Part 1 (1/2)
G.o.dliness.
by Catherine Booth.
PREFACE.
In giving this volume to our American readers, we are a.s.sured that we are doing a special favor to all the lovers of ”Christianity in earnest.” ”Aggressive Christianity,” from the same talented author, has met with unusual favor, and has been the means of much good. We are confident that the present volume is in all respects equal to the former, and that no one can read it without great spiritual profit.
The Introduction, by Dr. Daniel Steele, is a forcible presentation of the main doctrines of the book, and is creditable to the head and heart of the writer, and a commendation which all intelligent readers will highly esteem.
Our object in publis.h.i.+ng these sermons, is, that their perusal may kindle a flame of revival in the hearts of believers, which may result in many turning unto the Lord.
MCDONALD & GILL
BOSTON, Ma.s.s.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
In presenting another volume of reports of my Addresses, I have only to repeat what I have said with respect to similar books before-- Read, for the sake of getting more light and more blessing to your soul, and you will, I trust, partake of the good which many have professed to receive at the West-End services, wherein most of these words were first spoken.
I am well aware that, in such imperfect reports of, for the most part, extemporaneous utterances, often most hurriedly corrected, there may be found abundant ground for criticism; but, if this book may be the means of leading only a few souls to devote themselves more fully to G.o.d and to the salvation of men, I shall be more than compensated for any unfriendly criticism with which it may meet.
I have not sought to please any but the Lord, and to His fatherly loving-kindness I commend both the book and its readers.
CATHERINE BOOTH.
_London, Nov._ 10, 1881.
INTRODUCTION.
The sermons of Mrs. Booth already re-published under the t.i.tle of ”_Aggressive Christianity_,” came to American Christians as a tonic to their weakness, and a stimulant to their inertness.
The sermons in the present volume are a much-needed prophylactic, a safeguard against several practical errors in dealing with souls; errors which lead them into Egyptian darkness, instead of the marvelous light.
The sermon on _Repentance_ is a most faithful showing up of spurious repentance, the vain subst.i.tute for a downright abandonment of every form of sin, and right-about facing towards the Lord. In directness and point, it is a model for earnest revival preaching,--rather, for all preaching to unsaved souls, outside the church, or within it. All of these will be found in some subterfuge, which must be ruthlessly torn down, before it will be abandoned for the cleft Rock.
The sermon on _Saving Faith_ is next in order. The disastrous consequences of what, for the want of a better description, maybe styled an Antinomian faith, an unrepentant a.s.sent of the intellect to the historic facts of the Gospel, which too many evangelists and other religious teachers are calling saving faith, are clearly set forth and plainly labeled, POISON. This spurious trust in Christ following a superficial repentance, which has never felt the desperate sinfulness and real misery of sin, has furnished our churches with a numerous cla.s.s of members, aptly described by the prophet Micah: ”The sin of Israel is great and unrepented of, yet they will lean on the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us?” We are convinced that much of the work of the faithful and pungent preacher, who preaches with his eye fixed on the great white throne and the descending Judge, is to dislodge professors from their imaginary trust in a Saviour who does not save them, and probe deeply their hearts festering with sin, which have been hastily p.r.o.nounced healed, ”slightly healed.” Many of us have incautiously said to awakened souls, ”Only believe,” before we have thrust the heart through and through with the sword of G.o.d's law. We have dismissed G.o.d's schoolmaster. The law, like the slave charged with the task of leading the boy to school, and of committing him to the teacher, we have thought to be too harsh and severe for our sentimental age, and have unwisely discharged, and have a.s.sumed its office of a _paidagogos_ to Christ, and we have missed the way, and misled a priceless soul. G.o.d have mercy on us, and give us humility, as He gave Apollos, to be set right by an anointed woman!
After her timely correction of erroneous teachings on faith, Mrs.
Booth proceeds, pruning-knife in hand, to cut away from the tree of modern Christianity the poisonous fungus of a ”spurious charity.” Her four sermons on _Charity_ are four beacons set on the rocks of counterfeit Christian love. She sets forth several infallible tests by which genuine love may be distinguished from the devil's base imitation. Like the Epistles of St. John, these sermons are full of touchstones for testing love, that golden principle of the Christian life. It would be very profitable for all professors of that perfect love which casteth out all tormenting fear, to apply unflinchingly these touch-stones to themselves. They may find the word ”perfection”
taking on a meaning deeper, broader and higher than they had ever before conceived. Why should not our conception of Christian perfection steadily grow with the increase of our knowledge of G.o.d and of His holy law?
The sermon on _The Conditions of Effectual Prayer_, we commend to all Christians and to all seekers of Christ, who are mourning because their prayers do not prevail with G.o.d. In the clear light of this sermon they will find that the difficulty lies, either in the lack of fellows.h.i.+p with Jesus Christ, or of obedience to His commands, or in the absence from their hearts of the interceding Spirit, or in defective faith. In the discussion of these hindrances to prayer, the preacher lays open the heart, and with a skilful spiritual surgery, searches it to the very bottom. The incisiveness of her style, her courage and plain dealing with her hearers, tearing off the masks of sin and selfishness, the various guises in which these masquerade in many Christian hearts and obstruct their access to a throne of grace, remind us of Dr. Finney's unsparing exposure and condemnation of these foes to Christian holiness, and of John Wesley's cutting up by the roots ”Sin in Believers.”
In this sermon Mrs. Booth turns her attention to another phase of faith and of practical error in the guidance of souls to Christ. Her views on this vexed question are not extreme but philosophical and scriptural. She teaches that G.o.d has made the bestowment of salvation simultaneous with the exercise of faith, and that ”telling a person to believe he is saved, before he is saved, is telling him to believe a lie.” But she insists that the act of faith is put forth with the special aid of the Holy Spirit giving an a.s.surance that the blessing sought will be granted. This a.s.surance, or earnest, given by the Spirit, becomes the basis on which the final act of faith rests, namely, ”I believe that I receive.” This corresponds with William Taylor's Divine ”ascertainment of the fact of the sinner's surrender to G.o.d, and his acceptance of Christ,” before justification.
[Footnote: Election of Grace, pp. 38-42.] Both teachers agree with Wesley's a.n.a.lysis of faith which teaches that the fourth and last step, ”He doth it,” can be taken only by the special enabling power of the Holy Spirit, [Footnote: Sermons. Patience, Section 13; Scripture Way of Salvation, Section 17; and Whedon on Mark xi. 24.] All three locate the Divine efficiency before the declaration, ”I believe that I receive,” or ”have received” (R. V.), making that declaration rest upon the perception of a Divine change within the consciousness. They all insist that saving faith is not a mere humanly moral exercise, but that power to believe with the heart descends from G.o.d, and that it must be waited for in prayer, and that it becomes in the believer a series of supernatural and spiritual acts, a habit of soul, at once the seed and fruit of the Divine life-stirring, uniting in itself the characters of penitent humility, self-renunciation, simple trust, and absolute obedience grounded in love. These teachers magnify the Divine element in faith. We look in vain in their writings for any such direction to a penitent as this, ”Believe that you are saved, because, G.o.d says so in His Word,” but rather believe that you are saved when you hear His Spirit crying, Abba, Father, in your heart.