Posted in Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, The Free Offer of the Gospel on December 15, 2013| Leave a Comment »
“Say not you cannot believe, the great defect is in your will. ‘Ye will not come to me,’ says Jesus, ‘that you may have life.’ Stretch out the withered hand to Christ; protest you shall never be satisfied till he put forth mighty power to make you believe, and never quit the throne till you get it, if you should dig your grave at it, Luke 16:39-43.”
-Thomas Boston
Posted in Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Thomas Chalmers on December 10, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Some choice counsel from Thomas Chalmers to a Christian lady struggling with doubts (1826). His distinction between having a concern about what and not how to believe is especially choice.
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But, generally, you complain that you are ignorant of how to go—how to believe. Now this has long been a stumbling-block to many; their thoughts are how they are to believe, when their thoughts should be what they should believe. They look inwardly for the work of faith, when they should look outwardly for the object of faith. “For every one thought,” says Richard Baxter, “that he casts downwardly upon himself, he should cast ten upwardly and outwardly upon Jesus, and upon the glorious truths of the Gospel.” You say that you have no doubts of the freeness of Christ’s salvation, and of His willingness to save you. Dwell upon this; persist in this; stand in the Gospel attitude of looking upon Jesus, and light will at length arise within you. In the act of looking, you may have to wait a longer or a shorter time for your coming enlargement; but surely it is worth the waiting for. Meanwhile your business is prayer; a diligent attention in the ordinances of religion; reading of God’s word; and, above all, a keeping of the sayings of Christ: “He that keepeth my sayings, to him will I manifest myself.” Be assured you are in good hands, even in the hands of Him who will not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax.
Posted in Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls on October 1, 2013| Leave a Comment »
I’m a dyed-in-the-wool psalm singer. But like my predecessor, Dr. William Young, I can still appreciate as poetry the rich, experimental hymns of the past. Here’s one from Joseph Hart (1712-1768) on the child of God struggling with assurance. It’s titled, “The Doubting Christian.”
1 If unbelief’s that sin accursed,
Abhorred by God above,
Because, of all opposers worst,
It fights against his love,
2 How shall a heart that doubts like mine,
Dismayed at every breath,
Pretend to live the life divine,
Or fight the fight of faith?
3 Conscience accuses from within,
And others from without;
I feel my soul the sink of sin,
And this produces doubt.
4 When thousand sins, of various dyes,
Corruptions dark and foul,
Daily within my bosom rise,
And blacken all my soul,
5 I groan, and grieve, and cry, and call
On Jesus for relief;
But, that delayed, to doubting fall,
Of all my sins the chief.
6 Such dire disorders vex my soul,
That ill engenders ill;
And when my heart I feel so foul,
I make it fouler still.
7 In this distress, the course I take
Is still to call and pray,
And wait the time when Christ shall speak,
And drive my foes away.
8 For that blest hour I sigh and pant,
With wishes warm and strong;
But dearest Lord, lest these should faint,
O do not tarry long.
Posted in Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls on September 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Jonathan Edwards wrote of his future wife, Sarah Pierrepont, “They say there is a young lady in (New Haven) who is loved of that Great Being, who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight; and she hardly cares for anything, except to meditate on him… she has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in their affection… you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful…. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness and universal benevolence of mind…. She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have someone invisible always conversing with her.” Here is a higher romance. Attraction to one who is hopelessly enamored with God.
May God make all our wives and our daughters such “daughters of Sarah” and make us worthy of those of whom the world is not.
Posted in Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls on March 8, 2013| Leave a Comment »
“There is sometimes a very great similitude between true and false experiences, in their appearance, and in what is expressed and related by the subjects of them: and the difference between them is much like the difference between the dreams of Pharaoh’s chief butler and baker; they seemed to be much alike; insomuch that when Joseph interpreted the chief butler’s dream, that he should be delivered from his imprisonment, and restored to the king’s favor, and his honorable office in the palace, the chief baker had raised hopes and expectations, and told his dream also; but he was woefully disappointed; and though his dream was so much like the happy and well-boding dream of his companion, yet it was quite contrary in its issue.”
-Jonathan Edwards
Posted in Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Mental Health, Pastoral Theology on January 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »
“I find that principle and reflection afford a feeble support against the visitations of melancholy. It is a physical distemper, and must be counteracted by physical means. It is not the direct application of reason that will school it down, any more that it can cure the discomfort of your physical sensations when placed in an overheated room, for example. But it is our duty to apply whatever experience tells us is a corrective against those unpleasant feelings which agitate, and enfeeble, and render unfit for any useful exertion. It is not my duty to feel cool and comfortable when placed in a confined room; but it is my duty to rise and open the window if this can restore me to my wonted capacity of exertion. It is perhaps not my duty to summon up a cheerfulness of mind in the hour of unaccountable despondency, for perhaps this is an affair as completely beyond the control of reason as any other of our physical sensations; but it is my duty to study, and, if possible, to devise expedients for restoring me from this useless and melancholy state. Now, all experience assures me that regular occupation is that expedient; and it is my duty, if I find myself unequal to the severity of my usual exercises, to devise slighter subjects of employment which can be resorted to in the time of necessity. This I esteem to be an important part of moral discipline. Writing a fair copy of an old production which you wish to preserve, setting your books and papers into a state of greater arrangement, writing letters, looking over your accounts, and making slight but interesting calculations about your future gains and future expenditure,—these, and a number of other subjects of occupation, should occur to be ever ready to offer themselves as correctives to melancholy. Let me cultivate, then, that habit of exertion which will not shrink from a remedy which I find so effectual.”
Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847)
Posted in Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Locality & the Law of Residence, Parish Theory & Practice, Thomas Chalmers, Visitation Evangelism on December 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »
The following are the words of exhortation Dr. Thomas Chalmers gave to his ruling elders upon their induction to office to the newly formed St. John’s parish in Glasgow, in 1819. These men were installed not simply to attend to the communicant and baptized membership, but each was assigned a small district of contiguous households within the parish. They were thus ordained as missionaries to all within the limits of their assignment, visiting each house in turn, seeking lost sheep. The address below highlights the tension frequently stressed by Chalmers – the obligation diligently to use all lawful means to reclaim the unsaved and at the same time to look alone to the Mighty Spirit to bring it all to pass.
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“The whole habit and tendency of my thoughts on the subject of Christian usefulness incline me to attach a far higher importance to your relationship with the parish of St. John’s than to your relationship with the Church, and I do honestly believe, that never till the rights of parishes come to be better respected, never till the attention of ministers and elders be more restricted to the population of a given local territory, never till God put it into the hearts of men to go forth among our heathen at home with the same zeal and enthusiasm which are expected of missionaries who go abroad, will there be any thing like a revival of religion throughout the mass of our city families, or a reclaiming of them from those sad habits of alienation from God and from goodness into which the vast majority of them have fallen.
“There is one circumstance of encouragement which you will soon in the course of your movements through the districts that arc assigned to you be enabled to verify by your own experience. All the householders, with scarcely one exception, and whatever be their character in respect of Christianity, will welcome you with the utmost cordiality and courteousness. There is something in the very presence of one human being when he comes with the feelings and the desires of friendship, which serves to conciliate and to subdue another human being. Bear an honest regard to the people, and the people will, in spite of themselves, bear you an honest regard back again. This is what may be called an open door for you in the first instance, and the effect of frequent intercourse between the higher and lower orders of life in tranquilizing the general spirit of a community, and softening their malignant antipathies which else might ferment and fester and break out into. open violence, and consolidating something like a system of brotherhood through a mighty aggregate of human beings, this I say would confer a civil blessing on the establishment of an eldership that is altogether incalculable.
“But it must be remarked, on the other hand, that so wide and universal a welcome from the families may lead at the outset to a most delusive anticipation. A civil comes more easily and readily than a Christian effect. You are not to infer, because the good will of the people can be so immediately carried, that the conversion of the people will therefore speedily follow in its train. There is much of what is constitutionally attractive among men distinct and apart from any religious tendencies; and there is none who sets himself in good earnest to the working of a Christian effect, that will not soon feel himself engaged in a business where aids and instruments are necessary that are altogether superhuman. You will, in particular, be struck with the obstinate and determinate stand which the manhood of the population will make to all your proofs and all your earnestness. In sad proof of the progressive hardening of conscience will it be seen how arduous if not how impossible it is, with all the arts and resources of Christian philanthropy, to make any sensible advances on those who have been suffered to ascend from boyhood without the Word and without the ordinances.
“It is this which has shut up so many adventurers on the field of Christian usefulness, both at home and abroad, to the melancholy conclusion, that the grown-up generation are to be given up in despair, and that the hope of brighter and better days all lies with the capabilities of the young; and I certainly do recommend, among the foremost objects of your attention, the encouragement of those religious schools which may be situated within the limits of your respective localities, and for the discouragements which you will experience in the obstinacy and immovableness of many parents, you will often meet with a cheering compensation in the
promise and docility of their children.
“At the same time, I would never give up any human being in despair. Forget not the affirmation of the missionary Eliot, that it was in the power of pains and of prayers to do any thing. We are apt to confide in the efficacy and wisdom of our own arrangements—to set up a framework of skillful contrivance, and think that so good an apparatus will surely be productive of something—to please ourselves with parochial constitutions, and be quite sanguine that on the strength of elderships and deaconships, and a machinery of schools and agents, and moralizing processes, some great and immediate effect is to follow. But we may just as well think that a system of aqueducts will irrigate and fertilize the country without rain, as think that any human economy will Christianize a parish without the living water of the Spirit—without the dew df heaven descending upon the human administrators, and following them in their various movements through the houses and families under their superintendence. Still it is right to have a parochial constitution, just as it is right to have aqueducts. But the supply of the essential influence cometh from above. God will put to shame the proud confidence of man in the efficacy of his own wisdom, and He will have all the glory of all the spiritual good that is done in the world, and your piety will, therefore, work a tenfold mightier effect than your talents, in the cause you have undertaken; and your pains without your prayers will positively do nothing in this way, though it must be confessed that prayers without pains are just as unproductive, and that because they must be such prayers of insincerity as can not rise with acceptance to heaven. It is the union of both which best promises an apostolical effect to your truly apostolical office; and with theso few simple remarks do I commend you to Him who alone can bles3 you in this laudable undertaking, and give comfort and efficacy to the various duties that are involved with it.”
