Unity and Diversity
by J. C. Philpot
Next to the word of life and the preached gospel, and, we
may perhaps add, the conversation of the tried and favored among the people
of God, there are few things more edifying to the soul than the records
of the experience of the living family. Even in natural biography
there is for most readers a peculiar charm. The pulses of human life so beat
in unison, heart so echoes to heart in man to man, even as it lies buried
amid the ruins of the fall, that most are riveted by any well written,
detailed description of the varied circumstances and incidents that have
stamped a character on the writer's life. And most have a history to relate,
a tale of joys and sorrows, of marked providences and striking incidents,
were they able to recollect or willing to detail the varied events that have
tracked their path and lie buried in the secret depths of their bosom.
But if this be true naturally, how much more so
spiritually! Bunyan's "Grace Abounding," Hart's "Experience," Huntington's
"Kingdom of Heaven"—where, in the whole range of spiritual reading, can we
find three more edifying books? They are the concentrated kernel of well
near everything else that these gracious men of God wrote. "The Pilgrim's
Progress" lies deeply imbedded in "Grace Abounding"—the Hymns of Hart in his
"Experience"—and the more than twenty volumes of the immortal Coal-heaver in
"The Kingdom of Heaven taken by Prayer."
If our books were placed on different shelves according
to their worth and value, these would occupy the first, and few, perhaps, be
found worthy to stand by their side. But as preachers have been owned and
blessed who have not had the gifts and knowledge, power and utterance of
Huntington, and writers been honored who had neither the temptations of
Bunyan nor the experience of Hart, so there are other records of
Christian experience which well deserve a place on the shelves and in
the hearts of those that fear God. Where these accounts are genuine, clear,
deep, and powerful, they impress the heart and conscience in an
indescribable manner. The weighty things of eternity are brought vividly
before the eyes—the reality of true religion, the blessedness of those who
are taught and favored of God, the fallacy of a dead profession, the truth
of the Scriptures, the oneness of the Spirit's teaching—all seem to be
impressed on the soul of the spiritual reader when he sees them take this
living, breathing form, and thus stamped as by the creating hand of God.
And when we can follow the suffering saints from their
first convictions to their deliverance, and then all through the wilderness
of temptation to a dying bed, and see the faithfulness of God and the
efficacy of his superabounding grace manifested from first to last, how it
makes us admire and adore the depth and fullness of his infinite and eternal
love! Grace in the heart of a Christian is thus seen as in the mirror. In
the Person and work of the Lord Jesus is grace revealed, in the word of
truth is it made known; but it is only as let down into the heart that it is
tasted, handled, felt, and realized!
Now grace in the heart of one child of God will ever
unite with grace in the heart of another. If there be jars and divisions, if
there be dispute and contention in churches and among individuals, let not
these be fathered on religion. It is not grace but lack of it that gives
them birth and maintains them in being. So far as grace rules and reigns, so
far as the life of God is made manifest in the conscience, there is a
blessed bond of union among the family of God. This bond of union may indeed
lie very deep or be much hidden and covered—the brook of love that once
flowed strong and clear may be diminished to a trickling rill—circumstances
may separate the chief friends—ministers may be divided, churches split,
congregations dispersed, the dearest ties severed—because iniquity abounds
the love of many may wax cold.
But love itself can never die, for life and love are so
one that love can only die with life, and life the with love. It is one of
the three abiding graces; and as faith never ceases out of the believer's
heart, nor hope quite dies out of his soul, so love, however low it may sink
or cold it may grow, never gives up the spirit. If a man could cease to love
he would cease to believe; and if he could cease to believe he would cease
to live; and if he ceased to live he would die out of the body of Christ as
a dead branch out of a tree. But this we know is impossible with the people,
of God. "My sheep shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out
of my hand;" "Because, I live, you shall live also."
That there is a great diversity in the experience
of the Lord's people must be acknowledged; but there is a oneness,
notwithstanding, running through and shining forth amid that diversity. A
few moments may not be out of place in glancing at this subject. Oneness,
with diversity, is the peculiar feature of the work of God as seen in the
visible creation. It is the grand clue that leads the naturalist through the
labyrinth of created beings with which we are surrounded, from the stars
that spangle the sky to the grass that we tread under our feet. Not to
mention God's noblest work, man, created in his own image, after his own
likeness, in the features of whose countenance there is the greatest
diversity, with oneness of original design and form, there is not a leaf
that waves on the trees nor a flower that blows in garden or field that is
not different, and yet alike—alike in type and nature, different in size,
shape, or color; alike as a whole, different in detail.
And if natural creation present this beautiful
combination of variety and oneness, shall not the spiritual creation bear a
similar impress of God's handiwork? That there is a striking analogy between
the old creation and the new is most plain. The figures and parables,
comparisons, and similitudes that meet us in well near every page of Old
Testament and New amply prove this; for were there no resemblance between
the work of creation and the work of grace there could be no room for such
comparisons.
In true experience, then, viewed as the product of God's
hand, there must be oneness. It is "one Lord, one faith, one
baptism." "For as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members
of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For by one
Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles,
whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one
Spirit." (1 Cor. 12:12, 13.) Without this oneness there could be neither
union nor communion. In grace as in nature, there must be a face to look at
and love. "Your neck," says the Bridegroom to the Bride, "is as a tower of
ivory; your eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, your nose is as the tower of
Lebanon which looks toward Damascus." (Song 7:4.) The graces of the Spirit
typified by the features of her face drew forth his love. "Turn away your
eyes, for they have overcome me." (6:5.) When we gaze upon a human
countenance we instinctively look for features. Without eyes, nose, mouth,
and the other features, and these blended and assimilated in some proportion
and harmony, it would not be the face of a man but of a monster. In the work
of God on the soul, must there not be equally marked features? And do we not
look, as if instinctively, for them?
In hearing or reading, then, some professed account of
the Lord's dealings with the soul, are we not obliged sometimes to stop and
say, "Well, there is something here like face; but where are the eyes, where
the nose, the mouth, and chin? Why, with all its roundness and softness, its
form and coloring, it is after all but a mass of flesh—a misshapen mummy; or
if there be something in it like eyes, they are certainly in the wrong
place, in the cheek or chin, and the nose, where the forehead should be. Is
this a face to draw forth love? It rather creates disgust." Is there not
much of this in the religious world? Taking the word experience in the
broad, and, we may say, misused sense, of mere feelings, without
regard to their source, nature, and end, the world is full of it. Does not
the Wesleyan class leader catechize his young brood about their experience?
and does not the Romish priest draw forth the workings of the heart from his
female penitents? True experience is not mere feeling, as feeling, but an
experience of the power, presence, grace, and teaching of God in the soul.
When, then, we examine much that is called experience, it is like looking at
what claims to be a human face.
And what are many such countenances? Some are like the
gutta percha faces—the new toy that amuses children, which can be pulled
and squeezed, made long or short, round or square, to smile or frown, and
yet always in the end resumes its vacant, unmeaning stare. Hundreds of such
experiences are every year manufactured to order. Others possess no features
at all—a mere mummy and mass of flesh; or, if any features, all in their
wrong places. Liberty before bondage, gospel before law, deliverance before
the prison, pardon before guilt, assurance before unbelief, redemption
before captivity, mercy before misery; eyes, nose, mouth, chin, and cheeks
all topsy-turvy, all in their wrong place. Aye, and some features altogether
wanting—holes instead of eyes, or no eyes at all; a cheek all over the face,
forehead and chin clean shaved away. How many have what they call faith and
yet no repentance, knowledge and no contrition, confidence and no fear,
boldness and no humility, praise and no prayer, singing and no sorrowing,
rejoicing and no mourning, victory without fighting, resurrection without
dying, and glory in prospect without grace in possession! What can we make
out of all this? Are we harsh, bigoted, uncharitable, if we cannot admire
nor love such an eyeless, noseless, chinless face? Show us real,
well-placed, harmonious features, and we can admire and love them; but not a
featureless, disfigured countenance—a cross between presumption and
ignorance. Let us have eyes, and we shall not inquire whether they be blue
or black; a nose, and we shall not be particular as to its shape or size.
Oneness without variety would be sameness; variety without oneness would be
disfigurement.
Amid, then, all the variety of gracious experience, there
is, as in the human countenance, a pervading oneness and a harmony, which,
like the key-note of an air in music, runs through and blends the whole. For
there is a variety, a beautiful variety in the experience of
God's family. Each tuneful bird has its own note, each fragrant flower its
own smell, each season its own beauty; and each child of God his own
experience. Their trials, temptations, afflictions, providences, mercies,
miseries, are not made in the same exact mold, nor cut in the same precise
pattern. Some sink more deeply, and others rise more highly; some are faint
and feeble, and others lively and strong; some are slow, late, and long,
others, quick, early, and short; some are cropped in their bloom, and others
hang until their leaves get brown and dusky; some promise well at the outset
and perform poorly, others promise but indifferently and ripen better; with
some, clouds and rain last nearly all day until there is a glorious sunset,
with others, cloudy bars are stretched across their evening rays, though
their morning might have been bright and clear; some walk tenderly and
humbly all their days, and others bring grief on themselves and others by
their carelessness and carnality.
Yet amid all this variety there is oneness. The
misery of sin, the vileness and deceitfulness of the heart, the guilt and
bondage that allowed carnality produces, the mercy and patience of God and
the super-aboundings of his grace, the suitability and preciousness of the
Lord Jesus Christ, the emptiness of all created things, the assaults and
fiery darts of Satan, the doubts and fears that spring up within when night
comes on and the beasts of the forest prowl forth, the cries and sighs that
go up unto the Lord when the battle is hot and victory hangs trembling in
the balance, the sweetness of the promises as applied to the soul, the
certainty and security of the elect, with the other blessed truths of the
gospel, as appropriated and realized—in all these features of divine
experience, there is a sweet oneness of spirit among all the family of God.
To see, to feel, to realize this oneness is to experience spiritual union
and communion with the members of the body of Christ. This is the "communion
of saints"—an article of the apostles' creed, but to most, as dead and dry
an article as the gilded sentence that stands at the east end of a church,
or the whole of the thirty-nine articles to a young curate pouncing upon a
living as a duck upon a worm.
But the "communion of saints" is as much a living article
of a Christian's faith as "the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the
body, and the life everlasting." This is the mystical tie that knits heart
to heart. This Jonathan felt to David, Elisha to Elijah, Asaph to the
generation of God's children, (Ps. 73:15), the saints to each other in those
Pentecostal days when they were of "one heart and one soul," Paul to the
Corinthian believers, (2 Cor. 12:15,) and the early Christians when the
wondering heathens said, "See how these Christians love one another."
Here, then, is one of the main benefits and blessings of
those accounts of real Christian experience which we are sometimes favored
with. They much tend to the edifying of the body in love. They strengthen
faith, encourage hope, and draw forth love, tenderness, and affection. The
faithfulness of God is seen in living examples, his dealings seem brought
near, and there is a sweet testimony that the Lord still reigns, that he has
not forgotten the earth, and that a seed still serves him.