OF what are we assured? This question is important, because it is what we are sure of that enables us to say why we are sure of it. The object of certainty is a creative power which obliges us to say of our faith, when we would account for it, that it is not of ourselves, but is God’s gift and His product in us. The object gives by its intrinsic and creative quality the ground of the certainty.
But this question, to answer it with any fulness, would demand a theological treatise to itself. We are concerned now only to note that to all of us who accept Christianity there are such certainties, assured by repeated and definite declarations of Holy Scripture, accepted by the general Christian consciousness, and attested by their influence upon our own souls. These connect themselves with the great threefold revelation, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is to say, the Christian is one who owns the Fatherhood of God, the redemption which is by Christ Jesus, and the communication of light and life by the Eternal Spirit. How these thoughts are to be translated into dogma is not now the question. They are the powers of the new life; without them there is no Christianity. And the believer is one who has found them to be true. He receives them on the warrant of faith; but they have also passed into his consciousness and experience. He is sure of them; he has a right to be sure. No doubt, the testimony of consciousness and experience will be variously read by different minds. The certainty belongs not to the mode of apprehension, but to the fact itself; and the glad utterance of the soul will be, I know.
Connected with these central truths are many others upon which Christian thinkers often gravely differ. Such beliefs are sometimes termed the “non-essentials” of the faith—a term, however, which it seems on many accounts undesirable to employ. There is a certain faithlessness to truth in the very thought of such a distinction. The great questions of faith cannot bear to be put in duplicate form: What must I believe? and What may I believe? A man who desires to learn the whole counsel of God must be prepared to stand faithfully by all his convictions, on matters great and small, although indeed he may hold them with different degrees of assurance. To discriminate these several convictions, to ask which of them are fundamental, not to be denied without renouncing the Christian faith altogether and so rendering Christian fellowship impossible, is no doubt a delicate and difficult task—the more so, as we remember that the essentials of that fellowship as laid down in the New Testament are rather of the heart than of the head. Where there is true repentance, self-renunciation, trust in Christ as Saviour, love to God and man, there is essential Christianity.
What should be our attitude to the less essential things?
(1) We should seek distinct convictions respecting them. They belong to the revelation of God, and are not to be treated as indifferent. The fact that men have differently conceived of these truths does not invalidate them in themselves. Our own Christian life will be largely affected by our conceptions of them, and, as we have seen, we may be firmly convinced respecting them without being either dogmatic or exclusive. But to be thus firmly convinced, to know what we believe and why, is needful for the perfect man in Christ Jesus.
(2) Such beliefs will be held with very varying strength of conviction and sense of their relative value to the religious life. Certain of these beliefs will appear of more importance than others; and this comparative estimate, again, will vary in different minds. Thus it was said by Professor Duncan of Edinburgh (called Rabbi Duncan for his Hebrew lore), “I am first a Christian, next a Catholic, then a Calvinist, fourth a Paedobaptist, and fifth a Presbyterian. I cannot reverse this order.” It would be interesting in like manner to have a similar testimony from other theologians, of different schools of thought, as to the order of their convictions. Such a statement would perhaps be of as much value as their declarations of the beliefs themselves. It is not only what we hold, but how we hold it, and in what relation to other opinions, that indicates and determines our theology.
My certainty that there is God is before my certainty that he requireth love and holiness of his creatures. My certainty of this is greater than my certainty of the life of rewards and punishments hereafter. My certainty of that is greater than my certainty of the endless duration of it, and the immortality of individual souls. My certainty of the Deity is greater than my certainty of the Christian faith. My certainty of the Christian faith, in its essentials, is greater than my certainty of the perfection and infallibility of the Holy Scriptures. And my certainty of that is greater than my certainty of many particular texts, and so of the truth of many particular doctrines, and of the canonicalness of some certain books. [Note: O. Dewey, Works, 361.]
(3) On some of these questions Christian people are manifestly coming nearer to one another. It would be but a poor prospect for the Church if these secondary doctrines of the faith were to continue to the end the subject of endless debate and division. So long, however, as men are simply controversialists, it will probably remain so. They feel called to be champions of their respective creeds; there is the ever-present temptation to fight for victory rather than for truth; and even the vanquished in the wordy strife often love their cause all the more for the defeat—
Victrix causa Dus placuit sed victa Catoni.
