What is moralism?

There is one feature in this narrative to which the writer would call special attention. It is the air of respectability and usefulness with which souls may move religiously on the broad road which leads to everlasting destruction. Such cases, we fear, are by no means uncommon. People of this stamp certainly look better outwardly than the immoral and profane, and yet, perhaps, are more thoroughly deceived by the great adversary of souls. To "do good," "be useful," "try to get better," "act with sincerity," "practise ways of benevolence and sympathy," are expressions often pressed on the unconverted, with the delusive hope of helping their salvation. Such ways, like those of the Pharisees, are certainly beneficial in a social point of view, and we all prefer to have such well-behaved neighbours; but to put these things, in any degree as stepping stones, or means of eternal salvation, is not only in direct opposition to God's word, but sets aside the only Saviour whom God has sent, and who declared "no man cometh unto the Father but by Me."

Then, what about the stream called morality. Many a proud infidel, who would not go to church, rests satisfied in a strict morality. For instance; Colonel Robert Ingersol sneers at the Bible, and talks about the mistakes of Moses. He denies that Christian virtues are Christian virtues. He claims Christian virtues in the name of infidelity, and preaches a gospel of morality, proclaiming on the house-tops that a man ought to be strictly moral, upright, kind, and philanthropic—that he ought to do the best he can to help mankind, and, that being the case, he will lead a happy life, and die an easy death. What will a moral life do for the sinner? It may bear the fruits of respectability in this life, but it cannot atone for sin. It can do absolutely nothing for the guilty sinner, when he stands before the bar of the Judge of all the earth. Morality, be it ever of such a profound and exalted nature, cannot, any more than religion, remove one blot of the leprosy of sin.

In our days more than ever before we notice an astonishing misuse of the sermon on the mount. The saddest of all is that many preachers of various evangelical denominations fall back upon it as the most important document of Christendom; for them it seems to become more and more the Gospel, and the consequences are that we hear in our times more ethical preaching, more about becoming better, doing good, improving your better self, etc., than ever before. It would require much time and a great deal of space to show up all the errors which are springing from this application. It is the Gospel of works and of evolution. And as this is done there is less preaching of the utter corruption of man, his lost condition and utter helplessness to be righteous (that which the discourse makes very clear), and the salvation of God in our Lord Jesus Christ, the absolute necessity of being born again, the reception of eternal life, the new nature. As the teachings of the Epistle to the Romans have been and are being abandoned in Christendom, the false application of the discourse here in Matthew has been taken up. There is therefore a continual increase of teaching about lifting man out of his lost place into a better sphere by means of ethical teachings taken from the sermon on the mount. This is done also under the garb of a social Christianity, union of worshippers (?), the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Not long ago we were told of a reformed rabbi who read in his synagogue on Saturday portions of the sermon on the mount and preached on it to his hearers. This was hailed as a favorable sign of the progress made toward the lifting up of humanity. Surely, if evangelical preachers (in creed at least) continue to progress in this awful direction by substituting ethical teachings for salvation by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and declare, as not a few have done, "the sermon on the mount is a large enough Bible for us," a general apostasy from the faith will soon be reached. There is a lifting up of the sinner from his miserable place into sonship and making him the heir of God, but that is never by the sermon on the mount, by striving to obtain the heavenly righteousness revealed here.

There is a Christianity in the present day, of large and general acceptance, in which the cross of Christ is really no element at all. To mind earthly things, instead of being regarded as a fatal symptom of reprobation (Phil. 3:18-19), which must needs fill with anguish the hearts of those who love the Lord indeed, is now sanctioned as a duty by multitudes who, nevertheless, are not slow to make outward profession of the name of Christ. This is, indeed, Satan's chief handy-work. To reduce the grace of God, which brings salvation through the redeeming blood of the Lamb, to a mere instrument of moral amelioration for the amendment and polish of this present world, is the last outrage but one which can be offered to the long-suffering holiness of God. When Christian truth becomes a matter of mere opinion, Christ is already gone.

