Some thoughts on God's creation

The Two Effects of the Gospel
Excerpt from: A Sermon Delivered on May 27, 1855
by the REV. C. H. Spurgeon

"Once in Christ, in Christ for ever;
Nothing from his love can sever."

The Eternal Name
Excerpt from: A Sermon Delivered on May 27, 1855
by the REV. C. H. Spurgeon

The Enchanted Ground
Excerpt from: A Sermon Delivered on February 3, 1856
By Rev. C. H. Spurgeon

The Kingly Priesthood of the Saints
Excerpt from: A Sermon Delivered on January 28th, 1855
by the REV. C. H. Spurgeon

Faith
Excerpt from: A Sermon Delivered on December 14, 1856
by the REV. C. H. Spurgeon

A Penitent Prince Mikasa

Japanese Prince Indicts Country's Wartime Record

And here let it be remarked that events follow principles; that mind rules the world; that thought is more powerful than cannon; that "all history is in its inmost nature religious;" and that, as John von Muller says, "Christ is the key to the history of the world," and, as Carlyle says, "the spiritual will always body itself forth in the temporal history of men." In the formation of the modern nations religion performed a principal part. The great movements out of which the present civilized nations sprung were religious through and through.

What part, then, had Calvinism in begetting and shaping and controlling those movements? What has it to show as the result of its labors? A rich possession indeed. A glorious record be, longs to it in the history of modern civilization.

Be it remembered that Luther was an Augustinian or Calvinistic monk, and that it was from this rigorous theology that he learned the great truth, the pivot of the Reformation and the kindling flame of civilization耀alvation, not by works, but by faith alone. True, indeed, that truth was first laid down in the word of God. We can accept as complimentary the sneering remark of Ernest Renan, that Paul begat Augustine, and Augustine begat Calvin, and Calvin begat the Janseniste and their brethren. We glory in the lineal descent. And we stand willing also to acknowledge the kindness of Matthew Arnold, when, in his vain attempts to cut Calvinism out of the New Testament and fling it away, he declares Paul to have been the author of it, but excuses the great apostle for being guilty of it by saying that he allowed himself "to fall into it" through mistake and through the speculative bent of his intellect. But one might be tempted to ask Mr. Arnold, How could Paul have "fallen into it" unless it had been already in existence? And from what ground did the great apostle fall? Truly the Church is in a sad plight if the doctrines of the apostles are the errors which they "fell into "! It is pleasing, however, to some of us to find such men as these attributing the paternity of Calvinism to St. Paul, and to find them driven to such extremities in their efforts to explain it away as to be compelled to say that Paul was mad, or, an an Arminian clergyman of our own city has said, that "Paul was not converted when he wrote the book of Romans."

So, then, enemies themselves being witness, Paul, had laid down the grand truth which Luther found in his study of the Augustinian theology and of the Bible. The Arminianism of the Church of Rome had so perverted that truth, and so wrapped it over with its "works of righteousness," as to make it practically unknown. It was not till Luther had grasped it clearly and firmly in his intellect and heart that it became again a living thing and a mighty force. Henceforth the secret power and stirring watchword of the Reformation was justification by faith alone. It was this cleanly-cut and strong theology which began the Reformation, and which carried it on through fire and flood, through all opposition and terror and persecution and misery, to its glorious consummation. When in the great toil and roar of the conflict the fiery nature of Luther began to chill, and he began to temporize with civil rulers, and to settle down in harmony with them, it was this same uncompromising theology of the Genevan school which heroically and triumphantly waged the conflict to the end. I but repeat the testimony of history, friendly and unfriendly to Calvinism, when I say that had it not been for the strong, unflinching, systematic spirit and character of the theology of Calvin, the Reformation would have been lost to the world. That is one thing which Calvinism has done. That is one of the fruits which have grown on this vigorous old tree.

Hence it was that almost everywhere the Reformation assumed the Calvinistic type, supplanting or absorbing all other reforming ideas. Even in the lands, such as Germany and Switzerland, where the peculiarly Lutheran ideas had first found acceptance, it was "through the influence of Calvinistic principles that the Protestantism of those lands assumed an external form and organization, and attained to definite dimensions in the history of the world."' In this system only were found that vigor and that earnestness which are essential to the highest success. Even Luther himself, when the splendor of Calvin's name was outshining his own, withheld not his admiration and praise from the strict discipline which prevailed in the Calvinistic churches, and from that lofty earnestness which pervades the whole Calvinistic system of reform, and which gave it more and more of that steady consistency that was requisite in its conflict with opposing powers, and without which no victory is ever attained.

