop, and who makes them flow thus? The clouds also come and go, and burst in water over the earth. Whence come they—who sends them? The diviners certainly do not give us rain; for how could they do it? And why do I not see them with my own eyes, when they go up to heaven to fetch it? I cannot see the wind; but what is it? Who brings it, makes it blow and roar and terrify us? Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not a blade in my field; to-day I returned to my field and found some; who can have given to the earth the wisdom and the power to produce it? Then I buried my head in both hands.”On the question whether men are ever led to faith, without intercourse with living Christians or preachers, see Life of Judson, by his son, 84. The British and Foreign Bible Society publish a statement, made upon the authority of Sir Bartle Frere, that he met with“an instance, which was carefully investigated, in which all the inhabitants of a remote village in the Deccan had abjured idolatry and caste, removed from their temples the idols which had been worshiped there time out of mind, and agreed to profess a form of Christianity which they had deduced from the careful perusal of a single Gospel and a few tracts.”Max Müller, Chips, 4:177-189, apparently proves that Buddha is the original of St. Josaphat, who has a day assigned to him in the calendar of both the Greek and the Roman churches.“Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.”The Missionary Review of the World, July, 1896:519-523, tells the story of Adiri, afterwards called John King, of Maripastoon in Dutch Guiana. The Holy Spirit wrought in him mightily years before he heard of the missionaries. He was a coal-black negro, a heathen and a fetish worshiper. He was convicted of sin and apparently converted through dreams and visions. Heaven and hell were revealed to him. He was sick unto death, and One appeared to him declaring himself to be the Mediator between God and man, and telling him to go to the missionaries for instruction. He was persecuted, but he won his tribe from heathenism and transformed them into a Christian community.S. W. Hamblen, missionary to China, tells of a very earnest and consistent believer who lived at rather an obscure town of about 2800 people. The evangelist went to visit him and found that he was a worthy example to those around him. He had become a Christian before he had seen a single believer, by reading a Chinese New Testament. Although till the evangelist went to his house he had never met a Baptist and did not know that there were any Baptist churches in existence, yet by reading the New Testament he had become not only a Christian but a strong Baptist in belief, so strong that he could argue with the missionary on the subject of baptism.The Rev. K. E. Malm, a pioneer Baptist preacher in Sweden, on a journey to the district as far north as Gestrikland, met a woman from Lapland who was on her way to Upsala in order to visit Dr. Fjellstedt and converse with him as to how she might obtain peace with God and get rid of her anxiety concerning her sins. She said she had traveled 60 (= 240 English) miles, and she had still far to go. Malm improved the opportunity to speak to her concerning the crucified Christ, and she found peace in believing on his atonement. She became so happy that she clapped her hands, and for joy could not sleep that night. She said later:“Now I will return home and tell the people what I have found.”This she did, and did not care to continue her journey to Upsala, in order to get comfort from Dr. Fjellstedt.(c) That the ground of faith is the external word of promise. The ground of assurance, on the other hand, is the inward witness of the Spirit that we fulfil the conditions of the promise (Rom. 4:20, 21; 8:16; Eph. 1:13; 1 John 4:13; 5:10). This witness of the Spirit is not a new revelation[pg 845]from God, but a strengthening of faith so that it becomes conscious and indubitable.True faith is possible without assurance of salvation. But if Alexander's view were correct, that the object of saving faith is the proposition:“God, for Christ's sake, now looks with reconciling love on me, a sinner,”no one could believe, without being at the same time assured that he was a saved person. Upon the true view, that the object of saving faith is not a proposition, but a person, we can perceive not only the simplicity of faith, but the possibility of faith even where the soul is destitute of assurance or of joy. Hence those who already believe are urged to seek for assurance (Heb. 6:11; 2 Peter 1:10).Rom. 4:20, 21—“looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was able also to perform”;8:16—“The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God”;Eph. 1:13—“in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”;1 John 4:13—“hereby we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit”;5:10—“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him.”This assurance is not of the essence of faith, because believers are exhorted to attain to it:Heb. 6:11—“And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope[marg.—‘full assurance’]even to the end”;2 Pet. 1:10—“Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure.”Cf.Prov. 14:14—“a good man shall be satisfied from himself.”There is need to guard the doctrine of assurance from mysticism. The witness of the Spirit is not a new and direct revelation from God. It is a strengthening of previously existing faith until he who possesses this faith cannot any longer doubt that he possesses it. It is a general rule that all our emotions, when they become exceedingly strong, also become conscious. Instance affection between man and woman.Edwards, Religious Affections, in Works, 3:83-91, says the witness of the Spirit is not a new word or suggestion from God, but an enlightening and sanctifying influence, so that the heart is drawn forth to embrace the truth already revealed, and to perceive that it embraces it.“Bearing witness”is not in this case to declare and assert a thing to be true, but to hold forth evidence from which a thing may be proved to be true: God“beareth witness ... by signs and wonders”(Heb. 2:4). So the“seal of the Spirit”is not a voice or suggestion, but a work or effect of the Spirit, left as a divine mark upon the soul, to be an evidence by which God's children may be known. Seals had engraved upon them the image or name of the persons to whom they belonged. The“seal of the Spirit,”the“earnest of the Spirit,”the“witness of the Spirit,”are all one thing. The childlike spirit, given by the Holy Spirit, is the Holy Spirit's witness or evidence in us.See also illustration of faith and assurance, in C. S. Robinson's Short Studies for S. S. Teachers, 179, 180. Faith should be distinguished not only from assurance, but also from feeling or joy. Instance Abraham's faith when he went to sacrifice Isaac; and Madame Guyon's faith, when God's face seemed hid from her. See, on the witness of the Spirit, Short, Bampton Lectures for 1846; British and For. Evan. Rev., 1888:617-631. For the view which confounds faith with assurance, see Alexander, Discourses on Faith, 63-118.It is important to distinguish saving faith from assurance of faith, for the reason that lack of assurance is taken by so many real Christians as evidence that they know nothing of the grace of God. To use once more a well-worn illustration: It is getting into the boat that saves us, and not our comfortable feelings about the boat. What saves us is faith inChrist, not faith inourfaith, or faith inthefaith. The astronomer does not turn his telescope to the reflection of the sun or moon in the water, when he can turn it to the sun or moon itself. Why obscure our faith, when we can look to Christ?The faith in a distant Redeemer was the faith of Christian, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Only at the end of his journey does Christian have Christ's presence. This representation rests upon a wrong conception of faith as laying hold of a promise or a doctrine, rather than as laying hold of the living and present Christ. The old Scotch woman's direction to the inquirer to“grip the promise”is not so good as the direction to“grip Christ.”Sir Francis Drake, the great English sailor, had for his crest an[pg 846]anchor with a cable running up into the sky. A poor boy, taught in a mission school in Ireland, when asked what was meant by saving faith, replied:“It is grasping God with the heart.”The view of Charles Hodge, like that of Alexander, puts doctrine before Christ, and makes the formal principle, the supremacy of Scripture, superior to the material principle, justification by faith. The Shorter Catechism is better:“Faith in Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and reston him alonefor salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.”If this relation of faith to the personal Christ had been kept in mind, much religious despondency might have been avoided. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 30, 31, tells us that Frances Ridley Havergal could never fix the date of her conversion. From the age of six to that of fourteen she suffered from religious fears, and did not venture to call herself a Christian. It was the result of confoundingbeingat peace with God and beingconsciousof that peace. So the mother of Frederick Denison Maurice, an admirable and deeply religious woman, endured long and deep mental suffering from doubts as to her personal election.There is a witness of the Spirit, with some sinners, that they arenotchildren of God, and this witness is through the truth, though the sinner does not know that it is the Spirit who reveals it to him. We call this work of the Spirit conviction of sin. The witness of the Spirit that we are children of God, and the assurance of faith of which Scripture speaks, are one and the same thing, the former designation only emphasizing the source from which the assurance springs. False assurance is destitute of humility, but true assurance is so absorbed in Christ that self is forgotten. Self-consciousness, and desire to display one's faith, are not marks of true assurance. When we say:“That man has a great deal of assurance,”we have in mind the false and self-centered assurance of the hypocrite or the self-deceiver.Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 231—“It has been said that any one who can read Edwards's Religious Affections, and still believe in his own conversion, may well have the highest assurance of its reality. But how few there were in Edwards's time who gained the assurance, may be inferred from the circumstance that Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Emmons, disciples of Edwards and religious leaders in New England, remained to the last uncertain of their conversion.”He can attribute this only to the semi-deistic spirit of the time, with its distant God and imperfect apprehension of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Christ. Nothing so clearly marks the practical progress of Christianity as the growing faith in Jesus, the only Revealer of God in nature and history as well as in the heart of the believer. As never before, faith comes directly to Christ, abides in him, and finds his promise true:“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”(Mat. 28:20).“Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void and find The Rock beneath.”(d) That faith necessarily leads to good works, since it embraces the whole truth of God so far as made known, and appropriates Christ, not only as an external Savior, but as an internal sanctifying power (Heb. 7:15, 16; Gal. 5:6).Good works are the proper evidence of faith. The faith which does not lead men to act upon the commands and promises of Christ, or, in other words, does not lead to obedience, is called in Scripture a“dead,”that is, an unreal, faith. Such faith is not saving, since it lacks the voluntary element—actual appropriation of Christ (James 2:14-26).Heb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life”;Gal. 5:6—“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love”;James 2:14, 26—“What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him?... For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.”The best evidence that I believe a man's word is that I act upon it. Instance the bank-cashier's assurance to me that a sum of money is deposited with him to my account. If I am a millionaire, the communication may cause me no special joy. My faith in the cashier's word is tested by my going, or not going, for the money. So my faith in Christ is evidenced by my acting upon his commands and promises. We may illustrate also by the lifting of the trolley to the wire, and the resulting light and heat and motion to the car that before stood dark and cold and motionless upon the track.[pg 847]Salvation by works is like getting to one's destination by pushing the car. True faith depends upon God for energy, but it results in activity of all our powers.Rom. 3:28—“We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.”We are saved only by faith, yet this faith will be sure to bring forth good works; seeGal. 5:6—“faith working through love.”Dead faith might be illustrated by Abraham Lincoln's Mississippi steamboat, whose whistle was so big that, when it sounded, the boat stopped. Confession exhausts the energy, so that none is left for action.A. J. Gordon, The First Thing in the World, or The Primacy of Faith:“David Brainard speaks with a kind of suppressed astonishment of what he observed among the degraded North American Indians; how, preaching to them the good news of salvation through the atonement of Christ and persuading them to accept it by faith, and then hastening on in his rapid missionary tours, he found, on returning upon his track a year or two later, that the fruits of righteousness and sobriety and virtue and brotherly love were everywhere visible, though it had been possible to impart to them only the slightest moral or ethical teaching.”(e) That faith, as characteristically the inward act of reception, is not to be confounded with love or obedience, its fruit.Faith is, in the Scriptures, called a work, only in the sense that man's active powers are engaged in it. It is a work which God requires, yet which God enables man to perform (John 6:29—ἔργον τοῦ Θεοῦ.Cf.Rom. 1:17—δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ). As the gift of God and as the mere taking of undeserved mercy, it is expressly excluded from the category of works upon the basis of which man may claim salvation (Rom. 3:28; 4:4, 5, 16). It is not the act of the full soul bestowing, but the act of an empty soul receiving. Although this reception is prompted by a drawing of heart toward God inwrought by the Holy Spirit, this drawing of heart is not yet a conscious and developed love: such love is the result of faith (Gal. 5:6). What precedes faith is an unconscious and undeveloped tendency or disposition toward God. Conscious and developed affection toward God, or love proper, must always follow faith and be the product of faith. So, too, obedience can be rendered only after faith has laid hold of Christ, and with him has obtained the spirit of obedience (Rom. 1:5—ὑπακοὴν πίστεως =“obedience resulting from faith”). Hence faith is not the procuring cause of salvation, but is only the instrumental cause. The procuring cause is the Christ, whom faith embraces.
Acts 17:18—“he preached Jesus and the resurrection”;1 Cor. 1:23—“we preach Christ crucified”;Col. 1:27—“this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim”;Rev. 19:10—“the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”Saving faith is not belief in a dogma, but personal trust in a personal Christ. It is, therefore, possible to a child. Dorner:“The object of faith is the Christian revelation—God in Christ.... Faith is union with objective Christianity—appropriation of the real contents of Christianity.”Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the great uncle, defined faith as“an understanding, cordial receiving of the divine testimony concerning Jesus Christ and the way of salvation by him, in which the heart accords and conforms to the gospel.”Dr. Mark Hopkins, the great nephew, defined it as“confidence in a personal being.”Horace Bushnell:“Faith rests on a person. Faith is that act by which one person, a sinner, commits himself to another person, a Savior.”InJohn 11:25—“I am the resurrection and the life”—Martha is led to substitute belief in a person for belief in an abstract doctrine. Jesus is“the resurrection,”because he is“the life.”All doctrine and all miracle is significant and important only because it is the expression of the living Christ, the Revealer of God.The object of faith is sometimes represented in the N. T., as being God the Father.John 5:24—“He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life”;Rom. 4:5—“to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.”We can[pg 843]explain these passages only when we remember that Christ is God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16), and that“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9). Man may receive a gift without knowing from whom it comes, or how much it has cost. So the heathen, who casts himself as a sinner upon God's mercy, may receive salvation from the Crucified One, without knowing who is the giver, or that the gift was purchased by agony and blood. Denney, Studies in Theology, 154—“No N. T. writer everrememberedChrist. They never thought of him as belonging to the past. Let us not preach about thehistoricalChrist, but rather, about thelivingChrist; nay, let us preachhim, present and omnipotent. Jesus could say:‘Whither I go, ye know the way’(John 14:4); for they knewhim, and he was both theendand theway.”Dr. Charles Hodge unduly restricts the operations of grace to the preaching of the incarnate Christ: Syst. Theol., 2:648—“There is no faith where the gospel is not heard; and where there is no faith, there is no salvation. This is indeed an awful doctrine.”And yet, in 2:668, he says most inconsistently:“As God is everywhere present in the material world, guiding its operations according to the laws of nature; so he is everywhere present with the minds of men, as the Spirit of truth and goodness, operating on them according to laws of their free moral agency, inclining them to good and restraining them from evil.”This presence and revelation of God we hold to be through Christ, the eternal Word, and so we interpret the prophecy of Caiaphas as referring to the work of the personal Christ:John 11:51, 52—“he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation; and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad.”Since Christ is the Word of God and the Truth of God, he may be received even by those who have not heard of his manifestation in the flesh. A proud and self-righteous morality is inconsistent with saving faith; but a humble and penitent reliance upon God, as a Savior from sin and a guide of conduct, is an implicit faith in Christ; for such reliance casts itself upon God, so far as God has revealed himself,—and the only Revealer of God is Christ. We have, therefore, the hope that even among the heathen there may be some, like Socrates, who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit working through the truth of nature and conscience, have found the way of life and salvation.The number of such is so small as in no degree to weaken the claims of the missionary enterprise upon us. But that there are such seems to be intimated in Scripture:Mat. 8:11, 12—“many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness”;John 10:16—“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd”;Acts 4:12—“And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved”;10:31, 34, 35, 44—“Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God.... Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him.... While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word”;16:31—“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house.”And instances are found of apparently regenerated heathen; see in Godet onJohn 7:17, note (vol. 2:277), the account of the so-called“Chinese hermit,”who accepted Christ, saying:“This is the only Buddha whom men ought to worship!”Edwards, Life of Brainard, 173-175, gives an account“of one who was a devout and zealous reformer, or rather restorer, of what he supposed was the ancient religion of the Indians.”After a period of distress, he says that God“comforted his heart and showed him what he should do, and since that time he had known God and tried to serve him; and loved all men, be they who they would, so as he never did before.”See art. by Dr. Lucius E. Smith, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1881:622-645, on the question:“Is salvation possible without a knowledge of the gospel?”H. B. Smith, System, 323, note, rightly bases hope for the heathen, not on morality, but on sacrifice.A chief of the Camaroons in S. W. Africa, fishing with many of his tribe long before the missionaries came, was overtaken by a storm, and while almost all the rest were drowned, he and a few others escaped. He gathered his people together afterwards and told the story of disaster. He said:“When the canoes upset and I found myself battling with the waves, I thought: To whom shall I cry for help? I knew that the god of the hills could not help me; I knew that the evil spirit would not help me. So I cried to the Great Father, Lord, save me! At that moment my feet touched the sand of the beach, and I was safe. Now let all my people honor the Great Father, and let no man speak a word against him, for he can help us.”This chief afterwards used every effort to prevent strife and bloodshed, and was remembered by those who came after as a peace-maker. His son told this story to Alfred Saker, the missionary, saying[pg 844]“Why did you not come sooner? My father longed to know what you have told us; he thirsted for the knowledge of God.”Mr. Saker told this in England in 1879.John Fiske appends to his book, The Idea of God, 168, 169, the following pathetic words of a Kafir, named Sekese, in conversation with a French traveler, M. Arbrouseille, on the subject of the Christian religion:“Your tidings,”said this uncultured barbarian,“are what I want, and I was seeking before I knew you, as you shall hear and judge for yourself. Twelve years ago I went to feed my flocks; the weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock, and asked myself sorrowful questions; yes, sorrowful, because I was unable to answer them. Who has touched the stars with his hands—on what pillars do they rest? I asked myself. The waters never weary, they know no other law than to flow without ceasing from morning till night and from night till morning; but where do they stop, and who makes them flow thus? The clouds also come and go, and burst in water over the earth. Whence come they—who sends them? The diviners certainly do not give us rain; for how could they do it? And why do I not see them with my own eyes, when they go up to heaven to fetch it? I cannot see the wind; but what is it? Who brings it, makes it blow and roar and terrify us? Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not a blade in my field; to-day I returned to my field and found some; who can have given to the earth the wisdom and the power to produce it? Then I buried my head in both hands.”On the question whether men are ever led to faith, without intercourse with living Christians or preachers, see Life of Judson, by his son, 84. The British and Foreign Bible Society publish a statement, made upon the authority of Sir Bartle Frere, that he met with“an instance, which was carefully investigated, in which all the inhabitants of a remote village in the Deccan had abjured idolatry and caste, removed from their temples the idols which had been worshiped there time out of mind, and agreed to profess a form of Christianity which they had deduced from the careful perusal of a single Gospel and a few tracts.”Max Müller, Chips, 4:177-189, apparently proves that Buddha is the original of St. Josaphat, who has a day assigned to him in the calendar of both the Greek and the Roman churches.“Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.”The Missionary Review of the World, July, 1896:519-523, tells the story of Adiri, afterwards called John King, of Maripastoon in Dutch Guiana. The Holy Spirit wrought in him mightily years before he heard of the missionaries. He was a coal-black negro, a heathen and a fetish worshiper. He was convicted of sin and apparently converted through dreams and visions. Heaven and hell were revealed to him. He was sick unto death, and One appeared to him declaring himself to be the Mediator between God and man, and telling him to go to the missionaries for instruction. He was persecuted, but he won his tribe from heathenism and transformed them into a Christian community.S. W. Hamblen, missionary to China, tells of a very earnest and consistent believer who lived at rather an obscure town of about 2800 people. The evangelist went to visit him and found that he was a worthy example to those around him. He had become a Christian before he had seen a single believer, by reading a Chinese New Testament. Although till the evangelist went to his house he had never met a Baptist and did not know that there were any Baptist churches in existence, yet by reading the New Testament he had become not only a Christian but a strong Baptist in belief, so strong that he could argue with the missionary on the subject of baptism.The Rev. K. E. Malm, a pioneer Baptist preacher in Sweden, on a journey to the district as far north as Gestrikland, met a woman from Lapland who was on her way to Upsala in order to visit Dr. Fjellstedt and converse with him as to how she might obtain peace with God and get rid of her anxiety concerning her sins. She said she had traveled 60 (= 240 English) miles, and she had still far to go. Malm improved the opportunity to speak to her concerning the crucified Christ, and she found peace in believing on his atonement. She became so happy that she clapped her hands, and for joy could not sleep that night. She said later:“Now I will return home and tell the people what I have found.”This she did, and did not care to continue her journey to Upsala, in order to get comfort from Dr. Fjellstedt.(c) That the ground of faith is the external word of promise. The ground of assurance, on the other hand, is the inward witness of the Spirit that we fulfil the conditions of the promise (Rom. 4:20, 21; 8:16; Eph. 1:13; 1 John 4:13; 5:10). This witness of the Spirit is not a new revelation[pg 845]from God, but a strengthening of faith so that it becomes conscious and indubitable.True faith is possible without assurance of salvation. But if Alexander's view were correct, that the object of saving faith is the proposition:“God, for Christ's sake, now looks with reconciling love on me, a sinner,”no one could believe, without being at the same time assured that he was a saved person. Upon the true view, that the object of saving faith is not a proposition, but a person, we can perceive not only the simplicity of faith, but the possibility of faith even where the soul is destitute of assurance or of joy. Hence those who already believe are urged to seek for assurance (Heb. 6:11; 2 Peter 1:10).Rom. 4:20, 21—“looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was able also to perform”;8:16—“The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God”;Eph. 1:13—“in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”;1 John 4:13—“hereby we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit”;5:10—“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him.”This assurance is not of the essence of faith, because believers are exhorted to attain to it:Heb. 6:11—“And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope[marg.—‘full assurance’]even to the end”;2 Pet. 1:10—“Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure.”Cf.Prov. 14:14—“a good man shall be satisfied from himself.”There is need to guard the doctrine of assurance from mysticism. The witness of the Spirit is not a new and direct revelation from God. It is a strengthening of previously existing faith until he who possesses this faith cannot any longer doubt that he possesses it. It is a general rule that all our emotions, when they become exceedingly strong, also become conscious. Instance affection between man and woman.Edwards, Religious Affections, in Works, 3:83-91, says the witness of the Spirit is not a new word or suggestion from God, but an enlightening and sanctifying influence, so that the heart is drawn forth to embrace the truth already revealed, and to perceive that it embraces it.“Bearing witness”is not in this case to declare and assert a thing to be true, but to hold forth evidence from which a thing may be proved to be true: God“beareth witness ... by signs and wonders”(Heb. 2:4). So the“seal of the Spirit”is not a voice or suggestion, but a work or effect of the Spirit, left as a divine mark upon the soul, to be an evidence by which God's children may be known. Seals had engraved upon them the image or name of the persons to whom they belonged. The“seal of the Spirit,”the“earnest of the Spirit,”the“witness of the Spirit,”are all one thing. The childlike spirit, given by the Holy Spirit, is the Holy Spirit's witness or evidence in us.See also illustration of faith and assurance, in C. S. Robinson's Short Studies for S. S. Teachers, 179, 180. Faith should be distinguished not only from assurance, but also from feeling or joy. Instance Abraham's faith when he went to sacrifice Isaac; and Madame Guyon's faith, when God's face seemed hid from her. See, on the witness of the Spirit, Short, Bampton Lectures for 1846; British and For. Evan. Rev., 1888:617-631. For the view which confounds faith with assurance, see Alexander, Discourses on Faith, 63-118.It is important to distinguish saving faith from assurance of faith, for the reason that lack of assurance is taken by so many real Christians as evidence that they know nothing of the grace of God. To use once more a well-worn illustration: It is getting into the boat that saves us, and not our comfortable feelings about the boat. What saves us is faith inChrist, not faith inourfaith, or faith inthefaith. The astronomer does not turn his telescope to the reflection of the sun or moon in the water, when he can turn it to the sun or moon itself. Why obscure our faith, when we can look to Christ?The faith in a distant Redeemer was the faith of Christian, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Only at the end of his journey does Christian have Christ's presence. This representation rests upon a wrong conception of faith as laying hold of a promise or a doctrine, rather than as laying hold of the living and present Christ. The old Scotch woman's direction to the inquirer to“grip the promise”is not so good as the direction to“grip Christ.”Sir Francis Drake, the great English sailor, had for his crest an[pg 846]anchor with a cable running up into the sky. A poor boy, taught in a mission school in Ireland, when asked what was meant by saving faith, replied:“It is grasping God with the heart.”The view of Charles Hodge, like that of Alexander, puts doctrine before Christ, and makes the formal principle, the supremacy of Scripture, superior to the material principle, justification by faith. The Shorter Catechism is better:“Faith in Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and reston him alonefor salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.”If this relation of faith to the personal Christ had been kept in mind, much religious despondency might have been avoided. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 30, 31, tells us that Frances Ridley Havergal could never fix the date of her conversion. From the age of six to that of fourteen she suffered from religious fears, and did not venture to call herself a Christian. It was the result of confoundingbeingat peace with God and beingconsciousof that peace. So the mother of Frederick Denison Maurice, an admirable and deeply religious woman, endured long and deep mental suffering from doubts as to her personal election.There is a witness of the Spirit, with some sinners, that they arenotchildren of God, and this witness is through the truth, though the sinner does not know that it is the Spirit who reveals it to him. We call this work of the Spirit conviction of sin. The witness of the Spirit that we are children of God, and the assurance of faith of which Scripture speaks, are one and the same thing, the former designation only emphasizing the source from which the assurance springs. False assurance is destitute of humility, but true assurance is so absorbed in Christ that self is forgotten. Self-consciousness, and desire to display one's faith, are not marks of true assurance. When we say:“That man has a great deal of assurance,”we have in mind the false and self-centered assurance of the hypocrite or the self-deceiver.Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 231—“It has been said that any one who can read Edwards's Religious Affections, and still believe in his own conversion, may well have the highest assurance of its reality. But how few there were in Edwards's time who gained the assurance, may be inferred from the circumstance that Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Emmons, disciples of Edwards and religious leaders in New England, remained to the last uncertain of their conversion.”He can attribute this only to the semi-deistic spirit of the time, with its distant God and imperfect apprehension of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Christ. Nothing so clearly marks the practical progress of Christianity as the growing faith in Jesus, the only Revealer of God in nature and history as well as in the heart of the believer. As never before, faith comes directly to Christ, abides in him, and finds his promise true:“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”(Mat. 28:20).“Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void and find The Rock beneath.”(d) That faith necessarily leads to good works, since it embraces the whole truth of God so far as made known, and appropriates Christ, not only as an external Savior, but as an internal sanctifying power (Heb. 7:15, 16; Gal. 5:6).Good works are the proper evidence of faith. The faith which does not lead men to act upon the commands and promises of Christ, or, in other words, does not lead to obedience, is called in Scripture a“dead,”that is, an unreal, faith. Such faith is not saving, since it lacks the voluntary element—actual appropriation of Christ (James 2:14-26).Heb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life”;Gal. 5:6—“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love”;James 2:14, 26—“What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him?... For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.”The best evidence that I believe a man's word is that I act upon it. Instance the bank-cashier's assurance to me that a sum of money is deposited with him to my account. If I am a millionaire, the communication may cause me no special joy. My faith in the cashier's word is tested by my going, or not going, for the money. So my faith in Christ is evidenced by my acting upon his commands and promises. We may illustrate also by the lifting of the trolley to the wire, and the resulting light and heat and motion to the car that before stood dark and cold and motionless upon the track.[pg 847]Salvation by works is like getting to one's destination by pushing the car. True faith depends upon God for energy, but it results in activity of all our powers.Rom. 3:28—“We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.”We are saved only by faith, yet this faith will be sure to bring forth good works; seeGal. 5:6—“faith working through love.”Dead faith might be illustrated by Abraham Lincoln's Mississippi steamboat, whose whistle was so big that, when it sounded, the boat stopped. Confession exhausts the energy, so that none is left for action.A. J. Gordon, The First Thing in the World, or The Primacy of Faith:“David Brainard speaks with a kind of suppressed astonishment of what he observed among the degraded North American Indians; how, preaching to them the good news of salvation through the atonement of Christ and persuading them to accept it by faith, and then hastening on in his rapid missionary tours, he found, on returning upon his track a year or two later, that the fruits of righteousness and sobriety and virtue and brotherly love were everywhere visible, though it had been possible to impart to them only the slightest moral or ethical teaching.”(e) That faith, as characteristically the inward act of reception, is not to be confounded with love or obedience, its fruit.Faith is, in the Scriptures, called a work, only in the sense that man's active powers are engaged in it. It is a work which God requires, yet which God enables man to perform (John 6:29—ἔργον τοῦ Θεοῦ.Cf.Rom. 1:17—δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ). As the gift of God and as the mere taking of undeserved mercy, it is expressly excluded from the category of works upon the basis of which man may claim salvation (Rom. 3:28; 4:4, 5, 16). It is not the act of the full soul bestowing, but the act of an empty soul receiving. Although this reception is prompted by a drawing of heart toward God inwrought by the Holy Spirit, this drawing of heart is not yet a conscious and developed love: such love is the result of faith (Gal. 5:6). What precedes faith is an unconscious and undeveloped tendency or disposition toward God. Conscious and developed affection toward God, or love proper, must always follow faith and be the product of faith. So, too, obedience can be rendered only after faith has laid hold of Christ, and with him has obtained the spirit of obedience (Rom. 1:5—ὑπακοὴν πίστεως =“obedience resulting from faith”). Hence faith is not the procuring cause of salvation, but is only the instrumental cause. The procuring cause is the Christ, whom faith embraces.
Acts 17:18—“he preached Jesus and the resurrection”;1 Cor. 1:23—“we preach Christ crucified”;Col. 1:27—“this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim”;Rev. 19:10—“the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”Saving faith is not belief in a dogma, but personal trust in a personal Christ. It is, therefore, possible to a child. Dorner:“The object of faith is the Christian revelation—God in Christ.... Faith is union with objective Christianity—appropriation of the real contents of Christianity.”Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the great uncle, defined faith as“an understanding, cordial receiving of the divine testimony concerning Jesus Christ and the way of salvation by him, in which the heart accords and conforms to the gospel.”Dr. Mark Hopkins, the great nephew, defined it as“confidence in a personal being.”Horace Bushnell:“Faith rests on a person. Faith is that act by which one person, a sinner, commits himself to another person, a Savior.”InJohn 11:25—“I am the resurrection and the life”—Martha is led to substitute belief in a person for belief in an abstract doctrine. Jesus is“the resurrection,”because he is“the life.”All doctrine and all miracle is significant and important only because it is the expression of the living Christ, the Revealer of God.The object of faith is sometimes represented in the N. T., as being God the Father.John 5:24—“He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life”;Rom. 4:5—“to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.”We can[pg 843]explain these passages only when we remember that Christ is God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16), and that“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9). Man may receive a gift without knowing from whom it comes, or how much it has cost. So the heathen, who casts himself as a sinner upon God's mercy, may receive salvation from the Crucified One, without knowing who is the giver, or that the gift was purchased by agony and blood. Denney, Studies in Theology, 154—“No N. T. writer everrememberedChrist. They never thought of him as belonging to the past. Let us not preach about thehistoricalChrist, but rather, about thelivingChrist; nay, let us preachhim, present and omnipotent. Jesus could say:‘Whither I go, ye know the way’(John 14:4); for they knewhim, and he was both theendand theway.”Dr. Charles Hodge unduly restricts the operations of grace to the preaching of the incarnate Christ: Syst. Theol., 2:648—“There is no faith where the gospel is not heard; and where there is no faith, there is no salvation. This is indeed an awful doctrine.”And yet, in 2:668, he says most inconsistently:“As God is everywhere present in the material world, guiding its operations according to the laws of nature; so he is everywhere present with the minds of men, as the Spirit of truth and goodness, operating on them according to laws of their free moral agency, inclining them to good and restraining them from evil.”This presence and revelation of God we hold to be through Christ, the eternal Word, and so we interpret the prophecy of Caiaphas as referring to the work of the personal Christ:John 11:51, 52—“he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation; and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad.”Since Christ is the Word of God and the Truth of God, he may be received even by those who have not heard of his manifestation in the flesh. A proud and self-righteous morality is inconsistent with saving faith; but a humble and penitent reliance upon God, as a Savior from sin and a guide of conduct, is an implicit faith in Christ; for such reliance casts itself upon God, so far as God has revealed himself,—and the only Revealer of God is Christ. We have, therefore, the hope that even among the heathen there may be some, like Socrates, who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit working through the truth of nature and conscience, have found the way of life and salvation.The number of such is so small as in no degree to weaken the claims of the missionary enterprise upon us. But that there are such seems to be intimated in Scripture:Mat. 8:11, 12—“many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness”;John 10:16—“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd”;Acts 4:12—“And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved”;10:31, 34, 35, 44—“Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God.... Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him.... While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word”;16:31—“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house.”And instances are found of apparently regenerated heathen; see in Godet onJohn 7:17, note (vol. 2:277), the account of the so-called“Chinese hermit,”who accepted Christ, saying:“This is the only Buddha whom men ought to worship!”Edwards, Life of Brainard, 173-175, gives an account“of one who was a devout and zealous reformer, or rather restorer, of what he supposed was the ancient religion of the Indians.”After a period of distress, he says that God“comforted his heart and showed him what he should do, and since that time he had known God and tried to serve him; and loved all men, be they who they would, so as he never did before.”See art. by Dr. Lucius E. Smith, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1881:622-645, on the question:“Is salvation possible without a knowledge of the gospel?”H. B. Smith, System, 323, note, rightly bases hope for the heathen, not on morality, but on sacrifice.A chief of the Camaroons in S. W. Africa, fishing with many of his tribe long before the missionaries came, was overtaken by a storm, and while almost all the rest were drowned, he and a few others escaped. He gathered his people together afterwards and told the story of disaster. He said:“When the canoes upset and I found myself battling with the waves, I thought: To whom shall I cry for help? I knew that the god of the hills could not help me; I knew that the evil spirit would not help me. So I cried to the Great Father, Lord, save me! At that moment my feet touched the sand of the beach, and I was safe. Now let all my people honor the Great Father, and let no man speak a word against him, for he can help us.”This chief afterwards used every effort to prevent strife and bloodshed, and was remembered by those who came after as a peace-maker. His son told this story to Alfred Saker, the missionary, saying[pg 844]“Why did you not come sooner? My father longed to know what you have told us; he thirsted for the knowledge of God.”Mr. Saker told this in England in 1879.John Fiske appends to his book, The Idea of God, 168, 169, the following pathetic words of a Kafir, named Sekese, in conversation with a French traveler, M. Arbrouseille, on the subject of the Christian religion:“Your tidings,”said this uncultured barbarian,“are what I want, and I was seeking before I knew you, as you shall hear and judge for yourself. Twelve years ago I went to feed my flocks; the weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock, and asked myself sorrowful questions; yes, sorrowful, because I was unable to answer them. Who has touched the stars with his hands—on what pillars do they rest? I asked myself. The waters never weary, they know no other law than to flow without ceasing from morning till night and from night till morning; but where do they stop, and who makes them flow thus? The clouds also come and go, and burst in water over the earth. Whence come they—who sends them? The diviners certainly do not give us rain; for how could they do it? And why do I not see them with my own eyes, when they go up to heaven to fetch it? I cannot see the wind; but what is it? Who brings it, makes it blow and roar and terrify us? Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not a blade in my field; to-day I returned to my field and found some; who can have given to the earth the wisdom and the power to produce it? Then I buried my head in both hands.”On the question whether men are ever led to faith, without intercourse with living Christians or preachers, see Life of Judson, by his son, 84. The British and Foreign Bible Society publish a statement, made upon the authority of Sir Bartle Frere, that he met with“an instance, which was carefully investigated, in which all the inhabitants of a remote village in the Deccan had abjured idolatry and caste, removed from their temples the idols which had been worshiped there time out of mind, and agreed to profess a form of Christianity which they had deduced from the careful perusal of a single Gospel and a few tracts.”Max Müller, Chips, 4:177-189, apparently proves that Buddha is the original of St. Josaphat, who has a day assigned to him in the calendar of both the Greek and the Roman churches.“Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.”The Missionary Review of the World, July, 1896:519-523, tells the story of Adiri, afterwards called John King, of Maripastoon in Dutch Guiana. The Holy Spirit wrought in him mightily years before he heard of the missionaries. He was a coal-black negro, a heathen and a fetish worshiper. He was convicted of sin and apparently converted through dreams and visions. Heaven and hell were revealed to him. He was sick unto death, and One appeared to him declaring himself to be the Mediator between God and man, and telling him to go to the missionaries for instruction. He was persecuted, but he won his tribe from heathenism and transformed them into a Christian community.S. W. Hamblen, missionary to China, tells of a very earnest and consistent believer who lived at rather an obscure town of about 2800 people. The evangelist went to visit him and found that he was a worthy example to those around him. He had become a Christian before he had seen a single believer, by reading a Chinese New Testament. Although till the evangelist went to his house he had never met a Baptist and did not know that there were any Baptist churches in existence, yet by reading the New Testament he had become not only a Christian but a strong Baptist in belief, so strong that he could argue with the missionary on the subject of baptism.The Rev. K. E. Malm, a pioneer Baptist preacher in Sweden, on a journey to the district as far north as Gestrikland, met a woman from Lapland who was on her way to Upsala in order to visit Dr. Fjellstedt and converse with him as to how she might obtain peace with God and get rid of her anxiety concerning her sins. She said she had traveled 60 (= 240 English) miles, and she had still far to go. Malm improved the opportunity to speak to her concerning the crucified Christ, and she found peace in believing on his atonement. She became so happy that she clapped her hands, and for joy could not sleep that night. She said later:“Now I will return home and tell the people what I have found.”This she did, and did not care to continue her journey to Upsala, in order to get comfort from Dr. Fjellstedt.(c) That the ground of faith is the external word of promise. The ground of assurance, on the other hand, is the inward witness of the Spirit that we fulfil the conditions of the promise (Rom. 4:20, 21; 8:16; Eph. 1:13; 1 John 4:13; 5:10). This witness of the Spirit is not a new revelation[pg 845]from God, but a strengthening of faith so that it becomes conscious and indubitable.True faith is possible without assurance of salvation. But if Alexander's view were correct, that the object of saving faith is the proposition:“God, for Christ's sake, now looks with reconciling love on me, a sinner,”no one could believe, without being at the same time assured that he was a saved person. Upon the true view, that the object of saving faith is not a proposition, but a person, we can perceive not only the simplicity of faith, but the possibility of faith even where the soul is destitute of assurance or of joy. Hence those who already believe are urged to seek for assurance (Heb. 6:11; 2 Peter 1:10).Rom. 4:20, 21—“looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was able also to perform”;8:16—“The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God”;Eph. 1:13—“in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”;1 John 4:13—“hereby we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit”;5:10—“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him.”This assurance is not of the essence of faith, because believers are exhorted to attain to it:Heb. 6:11—“And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope[marg.