Page images
PDF
EPUB

him! "though he was rich,"-and what riches!" become poor,"and what poverty! See him! living in this world, your Lord and God, as you would not live,-supported by charity, not having a penny to pay the tribute, nor a place to lay his head. See him! sold for that miserable money which you prefer before every thing, delivered into the hands of wicked men, condemned as a criminal, insulted, crowned with thorns, crucified between two malefactors! and for whom? For you; yes, for you; who have to this day loved the thirty pieces of Judas more than the blood of your Saviour; but who will henceforth love the blood of your Saviour more than the thirty pieces of Judas. See, and believe, and fall at his feet! saying to him, as Peter, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Then, doubt not, the shameful bonds with which Mammon has held you enchained will fall of themselves. Could you then deem fortune the sovereign good, and poverty insupportable, when Christ has become poor to merit for you eternal riches? Could you then be anxious for your life, or for your family, when he has said, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee?" Could you not then "suffer joyfully the spoiling of your goods, since you have in heaven a better and a more enduring substance?" Could you refuse your property to the Lord, when it is a deposit which belongs to him, and which he has confided to you; and when he has given himself to you, and is your true riches? Ah! it is only necessary to become a Christian, in order to be the most disinterested of men; and if there are so few who are not influenced by the love of money, it is because there are so very few true Christians even among true Christians.

This is the first step,-the faith of the heart: the second is the liberality of the hand, which springs from this faith, and feeds it in turn. Zaccheus no sooner knew the Lord than he presented himself before him, and said, "Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wronged any man, I restore him fourfold." Imitate him. Like him, give with method; like him, devise for yourself a large and liberal rule. How much each ought to give, or in what manner, he must settle with the Lord. The Gospel has prescribed nothing: it has left it to your charity. Justify this confidence. Rise above cold custom, and lay your account not with men, but with Jesus Christ. Be not content till you hear him say, "Well done!" Ponder the thought, that your fortune is his more than your own; and that you are only the steward to dispense it in his name. Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, "It is more blessed to give than to receive;" and give as one who feels that the power is bestowed upon him as a favour from God. Congratulate yourself that you live at a time when occasions for the religious bestowment of your property are increasing. Blessed is he who knows how to respond at once to the call of the age, to the call of men, to the call of the Saviour, and to the call of a heart animated by charity!

VOL. XXIII. Third Series. JANUARY, 1844.

D

Rich men, this happiness is specially yours. Learn, then, to enjoy your fortune. Learn why God has given it to you. Dispense it for his glory while you live, and in your last Will forget not Him to whom you owe both your earthly and your heavenly inheritance. Of what use will your riches be, if you do no good,-if you are not "rich in good works, and ready to distribute?" Then only will you be happy in being rich, and the world will be happy that you are so. Then that property which has ruined so many others will be to you a means of making "your calling and election sure." Then, in separating from your earthly treasure, you will remember with joy what you have sown in the field of the Lord, and will go to reap it with increase; and you may, as another charitable man, have inscribed on your tombstone, "What I kept, I lost; but what I gave, I have."

And do not you, to whom the Lord has given the heritage which the wise Agur asked for himself, complain, because you cannot give what you would: give what you can. "If there he first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not." Attempt it, and you will find that you can give more, much more, than you imagine. An ingenious charity will enrich you for the Lord; impracticable sacrifices will become easy; necessary expenses superfluous; and if the rich man has this advantage over you, that he can present more costly gifts,-you will have this over him, that your gifts are characterized by greater self-denial.

Finally is Christian liberality forbidden to you, whom Christ has placed in the very condition in which he lived on earth? No, my dear brethren; no! Remember the poor widow. You have nothing to give? She had no more than you; but the spirit of sacrifice led her to discover, in the depths of her poverty, an offering which excited the admiration of her Lord. What you give will be too small to bring forth fruit? Listen. Have the two mites of the widow been lost? Have they not been more fruitful-yes, literally more fruitful-than the rich offerings which fell with them into the treasury of the temple? Through the faith which offered them, and by the blessing of the Saviour who accepted them, and who designed that his words should perpetuate the remembrance of them, these two mites have been multiplied from age to age. From age to age they have provoked the sacrifices of a multitude of poor Christians, who would never have discovered that they had any thing to give, if they had not learned it from this poor widow; and whose contributions, in fact, produce a larger amount than those of the rich. These two mites have already drawn into the treasury of the church immense sums; their work is not done; they will continue to influence "in all places wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached;" and if you to-day resolve to imitate this widow, that will be a new fruit of her humble offering. Be faithful, and listen to Him who multiplied the oil of the widow of Sarepta, and the mite of the widow of Jerusalem.

