Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists, Volume 3 of 3

by Unknown

3.

There certainly is another method of conversion upon private judgment described in Scripture, which is much more to our purpose, viz., by means of the study of Scripture itself. Thus our Lord says to the Jews, "Search the Scriptures"; and the treasurer of Candace was reading the book of Isaiah when St. Philip met him; and the men of Berea are said to be "more noble than those of Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so." And it is added, "therefore many of them believed." Here at length, it will be said, is a precedent for such acts of private judgment as are most frequently recommended and instanced in religious tales; and indeed these texts commonly are understood to make it certain beyond dispute, that individuals ordinarily may find out the doctrines of the Gospel for themselves from the private study of Scripture. A little consideration, however, will convince us that even these are precedents for something else, that they sanction, not an inquiry about Gospel doctrine, but about the Gospel teacher; not what has God revealed, but whom has He commissioned? And this is a very different thing.

The context of the passage in which our Lord speaks of searching the Scriptures, shows plainly that their office is that of leading, not to a knowledge of the Gospel, but of Himself, its Author and Teacher. "Whom He hath sent," He says, "Him ye believe not. Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me." He adds, that they "will not come unto Him, that they may have life," and that "He is come in His Father's name, and they receive Him not." And again, "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me, for he wrote of Me." It is plain that in this passage our Lord does not send His hearers to the Old Testament to gain thence the knowledge of the doctrines of the Gospel by means of their private judgment, but to gain tests or notes by which to find out and receive Him who was the teacher of those doctrines; and, though the treasurer of Candace appears in the narrative to be contemplating our Lord in prophecy, not as the teacher but the object of the Christian faith, yet still in confessing that he could not "understand" what he was reading, "unless some man should guide him," he lays down the principle broadly, which we desire here to maintain, that the private study of Scripture is not intended ordinarily as the means of getting a knowledge of the Gospel. In like manner, St. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, refers to the book of Joel, by way of proving thence, not the Christian doctrine, but the divine promise that new teachers were to be sent in due season, and the fact that it was fulfilled in himself and his brethren. "This is that," he says, "which was spoken by the prophet Joel, I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy."

While, then, the conversions recorded in Scripture are brought about in a very marked way through a teacher, and not by means of private judgment, so again, if an appeal is made to private judgment, this is done in order to settle who the teacher is, and what are his notes or tokens, rather than to substantiate this or that religious opinion or practice. And if such instances bear upon our conduct at this day, as it is natural to think they do, then of course the practical question before us is, who is the teacher now, from whose mouth are we to seek the law, and what are his notes?

Now, in remarkable coincidence with this view, we find in both Testaments that teachers are promised under the dispensation of the Gospel, so that they who, like the noble Bereans, search the Scriptures daily will be at little loss whither their private judgment should lead them in order to gain the knowledge of the truth. In the book of Isaiah we have the following express promises: "Though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the waters of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers, and thine ears shall hear a voice behind thee, saying, This is the way," etc. Several tests follow descriptive of the condition of things or the circumstances in which these teachers are to be found. First, the absence of idolatry: "Ye shall defile also the covering of thy graven images of silver, and the ornaments of thy molten images of gold"; and next the multitude of fellow-believers: "Then shall He give the rain of thy seed, that thou shalt sow the ground withal; in that day shall thy cattle feed in large pastures." Elsewhere the appointed teacher is noted as speaking with authority and judicially, as: "Every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn." And here again the promises or tests of extent and perpetuity appear: "Thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left, and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles"; and "My kindness shall not depart from them, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed." Elsewhere holiness is mentioned: "It shall be called, The way of holiness, the unclean shall not pass over it." One more promise shall be cited: "My Spirit that is upon thee, and My words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed ... from henceforth and for ever."

In the New Testament we have the same promises stated far more concisely indeed, but, what is much more apposite than a longer description, with the addition of the name of our promised teacher: "The Church of the living God," says St. Paul, "the pillar and ground of the truth." The simple question then for Private Judgment to exercise itself upon is, what and where is the Church?

Now let it be observed how exactly this view of the province of Private Judgment, where it is allowable, as being the discovery not of doctrine, but of the teacher of doctrine, harmonizes both with the nature of Religion and the state of human society as we find it. Religion is for practice, and that immediate. Now it is much easier to form a correct and rapid judgment of persons than of books or of doctrines. Every one, even a child, has an impression about new faces; few persons have any real view about new propositions. There is something in the sight of persons or of bodies of men, which speaks to us for approval or disapprobation with a distinctness to which pen and ink are unequal. This is just the kind of evidence which is needed for use, in cases in which private judgment is divinely intended to be the means of our conversion. The multitude have neither the time, the patience, nor the clearness and exactness of thought, for processes of investigation and deduction. Reason is slow and abstract, cold and speculative; but man is a being of feeling and action; he is not resolvable into a dictum de omni et nullo, or a series of hypotheticals, or a critical diatribe, or an algebraical equation. And this obvious fact does, as far as it goes, make it probable that, if we are providentially obliged to exercise our private judgment, the point toward which we have to direct it, is the teacher rather than the doctrine.

In corroboration, it may be observed, that Scripture seems always to imply the presence of teachers as the appointed ordinance by which men learn the truth; and is principally engaged in giving cautions against false teachers, and tests for ascertaining the true. Thus our Lord bids us "beware of false prophets," not of false books; and look to their fruits. And He says elsewhere that "the sheep know His voice," and that "they know not the voice of strangers." And He predicts false Christs, and false prophets, who are to be nearly successful against even the elect. He does not give us tests of false doctrines, but of certain visible peculiarities or notes applicable to persons or parties. "If they shall say, Behold, he is in the desert, go not forth; behold, he is in the secret chamber, believe it not." St. Paul insists on tokens of a similar kind: "Mark them which cause divisions, and avoid them"; "is Christ divided?" "beware of dogs, beware of evil workers"; "be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so, as ye have us for an ensample." Thus the New Testament equally with the Old, as far as it speaks of private examination into teaching professedly from heaven, makes the teacher the subject of that inquiry, and not the thing taught; it bids us ask for his credentials, and avoid him if he is unholy, or idolatrous, or schismatical, or if he comes in his own name, or if he claims no authority, or is the growth of a particular spot or of particular circumstances.

If there are passages which at first sight seem to interfere with this statement, they admit of an easy explanation. Either they will be found to appeal to those instinctive feelings of our nature already spoken of which supersede argument and proof in the judgments we form of persons or bodies; as in St. Paul's reference to the idolatry of Athenian worship, or to the extreme moral corruption of heathenism generally. Or, again, the criterion of doctrine which they propose to the private judgment of the individual turns upon the question of its novelty or previous reception. When St. Paul would describe a false gospel, he calls it another gospel "than that ye have received"; and St. John bids us "try the spirits," gives us as the test of truth and error the "confessing that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh," and warns us against receiving into our houses any one who "brings not this doctrine." We conceive then that, on the whole, the notion of gaining religious truth for ourselves by our private examination, whether by reading or thinking, whether by studying Scripture or other books, has no broad sanction in Scripture, is neither impressed upon us by its general tone, nor enjoined in any of its commands. The great question which it puts before us for the exercise of private judgment is,—Who is God's prophet, and where? Who is to be considered the voice of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church?