—‘full assurance’]even to the end”;2 Pet. 1:10—“Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure.”Cf.Prov. 14:14—“a good man shall be satisfied from himself.”There is need to guard the doctrine of assurance from mysticism. The witness of the Spirit is not a new and direct revelation from God. It is a strengthening of previously existing faith until he who possesses this faith cannot any longer doubt that he possesses it. It is a general rule that all our emotions, when they become exceedingly strong, also become conscious. Instance affection between man and woman.Edwards, Religious Affections, in Works, 3:83-91, says the witness of the Spirit is not a new word or suggestion from God, but an enlightening and sanctifying influence, so that the heart is drawn forth to embrace the truth already revealed, and to perceive that it embraces it.“Bearing witness”is not in this case to declare and assert a thing to be true, but to hold forth evidence from which a thing may be proved to be true: God“beareth witness ... by signs and wonders”(Heb. 2:4). So the“seal of the Spirit”is not a voice or suggestion, but a work or effect of the Spirit, left as a divine mark upon the soul, to be an evidence by which God's children may be known. Seals had engraved upon them the image or name of the persons to whom they belonged. The“seal of the Spirit,”the“earnest of the Spirit,”the“witness of the Spirit,”are all one thing. The childlike spirit, given by the Holy Spirit, is the Holy Spirit's witness or evidence in us.See also illustration of faith and assurance, in C. S. Robinson's Short Studies for S. S. Teachers, 179, 180. Faith should be distinguished not only from assurance, but also from feeling or joy. Instance Abraham's faith when he went to sacrifice Isaac; and Madame Guyon's faith, when God's face seemed hid from her. See, on the witness of the Spirit, Short, Bampton Lectures for 1846; British and For. Evan. Rev., 1888:617-631. For the view which confounds faith with assurance, see Alexander, Discourses on Faith, 63-118.It is important to distinguish saving faith from assurance of faith, for the reason that lack of assurance is taken by so many real Christians as evidence that they know nothing of the grace of God. To use once more a well-worn illustration: It is getting into the boat that saves us, and not our comfortable feelings about the boat. What saves us is faith inChrist, not faith inourfaith, or faith inthefaith. The astronomer does not turn his telescope to the reflection of the sun or moon in the water, when he can turn it to the sun or moon itself. Why obscure our faith, when we can look to Christ?The faith in a distant Redeemer was the faith of Christian, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Only at the end of his journey does Christian have Christ's presence. This representation rests upon a wrong conception of faith as laying hold of a promise or a doctrine, rather than as laying hold of the living and present Christ. The old Scotch woman's direction to the inquirer to“grip the promise”is not so good as the direction to“grip Christ.”Sir Francis Drake, the great English sailor, had for his crest an[pg 846]anchor with a cable running up into the sky. A poor boy, taught in a mission school in Ireland, when asked what was meant by saving faith, replied:“It is grasping God with the heart.”The view of Charles Hodge, like that of Alexander, puts doctrine before Christ, and makes the formal principle, the supremacy of Scripture, superior to the material principle, justification by faith. The Shorter Catechism is better:“Faith in Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and reston him alonefor salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.”If this relation of faith to the personal Christ had been kept in mind, much religious despondency might have been avoided. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 30, 31, tells us that Frances Ridley Havergal could never fix the date of her conversion. From the age of six to that of fourteen she suffered from religious fears, and did not venture to call herself a Christian. It was the result of confoundingbeingat peace with God and beingconsciousof that peace. So the mother of Frederick Denison Maurice, an admirable and deeply religious woman, endured long and deep mental suffering from doubts as to her personal election.There is a witness of the Spirit, with some sinners, that they arenotchildren of God, and this witness is through the truth, though the sinner does not know that it is the Spirit who reveals it to him. We call this work of the Spirit conviction of sin. The witness of the Spirit that we are children of God, and the assurance of faith of which Scripture speaks, are one and the same thing, the former designation only emphasizing the source from which the assurance springs. False assurance is destitute of humility, but true assurance is so absorbed in Christ that self is forgotten. Self-consciousness, and desire to display one's faith, are not marks of true assurance. When we say:“That man has a great deal of assurance,”we have in mind the false and self-centered assurance of the hypocrite or the self-deceiver.Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 231—“It has been said that any one who can read Edwards's Religious Affections, and still believe in his own conversion, may well have the highest assurance of its reality. But how few there were in Edwards's time who gained the assurance, may be inferred from the circumstance that Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Emmons, disciples of Edwards and religious leaders in New England, remained to the last uncertain of their conversion.”He can attribute this only to the semi-deistic spirit of the time, with its distant God and imperfect apprehension of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Christ. Nothing so clearly marks the practical progress of Christianity as the growing faith in Jesus, the only Revealer of God in nature and history as well as in the heart of the believer. As never before, faith comes directly to Christ, abides in him, and finds his promise true:“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”(Mat. 28:20).“Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void and find The Rock beneath.”(d) That faith necessarily leads to good works, since it embraces the whole truth of God so far as made known, and appropriates Christ, not only as an external Savior, but as an internal sanctifying power (Heb. 7:15, 16; Gal. 5:6).Good works are the proper evidence of faith. The faith which does not lead men to act upon the commands and promises of Christ, or, in other words, does not lead to obedience, is called in Scripture a“dead,”that is, an unreal, faith. Such faith is not saving, since it lacks the voluntary element—actual appropriation of Christ (James 2:14-26).Heb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life”;Gal. 5:6—“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love”;James 2:14, 26—“What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him?... For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.”The best evidence that I believe a man's word is that I act upon it. Instance the bank-cashier's assurance to me that a sum of money is deposited with him to my account. If I am a millionaire, the communication may cause me no special joy. My faith in the cashier's word is tested by my going, or not going, for the money. So my faith in Christ is evidenced by my acting upon his commands and promises. We may illustrate also by the lifting of the trolley to the wire, and the resulting light and heat and motion to the car that before stood dark and cold and motionless upon the track.[pg 847]Salvation by works is like getting to one's destination by pushing the car. True faith depends upon God for energy, but it results in activity of all our powers.Rom. 3:28—“We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.”We are saved only by faith, yet this faith will be sure to bring forth good works; seeGal. 5:6—“faith working through love.”Dead faith might be illustrated by Abraham Lincoln's Mississippi steamboat, whose whistle was so big that, when it sounded, the boat stopped. Confession exhausts the energy, so that none is left for action.A. J. Gordon, The First Thing in the World, or The Primacy of Faith:“David Brainard speaks with a kind of suppressed astonishment of what he observed among the degraded North American Indians; how, preaching to them the good news of salvation through the atonement of Christ and persuading them to accept it by faith, and then hastening on in his rapid missionary tours, he found, on returning upon his track a year or two later, that the fruits of righteousness and sobriety and virtue and brotherly love were everywhere visible, though it had been possible to impart to them only the slightest moral or ethical teaching.”(e) That faith, as characteristically the inward act of reception, is not to be confounded with love or obedience, its fruit.Faith is, in the Scriptures, called a work, only in the sense that man's active powers are engaged in it. It is a work which God requires, yet which God enables man to perform (John 6:29—ἔργον τοῦ Θεοῦ.Cf.Rom. 1:17—δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ). As the gift of God and as the mere taking of undeserved mercy, it is expressly excluded from the category of works upon the basis of which man may claim salvation (Rom. 3:28; 4:4, 5, 16). It is not the act of the full soul bestowing, but the act of an empty soul receiving. Although this reception is prompted by a drawing of heart toward God inwrought by the Holy Spirit, this drawing of heart is not yet a conscious and developed love: such love is the result of faith (Gal. 5:6). What precedes faith is an unconscious and undeveloped tendency or disposition toward God. Conscious and developed affection toward God, or love proper, must always follow faith and be the product of faith. So, too, obedience can be rendered only after faith has laid hold of Christ, and with him has obtained the spirit of obedience (Rom. 1:5—ὑπακοὴν πίστεως =“obedience resulting from faith”). Hence faith is not the procuring cause of salvation, but is only the instrumental cause. The procuring cause is the Christ, whom faith embraces.
Acts 17:18—“he preached Jesus and the resurrection”;1 Cor. 1:23—“we preach Christ crucified”;Col. 1:27—“this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim”;Rev. 19:10—“the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”Saving faith is not belief in a dogma, but personal trust in a personal Christ. It is, therefore, possible to a child. Dorner:“The object of faith is the Christian revelation—God in Christ.... Faith is union with objective Christianity—appropriation of the real contents of Christianity.”Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the great uncle, defined faith as“an understanding, cordial receiving of the divine testimony concerning Jesus Christ and the way of salvation by him, in which the heart accords and conforms to the gospel.”Dr. Mark Hopkins, the great nephew, defined it as“confidence in a personal being.”Horace Bushnell:“Faith rests on a person. Faith is that act by which one person, a sinner, commits himself to another person, a Savior.”InJohn 11:25—“I am the resurrection and the life”—Martha is led to substitute belief in a person for belief in an abstract doctrine. Jesus is“the resurrection,”because he is“the life.”All doctrine and all miracle is significant and important only because it is the expression of the living Christ, the Revealer of God.The object of faith is sometimes represented in the N. T., as being God the Father.John 5:24—“He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life”;Rom. 4:5—“to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.”We can[pg 843]explain these passages only when we remember that Christ is God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16), and that“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9). Man may receive a gift without knowing from whom it comes, or how much it has cost. So the heathen, who casts himself as a sinner upon God's mercy, may receive salvation from the Crucified One, without knowing who is the giver, or that the gift was purchased by agony and blood. Denney, Studies in Theology, 154—“No N. T. writer everrememberedChrist. They never thought of him as belonging to the past. Let us not preach about thehistoricalChrist, but rather, about thelivingChrist; nay, let us preachhim, present and omnipotent. Jesus could say:‘Whither I go, ye know the way’(John 14:4); for they knewhim, and he was both theendand theway.”Dr. Charles Hodge unduly restricts the operations of grace to the preaching of the incarnate Christ: Syst. Theol., 2:648—“There is no faith where the gospel is not heard; and where there is no faith, there is no salvation. This is indeed an awful doctrine.”And yet, in 2:668, he says most inconsistently:“As God is everywhere present in the material world, guiding its operations according to the laws of nature; so he is everywhere present with the minds of men, as the Spirit of truth and goodness, operating on them according to laws of their free moral agency, inclining them to good and restraining them from evil.”This presence and revelation of God we hold to be through Christ, the eternal Word, and so we interpret the prophecy of Caiaphas as referring to the work of the personal Christ:John 11:51, 52—“he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation; and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad.”Since Christ is the Word of God and the Truth of God, he may be received even by those who have not heard of his manifestation in the flesh. A proud and self-righteous morality is inconsistent with saving faith; but a humble and penitent reliance upon God, as a Savior from sin and a guide of conduct, is an implicit faith in Christ; for such reliance casts itself upon God, so far as God has revealed himself,—and the only Revealer of God is Christ. We have, therefore, the hope that even among the heathen there may be some, like Socrates, who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit working through the truth of nature and conscience, have found the way of life and salvation.The number of such is so small as in no degree to weaken the claims of the missionary enterprise upon us. But that there are such seems to be intimated in Scripture:Mat. 8:11, 12—“many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness”;John 10:16—“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd”;Acts 4:12—“And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved”;10:31, 34, 35, 44—“Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God.... Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him.... While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word”;16:31—“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house.”And instances are found of apparently regenerated heathen; see in Godet onJohn 7:17, note (vol. 2:277), the account of the so-called“Chinese hermit,”who accepted Christ, saying:“This is the only Buddha whom men ought to worship!”Edwards, Life of Brainard, 173-175, gives an account“of one who was a devout and zealous reformer, or rather restorer, of what he supposed was the ancient religion of the Indians.”After a period of distress, he says that God“comforted his heart and showed him what he should do, and since that time he had known God and tried to serve him; and loved all men, be they who they would, so as he never did before.”See art. by Dr. Lucius E. Smith, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1881:622-645, on the question:“Is salvation possible without a knowledge of the gospel?”H. B. Smith, System, 323, note, rightly bases hope for the heathen, not on morality, but on sacrifice.A chief of the Camaroons in S. W. Africa, fishing with many of his tribe long before the missionaries came, was overtaken by a storm, and while almost all the rest were drowned, he and a few others escaped. He gathered his people together afterwards and told the story of disaster. He said:“When the canoes upset and I found myself battling with the waves, I thought: To whom shall I cry for help? I knew that the god of the hills could not help me; I knew that the evil spirit would not help me. So I cried to the Great Father, Lord, save me! At that moment my feet touched the sand of the beach, and I was safe. Now let all my people honor the Great Father, and let no man speak a word against him, for he can help us.”This chief afterwards used every effort to prevent strife and bloodshed, and was remembered by those who came after as a peace-maker. His son told this story to Alfred Saker, the missionary, saying[pg 844]“Why did you not come sooner? My father longed to know what you have told us; he thirsted for the knowledge of God.”Mr. Saker told this in England in 1879.John Fiske appends to his book, The Idea of God, 168, 169, the following pathetic words of a Kafir, named Sekese, in conversation with a French traveler, M. Arbrouseille, on the subject of the Christian religion:“Your tidings,”said this uncultured barbarian,“are what I want, and I was seeking before I knew you, as you shall hear and judge for yourself. Twelve years ago I went to feed my flocks; the weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock, and asked myself sorrowful questions; yes, sorrowful, because I was unable to answer them. Who has touched the stars with his hands—on what pillars do they rest? I asked myself. The waters never weary, they know no other law than to flow without ceasing from morning till night and from night till morning; but where do they stop, and who makes them flow thus? The clouds also come and go, and burst in water over the earth. Whence come they—who sends them? The diviners certainly do not give us rain; for how could they do it? And why do I not see them with my own eyes, when they go up to heaven to fetch it? I cannot see the wind; but what is it? Who brings it, makes it blow and roar and terrify us? Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not a blade in my field; to-day I returned to my field and found some; who can have given to the earth the wisdom and the power to produce it? Then I buried my head in both hands.”On the question whether men are ever led to faith, without intercourse with living Christians or preachers, see Life of Judson, by his son, 84. The British and Foreign Bible Society publish a statement, made upon the authority of Sir Bartle Frere, that he met with“an instance, which was carefully investigated, in which all the inhabitants of a remote village in the Deccan had abjured idolatry and caste, removed from their temples the idols which had been worshiped there time out of mind, and agreed to profess a form of Christianity which they had deduced from the careful perusal of a single Gospel and a few tracts.”Max Müller, Chips, 4:177-189, apparently proves that Buddha is the original of St. Josaphat, who has a day assigned to him in the calendar of both the Greek and the Roman churches.“Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.”The Missionary Review of the World, July, 1896:519-523, tells the story of Adiri, afterwards called John King, of Maripastoon in Dutch Guiana. The Holy Spirit wrought in him mightily years before he heard of the missionaries. He was a coal-black negro, a heathen and a fetish worshiper. He was convicted of sin and apparently converted through dreams and visions. Heaven and hell were revealed to him. He was sick unto death, and One appeared to him declaring himself to be the Mediator between God and man, and telling him to go to the missionaries for instruction. He was persecuted, but he won his tribe from heathenism and transformed them into a Christian community.S. W. Hamblen, missionary to China, tells of a very earnest and consistent believer who lived at rather an obscure town of about 2800 people. The evangelist went to visit him and found that he was a worthy example to those around him. He had become a Christian before he had seen a single believer, by reading a Chinese New Testament. Although till the evangelist went to his house he had never met a Baptist and did not know that there were any Baptist churches in existence, yet by reading the New Testament he had become not only a Christian but a strong Baptist in belief, so strong that he could argue with the missionary on the subject of baptism.The Rev. K. E. Malm, a pioneer Baptist preacher in Sweden, on a journey to the district as far north as Gestrikland, met a woman from Lapland who was on her way to Upsala in order to visit Dr. Fjellstedt and converse with him as to how she might obtain peace with God and get rid of her anxiety concerning her sins. She said she had traveled 60 (= 240 English) miles, and she had still far to go. Malm improved the opportunity to speak to her concerning the crucified Christ, and she found peace in believing on his atonement. She became so happy that she clapped her hands, and for joy could not sleep that night. She said later:“Now I will return home and tell the people what I have found.”This she did, and did not care to continue her journey to Upsala, in order to get comfort from Dr. Fjellstedt.(c) That the ground of faith is the external word of promise. The ground of assurance, on the other hand, is the inward witness of the Spirit that we fulfil the conditions of the promise (Rom. 4:20, 21; 8:16; Eph. 1:13; 1 John 4:13; 5:10). This witness of the Spirit is not a new revelation[pg 845]from God, but a strengthening of faith so that it becomes conscious and indubitable.True faith is possible without assurance of salvation. But if Alexander's view were correct, that the object of saving faith is the proposition:“God, for Christ's sake, now looks with reconciling love on me, a sinner,”no one could believe, without being at the same time assured that he was a saved person. Upon the true view, that the object of saving faith is not a proposition, but a person, we can perceive not only the simplicity of faith, but the possibility of faith even where the soul is destitute of assurance or of joy. Hence those who already believe are urged to seek for assurance (Heb. 6:11; 2 Peter 1:10).Rom. 4:20, 21—“looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was able also to perform”;8:16—“The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God”;Eph. 1:13—“in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”;1 John 4:13—“hereby we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit”;5:10—“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him.”This assurance is not of the essence of faith, because believers are exhorted to attain to it:Heb. 6:11—“And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope[marg.—‘full assurance’]even to the end”;2 Pet. 1:10—“Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure.”Cf.Prov. 14:14—“a good man shall be satisfied from himself.”There is need to guard the doctrine of assurance from mysticism. The witness of the Spirit is not a new and direct revelation from God. It is a strengthening of previously existing faith until he who possesses this faith cannot any longer doubt that he possesses it. It is a general rule that all our emotions, when they become exceedingly strong, also become conscious. Instance affection between man and woman.Edwards, Religious Affections, in Works, 3:83-91, says the witness of the Spirit is not a new word or suggestion from God, but an enlightening and sanctifying influence, so that the heart is drawn forth to embrace the truth already revealed, and to perceive that it embraces it.“Bearing witness”is not in this case to declare and assert a thing to be true, but to hold forth evidence from which a thing may be proved to be true: God“beareth witness ... by signs and wonders”(Heb. 2:4). So the“seal of the Spirit”is not a voice or suggestion, but a work or effect of the Spirit, left as a divine mark upon the soul, to be an evidence by which God's children may be known. Seals had engraved upon them the image or name of the persons to whom they belonged. The“seal of the Spirit,”the“earnest of the Spirit,”the“witness of the Spirit,”are all one thing. The childlike spirit, given by the Holy Spirit, is the Holy Spirit's witness or evidence in us.See also illustration of faith and assurance, in C. S. Robinson's Short Studies for S. S. Teachers, 179, 180. Faith should be distinguished not only from assurance, but also from feeling or joy. Instance Abraham's faith when he went to sacrifice Isaac; and Madame Guyon's faith, when God's face seemed hid from her. See, on the witness of the Spirit, Short, Bampton Lectures for 1846; British and For. Evan. Rev., 1888:617-631. For the view which confounds faith with assurance, see Alexander, Discourses on Faith, 63-118.It is important to distinguish saving faith from assurance of faith, for the reason that lack of assurance is taken by so many real Christians as evidence that they know nothing of the grace of God. To use once more a well-worn illustration: It is getting into the boat that saves us, and not our comfortable feelings about the boat. What saves us is faith inChrist, not faith inourfaith, or faith inthefaith. The astronomer does not turn his telescope to the reflection of the sun or moon in the water, when he can turn it to the sun or moon itself. Why obscure our faith, when we can look to Christ?The faith in a distant Redeemer was the faith of Christian, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Only at the end of his journey does Christian have Christ's presence. This representation rests upon a wrong conception of faith as laying hold of a promise or a doctrine, rather than as laying hold of the living and present Christ. The old Scotch woman's direction to the inquirer to“grip the promise”is not so good as the direction to“grip Christ.”Sir Francis Drake, the great English sailor, had for his crest an[pg 846]anchor with a cable running up into the sky. A poor boy, taught in a mission school in Ireland, when asked what was meant by saving faith, replied:“It is grasping God with the heart.”The view of Charles Hodge, like that of Alexander, puts doctrine before Christ, and makes the formal principle, the supremacy of Scripture, superior to the material principle, justification by faith. The Shorter Catechism is better:“Faith in Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and reston him alonefor salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.”If this relation of faith to the personal Christ had been kept in mind, much religious despondency might have been avoided. