Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

XLI

FAITH AND MORALS

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by Thy name, and by Thy name cast out devils, and by Thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.-MATT. vii. 22, 23.

ELIGIOUS faith may be held so that it affects

character injuriously, and works out in ways and acts of unrighteousness. In a letter written by the late Mr. Gladstone to the Duchess of Sutherland occurs this passage: "There is one proposition which the experience of life burns into my soul; it is this, that man should beware of letting his religion spoil his morality. In a thousand ways, some great, some small, but all subtle, we are daily tempted to that great sin." How well founded is this admonition to beware of letting our religion spoil our morality! The Pharisees of our Lord's day show how real this danger is. The result of their energetic religious faith was deplorable; it produced the worst type of character we know. "Working death by that which is good" was the melancholy distinction of the Pharisee.

History furnishes abundant proof of the ruinous effects of misdirected religious faith. We see how the vices come to their last sad perfection in religious.

circles and atmospheres. The Inquisition made of cruelty a fine art. The Jesuits reduced duplicity to a science. Ecclesiastical tyranny has ever been the worst form of tyranny. Pride reached its apotheosis in the successors of the apostles. The Puritans contrived to give to virtue a fierceness and hardness which made. it repulsive. And the golden calf was never worshipped more passionately than by those who sought to make the best of both worlds. Nowhere has pride been more lofty, gluttony more greedy, craft more subtle, ingratitude more base, covetousness more grasping, temper more fierce, cruelty more unsparing, than when and where prompted and consecrated by religious faith and zeal. Immorality cannot be brought to its last inglorious maturity without some sort of religious stimulation. "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble." And they could not be the ghastly shapes they are if they did not believe. This effect is inevitable if faith through ignorance, prejudice, or insincerity operates on wrong lines. Religious belief is "the savour of life unto life, or of death unto death"; and it is an indirect testimony to the divinity of our religion that the worst of character is bread in the Christian Church.

Grace abused brings forth the foulest deeds,
As richest soil the most luxuriant weeds.

Great indeed are the obligations and perils of religious belief; we must be much the better or terribly the worse for it. The science of electricity puts us in the front of civilization, but he who blunders with it is

a corpse; and the action of religious enthusiasm is similarly decisive. If a spiritual faith does not correct our native faults, it accentuates and exaggerates then. The intolerant become more fiercely dogmatic, the irritable more bitterly irascible, the mean unspeakably contemptible, and the sins of the flesh affecting religious sanctions are peculiarly odious. By misconception and misdirection, by mistaken ends and methods, we turn the grace of God to lasciviousness.

Religious faith must be so held that it glorifies character; the faith which spoils morality cannot save. "And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity." The one great ideal of the Old and New Testament is the transfiguration of character, the holiness of life. Every visitor to Palestine is impressed with the prominence of Mount Hermon. That superb, isolated cone, covered with snow nearly all the year, is practically visible from every district and corner of the Holy Land. Whether you journey in Judea, Samaria, or Galilee, whatever may be the locality or point of view, one never gets away from that dazzling dome. As Hermon dominates Palestine, so does the idea of holiness dominate revelation. Whether the sacred writer is treating of cosmogony, history, philosophy, prophecy, or doctrine, righteousness is the motive and aim of his argument. We are no more permitted to lose sight of purity than the geography of the sacred land allows its people to lose sight of Hermon's stainless crest. Religion does not call upon us for "many mighty works," or, indeed, for any "mighty" work whatever; it calls for good works, for whatsoever is true, honest,

pure, and lovely. If we would not that our religious faith should spoil our morality, let us keep this truth continually in mind.

A true faith will not distort character, but, on the contrary, bring it to splendid perfection. If religion is not to mar our morality, we must have the right kind of religion, and the right kind is the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Him we see exemplified the holiness for which revelation everywhere pleads; and in Him we find the grace making that holiness possible. We must fix our eye, not on traditionalism or ecclesiasticism, but on the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Whenever we examine the religion that disfigures character and perverts conduct, we discover that it is a religion vitiated by foreign elements, a faith lacking simplicity and spirituality. It is occupied with antiquity, its controversies and interpretations. It is largely biased by ecclesiastical canons, rubrics, and theories. No longer the direct, clear vision of the Lord, it has become obscure and oblique. We ever need to fix our eye on the living Christ and the great facts and verities of His gospel. It is so easy to let human teachings and institutions blind us to the divine holiness, which is the first and last question for us all. Clinging to "the simplicity that is in Christ," we cannot get far wrong on matters of moral duty. If we cherish His Spirit, we shall be saved from the sophistry which turns grace into lasciviousness; and if we daily walk with Him, all noble virtues and sweet graces will spontaneously spring in our heart and life.

XLII

REALITY AND RANGE IN
CHRISTIAN FAITH

And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith. And the Lord said, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye would say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou rooted up, and be thou planted in the sea; and it would have obeyed you. -LUKE xvii. 5, 6.

A

S a rule we are more anxious about the range of our faith than about its reality. We are most concerned that faith should be commensurate with the great creeds; and if we find ourselves unable to receive this article or that, we regard ourselves as excluded from the household of faith. Does not our Lord in the text teach that the matter of first import is not the comprehensiveness or intensity of faith, but its reality? Faith, however limited or feeble, if only genuine and vital, is full of efficacy. A grain of genuine trust in the righteous God, in the supernatural universe, in the divine government, in the virtue of the Cross, in the power of grace, in the life everlasting, contains within itself all virtue and promise. A hundred guineas were recently refused for a microscopic speck of the pollen of a rare orchid, so precious is the dust of beauty. The fact is, that microscopic speck of pollen would have enabled its pur

« ForrigeFortsæt »