Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors

by James Freeman Clarke

A very interesting book was published not long ago, written by Miss Catherine Beecher, in which she describes the sufferings caused in her own experience by this theory of regeneration. Her father fully believed in it, and thought it necessary to carry all his children through it somehow or other. Their conversions, to be sure, were not all quite in [pg 188] rule; especially that of Henry seems to have been a little abnormal, if we may trust an account given by himself in an article on the dissolution of the Bowdoin Street Church and congregation, Boston, of which his father was the first minister. The description is so suggestive that we will quote the passage:—

“If somebody will look in the old records of Hanover Street Church about 1829, they will find a name there of a boy about fifteen years old, who was brought into the Church on a sympathetic wave, and who well remembers how cold and almost paralyzed he felt while the committee questioned him about his ‘hope’ and ‘evidences,’ which upon review amounted to this—that the son of such a father ought to be a good and pious boy. Being tender-hearted and quick to respond to moral sympathy, he had been caught and inflamed in a school excitement, but was just getting over it when summoned to Boston to join the church! On the morning of the day, he went to church without seeing anything he looked at. He heard his name called from the pulpit among many others, and trembled; rose up with every emotion petrified; counted the spots on the carpet; looked piteously up at the cornice; heard the fans creak in the pews near him; felt thankful to a fly that lit on his face, as if something familiar at last had come to break an awful trance; heard faintly a reading of the articles of faith; wondered whether he should be struck dead for not feeling more—whether he should go to hell for touching the bread and wine that he did not dare to take nor to refuse; spent the morning service uncertain whether dreaming, or out of the body, or in a trance; and at last walked home crying, and wishing he knew what, now that he was a Christian, he should do, and how he was to do it. Ah, well; there is a world of things in children's minds that grown-up people do not imagine, though they, too, once were young!”

Now, if his state of mind, thus described, had been at [pg 189] that time exposed and told, it would not have been thought a very sound Orthodox experience. But in reality the boy was at that very time as good a Christian for a boy as he is now for a man. But Miss Beecher, in the book referred to, tells us that when one of her other brothers was striving in prayer for this change of heart, with groans and struggles, the house was like a tomb. The poor young man was in his chamber alone, and his groans and cries were heard through the whole house. All the other members of the family staid in their own rooms in silence, until at last, by some natural reaction of feeling, there came a sense of rest and peace to his mind, which they believed to be the new birth. She also describes the way in which Dr. Payson, of Portland, tortured his little daughter, three years old, by a torture as well meant, as conscientious, and more terrible than that of the Holy Inquisition. He told his little daughter that she hated God; that she must have a change of heart, but that she could not get it for herself; and that even her prayers, until she was converted, were only making her worse. The poor little girl denied that she hated God; she said she was sure she loved him. Then the misguided father brought up all her little childish faults as a proof that she hated God; for if she loved him she would never do wrong. And so, from three years of age till she was thirteen, this poor, infatuated parent tormented this little child by keeping her on this spiritual rack—all because of a false view of the passages concerning regeneration in the Bible. And when we think of the twenty thousand pulpits which to-day are teaching in this country this same sort of belief, it is evident that it is our duty to see what the Master really meant to teach us by this passage.

Nicodemus is the type of a class of men common in all times. We have seen Nicodemus very often. He is a good man whose goodness has no life in it. His goodness is a sort of an automaton—all machinery and no soul. He is [pg 190] so thoroughly right in all he does; everything about him is so proper; he is so perfectly en règle in his own eyes,—that we sometimes wish that he might be betrayed into some impropriety, commit some not too great folly, have some escapade of rash enthusiasm. You respect him so much, you wonder why you do not love him more. It is because he is not open to influence. His goodness is so rigid, his opinions so declared, his character so pronounced, that there is no crack anywhere by which God or man can reach him. He has a whole armor of opinions all round him, and you cannot get through it. He has narrowed himself, and shut himself in, so that he feels no influence of sympathy coming from the wide ocean of humanity around, no influence of love from the deep heaven of God above. He is a sort of good rhinoceros, with a skin so thick that nothing can pierce it.

Nicodemus was such a man, and he came to Jesus with all his opinions cut and dried, ready for an argument. He begins in a very formal and precise way. “Rabbi, we know thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him.” He observes all proprieties; he calls Jesus Doctor,—“Rabbi,”—but takes good care not to call him Christ. He gives his reason for thinking Jesus a teacher come from God, namely, his miracles. Not his holiness, not his inspiration, not his supreme sweetness, not that he is a channel through which God's tenderness runs down into our hearts. No; he sees no such spiritual proof as this, but a merely logical one, expressed almost in the form of a syllogism. Major proposition—“No man can work miracles without God's help.” Minor proposition—“Jesus works miracles.” Conclusion—“Therefore Jesus has God's help.”

Now, what does Jesus reply? Evidently much of the conversation has been omitted. We have only the substance of it here. “You believe in the kingdom of heaven, Nicodemus.” “Certainly.” “How do you expect to know it when you see [pg 191] it?” “By some great outward signs; something which shall shake heaven and earth; the Messiah coming in the sky, with angels.” “Nicodemus, you cannot even see the kingdom when it is here, if you look for it so; you must be born again yourself; you must be changed, and become as a little child, in order to enter the kingdom.” We remember that Peter, who was probably not half as good as Nicodemus, an impulsive soul, was nevertheless enough of a little child, in openness of heart, to see that this was the kingdom of heaven,—this teaching and life of Jesus,—and that Jesus was the Messiah.

But Nicodemus says, “No. A Gentile, a heathen, ought, no doubt, to begin at the beginning, give up all his old opinions, and be born of water by being baptized. He should begin by a recantation. I suppose that is what you mean by being born again. But I ought not, for I am a Jew, grown up in the true knowledge of God, learned from Moses and the prophets. So I need not begin my life again.”

Jesus then replies, “The form is nothing. You must be born not only of water, but of the Spirit, in order to enter the kingdom of God. You need not only to wash off all your old opinions and conduct, as the Gentiles must do; but also you must be made a little child by laying your heart open to God's Spirit, and letting it lead your thoughts into new ways, your heart into new love, and your life into new action. You must be willing to follow me, not by night only, but in the day. If they turn you out of the Sanhedrim, you must not mind that; you must find your happiness in getting good and doing good; receiving God's love into your soul, and letting it go out again. You must give yourself up to this divine influence.”

Then Nicodemus says, “How can these things be?” He wishes to see the way, to have it all marked out; to have a creed with all its articles of belief fixed; a programme of what he is to do arranged. The spirit he does not quite [pg 192] understand. Give it to him in the letter, and he can do it. He wants a map of the operations of the Holy Spirit.

“Are you a teacher of Israel, and do not know this?” replies Jesus. “The whole Old Testament is full of this inspiration; full of the Spirit of God coming and going, in a thousand ways, and not by any special rule or method; going as the wind comes and goes in the sky, we do not know whence or how.” It is well that some things cannot be arranged beforehand—well that no almanac can tell if the wind to-morrow is to be east or west, north or south.