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All true religion is or brings forth an essential union and communion of the Spirit of the creature with the Spirit of the Creator: God in it and it in God, one life, one light and one love. The Spirit of God first gives, or sows, the seed of divine union in the soul of every man and it is quickened, raised and brought forth to a fullness and growth of a life in God. Take a similitude of this as follows: The beginning or seed of animal breath must first be born in the creature from the spirit of this world ["that which is born of the flesh is flesh"]. In like manner divine faith, hope, love and resignation to God are in the religious life, its acts of respiration, which so long as they are true, unite God and the creature in the same living and essential manner ["That which is born of the Spirit is spirit"] as animal respiration unites the breath of the animal with the breath of this world.
No animal could begin to respire or unite with the breath of this world unless it has its beginning to breathe begotten in it from the air of this world. So it is equally certain that no creature angel or man could begin to be religious or breathe forth the divine affections of faith, love and desire towards God, unless a living seed of these divine affections was, by the Spirit of God, first begotten in it. And as a tree or plant can only grow and bear fruit by the same power that first gave birth to the seed, so faith and hope and love towards God can only grow and bear [the fruit of the Spirit] by the same power that begot the first seed of them in the soul. Therefore, divine, immediate inspiration and divine religion are inseparable in the nature of the thing.
Take away inspiration, or suppose it to cease, and no religious acts or affections can give forth anything that is godly or divine. For the creature can offer or return nothing to God but what it has first received from Him; therefore, if it is to offer and send up to God affections and aspirations that are divine and godly, it must of all necessity have the divine and godly nature living and breathing in it. [Jesus said, "The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what he sees the Father do: for whatsoever things he does, these also does the Son likewise"]. Can anything reflect light before it has received it? Or any other light than what it has received? Can any creature breathe forth earthly or diabolical affections before it is possessed of an earthly or diabolical nature [See Matthew 7:17-20]? This is as possible as for any creature to have divine affections rising up and dwelling in it either before or any further than it partakes of the divine nature dwelling and operating in it.
A religious faith that is uninspired, a hope or love that proceeds not from the immediate working of the divine nature within us can no more do any divine good to our souls, or unite them with the goodness of God, than hunger after earthly food can feed us with the immortal bread of heaven. All that the natural or uninspired man does or can do in the church has no more of the truth or power of divine worship in it than what he does in the field or shop through a desire of riches. And the reason is because all the acts of the natural man, whether relating to matters of religion or the world, must be equally selfish and there is no possibility of their being otherwise. For self-love, self-esteem, self-seeking and living wholly to self are as strictly the whole of all that is or possibly can be in the natural man as in the natural beast; the one can no more be better or act above this nature than the other. Neither can any creature be in a better or higher state than this until something supernatural is found in it. This supernatural "something" in the scripture called the Word, the Spirit, or Inspiration of God is the only source of any good thought about God that man can have. This something is the only source of the power to have more heavenly desires in man's spirit than he has in his flesh.
A religion that is not wholly built upon this supernatural ground but solely stands on the power of reasoning and conclusions of the natural uninspired man has not so much as the shadow of true religion in it. It is nothing in the same sense as an idol is said to be nothing, because the idol has nothing in it that is pretended by it. The work of religion has no divine good in it, except when it brings forth and keeps up essential union of the spirit of man with the Spirit of God. This essential union can only be made through love on both sides that works by the same essential nature of God [See Galatians 5:6].
No man therefore can reach God with his own love or have union with Him by it, but he who is inspired with that One, same Spirit of love with which God loved Himself from all eternity and before there was any creature. Infinite hosts of new created heavenly beings can begin no new kind of love of God, nor have the least power of beginning to love Him at all, but so far as His own Holy Spirit of love is brought to life in them. This love that was then in God alone, can be the only love in creatures that can draw them to God; they can have no power of cleaving to Him, of willing what He wills or adoring the divine nature, but by partaking of that eternal Spirit of love. Therefore the continual, immediate inspiration or operation of the Holy Spirit is the one, and only possible ground of our continually loving God. And of this inspired love (and no other) St. John says, "He that dwells in love dwells in God." Suppose it to be any other love brought forth by any other thing except the Spirit of God breathing His own love in us, and then it cannot be true that he who dwells in such love dwells in God.
