The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps

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The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps

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Title: The Christian Life Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps

Author: Thomas Arnold

Release Date: August 10, 2004 [EBook #13151]

Language: English

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THE

CHRISTIAN LIFE;

ITS COURSE, ITS HINDRANCES, AND ITS HELPS.

THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D.,

HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL,

AND LATE FELLO W O F O RIEL CO LLEG E, O XFO RD.

From the Fifth London Edition.

1856.

"As far as the principle on which Archbishop Laud and his followers acted went to re-actuate the idea of the church, as a co-ordinate and living power by right of Christ's institution and express promise, I go along with them; but I soon discover that by the church they meant the clergy, the hierarchy exclusively, and then I fly off from them in a tangent.

"For it is this very interpretation of the church, that, according to my conviction, constituted the first and fundamental apostasy; and I hold it for one of the greatest mistakes of our polemical divines, in their controversies with the Romanists, that they trace all the corruptions of the gospel faith to the Papacy."--COLERIDGE,

Literary Remains, vol. iii. p. 386.

INTRODUCTION.

LECTURE I..

CONTENTS.

GEN. iii. 22.--And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.

LECTURE II.

1 COR. xiii. 11.--When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a ma n, I put away childish things.

LECTURE III.

1 COR. xiii. 11.--When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a ma n, I put away childish things.

LECTURE IV.

COL. i. 9.--We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.

LECTURE V.

COL. i. 9.--We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.

LECTURE VI.

COL. iii. 3.--Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

LECTURE VII.

1 COR. iii. 21--23.--All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours, and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.

LECTURE VIII.

GAL. v. 16, 17.--Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the S pirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

LECTURE IX.

LUKE xiv. 33.--Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

LECTURE X.

1 TIM. i. 9.--The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane.

LECTURE XI.

LUKE xxi. 36.--Watch ye, therefore, and pray always , that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.

LECTURE XII.

PROV. i. 28.--Then shall they call upon me, but I w ill not answer: they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.

LECTURE XIII.

MARK xii. 34.--Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.

LECTURE XIV.

MATT. xxii. 14.--For many are called, but few are chosen.

LECTURE XV.

LUKE xi. 25.--When he cometh he findeth it swept and garnished.

JOHN v. 42.--I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.

LECTURE XVI.

MATT. xi. 10.--I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee.

LECTURE XVII.

1 COR. ii. 12.--We have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God.

LECTURE XVIII.

GEN. xxvii. 38.--And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.

MATT. xv. 27.--And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table.

LECTURE XIX.

MATT. xxii. 32.--God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

LECTURE XX.

EZEK. xiii. 22.--With lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should

not return from his wicked way, by promising him life.

LECTURE XXI.

ADVENT SUNDAY.

HEB. iii. 16.--For some when they had heard did provoke; howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.

LECTURE XXII.

CHRISTMAS DAY.

JOHN i. 10.--He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

LECTURE XXIII.

SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER.

MATT. xxvi. 40, 41.--What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

LECTURE XXIV.

GOOD FRIDAY.

ROMANS v. 8.--God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

LECTURE XXV.

EASTER DAY.

JOHN xx. 20.--Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.

LECTURE XXVI.

WHITSUNDAY.

ACTS xix. 2.--Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?

LECTURE XXVII.

TRINITY SUNDAY.

JOHN iii. 9.--How can these things be?

LECTURE XXVIII.

EXOD. iii. 6.--And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.

LUKE xxiii. 30.--Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.

LECTURE XXIX.

PSALM cxxxvii. 4.--- How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

LECTURE XXX.

1 COR. xi. 26.--For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come.

LECTURE XXXI.

LUKE i. 3, 4.--It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto th ee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.

LECTURE XXXII.

Luke i. 3, 4.--It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.

LECTURE XXXIII.

JOHN ix. 29.--We know that God spake unto Moses; as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is.

LECTURE XXXIV.