h

Lord Jesus, thou hast come to us to-day, saying, "Take heed, and beware of covetousness." We come to thee, saying, "Save us from the love of money! Tear away, stifle this serpent which holds us in its folds! The faith of the heart, the liberality of the hand, both are from thee. Give us both, that, washed in thy blood, and baptized by thy Spirit, we may henceforth consecrate to thy service all that we have, and all that we are. Happy to offer thee a thousand fortunes, and a thousand lives, did we possess them! and hereafter only regretting that we have nothing more to offer thee in return for thy unspeakable gift, which constitutes our joy and our eternal riches.”

THE JUSTIFICATION OF A SINNER BY LIVING FAITII. (From "Defence of Christ's Church," by Caelius Secundus Curio, an Italian Protestant: translated by Archdeacon Philpot, one of the Smithfield Martyrs. Written soon after 1547, and translated in the latter part of the Reign of Edward VI.)

BUT, I pray thee, show me why dost thou so much detest to grant, that we obtain the divine justice through faith, and that all our sins be freely and for nought forgiven us, for Christ's sake alone, if that we put our confidence upon him? Doth not Peter the Apostle confess and preach this, where he saith, that God, by faith, that is, through affiance of his mercy,-purgeth the hearts and souls of men? Is not Paul wholly in this, to teach us that excellent justice of Christ to belong to us by faith? "Therefore we, being justified by faith, have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;" than the which nothing may be found out more plainer, stronger, and more pertinent to put this question out of doubt. "By the works of the law no man

shall be justified before God." Thou hast here, that together all good deeds, yea, the very best, as those of God's law, cannot bring us just before God, and do justify no man. And he addeth a reason why the law justifieth not; for that it was not made for this purpose, to justify, but that through the same sin might be known. And it is a shameful blasphemy, when thou affirmest that Luther requireth a barren faith. only, or rather a certain trust, with the which whosoever is once endowed, albeit he shall grievously sin until the last day of his life, he ought to be careless. Where ever taught Luther this? With these subtleties and lies ye cause the true and sweet doctrine of Christ to be hated, disdained, and envied. We teach the sincere and lively faith which is right-firmly grounded upon the promises of God, out of the which do spring all good deeds, and honest and virtuous actions, as it were fruit out of a quick and plenteous tree, and not a dead opinion and vain confidence.

MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS.

ON THE PERFECTION OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE.

(To the Editor of the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine.)

Ita tamen ut Deus intelligatur perfectus tamquam Deus, et anima perfecta tamquam anima.-Aug., De Serm. Dom. in Monte.

THE great revival of religion, of which the Rev. John Wesley was the honoured instrument, has not been sufficiently regarded in its connexion with the Lutheran Reformation. The grand principle by which this latter was effected was, that the personal salvation of man, his reconciliation to God by the forgiveness of sins, his reception of peace of conscience, and power over sin,all was from the mercy of God, through the alone merits and mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ; and bestowed only upon those by whom a true, spiritual faith in Christ was exercised. Along with this there were others of high importance. The supremacy of the word of God may be mentioned as one of them. But salvation by grace, through faith in Christ, was that which originated the whole. The letters written (especially by Melancthon) immediately on receiving the intelligence of Luther's death abundantly demonstrate that this was the fact. And, in the case of Luther, this commenced in personal experience. It is also very remarkable, that he was guided to this personal experience by the citation of a passage from one who, though he lived so low down as in the eleventh century, is reckoned as one of the Fathers,the last in the long line, but still belonging to it. Luther had chosen the monastic life that he might seek PEACE and POWER. By the austerities which he practised, he had brought himself to such a state of bodily emaciation, that he was found one day on the floor of his cell, almost more dead than alive, by an old Monk; who, though with some obscurity of language, preached to him faith in Christ for the forgive

ness of his own sins, and enforced his exhortation by a passage from the writings of Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux. Luther was thus put on the right track; and when afterwards he found a copy of the Bible in the library of his monastery, he deeply studied the Epistles of St. Paul; and, learning from them the doctrine of "the righteousness of God," revealed in the Gospel, that Gospel-for the first time truly understood by him-became, in his case, "the power of God unto salvation." And thus was he prepared, by knowledge of the truth, and by experience of its saving efficacy, to engage in those controversies which produced the great Reformation.*