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 30, 31, tells us that Frances Ridley Havergal could never fix the date of her conversion. From the age of six to that of fourteen she suffered from religious fears, and did not venture to call herself a Christian. It was the result of confoundingbeingat peace with God and beingconsciousof that peace. So the mother of Frederick Denison Maurice, an admirable and deeply religious woman, endured long and deep mental suffering from doubts as to her personal election.There is a witness of the Spirit, with some sinners, that they arenotchildren of God, and this witness is through the truth, though the sinner does not know that it is the Spirit who reveals it to him. We call this work of the Spirit conviction of sin. The witness of the Spirit that we are children of God, and the assurance of faith of which Scripture speaks, are one and the same thing, the former designation only emphasizing the source from which the assurance springs. False assurance is destitute of humility, but true assurance is so absorbed in Christ that self is forgotten. Self-consciousness, and desire to display one's faith, are not marks of true assurance. When we say:“That man has a great deal of assurance,”we have in mind the false and self-centered assurance of the hypocrite or the self-deceiver.Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 231—“It has been said that any one who can read Edwards's Religious Affections, and still believe in his own conversion, may well have the highest assurance of its reality. But how few there were in Edwards's time who gained the assurance, may be inferred from the circumstance that Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Emmons, disciples of Edwards and religious leaders in New England, remained to the last uncertain of their conversion.”He can attribute this only to the semi-deistic spirit of the time, with its distant God and imperfect apprehension of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Christ. Nothing so clearly marks the practical progress of Christianity as the growing faith in Jesus, the only Revealer of God in nature and history as well as in the heart of the believer. As never before, faith comes directly to Christ, abides in him, and finds his promise true:“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”(Mat. 28:20).“Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void and find The Rock beneath.”(d) That faith necessarily leads to good works, since it embraces the whole truth of God so far as made known, and appropriates Christ, not only as an external Savior, but as an internal sanctifying power (Heb. 7:15, 16; Gal. 5:6).Good works are the proper evidence of faith. The faith which does not lead men to act upon the commands and promises of Christ, or, in other words, does not lead to obedience, is called in Scripture a“dead,”that is, an unreal, faith. Such faith is not saving, since it lacks the voluntary element—actual appropriation of Christ (James 2:14-26).Heb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life”;Gal. 5:6—“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love”;James 2:14, 26—“What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him?... For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.”The best evidence that I believe a man's word is that I act upon it. Instance the bank-cashier's assurance to me that a sum of money is deposited with him to my account. If I am a millionaire, the communication may cause me no special joy. My faith in the cashier's word is tested by my going, or not going, for the money. So my faith in Christ is evidenced by my acting upon his commands and promises. We may illustrate also by the lifting of the trolley to the wire, and the resulting light and heat and motion to the car that before stood dark and cold and motionless upon the track.[pg 847]Salvation by works is like getting to one's destination by pushing the car. True faith depends upon God for energy, but it results in activity of all our powers.Rom. 3:28—“We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.”We are saved only by faith, yet this faith will be sure to bring forth good works; seeGal. 5:6—“faith working through love.”Dead faith might be illustrated by Abraham Lincoln's Mississippi steamboat, whose whistle was so big that, when it sounded, the boat stopped. Confession exhausts the energy, so that none is left for action.A. J. Gordon, The First Thing in the World, or The Primacy of Faith:“David Brainard speaks with a kind of suppressed astonishment of what he observed among the degraded North American Indians; how, preaching to them the good news of salvation through the atonement of Christ and persuading them to accept it by faith, and then hastening on in his rapid missionary tours, he found, on returning upon his track a year or two later, that the fruits of righteousness and sobriety and virtue and brotherly love were everywhere visible, though it had been possible to impart to them only the slightest moral or ethical teaching.”(e) That faith, as characteristically the inward act of reception, is not to be confounded with love or obedience, its fruit.Faith is, in the Scriptures, called a work, only in the sense that man's active powers are engaged in it. It is a work which God requires, yet which God enables man to perform (John 6:29—ἔργον τοῦ Θεοῦ.Cf.Rom. 1:17—δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ). As the gift of God and as the mere taking of undeserved mercy, it is expressly excluded from the category of works upon the basis of which man may claim salvation (Rom. 3:28; 4:4, 5, 16). It is not the act of the full soul bestowing, but the act of an empty soul receiving. Although this reception is prompted by a drawing of heart toward God inwrought by the Holy Spirit, this drawing of heart is not yet a conscious and developed love: such love is the result of faith (Gal. 5:6). What precedes faith is an unconscious and undeveloped tendency or disposition toward God. Conscious and developed affection toward God, or love proper, must always follow faith and be the product of faith. So, too, obedience can be rendered only after faith has laid hold of Christ, and with him has obtained the spirit of obedience (Rom. 1:5—ὑπακοὴν πίστεως =“obedience resulting from faith”). Hence faith is not the procuring cause of salvation, but is only the instrumental cause. The procuring cause is the Christ, whom faith embraces.
Acts 17:18—“he preached Jesus and the resurrection”;1 Cor. 1:23—“we preach Christ crucified”;Col. 1:27—“this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim”;Rev. 19:10—“the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”Saving faith is not belief in a dogma, but personal trust in a personal Christ. It is, therefore, possible to a child. Dorner:“The object of faith is the Christian revelation—God in Christ.... Faith is union with objective Christianity—appropriation of the real contents of Christianity.”Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the great uncle, defined faith as“an understanding, cordial receiving of the divine testimony concerning Jesus Christ and the way of salvation by him, in which the heart accords and conforms to the gospel.”Dr. Mark Hopkins, the great nephew, defined it as“confidence in a personal being.”Horace Bushnell:“Faith rests on a person. Faith is that act by which one person, a sinner, commits himself to another person, a Savior.”InJohn 11:25—“I am the resurrection and the life”—Martha is led to substitute belief in a person for belief in an abstract doctrine. Jesus is“the resurrection,”because he is“the life.”All doctrine and all miracle is significant and important only because it is the expression of the living Christ, the Revealer of God.The object of faith is sometimes represented in the N. T., as being God the Father.John 5:24—“He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life”;Rom. 4:5—“to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.”We can[pg 843]explain these passages only when we remember that Christ is God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16), and that“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9). Man may receive a gift without knowing from whom it comes, or how much it has cost. So the heathen, who casts himself as a sinner upon God's mercy, may receive salvation from the Crucified One, without knowing who is the giver, or that the gift was purchased by agony and blood. Denney, Studies in Theology, 154—“No N. T. writer everrememberedChrist. They never thought of him as belonging to the past. Let us not preach about thehistoricalChrist, but rather, about thelivingChrist; nay, let us preachhim, present and omnipotent. Jesus could say:‘Whither I go, ye know the way’(John 14:4); for they knewhim, and he was both theendand theway.”Dr. Charles Hodge unduly restricts the operations of grace to the preaching of the incarnate Christ: Syst. Theol., 2:648—“There is no faith where the gospel is not heard; and where there is no faith, there is no salvation. This is indeed an awful doctrine.”And yet, in 2:668, he says most inconsistently:“As God is everywhere present in the material world, guiding its operations according to the laws of nature; so he is everywhere present with the minds of men, as the Spirit of truth and goodness, operating on them according to laws of their free moral agency, inclining them to good and restraining them from evil.”This presence and revelation of God we hold to be through Christ, the eternal Word, and so we interpret the prophecy of Caiaphas as referring to the work of the personal Christ:John 11:51, 52—“he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation; and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad.”Since Christ is the Word of God and the Truth of God, he may be received even by those who have not heard of his manifestation in the flesh. A proud and self-righteous morality is inconsistent with saving faith; but a humble and penitent reliance upon God, as a Savior from sin and a guide of conduct, is an implicit faith in Christ; for such reliance casts itself upon God, so far as God has revealed himself,—and the only Revealer of God is Christ. We have, therefore, the hope that even among the heathen there may be some, like Socrates, who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit working through the truth of nature and conscience, have found the way of life and salvation.The number of such is so small as in no degree to weaken the claims of the missionary enterprise upon us. But that there are such seems to be intimated in Scripture:Mat. 8:11, 12—“many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness”;John 10:16—“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd”;Acts 4:12—“And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved”;10:31, 34, 35, 44—“Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God.... Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him.... While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word”;16:31—“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house.”And instances are found of apparently regenerated heathen; see in Godet onJohn 7:17, note (vol. 2:277), the account of the so-called“Chinese hermit,”who accepted Christ, saying:“This is the only Buddha whom men ought to worship!”Edwards, Life of Brainard, 173-175, gives an account“of one who was a devout and zealous reformer, or rather restorer, of what he supposed was the ancient religion of the Indians.”After a period of distress, he says that God“comforted his heart and showed him what he should do, and since that time he had known God and tried to serve him; and loved all men, be they who they would, so as he never did before.”See art. by Dr. Lucius E. Smith, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1881:622-645, on the question:“Is salvation possible without a knowledge of the gospel?”H. B. Smith, System, 323, note, rightly bases hope for the heathen, not on morality, but on sacrifice.A chief of the Camaroons in S. W. Africa, fishing with many of his tribe long before the missionaries came, was overtaken by a storm, and while almost all the rest were drowned, he and a few others escaped. He gathered his people together afterwards and told the story of disaster. He said:“When the canoes upset and I found myself battling with the waves, I thought: To whom shall I cry for help? I knew that the god of the hills could not help me; I knew that the evil spirit would not help me. So I cried to the Great Father, Lord, save me! At that moment my feet touched the sand of the beach, and I was safe. Now let all my people honor the Great Father, and let no man speak a word against him, for he can help us.”This chief afterwards used every effort to prevent strife and bloodshed, and was remembered by those who came after as a peace-maker. His son told this story to Alfred Saker, the missionary, saying[pg 844]“Why did you not come sooner? My father longed to know what you have told us; he thirsted for the knowledge of God.”Mr. Saker told this in England in 1879.John Fiske appends to his book, The Idea of God, 168, 169, the following pathetic words of a Kafir, named Sekese, in conversation with a French traveler, M. Arbrouseille, on the subject of the Christian religion:“Your tidings,”said this uncultured barbarian,“are what I want, and I was seeking before I knew you, as you shall hear and judge for yourself. Twelve years ago I went to feed my flocks; the weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock, and asked myself sorrowful questions; yes, sorrowful, because I was unable to answer them. Who has touched the stars with his hands—on what pillars do they rest? I asked myself. The waters never weary, they know no other law than to flow without ceasing from morning till night and from night till morning; but where do they stop, and who makes them flow thus? The clouds also come and go, and burst in water over the earth. Whence come they—who sends them? The diviners certainly do not give us rain; for how could they do it? And why do I not see them with my own eyes, when they go up to heaven to fetch it? I cannot see the wind; but what is it? Who brings it, makes it blow and roar and terrify us? Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not a blade in my field; to-day I returned to my field and found some; who can have given to the earth the wisdom and the power to produce it? Then I buried my head in both hands.”On the question whether men are ever led to faith, without intercourse with living Christians or preachers, see Life of Judson, by his son, 84. The British and Foreign Bible Society publish a statement, made upon the authority of Sir Bartle Frere, that he met with“an instance, which was carefully investigated, in which all the inhabitants of a remote village in the Deccan had abjured idolatry and caste, removed from their temples the idols which had been worshiped there time out of mind, and agreed to profess a form of Christianity which they had deduced from the careful perusal of a single Gospel and a few tracts.”Max Müller, Chips, 4:177-189, apparently proves that Buddha is the original of St. Josaphat, who has a day assigned to him in the calendar of both the Greek and the Roman churches.“Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.”The Missionary Review of the World, July, 1896:519-523, tells the story of Adiri, afterwards called John King, of Maripastoon in Dutch Guiana. The Holy Spirit wrought in him mightily years before he heard of the missionaries. He was a coal-black negro, a heathen and a fetish worshiper. He was convicted of sin and apparently converted through dreams and visions. Heaven and hell were revealed to him. He was sick unto death, and One appeared to him declaring himself to be the Mediator between God and man, and telling him to go to the missionaries for instruction. He was persecuted, but he won his tribe from heathenism and transformed them into a Christian community.S. W. Hamblen, missionary to China, tells of a very earnest and consistent believer who lived at rather an obscure town of about 2800 people. The evangelist went to visit him and found that he was a worthy example to those around him. He had become a Christian before he had seen a single believer, by reading a Chinese New Testament. Although till the evangelist went to his house he had never met a Baptist and did not know that there were any Baptist churches in existence, yet by reading the New Testament he had become not only a Christian but a strong Baptist in belief, so strong that he could argue with the missionary on the subject of baptism.The Rev. K. E. Malm, a pioneer Baptist preacher in Sweden, on a journey to the district as far north as Gestrikland, met a woman from Lapland who was on her way to Upsala in order to visit Dr. Fjellstedt and converse with him as to how she might obtain peace with God and get rid of her anxiety concerning her sins. She said she had traveled 60 (= 240 English) miles, and she had still far to go. Malm improved the opportunity to speak to her concerning the crucified Christ, and she found peace in believing on his atonement. She became so happy that she clapped her hands, and for joy could not sleep that night. She said later:“Now I will return home and tell the people what I have found.”This she did, and did not care to continue her journey to Upsala, in order to get comfort from Dr. Fjellstedt.(c) That the ground of faith is the external word of promise. The ground of assurance, on the other hand, is the inward witness of the Spirit that we fulfil the conditions of the promise (Rom. 4:20, 21; 8:16; Eph. 1:13; 1 John 4:13; 5:10). This witness of the Spirit is not a new revelation[pg 845]from God, but a strengthening of faith so that it becomes conscious and indubitable.True faith is possible without assurance of salvation. But if Alexander's view were correct, that the object of saving faith is the proposition:“God, for Christ's sake, now looks with reconciling love on me, a sinner,”no one could believe, without being at the same time assured that he was a saved person. Upon the true view, that the object of saving faith is not a proposition, but a person, we can perceive not only the simplicity of faith, but the possibility of faith even where the soul is destitute of assurance or of joy. Hence those who already believe are urged to seek for assurance (Heb. 6:11; 2 Peter 1:10).Rom. 4:20, 21—“looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was able also to perform”;8:16—“The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God”;Eph. 1:13—“in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”;1 John 4:13—“hereby we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit”;5:10—“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him.”This assurance is not of the essence of faith, because believers are exhorted to attain to it:Heb. 6:11—“And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope[marg.—‘full assurance’]even to the end”;2 Pet. 1:10—“Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure.”Cf.Prov. 14:14—“a good man shall be satisfied from himself.”There is need to guard the doctrine of assurance from mysticism. The witness of the Spirit is not a new and direct revelation from God. It is a strengthening of previously existing faith until he who possesses this faith cannot any longer doubt that he possesses it. It is a general rule that all our emotions, when they become exceedingly strong, also become conscious. Instance affection between man and woman.Edwards, Religious Affections, in Works, 3:83-91, says the witness of the Spirit is not a new word or suggestion from God, but an enlightening and sanctifying influence, so that the heart is drawn forth to embrace the truth already revealed, and to perceive that it embraces it.“Bearing witness”is not in this case to declare and assert a thing to be true, but to hold forth evidence from which a thing may be proved to be true: God“beareth witness ... by signs and wonders”(Heb. 2:4). So the“seal of the Spirit”is not a voice or suggestion, but a work or effect of the Spirit, left as a divine mark upon the soul, to be an evidence by which God's children may be known. Seals had engraved upon them the image or name of the persons to whom they belonged. The“seal of the Spirit,”the“earnest of the Spirit,”the“witness of the Spirit,”are all one thing. The childlike spirit, given by the Holy Spirit, is the Holy Spirit's witness or evidence in us.See also illustration of faith and assurance, in C. S. Robinson's Short Studies for S. S. Teachers, 179, 180. Faith should be distinguished not only from assurance, but also from feeling or joy. Instance Abraham's faith when he went to sacrifice Isaac; and Madame Guyon's faith, when God's face seemed hid from her. See, on the witness of the Spirit, Short, Bampton Lectures for 1846; British and For. Evan. Rev., 1888:617-631. For the view which confounds faith with assurance, see Alexander, Discourses on Faith, 63-118.It is important to distinguish saving faith from assurance of faith, for the reason that lack of assurance is taken by so many real Christians as evidence that they know nothing of the grace of God. To use once more a well-worn illustration: It is getting into the boat that saves us, and not our comfortable feelings about the boat. What saves us is faith inChrist, not faith inourfaith, or faith inthefaith. The astronomer does not turn his telescope to the reflection of the sun or moon in the water, when he can turn it to the sun or moon itself. Why obscure our faith, when we can look to Christ?The faith in a distant Redeemer was the faith of Christian, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Only at the end of his journey does Christian have Christ's presence. This representation rests upon a wrong conception of faith as laying hold of a promise or a doctrine, rather than as laying hold of the living and present Christ. The old Scotch woman's direction to the inquirer to“grip the promise”is not so good as the direction to“grip Christ.”Sir Francis Drake, the great English sailor, had for his crest an[pg 846]anchor with a cable running up into the sky. A poor boy, taught in a mission school in Ireland, when asked what was meant by saving faith, replied:“It is grasping God with the heart.”The view of Charles Hodge, like that of Alexander, puts doctrine before Christ, and makes the formal principle, the supremacy of Scripture, superior to the material principle, justification by faith. The Shorter Catechism is better:“Faith in Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and reston him alonefor salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.”If this relation of faith to the personal Christ had been kept in mind, much religious despondency might have been avoided. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 30, 31, tells us that Frances Ridley Havergal could never fix the date of her conversion. From the age of six to that of fourteen she suffered from religious fears, and did not venture to call herself a Christian. It was the result of confoundingbeingat peace with God and beingconsciousof that peace. So the mother of Frederick Denison Maurice, an admirable and deeply religious woman, endured long and deep mental suffering from doubts as to her personal election.There is a witness of the Spirit, with some sinners, that they arenotchildren of God, and this witness is through the truth, though the sinner does not know that it is the Spirit who reveals it to him. We call this work of the Spirit conviction of sin. The witness of the Spirit that we are children of God, and the assurance of faith of which Scripture speaks, are one and the same thing, the former designation only emphasizing the source from which the assurance springs. False assurance is destitute of humility, but true assurance is so absorbed in Christ that self is forgotten. Self-consciousness, and desire to display one's faith, are not marks of true assurance. When we say:“That man has a great deal of assurance,”we have in mind the false and self-centered assurance of the hypocrite or the self-deceiver.Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 231—“It has been said that any one who can read Edwards's Religious Affections, and still believe in his own conversion, may well have the highest assurance of its reality. But how few there were in Edwards's time who gained the assurance, may be inferred from the circumstance that Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Emmons, disciples of Edwards and religious leaders in New England, remained to the last uncertain of their conversion.”He can attribute this only to the semi-deistic spirit of the time, with its distant God and imperfect apprehension of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Christ. Nothing so clearly marks the practical progress of Christianity as the growing faith in Jesus, the only Revealer of God in nature and history as well as in the heart of the believer. As never before, faith comes directly to Christ, abides in him, and finds his promise true:“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”(Mat. 28:20).“Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void and find The Rock beneath.”(d) That faith necessarily leads to good works, since it embraces the whole truth of God so far as made known, and appropriates Christ, not only as an external Savior, but as an internal sanctifying power (Heb. 7:15, 16; Gal. 5:6).Good works are the proper evidence of faith. The faith which does not lead men to act upon the commands and promises of Christ, or, in other words, does not lead to obedience, is called in Scripture a“dead,”that is, an unreal, faith. Such faith is not saving, since it lacks the voluntary element—actual appropriation of Christ (James 2:14-26).Heb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life”;Gal. 5:6—“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love”;James 2:14, 26—“What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him?... For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.”The best evidence that I believe a man's word is that I act upon it. Instance the bank-cashier's assurance to me that a sum of money is deposited with him to my account. If I am a millionaire, the communication may cause me no special joy. My faith in the cashier's word is tested by my going, or not going, for the money. So my faith in Christ is evidenced by my acting upon his commands and promises. We may illustrate also by the lifting of the trolley to the wire, and the resulting light and heat and motion to the car that before stood dark and cold and motionless upon the track.[pg 847]Salvation by works is like getting to one's destination by pushing the car. True faith depends upon God for energy, but it results in activity of all our powers.Rom. 3:28—“We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.”We are saved only by faith, yet this faith will be sure to bring forth good works; seeGal. 5:6—“faith working through love.”Dead faith might be illustrated by Abraham Lincoln's Mississippi steamboat, whose whistle was so big that, when it sounded, the boat stopped. Confession exhausts the energy, so that none is left for action.A. J. Gordon, The First Thing in the World, or The Primacy of Faith:“David Brainard speaks with a kind of suppressed astonishment of what he observed among the degraded North American Indians; how, preaching to them the good news of salvation through the atonement of Christ and persuading them to accept it by faith, and then hastening on in his rapid missionary tours, he found, on returning upon his track a year or two later, that the fruits of righteousness and sobriety and virtue and brotherly love were everywhere visible, though it had been possible to impart to them only the slightest moral or ethical teaching.”(e) That faith, as characteristically the inward act of reception, is not to be confounded with love or obedience, its fruit.Faith is, in the Scriptures, called a work, only in the sense that man's active powers are engaged in it. It is a work which God requires, yet which God enables man to perform (John 6:29—ἔργον τοῦ Θεοῦ.Cf.Rom. 1:17—δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ). As the gift of God and as the mere taking of undeserved mercy, it is expressly excluded from the category of works upon the basis of which man may claim salvation (Rom. 3:28; 4:4, 5, 16). It is not the act of the full soul bestowing, but the act of an empty soul receiving. Although this reception is prompted by a drawing of heart toward God inwrought by the Holy Spirit, this drawing of heart is not yet a conscious and developed love: such love is the result of faith (Gal. 5:6). What precedes faith is an unconscious and undeveloped tendency or disposition toward God. Conscious and developed affection toward God, or love proper, must always follow faith and be the product of faith. So, too, obedience can be rendered only after faith has laid hold of Christ, and with him has obtained the spirit of obedience (Rom. 1:5—ὑπακοὴν πίστεως =“obedience resulting from faith”). Hence faith is not the procuring cause of salvation, but is only the instrumental cause. The procuring cause is the Christ, whom faith embraces.
Acts 17:18—“he preached Jesus and the resurrection”;1 Cor. 1:23—“we preach Christ crucified”;Col. 1:27—“this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim”;Rev. 19:10—“the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”Saving faith is not belief in a dogma, but personal trust in a personal Christ. It is, therefore, possible to a child. Dorner:“The object of faith is the Christian revelation—God in Christ.... Faith is union with objective Christianity—appropriation of the real contents of Christianity.”Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the great uncle, defined faith as“an understanding, cordial receiving of the divine testimony concerning Jesus Christ and the way of salvation by him, in which the heart accords and conforms to the gospel.”Dr. Mark Hopkins, the great nephew, defined it as“confidence in a personal being.”Horace Bushnell:“Faith rests on a person. Faith is that act by which one person, a sinner, commits himself to another person, a Savior.”InJohn 11:25—“I am the resurrection and the life”—Martha is led to substitute belief in a person for belief in an abstract doctrine. Jesus is“the resurrection,”because he is“the life.”All doctrine and all miracle is significant and important only because it is the expression of the living Christ, the Revealer of God.The object of faith is sometimes represented in the N. T., as being God the Father.John 5:24—“He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life”;Rom. 4:5—“to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.”We can[pg 843]explain these passages only when we remember that Christ is God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16), and that“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9). Man may receive a gift without knowing from whom it comes, or how much it has cost. So the heathen, who casts himself as a sinner upon God's mercy, may receive salvation from the Crucified One, without knowing who is the giver, or that the gift was purchased by agony and blood. Denney, Studies in Theology, 154—“No N. T. writer everrememberedChrist. They never thought of him as belonging to the past. Let us not preach about thehistoricalChrist, but rather, about thelivingChrist; nay, let us preachhim, present and omnipotent. Jesus could say:‘Whither I go, ye know the way’(John 14:4); for they knewhim, and he was both theendand theway.”Dr. Charles Hodge unduly restricts the operations of grace to the preaching of the incarnate Christ: Syst. Theol., 2:648—“There is no faith where the gospel is not heard; and where there is no faith, there is no salvation. This is indeed an awful doctrine.”And yet, in 2:668, he says most inconsistently:“As God is everywhere present in the material world, guiding its operations according to the laws of nature; so he is everywhere present with the minds of men, as the Spirit of truth and goodness, operating on them according to laws of their free moral agency, inclining them to good and restraining them from evil.”This presence and revelation of God we hold to be through Christ, the eternal Word, and so we interpret the prophecy of Caiaphas as referring to the work of the personal Christ:John 11:51, 52—“he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation; and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad.”Since Christ is the Word of God and the Truth of God, he may be received even by those who have not heard of his manifestation in the flesh. A proud and self-righteous morality is inconsistent with saving faith; but a humble and penitent reliance upon God, as a Savior from sin and a guide of conduct, is an implicit faith in Christ; for such reliance casts itself upon God, so far as God has revealed himself,—and the only Revealer of God is Christ. We have, therefore, the hope that even among the heathen there may be some, like Socrates, who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit working through the truth of nature and conscience, have found the way of life and salvation.The number of such is so small as in no degree to weaken the claims of the missionary enterprise upon us. But that there are such seems to be intimated in Scripture:Mat. 8:11, 12—“many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness”;John 10:16—“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd”;Acts 4:12—“And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved”;10:31, 34, 35, 44—“Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God.... Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him.... While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word”;16:31—“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house.”And instances are found of apparently regenerated heathen; see in Godet onJohn 7:17, note (vol. 2:277), the account of the so-called“Chinese hermit,”who accepted Christ, saying:“This is the only Buddha whom men ought to worship!”Edwards, Life of Brainard, 173-175, gives an account“of one who was a devout and zealous reformer, or rather restorer, of what he supposed was the ancient religion of the Indians.”After a period of distress, he says that God“comforted his heart and showed him what he should do, and since that time he had known God and tried to serve him; and loved all men, be they who they would, so as he never did before.”See art. by Dr. Lucius E. Smith, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1881:622-645, on the question:“Is salvation possible without a knowledge of the gospel?”H. B. Smith, System, 323, note, rightly bases hope for the heathen, not on morality, but on sacrifice.A chief of the Camaroons in S. W. Africa, fishing with many of his tribe long before the missionaries came, was overtaken by a storm, and while almost all the rest were drowned, he and a few others escaped. He gathered his people together afterwards and told the story of disaster. He said:“When the canoes upset and I found myself battling with the waves, I thought: To whom shall I cry for help? I knew that the god of the hills could not help me; I knew that the evil spirit would not help me. So I cried to the Great Father, Lord, save me! At that moment my feet touched the sand of the beach, and I was safe. Now let all my people honor the Great Father, and let no man speak a word against him, for he can help us.”This chief afterwards used every effort to prevent strife and bloodshed, and was remembered by those who came after as a peace-maker. His son told this story to Alfred Saker, the missionary, saying[pg 844]“Why did you not come sooner? My father longed to know what you have told us; he thirsted for the knowledge of God.”Mr. Saker told this in England in 1879.John Fiske appends to his book, The Idea of God, 168, 169, the following pathetic words of a Kafir, named Sekese, in conversation with a French traveler, M. Arbrouseille, on the subject of the Christian religion:“Your tidings,”said this uncultured barbarian,“are what I want, and I was seeking before I knew you, as you shall hear and judge for yourself. Twelve years ago I went to feed my flocks; the weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock, and asked myself sorrowful questions; yes, sorrowful, because I was unable to answer them. Who has touched the stars with his hands—on what pillars do they rest? I asked myself. The waters never weary, they know no other law than to flow without ceasing from morning till night and from night till morning; but where do they stop, and who makes them flow thus? The clouds also come and go, and burst in water over the earth. Whence come they—who sends them? The diviners certainly do not give us rain; for how could they do it? And why do I not see them with my own eyes, when they go up to heaven to fetch it? I cannot see the wind; but what is it? Who brings it, makes it blow and roar and terrify us? Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not a blade in my field; to-day I returned to my field and found some; who can have given to the earth the wisdom and the power to produce it? Then I buried my head in both hands.”On the question whether men are ever led to faith, without intercourse with living Christians or preachers, see Life of Judson, by his son, 84. The British and Foreign Bible Society publish a statement, made upon the authority of Sir Bartle Frere, that he met with“an instance, which was carefully investigated, in which all the inhabitants of a remote village in the Deccan had abjured idolatry and caste, removed from their temples the idols which had been worshiped there time out of mind, and agreed to profess a form of Christianity which they had deduced from the careful perusal of a single Gospel and a few tracts.”Max Müller, Chips, 4:177-189, apparently proves that Buddha is the original of St. Josaphat, who has a day assigned to him in the calendar of both the Greek and the Roman churches.“Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.”The Missionary Review of the World, July, 1896:519-523, tells the story of Adiri, afterwards called John King, of Maripastoon in Dutch Guiana. The Holy Spirit wrought in him mightily years before he heard of the missionaries. He was a coal-black negro, a heathen and a fetish worshiper. He was convicted of sin and apparently converted through dreams and visions. Heaven and hell were revealed to him. He was sick unto death, and One appeared to him declaring himself to be the Mediator between God and man, and telling him to go to the missionaries for instruction. He was persecuted, but he won his tribe from heathenism and transformed them into a Christian community.S. W. Hamblen, missionary to China, tells of a very earnest and consistent believer who lived at rather an obscure town of about 2800 people. The evangelist went to visit him and found that he was a worthy example to those around him. He had become a Christian before he had seen a single believer, by reading a Chinese New Testament. Although till the evangelist went to his house he had never met a Baptist and did not know that there were any Baptist churches in existence, yet by reading the New Testament he had become not only a Christian but a strong Baptist in belief, so strong that he could argue with the missionary on the subject of baptism.The Rev. K. E. Malm, a pioneer Baptist preacher in Sweden, on a journey to the district as far north as Gestrikland, met a woman from Lapland who was on her way to Upsala in order to visit Dr. Fjellstedt and converse with him as to how she might obtain peace with God and get rid of her anxiety concerning her sins. She said she had traveled 60 (= 240 English) miles, and she had still far to go. Malm improved the opportunity to speak to her concerning the crucified Christ, and she found peace in believing on his atonement. She became so happy that she clapped her hands, and for joy could not sleep that night. She said later:“Now I will return home and tell the people what I have found.”This she did, and did not care to continue her journey to Upsala, in order to get comfort from Dr. Fjellstedt.(c) That the ground of faith is the external word of promise. The ground of assurance, on the other hand, is the inward witness of the Spirit that we fulfil the conditions of the promise (Rom. 4:20, 21; 8:16; Eph. 1:13; 1 John 4:13; 5:10). This witness of the Spirit is not a new revelation[pg 845]from God, but a strengthening of faith so that it becomes conscious and indubitable.True faith is possible without assurance of salvation. But if Alexander's view were correct, that the object of saving faith is the proposition:“God, for Christ's sake, now looks with reconciling love on me, a sinner,”no one could believe, without being at the same time assured that he was a saved person. Upon the true view, that the object of saving faith is not a proposition, but a person, we can perceive not only the simplicity of faith, but the possibility of faith even where the soul is destitute of assurance or of joy. Hence those who already believe are urged to seek for assurance (Heb. 6:11; 2 Peter 1:10).Rom. 4:20, 21—“looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was able also to perform”;8:16—“The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God”;Eph. 1:13—“in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”;1 John 4:13—“hereby we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit”;5:10—“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him.”This assurance is not of the essence of faith, because believers are exhorted to attain to it:Heb. 6:11—“And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope[marg.—‘full assurance’]even to the end”;2 Pet. 1:10—“Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure.”Cf.Prov. 14:14—“a good man shall be satisfied from himself.”There is need to guard the doctrine of assurance from mysticism. The witness of the Spirit is not a new and direct revelation from God. It is a strengthening of previously existing faith until he who possesses this faith cannot any longer doubt that he possesses it. It is a general rule that all our emotions, when they become exceedingly strong, also become conscious. Instance affection between man and woman.Edwards, Religious Affections, in Works, 3:83-91, says the witness of the Spirit is not a new word or suggestion from God, but an enlightening and sanctifying influence, so that the heart is drawn forth to embrace the truth already revealed, and to perceive that it embraces it.“Bearing witness”is not in this case to declare and assert a thing to be true, but to hold forth evidence from which a thing may be proved to be true: God“beareth witness ... by signs and wonders”(Heb. 2:4). So the“seal of the Spirit”is not a voice or suggestion, but a work or effect of the Spirit, left as a divine mark upon the soul, to be an evidence by which God's children may be known. Seals had engraved upon them the image or name of the persons to whom they belonged. The“seal of the Spirit,”the“earnest of the Spirit,”the“witness of the Spirit,”are all one thing. The childlike spirit, given by the Holy Spirit, is the Holy Spirit's witness or evidence in us.See also illustration of faith and assurance, in C. S. Robinson's Short Studies for S. S. Teachers, 179, 180. Faith should be distinguished not only from assurance, but also from feeling or joy. Instance Abraham's faith when he went to sacrifice Isaac; and Madame Guyon's faith, when God's face seemed hid from her. See, on the witness of the Spirit, Short, Bampton Lectures for 1846; British and For. Evan. Rev., 1888:617-631. For the view which confounds faith with assurance, see Alexander, Discourses on Faith, 63-118.It is important to distinguish saving faith from assurance of faith, for the reason that lack of assurance is taken by so many real Christians as evidence that they know nothing of the grace of God. To use once more a well-worn illustration: It is getting into the boat that saves us, and not our comfortable feelings about the boat. What saves us is faith inChrist, not faith inourfaith, or faith inthefaith. The astronomer does not turn his telescope to the reflection of the sun or moon in the water, when he can turn it to the sun or moon itself. Why obscure our faith, when we can look to Christ?The faith in a distant Redeemer was the faith of Christian, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Only at the end of his journey does Christian have Christ's presence. This representation rests upon a wrong conception of faith as laying hold of a promise or a doctrine, rather than as laying hold of the living and present Christ. The old Scotch woman's direction to the inquirer to“grip the promise”is not so good as the direction to“grip Christ.”Sir Francis Drake, the great English sailor, had for his crest an[pg 846]anchor with a cable running up into the sky. A poor boy, taught in a mission school in Ireland, when asked what was meant by saving faith, replied:“It is grasping God with the heart.”The view of Charles Hodge, like that of Alexander, puts doctrine before Christ, and makes the formal principle, the supremacy of Scripture, superior to the material principle, justification by faith. The Shorter Catechism is better:“Faith in Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and reston him alonefor salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.”If this relation of faith to the personal Christ had been kept in mind, much religious despondency might have been avoided. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 30, 31, tells us that Frances Ridley Havergal could never fix the date of her conversion. From the age of six to that of fourteen she suffered from religious fears, and did not venture to call herself a Christian. It was the result of confoundingbeingat peace with God and beingconsciousof that peace. So the mother of Frederick Denison Maurice, an admirable and deeply religious woman, endured long and deep mental suffering from doubts as to her personal election.There is a witness of the Spirit, with some sinners, that they arenotchildren of God, and this witness is through the truth, though the sinner does not know that it is the Spirit who reveals it to him. We call this work of the Spirit conviction of sin. The witness of the Spirit that we are children of God, and the assurance of faith of which Scripture speaks, are one and the same thing, the former designation only emphasizing the source from which the assurance springs. False assurance is destitute of humility, but true assurance is so absorbed in Christ that self is forgotten. Self-consciousness, and desire to display one's faith, are not marks of true assurance. When we say:“That man has a great deal of assurance,”we have in mind the false and self-centered assurance of the hypocrite or the self-deceiver.Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 231—“It has been said that any one who can read Edwards's Religious Affections, and still believe in his own conversion, may well have the highest assurance of its reality. But how few there were in Edwards's time who gained the assurance, may be inferred from the circumstance that Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Emmons, disciples of Edwards and religious leaders in New England, remained to the last uncertain of their conversion.”He can attribute this only to the semi-deistic spirit of the time, with its distant God and imperfect apprehension of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Christ. Nothing so clearly marks the practical progress of Christianity as the growing faith in Jesus, the only Revealer of God in nature and history as well as in the heart of the believer. As never before, faith comes directly to Christ, abides in him, and finds his promise true:“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”(Mat. 28:20).“Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void and find The Rock beneath.”(d) That faith necessarily leads to good works, since it embraces the whole truth of God so far as made known, and appropriates Christ, not only as an external Savior, but as an internal sanctifying power (Heb. 7:15, 16; Gal. 5:6).Good works are the proper evidence of faith. The faith which does not lead men to act upon the commands and promises of Christ, or, in other words, does not lead to obedience, is called in Scripture a“dead,”that is, an unreal, faith. Such faith is not saving, since it lacks the voluntary element—actual appropriation of Christ (James 2:14-26).Heb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life”;Gal. 5:6—“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love”;James 2:14, 26—“What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him?... For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.”The best evidence that I believe a man's word is that I act upon it. Instance the bank-cashier's assurance to me that a sum of money is deposited with him to my account. If I am a millionaire, the communication may cause me no special joy. My faith in the cashier's word is tested by my going, or not going, for the money. So my faith in Christ is evidenced by my acting upon his commands and promises. We may illustrate also by the lifting of the trolley to the wire, and the resulting light and heat and motion to the car that before stood dark and cold and motionless upon the track.[pg 847]Salvation by works is like getting to one's destination by pushing the car. True faith depends upon God for energy, but it results in activity of all our powers.Rom. 3:28—“We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.”We are saved only by faith, yet this faith will be sure to bring forth good works; seeGal. 5:6—“faith working through love.”Dead faith might be illustrated by Abraham Lincoln's Mississippi steamboat, whose whistle was so big that, when it sounded, the boat stopped. Confession exhausts the energy, so that none is left for action.A. J. Gordon, The First Thing in the World, or The Primacy of Faith:“David Brainard speaks with a kind of suppressed astonishment of what he observed among the degraded North American Indians; how, preaching to them the good news of salvation through the atonement of Christ and persuading them to accept it by faith, and then hastening on in his rapid missionary tours, he found, on returning upon his track a year or two later, that the fruits of righteousness and sobriety and virtue and brotherly love were everywhere visible, though it had been possible to impart to them only the slightest moral or ethical teaching.”(e) That faith, as characteristically the inward act of reception, is not to be confounded with love or obedience, its fruit.Faith is, in the Scriptures, called a work, only in the sense that man's active powers are engaged in it. It is a work which God requires, yet which God enables man to perform (John 6:29—ἔργον τοῦ Θεοῦ.Cf.Rom. 1:17—δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ). As the gift of God and as the mere taking of undeserved mercy, it is expressly excluded from the category of works upon the basis of which man may claim salvation (Rom. 3:28; 4:4, 5, 16). It is not the act of the full soul bestowing, but the act of an empty soul receiving. Although this reception is prompted by a drawing of heart toward God inwrought by the Holy Spirit, this drawing of heart is not yet a conscious and developed love: such love is the result of faith (Gal. 5:6). What precedes faith is an unconscious and undeveloped tendency or disposition toward God. Conscious and developed affection toward God, or love proper, must always follow faith and be the product of faith. So, too, obedience can be rendered only after faith has laid hold of Christ, and with him has obtained the spirit of obedience (Rom. 1:5—ὑπακοὴν πίστεως =“obedience resulting from faith”). Hence faith is not the procuring cause of salvation, but is only the instrumental cause. The procuring cause is the Christ, whom faith embraces.
