IV. CHAPTER X.

LIMITED RECEPTION OF THE GOSPEL—MILLENNIAL PROSPECT.

THERE is an obvious objection, we are well aware, that may be taken to the foregoing representation. If the gospel be such a power of moral elevation and consolation to man—if it can so effectually restore the ruin wrought within him by sin, and thus manifests practically that perfect wisdom and goodness of which it speaks—why, it may be asked, has its influence hitherto been so limited? Why does it prevail within so narrow a compass, and, even where it does prevail, why is its beneficent power so obstructed and inadequate? A further difficulty would seem to emerge upon us from the very heart of the evangelical revelation of Divine wisdom and mercy.

That this, however, is only a new form of the old difficulty of sin—of the fact of moral evil at all—is evident on a little reflection. For the undoubted reason why the gospel is, at this day, so slightly influential, is, that it is opposed by man’s unbelief and selfishness. Men will not come unto Christ that they may have life. That sin which Christ lived and died to destroy, which His Spirit in the church everywhere is now working to destroy, opposes itself with 363hardened hostility to the truth, and where it cannot altogether oppose, degrades and corrupts it.

But could not God overcome this hostility? Is it not the special representation of the gospel that it is only everywhere overcome by His direct agency? And why is not that agency so powerfully and universally exerted, as to bring all under its benign and happy sway? In such depths of dark and almost irreverent questioning we lose our footing, and are perhaps better silent in hopeful trust than loud in curious reply. Having acknowledged to the full extent the awful mystery of sin, we might rest our answer on this mystery. Wholly inscrutable, there is nothing about it more inscrutable than its continued power of resistance to the gospel—than its opposition to the truth bearing upon it at every point, and summoning it to surrender. A few words of explanation, however, suggest themselves.

It is no doubt true that it is only through special Divine agency that the gospel everywhere makes progress, and that it is possible for us to conceive such a forth-putting of this agency as might speedily bring the whole world under its sway; yet it is no less, and in the very nature of the case, true, that this agency everywhere only works in co-operation with the free agency of man. It is a persuasive power, eliciting and strengthening man’s spirit, but in no case forcibly overbearing it even for its most holy purposes. “The whole course of history, as well as the express teaching of revelation, prove that God has ever dealt with man, not by the strength of an irresistible power crushing all that is contrary to it, but by the moral strength of those Divine influences by which He seeks to draw every inferior will into 364true harmony with His own perfect will. And no doubt this is so, because, consistently with the blessed perfection of God, it could not be otherwise; because He is most glorified in being served by a world of created beings, who are endued with the mysterious power of willing good or evil, and who, through His grace and goodness, have been each one brought into true harmony with Him.”¹⁷⁴¹⁷⁴   Sermons by the Bishop of Oxford, p. 95: 1849. It is not difficult to see, indeed, that the idea of a forcible and compulsory advance of the gospel is not for a moment tenable even as a supposition. For in the very statement of this idea there is already implied the annihilation of the moral quality in man, which alone constitutes the gospel so great a blessing to him, or even makes him possibly a subject of it. Unless man were truly possessed of a will, the gospel would lose all meaning, as man would lose all distinction from the objects of nature around him. In such a case, it has been well said, “There could be really no true living being in the world except God. For to have a will is in truth to live. What are all things without this but mere machines, which must do the order of the one Will which acts through them? What are they but mere shadowy figures of being cast forth from the one Being? If we do not believe that there are separate wills, with this awful power of resisting the one Will, we must either make the perfectly good God the direct cause of evil, or we must admit a second first cause from whom that evil springs.”¹⁷⁵¹⁷⁵   Ibid., pp. 95, 96.

Here, therefore, we come back to the final mystery of creation, the fact of human freedom. In this fact is contained at once man’s glory and the possibility of his fearful revolt 365and shame. It is this alone which at once makes him a subject of Divine grace, and enables him to oppose that grace. Forcibly to destroy the capability of opposition, would be to destroy the very character of his being, and to leave him incapable of good any more than of evil. It is the awful peril of freedom, that while man may rise into union with God, and become a partaker of the Divine nature, he may no less harden himself against God, and fall away from Him into an ever deeper revolt and abandonment of selfishness.

While, therefore, it is truly saddening and perplexing that the benign influence of the gospel has hitherto been confined within such narrow limits, it must be kept in view that this restraint of the gospel springs from man’s sinful opposition, and not from any deficiency of wisdom or love in the Divine will. This, we apprehend, will not be denied by any Theist. Whatever be the more special views entertained in connection with this point, every Christian Theologian must admit that the perfection of the Divine character is not implicated in the restrained influence of the gospel. And this is all that is sufficient for our purpose to hold. Here, as hitherto, the mystery lies before us, impenetrably shrouded in its very nature, but reflecting its darkness directly, not on the Divine character, but on the mysterious fact of human freedom.

Let us observe, at the same time, before passing finally from the subject, that there is disclosed to us in the future the prospect of a universal reign of holiness. The kingdom of Divine order, we are assured, shall yet prevail throughout the whole moral, as now throughout the whole physical world. To this gloriously beneficent end, human progress is now, amid 366whatever perplexities, everywhere tending. There may be much to cloud this prospect; there may even seem, in certain aspects of social life, and of literary and speculative culture in our day, to be rather a recession than an advance of the “gospel of the kingdom.” Yet it is amid such very crises that Christianity is found pre-eminently to approve itself the power of God and the wisdom of God for the world’s salvation. It puts forth its greatest strength in seasons of the utmost spiritual darkness. When there seems to be only the disturbance of conflicting opinions, there is silently preparing beneath the embryotic confusion a fresh life, destined to rise into nobler and fairer forms of wisdom and beneficence than any that have gone before. And this will certainly be the issue of present as of former conflicts. The Truth of God, purified by the very assaults which seem to threaten it, will go forth with a new strength, “conquering and to conquer.”

And this it will continue to do, till its purifying spirit penetrate every relation, and beautify every aspect of human life, till it stamp its bright and gladdening impress on every feature alike of individual and social culture, and throughout the moral universe there reign at once the most perfect order and the purest love. As we believe in God, we believe in the advent of this better time, “when all the kingdoms of the earth shall become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ;” when unhappiness shall be no more, because sin shall be no more, and, amid the activities of unmingled beneficence, the world shall forget its past conflicts, and rejoice in an everlasting peace.