But let the respective parties exchange their bellicose attitude for that of fellow-students of the Word and will of God, and approximation becomes possible.
You used to say that comparatively few people really believed even in a God. On this and certain other fundamental questions I think I may dare to say that I believe—believe, I mean, in the deepest sense. But there are innumerable lesser points which must occur to any man who has to use the Bible and the Church services for other people besides himself, and for other people too sometimes on their deathbeds—points about which, if a man feels only the possibility of doubt, he can only work with half of himself. God knows, it is not pride of intellect that makes me say this. I believe in nothing more strongly than in the necessity at a certain point of belief without proof. But -I cannot crush reason and remain a man. I see quite enough at Oxford of doubting for doubting’s sake to make me abhor such a thing myself; but the abuse of some must not be allowed to stigmatize all. I cannot help believing myself that there is far more in common between men of different theological opinions than they themselves will allow; that the truth is far wider than any one man or school can comprehend. But until this is more recognized and the Church in some way or other made really Catholic, there must be many who long to go in but are obliged to stay out. [Note: Edward Thring, i. 275.]
1. We may begin at home—I am sure of myself—Inactual life nobody doubts the self. Naturally, whatever thing or event comes before us, the first thought is—how will it affect me? Human life indeed is a continuous succession of self-adjustments to varied circumstances, in which the motive is to obtain good and avoid harm to self. On occasions, we sacrifice self-interest for the welfare of others; but the existence of the self is then even more plainly in evidence, because of the strain we have to put upon it in order to curb its wonted instincts. In actual experience the self is indubitable. “As sure as I am of my own existence” is the expression of our strongest certainty.
There is nothing of which I am so sure as I am of my personal identity, and yet there is nothing I am less able to prove if challenged for a proof. There is nothing, moreover, about which I could raise so many doubts myself, were I determined to raise them. How, for instance, can I make it absolutely certain that I, who am delivering this lecture am identically the same person as he who received the invitation to deliver it three months ago? I may be under an illusion. I may have been dreaming. An evil spirit may have deluded me. Perhaps I am the wrong man. “But no,” you reply, “the committee who invited you are here to testify that you are the man they invited. And the audience is here to support their testimony.” I answer, How do I know that the committee are not the wrong men? Before their testimony can make me absolutely sure of my identity, they must be absolutely sure of their own. Perhaps the committee is under an illusion. Perhaps the audience is composed of people who are not the people they think they are. Whatever reason I have for doubting my own identity, they have equal reasons for doubting theirs; and either party must beg the whole question before it can accept the testimony of the other. How then can we make sure that we are not all in Bedlam together? We cannot make it sure by any manner of means. But why? The answer is simple—we cannot make it sure, simply because it is sure already. No one who was really and utterly in Bedlam would ever raise the question whether he was there or not. Be that as it may, the instance is interesting because it shows how much easier it is to raise doubts concerning our primal certainties than to give proofs of them. Provided you choose to raise them, provided you are determined to raise them, the scope for doubt is simply limitless. But what difference do the doubts make to our certainty? Not one iota. Our inability to solve the conundrums I have just suggested leaves our belief in identity untouched. Nay, I go further. Were some heaven-born philosopher to appear on the instant and present us with an irrefragable proof that we are the men we think ourselves to be, we should tell that philosopher that he had brought coals to Newcastle, we should be unmoved by his logic, we should go away not one whit surer of our personal identity than we were before the proof was offered?
