any enlightening or experience vouchsafed beforehand in regard to our guilt, his Word might preach Christ so for ages, and there never would be faith either in it or in him. That deep, impassable gulf between God and the soul would remain impassable for ever, and none would attempt to cross it. God crosses it in our experience, before we would ever attempt to cross it, or even be aware of its existence. God produces our experience, and lays it down as that bridge for unbelief and insensibility itself to walk upon, that experience of guilt, and so of the need of Christ as a Saviour, and of God's forgiveness in him, out of which, or upon which, the soul comes in faith to Christ. But that experience itself, we see, would be nothing without God's promises; that is, would be nothing to produce faith, nothing but to produce despair, nothing but to bring the soul to the verge of that horrible gulf, make it look down into it, and then plunge it headlong in despair for ever. So that God's promises in Christ are the piles driven down into that gulf, the piers, deeper and stronger than hell itself, on which that experience of hell may be bottomed, may be flung as a bridge for the passage of the soul in faith towards a Saviour. There it rests, upheld by those foundations. And the foundations which as buttresses and piers sink below, and sustain the shock of all the drift of chaos and of hell against them, rise also as a fence or railing above, to keep the trembling, fearful soul, walking thus upon its own terrible experience towards Christ, from falling over, from plunging into the bosom of despair instead of Christ. This is God's mercy, this is God's infinitely wise and gracious arrangement. Out of death he brings forth life. Out of the materials of sin and hell and despair, he brings a passage to holiness and salvation and joy and life eternal in the Saviour. Out of condemnation in guilt he brings pardon, and out of the grave, victory. Now God having demonstrated this to us in many forms, might have left us to our own experience and his pro still further. mises; and no man could have imagined what more we could ask of him than that; and yet God himself has gone For he has, as it were, thrown down this eyes, and shown us other sinners There it is in the 32d Psalm, and And what is to be thought of the prayer, "For thy name's sake pardon mine iniquity, for it is great?" Would it not be the strangest of all strange prayers for a criminal to offer to the government, a criminal guilty of a monstrous murder for example, if he should say, My murder is the worst that was ever committed since Cain's; the most atrocious, the most deliberate, cruel, cold-blooded, inexcusable, and therefore I beseech you for the government's sake to pardon me. And yet that is David's prayer to God, that is the prayer God teaches us to offer for his mercy: "For thy name's sake pardon mine iniquity, for it is great." And so David went over the bridge of his own sins into the heart of God's mercy. And there it is again in the 2d Chronicles xxxiii. 12, 13, and Manasseh going over it, that monstrous sinner! But God was entreated of him, and heard his supplication. And there it is again in Luke xv., and the Prodigal Son going over it. And there it is again in 1st Timothy i. 15, and Paul himself going over it, as the chief of sinners, with the same argument, "For thy name's sake pardon mine iniquity, for it is great." And here let us stop one moment and see the progress of Paul's experience. There is a peculiarly beautiful and instructive series of climacterics in it, which has often been noted. In the year of our Lord 59, he is the least of the apostles, and not meet to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the church of God. In the year of our Lord 64, after five years more of growth in grace, he is less than the least of all saints. But in the year of our Lord 65, and not long before he was to receive his crown in heaven, he is the chief of sinners. So a man, as he goes down in self goes up in God, and as he goes up in God 74 GRACE AND TRUTH, CHRIST IN THE AFFECTIONS, goes down in self. He that began his way to Christ by saying, Lord have mercy upon me, for I am a great sinner, sees more and more, after he has come to Christ, and all his sins are put behind him and forgiven, how great and aggravated they were; and the more he experiences of God's loving kindness, and the more he grows in grace, the more he sees and feels his own unworthiness. His sins grow behind him, as God's love grows before him; but it is the love that is before, while the guilt is all behind, and the more he sees of the love that forgives, the more, in the expanding and increasing light of that love, he sees of the greatness of the guilt that has been forgiven. So love grows out of sin, and sin seems larger by love, all the way through eternity. GRACE!-'tis a charming sound, Harmonious to the ear; Heaven with the echo shall resound, GRACE first contrived the way And all the steps that grace display, GRACE led my roving feet To tread the heavenly road; GRACE all the work shall crown It lays in heaven the topmost stone CHAPTER VIII. God's method of discipline.-Faith an element of character for development and growth.-A reward of Faith in the habit of Faith. THERE was a Day of Discourse by our Blessed Lord with his disciples on earth, very noticeable for a conversation on the subject of faith, which has singularly, in some points, escaped examination. It was the occasion in Luke's seventeenth chapter, when the apostles came with the simple, childlike prayer, "Lord, increase our faith." The prayer itself is simple and childlike, though it may possibly be offered in words, without the possession of the spirit which it indicates. The prayer itself is at the bottom of the well-spring of our spiritual life. A man already has some faith, who truly feels his need of faith, and his dependence on Christ for it. So this prayer offered by the apostles was one of the most satisfactory proofs that faith was in their hearts, and that it was a growing principle, however small at first. We all need to come to Christ with this prayer, but oftentimes we know not what we are praying for, and the apostles themselves hardly knew what they were praying for, when they begged for an increase of their faith. They were in truth praying that our Blessed Lord would take what means he might find necessary to produce a stronger faith in their hearts. They thought they were praying for a direct communication from his Spirit, a direct and positive and immediate exercise of his power in their souls, without any waiting, or working, or difficulty on their part. But they were very greatly mistaken; and as he saw in them a true sincerity in that request, although mingled with much error, he answered their prayer in his own way and time, not theirs; according to his own wisdom and grace, not their short-sightedness. They had formed the habit of walking by sight, not faith, and they were carrying that habit even into spiritual things. They wished all their acquisitions to be present ones, and they would have present proof that their prayers were answered. They had no idea upon what a sea of trying discipline their supplications would launch them forth. The true increase of their faith comprised an amount of trial from which they would have shrunk back, could they have foreseen it. And when it came, they saw not then its meaning, they thought it was the wrong way. The increase of faith comprises methods of discipline, both inward and external, which to sight seem very mysterious. At the very time when God is administering the very remedies that are to work in us a greater faith, when Christ, our great Physician, is taking our case in hand, and putting us under the necessary regimen, it may seem to us as if our prayers were neither heard nor answered. Prayer, sometimes, seems to bring nothing but difficulty, seems to do nothing but stir up our ill humors, seems to reveal nothing but our guilt and misery. Then we think God has deserted us, or we have never known the way of his mercy, or have no right to hope in it, and no reason for encouragement. We are almost ready to turn back, perhaps, because of the very discipline by which God would carry us forward. We know not God's methods, and can see but little way before us. Sometimes the direction of those methods seems to sight directly contrary to the way of our progress. But in spiritual things we often have to go down in order to go up, just as in climbing a high mountain you often have to descend in one place in order to ascend in another. So it is in God's discipline. And our habit of judging by sight, and of ask |