"But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." II Cor. xi:3.

N making our estimate of the Gospel, if we would be well guided, there are two or three things we should constantly hold in mind.

      1. That it is the power of God for saving men from sin. This is simply a Scripture statement, and needs not to be argued. Paul says, Rom. i:16, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth: to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." It is the power by which God proposes to save Jews and Gentiles individually. That's the meaning of "every one." It is distributive. It means the Gospel is the power of God to save each individual of the race. It is God's power as method and as means. And if He will ever save any one by any other means, He has not revealed to us His intention to do so, and we cannot therefore know the fact. The Gospel is the only means known to men and the only [483] means we can have anything to do with, for the salvation of men from sin.

      2. Our Saviour, when he had done the necessary preparatory work he had to do in his own personal ministry, gave Commission and Commandment to his disciples to "preach, the gospel to every creature." Mark xvi:15. They were not to preach the gospel to kings, or governors, or priests, for the people; but to every individual. Every creature means the whole creations individually, distributively. Now, he knew the capacity of men; what they were capable and what they were incapable of understanding. He knew the ignorance of men generally and particularly; their incapability of grappling with and comprehending profound and abstruse questions, of law, of philosophy, of science, of theology. And yet he commanded his disciples to preach the gospel to every creature.

      3. We should also observe the fact that when his disciples went forth to preach the gospel, when they preached it and where they preached it, the people did on hearing a single presentation of it, understand it so far as it was necessary that they should, and believe and obey it, and did receive and enjoy the salvation it brought; in some instances hundreds and possibly thousands in a single day; in some instances on the public highway; sometimes at midnight; they heard a single presentation of the Gospel, understood, believed and, obeyed it, and rejoiced in its salvation the same day, and even the same hour [484] of the night. All this we learn from Acts of Apostles.

      From these facts, unquestionable as facts, there comes to my mind, with irresistible force, this conclusion: The Gospel of Christ, preached by the first disciples, was a very simple something; something suited well to the capacity of the people, the unlearned as well as the learned; something they could readily understand and receive. Is not the conclusion a necessary one, from the facts named? Not only so, but it seems to me eminently reasonable that it should be so. There are questions of philosophy, questions of science and questions of moral casuistry that are very profound, very abstruse, and even mysterious; quite enough for the greatest intellectual exercise and highest culture, and severest mental training of men and women; enough so for their life-long intellectual development. And this seems to me well and wisely so.

      It seems to me to be right that there should be questions for men and women to study and work on for generations. This is necessary for the intellectual and moral development of men and women. God has made wise, provision for us thus in the constitution of nature and its adjustments to the wants of our nature. There are many questions one may study all his life and even then know comparatively little about them. But the Gospel of Christ is not one of these. It was not intended to be of such a character. It is God's appointed means of salvation from sin, and the sinner is not required to carry [485] his soul burdened with sin, and his conscience with guilt, through a lifetime, because he is unable to understand and appreciate the means of relief.

      While I do not believe the popular doctrine of total depravity, yet I must confess that there is a perverseness about human nature in all its individualizations with which I have had to do, or of which I have had much knowledge; a sort of proneness to be contrary and to go wrong. Almost all men and women seem--more disposed to know what they can not and ought not to know than to know what they can and ought to know. Hence it is that almost all men and women have a fondness for finding out secrets, for fathoming mysteries, for seeking after impracticable knowledge, for knowing unrevealed and unknowable things; as if such things were of greater value and importance than the simple things that may and ought to be known and understood. Many seem more disposed to know all that other people know, and to attend to other people's business, than to find out what they ought to know and to attend to their own business. They would always rather know what God has not revealed than to study and profit by what He has revealed. They think all wisdom comes from afar, clothed in clouds and mist. We are slow to believe that a man is really wise or great whom we have known all our lives, and just because we have so known him; but one coming from afar, of whom we know nothing, he may be great and wise, and just because we know nothing about him. [486] And just so about doing, as well as about knowing. Men are disposed to do what they can not and ought not to do rather than what they can and ought to do.

      A few years ago the people nearly all went wild over the hypothesis of evolution. It seemed to many people full of beauty, wisdom and importance, just because they knew nothing about it, and nobody could know anything about it. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and "created man in his own image," are statements that have very little beauty or wisdom in them for some people, just because they are revealed things, and can be understood tolerably well.

      Of course we lay all this perverseness and contrariness in our natures to the fall in Adam. I do not desire especially to be heterodox, any more than I would go out of my way to be called orthodox, but I have not a single doubt about the fact that we have laid entirely too much on Adam and Eve. We ought to practice quitting it awhile. It is not magnanimous. It is cowardly. Besides, we cannot get rid of all our sins in that way, and should not try to.

