The ancient Christians did not wrestle with God in the work of saving sinners. He was always willing that men should be saved, and is yet willing. If we were to wrestle with him in solemn prayer all our days he would not be more willing than he is at this moment.
Why is it that all men are not saved? Ans.—The Lord commands men to convert, turn and live. Turn from what? Ans.—From the will of the flesh and from the will of man. To what? Ans.—To the gospel of Christ. And they refuse to do it. To say the sinner has not the power is to relieve him, forever, of all responsibility for his continuance in an unconverted state, and throw it, forever, upon God. To say the sinner has not the power, and in the next breath tell him that he has, is a square contradiction and a self-evident falsehood, only equaled by the statement that a thing is a round square, or that ice is red hot. Let whatever fall that may, it is true that a thing can not be, exist, and not be, not exist, at the same time. The sinner is either passive or active in his conversion. He can not be both. If he has not the power to begin and convert, it follows that all who have died in sin were fated to ruin without remedy. Philosophers have said, "that the will is determined by motives, purposes, intentions, or reasons." Granting this to be true, we can not admit that the will is necessarily determined by motives and purposes; for it is the self-determining power of the mind that gives a motive, or reason, that weight and influence whereby our course is determined. In other words, it depends on ourselves whether we will act from one motive or another.
Action from motive always begins in ourselves. And if conversion is the result of motive power, it begins in ourselves and by ourselves. Let a man be tempted to steal, his motive is the love of money. But if he refrains from the deed, his motive is a regard for duty. If he suffers himself to be governed by the first, he is a thief and deserves punishment, but if he allows himself to be governed by the second, he has done well. The laws of every country suppose that men have it in their power to give to either motive that regard which will determine their conduct. The divine laws allow the same, placing motives high as heaven before sinners for their acceptance, and warning them with restraining threats deep as hell. And if sinners will not receive these threats and act accordingly, they are without excuse. The scriptures allow that men convert from God. How is this? Have men power to cross the chasm backwards, and are not able, at the same time to cross it in a forward movement? Strange logic, this! It is the same old philosophy that sinners have the power to go to hell, but none to get to heaven; that they are free, like the slave, to do the tyrant's bidding; that they are free like the water that stands in the pool; that they are mechanically free, are simply active when wrought upon, the same as any machinery. If this be so, why is it that so many are left in an unconverted state? Is it because the good Spirit prefers the existence of iniquity and crime? If the Lord brings about the salvation of some, through a mighty outpouring of his Spirit, then we shall never comprehend his ways. Why is it that he does not give us one general outpouring, one grand revival all over our country, and bring about the long prayed for millennial day? Answer.—Conversion is a commandment of God. It must be obeyed or the country lie, in direct opposition to the will of God, in sin. His will is expressed in the words, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return, reconvert, unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."
"To Israel he saith, all the day long have I stretched forth my hands unto a gainsaying and disobedient people." Ro. x, 21. "The Lord strove with them by his Spirit in the prophets, and bore with them many years, yet they would not hear." Nehe. ix, 30. "They made their hearts as an adamant stone lest they should hear the law, and the words which the Lord of hosts hath sent in his spirit by the former prophets." Zech. vii, 12. Jesus wept over them when he stood upon Mount Olivet and expressed the greatness of his great heart in these words: "How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not." Lu. xiii, 34. Their failure was not because the Spirit did not strive with them as it did with others who were saved. "God is no respecter of persons." Neither was it on account of inborn depravity. For if any were corrupted in their moral nature by Adam's sin, all were corrupted alike. So that each one would be in this respect equally hard to overcome. But why bring up inborn corruption and helplessness? Is not the Spirit of God able for any task which is in its own line of work? Jesus gave the true solution of the question. He said: "Their hearts have waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts and be converted, and I should heal them." The words "at any time" deserve particular attention, for the Lord's time is all the time. He is unchangeable. "He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." 2 Pet. iii, 9.
Many people talk and act as though the Lord was the most changeable being in the universe. They seem to think that the unchangeableness of the Lord is in the idea that he is everlastingly changing. Let us imagine a perfect circle with a stone permanently fixed in the center and a man walking within, and every move he makes from side to side affecting his relations to the center. So it is with God and the children of men. He is immutable. He is the center of the circle. In the right hand side of this circle are the innocent and the obedient, in the enjoyment of all its riches, peace, pardon and all spiritual blessings. These blessings were provided for all men, and presented in the gospel of peace; and in the left side of this circle are all the threatenings of God and all the wickedness and miseries of men. The wicked at the left are able to convert around to the right. In doing this they leave their sins and miseries and come around where all the blessings of the great salvation have always been, are, and will be until time is no more. In all the work of human redemption there is no place for change in God. The center has never changed. Man alone changes. God has not bestowed special pardoning grace. Such phraseology is unknown in the gospel. "His grace was given us in Jesus Christ before the world began." 2 Tim. i, 9. All that we or any others have to do is to live on the Christ side of this circle—the right hand. If we are sinners it is our duty to convert around to the right into new relations containing all that is grand, glorious and desirable. The sinner, led by the motives of the gospel, changes sides; leaving the kingdom of darkness upon the left, and crossing the line drawn through the center of the circle, he passes into the kingdom of light. It seems strange that intelligent men and women should be constantly throwing mystery around a matter that is so plain and simple. But we are aware that, by long dwelling on an idea, and from the excited and abnormal sensitiveness of the mind, we sometimes lose ourselves to truth amidst our own creations, which become in the imagination stern realities, producing a species of monomania or religious insanity.