2. We are sure, next, of God.—Not so immediately and perhaps never so fully certain as we are of self. We hear the name of God; it comes to us upon the lips of those who tell us that they know Him; generations and centuries of prophets and apostles and confessors and humble believers bear witness that He is, and that He is good—the Creator of the universe, the Father of our spirits, the source of all truth and love, and that we are made in His image to have fellowship with Him; that this is the highest possibility of the human soul, to receive, of His infinite fulness, the strength and the light and the peace which shall satisfy all our deepest wants. This is what they tell us, but we do not always easily verify their testimony. “Why,” we are sometimes inclined to ask, “is not this truth more clearly revealed? Why, in a matter so great as this, is any room left for doubt? Why is not God as palpable as the earth, as demonstrable as the sun in the sky? Is not our need of Him our deepest need? Why should not the ministry to it be as direct and inevitable as that by which our physical natures are supplied? It is not so. We may have reasons for believing, but there are also many reasons for doubt, and certainty is not attainable. And often we are forced to cry with Job:
“O that I knew where I might find him!
That I might come even to his seat!
I would order my cause before him,
And fill my mouth with arguments.
Behold, I go forward, but he is not there;
And backward, but I cannot perceive him:
On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him:
He hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him.”
3. We are sure of Christ.—Thisis the secret of our certainty in God. Christ made God’s faithfulness known by realizing the promises and revealed His love by dying for men. But what do we mean by being sure of Christ? No man ever believed more truly in Jesus Christ than Paul; no man was ever more sure that Christ had risen from the dead; no man was ever more firmly persuaded that Christ was keeping him, saving him, and that Christ would in eternity receive and crown him. On what did St. Paul rest? Was it upon the miracles of Christ? Except the miracle of the resurrection he never refers to Christ’s miracles. Was it upon the life of Christ? It is a remarkable thing that Paul dwells very little on the life of the Lord. Was it upon his visions? No, they were only beautiful experiences and strengthening revelations. He rests upon his own individual and sustained experience of Jesus Christ. Once he met Christ and Christ revealed Himself to him. He committed himself into Christ’s hands, and from that day he died with Christ, he rose with Christ, he lived with Christ, he suffered with Christ, he worked with Christ, he triumphed with Christ, and, as the years came and went, there was no person on earth so absolutely real to the apostle Paul as the Lord Jesus Christ. The whole world was as a dream to him compared with Christ, who loved him and gave Himself for him. It was by spiritual experience of Christ that he came to certainty and was able to say, “I know whom I have believed. I am persuaded.”
I have been steadily ploughing my way through the letters of Paul with a view to finding out the abiding essentials in Paul’s teaching. What were the immovable certainties to him? What was the very heart of the whole matter? What was the blazing sun at the centre of his system? Now, whether we agree with a man or not, we ought not to misrepresent him. We ought to treat him honestly. If we are going to controvert him, all well and good. But if we are going to expound him, honesty demands faithfulness to the records. To explain a man away is to lie about him. St. Paul’s assurance was founded in what, to him, was the central fact in his teaching—that central fact was what he called “Gospel.” It was good news of such a kind that it deserved to be put in a place by itself and be called not culture, but “Gospel.” The central truth was this—that in His death—which He accepted voluntarily, and without any compulsion—Christ had taken upon Himself the responsibility for the sins of the race. He so dealt with sin in that sacrifice of Himself, that the sinfulness of man no longer stood as a great impassable mountain between man and God. Christ’s death interprets the love of God as nothing else does. In dying He was doing the will of His Father. Ask the apostle—How can I believe in the love of God? He has but one answer—The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me. [Note: R. Thomas, in Christian World Pulpit, lxv. 157.]
4. But when we speak of assurance we usually mean assurance of one’s own salvation.—Now it is undeniable that a tone of confidence runs through the New Testament on the question of personal salvation. The apostles teach that the design of the gospel is to put an end to doubt on the most important problems of human life; to fix the soul on immovable foundations of truth; to lock it fast in the arms of Almighty love; to give it a directing pole-star amidst the billows of temptation, “so that we be no more children tossed on the waves, and driven about by every wind of doctrine”; and to enable it at last to confront death itself with a shout of victory.