1 COR. xiv. 20.--Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit, in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.

LECTURE XXXV.

MATT. xxvi. 45, 46.--Sleep on now and take your rest; behold the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us

be going: behold he is at hand that doth betray me.

LECTURE XXXVI.

2 COR. v. 17, 18.--Old things are passed away; behold all things are become new, and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.

LECTURE XXXVII.

EZEK. xx. 49.--Then said I, Ah, Lord God! they say of me Doth he not speak parables?

LECTURE XXXVIII.

ISAIAH v. 1.--Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard.

LECTURE XXXIX.

COL. iii. 17.--Whatsoever ye do in the word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.

NOTES.

INTRODUCTION.

The contents of this volume will be found, I hope, to be in agreement with its title.

Amongst the helps of Christian life, the highest place is due to the Christian church and its ordinances. I have been greatly misunderstood with respect to my estimate of the Christian church, as distinguish ed from the Christian religion. I agree so far with those, from whom I in other things most widely differ, that I hold the revival of the church of Christ in its full perfection, to be the one great end to which all our efforts should be directed. This is with me no new belief, but one which I have entertained for many years. It was impressed most strongly upon me, as it appears to have been upon others, by the remarkable state of affairs and of opinions whi ch we witnessed in this

country about nine or ten years ago; and everything since that time has confirmed it in my mind more and more.

Others, according to their own statement, received the same impression from the phenomena of the same period. But the movement had begun earlier; nor should I object to call it, as they do, a movement towards "something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century[1]." It began, I suppose, in the last ten years of the last century, and has ever since been working onwards, though for a long time slowly and secretly, and with no di stinctly marked direction. But still, in philosophy and general literature, there have been sufficient proofs that the pendulum, which for nearly two hundred years had been swinging one way, was now beginning to swing back again; and as its last oscillation brought it far from the true centre, so it may be, that its present impulse may be no less in excess, and thus may bring on again, in after ages, another corresponding reaction.

[1]See Mr. Newman's Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 27.

Now if it be asked what, setting aside the metaphor, are the two points between which mankind has been thus moving to and fro; and what are the tendencies in us which, thus alternately predominating, give so different a character to different periods of the human history; the answer is not easy to be given summarily, for the generalisation which it requires is almost beyond the compass of the human mind. Several phenomena appear in each period, and it would be easy to give any one of these as marking its tendency: as, for instance, we might describe one period as having a tendency to despotism, and another to licentiousness: but the true answer lies deeper, and can be only given by discovering that common element in human nature which, in religion, in politics, in philosophy, and in litera ture, being modified by the subject-matter of each, assumes in each a different form, so that its own proper nature is no longer to be recognized. Again, it would be an error to suppose that either of the two tendencies which so affect the course of human affairs were to be called simply bad or good. Each has its good and evil nicely intermingled; and taking the highest good of each, it would be difficult to say which was the more excellent;--taking the last corruption of each, we could not determine which, was the more hateful. For so far as we can trace back the manifold streams, flowing some from the eastern mountains, and some from the western, to the highest springs from which they rise, we find on the one side the ideas of truth and justice, on the other those of beauty and love;--things so exalted, and so inseparably united in the divine perfections, that to set either two above the other were presumptuous and profane. Yet these most divine things separated from each other, and defiled in their passage through this lower world, do each assume a form in human nature of very great evil: the exclusive and corrupted love of truth and justice becomes in man selfish atheism; the exclusive and corrupted worship of beauty and love becomes in man a bloody and a lying idolatry.

