and experiences were to indicate faith. The pharisaic spirit soon began to manifest itself, and Luther found it just as necessary to denounce with vigor the false views of spirituality as he had the doctrine of indulgences. But still that theology, which dwelt so exclusively on faith, which was supposed to be so exclusively concerned in the reconciliation to God, and union with God, has fastened in the mind a view of the moral life which has not been favorable to its development and cultivation. The same tendency was seen in the Wesleyan revival. There arose from that religious movement a feeling adverse to morality, which has not yet faded away. The great doctrine of that religious event was conversion, "a change of heart." It dealt with what Alexander Knox called the "interior things of religion." There was no doubt that the poor miners and others, to whom Wesley supposed that he was specially sent, were in need of such a view of religion as would arouse their feelings, and bring them to see the importance of repentance and a revolution of the mind with respect to the life of God in the soul. They were benighted and darkened, and hardened in sin. It was, no doubt, necessary to bring them to see the hideousness of sin, before any real reformation could take place. It was natural that Wesley's preachers should dwell especially on feeling, and that feeling should be unduly exalted, and that re liance should be placed on feeling; and, more than this, that any phase of character which was not feeling, should be distrusted and despised. This was what took place. Then followed what was called Antinomianism.' It was opposition to law, in respect to the exercise of faith as the means of justification. But it did not rest in doctrine. It manifested itself in the life, in works. There was a reliance on faith and feeling, and a neglect of works of morality as well as works of piety. This was not true of Wesley, but it became a great source of anxiety and trouble to him. This view of religion has come down to our day, and the relations of faith are so stated that the necessity of works is not appreciated. The contrast of feeling and of works is so emphasized that often works are forgotten. It has led very generally to the neglect of explicit teaching of the virtues of the moral life. "Mere morality" is a phrase which has been put forward in such a way as to obscure the view of the necessity of morality at all as part of the Christian character. No doubt, also, the view was influenced and strengthened by the tendency of the deistical controversy which was coming to a close when Wesley began his work. There had been an almost exclusive attention to the subject of morals, as the deists. of that day put forward morality as the only religion, 1 See Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, chap. ix. and as the only requirement by the Creator. As they not only ignored grace, but denied it, and the necessity of divine aid, it was to be supposed that the opposite view would be brought forward in an exclusive way, and that grace would be insisted on exclusively, and that works, moral virtues, would be spoken of as fruits simply of grace, or of the Christian character. The teaching of morals would also be connected with the teaching of the deists, and thus a prejudice be excited against any explicit teaching of morality. It was, no doubt, in this way that the preachers of grace, such as the followers of Wesley were, by keeping their minds steadily on one view, and on one side of a subject, came not only to lose sight of the other view, but to think that there was no other. Thus, they neglected to preach the necessity of cultivating the moral character as part of the religious character, which Christianity came to enforce and to build up. There was another way in which morals in connection with the Christian life came to be neglected. It arose from the one-sided view of theology which resulted from the rise of the evangelical party in the Church of England at the beginning of the present century. If the deistical controversy had ceased more than half a century before, it still had left its influence behind it. And Christianity in England was falling into the same hard and formal life into which -- the Jewish religion had fallen when our Lord appeared in Judæa. It was becoming the form without the life. But there was possibly a more intense worldliness in England. Religion, the binding one to God, belief in God and in His Son, and in spiritual influence, - this was losing its hold on the English people in high places. Among the laity, William Wilberforce, the father of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, saw this; and he did all that he could to revive the religious feeling and religious faith. He did what was a very courageous act for a layman to do at that time. He wrote a book on "A Practical View of Christianity," and joined with Bishop Wilson, and Simeon of Cambridge, and Scott the commentator, in presenting a new view of religion. They revived the Lutheran doctrine of faith, and presented it as the essential doctrine of the gospel. The merits of the Saviour were the object of faith and reliance. As it was a re-action from the deistical view of the previous century, so it naturally ran into the opposite extreme, and brought forward so exclusively the divine operation in the work of salvation, that it lost sight of the operation of the human will, and the relation of human actions. It was making conversion, the devotion of the life to God, so exclusively a divine work, that we were in danger of losing sight of our responsibility, and supposing that conversion was almost a miracle. It was becoming, in the view which was presented, a momentary work, and a divine work of such a nature that persons were waiting for conversion and renewal as the impotent folk were waiting at the Pool of Bethesda for the moving of the waters. In Scotland the same view of religion came to prevail. The great preacher Chalmers,' after he had been exercising his ministry for some time, came to experience this change. His biographer contrasts the two states. When Chalmers had entered on his work, he one day encountered a man treating a poor woman with impropriety. He gave the man a severe lecture on his conduct, and on his return home he wrote a sermon on courtesy. I think to-day we should say that it was a very proper sermon to be preached, and would lament that we did not hear more of the same character. But his biographer, on the contrary, regrets that it is defective in its views of evangelical religion, and says that Chalmers came to experience such a change in his religious views that he also lamented the tone and character of the 1 Dr. Newman, in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, p. 56, says that he read one of Romaine's books. He adds, "I received it at once, and believed the inward conversion of which I was conscious, and of which I am still more certain than that I have hands and feet," etc. The Rev. John Tulloch, D.D., LL.D., in his Movement of Religious Thought in Britain during the Nineteenth Century, p. 92, says that, "Dr. Chalmers, very much under the same influence, but at a more mature age, became the subject of a similar change." See also Hanna's Biography of Chalmers. |