      The crookedness in our nature, of which I have been speaking, is traceable beyond the "fall," as we call the sin of our foreparents. Our mother Eve had it before she ate the forbidden fruit. It was here she tripped, just as here thousands of women have tripped since--and men, too--I mean no cowardice. It is contemptible. Let us see how it was: "And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely [487] die; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil; and when the woman (thought she) saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise she took of the fruit thereof and did eat." There it is! the whole story! The woman thought it better to "be as gods" than to be simply a woman; better to know what "God doth know" than to know what he had revealed; better to "eat" what was forbidden than what was permitted; better to have her "eyes opened" to the forbidden than to behold all the beauties of Paradise; and she went wrong. Paul knew this weakness and perverseness of our nature, and he knew also the cunning of the serpent, and hence his well grounded fear: "I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."

      But let me not be misunderstood. When I contend that the Gospel of Christ is very simple, and brought down to the capacity of all responsible persons; so that the unlearned, as well as the learned, may understand it so far as it is necessary that they should, and believe it, and obey it, and be saved from their sins, I do not mean that there are no mysteries in the Bible, or even none in the Gospel itself. Certainly not. On the contrary, I am free to say that there are a great many things in the Bible I have never been able to understand; mysteries I have [488] never been able to fathom. To me there are some mysteries about the gospel that I have about concluded I shall never understand in this life, and probably not fully in the life to come. This is especially true as to the reason of things.

      There are in the Bible seeming discrepancies; even things that, with all the light and knowledge I have, look like contradictions. There are things God is said to have done, and commanded to be done, that if they are right according to our commonly received standards, I am unable to prove it to the satisfaction of objectors, or even to my own satisfaction. I don't doubt that they are right. I believe they are. But I believe it because God did or commanded them, and not because I see their rightness myself. There are curious persons of little knowledge who suppose that if they can find something in the Bible that the preacher can not explain to everybody's satisfaction, they have accomplished something very wonderful, and set up a sufficient excuse for rejecting the Book altogether. But this is a prodigious mistake. We should not expect to be able to understand all the ways of God; to be able to see the reason in His mind for all He does, or even for all He commands us to do. No doubt there is in His mind a good reason for all He says and does, whether recorded in the Bible or in nature; but it is certain that we cannot, in all cases, see the reason. Our scope of vision is very much limited as compared with the infinite. God does everything He does, and [489] orders everything He orders, in full view of and with reference to everything else in the whole universe, in all time and eternity. If we could take so much within our visual plane, then we might see the reason for all He does.

      God is necessarily a mystery to us, just as a man is a mystery to a little child, and for the same reason. A child cannot comprehend the reasons that may be in the mind of a man for his conduct. The wisest ways of a parent are often mysteries to his own child, just because the parent sees more than the child can see, as a child. Were this not so, a child would not need parental government. If it could comprehend all the reasons in the mind of the parent, it could just as well govern itself. The larger scope and superior knowledge of the parent is the ground and reason for the faith in him on the part of the child. Just so, and more so, is it necessary that men should walk by faith in reference to God. He is infinite, we finite. He governs all worlds, we cannot govern one--or a state, or a county, or a city, or ourselves, or even our tongues. And shall we demand a reason that we can see for all He does or commands? Preposterous ! impudent! wicked!

      Men do not require so much of God in nature. We do not understand nature any better than we do the Bible. It is full of mysteries even to the wisest men. Why God created nature as He did? Why this and that law? Why He governs as He does? These are questions we can never answer, even to [490] our own satisfaction. If we could create and equip and stock a world, and were going to do it, we would beyond doubt leave out a great many things we find in this, with our present knowledge; yet I have no idea that, on the whole, our effort would result in an improvement upon the world we have. None of us believes we could successfully run this world if the reins were given into our hands. We would wreck it.

      What we call nature, then, and the Bible, are very like each other in that they are both full of mysteries to men. We cannot know a great deal, it is true, but we can and ought to be consistent, and we must be if we would convince even ourselves that we are honest. We ought not to accept nature as it is, without complaint, and fall in love with its laws, and get a living out of it, full of mysteries as it is; and then turn about and demand that there shall be no mysteries in the Bible, another book by the same author, or we will reject it. We ought to deal fairly with the Bible. If it be of God, mysteries in it are to be expected. In fact, it may be said they are a necessity, because He is infinite and His ways are past finding out to the finite mind.

