[SPIRIT OF INDIFFERENCE.]
THE worst difficulty there is to encounter is the general state of indifference. There is a general state of don’t-careitiveness. The Galio feeling abounds. Of all the opponents the preacher of Christ has to contend with, there is none that we so much dread, as the man who cares for nothing—who is wholly indifferent—who scarcely has vitality enough to sit up in his pew, unless he can sleep sitting. There are men in these times, who by custom, mere habit, indifferently float along with the current to the place of worship, and sit, lean down, lie down, or lounge in an audience before a preacher, who seem to say, by every motion, every cuticle of the face, expression of the countenance and move of the eye, in thunder tones, to the discerning preacher, I do not care what you say—whether your doctrine is true or false. This discomfits the preacher. What can be done for a man who does not care? What can a preacher do for a man whose spirit is so calloused and numbed as to be incapable of giving attention to a single discourse? What can be done for men who have so lost the love of the truth, all interest in it, and so unfeeling to all its appeals, as to sit before him who pleads its holy claims with earnestness, wholly inattentive? To such men the whole appears idle tales, a kind of dream or kind of dim vision. Many in this description, in church and out of it, cannot be aroused from their stupor, awakened from their slumbers and brought out from the almost impenetrable spell of thick darkness that envelopes them, by the efforts of any preacher. The thunders of Sinai would not do it. The melting strains of gospel love will not do it. Heaven’s beneficence to man is all nothing to them. Many, in this generation, will never be awakened from this deep and awful slumber, and the thick darkness that surrounds them, till the voice of the archangel from heaven and the trumpet of God shall summon them to the judgment of the great day.
An effort is demanded, such as we, as a people, have never made; such as man has rarely made; in any age, an equal to anything in the power of man to make, to awaken our cotemporaries from this terrible and fearful state of death. None but men who are in earnest can do anything in this work. Men who have no concern themselves, or who are nearly in the same predicament, may deliver their little, dry and lifeless harangues, but they make no impression. Men must be fully alive, have the benevolence of God at heart, enter the work with the whole soul, and labor mightily for the Lord. We must feel the need of a great effort, to save man, maintain righteousness and restrain the world from sin, and our efforts must make men feel the necessity of such an effort. It is not necessary that the imagination should be wrought up, but merely that the people be made conscious of the reality, to move those in the reach of reason and argument. But, we defer approaching any other point, for a month.
[APOLOGY FOR CREEDS.]
APOLOGY First. “It is not necessary to make such an incessant war upon our creed; it is just like the Bible; it is all scriptural.” In this case admitting, for the sake of argument, what is not true of any human creed, that it is “just like the Bible,” we reply, that is useless, and will do no better than the Bible itself. If it is just like the Bible it will accomplish nothing more than the Bible, and be just as deficient. Nothing can be gained by it; nothing can be accomplished by it which the Bible itself could not accomplish, so that it must be utterly useless. In that case there can be no excuse for having it—not only so, but the person holding on to and contending for such a creed, is inexcusable on another account. To give up a creed just like the Bible, and take the Bible itself as a rule of faith and practice, a man would lose nothing, for he would find all his creed in the Bible. We insist, therefore, that one of the most inexcusable, unreasonable and unjustifiable positions a man can occupy, is to hold on to, contend for and insist that he can not do without a creed which he insists is just like the Bible, though he can have the Bible itself! The Bible will certainly accomplish all that any creed just like it can.
Apology Second. “It is useless to be contending against our creed. It contains nothing that is not in the Bible. It is simply an abstract, epitome or abridgment of Bible doctrine, so arranged as to be convenient and show at a glance what we hold.” This is quite a specious apology, and has succeeded in deluding and deceiving many persons, and silencing their consciences, and is, therefore, more especially deserving of attention. This apology is dangerous because it acknowledges that the creed contains and sets forth what the party believes—its faith. Now, we assert, without hesitation, that any man who believes no more than is set forth in any human creed on earth, and will do no more than any human creed requires, has neither faith nor obedience enough to be acceptable with God. There is not a human creed on earth, that contains the whole Christian faith. Their faith is too narrow. We have no confidence in epitomes, abstracts, or abridgments of the faith. Nothing less than the faith, the whole faith of Christ, is sufficient to meet the divine approbation. No man’s faith not as broad as the Bible is broad enough for us. His faith must contain Moses and Jesus, the prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New. There must be no abstracting, no epitomizing, no abridging. The man not willing to receive Christ, and the whole Christian faith, as God has set him and the faith forth, in the Holy Scriptures, is not a christian, and had better make no pretence to christianity. We do not wish a man to come describing how he views every point of doctrine. We do not desire him to come declaring that he receives Christ as a Trinitarian or Unitarian, a Calvinist or an Arminian, but to come with a contrite spirit, avowing it as the desire of the heart, and his full determination, to receive Christ with all his heart, as God has revealed him in the prophecies of the Old Testament and the apostolic preaching of the New.