Plain Sermons, preached at Archbishop Tenison's Chapel, Regent Street. Second Series

by James Galloway Cowan

But it occurs to you to ask, perhaps, how it is that God selects believing, rather than seeing, on any other way of reception for special blessing.

Now, it is not necessary that God should account to us for what He does or wills. Creatures of His hand, we are made for Him; dependents on His bounty, we must thankfully receive it in any way and form of bestowal. But still there are reasons which may be briefly suggested for the selection of faith.

First, then, faith embodies the entire trustful devotion to God, which, above any assent to what is proved, any following of what is seen or heard, magnifies the honour of God, and so sets forth His glory. It owns His truth, His providence, His love, and prompts to a free-will, spiritual, glorifying service of Him. Secondly, unless there are to be perpetual miracles, faith alone can be permanently and universally influential. If we are to be guided by sight, or hearing, or touching, then the revelations to one generation would have to be repeated to each following generation, and those of one country performed again in every other. Thus Christ would have had to continue on earth, to have visited every land, and been crucified and raised from the dead in every land, or to have gathered all nations into Judea to witness what was done; and this would have had to be repeated over and over again to our fathers, to us, to our children, or else some would have been without the necessary influence to serve, and love, and depend on Him. And more than this, since the sights we see and the sounds we hear, are soon over, and leave but a faint remembrance behind, we should be imperfectly influenced by them, when Christ ceased to speak; or when He passed into another place we should be without our object of worship, our instructor or hope. And even if these objections can be met, still the perpetuity of Christ’s visible presence, the beholding of His miracles, and hearing of His words, would necessarily put a stop to all worldly occupations; would make probation little more than a name; would constrain men by natural influences to a carnal or slavish adherence to Him, or would drive them into reckless rebellion, and instant and irrevocable condemnation.

But again, faith is more blessed because it has greater privileges—because it reveals more clearly, brings nearer, than any sense could do. If you only hear a loved one, do you not desire to see him? If you see him, are you not unblessed unless you embrace him? And then, is there not an influence, a way of communicating, that surpasses this—a purer, a more spiritual influence, one which brings you together, and keeps you together, and makes you one—love, which surpasses, which is independent of, or only uses as accessories, the bodily senses? We are too apt, brethren, to talk of seeing as believing; to count sense above feeling; to exalt what belongs to the body, above what belongs to the mind or spirit. Doubtless, the error arises from the way in which we speak of faith giving way to sight in heaven, as though the eyes of the body only, and not the mind and spirit, were to behold Christ then; as though mental and spiritual perception were not better than bodily; as though there were no assurance that faith is an abiding gift, and that, therefore, while in heaven there will be much to gratify the eye of the body, there will still be much more which faith alone can realise. My brethren, the greatest eternal blessedness will be vouchsafed to faith, and the greatest blessedness of this state belongs to faith, because it is the exercise of man’s noblest and best, and most reliable faculties, far superior in excellence, far more certain in ascertaining the truth, than ears, or eyes, or hands.

Once more, faith is blessed above seeing, because it grasps a set of truths, and enjoys a class of pleasures which are different from those of the senses, and which the senses cannot touch. God the Father invisible for ever, God the Holy Ghost, blowing like the wind where it listeth, so that you cannot see whence it cometh and whither it goes, ministering angels, spiritual influences, and consolations, and helps—what can ear, or eye, or hand know of these? But faith knows them, hears them, sees them, handles them, and joys in them. And this, brethren, exhibits the nature of faith’s blessedness; that to it is revealed the whole spiritual world; that the evidence which it needs, the object of its worship, its Saviour, its Lord, its hopes and fears, and encouragements and promises are never absent, and never missed, (but by its own dimness or voluntary blindness) whatever may become of the outward signs and boding presences. Picture to yourselves, brethren, the scene of that chamber where the raised Christ stood manifest, in the posture of blessing, before His adoring disciples. Imagine what Thomas had before felt, and what he now felt. Then hear Christ say—“The bliss of this moment might have been yours before, if you had sought to attain it by faith, and not by sight; and what you now see may be yours for ever, for in spirit I shall ever be with you, and by faith you may ever behold Me! Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed”; and that blessing, brethren, was for us, if we will have it. If we believe, then we are thus blessed. If we are not blessed, we may be. O let us lay hold on this truth, let us cultivate faith, let us pray to God for an increase of it, and let us perpetually exercise it in beholding Him Who is ever with us, to pardon our faithless sins, to restore us to His company, to breathe upon us peace and blessing.

SERMON VI.
FAULTLESSNESS BEFORE GOD.
(INNOCENTS’ DAY.)

