Real Religion

I cannot, like some professors, take to myself wings to soar when I please to the third heaven, nor kindle a fire and compass myself about with sparks, and then walk in the light of it. I am obliged to come to this: “Behold, He shutteth up a man, and there is no opening.” “When He hideth His face, who can behold Him?” Some of our professors here can always lay hold of the promises, and so strong is their faith that they neither doubt nor fear; but this is a religion which I cannot come up to. And when I see that this faith of theirs is the work of man, and born of the flesh, I tell them that I would sooner have my unbelief than their faith. Not that I think unbelief and darkness good things, but this I learn from them, which few know in our day, that faith is “the gift of God”; and this, too, I know, that the feeling sense of our own helplessness and unbelief is the necessary, yea, the only preparation of the soul for the inward discovery and manifestation of Christ. We have, in our day, too many spiritual thieves and liars. They first get their assurance by climbing over the wall, and then “boast themselves of a false gift,” which, as Solomon says, is “like clouds and wind without rain,” i.e., has all the appearance of watering our soul, and then goes off without giving them a drop. From such a religion may the Lord keep us.

It is better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud. It is better to sigh and mourn over a heart full of unbelief and corruption than to take to ourselves one promise which the Lord does not apply. Many will tell us to believe, and say, “Ye are idle, ye are idle,” who have never been in the iron furnace, nor sighed out of the low dungeon. I believe, for myself, that the souls which can really and spiritually rejoice in the Lord are very few, and that their experience is very much checkered with seasons of darkness and distress. And as for that religion which tells us we must rejoice because believers are told in the Bible to rejoice always, it savors to me too much of man’s power and free will to be of God. The religion which I want is that of the Holy Ghost. I know nothing but what He teaches me; I feel nothing but what He works in me; I believe nothing but what He shows me; I only mourn when He smites the rock; I only rejoice when He reveals the Savior. I do not say I can rise up to all this, but this is the religion I profess, seek after, and teach; and when the blessed Spirit is not at work in me, and with me, I fall back into all the darkness, unbelief, earthliness, idleness, carelessness, infidelity, and helplessness of my Adam nature.

Religion is a supernatural and mysterious thing. It is as much hidden from us, until God reveals it, as God Himself, who dwells in the light which no man can approach unto. It is the work of the Holy Ghost from first to last; and no text is truer than this: “No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.” He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and He will have compassion on whom He will have compassion; and these favored objects of mercy, and these alone, know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent; and that happy soul which is thus experimentally taught of the Holy Ghost, and brought into a heavenly fellowship with the Father and the Son, will enjoy forever the Triune Jehovah, when professors, high and low, doctrinal, experimental, and practical, Calvinist and Arminian, will be cast into the blackness of darkness forever. A man thus experimentally taught will be humble and abased, will be swift to hear and slow to speak, will have a tender conscience and a godly fear, will seek rather to please God than man, and would sooner speak with God for five minutes than with a frothy professor for an hour. This religion I am seeking after, though miles and miles from it; but no other will satisfy or content me.

“No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.”

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