We have surely to be deeply abased for having given so tortured a picture of christian grace. The end proposed has often been merely the maintenance of the standard of worldly decency even in christian communities, and the principle too often acted on in them has been the summary righteousness of the world, rather than the reclaiming power of grace. Christians have not sufficiently recognised that whilst godliness is the guarantee for morals, it is something much higher, — something leading the soul into association with God in all things, judging God's judgment on them, and walking in them according to that judgment. The apostle says, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in truth." This is the great point, a walk which necessarily presents the daily recognition of all the fundamental doctrines of the gospel: a walk which necessarily leads into separation from the world: in other words, a "walking with God," walking in the light as He is in the light, and thus exposing or convicting the unfruitful works of darkness. The attempt to make Christianity subserve worldly morality is a special product of the craft of Satan at this present day, in order to obliterate the distinction between the church and the world. It is doing that in practice which he so early attempted in doctrine, to cause men to turn again unto the weak and beggarly elements of the world. He does not now deny the value of the cross; but he completely nullifies its power where he succeeds in making it to be thought that a certain something has been effected for all, which still throws us back upon moral restraint for security. Until the cross is known as the actual power of present deliverance from the world and sin and Satan, and as the introduction of the Life in the Spirit, there is not the acknowledging of the truth which is according to godliness. But where these truths are practically acknowledged, the unwilling confession is forced even from the world, that our principles are not the same as theirs. Let indeed the light of christians so shine before men as to prove the utter failure of their righteousness and the scantiness of their morality. Let it be with well doing that they put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. And let them show that liberty and obedience are to them, strange as it may appear, one and the same thing. They are "led of the Spirit" and "are not under the Law."

Morality, without Christ, is an icy morality. Benevolence, without Christ, is a worthless benevolence. Ordinances, without Christ, are powerless and valueless. Orthodoxy, without Christ, is heartless and fruitless. We must get to the end of self whether it be a guilty self or a religious self, and find Christ as the satisfying portion of our hearts, now and for ever. Then we shall be able to say, with truth,

See, too, the immense danger of thinking so much of a little education, or of abstaining on the other hand from drink. Men, if temperate and educated, seem to think themselves somewhat better, and, if not nearer to God, more in the way to the gospel. Alas! how many build on sobriety or avoiding the dramshop, and the racecourse, and the like, making of these things their righteousness. And what does the Spirit of God do with men seeking after a little righteousness of their own? When God's word is mixed with faith, all such "righteousness" crumbles into dust. It is a barrier between his soul and salvation. He must come out of his little righteous castle, and surrender as nothing but a sinner, that he may be saved by grace through faith. It is not man that commends his love, or his anything else, to God; but "God commendeth His love towards us." And in what condition? When "without strength and ungodly;" for "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Can you ask a more conclusive proof than in Saul of Tarsus, himself the man who wrote those words for us from God? Are they not true now as then? Do you think the nineteenth century can add to or take from Scripture? The spirit of the age puffs up men, who think too much of themselves nowadays. Undoubtedly we have many conveniences — railways, steamers, electric telegraph, school boards, and what not? — all sorts of inventions which indicate progress; but is it progress in the things of God? Is it deliverance from sin? Not in the least. On the contrary, if you lean on material progress, or even intellectual, you will find it a broken reed which fails and pierces, when leaned on.

Surely a terrible possibility is suggested to us in this parable. A man's religion may be his ruin. His very strictness of life may land him in perdition. Why? Because the religious man is apt to pride himself in his religiousness, and the moral man in his morality, and so become utterly blinded to the fact of his real sinnership before a holy God. Rom. 9:30 — Rom. 10:4 may well be pondered in this connection. The apostle groaned over his religious fellow countrymen because they were seeking righteousness on the principle of works, whereas righteousness for man is only found through faith in Christ. Paul pursued the same false line himself until stopped in his career by the revelation of the glorified Christ (Phil. 3:4-9).

This for many is a blessed truth to learn, that our duties flow out of an existing relationship, instead of being done to win it. Our duties do not bring its into the relationship; but the relationship decides the kind of duties which become it and are owing to it. Our near and blessed relationship — and we could have none nearer — flows out of our being now His children. It is a standing fact which nothing can alter, except when one who has professed to be a Christian shows that there was no root of the matter in him, because he has given Christ up; even then it will tell against him in the judgment. But evidently it is a general principle and easily understood by looking at natural duties. Hence the world is always wrong in its ethical notions, because they do not at all base duty upon relationship. On the contrary they make duty to flow from the man's moral power. They suppose that man is able to do his duty if he will; and therefore there is nothing in a man's duty but what he can do if he choose. The sorrowful fact certainly is that man fails in his Godward duties utterly; but philosophers think little of that. The error shows how the system of ethics has no source in revelation but is merely of fallen man. There is neither the truth of God nor the reality of man, as in His sight.

Now there is a reason for the introduction of this passage here; which is simply this: that while men are satisfied - and must be satisfied, for they can go no farther - with the expression of the mere outward behaviour, the word of God occupies itself with the correction of the motives and springs from whence all conduct flows. More than this - no conduct can ever be acceptable in the sight of God that does not flow from a heart subjected to His grace, which brings salvation; and that is not swayed by its daily powers. Rules of conduct are not given, cannot be given, to those whose hearts have not been subjected to "the obedience of faith."