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The Necessity of Regeneration.

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"But if the susceptibility for Christ attests the dignity of man, how much more the actual reception of him. Is there glory in seeking for God, how much greater is the glory of finding God in Christ. When we exercise that repentance which God requires, we judge ourselves; and when we truly appropriate the faith which God sets before us in the risen Redeemer, then he, by whom God will judge the world in righteousness, is no more our judge, but the finisher of our redemption; we are in him and he in us, and all things which he now possesses as the glorified Son of Man, he communicates to us, so that we, becoming like the image of the first born among many brethen, may possess with Him the kingdom that his Father has appointed. After this faith, my dear friends, let us strive with all the earnestness of our souls, in order that that on which the true dignity of man rests, communion with God, may be in us not merely a capability or a possibility, but may become more and more real. Even in our times and in the midst of Christendom, many still, like the Athenians, worship the unknown God, uncertain what they have in him and what they should expect from him, vacillating in their opinions and following every wind of doctrine. With them God is the name by which they denote a dark, indefinite feeling, as it occasionally reminds them of something above them who is higher and infinite. We would rejoice that this warning voice is not yet mute; but we would say to them that our God no more dwells in the darkness, as he once did for Israel, that the mystery is revealed in the word and the gospel, that the unknown God has made himself known in Christ."

In the sermon on regeneration, the author considers particularly what certain opponents of this doctrine allege as sufficient substitutes for it, namely, that man, without regeneration, can attain the end of his being, either by intellectual cultivation, by integrity and virtue, or by an indirect participation in the effects of Christianity. We quote one or two sentences under the first

head.

"It is an inner world which man here opens to himself, and which he conquers, while he creates. The manifold problems which meet him as they require, his time for higher thoughts and efforts, must withdraw him from what is vulgar and low, and preserve him from sinking down into the defiling fens of life. There is something noble in that he employs himself in the earnest pursuit of the objects of knowledge, not for the sake of any personal use or advantage, but from mere curiosity. Such toil bears in it

self a certain consecration; for the moment, a purifying power; man has now something elevated above the sensual world, which he seeks and loves, and to which he devotes himself. And besides, if the investigation leads to the ultimate grounds of all knowledge and existence, how great does our soul feel itself to be and how highly raised above the little things which else tempt one to sin! And the same praise-dare we deny it to the cultivation of the beautiful in poetry and other fine arts? Does not this stand in a relation not to be mistaken with striving for the good and the holy? How often do its rules forbid the same things which the moral law does not allow! How is such an employment fitted to give us an idea of the beauty of the perfect harmony in our life, which a sanctified will only can produce! How it moderates the inclinations, softens the manners, represses all the rough outbreaks of nature!

"Such then would be the intellectual cultivation which should lead individuals as well as nations most surely to the highest dignity of human life and guard them from destruction.-But were it actually the case, more than two thousand years since, mankind would have solved the problem. History informs us that there had then been a nation, the Greek, which had reached a height of cultivation in art and science, never seen before or since-to a summit from which by its works it could become the lawgiver of the most distant posterity. Where is this nation? Vanished long ago from the earth. When therefore the apostle Paul stepped on the great seat of this cultivation, he delayed not a moment to summon the Athenians from the schools of their philosophers to the despised Galilean; he called the whole great past of this people, with all their celebrated creations, times of ignorance. A time of ignorance it was, since in the midst of all their noble treasures of cultivation, they did not and could not possess the highest-the spirit of knowledge and of peace and of holiness in communion with the living God. And since they lacked this one thing, a poisonous breath arose from the splendid flowers of their cultivation, which infected the air and corroded the ground, which stunned the conscience and killed the moral sense, which blunted the feelings of the people in respect to the most shameless sins by daily familiarity and made their understanding only ingenious and creative in the arts of destruction, so that at length the most beautiful, the richest sown field, ever beheld in the garden of God, perished in a total putridity."

"Ye know well, for I speak to men of understanding, that this

1847.] Honor and Integrity not substitutes for Regeneration. 227 cultivation could only be of a genuine kind and actually valuable, when it was the fruit of earnest labor and effort. Think you really that a cultivation which was effected like that of the Greeks could ever become the universal possession of man? Certainly it needs only a glance on the world as it actually is, to scare away this marvellous dream. It is not merely that an innumerable multitude were not called, according to the measure of their gifts to the enjoyment of this higher cultivation. The essential arrangements of the earthly life will always render it necessary that the greater part of mankind should be specially devoted to manual employments, which will not allow them time to acquire intellectual cultivation, and to whom the possession and care of it would only be an evil. And if we now praise this cultivation as the one thing needful, what follows? What else than that the highest good was not intended for all, but only for select, highly favored natures. O then let these high words in praise of human cultivation be dumb! For this haughty culture wants nothing so much as the warm breath of love, of genuine humanity, without which certainly no one can attain to the true destiny of

man."