Acts 17:18—“he preached Jesus and the resurrection”;1 Cor. 1:23—“we preach Christ crucified”;Col. 1:27—“this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim”;Rev. 19:10—“the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”Saving faith is not belief in a dogma, but personal trust in a personal Christ. It is, therefore, possible to a child. Dorner:“The object of faith is the Christian revelation—God in Christ.... Faith is union with objective Christianity—appropriation of the real contents of Christianity.”Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the great uncle, defined faith as“an understanding, cordial receiving of the divine testimony concerning Jesus Christ and the way of salvation by him, in which the heart accords and conforms to the gospel.”Dr. Mark Hopkins, the great nephew, defined it as“confidence in a personal being.”Horace Bushnell:“Faith rests on a person. Faith is that act by which one person, a sinner, commits himself to another person, a Savior.”InJohn 11:25—“I am the resurrection and the life”—Martha is led to substitute belief in a person for belief in an abstract doctrine. Jesus is“the resurrection,”because he is“the life.”All doctrine and all miracle is significant and important only because it is the expression of the living Christ, the Revealer of God.The object of faith is sometimes represented in the N. T., as being God the Father.John 5:24—“He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life”;Rom. 4:5—“to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.”We can[pg 843]explain these passages only when we remember that Christ is God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16), and that“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9). Man may receive a gift without knowing from whom it comes, or how much it has cost. So the heathen, who casts himself as a sinner upon God's mercy, may receive salvation from the Crucified One, without knowing who is the giver, or that the gift was purchased by agony and blood. Denney, Studies in Theology, 154—“No N. T. writer everrememberedChrist. They never thought of him as belonging to the past. Let us not preach about thehistoricalChrist, but rather, about thelivingChrist; nay, let us preachhim, present and omnipotent. Jesus could say:‘Whither I go, ye know the way’(John 14:4); for they knewhim, and he was both theendand theway.”Dr. Charles Hodge unduly restricts the operations of grace to the preaching of the incarnate Christ: Syst. Theol., 2:648—“There is no faith where the gospel is not heard; and where there is no faith, there is no salvation. This is indeed an awful doctrine.”And yet, in 2:668, he says most inconsistently:“As God is everywhere present in the material world, guiding its operations according to the laws of nature; so he is everywhere present with the minds of men, as the Spirit of truth and goodness, operating on them according to laws of their free moral agency, inclining them to good and restraining them from evil.”This presence and revelation of God we hold to be through Christ, the eternal Word, and so we interpret the prophecy of Caiaphas as referring to the work of the personal Christ:John 11:51, 52—“he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation; and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad.”Since Christ is the Word of God and the Truth of God, he may be received even by those who have not heard of his manifestation in the flesh. A proud and self-righteous morality is inconsistent with saving faith; but a humble and penitent reliance upon God, as a Savior from sin and a guide of conduct, is an implicit faith in Christ; for such reliance casts itself upon God, so far as God has revealed himself,—and the only Revealer of God is Christ. We have, therefore, the hope that even among the heathen there may be some, like Socrates, who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit working through the truth of nature and conscience, have found the way of life and salvation.The number of such is so small as in no degree to weaken the claims of the missionary enterprise upon us. But that there are such seems to be intimated in Scripture:Mat. 8:11, 12—“many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness”;John 10:16—“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd”;Acts 4:12—“And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved”;10:31, 34, 35, 44—“Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God.... Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him.... While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word”;16:31—“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house.”And instances are found of apparently regenerated heathen; see in Godet onJohn 7:17, note (vol. 2:277), the account of the so-called“Chinese hermit,”who accepted Christ, saying:“This is the only Buddha whom men ought to worship!”Edwards, Life of Brainard, 173-175, gives an account“of one who was a devout and zealous reformer, or rather restorer, of what he supposed was the ancient religion of the Indians.”After a period of distress, he says that God“comforted his heart and showed him what he should do, and since that time he had known God and tried to serve him; and loved all men, be they who they would, so as he never did before.”See art. by Dr. Lucius E. Smith, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1881:622-645, on the question:“Is salvation possible without a knowledge of the gospel?”H. B. Smith, System, 323, note, rightly bases hope for the heathen, not on morality, but on sacrifice.A chief of the Camaroons in S. W. Africa, fishing with many of his tribe long before the missionaries came, was overtaken by a storm, and while almost all the rest were drowned, he and a few others escaped. He gathered his people together afterwards and told the story of disaster. He said:“When the canoes upset and I found myself battling with the waves, I thought: To whom shall I cry for help? I knew that the god of the hills could not help me; I knew that the evil spirit would not help me. So I cried to the Great Father, Lord, save me! At that moment my feet touched the sand of the beach, and I was safe. Now let all my people honor the Great Father, and let no man speak a word against him, for he can help us.”This chief afterwards used every effort to prevent strife and bloodshed, and was remembered by those who came after as a peace-maker. His son told this story to Alfred Saker, the missionary, saying[pg 844]“Why did you not come sooner? My father longed to know what you have told us; he thirsted for the knowledge of God.”Mr. Saker told this in England in 1879.John Fiske appends to his book, The Idea of God, 168, 169, the following pathetic words of a Kafir, named Sekese, in conversation with a French traveler, M. Arbrouseille, on the subject of the Christian religion:“Your tidings,”said this uncultured barbarian,“are what I want, and I was seeking before I knew you, as you shall hear and judge for yourself. Twelve years ago I went to feed my flocks; the weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock, and asked myself sorrowful questions; yes, sorrowful, because I was unable to answer them. Who has touched the stars with his hands—on what pillars do they rest? I asked myself. The waters never weary, they know no other law than to flow without ceasing from morning till night and from night till morning; but where do they stop, and who makes them flow thus? The clouds also come and go, and burst in water over the earth. Whence come they—who sends them? The diviners certainly do not give us rain; for how could they do it? And why do I not see them with my own eyes, when they go up to heaven to fetch it? I cannot see the wind; but what is it? Who brings it, makes it blow and roar and terrify us? Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not a blade in my field; to-day I returned to my field and found some; who can have given to the earth the wisdom and the power to produce it? Then I buried my head in both hands.”On the question whether men are ever led to faith, without intercourse with living Christians or preachers, see Life of Judson, by his son, 84. The British and Foreign Bible Society publish a statement, made upon the authority of Sir Bartle Frere, that he met with“an instance, which was carefully investigated, in which all the inhabitants of a remote village in the Deccan had abjured idolatry and caste, removed from their temples the idols which had been worshiped there time out of mind, and agreed to profess a form of Christianity which they had deduced from the careful perusal of a single Gospel and a few tracts.”Max Müller, Chips, 4:177-189, apparently proves that Buddha is the original of St. Josaphat, who has a day assigned to him in the calendar of both the Greek and the Roman churches.“Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.”The Missionary Review of the World, July, 1896:519-523, tells the story of Adiri, afterwards called John King, of Maripastoon in Dutch Guiana. The Holy Spirit wrought in him mightily years before he heard of the missionaries. He was a coal-black negro, a heathen and a fetish worshiper. He was convicted of sin and apparently converted through dreams and visions. Heaven and hell were revealed to him. He was sick unto death, and One appeared to him declaring himself to be the Mediator between God and man, and telling him to go to the missionaries for instruction. He was persecuted, but he won his tribe from heathenism and transformed them into a Christian community.S. W. Hamblen, missionary to China, tells of a very earnest and consistent believer who lived at rather an obscure town of about 2800 people. The evangelist went to visit him and found that he was a worthy example to those around him. He had become a Christian before he had seen a single believer, by reading a Chinese New Testament. Although till the evangelist went to his house he had never met a Baptist and did not know that there were any Baptist churches in existence, yet by reading the New Testament he had become not only a Christian but a strong Baptist in belief, so strong that he could argue with the missionary on the subject of baptism.The Rev. K. E. Malm, a pioneer Baptist preacher in Sweden, on a journey to the district as far north as Gestrikland, met a woman from Lapland who was on her way to Upsala in order to visit Dr. Fjellstedt and converse with him as to how she might obtain peace with God and get rid of her anxiety concerning her sins. She said she had traveled 60 (= 240 English) miles, and she had still far to go. Malm improved the opportunity to speak to her concerning the crucified Christ, and she found peace in believing on his atonement. She became so happy that she clapped her hands, and for joy could not sleep that night. She said later:“Now I will return home and tell the people what I have found.”This she did, and did not care to continue her journey to Upsala, in order to get comfort from Dr. Fjellstedt.(c) That the ground of faith is the external word of promise. The ground of assurance, on the other hand, is the inward witness of the Spirit that we fulfil the conditions of the promise (Rom. 4:20, 21; 8:16; Eph. 1:13; 1 John 4:13; 5:10). This witness of the Spirit is not a new revelation[pg 845]from God, but a strengthening of faith so that it becomes conscious and indubitable.True faith is possible without assurance of salvation. But if Alexander's view were correct, that the object of saving faith is the proposition:“God, for Christ's sake, now looks with reconciling love on me, a sinner,”no one could believe, without being at the same time assured that he was a saved person. Upon the true view, that the object of saving faith is not a proposition, but a person, we can perceive not only the simplicity of faith, but the possibility of faith even where the soul is destitute of assurance or of joy. Hence those who already believe are urged to seek for assurance (Heb. 6:11; 2 Peter 1:10).Rom. 4:20, 21—“looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was able also to perform”;8:16—“The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God”;Eph. 1:13—“in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”;1 John 4:13—“hereby we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit”;5:10—“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him.”This assurance is not of the essence of faith, because believers are exhorted to attain to it:Heb. 6:11—“And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope[marg.—‘full assurance’]even to the end”;2 Pet. 1:10—“Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure.”Cf.Prov. 14:14—“a good man shall be satisfied from himself.”There is need to guard the doctrine of assurance from mysticism. The witness of the Spirit is not a new and direct revelation from God. It is a strengthening of previously existing faith until he who possesses this faith cannot any longer doubt that he possesses it. It is a general rule that all our emotions, when they become exceedingly strong, also become conscious. Instance affection between man and woman.Edwards, Religious Affections, in Works, 3:83-91, says the witness of the Spirit is not a new word or suggestion from God, but an enlightening and sanctifying influence, so that the heart is drawn forth to embrace the truth already revealed, and to perceive that it embraces it.“Bearing witness”is not in this case to declare and assert a thing to be true, but to hold forth evidence from which a thing may be proved to be true: God“beareth witness ... by signs and wonders”(Heb. 2:4). So the“seal of the Spirit”is not a voice or suggestion, but a work or effect of the Spirit, left as a divine mark upon the soul, to be an evidence by which God's children may be known. Seals had engraved upon them the image or name of the persons to whom they belonged. The“seal of the Spirit,”the“earnest of the Spirit,”the“witness of the Spirit,”are all one thing. The childlike spirit, given by the Holy Spirit, is the Holy Spirit's witness or evidence in us.See also illustration of faith and assurance, in C. S. Robinson's Short Studies for S. S. Teachers, 179, 180. Faith should be distinguished not only from assurance, but also from feeling or joy. Instance Abraham's faith when he went to sacrifice Isaac; and Madame Guyon's faith, when God's face seemed hid from her. See, on the witness of the Spirit, Short, Bampton Lectures for 1846; British and For. Evan. Rev., 1888:617-631. For the view which confounds faith with assurance, see Alexander, Discourses on Faith, 63-118.It is important to distinguish saving faith from assurance of faith, for the reason that lack of assurance is taken by so many real Christians as evidence that they know nothing of the grace of God. To use once more a well-worn illustration: It is getting into the boat that saves us, and not our comfortable feelings about the boat. What saves us is faith inChrist, not faith inourfaith, or faith inthefaith. The astronomer does not turn his telescope to the reflection of the sun or moon in the water, when he can turn it to the sun or moon itself. Why obscure our faith, when we can look to Christ?The faith in a distant Redeemer was the faith of Christian, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Only at the end of his journey does Christian have Christ's presence. This representation rests upon a wrong conception of faith as laying hold of a promise or a doctrine, rather than as laying hold of the living and present Christ. The old Scotch woman's direction to the inquirer to“grip the promise”is not so good as the direction to“grip Christ.”Sir Francis Drake, the great English sailor, had for his crest an[pg 846]anchor with a cable running up into the sky. A poor boy, taught in a mission school in Ireland, when asked what was meant by saving faith, replied:“It is grasping God with the heart.”The view of Charles Hodge, like that of Alexander, puts doctrine before Christ, and makes the formal principle, the supremacy of Scripture, superior to the material principle, justification by faith. The Shorter Catechism is better:“Faith in Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and reston him alonefor salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.”If this relation of faith to the personal Christ had been kept in mind, much religious despondency might have been avoided. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 30, 31, tells us that Frances Ridley Havergal could never fix the date of her conversion. From the age of six to that of fourteen she suffered from religious fears, and did not venture to call herself a Christian. It was the result of confoundingbeingat peace with God and beingconsciousof that peace. So the mother of Frederick Denison Maurice, an admirable and deeply religious woman, endured long and deep mental suffering from doubts as to her personal election.There is a witness of the Spirit, with some sinners, that they arenotchildren of God, and this witness is through the truth, though the sinner does not know that it is the Spirit who reveals it to him. We call this work of the Spirit conviction of sin. The witness of the Spirit that we are children of God, and the assurance of faith of which Scripture speaks, are one and the same thing, the former designation only emphasizing the source from which the assurance springs. False assurance is destitute of humility, but true assurance is so absorbed in Christ that self is forgotten. Self-consciousness, and desire to display one's faith, are not marks of true assurance. When we say:“That man has a great deal of assurance,”we have in mind the false and self-centered assurance of the hypocrite or the self-deceiver.Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 231—“It has been said that any one who can read Edwards's Religious Affections, and still believe in his own conversion, may well have the highest assurance of its reality. But how few there were in Edwards's time who gained the assurance, may be inferred from the circumstance that Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Emmons, disciples of Edwards and religious leaders in New England, remained to the last uncertain of their conversion.”He can attribute this only to the semi-deistic spirit of the time, with its distant God and imperfect apprehension of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Christ. Nothing so clearly marks the practical progress of Christianity as the growing faith in Jesus, the only Revealer of God in nature and history as well as in the heart of the believer. As never before, faith comes directly to Christ, abides in him, and finds his promise true:“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”(Mat. 28:20).“Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void and find The Rock beneath.”(d) That faith necessarily leads to good works, since it embraces the whole truth of God so far as made known, and appropriates Christ, not only as an external Savior, but as an internal sanctifying power (Heb. 7:15, 16; Gal. 5:6).Good works are the proper evidence of faith. The faith which does not lead men to act upon the commands and promises of Christ, or, in other words, does not lead to obedience, is called in Scripture a“dead,”that is, an unreal, faith. Such faith is not saving, since it lacks the voluntary element—actual appropriation of Christ (James 2:14-26).Heb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life”;Gal. 5:6—“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love”;James 2:14, 26—“What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him?... For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.”The best evidence that I believe a man's word is that I act upon it. Instance the bank-cashier's assurance to me that a sum of money is deposited with him to my account. If I am a millionaire, the communication may cause me no special joy. My faith in the cashier's word is tested by my going, or not going, for the money. So my faith in Christ is evidenced by my acting upon his commands and promises. We may illustrate also by the lifting of the trolley to the wire, and the resulting light and heat and motion to the car that before stood dark and cold and motionless upon the track.[pg 847]Salvation by works is like getting to one's destination by pushing the car. True faith depends upon God for energy, but it results in activity of all our powers.Rom. 3:28—“We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.”We are saved only by faith, yet this faith will be sure to bring forth good works; seeGal. 5:6—“faith working through love.”Dead faith might be illustrated by Abraham Lincoln's Mississippi steamboat, whose whistle was so big that, when it sounded, the boat stopped. Confession exhausts the energy, so that none is left for action.A. J. Gordon, The First Thing in the World, or The Primacy of Faith:“David Brainard speaks with a kind of suppressed astonishment of what he observed among the degraded North American Indians; how, preaching to them the good news of salvation through the atonement of Christ and persuading them to accept it by faith, and then hastening on in his rapid missionary tours, he found, on returning upon his track a year or two later, that the fruits of righteousness and sobriety and virtue and brotherly love were everywhere visible, though it had been possible to impart to them only the slightest moral or ethical teaching.”(e) That faith, as characteristically the inward act of reception, is not to be confounded with love or obedience, its fruit.Faith is, in the Scriptures, called a work, only in the sense that man's active powers are engaged in it. It is a work which God requires, yet which God enables man to perform (John 6:29—ἔργον τοῦ Θεοῦ.Cf.Rom. 1:17—δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ). As the gift of God and as the mere taking of undeserved mercy, it is expressly excluded from the category of works upon the basis of which man may claim salvation (Rom. 3:28; 4:4, 5, 16). It is not the act of the full soul bestowing, but the act of an empty soul receiving. Although this reception is prompted by a drawing of heart toward God inwrought by the Holy Spirit, this drawing of heart is not yet a conscious and developed love: such love is the result of faith (Gal. 5:6). What precedes faith is an unconscious and undeveloped tendency or disposition toward God. Conscious and developed affection toward God, or love proper, must always follow faith and be the product of faith. So, too, obedience can be rendered only after faith has laid hold of Christ, and with him has obtained the spirit of obedience (Rom. 1:5—ὑπακοὴν πίστεως =“obedience resulting from faith”). Hence faith is not the procuring cause of salvation, but is only the instrumental cause. The procuring cause is the Christ, whom faith embraces.
