Philosophy based on Tradition 453 568 38, 84, 225 71, 205, 408 81 576 34, 78, 118, 157 THE RAINBOW: A Magazine of Christian Literature, with Special Reference to the Bebealed Future of the Church and the World. JANUARY 1, 1874. "WAYMARKS" TRUTH RETURNING FROM CAPTIVITY. A MAN who is engaged in an enterprise-no matter what-that taxes the utmost energies of his mind, in his efforts to commend it to the sympathy of others, believing that its success would be a benefit to the community, naturally takes note of any fact or circumstance that gives him hope, and thus sustains exertion. He is cheered by the thought that his labour is not all lost; that he is not thinking about it from dawn to darkness every day of the year in vain. Of course his estimate of the public utility of the enterprise may be greatly, even absurdly, exaggerated,-for there is a gracious law of nature that makes. one's own child the most lovely in the world;—and it may be too, that self-interest, that subtle but powerful motive, quietly prompts the zeal which declares itself in action only for the public good. Incredulity may seek to justify itself by such arguments as these, so that our enterprising friend, notwithstanding his honesty and patriotism, has to do battle with a host of prejudiced enemies who pride themselves on their superiority to the weakness of credulity. Happily, however, all men are not sceptical, and in due time, he finds a sufficient number of believers to appreciate his project and crown it with reward. But when the test of public utility has been applied for a time it is found that the thing was indebted to imagination for many of its rose-coloured virtues, and project and projector are speedily forgotten by an ungrateful generation. What a number of schemes "for the public good" can we call to mind of which this is the history! It requires no undue pressure upon memory to bring them up one by one, with their magniloquent cerificates of virtue, their short-lived popularity, and their ignominious collapse. For the ills of the body politic, as well as for those of the Church, one panacea after another is prescribed by the professional healers, and each in its turn is found inadequate to the necessity. The seat of the malady B is not reached, and the patient continues the victim of exhausting experiments. There is a peculiar institution in the world, called "the Church." For the formation, government, life, and design of this institution, Divine directions have been given; but these directions are practically a dead letter to a most mournful extent: whilst the truth, which is essential to the healthy life of the Church, has been so grossly corrupted during the lapse of ages, that what was meant for its nourishment and joy has made it sickly and sad. Its testimony, consequently, to the world is not now the same as that which it gave when it came forth from the pentecostal room at Jerusalem with the baptism of the Holy Ghost on its intellect and heart. Then its speech was as clear as the light, and the love of Christ constrained it to cry, "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved;" now it speaks feebly and mystically, and encumbers its message with so many theological conditions and impossibilities that "the common people," who heard the Great Master gladly, can make nothing of it, and "leave Church to their betters." And then it spoke joyfully about the return of its beloved Lord as life and victory and immortality; but now, by a preposterous process of marching backward, it teaches that the return of the Lord means death, with its sorrow and lamentations and bitter tears; only, to prevent the absurdity from appearing too gross, it gives us the marvellous consolation of a "triumphant death," and sends the soul straightway to glory, although the Bible teaches that resurrection precedes glorification. Secondary senses of words, metaphor, and the so-called spiritualising mode of "interpretation" (?) have made a riddle of a book which its glorious Author meant as a revelation to mankind. How is all this to be accounted for? Easily. Truth is in captivity. Jeremiah (xxxi. 21) has suggested the title of this brief paper; and we are profoundly thankful that though there is not yet any imposing procession on the return journey, one truth after another is being delivered from its thraldom to corrupt theology, superstition, popery, and paganism, and one man after another is, by the grace of God, hailing the returned captive, the ransomed verity, with expressions of heartfelt joy. The enterprise in which the writers and patrons of the RAINBOW are engaged, unlike some of those enterprises to which allusion has been made, is not destined to cause a little temporary excitement, and then to pass away and be forgotten, leaving no permanent benefit to men as its durable memorial. No, no! This work is surely of GOD. The leaders in the noble labour of emancipation, by which Great Britain stood forth before the world without a single slave in any portion of her dominions, will never be forgotten. The men who gave their money, and time, and moral influence, and mighty eloquence to the divine work of breaking every yoke and letting the oppressed go free, will be enshrined in the memory of Christian philanthropy as long as history lasts. |
