which is intended to be emphasized. But do we not shoot beyond the mark when we seem to hang sal- vation purely on the human will? And should we not stop to consider that, if so we seem to open salva- tion to “whosoever will" on the one hand, on the other we open it only to “whosoever will"? And who, in this world of death and sin, I do not say merely will, but can, will the good? Is it not forever true that grapes are not gathered from thorns, nor figs from thistles; that it is only the good tree which brings forth good fruit while the evil tree brings forth always and everywhere only evil fruit? Itis not only Hannah More’s Black Giles the Poacher who may haply “find it difficult to repent when he will.” It is useless to talk of salvation being for “whosoever will" in a world of universal “‘won’t.” Here is the real point of difficulty: how, where, can we obtain the will? Let others rejoice in a “whosoever will gospel": for the sinner who knows himself to be a sinner, and knows what it is to be a sinner, only a “God will” gospel will suffice. If the gospel is to be committed to the dead wills of sinful men, and there is nothing above and beyond, who then can be saved?
As a recent writer, who makes no great claim to special orthodoxy but has some philosophical insight, points out, “the self that is to determine is the same as the self that is to be determined”; “the self which according to Pelagius is to make one good is the bad self that needs to be made good.” “Тһе disease is in the will, not in some part of ourselves other than the
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THE PLAN OF SALVATION
will which the will can control. How can the diseased will provide the cure?" ^ “Тһе seat of the problem is our wills; we could be good if we would, but we won't; and we can't begin to will it, unless we will so to begin, that is, unless we already willit. ‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? І thank my God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ I am told to repent if I would be forgiven; but how can I repent? I only do what is wrong because I like it, and I can't stop liking it or like something else better because I am told to do so, nor even because it is proved that it would be better for me. If I am to be changed, some- thing must lay hold of me and change me." * “Can peach renew lost bloom?" asks Christina G. Rossetti, more poetically, but with the same pungent. point:
Can peach renew lost bloom,
Or violet lost perfume,
Or sullied snow turn white as over-night?
Man cannot compass it, yet never fear:
The leper Naaman
Shows what God will and can.
God who worked then is working here;
Wherefore let shame, not gloom, betinge thy brow. God who worked then is working now.
It is only in the loving omnipotence and omnipotent
love of God that a sinner can trust. “Christ” cries
Charles H. Spurgeon,* “is not ‘mighty to save’ those
who repent, butis not able to make men repent. He will
carry those to heaven who believe; but he is moreover
mighty to give men new hearts, and to work faith in [58]
AUTOSOTERISM
them. He is mighty to make the man who hates holiness, love it, and to constrain the despiser of his name to bend the knee before him. Nay, this is not all the meaning, for the divine power is equally seen in the after-work. . . . He is mighty to keep his people holy after he has made them so, and to preserve them in fear and love, until he consummates their spiritual existence in heaven.”
If it were not so, the case of the sinner were desperate. It is only in almighty grace that a sinner can hope; for it is only almighty grace that can raise the dead. What boots it to send the trumpeter crying amid the serried ranks of the dead: “The gates of heaven stand open: whosoever wil may enter in"? The real question which presses is, Who will make these dry bones live? As over against all teaching that would tempt man to trust in himself for any, even the smallest part, of his salvation, Christianity casts him utterly on God. It is God and God alone who saves, and that in every element of the saving process. “If there be but one stitch," says Spurgeon aptly, “in the celestial garment of our righteousness which we ourselves are to put in, we are lost."
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SACERDOTALISM
The Lord added to them day by day those that were saved.—Acts 2: 47.
III SACERDOTALISM