Such would be the general theory of the two great currents in which human affairs may be said to have been successively drifting. But real history, even the history of all mankind, and much more that of a ny particular age or country, presents a picture far more complicated. F irst, as to time: as the vessels in a harbour, and in the open sea without i t, may be seen swinging

with the tide at the same moment in opposite directions; the ebb has begun in the roadstead, while it is not yet high water in the harbour; so one or more nations may be in advance of or behind the general tendency of their age, and from either cause may be moving in the opposite direction. Again, the tendency or movement in itself is liable to frequent interruptions, and short counter-movements: even when the tide is coming in upon the shore, every wave retires after its advance; and he who follows incautiously the retreating waters, may be caught by some stronger billow, overwhelming again for an instant the spot which had just been left dry. A child standing by the sea-shore for a few minutes, and watching this, as it seems, irregular advance and retreat of the water, could not tell whether it was ebb or flood; and we, standing for a few years on the shore of time, can scarcely tell whether the particular movement which we witness is according to or against the general tendency of the whole period. Farther yet, as these great tendencies are often interrupted, so are they continually mixed: that is, not only are their own good and bad elements successively predominant, but they never have the world wholly to themselves: the opposite tendency exists, in an under-current it may be, and not lightly perceptible; but here and there it struggles to the surface, and mingles its own good and evil with the predominant good and evil of its antagonist. Wherefore he who would learn wisdom fro m the complex experience of history, must question closely all its phenomena, must notice that which is less obvious as well as that which is most palpable; must judge not peremptorily or sweepingly, but with reserves a nd exceptions; not as lightly overrunning a wide region of the truth, but thankful if after much pains he has advanced his landmarks only a little; if he has gained, as it were, but one or two frontier fortresses, in which he can establish himself for ever.

Now, then, when Mr. Newman describes the movement o f the present moment as being directed towards "something better and deeper than satisfied the last century," this description, although in some sense true, is yet in practice delusive; and the delusion which lurks in it is at the root of the errors of Mr. Newman and of his friends. They regard the tendencies of the last century as wholly evil; and they appear to extend this feeling to the whole period of which the last century was the close, and which began nearly with the sixteenth century. Viewing in this light the last three hundred years, they regard naturally with excessive favour the preceding period, with which they are so strongly contrasted; and not the less because this period has been an object of scorn to the times which have followed it. They are drawn towards the enemy of their enemy, and they fancy that it must be in all points their enemy's opposite. And if the faults of its last decline are too palpable to be denied, they ascend to its middle and its earlier course, and finding that its evils are there less flagrant, they abandon themsel ves wholly to the contemplation of its good points, and end with maki ng it an idol. There are few stranger and sadder sights than to see men judging of whole periods of the history of mankind with the blindness of party-spirit, never naming one century without expressions of contempt or abhorrence, never mentioning another but with extravagant and undistinguishing admiration.

But the worst was yet to come. The period which Mr. Newman and his friends so disliked, had, in its religious character, been distinguished by its professions of extreme veneration for the Scriptures; in its quarrel with the

system of the preceding period, it had rested all its cause on the authority of the Scripture,--it had condemned the older system because Scripture could give no warrant for it. On the other hand, the partizans of the older system protested against the exclusive appeal to Scripture ; there was, as they maintained, another authority in religious matters; if their system was not supported in all its points by Scripture, it had at least the warrant of Christian antiquity. Thus Mr. Newman and his friends found that the times which they disliked had professed to rely on Scripture alone; the times which they loved had invested the Church with equal authority. It was natural then to connect the evils of the iron age, for so they regarded it, with this notion of the sole supremacy of Scripture; and it was no less natural to associate the blessings of their imagined golden age with its avowed reverence for the Church. If they appealed only to Scripture, they echoed the languag e of men whom they abhorred; if they exalted the Church and Christian antiquity, they sympathised with a period which they were resolved to love. Their theological writings from the very beginning have too plainly shown in this respect the force both of their sympathies and their antipathies.

