(c) It is objected, indeed, that we know only of mental substance and of mental acts, and that the new disposition or state just mentioned, since it is not an act, must be regarded as a new substance, and so lack all moral quality. But we reply that, besides substance and acts, there are habits, tendencies, proclivities, some of them native and some of them acquired. They are voluntary, and have moral character. If we can by repeated acts originate sinful tendencies, God can surely originate in us holy tendencies. Such holy tendencies formed a part of the nature of Adam, as he came from the hand of God. As the result of the Fall, we are born with tendencies toward evil for which we are responsible. Regeneration is a restoration of the original tendencies toward God which were lost by the Fall. Such holy tendencies (tastes, dispositions, affections) are not only not unmoral—they are the only possible springs of right moral action. Only in the restoration of them does man become truly free.
Mat. 12:33—“Make the tree good, and its fruit good”; Eph. 2:10—“created in Christ Jesus for good works.”The tree is first made good—the character renewed in its fundamental principle, love to God—in the certainty that when this is done the fruit will be good also. Good works are the necessary result of regeneration by union with Christ. Regeneration introduces a new force into humanity, the force of a new love. The work of the preacher is that of coöperation with God in the impartation of a new life—a work far more radical and more noble than that of moral reform, by as much as the origination of a new force is more radical and more noble than the guidance of that force after it has been originated. Does regeneration cure disease and remove physical ills? Not primarily. Mat. 1:21—“thou shalt call his name Jesus; for it is he that shall save his people from their sins.”Salvation from sin is Christ's first and main work. He performed physical healing only to illustrate and further the healing of the soul. Hence in the case of the paralytic, when he was expected to cure the body, he said first: “thy sins are forgiven” (Mat. 9:2); but, that they who stood by might not doubt his power to forgive, he added the raising up of the palsied man. And ultimately in every redeemed man the holy heart will bring in its train the perfected body: Rom. 8:23—“we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”
On holy affection as the spring of holy action, see especially Edwards, Religious Affections, in Works, 3:1-21. This treatise is Jonathan Edwards's Confessions, as much as if it were directly addressed to the Deity. Allen, his biographer, calls it “a work which will not suffer by comparison with the work of great teachers in theology, whether ancient or modern.” President Timothy Dwight regarded it as most worthy of preservation next to the Bible. See also Hodge, Essays and Reviews, 1:48; Owen on the Holy Spirit, in Works, 3:297-336; Charnock on Regeneration; Andrew Fuller, Works, 2:461-471, 512-560, and 3:796; Bellamy, Works, 2:502; Dwight, Works, 2:418; Woods, Works, 3:1-21; Anderson, Regeneration, 21-50.
B. It is an instantaneous change, in a region of the soul below consciousness, and is therefore known only in its results.
(a) It is an instantaneous change.—Regeneration is not a gradual work. Although there may be a gradual work of God's providence and Spirit, preparing the change, and a gradual recognition of it after it has taken place, there must be an instant of time when, under the influence of God's Spirit, the disposition of the soul, just before hostile to God, is changed to love. Any other view assumes an intermediate state of indecision which has no moral character at all, and confounds regeneration either with conviction or with sanctification.
Conviction of sin is an ordinary, if not an invariable, antecedent of regeneration. It results from the contemplation of truth. It is often accompanied by fear, remorse, and cries for mercy. But these desires and fears are not signs of regeneration. They are selfish. They are quite consistent with manifest and dreadful enmity to God. [pg 827]They have a hopeful aspect, simply because they are evidence that the Holy Spirit is striving with the soul. But this work of the Spirit is not yet regeneration; at most, it is preparation for regeneration. So far as the sinner is concerned, he is more of a sinner than ever before; because, under more light than has ever before been given him, he is still rejecting Christ and resisting the Spirit. The word of God and the Holy Spirit appeal to lower as well as to higher motives; most men's concern about religion is determined, at the outset, by hope or fear. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:512.
All these motives, though they are not the highest, are yet proper motives to influence the soul; it is right to seek God from motives of self-interest, and because we desire heaven. But the seeking which not only begins, but ends, upon this lower plane, is never successful. Until the soul gives itself to God from motives of love, it is never saved. And so long as these preliminary motives rule, regeneration has not yet taken place. Bible-reading, and prayers, and church-attendance, and partial reformations, are certainly better than apathy or outbreaking sin. They may be signs that God is working in the soul. But without complete surrender to God, they may be accompanied with the greatest guilt and the greatest danger; simply because, under such influences, the withholding of submission implies the most active hatred to God, and opposition to his will. Instance cases of outward reformation that preceded regeneration,—like that of John Bunyan, who left off swearing before his conversion. Park: “The soul is a monad, and must turn all at once. If we are standing on the line, we are yet unregenerate. We are regenerate only when we cross it.” There is a prevenient grace as well as a regenerating grace. Wendelius indeed distinguished five kinds of grace, namely, prevenient, preparatory, operant, coöperant, and perfecting.
While in some cases God's preparatory work occupies a long time, there are many cases in which he cuts short his work in righteousness (Rom. 9:28). Some persons are regenerated in infancy or childhood, cannot remember a time when they did not love Christ, and yet take long to learn that they are regenerate. Others are convicted and converted suddenly in mature years. The best proof of regeneration is not the memory of a past experience, however vivid and startling, but rather a present inward love for Christ, his holiness, his servants, his work, and his word. Much sympathy should be given to those who have been early converted, but who, from timidity, self-distrust, or the faults of inconsistent church members, have been deterred from joining themselves with Christian people, and so have lost all hope and joy in their religious lives. Instance the man who, though converted in a revival of religion, was injured by a professed Christian, and became a recluse, but cherished the memory of his dead wife and child, kept the playthings of the one and the clothing of the other, and left directions to have them buried with him.
As there is danger of confounding regeneration with preparatory influences of God's Spirit, so there is danger of confounding regeneration with sanctification. Sanctification, as the development of the new affection, is gradual and progressive. But no beginning is progressive or gradual; and regeneration is a beginning of the new affection. We may gradually come to the knowledge that a new affection exists, but the knowledge of a beginning is one thing; the beginning itself is another thing. Luther had experienced a change of heart, long before he knew its meaning or could express his new feelings in scientific form. It is not in the sense of a gradual regeneration, but in the sense of a gradual recognition of the fact of regeneration, and a progressive enjoyment of its results, that “the path of the righteous” is said to be “as the dawning light”—the morning-dawn that begins in faintness, but—“that shineth more and more unto the perfect day”(Prov. 4:18). Cf. 2 Cor. 4:4—“the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them.” Here the recognition of God's work is described as gradual; that the work itself is instantaneous, appears from the following verse 6—“Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Illustrate by the unconscious crossing of the line which separates one State of the Federal Union from another. From this doctrine of instantaneous regeneration, we may infer the duty of reaping as well as of sowing: John 4:38—“I sent you to reap.” “It is a mistaken notion that it takes God a long time to give increase to the seed planted in a sinner's heart. This grows out of the idea that regeneration is a matter of training; that a soul must be educated from a lost state into a state of salvation. Let us remember that three thousand, whom in the morning Peter called murderers of Christ, were before night regenerated and baptized members of his church.” Drummond, in his Nat. Law in the Spir. World, remarks upon the humaneness of sudden conversion. As [pg 828]self-limitation, self-mortification, suicide of the old nature, it is well to have it at once done and over with, and not to die by degrees.