Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

knows he must think in accordance with it. The matter has been well put thus :-"There is an ambiguity in the phrase, Freedom of thought, by which many persons are misled. Strictly speaking thought is free only in those directions in which we are ignorant. I know nothing about the possible inhabitants of the planet Jupiter; I may, if I please, fancy that Jupiter is inhabited, and I am free to give its inhabitants. what forms I please and what occupations I please. But I am not free to think as I please of the inhabitants of Paris, or Vienna, or of Rome. When knowledge begins, freedom of thought, in the sense in which the phrase is sometimes used, ceases. It is while the scientific man has no facts to determine unresolved questions that his speculation is unrestricted. But he welcomes the arrest of his liberty which the knowledge of facts gives to him. If freedom meant the sanction of universal scepticism and the right to doubt, it would be in irreconcilable antagonism to Christianity. For Christianity insists on faith as the supreme duty of man, the condition of restoration to God and of all moral and spiritual perfection in this world, and of eternal blessedness in the world to come. To doubt is to be ignorant, and ignorance is to be deplored as a calamity, not defended as a right." ""1

The right of private judgment then means the right to look with our own eyes on the revelation which God has given of Himself in the Scriptures, and especially in Christ who is the very centre and soul of those Scriptures. The great questions which lie at the foundation of man's life and character are of such vital consequence to us all that we cannot consent to look at them merely through other people's eyes without injury to ourselves, we cannot face them directly and honestly without being the stronger for it. A sensible man will be glad of all the light and help which good men can give him as the result of their experience, but

I Protestantism: its ultimate Principle, by R. W. Dale.

the truth must be made vital to him as well as to them by his receiving it face to face with the God of his life. We must livingly settle the great life-questions,—What is God to me? What am I to Him? How can I make the most of my journey through time? Whatever dangers may thus arise from the possibility of mistake through ignorance are not for a moment to be compared with the dangers which not only may but must arise if we allow either men or systems to separate between us and our Father in heaven. It has been well said that there is no heresy so great as that which removes God to a distance from us. Our heart and our flesh cries out for the living God. At all risks and hazards we must touch Him. And if we do-if we are right there, everything else will soon come right. Even if we have made mistakes while finding our way into the holiest of all, once there, in the ineffable light of that great Presence, our mistakes will soon drop away from us. It is true in a good many ways and in a good many things that it is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of man.

It was the glory of the Reformation that it brought out this great truth and sought to restore the lost communion between God and man. Those who think more of Church machinery than they do of living souls vilify the Reformation, but they cannot do away with the fact that it laid fast hold of the main promises of the Gospel. Its leaders raised aloft out of the dust the blessed truth that we have not to toil and strive to get God on our side, that He is on our side already. The promise of our Lord was that all who put faith in Him should be safe in His hands for life and death, for time and eternity. If men will trust Him, and, as the trust implies, will obey Him, serve Him, and love Him, He will be true to them and give the victory to the better side of their nature against the worse-thus remedying the corruption of that nature. This was His promise, His direct promise to every soul, and the main thing that Luther taught was that it

could be accepted, and ought to be accepted, immediately, without hesitation and without reserve. He said not merely that a man might believe it, but that he was bound to believe it-bound to believe a Saviour whose words and deeds, whose life and death asserted an inalienable claim upon his heart and conscience. Thus believing them, standing face to face with God Himself, men entered into the freedom of sonship; for it is the men who look up reverently to God who are delivered from the fear of man. It was the spirit of freedom and of fearlessness which reasserted itself at the Reformation, and its echoes have shaken the spirit of bondage all over Christendom, establishing Christian liberty on a basis which cannot be shaken. In the last resort we can abandon everything but the word and promise of God, and therefore we need not be, we must not be subservient to any visible power.

The outcome of all this is, then, that every man has the right to say I may for myself see God manifest in the flesh. When He speaks He speaks to me; when He works all His works of mercy I may stand by and see these manifestations of mercy and power with my own eyes. When He speaks as never man spake I may listen for myself-I may hear Him tell Nicodemus about the new birth; I may gather with the multitudes and listen to the Sermon on the Mount, or stand with the crowd hearing with moistened eyes and beating hearts about the lost sheep, the lost piece of silver, and the prodigal son. I may go in with Him and the disciples to the supper chamber at Jerusalem, and let all His wonderful words, with the wonderful heart there was in them, reach my heart; I may follow Him to the judgment hall and to Calvary itself. I, too, may stand there under the darkened heaven and see that great sight when the Son of God lays down His life for man the creature's sin, and I may let that transcendent expression of infinite love act directly on my conscience, my intellect, and my heart. This is my unspeakable privilege, but it is also my

unspeakable duty. The appeal that God makes to the world in Christ is not made to ecclesiastics as such, not to bishops, and synods, and councils, but to the living, beating heart of the very men for whom Christ died. And I owe it to Him that I listen to Him rather than to them. If God wishes to speak to me personally, who am I that I should refuse to permit Him, and should prefer to receive His message at second-hand from men who have set up an authority for themselves? If I stand alone with all Christendom against me I must receive at first hand the glorious revelation of the infinite love of God. When God speaks to me through Christ, no ecclesiastical authority has the right to come between God and my soul. When the light of God is shining upon me direct from heaven, I am under the most solemn and awful obligations to walk in it. This is what we are pleading for in the Right of Private Judgment. It is the most sacred of rights because it guarantees the most sacred of duties.1

I Protestantism, by R. W. Dale.

X.

OUR ENGLISH BIBLE.

It is sometimes said of the English Constitution under which we live that it was not made but grew, that it is the outcome of many a brave and patient struggle for liberty, and is in itself the record as it is the result of the great events of the past. Very much the same thing may be said of the English Bible. Through many successive stages it has grown into its present shape, and as the result of the toil and self-sacrifice of many godly men who felt that it was worth living for, and even worth dying for, to give the people the Book of God in their much-loved English tongue. So that the mere outside history of the Book is one of deepest interest associated as it is with the living faith and godly zeal of bye-gone generations. A collection of old Bibles becomes a very affecting sight when we connect them with the history of the times in which they first saw the light. Looking them over we come upon one not printed but written with religious care upon sheets of vellum, and with many variations from the present mother tongue. This very copy may have belonged to some Lollard of Wycliffe's time by whom it was often hidden away in haste as a forbidden thing or read and prayed over by stealth. To our reverent glance it seems illuminated with pictures of ancient worthies who bent over it, and between the lines we seem to read the saying-"The word of the Lord was precious in those days, there was no open vision." Passing by

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »