“III.
In the third
place, I would ENLARGE UPON HIS VERY NATURAL SUGGESTION. This prudent steward
said, “Perhaps the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land. Must
I bring your son again unto the land from where you came?” If she will not come
to Isaac, shall Isaac go down to her? This is the suggestion of the present
hour—if the world will not come to Jesus, shall Jesus tone down His teachings
to the world? In other words, if the world will not rise to the Church, shall
not the Church go down to the world? Instead of bidding men to be converted and
come out from among sinners and be separate from them, let us join with the
ungodly world, enter into union with it and so pervade it with our influence by
allowing it to influence us. Let us have a Christian world.
To this end let
us revise our doctrines. Some are old-fashioned, grim, severe,
unpopular. Let us
drop them. Use the old phrases so as to please the obstinately orthodox but
give them new meanings so as to win philosophical infidels who are prowling
around. Pare off the edges of the unpleasant Truths of God, moderate the
dogmatic tone of infallible Revelation—say that Abraham and Moses made mistakes
and that the books which have been so long in reverence are full of errors.
Undermine the old faith and bring in the new doubt. For the times are altered
and the spirit of the age suggests the abandonment of everything that is too
severely righteous and too surely of God.
The deceitful
adulteration of doctrine is attended by a falsification of experience. Men are
now told that they were born good, or were made so by their infant Baptism and
so that great sentence, “You must be born again,” is deprived of its force. Repentance
is ignored, faith is a drug in the market as compared with “honest doubt,” and
mourning for sin and communion with God are dispensed with to make way for
entertainments, and Socialism and politics of varying shades. A new creature in
Christ Jesus is looked upon as a sour invention of bigoted Puritans. It is
true, with the same breath they extol Oliver Cromwell. But then 1888 is not
1648. What was good and great two hundred years ago is mere cant today. That is
what “modern thought” is telling us. And under its guidance all religion is
being toned down. Spiritual religion is despised and a fashionable morality is
set up in its place. Do yourself up tidily on Sunday—behave yourself. And above
all, believe everything except what you read in the Bible and you will be all
right. Be fashionable and think with those who profess to be scientific—this is
the first and great commandment of the modern school. And the second is like
unto it—do not be singular, but be as worldly as your neighbors. Thus is Isaac
going down into Padan-aram—thus is the Church going down to the world.
Men seem to
say—It is of no use going on in the old way, fetching out one here and another
there from the great mass. We want a quicker way. To wait till people are born
again and become followers of Christ is a long process—let us abolish the separation
between the regenerate and unregenerate. Come into the Church, all of you,
converted or unconverted. You have good wishes and good resolutions. That will
do—don’t trouble about more. It is true you do not believe the Gospel but neither
do we. You believe something or other. Come along. If you do not believe
anything, no matter. Your “honest doubt” is better by far than faith. “But,”
you say, “nobody talks so.” Possibly they do not use the same words but this is
the real meaning of the present-day religion. This is the drift of the times.
I can justify the
broadest statement I have made by the action or by the speech of certain ministers
who are treacherously betraying our holy religion under pretense of adapting it
to this progressive age. The new plan is to assimilate the Church to the world
and so include a larger area within its bounds. By semi-dramatic performances they
make Houses of Prayer to approximate to the theater. They turn their services
into musical displays, and their sermons into political harangues or
philosophical essays—in fact, they exchange the temple for the theater and turn
the ministers of God into actors, whose business it is to amuse men. Is it not
so, that the Lord’s Day is becoming more and more a day of recreation or of
idleness, and the Lord’s House either a house full of idols, or a political
club, where there is more enthusiasm for a party than zeal for God? Ah me, the
hedges are broken down, the walls are leveled and to many there is henceforth
no Church except as a portion of the world, no God except as an unknowable
force by which the laws of nature work.
This, then, is
the proposal. In order to win the world, the Lord Jesus must conform Himself,
His people and His Word to the world. I will not dwell any longer on so
loathsome a proposal.”
-C.H. Spurgeon 1834-1892
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