Daily Devotionals

Devotional: June 18th

THE IMPASSABLE GULF BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS

Their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges. -- Deuteronomy 32:31

Christianity is a new covenant, undoubtedly, an altogether new thing in the world. For whatever other laws have been promulgated among men have had this in common, that they have stood over against the will with a whip in one hand and a box of sweets in the other, and have tried to influence desires and inclinations, first by the setting forth of duty, then by threatening, and then by promises to obedience. There is the inherent weakness of all, which is merely law. You do not make men good by telling them what goodness consists in, nor yet by setting forth the bitter consequences that may result from wrong-doing. All that is surface work. But here is a system that says that it deals with the will as from within, and moves and molds and revolutionizes it. "You cannot make men sober by Act of Parliament," people say. Well! I do not believe the conclusion which is generally drawn from that statement, but it is perfectly true in itself. To tell a man what he ought to do is very, very little help towards his doing it. I do not under-estimate the value of a clear perception of duty, but I say that, apart from Christianity, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that clear perception of duty is like a clear opening of a great gulf between a man and safety, which only makes him recoil in despair with the thought, "How can I ever leap across and clear that?" But the peculiarity of the Gospel is that it gives both the knowledge of what we ought to be, and with and in the knowledge and the desire -- the power to be what God would have us to be.

All other systems, whether the laws of a nation, or the principles of a scientific morality, or the solemn voice that speaks in our minds proclaiming some version of God’s law to every man, - all these are comparatively impotent. They are like bill-stickers going about a rebellious province posting the king’s proclamation - unless they have soldiers at their back, the proclamation is not worth the paper it is printed upon. But Christianity comes, and gives us that which it requires from us. So, in his epigrammatic way, Saint Augustine penetrated to the very heart of this truth when he prayed, "Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt."

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