The maxim, “Truth is mighty and will prevail,” is very untrue, if God be left out of the account. Truth without God is an abstraction, and not a power. It is a mere instrument, useless without an agent. “The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17), must be wielded by the Holy Spirit himself. And the Holy Spirit comes in contact, not simply with the instrument, but with the soul. To all moral, and especially to all religious truth, there is an inward unsusceptibility, arising from the perversity of the affections and the will. This blindness and hardness of heart must be removed, before the soul can perceive or be moved by the truth. Hence the Spirit must deal directly with the soul. Denovan: “Our natural hearts are hearts of stone. The word of God is good seed sown on the hard, trodden, macadamized highway, which the horses of passion, the asses of self-will, the wagons of imaginary treasure, have made impenetrable. Only the Holy Spirit can soften and pulverize this soil.”
The Psalmist prays: “Incline my heart unto thy testimonies” (Ps. 119:36), while of Lydia it is said: “whose heart the Lord opened to give heed unto the things which were spoken by Paul” (Acts 16:14). We may say of the Holy Spirit: “He freezes and then melts the soil, He breaks the hard, cold stone, Kills out the rooted weeds so vile,—All this he does alone; And every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought of holiness, Are his, and his alone.” Hence, in Ps. 90:16, 17, the Psalmist says, first: “Let thy work appear unto thy servants”; then “establish thou the work of our hands upon us”—God's work is first to appear,—then man's work, which is God's work carried out by human instruments. At Jericho, the force was not applied to the rams' horns, but to the walls. When Jesus healed the blind man, his power was applied, not to the spittle, but to the eyes. The impression is prepared, not by heating the seal, but by softening the wax. So God's power acts, not upon the truth, but upon the sinner.
Ps. 59:10—“My God with his lovingkindness will meet me”; A. V.—“The God of my mercy shall prevent me,” i. e., go before me. Augustine urges this text as proof that the grace of God precedes all merit of man: “What didst thou find in me but only sins? Before I do anything good, his mercy will go before me. What will unhappy Pelagius answer here?” Calvin however says this may be a pious, but it is not a fair, use of the passage. The passage does teach dependence upon God; but God's anticipation of our action, or in other words, the doctrine of prevenient grace, must be derived from other portions of Scripture, such as John 1:13, and Eph. 2:10. “The enthusiasm of humanity” to which J. R. Seeley, the author of Ecce Homo, exhorts us, is doubtless the secret of happiness and usefulness,—unfortunately he does not tell us whence it may come. John Stuart Mill felt the need of it, but he did not get it. Arthur Hugh Clough, Clergyman's First Tale: “Would I could wish my wishes all to rest, And know to wish the wish that were the best.” Bradford, Heredity, 228—“God is the environment of the soul, yet man has free will. Light fills the spaces, yet a man from ignorance may remain in a cave, or from choice may dwell in darkness.” Man needs therefore a divine influence which will beget in him a disposition to use his opportunities aright.
We may illustrate the philosophy of revivals by the canal boat which lies before the gate of a lock. No power on earth can open the lock. But soon the lock begins to fill, and when the water has reached the proper level, the gate can be opened almost at a touch. Or, a steamer runs into a sandbar. Tugs fail to pull the vessel off. Her own engines cannot accomplish it. But when the tide comes in, she swings free without effort. So what we need in religion is an influx of spiritual influence which will make easy what before is difficult if not impossible. The Superintendent of a New York State Prison tells us that the common schools furnish 83 per cent., and the colleges and academies over 4 per cent., of the inmates of Auburn and Sing Sing. Truth without the Holy Spirit to apply it is like sunshine without the actinic ray which alone can give it vitalizing energy.
(b) Even if truth could be energized, intensified, illuminated, there would still be needed a change in the moral disposition, before the soul could recognize its beauty or be affected by it. No mere increase of light can enable a blind man to see; the disease of the eye must first be cured before external objects are visible. So God's work in regeneration must be performed within the soul itself. Over and above all influence of the truth, there must be a direct influence of the Holy Spirit upon the heart. Although wrought in conjunction with the presentation of truth to the intellect, regeneration differs from moral suasion in being an immediate act of God.
Before regeneration, man's knowledge of God is the blind man's knowledge of color. The Scriptures call such knowledge “ignorance” (Eph. 4:18). The heart does not appreciate God's mercy. Regeneration gives an experimental or heart knowledge; see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:495. Is. 50:4—God “wakeneth mine ear to hear.” It is false to say that soul can come in contact with soul only through the influence of truth. In the intercourse of dear friends, or in the discourse of the orator, there is a personal influence, distinct from the word spoken, which persuades the heart and conquers the will. We sometimes call it “magnetism,”—but we mean simply that soul reaches soul, in ways apart from the use of physical intermediaries. Compare the facts, imperfectly known as yet, of second sight, mind-reading, clairvoyance. But whether these be accepted or not, it still is true that God has not made the human soul so that it is inaccessible to himself. The omnipresent Spirit penetrates and pervades all spirits that have been made by him. See Lotze, Outlines of Psychology (Ladd), 142, 143.
In the primary change of disposition, which is the most essential feature of regeneration, the Spirit of God acts directly upon the spirit of man. In the securing of the initial exercise of this new disposition—which constitutes the secondary feature of God's work of regeneration—the truth is used as a means. Hence, perhaps, in James 1:18, we read: “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth” instead of “he begat us by the word of truth,”—the reference being to the secondary, not to the primary, feature of regeneration. The advocates of the opposite view—the view that God works onlythrough the truth as a means, and that his only influence upon the soul is a moral influence—very naturally deny the mystical union of the soul with Christ. Squier, for example, in his Autobiog., 343-378, esp. 360, on the Spirit's influences, quotes John 16:8—he “will convict the world in respect of sin”—to show that God regenerates by applying truth to men's minds, so far as to convince them, by fair and sufficient arguments, that they are sinners.
Christ, opening blind eyes and unstopping deaf ears, illustrates the nature of God's operation in regeneration,—in the case of the blind, there is plenty of light,—what is wanted is sight. The negro convert said that his conversion was due to himself and God: he fought against God with all his might, and God did the rest. So our moral successes are due to ourselves and God,—we have done only the fighting against God, and God has done the rest. The sand of Sahara would not bring forth flowers and fruit, even if you turned into it a hundred rivers like the Nile. Man may hear sermons for a lifetime, and still be barren of all spiritual growths. The soil of the heart needs to be changed, and the good seed of the kingdom needs to be planted there.
For the view that truth is “energized” or “intensified” by the Holy Spirit, see Phelps, New Birth, 61, 121; Walker, Philosophy of Plan of Salvation, chap. 18. Per contra, see Wardlaw, Syst. Theol., 3:24, 25; E. D. Griffin, Divine Efficiency, 73-116; Anderson, Regeneration, 123-168; Edwards, Works, 2:547-597; Chalmers, Lectures on Romans, chap. 1; Payne, Divine Sovereignty, lect. 23:363-367; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 3:3-37, 466-485. On the whole subject of the Efficient Cause of Regeneration, see Hopkins, Works, 1:454; Dwight, Theology, 2:418-429; John Owen, Works, 3:282-297, 366-538; Robert Hall, Sermon on the Cause, Agent, and Purpose of Regeneration.