Divine inspiration was essential to man's first created state. The Spirit of the triune God who breathed into him was what made him a holy creature in the image and likeness of God. To have no other mover to live under, no other guide or leader but the Spirit, was what constituted all the holiness that the first man could have from God. Had he not been thus at the first, God in him and he in God, brought into the world as a true offspring and real birth of the Holy Spirit, no dispensation of God to fallen man would have directed him to the Holy Spirit or ever have made mention of His inspiration in man. Fallen man could be directed to nothing as his good, except what he had and was his good before he fell. Had not the Holy Spirit been his first life in and by which he lived, no inspired prophets among the sons of fallen Adam had ever been heard of or any holy men speaking as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. For the thing would have been impossible; no fallen man could have been inspired by the Holy Spirit except the first life of man was true and born from above. Every fallen man had by the mercy and free grace of God a secret remains of his first life preserved in him, though hidden or rather swallowed up by flesh and blood. These "secret remains" signified and assured to Adam by the name of a "bruiser of the serpent" and "seed of the woman," was his only capacity to be called and quickened again into his first life by new breathings of the Holy Spirit in him.
Hence, it plainly appears that the gospel state could not be God's last dispensation or the finishing of man's redemption unless its whole work was a work of the Spirit of God in the spirit of man. It brought the thing itself (or the substance of all former types and shadows) into real enjoyment so as to be possessed by man in spirit and in truth. Now, the thing itself-and for the sake of which all God's dispensations have been-is that first life of God that was essentially born in the soul of the first man, Adam, and to which he died. But now if the gospel dispensation brings the end of all types and shadows and brings forth again in man a true and full birth of that Holy Spirit [See John 3:5-7]that he had at first, then it must be plain that the work of this dispensation must be solely and immediately the work of the Holy Spirit. If it was impossible for man to have a holy nature and spirit at first except as an offspring of a holy God at his creation [See Luke 3:38], it is certain from the nature of the thing that fallen man, dead to his first holy nature, can have that same holy nature again only by the operation of that same Holy Spirit, the Spirit whose breath first gave him the holy nature and life in God [See Romans 5:15].
Therefore immediate inspiration is as necessary to make fallen man alive again unto God as it was to make man at first a living soul after the image and in the likeness of God. And continual inspiration is as necessary as man's continuance in his redeemed state. This is a certain truth that what alone begins or gives life must of all necessity be the only continuance or preservation of life. The second step can only be taken by what gave power to take the first. No life can continue in the goodness of its first created or redeemed state except by continuing under the influence of and working with and by that powerful root or Spirit who at first created or redeemed it [See Galatians 3:1-3]. Every branch of the tree, though ever so richly brought forth, must wither and die as soon as it ceases to have continual union with and virtue from the root it first sprang from. This truth is absolutely grounded in the nature of the thing. Our Lord appeals to it as proof and full illustration of the necessity of His immediate indwelling, breathing and operating in the redeemed soul of man. He said, "I am the vine you are the branches, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, no more can you except you abide in me. He that abides in me and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit. If a man abides not in me he is cast forth as a withered branch; for without me you can do nothing" ( John xv).
Now from these words let this conclusion be here drawn, viz., that to turn to Christ as a light within us, to expect life from nothing but His holy birth raised within us, to give ourselves up wholly and solely to the immediate continual influx and operation of this Holy Spirit depending wholly upon it for every kind and degree of goodness and holiness that we want or can receive, is and can be nothing else but proud rank fanaticism. Now as infinitely absurd as this conclusion is, no one that condemns continual immediate inspiration as gross fanaticism can possibly do it with less absurdity or show himself a wiser man or better reasoner than he that concludes that without Christ we can do nothing. Therefore we ought to believe, expect to wait for and depend upon His continual immediate operation in everything that we do or would do well.
As to the "pride" charged upon this pretended fanaticism it is the same absurdity. Christ says, "without me you can do nothing," the same as if he had said, "As to yourselves and all that can be called your own, you are in helpless sin and misery and nothing that is good can come from you.. It must be done by the continual, immediate breathing and inspiration of another Spirit given by God. The same Spirit given to you to over-rule your own self-centered nature and to save and deliver you from all your own goodness, your own wisdom and learning that always were and always will be as corrupt, as impure, as earthly and sensual as your own flesh and blood. Now is there any selfishly, creaturely pride in fully believing this to be true and in acting in full conformity to it? If so, then he that confesses he neither has, nor ever can have, a single farthing but as it is freely given him from charity thereby declares himself to be a purse-proud vain boaster of his own wealth. Such is the spiritual pride of him who fully acknowledges that he neither has nor can have the least spark or breathing after goodness, but what is freely kindled or breathed into him by the Spirit of God. Again if it is spiritual pride to believe that nothing that we ever think or say or do, either in the church or our closets, can have any truth of goodness in it, except what is done solely and immediately by the Spirit of God in us, then it must also be said that to have religious humility we must never forget to take some share of our religious virtues to ourselves and not allow (as Christ has said) that without Him, we can do nothing that is good. It must also be said that St. Paul took too much upon himself when he said, "the life that I now live is not mine but Christ's that lives in me."
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