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"The Lutheran congregations were but half emancipated from superstition, and shrank from pressing the struggle to extremities; and half measures meant half-heartedness, convictions which were but half convictions, and truth with an alloy of falsehood. Half measures, however, would not quench the bonfires of Philip of Spain or raise men in France or Scotland who would meet crest to crest the princes of the house of Lorraine. The Reformers required a position more sharply defined and a sterner leader, and that leader they found in John Calvin... For hard times hard men are needed, and intellects which can pierce to the roots where truth and lies part company. It fares ill with the soldiers of religion when 'the accursed thing' is in the camp. And this is to be said of Calvin, that, so far as the state of knowledge permitted, no eye could have detected more keenly the unsound spots in the creed of the Church, nor was there a Reformer in Europe so resolute to exercise, tear out and destroy what was distinctly seen to be false -- so resolute to establish what was true in its place, and make truth, to the last fibre of it, the rule of practical life."

This is the testimony of a man who has no particular love for Calvinism, but who from the high ground of learned investigation looks at it and the man whose name it bears through the light of historical fact.

And in further explication of this thought allow me to quote again from the same authority: "Was it not written long ago, 'He that will save his soul shall lose it'? If we think of religion only as a means of escaping what we call the wrath to come, we shall not escape it; we are already under it; we are under the burden of death, for we care only for ourselves. This was not the religion of your fathers; this was not the Calvinism which overthrew spiritual wickedness, and hurled kings from their thrones, and purged England and Scotland, for a time at least, of lies and charlatanry. Calvinism was the spirit which rises in revolt against untruth -- the spirit which, as I have shown you, has appeared and reappeared, and in due time will appear again unless God be a delusion and man be as the beasts that perish. For it is but the flashing upon the conscience of the nature and origin of the laws by which mankind are governed,— laws which exist whether we acknowledge them or whether we deny them, and will have their way, to our own weal or woe, according to the attitude in which we place ourselves toward them -- inherent, like the laws of gravity, in the nature of things; not made by us, not to be altered by us, but to be discerned and obeyed by us at our everlasting peril.'"

This was the Calvinism which flashed forth in the great Reforming days -- the spirit which, when Romanists and despots claimed the right to burn all who differed from them, inspired men and women and youth to go forth, Bible and sword in hand, to the greatest daring, appealing for the justice of their cause and the victory of their arms to the Lord of hosts. This was the spirit which acted in those men "who attracted to their ranks almost every man in Western Europe who hated a lie;" who when they were crushed down rose again; who "abhorred as no body of men ever more abhorred all conscious mendacity, all impurity, all moral wrong of every kind, so far as they could recognize it;" who, though they did not utterly destroy Romanism, "drew its fangs, and forced it to abandon that detestable principle that it was entitled to murder those who dissented from it." This was the spirit out of which came, and by which was nourished, the religious and civil liberties of Christendom; of which Bancroft says, "More truly benevolent to the human race than Solon, more self-denying than Lycurgus, the genius of Calvin infused enduring elements into the institutions of Geneva, and made it for the modern world the impregnable fortress of popular liberty, the fertile seed-plot of democracy."

That religious and civil liberty have an organic connection and a natural affinity is quite obvious. They hold together as root and branch. "By the side of every religion is to be found a political opinion connected with it by affinity. If the human mind be left to follow its own bent, it will regulate the temporal and spiritual institutions of society in a uniform manner, and man will endeavor, if I may so speak, to harmonize earth with heaven." But other influences may be powerful enough to interfere with this natural connection of the religious and political belief. The Romanist may choose to be a republican rather than a monarchist, because of the greater advantages which a republic confers, or because he finds himself in the midst of republican institutions which he cannot hope to alter; but when a man is free to follow his own inclinations, he will body forth his religion in his political beliefs. Hence it comes that the influence on our republican institutions of a rigid Arminianism, which has always been wedded to an aristocratic form of church government, is unfavorable to their perpetuity. Its whole tendency, politically, is to educate the sentiments of the people to a spirit of subjection to the rich and powerful, and thus to prepare them for the monarchic form of civil government.

Charles I of England gave as the reason why his father, James I, had subverted the republican form of government of the Scottish Church, that the presbyterial and monarchical forms of government do not harmonize. And De Tocqueville, admitting the same, calls Calvinism "a democratic and republican religion." This is the historical fact, that, while Calvinism can live and do its divine work under any form of civil government, its natural affinities are not with a monarchy, but with a republic.

This is the reason that it has made so splendid a record in the history of human freedom. Where it flourishes despotism cannot abide. This, says the historian D'Aubigne, "chiefly distinguishes the Reformation of Calvin from that of Luther, that wherever it was established it brought with it not only truth, but liberty, and all the great developments which these two fertile principles carry with them."