      I remember once on my way to Texas falling in with a very spritely and very loquacious Secularist, I think he called himself. There were some fifteen or twenty of us on the same palace coach all the way from St. Louis into Texas. Our Secularist friend was a great reasoner, as nearly all skeptics are. He seemed very determined in his mind on demolishing [491] the Bible, and very zealous in his work; much surprised that someone had not turned aside to brush it out of the way of thinking people long ago. He attacked nearly every one on the coach. In fact he bored us. The discrepancies, contradictions, and horrid inhumanities of the Bible, made up his theme. Most of the passengers avoided him. It is well to avoid such persons, as a general thing. There is not much to be made by reasoning with them. It is not the remedy for their ailment. An epidemic of cholera or yellow fever will reach their cases quicker, as these strike them where they live. But our friend kept up the fire.

      Now, there was a poor consumptive aboard, going South for a pinch of life, as most people do in that condition. We all sympathized with him, and gave him constant little attentions, as people generally will do in Christian countries. But, in course of time, our skeptical friend attacked the poor, sick man, and was coming down on his Bible, which the sick man had with him, with a torrent of emphasis. I remember he read from the Bible the passage in which God said to Saul, "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass"; and, when he had read this, he slammed the book with one hand against his other hand with a great noise and much seeming indignation, denouncing the passage as "unworthy of God or civilized man." [492]

      I was not far from him, and my mouth went off. I couldn't help it. I asked him what he knew about God, and where he got his information. He was ready. Nature was his book, he said, loudly, and the only book that reveals God. Now just a few days before, there had been a great earthquake somewhere east, that had ruined a considerable city, swallowing up, of course, "both man and woman, infant and suckling"; and we had hardly got done reading about it. Of course I thought of it, and, of course, called his attention to it, and wanted to know if that was his God, and if it didn't look a great deal like smiting the Amalekites--"man and woman, infant and suckling."

      And from this I went on to notice a good many other things in nature that seem hard, and inconsistent, and contradictory, and mysterious, just like things in the Bible; and insisted that he should try his hand on these passages in his Bible. I pressed, and he faltered. Of course he did. That was not the kind of work he was best at. Skeptics are generally better at finding fault with things than in explaining things; better at destruction than construction--and I have known even some Christians so. In fact, it is easier work for anybody.

      I plied him with the difficult passages in his book until he got to fretting so in the harness I had to quit. But I have related this incident to show that there are as great difficulties about explaining the mysteries of the book of nature as the mysteries of [493] the other Book. No doubt earthquakes, cyclones and other natural occurrences that destroy property and kill "both man and woman, infant and suckling," are all right and necessary in their times and places, and that there are reasons for them though we may not always be able to show the reasons. They are often too deep, or too high, for us. They are clean out of our scope of vision. No doubt there was wisdom in and a reason for smiting the Amalekites, "man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and ass," though we may not be able to make all men see them especially unwilling men, or even to see them for ourselves. There was a reason for it within the scope of the infinite, though we may not reach it for several billions of years yet. We explore the universe slowly.

      It seems never to have occurred to some people that where in the works of God they can see no reason it is because of their short-sightedness. But they think that where they can see no reason there is none! What a wonderful being is man, specially in his own estimation, and more especially if he only has a trifle of skepticism about him!

      There is another important respect in which the Bible and nature are alike. While, as we have seen, they both have mysteries in them, they both have a simple side. In each case the side of mysteries is God's side, and the simple side is man's. Of course that is just as it should be. There are no mysteries to God; and man is the simple party, though, it must [494] be granted, that some men are so wise in their own conceit, as not always to see it that way.

      Who understands perfectly the simplest of what we call the sciences? For example, who understands the science of agriculture, the most practical of them all? Of course there are many who know a good deal about it, and all of us know more or less about it; but that is not the question: Who understands it perfectly? Who can explain all its facts and phenomena? Who can fathom all its mysteries? Well, the fact is, that nobody will profess thus to understand it--unless it be possibly some young man recently pulled or paid through a scientific course. Who can tell why the same grain and grass and water will produce wool on a sheep, hair on a pig and feathers on a goose? Oh! it is something in the nature of the animal, one may say. Correct. But what is that something in the nature of the animal? All the animals are made of pretty nearly the same material, are they not? Then why the difference? There we stop. There we have to stop. It is enough for my purpose to say what has to be admitted, that one side of even the most practical of the sciences is mysterious all along the line. But then there is a simple side also.

