Yet I never met with this doctrine for the first thirty years of my life, in any theological work. I have no recollection that I ever heard it mentioned in a sermon. I certainly never heard it explained and applied to the great purposes for which it was designed. I never was told that to know the character of God, I had only to look at the character of Christ,—that what Christ was during His life on earth in the circle in which He moved, that God was throughout all worlds, and towards all the creatures of His hands,—that the love which led Jesus to suffer and die for the salvation of the world, lived and moved in the heart of the infinite, invisible God, prompting Him to plan and labor throughout immensity to promote the happiness of the whole creation. In short, the Gospel was never preached to me in its simplicity and beauty, in its glory and power, nor was it ever properly explained to me in catechism, creed, confession, or body of divinity.
And generally, no sufficient stress was ever laid by theologians on the value and necessity of personal virtue,—of religious and moral goodness. It was believed that Christians would have goodness of some kind, in some degree,—that they would be, on the whole, in some respects, better than the ungodly world; and there was a feeling that they ought to be so: but it was rare to meet with a preacher or a book that put the subject in any thing like a Scriptural Christian light. No one contended that goodness was everything, that it was the one great all-glorious object for which the world was made, for which the universe was upheld, for which prophets spake, for which the Scriptures were written, for which God became incarnate, for which Jesus lived and labored, for which He suffered and died, for which He founded His Church and appointed and endowed its ministers, for which Providence planned, and for which all things continued to exist. No one taught that goodness was the only thing for which God cared, the only thing which He esteemed and loved, and the only thing He would reward and bless. Books and preachers did not use to tell us, that faith, and knowledge, and feeling,—that repentance, conversion, and sanctification,—that reading the Scriptures, and hearing sermons, and singing hymns, and offering prayers,—that church fellowship, and religious ordinances, were all nothing except so far as they tended to make people good, and then to make them better, and at last to perfect them in all divine and human excellence. No one taught us that goodness was beauty, that goodness was greatness, that goodness was glory, that goodness was happiness, that goodness was heaven. The truth was never pressed on us that the want of goodness was deformity, dishonor and shame,—that it was pain, and wretchedness, and torment, and death,—that goodness in full measure would make earth heaven—that its decline and disappearance would make earth hell. Yet a careful and long-continued perusal of the Scriptures left the impression on my mind, that this was really the case. When I compared the eternal talk about all our goodness being of no account in the sight of God,—of all our righteousness being but as filthy rags,—with the teachings of Scripture, I felt as if theologians were anti-christ, and their theology the gospel of the wicked one. I have no wish to do injustice to theology, or to theologians either; but the more I knew of them, the less I thought of them. And even when the Christian and theologian got blended, as they did, to some extent, in such men as Baxter and Wesley, I pitied the theologian while I esteemed and loved the Christian. Theological works are poor contemptible things. It would have been no great loss to the world if nineteen-twentieths of them had been burnt in the Chicago fire.
I was often grievously harassed with prevailing theories of Scripture inspiration. All those theories seemed inconsistent with facts,—inconsistent with what every man of any information, knew to be true in reference to the Scriptures. They all lay open to infidel objections,—unanswerable objections. They made it impossible for a man to argue with the abler and better informed class of infidel assailants with the success and satisfaction desirable. The theories did not admit of a successful defence. And when the theories were refuted, the Bible and Christianity suffered. On searching the Scriptures I found they gave no countenance to those theories. They taught the doctrine of Scripture inspiration, but not the prevailing theories of the doctrine. The doctrine I could defend with ease: the defence of the theories was impossible. I accordingly laid aside the theories.
Again; I heard and read continually about the influence and work of the Holy Spirit; but I seldom heard and read of the influence of the truth. Yet in Scripture we read as much and as often of the latter as of the former.