Revelation, xiv., 5.

They are without fault before the throne of God.

Job declares that God puts no trust in His saints; that He charges His angels with folly; that in His sight the very heavens are not clean. This language is, of course, figurative, and not to be taken literally; but it well describes to us the transcendent holiness of God, and His utter abhorrence of all evil. In comparison of Him, heaven itself is not pure, and angels, endued with wisdom, swift and constant to obey, delighting in His will, even these are not perfect—fall far short of perfection before Him. Job would show us the distance between God and man. St. John, however, in the chapter of my text, would exhibit another truth, not contradictory, but rather supplementary to Job’s, namely, the nearness, through grace, of man to God. The Apostle is describing, for the comfort and encouragement of the tried and persecuted, a vision which he had seen of some of those who have passed away from this world, and, as a kind of first-fruits, are already with God and the Lamb; and he says, that “in their mouth is found no guile; for they are without fault before the throne of God.”

“Without fault,” means here, without spot or blemish; not only free from actual transgression, but wholly untainted by corruption of sin—not wanting in anything that belongs to the perfect character of the approved of God.

That man in his natural state is altogether faulty, that even in his redeemed, and spiritualised, and sanctified state, while here on earth, he has still many faults, are truths so plainly taught, so proved to our reason and experience, that it would be idle to enforce them. How, then, can he ever stand faultless before the throne of God? Now some would answer, that for Christ’s sake God overlooks, that Christ, by His merits, hides man’s faults; and so that the redeemed in heaven are not really faultless, but that for Christ’s sake faultlessness is reckoned, imputed to them. This is what may be called the popular answer to our question. But, brethren, how utterly wrong it is seen to be, when we consider that, in order to exalt God’s mercy and His wisdom in contriving justification, it sacrifices His truth and His holiness. God cannot call the faulty faultless. He Who is Truth cannot enter with His Holy Son (Who is also Truth) into a plan of deceit, by which, to Himself, to them, to angels, to the whole universe, sin shall be presented as holiness. God may agree not to reckon with men for their sins, to forget the past, on certain conditions to deal with the faulty as if they were actually faultless; but He cannot—I say it advisedly, it is beyond the limits of His power, as regulated by His truth—He cannot call evil good. And, brethren, besides, even if it were possible that by some strange agreement with the Son, sinful man should be passed off as holy, still his sin, while it remained, hide it, disguise it, call it by what name you will, must separate from God. Charity might forbear to punish it, or to make mention of it. Charity might even gild it over; but Holiness deals not with the name, but with the reality; and holiness must shrink from sin and thrust it away. This ought to be the most readily perceived and admitted of all Scripture truths, that God cannot tolerate near iniquity; that—if I may venture reverently to use such words—even if God were willing to receive to Himself an unchanged sinner, the actual reception would be morally impossible; the same heaven could not contain holiness and sin! No, brethren, if the sinner is to enter heaven, it must be, not because his name is changed, but his nature; he must be actually without fault before God. We see this to have been the case with those described in the text: for it is expressly said, “In their mouth was found no guile.” Observe, it is not, God mercifully overlooked their guile for the sake of His dear Son, the Guileless One; He charitably called them guileless; but “in their mouth was found (the testimony of truth to the searching of holiness) no guile: yea, for they are altogether blameless, without spot or blemish.” It is an actual, not an imputed faultlessness that is thus described. Now, how is it to be attained by sinful men? And here comes in a second answer of popular theology. At or after death, Christ meets the departed, and by His resurrection-power quickens that which was dead, purifies that which was corrupt, spiritualises, sanctifies, and, as by a miracle, converts the sinner into a perfect saint. This is an answer only second in popularity to the one we have been considering. Those who urge it, believe that man is naturally depraved, that, under grace, he retains much, almost all, his old nature, that he is very faulty in deed, in will and affections. They know that he must be faultless to gain accession to heaven and dwell with God and the Lamb, and this faultlessness they hope for and pray for; but there is no effort to acquire it; there is no concern for the absence, the continued absence of it; it is regarded as altogether a thing of the future; the free and perfect gift—perfect at once—to the released soul and the raised body. Men who hold this view, are often better than their creed requires them to be. In love of God and devotion to Him, they strive to abandon sin and cultivate holiness; but they have no definite object in view of becoming faultless here, in order to be faultless in heaven. They seem to believe that they cannot get any nearer to faultlessness whatever they do, and that those who have made no efforts, ay, have even led ungodly lives, and, but for a few last sighs and ejaculations, would have died ungodly deaths, are just as qualified, just as fit in many cases, just as sure recipients of instantly converting and perfecting grace in the next world!