Throughout the New Testament we find that the faith of the writers and their converts corresponds in force and clearness with the certainty on which it rests, and hope corresponds in its stead-fastness with such a basis. They speak of “knowing” that they have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens; of “knowing God,” who had taught them to call Him Father, by His own Spirit—they even boldly say that they “rejoice in tribulation” in “hope of the glory of God.” They do not even wait to consider the modern notion that it is morally disreputable to look for any recompense of reward, but they press on straight ahead for the “city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”
The doctrine of “assurance” through the witness of the Spirit is an integral part of religion. Scripture teaches it; reason demands it; the creeds of all the Christian Churches assert it. It is incredible that, when God’s love in Christ has established its empire in the believing heart, and sin is forgiven, and all the ties of the spiritual order are restored, this stupendous change should be unrealized. It is incredible that God should conceal His grace; that it can be His will that His pardoned child should live under the shadow of a lie.
But this gracious truth was, in Wesley’s day, one of the lost doctrines of Christianity. It was in the Thirty-nine Articles, but it had faded out of human memory. It was no longer realized, nor even expected, in human experience. It had become a mere incredibility. Its rediscovery and reassertion are part of the great service Methodism has rendered to the general Christian faith. This is what Wesley says of it:
“I observed, many years ago, that it is hard to find words in the language of men to explain the deep things of God. Indeed, there are none that will adequately express what the Spirit of God works in His children. But perhaps one might say (desiring any who are taught of God to correct, soften, or strengthen the expression), by the ‘testimony of the Spirit’ I mean an inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God immediately and directly witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God; that ‘Jesus Christ hath loved me, and given Himself for me,’ that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God. After twenty years’ further consideration, I see no cause to retract any part of this. Neither do I conceive how any of these expressions may be altered so as to make them more intelligible. Meantime, let it be observed, I do not mean hereby that the Spirit of God testifies this by any outward voice; no, nor always by an inward voice, although He may do this sometimes. Neither do I suppose that He always applies to the heart (though He often may) one or more texts of Scripture. But He so works upon the soul by His immediate influence, and by a strong, though inexplicable operation, that the stormy wind and troubled waves subside, and there is a sweet calm; the heart resting as in the arms of Jesus, and the sinner being clearly satisfied that all his ‘iniquities are forgiven, and his sins covered.’ ” [Note: W. H. Fitchett, Wesley and His Century, 428.]
It is very interesting to notice how, in times of awakening, the spiritual instincts imparted to the new-born soul by the Holy Ghost seek out the truth. One day, in a fisherman’s house, we found two females sitting together with the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism in their hands. They were talking over the questions on “Justification” and “Adoption,” and were comparing these with some of the “benefits which accompany or flow from them,” namely, “assurance of God’s love, peace of conscience, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” They were themselves happy in the calm assurance of the love of God; but a neighbour had somewhat perplexed them by insisting that they had no right to assurance until they could point to sanctification showing itself in their after-lives. On the other hand, those two souls could not see why they should wait till then; for if they had been “justified,” and had a “right to all the privileges of the sons of God,” they might at once have “assurance of God’s love.” [Note: Reminiscences of Andrew A. Bonor, 333]
After describing the circumstances of a woman’s conversion through the influence of Mrs. Price Hughes, Mr. Begbie gives the result of it in her own words: “A great tumult took place in my mind. It was like a crashing of masonry. There was no joy, and no peace, but an absolute certainty. I knew that my Redeemer lived. I knew that He desired to save me. I knew that I had only to trust Him and He would save me. I clutched Mrs. Hughes’ arm, and clung to her with a kind of frantic terror. She told me afterwards that the clutch of my hand hurt her arm for many days; I was like one possessed—not outwardly, though I was trembling, but in my soul, where I was conscious of God. All I could do was to cling to Mrs. Hughes, and wait for the tempest in my soul to go.
You see, the dawn had come not as it comes in England, tranquilly and slowly, but as it comes in the tropics, suddenly and at once, with a complete glory. I was certain. Afterwards there was joy and a great peace, but then, at that wonderful moment, everything in my soul and body centred in the single idea of absolute certainty. There was a God. There was a Christ. There was forgiveness for sin, and strength to withstand temptation. Like a flash the light had come. I saw how I was wronging my Lord, and piercing His loving heart, and at that moment the struggle and strife ended: I laid down my burden of sorrow and shame at His feet. I felt myself forgiven. I almost fainted under the revulsion of feeling, and what I really said or did I cannot tell.” [Note: H. Begbie, In the Hand of the Potter, 101.]
