Augustinian doctrine of efficacious grace. No believer ever as- cribes his regeneration to himself. He does not recognize him- self as the author of the work, or his own relative goodness, his greater susceptibility to good impression, or his greater readiness of persuasion, as the reason why he rather than others, is the sub- ject of this change. He knows that it is a work of God ; and that it is a work of God's free grace. His heart responds to the language of the Apostle when he says : " Not by works of right- eousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost." (Tit. iii. 5.) Paul says of himself that God, hav- ing separated him fi'om his mother's womb called him by his grace. (Gal. i. 15.) There was nothing in him, who was injurious and a persecutor, to demand the special intervention of God in his behalf. So far from his referring his vocation to himself, to his greater readiness to yield to the influence of the truth, he con- stantly represents himself as a monument of the vi'onderful conde- scension and grace of God. He would have little patience to lis- ten to the philosophical account of conversion, which makes the fact so intelligible why one believes and another rejects the offer of the Gospel. Paul's conversion is the type of every genuine con- version from that day to this. The miraculous circumstances attending; it were simply adventitious. He Avas not converted by the audible words or by the blinding light, which encountered him on his way to Damascus. Our Lord said, " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." (Luke xvi. 31.) Neither was the change effected by a process of reasoning or persuasion. It was by the instantaneous opening his eyes to see the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ. And this opening his eyes was as obviously an act of unmerited favour and of God's almighty power, as was the restoration of the blind Bartimeus to sight. God, says the Apostle, revealed his Son in Him. The revelation was in- ternal and spiritual. What was true in his own experience, he tells us, is no less true in the ex])erience of other believers. " The god of this world," he says, " hath blinded the minds of them which believe not." But "• God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath sinned in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." (2 Cor. iv. 4, 6.) The truth concerning the person and work of Christ is presented objectively to all. The reason why some see it, and others do not, the Apostle refers to the simple fiat of Him
708 PART m. Ch. XIV. — VOCATION.
who said in the beginning, " Let there be light." This is Paul's theory of conversion.
Five thousand persons were converted on the day of Pente- cost. Most of them had seen the person and works of Christ. They had heard his instructions. They had hitherto resisted all the influences flowing from the exhibition of his character and the truth of his doctrines. They had remained obdurate and unbe- lieving under all the strivings of the Spirit who never fails to enforce truth on the reason and the conscience. Their conversion was sudden, apparently instantaneous. It was radical, affecting their whole character and determining their whole subsequent life. That this was not a natural change, effected by the influence of truth on the mind, or yjroduced by a process of moral suasion, is primd facie certain from the whole narrative and from the nature of the case. The Holy Ghost was poured out abundantly, as the Apostle tells, in fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel. Three classes of effects immediately followed. First, miracles ; that is, external manifestations of the immediate power of God. Secondly, the im- mediate illumination of the minds of the Apostles, by which they were raised from the darkness, prejudices, ignorance, and mistakes of tiieir Jewish state, into the clear comprehension of the Gospel in all its spirituality and catholicity. Thirdly, the instantaneous conversion of five thousand of those who with wicked hands had crucified the Lord of glory, into his broken-hearted, adoring, de- voted worshippers and servants. This third class of effects is as directly referred to the Spirit as either of the others. They all belong to the same general category. They were all supernatural, that is, produced by the immediate agency or volition of the Spirit of God. The Rationalist admits that they are all of the same general class. But he explains them all as natural effects, discarding all supernatural intervention. He has the advantage, so far as consistency is concerned, over those who admit the gift of tongues and the ilhnnination of the Apostles to be the effects of the immediate agency of the Spirit, but insist on explaining the conversions as the consequents of argument and persuasion. This explanation is not only inconsistent with the narrative, but with the Scriptural method of accounting for these wonderful effects. The Bible says they are produced by " the exceeding greatness of " the power of God ; that He raises those spiritually dead to a new life ; that He creates a new heart in them ; that He takes from them the heart of stone and gives them a heart of flesh ; that He opens their eyes, and commands light to shine into their hearts, as in the
g6.] OBJECTIONS. 709
beginning He commanded light to sliine in the darkness which brooded over chaos. The Bible, therefore, refers conversion, or regenei'ation, to the class of events due to the immediate exercise of the power of God.
The scenes of the day of Pentecost do not stand alone in the history of the Church. Similar manifestations of the ])ower of the Spirit have occurred, and are still occurring, in every part of the world. They all bear as unmistakably the impress of divine agency, as the miracles of the apostolic age did. We are justi- fied, therefore, in saying that all the phenomena of Christian ex- perience in the individual believer and in the Church collectively, bear out the Augustinian doctrine of Efficacious Grace, and are inconsistent with every other doctrine on the subject.
§ 6. Objections.
There are no specific objections against the doctrine of effica- cious grace which need to be considered. Those which are com- monly urged are pressed with equal force against other allied doc- trines, and have already come under review. Thus, —
1. It is urged that this doctrine destroys human responsibility. If we need a change which nothing but almighty power can effect l>efore we can do anything spiritually good, we cease to be respon- sible. This is the old objection that inability and responsibility are incompatible. This difficulty has been presented thousands of times \\\ the history of the Church, and has been a thousand times an- swered. It assumes unwarrantably that an inability which arises from character, and constitutes character, is incompatible with char- acter.
2. It is objected that if nothing but the creative power of God can enable us to repent and believe, we must patiently wait until that power is exerted. It is thus doubtless that those reason who are in love with sin and do not really desire to be delivered from it. Some leper, when Christ was upon earth, might have been so unreasonable as to argue that because he could not heal himself, he must wait until Christ came to heal him. The natural effect, however, of a conviction of utter helplessness is to impel to earnest a; plication to the source whence alone help can come. And to all who feel their sinfulness and their inability to deliver themselves, there is the promise, " Come unto me .... and I will give you rest." " Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." It will be time enough for any man to complain when he fails to experience Christ's heal-
710 PART m. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
ing power, after ha\*ing sought it as long, as earnestly, and as submissively to the directions of God's Word as its importance demands : or, even with the assiduity and zeal with which men seek the perishing things of this life.