Let me take one pre-eminent subject as my illustration: the foundation-truth of the Godhead of our Blessed Redeemer. Are you at all aware how widely spread is ignorance and error on that subject, far beyond the limits of the "Unitarian"[17] community? I remember a pastoral visit long ago to a slowly dying parishioner, a labouring man somewhat stricken in years, who had been a church-goer, though not a communicant. I soon fell into a conversation with my friend which took a sort of catechetical shape; my aim was to see where the soul's hopes for eternity really rested. Who and What was Jesus, whose name I know he humbly reverenced? Was He a good Man? Yes. But anything more? There was a long hesitation, and then the dear man expressed a faltering persuasion that the Lord could not be less than "a blessed angel." That case, I am well convinced, is very much more representative than some of us may think. At a recent Church Congress I heard some remarks in just this direction from Bishop Walsham How, who speaks from a large pastoral experience; his anxiety about the immense extent of popular ignorance or misbelief about the Saviour's Person was at least as great as mine.
[17] A term which I use under protest. If a Unitarian means a believer in the Unity of the Godhead, every orthodox Christian is a true Unitarian. Only, he is a Trinitarian also, from another side. I may venture to refer on this subject to a small book of my own, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, p. 20.
"ALL MY SUFFERMENT HERE."
And so too is ignorance and misbelief about the work of His Cross, and of His Holy Spirit. "I hope I shall have all my sufferment here," said one poor invalid to me in old days, speaking indeed from a very comfortless bed, in the slow pains of a dire disease. She had been long within sound of clear, bright Christian teaching. But deep in the soul, unmoved and ah, so difficult to dislodge, lay that notion of an atoning value in our own pains which is a radical contradiction to the glorious paradox of the perfect and unique work of Calvary:—
"Thy pains, not mine, O Christ,
Upon the shameful tree
Have paid the law's full price,
And purchased peace for me.
"Thy Cross, not mine, O Christ,
Has borne the awful load
Of sins that none in heaven
Or earth could bear but God."[18]
[18] Bonar, Hymns of Faith and Hope (First Series).
THE TRUTH OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
As regards the Person and the Work of the blessed Spirit, great and general is the oblivion, and manifold are the mistakes. I fear that even in the best instructed congregations, under the clearest public teaching, there are all too many who, practically, "have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost." [Acts xix. 2.] The belief in His glorious Personality is faint and vague. The confusion of His Presence and Power with our "better feelings" is very, very common. The solemn questions which the Scripture bids us put to ourselves, [Rom. viii. 9.] whether or not we "have the Spirit of Christ"—not merely "a Christian spirit" in the sense of tone and temper, but the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Son, and uniting the true believer to Him—are little understood, and rarely used upon the man by himself. And the very thought of such a presence and such a power of the Lord the Life-Giver as shall "fill us with the Spirit" [Eph. v. 18.] is not yet existent, I fear, in the minds of many even earnest Christians.
Here are fields, large and fruitful, for the teaching visitor's cultivation. And so are the other possible subjects indicated above; such as the claims of the Lord upon our personal consistency in little things; His solemn call to all His people to be, directly or indirectly, the evangelists of the world; and the nature of His blessed sacramental Institutions.
THE TRUTH OF THE SACRAMENTS.