Acts 17:18—“he preached Jesus and the resurrection”;1 Cor. 1:23—“we preach Christ crucified”;Col. 1:27—“this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim”;Rev. 19:10—“the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”Saving faith is not belief in a dogma, but personal trust in a personal Christ. It is, therefore, possible to a child. Dorner:“The object of faith is the Christian revelation—God in Christ.... Faith is union with objective Christianity—appropriation of the real contents of Christianity.”Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the great uncle, defined faith as“an understanding, cordial receiving of the divine testimony concerning Jesus Christ and the way of salvation by him, in which the heart accords and conforms to the gospel.”Dr. Mark Hopkins, the great nephew, defined it as“confidence in a personal being.”Horace Bushnell:“Faith rests on a person. Faith is that act by which one person, a sinner, commits himself to another person, a Savior.”InJohn 11:25—“I am the resurrection and the life”—Martha is led to substitute belief in a person for belief in an abstract doctrine. Jesus is“the resurrection,”because he is“the life.”All doctrine and all miracle is significant and important only because it is the expression of the living Christ, the Revealer of God.The object of faith is sometimes represented in the N. T., as being God the Father.John 5:24—“He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life”;Rom. 4:5—“to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.”We can[pg 843]explain these passages only when we remember that Christ is God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16), and that“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9). Man may receive a gift without knowing from whom it comes, or how much it has cost. So the heathen, who casts himself as a sinner upon God's mercy, may receive salvation from the Crucified One, without knowing who is the giver, or that the gift was purchased by agony and blood. Denney, Studies in Theology, 154—“No N. T. writer everrememberedChrist. They never thought of him as belonging to the past. Let us not preach about thehistoricalChrist, but rather, about thelivingChrist; nay, let us preachhim, present and omnipotent. Jesus could say:‘Whither I go, ye know the way’(John 14:4); for they knewhim, and he was both theendand theway.”Dr. Charles Hodge unduly restricts the operations of grace to the preaching of the incarnate Christ: Syst. Theol., 2:648—“There is no faith where the gospel is not heard; and where there is no faith, there is no salvation. This is indeed an awful doctrine.”And yet, in 2:668, he says most inconsistently:“As God is everywhere present in the material world, guiding its operations according to the laws of nature; so he is everywhere present with the minds of men, as the Spirit of truth and goodness, operating on them according to laws of their free moral agency, inclining them to good and restraining them from evil.”This presence and revelation of God we hold to be through Christ, the eternal Word, and so we interpret the prophecy of Caiaphas as referring to the work of the personal Christ:John 11:51, 52—“he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation; and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad.”Since Christ is the Word of God and the Truth of God, he may be received even by those who have not heard of his manifestation in the flesh. A proud and self-righteous morality is inconsistent with saving faith; but a humble and penitent reliance upon God, as a Savior from sin and a guide of conduct, is an implicit faith in Christ; for such reliance casts itself upon God, so far as God has revealed himself,—and the only Revealer of God is Christ. We have, therefore, the hope that even among the heathen there may be some, like Socrates, who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit working through the truth of nature and conscience, have found the way of life and salvation.The number of such is so small as in no degree to weaken the claims of the missionary enterprise upon us. But that there are such seems to be intimated in Scripture:Mat. 8:11, 12—“many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness”;John 10:16—“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd”;Acts 4:12—“And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved”;10:31, 34, 35, 44—“Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God.... Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him.... While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word”;16:31—“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house.”And instances are found of apparently regenerated heathen; see in Godet onJohn 7:17, note (vol. 2:277), the account of the so-called“Chinese hermit,”who accepted Christ, saying:“This is the only Buddha whom men ought to worship!”Edwards, Life of Brainard, 173-175, gives an account“of one who was a devout and zealous reformer, or rather restorer, of what he supposed was the ancient religion of the Indians.”After a period of distress, he says that God“comforted his heart and showed him what he should do, and since that time he had known God and tried to serve him; and loved all men, be they who they would, so as he never did before.”See art. by Dr. Lucius E. Smith, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1881:622-645, on the question:“Is salvation possible without a knowledge of the gospel?”H. B. Smith, System, 323, note, rightly bases hope for the heathen, not on morality, but on sacrifice.A chief of the Camaroons in S. W. Africa, fishing with many of his tribe long before the missionaries came, was overtaken by a storm, and while almost all the rest were drowned, he and a few others escaped. He gathered his people together afterwards and told the story of disaster. He said:“When the canoes upset and I found myself battling with the waves, I thought: To whom shall I cry for help? I knew that the god of the hills could not help me; I knew that the evil spirit would not help me. So I cried to the Great Father, Lord, save me! At that moment my feet touched the sand of the beach, and I was safe. Now let all my people honor the Great Father, and let no man speak a word against him, for he can help us.”This chief afterwards used every effort to prevent strife and bloodshed, and was remembered by those who came after as a peace-maker. His son told this story to Alfred Saker, the missionary, saying[pg 844]“Why did you not come sooner? My father longed to know what you have told us; he thirsted for the knowledge of God.”Mr. Saker told this in England in 1879.John Fiske appends to his book, The Idea of God, 168, 169, the following pathetic words of a Kafir, named Sekese, in conversation with a French traveler, M. Arbrouseille, on the subject of the Christian religion:“Your tidings,”said this uncultured barbarian,“are what I want, and I was seeking before I knew you, as you shall hear and judge for yourself. Twelve years ago I went to feed my flocks; the weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock, and asked myself sorrowful questions; yes, sorrowful, because I was unable to answer them. Who has touched the stars with his hands—on what pillars do they rest? I asked myself. The waters never weary, they know no other law than to flow without ceasing from morning till night and from night till morning; but where do they stop, and who makes them flow thus? The clouds also come and go, and burst in water over the earth. Whence come they—who sends them? The diviners certainly do not give us rain; for how could they do it? And why do I not see them with my own eyes, when they go up to heaven to fetch it? I cannot see the wind; but what is it? Who brings it, makes it blow and roar and terrify us? Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not a blade in my field; to-day I returned to my field and found some; who can have given to the earth the wisdom and the power to produce it? Then I buried my head in both hands.”On the question whether men are ever led to faith, without intercourse with living Christians or preachers, see Life of Judson, by his son, 84. The British and Foreign Bible Society publish a statement, made upon the authority of Sir Bartle Frere, that he met with“an instance, which was carefully investigated, in which all the inhabitants of a remote village in the Deccan had abjured idolatry and caste, removed from their temples the idols which had been worshiped there time out of mind, and agreed to profess a form of Christianity which they had deduced from the careful perusal of a single Gospel and a few tracts.”Max Müller, Chips, 4:177-189, apparently proves that Buddha is the original of St. Josaphat, who has a day assigned to him in the calendar of both the Greek and the Roman churches.“Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.”The Missionary Review of the World, July, 1896:519-523, tells the story of Adiri, afterwards called John King, of Maripastoon in Dutch Guiana. The Holy Spirit wrought in him mightily years before he heard of the missionaries. He was a coal-black negro, a heathen and a fetish worshiper. He was convicted of sin and apparently converted through dreams and visions. Heaven and hell were revealed to him. He was sick unto death, and One appeared to him declaring himself to be the Mediator between God and man, and telling him to go to the missionaries for instruction. He was persecuted, but he won his tribe from heathenism and transformed them into a Christian community.S. W. Hamblen, missionary to China, tells of a very earnest and consistent believer who lived at rather an obscure town of about 2800 people. The evangelist went to visit him and found that he was a worthy example to those around him. He had become a Christian before he had seen a single believer, by reading a Chinese New Testament. Although till the evangelist went to his house he had never met a Baptist and did not know that there were any Baptist churches in existence, yet by reading the New Testament he had become not only a Christian but a strong Baptist in belief, so strong that he could argue with the missionary on the subject of baptism.The Rev. K. E. Malm, a pioneer Baptist preacher in Sweden, on a journey to the district as far north as Gestrikland, met a woman from Lapland who was on her way to Upsala in order to visit Dr. Fjellstedt and converse with him as to how she might obtain peace with God and get rid of her anxiety concerning her sins. She said she had traveled 60 (= 240 English) miles, and she had still far to go. Malm improved the opportunity to speak to her concerning the crucified Christ, and she found peace in believing on his atonement. She became so happy that she clapped her hands, and for joy could not sleep that night. She said later:“Now I will return home and tell the people what I have found.”This she did, and did not care to continue her journey to Upsala, in order to get comfort from Dr. Fjellstedt.
Acts 17:18—“he preached Jesus and the resurrection”;1 Cor. 1:23—“we preach Christ crucified”;Col. 1:27—“this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim”;Rev. 19:10—“the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”Saving faith is not belief in a dogma, but personal trust in a personal Christ. It is, therefore, possible to a child. Dorner:“The object of faith is the Christian revelation—God in Christ.... Faith is union with objective Christianity—appropriation of the real contents of Christianity.”Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the great uncle, defined faith as“an understanding, cordial receiving of the divine testimony concerning Jesus Christ and the way of salvation by him, in which the heart accords and conforms to the gospel.”Dr. Mark Hopkins, the great nephew, defined it as“confidence in a personal being.”Horace Bushnell:“Faith rests on a person. Faith is that act by which one person, a sinner, commits himself to another person, a Savior.”InJohn 11:25—“I am the resurrection and the life”—Martha is led to substitute belief in a person for belief in an abstract doctrine. Jesus is“the resurrection,”because he is“the life.”All doctrine and all miracle is significant and important only because it is the expression of the living Christ, the Revealer of God.
The object of faith is sometimes represented in the N. T., as being God the Father.John 5:24—“He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life”;Rom. 4:5—“to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.”We can[pg 843]explain these passages only when we remember that Christ is God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16), and that“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9). Man may receive a gift without knowing from whom it comes, or how much it has cost. So the heathen, who casts himself as a sinner upon God's mercy, may receive salvation from the Crucified One, without knowing who is the giver, or that the gift was purchased by agony and blood. Denney, Studies in Theology, 154—“No N. T. writer everrememberedChrist. They never thought of him as belonging to the past. Let us not preach about thehistoricalChrist, but rather, about thelivingChrist; nay, let us preachhim, present and omnipotent. Jesus could say:‘Whither I go, ye know the way’(John 14:4); for they knewhim, and he was both theendand theway.”
Dr. Charles Hodge unduly restricts the operations of grace to the preaching of the incarnate Christ: Syst. Theol., 2:648—“There is no faith where the gospel is not heard; and where there is no faith, there is no salvation. This is indeed an awful doctrine.”And yet, in 2:668, he says most inconsistently:“As God is everywhere present in the material world, guiding its operations according to the laws of nature; so he is everywhere present with the minds of men, as the Spirit of truth and goodness, operating on them according to laws of their free moral agency, inclining them to good and restraining them from evil.”This presence and revelation of God we hold to be through Christ, the eternal Word, and so we interpret the prophecy of Caiaphas as referring to the work of the personal Christ:John 11:51, 52—“he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation; and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad.”
Since Christ is the Word of God and the Truth of God, he may be received even by those who have not heard of his manifestation in the flesh. A proud and self-righteous morality is inconsistent with saving faith; but a humble and penitent reliance upon God, as a Savior from sin and a guide of conduct, is an implicit faith in Christ; for such reliance casts itself upon God, so far as God has revealed himself,—and the only Revealer of God is Christ. We have, therefore, the hope that even among the heathen there may be some, like Socrates, who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit working through the truth of nature and conscience, have found the way of life and salvation.
The number of such is so small as in no degree to weaken the claims of the missionary enterprise upon us. But that there are such seems to be intimated in Scripture:Mat. 8:11, 12—“many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness”;John 10:16—“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd”;Acts 4:12—“And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved”;10:31, 34, 35, 44—“Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God.... Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him.... While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word”;16:31—“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house.”
And instances are found of apparently regenerated heathen; see in Godet onJohn 7:17, note (vol. 2:277), the account of the so-called“Chinese hermit,”who accepted Christ, saying:“This is the only Buddha whom men ought to worship!”Edwards, Life of Brainard, 173-175, gives an account“of one who was a devout and zealous reformer, or rather restorer, of what he supposed was the ancient religion of the Indians.”After a period of distress, he says that God“comforted his heart and showed him what he should do, and since that time he had known God and tried to serve him; and loved all men, be they who they would, so as he never did before.”See art. by Dr. Lucius E. Smith, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1881:622-645, on the question:“Is salvation possible without a knowledge of the gospel?”H. B. Smith, System, 323, note, rightly bases hope for the heathen, not on morality, but on sacrifice.
A chief of the Camaroons in S. W. Africa, fishing with many of his tribe long before the missionaries came, was overtaken by a storm, and while almost all the rest were drowned, he and a few others escaped. He gathered his people together afterwards and told the story of disaster. He said:“When the canoes upset and I found myself battling with the waves, I thought: To whom shall I cry for help? I knew that the god of the hills could not help me; I knew that the evil spirit would not help me. So I cried to the Great Father, Lord, save me! At that moment my feet touched the sand of the beach, and I was safe. Now let all my people honor the Great Father, and let no man speak a word against him, for he can help us.”This chief afterwards used every effort to prevent strife and bloodshed, and was remembered by those who came after as a peace-maker. His son told this story to Alfred Saker, the missionary, saying[pg 844]“Why did you not come sooner? My father longed to know what you have told us; he thirsted for the knowledge of God.”Mr. Saker told this in England in 1879.