Thus previously disposed, and in their sense or apprehension of the evil of their own times already flying as it were for refuge to the system of times past, they were overtaken by the political storm of 1831, and the two following years. That storm rattled loudly, and alarmed many who had viewed the gathering of the clouds with hope and pleasure; no wonder, then, if it produced a stormy effect upon those who viewed it as a mere calamity, an evil monster bred out of an evil time, and fraught with nothing but mischief. Farther, the government of the country was now, for the first time for many years, in the hands of men who admired the spirit of the age, nearly as much as Mr. Newman and his friends abhorred it. Thus all things seemed combined against them: the spirit of the period which they so hated was riding as it were upon the whirlwind; they knew not where its violence might burst; and the government of the country was, as they thought, dri ving wildly before it, without attempting to moderate its fury. Already th ey were inclined to recognise the signs of a national apostasy.

But from this point they have themselves written th eir own history.--Mr. Percival's letter to the editor of the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal, which was reprinted in the Oxford Herald of January 80, 1841, is really a document of the highest value. It acquaints us, from the very best authority, with the immediate occasion of the publication of the Tracts for the Times, and with the objects of their writers. It tells us whither their eyes were turned for deliverance; with what charm they hoped to allay the troubled waters. Ecclesiastical history would be far more valuable than it is, if we could thus learn the real character and views of every church, or sect, or party, from itself, and not from its opponents.

Mr. Percival informs us, that the Irish Church Act of 1833, which abolished several of the Irish Bishoprics, was the immediate occasion of the publication of the Tracts for the Times; and that the objects of that publication were, to enforce the doctrine of the apostolical succession, and to preserve the Prayer Book from "the Socinian leaven, with which we had reason to fear it would be tainted by the parliamentary alteration of it, which at that time was openly talked of." But the second of these objects is not mentioned in the more formal

statements which Mr. Percival gives of them; and in what he calls the "matured account" of the principles of the writers, it is only said, "Whereas there seems great danger at present of attempts at unauthorized and inconsiderate innovation as in other matters so especially in the service of our Church, we pledge ourselves to resist any attempt that may be made to alter the Liturgy on insufficient authority: i.e. without the exercise of the free and deliberate judgment of the Church on the alteration s proposed." It would seem, therefore, that what was particularly deprecated was "the alteration of the Liturgy on insufficient authority," without reference to any suspected character of the alteration in itself. But at any rate, as all probability of any alteration in the Liturgy vanished very soon after the publication of the tracts began, the other object, the maintaining the doctri ne of the apostolical succession, as it had been the principal one from the beginning, became in a very short time the only one.

The great remedy, therefore, for the evils of the times, the "something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century," or, at least, the most effectual means of attaining to it, is declared to be the maintenan ce of the doctrine of apostolical succession. Now let us hear, for it is most important, the grounds on which this doctrine is to be enforced, and the reason why so much stress is laid on it. I quote again from Mr. Percival's letter.

"Considering, 1. That the only way of salvation is the partaking of the body and blood of our sacrificed Redeemer;

"2. That the mean expressly authorized by him for that purpose is the holy sacrament of his supper;

"3. That the security by him no less expressly authorized, for the continuance and due application of that sacrament, is the apostolical commission of the bishops, and under them the presbyters of the church;

"4. That under the present circumstances of the church in England, there is peculiar danger of these matters being slighted and practically disavowed, and of numbers of Christians being left, or tempted to precarious and unauthorized ways of communion, which must terminate often in vital apostasy:--

"We desire to pledge ourselves one to another, rese rving our canonical obedience, as follows:--

"1. To be on the watch for all opportunities of inculcating, on all committed to our charge, a due sense of the inestimable privilege of communion with our Lord, through the successors of the apostles, and o f leading them to the resolution to transmit it, by his blessing, unimpaired to their children."

Then follow two other resolutions: one to provide and circulate books and tracts, to familiarize men's minds with this doctrine; and the other, "to do what lies in us towards reviving among churchmen, the practice of daily common prayer, and more frequent participation of the Lord's Supper."

The fourth resolution, "to resist unauthorized alterations of the Liturgy," I have already quoted: the fifth and last engages generally to place within the reach of all men, accounts of such points in our discipli ne and worship as may