Sixth.—In our conception of Jesus as our Saviour, we should not separate his death from his resurrection and ascension. If he died for our sins, he rose again for our justification. He is now exalted as a Prince and a Saviour at the right hand of the Father, to give repentance and the remission of sins. United to him by faith, and changed into his image, our resurrection is assured by his, and because he lives we shall live also. As oft as we “eat this bread and drink this cup,” we do show forth his death till he come. “Henceforth,” (said[9] the great Apostle) “there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day, and not only to me, but also to all them that leave loved his appearing.” “And[10] the Spirit and the Bride say, Come; and he that heareth let him say, Come; and he that is athirst let him come; he that will, let him take the water of Life freely.”
[1] It is one of the marvels of sin and shows the effrontery of Satan, that Hooykaas, who is about as rank an infidel as Strauss himself, should be pastor at Rotterdam, a Doctor of Divinity, and entitle his book, which laboriously excludes everything miraculous or supernatural in relation to Jesus, “The Bible for Learners.” Mr. Chadwick, while admitting that he is not a Christian in the original sense of the word, argues against Strauss (with whom he agrees in sentiment) the right to apply the term to himself, but meaning by it only “a stream of tendency,” “freedom, progress and civilization.” “It may be,” he says, “that some of you conceive that my definition of Christianity does worse than include those who are at pains to prove themselves not Christians. It includes the dangerous classes of society; it includes the men of vice and crime. There is no doubt of it.” (See Free Religious Index for March 17, 1881, March 24, 1881, and March 31, 1881.) Mr. Miln recently preached a sermon upon “The Church of the Future,” from which he said all speculative beliefs as a condition of membership will be excluded, even the belief in a personal Deity. (See Index for February 23, 1882.) He does not believe in prayer other than communion with himself. (See New York Observer of February 23, 1882.) If Mr. Savage has not yet gone as far, he stops but little short of it.
[2] So expressed in a creed drawn up by him in 1807. (See Congregationalist of February 15, 1882.) A copy of this creed was read at the centennial anniversary of his birth (January 18, 1882) by the Congregational Church of Salisbury, New Hampshire. He joined this church on profession of faith September 13, 1807, and never removed his connection. (See New Hampshire Journal of January 28, 1882.)
[3] See chap. xiii. [p. 67], ante.
[4] In the North American Review for August, 1881, p. 118.
[5] Starkie on Evidence, Vol. II., Sec. 10, and note upon Hume.
[6] Greenleaf’s Testimony of the Evangelists, p. 478.
[7] History of God’s Church, by Enoch Pond, D.D., p. 606. And as to Judge Waite’s “many cases of resurrection from the dead, handed down in the ancient mythologies” and by heathen writers, it will be soon enough to notice them whenever there shall be a serious attempt to run a parallel between the evidence in support of them, and that which proves the resurrection of our Lord. And so of the whole swarm of lying wonders, whether found in heathen writers, the Apocryphal Gospels, or exhibited by modern conjurors or spiritualists,—senseless, frivolous, for no worthy object, and, beyond the mystery accompanying them, supported by no reasonable proof. Our Saviour told his disciples “beforehand” that “there
shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.” (Matthew xxiv. 24.) Paul told Timothy that “the Spirit saith expressly that in later times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, through the hypocrisies of men that speak lies, branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron.” (1 Timothy iv. 1, 2.) This will be strange to any modern Sadducee who believes there is “neither angel nor Spirit,” but the Christian will do well to give heed.
[8] Within the last thirty years, through the labors of English Wesleyan missionaries, there has been an entire moral renovation of cannibals, once revelling and rioting in every excess of atrocity and bestial shame. Now there are nine thousand churches and thousands of communicants, fourteen thousand schools and nearly fifty thousand scholars: and out of a population of about one hundred and twenty thousand, over one hundred thousand are reckoned as regular attendants at the churches. Cannibalism has been voluntarily abandoned, save by a single tribe, in eighty inhabited islands: idolatry has been abjured, and all traces of it swept away. And to-day a gentle and refined English woman, as Miss Gordon-Cumming in her book, At Home in Fiji, testifies, can travel these islands alone, mingling with the people, rambling through their villages, sleeping in their huts and eating at their tables, with none to molest her or make her afraid. (See Rev. Edward Abbott, in Congregationalist of February 15, 1882.)