Posted in Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Ordinary Means Ministry, Uncategorized on September 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »
A masterful and balanced statement from William Young on the duty of self-examination before partaking of the Lord’s Supper:
“Self-examination, conducted according to the directions of Scripture, is a profitable exercise in preparation for the Lord’s Supper. The phantom of morbid introspection is the invention of that proud presumption that fails to distinguish between the precious and the vile. Surely on our American scene, the danger of unhealthy preoccupation with the abominations in our deceitful hearts, to the neglect of the remedy provided in the gospel, is very slight in comparison with the externalism and formality with which presumptuous sinners, puffed up with their imaginations of ‘blessed assurance,’ eat and drink damnation to themselves. Evangelical hypocrites are the natural product on the one hand of Arminian evangelism and on the other of Kuyperian Hyper-Covenantism, opposed to one another as these two errors are. A spurious assurance may arise either from confidence in a ‘decision for Christ’ made by the act of one’s ‘free will,’ or from the presumption that mistakes an external relation to the covenant of grace for a living relation to Christ, the only Mediator of the covenant. Such self-deception can be destroyed, and a well-grounded assurance of grace and salvation be established in the soul, only by way of serious and thorough self-examination.
“The critics of this wholesome exercise often misconstrue its purpose. Self-examination does not aim at the production of doubts and fears, leaving the troubled soul in a state of perpetual uncertainty as to its being in a state of grace. A faithful declaration of the demands of the law and of the deceitfulness of the human heart will, no doubt, give occasion for doubts and fears. But the truth is not the cause of the condition of the soul, arising from the suggestions of Satan and the weakness of the flesh. Self-examination as to whether one is in the faith is designed in fact to bring weak believers to the knowledge that Christ is in them and that they are not reprobates. To this end the Scripture has enumerated an abundance of marks of grace, especially those found in the First Epistle of John.
“In preparation for partaking of the Lord’s Supper, self-examination is in order both as to one’s state and as to one’s frame. If in applying the marks of grace, one finds that the great change has not taken place, then one’s first duty is to come to Christ to receive pardon and cleansing by His blood and only after that, to come to the table in obedience to the command, ‘This do in remembrance of me.’ If the happy result of self-examination is a well grounded assurance, then one may with confidence and thanksgiving enjoy a blessed communion with Christ and one’s fellow Christians. And weak believers may have to be reminded that the Savior’s gracious invitation is also a commandment, and that there is guilt in unworthy refusing as well as unworthy partaking. The assured believer is not called on to doubt as to the soundness of his faith, but may find comfort in seeing his title clear to mansions in the sky, only on the ground of the Redeemer’s merits. At the same time inquiry as to his frame leads him to see both the fruit of the Spirit and the sinful imperfection of his graces, and thus serves to foster spiritual growth in repentance, faith, hope, love, humility and every grace.”
Posted in Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Missiology, Parish Theory & Practice, Thomas Chalmers, Visitation Evangelism on August 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »
“If a poor child be capable of being thus transformed, how it should move the heart of a city philanthropist, when he thinks of the amazing extent of raw material, for this moral and spiritual manufacture that is on every side of him—when he thinks, that in going forth on some Christian enterprise among a population, he is, in truth, walking among the rudiments of a state that is to be everlasting—that out of the most loathsome and unseemly abodes, a glory can be extracted, which will weather all the storms, and all the vicissitudes of this world’s history—that in the filth and raggedness of a hovel, that is to be found, on which all the worth of heaven, as well as all the endurance of heaven, can be imprinted—that he is, in a word, dealing in embryo with the elements of a great and future empire, which is to rise, indestructible and eternal, on the ruins of all that is earthly, and every member of which shall be a king and a priest for evermore.”
Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847)
Posted in Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Ministerial Fidelity, Preaching on July 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »
J. W. Alexander (1804-1859) gives the following powerful observation in Thoughts on Preaching. If we would learn how to preach, we must not start with Homiletics. We must return ever and again “to the one thing needful.” He writes,
The great reason why we have so little good preaching is that we have so little piety. To be eloquent one must be in earnest; he must not only act as if he were in earnest, or try to be in earnest, but be in earnest, or he cannot be effective.
We have loud and vehement, we have smooth and graceful, we have splendid and elaborate preaching, but very little that is earnest. One man who so feels for the souls of his hearers as to be ready to weep over them—will assuredly make himself
felt. . . We must aim therefore at high degrees of warmth in our religious exercises, if we would produce an impression upon the public mind. . .Without any increase of our numbers, the very men we now have, if actuated with burning zeal for God, might work a mighty reformation in our country.