"You see how grievously we sin against our poor brethren when we put everything on the ground of mere intellectual education; it is not enough for us to care for ourselves only, unmindful of their true well-being; we thrust them down into the raging sea of sins and worldly cares, so that we only for ourselves may reach the shore. And would it were actually the shore that we attain. But on the heights of this cultivation, in all its grace and refinement, have not modern times shown us the deepest depravity of heart and life both in respect to nations and individuals? It is true that this culture cuts off the wilder shoots of the tree of sin; it represses the rougher sallies of selfish passion, and imparts to the manners in the common intercourse of life a virtuous appearance that looks like love, self-denial and humility; but as all its efforts in this respect are directed only to the outward show, it lets the poisonous root of that tree remain untouched. Intellectual cultivation, high as it may ever mount, never eradicates a single sinful tendency; it only refines the whole."

The following occurs under the second head,—the proposed substitution of honor and integrity for regeneration: "It is true that these men are moderate and honest and righteous in their dealings, so far as their view extends; but is there not a great defect in these children of duty and law, that their view ordina

rily reaches not to the deep roots of the moral life? When, therefore, they meet with opposing principles which proceed from these deep roots, where the struggle for something higher than their boasted notion of duty meets them, when especially they are thrown into great currents of life, how rapidly they lose this just moderation and forget their integrity and justice!" "If we look now over the whole of such a life, what a rare mixture of righteousness and unrighteousness, of adherence to duty and heedlessness, of power of self-denial and inability to restrain even the smallest violent propensity, of insight into the most distant objects and total blindness in respect to the nearest, of effort for that which is virtuous, and of an inconceivably calm acquiescence in evil! How can these things actually harmonize into one living whole? And still it even now exists, and innumerable individuals go on in their accustomed manner, till death that divides all things, separates here also, making manifest what was concealed. But must ye not then allow us thus to conclude: when ye are too weak, or too easy or too blinded to resist sin, still ye · are only indebted to the favor of circumstances, that ye have not already fallen off from your remaining duties. It only needs stronger temptations, directed in unfavorable moments on the weak side of your character, for you to apostatize here also. O dependent self-sufficiency and fragile, heroic virtue! Rich beggary! lofty nothingness! O proud adherence to duty, which in one hapless moment can change into bondage to sin!"

Under the last division, we translate the following: “Certain effects of the work of Christ, in the history of the human race, extend immeasurably further than the consciousness of communion with him, or the knowledge of his gospel. It flows around us like the air which man, without thinking of it, needs at every breath. Multitudes live under the institutions which Christianity has established and know it not. They enjoy every day its fruits and thank not the tree which bears them. The Christian religion has in all relations preserved and protected the dignity of man-the object of the redeeming love of God. It has procured the recognition of the true nature of marriage as the connection for life of one man with one woman, and, so far as its influence reaches, has removed the ancient degradation of the female It has freed the slave, and taught us in love to respect human rights in servants. It has connected nations more intimately with each other and has secured, in their wars, the rights of mankind. It has taken up the poor, the weak and the suffering,

sex.

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The Prayer at the Conclusion of a Sermon.

239

in all the departments of life, and placed them, as the helpless, under the special protection of the strong and rich. It has founded asylums for the orphan, the poor and the sick, caring for the instruction of the smallest, and establishing refuges for the depraved and deeply fallen to the saving of their souls. All this has it accomplished, and much more would it have attained, in all the departments of life, if it had not had to do with a race of stiff necks, of unbridled inclinations and of indolence hard to be overcome."

"And if they now enjoy the things which regeneration brings to man, does not this regeneration seem superfluous in attaining the end of our being before God? But it needs only a simple consideration to convince you, that there is no truth in this conclusion. If ye only partake in the general effects of the gospel, without truly appropriating to yourselves, its fundamental provisions, can ye say that ye are truly free and independent in your relation to the gospel? Certainly not; but it is a dark power which forces and bears you on, without your knowing the awakening force, the Divine power, to which you owe what is best and noblest in your life, and which still ever remains at a certain distance and in alienation from you, though it continues near you, in order to unite you wholly with it. In this your unconscious state, you are not free, but simply dependent; and think you that it is worthy of you, to remain voluntarily in this dark dependence, when ye could be truly free?"

O then turn with all your heart to the source of the mighty stream on whose banks ye dwell, whose waters fertilize your land and moisten your seed and quench your thirst. Make ye only this thing clear to yourselves, that the entire form of the life to which ye belong, the essential institutions in which it moves, have their deepest ground in the appearance of Jesus Christ among men, while yet no feeling of your necessity leads you to him. This one thing must have already prostrated you in deep humility at his feet, to listen to his words, as he still speaks to us to-day in the gospel, and to learn fundamentally what he has to say to us of his Father, and of us, and of himself."

Some of these discourses are introduced or concluded with a brief prayer. This practice, which might appear constrained and formal in the printed discourses of an American clergyman, does not seem incongruous in the sermons of our German friends. This perhaps may be attributed in part to the greater simplicity and fervor of the latter. We translate one or two specimens: VOL. IV. No. 14.

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