The Spiritual Faith Cure.
By Editor
THE faith cure for the body has not many adherents; faith cure for the spirit has more. There are not a great many who believe that God will heal the body without obedience to the laws of health and the use of remedies; there are a great many who imagine that God will heal the soul that is passive and does nothing. We hope it is needless to say that the Christian Union believes in faith cure for both body and soul; but the faith that cures is a faith that works. In inveighing against the spiritual faith cure we inveigh against the doctrine that God will intervene to cure a man of sin without any activity or energy or will-power on the patient's part. There is in Boston a Willard Tract Repository, which publishes some excellent little tracts and books. It is doing good service in holding before the churches a high standard of character, and urging upon every Christian a complete and perfect consecration of himself to God and his service. But its work is marred by this false and unscriptural doctrine of spiritual faith cure. From a bundle of its tracts lying before us as we write, we select one entitled "The Way to Be Holy," and from it we quote a few sentences, because they illustrate, if they do not define, the spiritual faith cure. The italics are our own:— "Your own doings, and your want of faith in Christ, are your only hindrances to the life of practical holiness for which your soul longs. Lay them aside, just as you did at the time of your conversion, and come to Jesus as trustingly as you did then, and he will do the work. . . . Exactly as we could do nothing toward our redemption in the first place, just so, being redeemed, we can do nothing toward conforming our lives to the standard set before the redeemed ones. . . . Our only remedy in either case is to abandon ourselves to the Lord Jesus and to trust him to do for us all that we need." The so-called Holiness Conventions and sanctification-meetings utter the same teaching, and are for the most part faith-cure assemblages. In so far as they urge a higher and holier life upon Christians, a more vital faith in a living, personal God, and a livelier hope of present salvation from sin, here and now, we commend them heartily; in so far as they teach that doing nothing is the best manifestation of faith, we condemn them heartily. Their end we commend, their means we condemn. It must be frankly admitted that evangelical teaching has been sometimes so phrased as to give apparent sanction to the faith-cure folly. Luther in his preface to the Galatians, defines the righteousness of faith as "a mere passive righteousness:" "In this we work nothing, we render nothing unto God, but only we receive and suffer another to work in us." In our intense desire to antagonize the doctrine of justification by works, we have allowed ourselves to apparently sanction a justification without working. There is a truth, a grand, sublime truth, perhaps the very grandest in theological science or spiritual experience, underlying this "nothing-to-do" error. The "doing" of most of the religious systems of the world is in order to placate God, to produce an effect upon him, to induce him to pity, to forgive, to help. For this are all sacrifices and most ceremonials, all self-flagellations and most self-inflicted penances. This notion, that God is hard to be entreated, and that pity must be wrung from him by man, cannot be truthfully said to be banished from even Protestant experiences or Protestant services. If any one doubts this, let him listen to the average prayers in an average prayer-meeting, or let him even read thoughtfully, and as though it were an original experience, the litany of the "Book of Common Prayer." Now, against this notion the whole force of biblical, and especially of New Testament teaching is directed. Nothing is to be done to induce God to pity, to help, to save. No sacrifice, no ceremony, no prayer or tear, no sin vanquished or virtue achieved, is required to purchase his sympathy. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us;" "For his great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sins"—this is the theme of that wonderful symphony of God's grace which we call the Bible. This is the truth which the faith cure tries to utter, and really, by its perversions, obscures. The soul can no more be saved from sin than the body from disease, without doing its duty. There is no way by which either can have health without obeying the laws of health. "Professor Sargent, I want to add two inches to my chest measure; will you exercise for me in your gymnasium, and add it?" "No! but I will tell you how to exercise." "Doctor, I do not sleep well at night, and so I wake unrefreshed in the morning. Will you sleep for me?" "No, sir! No man can sleep for another. But if you will obey my directions I will enable you to sleep." "O thou Physician of souls, subdue my appetite, destroy my pride, take away my temper." "Never! But I will tell you how you can subdue your appetite, destroy your pride, vanquish your temper." Salvation and sanctification are descriptive of character; the first a character begun, the second a character completed. Character can never be furnished ready-made. Virtue is never and never can be vicariously achieved for another. Vicarious suffering is the law of the universe; but vicarious righteousness—never! The mother suffers for her child; and by her suffering she saves him. But no courage of mother can serve for courage in a coward boy, no purity of mother for purity in a sensual boy. Righteousness can never be put on from without. It must grow from within. The do-nothing theory of salvation and sanctification has no real warrant in Scripture. The direction to do nothing was never given by Christ, nor by Paul. When Peter, amazed at the draught of fishes, fell at Christ's feet and cried, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" the Lord did not reply, Do nothing, only believe; he replied, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." When, later, the recreant disciple had denied his Lord, the Lord did not say to him, You can do nothing toward conforming your life to the standard set before my redeemed ones. He said, Lovest thou me? then feed my sheep. When the woman taken in adultery lifted her shrinking eyes to the Saviour, as he rose from his writing on the ground after the last accuser had left, he did not say to her, "Trust in me to do all that you need;" he said, "Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more." Do nothing? To what a battle, with all the influences of evil associates dragging her down, and all Pharisaic purity pushing her down, did these words invite her! When Saul cried out, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" the Lord did not rebuke the question, but bade the questioner go into Damascus, and there it should be told him what he should do. Ask Isaiah the conditions of salvation and sanctification: "Cease to do evil; learn to do well." Ask Paul: "Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth." Ask Peter: "Give diligence to make your calling and election sure." Ask John: "He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death." These are not the advocates of a do-nothing faith cure, of a passive righteousness. Our churches are full of men and women who practically act as though they believed that the church was a kind of spiritual faith-cure hospital. The Roman Catholic lives a careless life, and trusts to extreme unction at death to save him. The Protestant lives an equally careless life, scarcely thinking of moral growth from Monday morning to Saturday night, and expects a Sunday sermon to blot out the past and rectify the present. Such men build their hopes on a "passive righteousness," and trust to the delusive folly of a faith cure—a folly greater in the spiritual than in the physical realm. Nay! it is not faith cure; for faith is obedience, and works by love.—Christian Union.