      The old negro that doesn't know one letter of the alphabet from another--that couldn't say agriculture tomorrow, after hearing it said a half dozen times today, if a fortune depended upon it--that old Negro can plow and plant, sow and reap, thresh and [495] grind, cook and eat, and live. He can know enough of the simple side of nature, the side God has turned toward us to catch on and get a living out of it and he has sense enough to do so too, without bothering his head greatly about the other side, the upper side, the side of mysteries, God's side. He can plow and plant, and let God make to grow. And so we all have to do. Who is so silly as to refuse to sow until someone explains to him all the mysteries of germination, growth, and production? We have all found out that we can run the simple side in nature, while God runs the other side--we the lower side and He the upper side--and thus out of the co-operation we get our living.

      Then, again, we all know how to eat. That's one little matter in the essentials of which men generally, agree. We all eat, the learned and the unlearned, black and white, male and female. Even the greatest cranks eat. One side of that matter is very simple, though so important in the building up and the sustenance of our bodies. But who understands the other side even of the simple science of eating? Who understands all about how it is that what we eat is digested, distributed and assimilated, so as to build up in equal and proper proportions all the parts of an animal body? Portions of what we eat go to make bones; other portions, muscle; and other portions, veins; and other parts, blood; other parts, skin--white, black, red. Other portions, hair--black hair, brown hair, red hair--other portions [496] make ears; others parts, eyes--black, brown, blue, gray--others portions still, make brains, more or less, and of different degrees of fineness of texture!

      Who understands all this? Who can explain all the mysteries of this, wonderful work? Of course we may and we ought to learn much about this wonderful work of God in building our bodies. But there are many things about it we are not very likely ever to know, and that it is not essential we ever should know. On the other hand, our side of the matter, the side we have to see and to operate, is so very simple in its essential particulars, that the unlearned almost as well as the learned can work it. And, by the way, it is a noticeable fact that often, if not generally, the unlettered negro succeeds in making, in many fundamental respects, a sounder and stronger body than does the most scientific man or woman--better stomachs, and eyes and teeth. Especially does he have better success than most hygienic cranks.

      But, now, who is so silly as to refuse to eat until someone explains to his satisfaction and comprehension, all the mysteries of body-making; and, then, all about the connection between bodies and spirits? Such a person would be apt to starve out, would he not? All of us eat; spiritualists and materialists, evolutionists and creationists, educated and uneducated--all eat, and without waiting to understand all about both sides of the business of body-making. [497] All this is true, and all this I mean to say, without in the least disparaging education, or the deepest possible scientific research.

      Now all I have said of nature, and body-building and sustenance, is just as true of the Bible, and of soul-building and sustenance. Here, too, we have simplicity on one side, the under side, our side; and mystery on the other side, the upper side, God's side. All that men have to do or see to in the matter of their soul's salvation here and hereafter, is all so simple that any responsible person can understand it.

      1. What mystery is there about faith? Believing is one of the most natural and one of the most common things men ever do. We believe from childhood to the grave. We pull up out of the cradle, and on to manhood, by faith. Nor is there anything mysterious about believing in Jesus Christ. He came to us in our nature, a babe, a boy, a man; eating, drinking, sleeping; hungry, thirsty, weary; joyful and sorrowful; making wine at a marriage and weeping at the grave, having the experiences of life in common with us. He came as close to us as we can get to one another; came alongside of us, in all our sad and sorrowful experiences; tasting sorrow and grief, suffering and death, as we do, and because we do. He died for us. God raised Him up and exalted Him to His own right hand in heaven, where He lives for us. What is more simple and more reasonable than that we should believe in Him? The [498] wonder is that any poor sinner who ever heard of Him should not believe in Him, and love Him.

      2. What is more simple than repentance! Every one, anywhere between childhood and old age, knows what it is. There is no experience we know better.

      3. How simple and reasonable that we should openly confess Jesus Christ. We all understand confession. Children know what it is and even know something of its philosophy. But we do not have to know its philosophy. It is our duty, our privilege, to confess Him before men, and how it is that in confessing Him we make all the confession God requires of us as sinners, we may not understand, but so it is; and how simple it is.

      4. We can be baptized in His name. That, too, is a most simple thing. All who are capable of obedience at all can do that. We are not required to understand all about the reason or the philosophy of it, but simply to be baptized in His name and because He bids us do it.