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Now, if we ask what Calvinism did for the cause of civil and religious liberty in France and the Netherlands, we have but to turn to the glowing pages of D'Aubigne and to the enchanting histories of our own Motley. It created, under God, the Dutch Republic, and made it "the first free nation to put a girdle of empire around the world." Account for it as one will, the fact is, that until Calvinism took possession of the Netherlanders and gained the ascendency over all other religious beliefs, the people made but little headway against the powerful empire of Spain; but from that moment they never faltered for wellnigh a hundred years, until their independence was triumphantly established.

Their great leader, William the Silent, prince of Orange, was, as it would appear, forced logically, consistently and necessarily to give up first his Romanism and next his Lutheranism, and to become a sincere and rigid Calvinist while fighting for his country's independence. Then it was that he began to exhibit such vigor and enthusiasm and perseverance as he had never before exhibited. Then it was that he began to make those bleak fields of the North to be the light and hope of the Protestant world and the terror of the proud and powerful Philip of Spain. "It would certainly be unjust and futile," says Motley, "to detract from the vast debt which that republic owed to the Genevan Church. The Reformation had entered the Netherlands by the Walloon gate (that is, through the Calvinists). The earliest and most eloquent preachers, the most impassioned converts, the sublimest martyrs, had lived, preached, fought, suffered and died with the precepts of Calvin in their hearts. The fire which had consumed the last vestige of royal and sacerdotal despotism throughout the independent republic had been lighted by the hands of Calvinists.

"Throughout the blood-stained soil of France, too, the men who were fighting the same great battle as were the Netherlanders against Philip II and the Inquisition, the valiant cavaliers of Dauphiny and Provence, knelt on the ground before the battle, smote their iron breasts with their mailed hands, uttered a Calvinistic prayer, sang a psalm of Marot, and then charged upon Guise or upon Joycuse under the white plume of the Bearnese. And it was on the Calvinistic weavers and clothiers of Rochelle that the Great Prince relied in the hour of danger, as much as on his mounted chivalry. In England, too, the seeds of liberty, wrapped up in Calvinism and hoarded through many trying years, were at last destined to float over land and sea, and to bear largest harvests of temperate freedom for great commonwealths that were still unborn." To the Calvinists, "more than to any other class of men, the political liberties of Holland, England and America are due."

Such language might be mistaken for a mere panegyric of an intense Calvinist, did we not know that it is the historical testimony of one who was not a Calvinist, but who, with the fire of freedom burning brightly in his heart, and with a perfect knowledge of what he is saying, pays such lofty tributes to the men who dared maintain the cause of liberty in the earth. This is sufficient to indicate, as I here can only do, what was the influence and what the worth of Calvinism on the liberties of France and the Netherlands.

See also Calvinism and the Home by McFetridge.

Another man whom Wyclif greatly loved was Thomas Bradwardine, mathematician and theologian, teacher of theology at Oxford, chancellor of St. Paul's in London, chaplain to Edward III during his war with France, 1339, and for a few weeks only archbishop of Canterbury. He died prematurely of the plague on August 26, 1349. Bradwardine was one of those earnest scholars and spiritual men whom the Church in England has reared, a man who, like Isaac Barrow, was equally great as a mathematician and as a theologian. He did not consciously deviate from the teaching of the Church, and he submits all his opinions to her authority; but in his profoundly Augustinian mind, his emphasis on grace, his earnest protests against any trace of Pelagianism, and the spiritual fervor of his writings he plowed the soil deep for Wyclif's sowing.

In a most interesting passage Bradwardine gives an account of his awakening to the evangelical conception of grace:

Bradwardine felt himself called to oppose the superficial views then prevalent in the Church. "The doctrine is held by many," he says, "that either the free will of man is of itself sufficient for the obtaining of salvation, or if they confess the need of grace, that still grace may be merited by the power of the free will, so that grace no longer appears to be something undeserved by men, but something meritoriously acquired. Almost the whole world has run after Pelagius and fallen into error."

Bradwardine's treatise "Of the Cause of God" is an able and earnest exposition of the Pauline doctrine, according to the thought of St. Augustine, whom the author highly praises, and an appeal to the Church to return to the old paths. Although Bradwardine did not have the genius of Wyclif in the latter's breadth and boldness of theological reconstruction, he yet prepared the way for him by his thoroughly Protestant doctrine of grace. Let us say here that Bradwardine's doctrine, resting firmly on the scriptural principle that every good and perfect gift cometh down from the Father of lights, needed only the modification of the other truth, that in the reception and use of those gifts the sinner is left absolutely free. The movements toward salvation which he feels are from God alone, but he is yet master of himself in the response which he chooses to make to the divine promptings.

Moral and religious element almost totally ignored
in Japanese government schools, 1905