I had been led, in some way, to believe that Adam was the federal head of all mankind,—that God made a covenant with him that was binding on all his posterity,—that the destinies of the whole human race were placed in his hands,—that it was so arranged that if Adam did right, his posterity were to be born in a state of perfection and blessedness, incapable of sin and misery,—that if he did wrong they were to be born depraved and miserable, under the curse of God, and liable to death and damnation—that as Adam did do wrong, we all came into the world so depraved that we were incapable of thinking a good thought, of feeling a good desire, of speaking a right word, or of doing a right thing,—that Jesus came into the world to redeem us from the guilt of Adam's sin, and from the punishment due to us for that sin, and to put us on such a footing with regard to God as to render possible our salvation. I had been led to believe a hundred other things connected with these about the plan of redemption, the way of salvation, imputed righteousness, saving faith, &c. When I came to look for those doctrines in the Bible, I could not find one of them from the beginning of the Book to the end. I was in consequence led to regard them as the imaginations of unthinking, trifling, or dreamy theologians.
There are few doctrines more generally received than the doctrine of types,—the doctrine that persons and things under the older dispensations were intended to direct the minds of those who saw them to things corresponding to them under the Christian dispensation. In McEwen's work on Types, which appears to have had an immense circulation, is this sentence,—'That the grand doctrines of Christianity concerning the mediation of Christ, &c., were typically manifested to the church by a variety of ceremonies, persons and events, under the Old Testament dispensation, is past doubt.' And it is very plainly intimated, that those who affect to call this notion in question, and yet pretend to be friends of a divine revelation, are hypocrites. It is added: 'The sacrifices were ordained to pre-figure Christ,—and were professions of faith in His propitiation.'
There are but few preachers or religious books which do not go on the supposition that this doctrine is taught in Scripture. And you may hear sermon after sermon from some preachers, the chief object of which is to point out correspondences between the paschal lamb, the scape-goat, and other sacrifices under the Law, and Jesus and the sacrifice which He offered. Some preachers and religious writers take almost all things under the law to be types of Christ, or types of things pertaining to Him. They make Noah, and Isaac, and Melchisedec, and Joseph, and Moses, and Joshua, and David, and Samson, and Solomon, and the brazen serpent, and the rod of Aaron, and the manna, types of Christ, and almost all the sacrifices they make types of His great sacrifice of Himself.
I could see no warrant for this doctrine. I could find no proof that any of the sacrifices under the law were intended to direct the minds of those who offered them to the sacrifice of Jesus. There is nothing in the law, and there is nothing in the prophets to that effect. There is no passage of Scripture which says that any one ever did look through the old Levitical sacrifices to Christ. There is no passage which says it was men's duty to do so; none which commends any one for doing so, or which blames any one for not doing so. The prophets often rebuke the Israelites for their injustice, intemperance, deceit and cruelty, but they never rebuke them for not looking through their sacrifices to the sacrifice of Jesus. They often exhort people to 'cease to do evil and learn to do well;' but they never urge them to regard their sacrifices as types or manifestations of the sacrifice of Christ. Christ nowhere teaches the ordinary doctrine of types. He never refers to anything as a type of His sacrifice, or of anything else connected with His work. Nor do the Apostles say anything to countenance the prevailing notion. For anything the Scriptures say to the contrary, the whole doctrine of types, as set forth in such books as that of McEwen, is a human fiction. Indeed, I see no hint in Scripture that any one had the least idea that the Messiah would offer Himself a sacrifice for sin till after the sacrifice had taken place. Isaiah and Daniel spake on the subject, and 'They inquired and searched diligently,' says Peter, 'what, or what manner of time the spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow; unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven.' And we know that Christ's own disciples did not believe that Christ would die at all. So far were they from having any thought of such a thing, that when Jesus told them, in the plainest words imaginable, they did not understand Him. The fact had to reveal itself. And even now the nature and end of Christ's sacrifice are but very imperfectly understood.
And if the doctrine of types falls to the ground, some other doctrines, which rest upon it, must go down. Certain notions about the faith of the ancient saints must give way, and the views of saving faith presented in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews must take their place.
Great numbers of religious teachers and writers attribute to Adam and Eve, in their first state, an amount of knowledge, and a perfection of righteousness, which the Scriptures nowhere ascribe to them, and which, if they had possessed them, would have rendered it impossible, one would think, that they should have yielded so readily to temptation.