      5. And then a life of faith, hope, love, obedience, prayer and trust in Him is the simplest, easiest, happiest life one can live on earth; ever learning of Him, and leaving out of our lives what He forbids, and taking into them what He bids, as best we can, trusting Him for all the rest--that's all. We may not understand just how God answers prayer. We do not have to. Nor do we have to understand how He works in us by His Spirit, in the use of the means He has appointed and furnished, to build us up and [499] sustain us spiritually, any more than we have to understand how He makes our bodies to grow, and sustains them. We have only to learn and do our duty, as in nature, and He will do all the rest for us as He does in nature. There are many questions about which we give ourselves needless trouble; such as how God answers prayer, how He works in us to make us grow, how He will raise the dead, how He will judge the world, how He will make us happy in heaven? All this is His side of the work, and it will be done in greater love and wisdom than we can conceive.

      And this is "the simplicity that is in Christ." But what has he who "beguiled Eve by his subtilty" been doing since the apostle expressed his "fear" as in our text? Was Paul's "fear" groundless, or well grounded? Has not the enemy been trying to corrupt our minds from this simplicity in Christ? Has he not been trying to pervert our minds from what is revealed, and send us off after what "God doth know?" Has he not in a large measure succeeded in shutting men's eyes to a simple life of obedience and trust, and opening them to the mysteries of the Godhead, and the mysteries of God's side of the work of our redemption? Men have been led to suppose that it is all-important that they should understand all about the trinity of persons in the unity of the Godhead; and that there is vastly more wisdom and religion in such a statement as that there is "God the Father, God the Son, and [500] God the Holy Ghost'; yet not three Gods, but one God, for there is unity in trinity and trinity in unity," than in all the simple statements of Jesus and the apostles. Also that it is all important that they should know all about the "foreknowledge," "secret counsel" and decrees of God; as well as just how God and Christ and the Holy Spirit dwell in men and work in them.

      Many have gotten clean over on God's side of the business of saving souls, and are fighting above the clouds, or at least in the clouds. Preachers have taken the lead and the people have followed them away from the simplicity of duty and trust into the mysteries and mazes of speculations about the Godhead and the divine methods. About all the difficulties with which men are tussling, as well as the objections men urge against Christianity, as excuses for not doing their duty, are brought over from the upper side, the God side, of the question; and not from the side God presents to us, the side of human duty.

      Men have allowed the devil to practice a huge fraud upon them, to make them act inconsistently and foolishly, and to pass judgment of condemnation upon themselves; as well as to open up such vast fields of theology to be studied, that it takes people a whole life-time to learn how to become Christians, and many never learn the lesson.

      Now, here is the inconsistency. Men do not deal with God in nature, as they do with Him in the [501] Bible. They do not deal with their pockets and stomachs as they do with their souls. When asked to obey the Gospel of Christ, they will at once fall back upon foreknowledge and divine decrees; will tell you that God foreknew all things that do, or ever will, come to pass; that the end was present with Him from the beginning; that He foreknew whether they will be saved or lost; that if He foreknew that they will be saved nothing can hinder it; if He foreknew that they will be lost; they will be lost; that, in a word, they can do nothing to change what God foresaw from all eternity; that He foresaw all things that come to pass, from all eternity, and that therefore there is nothing they can do in the matter; they are afraid to attempt to do anything lest they might be found fighting against the divine decrees. But when it comes to questions about the body--about the pocket and the stomach, the very same men act quite differently, and it is presumable that they reason differently, If they reason at all. They look after the wants of the stomach and of the body generally, notwithstanding the end was present with God from the beginning. They work, provide, and eat, notwithstanding God knew from all eternity whether they would starve or have plenty.

      There are men in this country--growing scarcer as the years go by--who preach foreknowledge and foreordination, and man's utter inability to do anything in the matter of his soul's salvation, parting their hair in the middle that they may stand plumb [502] on this line: and after so preaching all day Sunday, will go home on Monday and go to work, and put all hands to it, to provide for the wants of the body! Why this inconsistency? Is it because men will not hear the enemy when their stomachs pinch them? Or is it because they do not consider him orthodox on questions about the body? Or, is it because he is willing to allow men to feed and pamper the body, provided only that they will neglect the soul?

      The problem of God's sovereignty and man's free agency is one that most likely we shall never be able to solve to the satisfaction of all. It is logically and theologically an impossibility, there being in the problem too much that is unknown and unknowable. In temporal matters almost all men are content to exercise their free agency and refer the matter of sovereignty to God Himself. This is the best we can do. But we should be consistent, and in spiritual as well as in temporal matters use our free agency, and refer the matter of sovereignty, and the harmony of the two to God. This side is ours. That side is His. In doing thus we may return to "the simplicity that is in Christ," as preached by the inspired apostles and acted upon by the first disciples. And may God help us. [503]

[NTC3 483-503]