Remarkably similar was the case of Mr. Wesley. He, too, sought

* There never was a period when it was more necessary than now it is, for the spread of correct opinions respecting Luther, and the Reformation of which he was, under God, the origin and leader. Protestantism is attacked by the Tractarians because it cuts up their scheme by the roots; while many professed friends of liberty dislike it because it condemns a system maintained by those with whom they have contracted a political alliance. And there is another reason. Charles II. said, that Popery was a religion for a gentleman. In its reference to mere worldly gentlemen, the remark is, we fear, only too correct. A religion of theatrical performance, including a splendidly-attired, hierarchical aristocracy, whose head claims to be a sovereign Prince, suits the pride of man better than the religion whose only power is in the truth which it proclaims, that truth being directly opposed to the natural self-righteousness of the heart; and whose richest adorning is found in the fruits of righteousness which it produces. The enemies of Protestantism increase: it is time that its friends began to prepare to defend themselves, by studying the subject as it is. To our Wesleyan readers, especially, we take the opportunity of recommending the "Life of Martin Luther," published, a year or two ago, by Mr. Mason. In this volume they will find, along with the mere external history of the great Reformer, important statements respecting his remarkable conversion, and his subsequent spiritual progress. The Methodism of the Reformation (so to call it) constituted its real power.

the possession of evangelical peace and power; but he long sought in vain. Crossing the Atlantic, he saw, in some German children of the Reformation, evidences of the possession of what he desired; but he continued seeking as before, and returned to England nearly in the state in which he had embarked for America. But his acquaintance with the children of the Lutheran Reformation did not cease. He was honestly following "on to know the Lord;" and for those who are thus upright light is prepared. He was introduced to other Germans, and learned from them the way of the Lord more perfectly. He searched the Scriptures especially on the subject of conversion, and found that these things were indeed as they had thus been described to him. And this, too, by referring to the Homilies, he found was the teaching of his own Church. Another teaching, indeed, of which the seeds were sown at the time of the Anglican Reformation, and which, unhappily, had been only too fruitful, had superseded it; and by this he had been led astray, and long kept back from peace and power. But he now perceived the truth: it only remained that he should experience it ; and, by the arrangements of Providence, it was ordered that this, too, should come to him, who was to be the great English Reformer, by the instrumentality of the writings of the great German Reformer. At a Meeting in Aldersgate-street, May 24th, 1738, Luther's "Preface to the Epistle to the Romans" was read; and the reader took occasion to describe “the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ;" and, while so doing, Mr. Wesley was enabled to believe with that faith which, as the Homilies say, is "the gift of God." "I felt my heart strangely warmed," he says, referring to that important period of his history: "I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

But it is an important question,—

What was the precise point in regard to which Mr. Wesley's religious opinions thus underwent a change? Did it relate directly to the nature of religion, or to the way in which he was to become possessed of it? That the change related to the latter, and only to the latter, might have been inferred from several circumstances. Thus, in the sermon on "the Circumcision of the Heart," preached before the University of Oxford, January 1st, 1733, he represents holiness as consisting essentially in love,-love to God for his own sake, and to our neighbour for God's sake. And, after the change which he experienced in 1738, he frequently uses language which discovers what might almost be called an anxious carefulness to show that on this subject he still thought and spake the same as ever. In his discourse on the "Law established through Faith" he has these remarkable words : "We establish the law, when we so preach faith in Christ as not to supersede, but produce, holiness; to produce all manner of holiness, negative and positive, of the heart, and of the life.

"In order to this, we continually declare, (what should be frequently and deeply considered by all who would not 'make void the law through faith,') that faith itself, Christian faith, the faith of God's elect, the faith of the operation of God, still is only the handmaid of love. As glorious and honourable as it is, it is not the end of the commandment. God hath given this honour to love alone: love is the end of all the commandments of God. Love is the end, the sole end, of every dispensation of God, from the beginning of the world, to the consummation of all things. And it will endure when heaven and earth flee away; for love alone never faileth." From the beginning to the end this was his unvaried doctrine. Religion consists in love, issuing in obedience.

But we are not left to inference. He himself has described the precise character of the alteration in his views, showing what was effected

« PreviousContinue »