Long dwelling upon the idea that conversion is a special work of God destroys all disposition to convert, and causes men to be at ease in disobedience. We will to do those things, and those only, which we believe to be in our power. We are not so destitute of common sense as to undertake that which we know to be out of our power. I never attempt to fly, or raise a weight that I know to be far above my strength. So it is in the question of conversion. If I believe it to be a work that is beyond my power, there will be a corresponding indifference upon my part. As long as men are made to believe that God must convert them by a special interposition of his Spirit, so long their minds will be directed, beyond the plain duties of the gospel, to the realm of the mysterious and incomprehensible. In ancient times, when men were plainly told to convert—turn—to God and do works worthy of repentance, when the mists and mysticles of the schoolmen and dogmatists of all sects and parties had not, as yet, beclouded the minds of men, nor corrupted the simplicity of the Gospel, thousands were converted in a day. Christianity overran the inhabited earth in the space of a few years. Judaism and Paganism trembled and crumbled before its mighty power. But now the religious world is contending with sin and crime, under the great disadvantages of a perverted mind and a Gospel beclouded with the smoke of Babylon, and the result is that three-score souls brought into the church is a great success for the labors of weeks, and even months. Why should this be so? It need not be. It would not be but for the wrong teaching consequent upon creeds. It is said, "That many of the Corinthians hearing, believed and were baptized." Their minds were clear upon the great subjects of human duty and the goodness, love and mercy of God. They had no long sessions, in which they were wrestling with God as though he was insensitive and indifferent upon the subject of the sinner's salvation.
They were told the story of God's love, and made acquainted with the great fact that all things were ready for their reception; "that Christ had finished the work which the Father had given him to do," and that it only remained for them to believe and obey the Gospel and all would be well. They were commanded to convert to the service of God. This work was not given into the hands of Christ to perform. It is the sinner's own work. Christ will not believe for you. He will not repent for you. He will not convert for you. Conversion is the overt action of the will carried out in "breaking off from sins by righteousness." It begins in the heart, but it does not end there. Murder begins in the heart, but its consummation is the action of the will carried out. The man first yielded to the temptation by saying, in his heart, I will. The next thing in the order was carrying out the will in the deed. Nothing short of the deed done would have met the statement in the heart, I will. So it is in conversion. The man first says in his heart, I will, I will forsake my former course of life and be a Christian, I will obey God, I will do his will. And nothing short of doing the will of God as it is addressed to him in the Gospel will carry out the action of the will, and meet the demands of the statement, I will. "Whosoever will let him come and take the water of life freely." So the "tree is known by its fruits." "He that saith I know him, acknowledge him, and keepeth not his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him." 1 Jno. ii, 4.
As regards the instrumentalities employed in persuading men, I have only to say, that men were always free as moral agents, to convert—turn, under the weakest instrumentality, or refuse under the most powerful. The Lord himself "strove with the ancient Jews by his Spirit in his prophets, and they would not hear but resisted the Spirit." Stephen, after he had made one grand effort to instruct his hearers, said, "Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did so do ye." Acts vii, 51. Was the condition of those fellows unavoidable? If it was, they were not to blame. But there was nothing in their condition that was not in their power. If there was, why should we find these words in their law, "circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked." Deut. x, 16. The Lord has made the salvation of all men possible, otherwise those remaining in an unconverted state, and dying in their sins, are unavoidably lost. And who is to blame? The Father "so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to die for every man. He sent him to be the Savior of the world. The Gospel is the ministration of the Spirit. The Apostles preached it with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. They received grace and Apostleship, for the obedience of faith among all nations, for Christ's name." Rom. i, 5. A great and grand law governed them. In obeying it they did all that they ever did for the world or for the church. There were just three duties prescribed in that law. The first is in the word "teach," or, the better rendering, disciple. The second is in the word "baptizing;" and the third is in the phrase "teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." The whole is beautifully rendered thus, "Going therefore, disciple all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." And the whole is rested upon a declaration of kingly authority, viz: "All power in heaven and upon earth is given into my hands," going therefore,—you see the connection.
Go to the Acts of the Apostles and read for yourselves and see how they turned men to God. Paul says, "That he showed first to them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn, convert, to God, and do works meet for repentance." Some disobeyed under the preaching and teaching of the Apostles. Some under the teachings of Christ. And many "rejected the council of God against themselves in not being baptized of John's baptism." Jesus said, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature; he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned." Paul was preaching at Corinth; many of the Corinthians hearing, believed, and were baptized, and Jesus appeared unto him in a vision by night, and said, "Speak boldly and hold not thy peace, and I will let no man set on thee to hurt thee."