John Fiske appends to his book, The Idea of God, 168, 169, the following pathetic words of a Kafir, named Sekese, in conversation with a French traveler, M. Arbrouseille, on the subject of the Christian religion:“Your tidings,”said this uncultured barbarian,“are what I want, and I was seeking before I knew you, as you shall hear and judge for yourself. Twelve years ago I went to feed my flocks; the weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock, and asked myself sorrowful questions; yes, sorrowful, because I was unable to answer them. Who has touched the stars with his hands—on what pillars do they rest? I asked myself. The waters never weary, they know no other law than to flow without ceasing from morning till night and from night till morning; but where do they stop, and who makes them flow thus? The clouds also come and go, and burst in water over the earth. Whence come they—who sends them? The diviners certainly do not give us rain; for how could they do it? And why do I not see them with my own eyes, when they go up to heaven to fetch it? I cannot see the wind; but what is it? Who brings it, makes it blow and roar and terrify us? Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not a blade in my field; to-day I returned to my field and found some; who can have given to the earth the wisdom and the power to produce it? Then I buried my head in both hands.”
On the question whether men are ever led to faith, without intercourse with living Christians or preachers, see Life of Judson, by his son, 84. The British and Foreign Bible Society publish a statement, made upon the authority of Sir Bartle Frere, that he met with“an instance, which was carefully investigated, in which all the inhabitants of a remote village in the Deccan had abjured idolatry and caste, removed from their temples the idols which had been worshiped there time out of mind, and agreed to profess a form of Christianity which they had deduced from the careful perusal of a single Gospel and a few tracts.”Max Müller, Chips, 4:177-189, apparently proves that Buddha is the original of St. Josaphat, who has a day assigned to him in the calendar of both the Greek and the Roman churches.“Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.”
The Missionary Review of the World, July, 1896:519-523, tells the story of Adiri, afterwards called John King, of Maripastoon in Dutch Guiana. The Holy Spirit wrought in him mightily years before he heard of the missionaries. He was a coal-black negro, a heathen and a fetish worshiper. He was convicted of sin and apparently converted through dreams and visions. Heaven and hell were revealed to him. He was sick unto death, and One appeared to him declaring himself to be the Mediator between God and man, and telling him to go to the missionaries for instruction. He was persecuted, but he won his tribe from heathenism and transformed them into a Christian community.
S. W. Hamblen, missionary to China, tells of a very earnest and consistent believer who lived at rather an obscure town of about 2800 people. The evangelist went to visit him and found that he was a worthy example to those around him. He had become a Christian before he had seen a single believer, by reading a Chinese New Testament. Although till the evangelist went to his house he had never met a Baptist and did not know that there were any Baptist churches in existence, yet by reading the New Testament he had become not only a Christian but a strong Baptist in belief, so strong that he could argue with the missionary on the subject of baptism.
The Rev. K. E. Malm, a pioneer Baptist preacher in Sweden, on a journey to the district as far north as Gestrikland, met a woman from Lapland who was on her way to Upsala in order to visit Dr. Fjellstedt and converse with him as to how she might obtain peace with God and get rid of her anxiety concerning her sins. She said she had traveled 60 (= 240 English) miles, and she had still far to go. Malm improved the opportunity to speak to her concerning the crucified Christ, and she found peace in believing on his atonement. She became so happy that she clapped her hands, and for joy could not sleep that night. She said later:“Now I will return home and tell the people what I have found.”This she did, and did not care to continue her journey to Upsala, in order to get comfort from Dr. Fjellstedt.
(c) That the ground of faith is the external word of promise. The ground of assurance, on the other hand, is the inward witness of the Spirit that we fulfil the conditions of the promise (Rom. 4:20, 21; 8:16; Eph. 1:13; 1 John 4:13; 5:10). This witness of the Spirit is not a new revelation[pg 845]from God, but a strengthening of faith so that it becomes conscious and indubitable.
True faith is possible without assurance of salvation. But if Alexander's view were correct, that the object of saving faith is the proposition:“God, for Christ's sake, now looks with reconciling love on me, a sinner,”no one could believe, without being at the same time assured that he was a saved person. Upon the true view, that the object of saving faith is not a proposition, but a person, we can perceive not only the simplicity of faith, but the possibility of faith even where the soul is destitute of assurance or of joy. Hence those who already believe are urged to seek for assurance (Heb. 6:11; 2 Peter 1:10).
Rom. 4:20, 21—“looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was able also to perform”;8:16—“The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God”;Eph. 1:13—“in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”;1 John 4:13—“hereby we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit”;5:10—“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him.”This assurance is not of the essence of faith, because believers are exhorted to attain to it:Heb. 6:11—“And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope[marg.—‘full assurance’]even to the end”;2 Pet. 1:10—“Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure.”Cf.Prov. 14:14—“a good man shall be satisfied from himself.”There is need to guard the doctrine of assurance from mysticism. The witness of the Spirit is not a new and direct revelation from God. It is a strengthening of previously existing faith until he who possesses this faith cannot any longer doubt that he possesses it. It is a general rule that all our emotions, when they become exceedingly strong, also become conscious. Instance affection between man and woman.Edwards, Religious Affections, in Works, 3:83-91, says the witness of the Spirit is not a new word or suggestion from God, but an enlightening and sanctifying influence, so that the heart is drawn forth to embrace the truth already revealed, and to perceive that it embraces it.“Bearing witness”is not in this case to declare and assert a thing to be true, but to hold forth evidence from which a thing may be proved to be true: God“beareth witness ... by signs and wonders”(Heb. 2:4). So the“seal of the Spirit”is not a voice or suggestion, but a work or effect of the Spirit, left as a divine mark upon the soul, to be an evidence by which God's children may be known. Seals had engraved upon them the image or name of the persons to whom they belonged. The“seal of the Spirit,”the“earnest of the Spirit,”the“witness of the Spirit,”are all one thing. The childlike spirit, given by the Holy Spirit, is the Holy Spirit's witness or evidence in us.See also illustration of faith and assurance, in C. S. Robinson's Short Studies for S. S. Teachers, 179, 180. Faith should be distinguished not only from assurance, but also from feeling or joy. Instance Abraham's faith when he went to sacrifice Isaac; and Madame Guyon's faith, when God's face seemed hid from her. See, on the witness of the Spirit, Short, Bampton Lectures for 1846; British and For. Evan. Rev., 1888:617-631. For the view which confounds faith with assurance, see Alexander, Discourses on Faith, 63-118.It is important to distinguish saving faith from assurance of faith, for the reason that lack of assurance is taken by so many real Christians as evidence that they know nothing of the grace of God. To use once more a well-worn illustration: It is getting into the boat that saves us, and not our comfortable feelings about the boat. What saves us is faith inChrist, not faith inourfaith, or faith inthefaith. The astronomer does not turn his telescope to the reflection of the sun or moon in the water, when he can turn it to the sun or moon itself. Why obscure our faith, when we can look to Christ?The faith in a distant Redeemer was the faith of Christian, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Only at the end of his journey does Christian have Christ's presence. This representation rests upon a wrong conception of faith as laying hold of a promise or a doctrine, rather than as laying hold of the living and present Christ. The old Scotch woman's direction to the inquirer to“grip the promise”is not so good as the direction to“grip Christ.”Sir Francis Drake, the great English sailor, had for his crest an[pg 846]anchor with a cable running up into the sky. A poor boy, taught in a mission school in Ireland, when asked what was meant by saving faith, replied:“It is grasping God with the heart.”The view of Charles Hodge, like that of Alexander, puts doctrine before Christ, and makes the formal principle, the supremacy of Scripture, superior to the material principle, justification by faith. The Shorter Catechism is better:“Faith in Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and reston him alonefor salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.”If this relation of faith to the personal Christ had been kept in mind, much religious despondency might have been avoided. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 30, 31, tells us that Frances Ridley Havergal could never fix the date of her conversion. From the age of six to that of fourteen she suffered from religious fears, and did not venture to call herself a Christian. It was the result of confoundingbeingat peace with God and beingconsciousof that peace. So the mother of Frederick Denison Maurice, an admirable and deeply religious woman, endured long and deep mental suffering from doubts as to her personal election.There is a witness of the Spirit, with some sinners, that they arenotchildren of God, and this witness is through the truth, though the sinner does not know that it is the Spirit who reveals it to him. We call this work of the Spirit conviction of sin. The witness of the Spirit that we are children of God, and the assurance of faith of which Scripture speaks, are one and the same thing, the former designation only emphasizing the source from which the assurance springs. False assurance is destitute of humility, but true assurance is so absorbed in Christ that self is forgotten. Self-consciousness, and desire to display one's faith, are not marks of true assurance. When we say:“That man has a great deal of assurance,”we have in mind the false and self-centered assurance of the hypocrite or the self-deceiver.Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 231—“It has been said that any one who can read Edwards's Religious Affections, and still believe in his own conversion, may well have the highest assurance of its reality. But how few there were in Edwards's time who gained the assurance, may be inferred from the circumstance that Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Emmons, disciples of Edwards and religious leaders in New England, remained to the last uncertain of their conversion.”He can attribute this only to the semi-deistic spirit of the time, with its distant God and imperfect apprehension of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Christ. Nothing so clearly marks the practical progress of Christianity as the growing faith in Jesus, the only Revealer of God in nature and history as well as in the heart of the believer. As never before, faith comes directly to Christ, abides in him, and finds his promise true:“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”(Mat. 28:20).“Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void and find The Rock beneath.”
Rom. 4:20, 21—“looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was able also to perform”;8:16—“The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God”;Eph. 1:13—“in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”;1 John 4:13—“hereby we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit”;5:10—“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him.”This assurance is not of the essence of faith, because believers are exhorted to attain to it:Heb. 6:11—“And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope[marg.—‘full assurance’]even to the end”;2 Pet. 1:10—“Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure.”Cf.Prov. 14:14—“a good man shall be satisfied from himself.”
There is need to guard the doctrine of assurance from mysticism. The witness of the Spirit is not a new and direct revelation from God. It is a strengthening of previously existing faith until he who possesses this faith cannot any longer doubt that he possesses it. It is a general rule that all our emotions, when they become exceedingly strong, also become conscious. Instance affection between man and woman.
Edwards, Religious Affections, in Works, 3:83-91, says the witness of the Spirit is not a new word or suggestion from God, but an enlightening and sanctifying influence, so that the heart is drawn forth to embrace the truth already revealed, and to perceive that it embraces it.“Bearing witness”is not in this case to declare and assert a thing to be true, but to hold forth evidence from which a thing may be proved to be true: God“beareth witness ... by signs and wonders”(Heb. 2:4). So the“seal of the Spirit”is not a voice or suggestion, but a work or effect of the Spirit, left as a divine mark upon the soul, to be an evidence by which God's children may be known. Seals had engraved upon them the image or name of the persons to whom they belonged. The“seal of the Spirit,”the“earnest of the Spirit,”the“witness of the Spirit,”are all one thing. The childlike spirit, given by the Holy Spirit, is the Holy Spirit's witness or evidence in us.
See also illustration of faith and assurance, in C. S. Robinson's Short Studies for S. S. Teachers, 179, 180. Faith should be distinguished not only from assurance, but also from feeling or joy. Instance Abraham's faith when he went to sacrifice Isaac; and Madame Guyon's faith, when God's face seemed hid from her. See, on the witness of the Spirit, Short, Bampton Lectures for 1846; British and For. Evan. Rev., 1888:617-631. For the view which confounds faith with assurance, see Alexander, Discourses on Faith, 63-118.
It is important to distinguish saving faith from assurance of faith, for the reason that lack of assurance is taken by so many real Christians as evidence that they know nothing of the grace of God. To use once more a well-worn illustration: It is getting into the boat that saves us, and not our comfortable feelings about the boat. What saves us is faith inChrist, not faith inourfaith, or faith inthefaith. The astronomer does not turn his telescope to the reflection of the sun or moon in the water, when he can turn it to the sun or moon itself. Why obscure our faith, when we can look to Christ?
The faith in a distant Redeemer was the faith of Christian, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Only at the end of his journey does Christian have Christ's presence. This representation rests upon a wrong conception of faith as laying hold of a promise or a doctrine, rather than as laying hold of the living and present Christ. The old Scotch woman's direction to the inquirer to“grip the promise”is not so good as the direction to“grip Christ.”Sir Francis Drake, the great English sailor, had for his crest an[pg 846]anchor with a cable running up into the sky. A poor boy, taught in a mission school in Ireland, when asked what was meant by saving faith, replied:“It is grasping God with the heart.”
The view of Charles Hodge, like that of Alexander, puts doctrine before Christ, and makes the formal principle, the supremacy of Scripture, superior to the material principle, justification by faith. The Shorter Catechism is better:“Faith in Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and reston him alonefor salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.”If this relation of faith to the personal Christ had been kept in mind, much religious despondency might have been avoided. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 30, 31, tells us that Frances Ridley Havergal could never fix the date of her conversion. From the age of six to that of fourteen she suffered from religious fears, and did not venture to call herself a Christian. It was the result of confoundingbeingat peace with God and beingconsciousof that peace. So the mother of Frederick Denison Maurice, an admirable and deeply religious woman, endured long and deep mental suffering from doubts as to her personal election.
There is a witness of the Spirit, with some sinners, that they arenotchildren of God, and this witness is through the truth, though the sinner does not know that it is the Spirit who reveals it to him. We call this work of the Spirit conviction of sin. The witness of the Spirit that we are children of God, and the assurance of faith of which Scripture speaks, are one and the same thing, the former designation only emphasizing the source from which the assurance springs. False assurance is destitute of humility, but true assurance is so absorbed in Christ that self is forgotten. Self-consciousness, and desire to display one's faith, are not marks of true assurance. When we say:“That man has a great deal of assurance,”we have in mind the false and self-centered assurance of the hypocrite or the self-deceiver.
Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 231—“It has been said that any one who can read Edwards's Religious Affections, and still believe in his own conversion, may well have the highest assurance of its reality. But how few there were in Edwards's time who gained the assurance, may be inferred from the circumstance that Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Emmons, disciples of Edwards and religious leaders in New England, remained to the last uncertain of their conversion.”He can attribute this only to the semi-deistic spirit of the time, with its distant God and imperfect apprehension of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Christ. Nothing so clearly marks the practical progress of Christianity as the growing faith in Jesus, the only Revealer of God in nature and history as well as in the heart of the believer. As never before, faith comes directly to Christ, abides in him, and finds his promise true:“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”(Mat. 28:20).“Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void and find The Rock beneath.”
(d) That faith necessarily leads to good works, since it embraces the whole truth of God so far as made known, and appropriates Christ, not only as an external Savior, but as an internal sanctifying power (Heb. 7:15, 16; Gal. 5:6).
Good works are the proper evidence of faith. The faith which does not lead men to act upon the commands and promises of Christ, or, in other words, does not lead to obedience, is called in Scripture a“dead,”that is, an unreal, faith. Such faith is not saving, since it lacks the voluntary element—actual appropriation of Christ (James 2:14-26).
Heb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life”;Gal. 5:6—“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love”;James 2:14, 26—“What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him?... For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.”The best evidence that I believe a man's word is that I act upon it. Instance the bank-cashier's assurance to me that a sum of money is deposited with him to my account. If I am a millionaire, the communication may cause me no special joy. My faith in the cashier's word is tested by my going, or not going, for the money. So my faith in Christ is evidenced by my acting upon his commands and promises. We may illustrate also by the lifting of the trolley to the wire, and the resulting light and heat and motion to the car that before stood dark and cold and motionless upon the track.[pg 847]Salvation by works is like getting to one's destination by pushing the car. True faith depends upon God for energy, but it results in activity of all our powers.Rom. 3:28—“We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.”We are saved only by faith, yet this faith will be sure to bring forth good works; seeGal. 5:6—“faith working through love.”Dead faith might be illustrated by Abraham Lincoln's Mississippi steamboat, whose whistle was so big that, when it sounded, the boat stopped. Confession exhausts the energy, so that none is left for action.A. J. Gordon, The First Thing in the World, or The Primacy of Faith:“David Brainard speaks with a kind of suppressed astonishment of what he observed among the degraded North American Indians; how, preaching to them the good news of salvation through the atonement of Christ and persuading them to accept it by faith, and then hastening on in his rapid missionary tours, he found, on returning upon his track a year or two later, that the fruits of righteousness and sobriety and virtue and brotherly love were everywhere visible, though it had been possible to impart to them only the slightest moral or ethical teaching.”
Heb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life”;Gal. 5:6—“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love”;James 2:14, 26—“What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him?... For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.”
The best evidence that I believe a man's word is that I act upon it. Instance the bank-cashier's assurance to me that a sum of money is deposited with him to my account. If I am a millionaire, the communication may cause me no special joy. My faith in the cashier's word is tested by my going, or not going, for the money. So my faith in Christ is evidenced by my acting upon his commands and promises. We may illustrate also by the lifting of the trolley to the wire, and the resulting light and heat and motion to the car that before stood dark and cold and motionless upon the track.[pg 847]Salvation by works is like getting to one's destination by pushing the car. True faith depends upon God for energy, but it results in activity of all our powers.Rom. 3:28—“We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.”We are saved only by faith, yet this faith will be sure to bring forth good works; seeGal. 5:6—“faith working through love.”Dead faith might be illustrated by Abraham Lincoln's Mississippi steamboat, whose whistle was so big that, when it sounded, the boat stopped. Confession exhausts the energy, so that none is left for action.
A. J. Gordon, The First Thing in the World, or The Primacy of Faith:“David Brainard speaks with a kind of suppressed astonishment of what he observed among the degraded North American Indians; how, preaching to them the good news of salvation through the atonement of Christ and persuading them to accept it by faith, and then hastening on in his rapid missionary tours, he found, on returning upon his track a year or two later, that the fruits of righteousness and sobriety and virtue and brotherly love were everywhere visible, though it had been possible to impart to them only the slightest moral or ethical teaching.”
(e) That faith, as characteristically the inward act of reception, is not to be confounded with love or obedience, its fruit.
Faith is, in the Scriptures, called a work, only in the sense that man's active powers are engaged in it. It is a work which God requires, yet which God enables man to perform (John 6:29—ἔργον τοῦ Θεοῦ.Cf.Rom. 1:17—δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ). As the gift of God and as the mere taking of undeserved mercy, it is expressly excluded from the category of works upon the basis of which man may claim salvation (Rom. 3:28; 4:4, 5, 16). It is not the act of the full soul bestowing, but the act of an empty soul receiving. Although this reception is prompted by a drawing of heart toward God inwrought by the Holy Spirit, this drawing of heart is not yet a conscious and developed love: such love is the result of faith (Gal. 5:6). What precedes faith is an unconscious and undeveloped tendency or disposition toward God. Conscious and developed affection toward God, or love proper, must always follow faith and be the product of faith. So, too, obedience can be rendered only after faith has laid hold of Christ, and with him has obtained the spirit of obedience (Rom. 1:5—ὑπακοὴν πίστεως =“obedience resulting from faith”). Hence faith is not the procuring cause of salvation, but is only the instrumental cause. The procuring cause is the Christ, whom faith embraces.