Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Freewill Baptist Quarterly, 1868, Vol. 16
As we are not appalled, so we are not surprised. The final con?ict with unbelief, whenever it occurs, must necessarily be fought around the Person and concerning the Plan of our Di vine Lord. Of the battle-grounds of recent generations, some are verdant meadows covered with thick summer glass and fra grant ?owers some well tilled fields yielding a prodigious har vest, and others the scenes of occas1onal skirmishing and fruitless saillies of rash and combative men, but never of serious fight. We have almost forgotten Calvin in resisting Comte, and only wish for the brave heart and gentle spirit of Arminius in putting on our armor to contend with Renan. The question of general redemp tion by the work of Christ that Andrew Fuller and Dan Taylor discussed so warmly is rapidly merging into the larger question, Is there a divine Saviour at all All theological teaching is certainly moving towards Christ himself for its last settlement and victorious defence. The enemy has said, Here is the heir, natural person of Jesus, and the' body of Christian truth has solid coherence of statement, precision of purpose, symmetry of proportion, and fulness of life -giving power. Our view of the inspiration of Scripture must be determined, in part, by refer ence to His words, and therefore by the' judgment we ferm of Himself. We only know God the Father as we know Him, for no man hath seen the Father at any time, the only begotten 8011 he hath revealed Him. The attractions of his cross are powerless if He who dies there, be an infatuated revolutionist [and not the Prince of Life. History is a blinded'muse, and has no interpreter, if Jesus be excluded from the highest throne in the rank of Divine kings. He 18 the light of the past, as He 18 the light of the Bible and the life of men. If I cease to admire and adore Him as my Lord and my God, my reason is as much puzzled and bewildered as my heart - isorphaned and woe strick en. The achievements 'of science are no gospel for me, but merely like strains of beautiful musrc that fall on the listless ears of the dying, so long as my higher aspirations after God [and immortality remain without affectionate response; and' the ador ation of humanity, so fervently commended by the high priests of a new religion, is but a subtle form of the practice from which, of all others, I am praying and fighting to'be delivered; in fact, if the Son of God be m me, I have nothing left to hope, nothing to live IS a chaos, history a riddle, God a problem, death a terror, and the future an abyss.
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