# Our New Departure (Brooks)/Chapter 7

We need no New Departure as to the fact or extent of salvation; but do we not need one in the way of a more direct and personal enforcement of its nature and terms?
It was related, several years since, of a Belgian nobleman, condemned to death for murder, that as the officers, who had come to prepare him for execution, were about to leave him, one of them said, "You have now nothing to think of but the welfare of your soul,"—and that he replied, "O, that is the priest's affair." He was a Catholic, and was thus an example of what Catholic education can do in emptying one of personal concern as to his spiritual welfare. But does he not also strikingly illustrate a form of thought in respect to this subject quite too common among people of all sects, and of no sect, throughout Christendom, and among many who call themselves Universalists as well as others?
I remember to have once read a communication in one of our papers, in which the writer indignantly complained that, as a member of a choir, he had, not long before, been required to sing,
and so incensed was he, he declared, at the abhorrent sentiment, especially of the last two lines, that he refused to sing the words. To the same effect, preaching on exchange, some years ago, from the text, "What must I do to be saved?" and trying to press home the question as one which we all have as much occasion as the jailer to ask, I so shocked a good woman of the congregation that she ran ​in alarm to her (supplying) minister, urging him to preach at once from the same text, to counteract my heresy, and expressing her fear that I was 'going over to the orthodox'! And the minister,—an eminent one,—sharing in her condemnation of the heresy, preached as requested, and showed, no doubt to the general satisfaction, that the jailer's question had no religious bearing, and that, though we should be concerned in appropriating the blessings of the Gospel in this world, it is taking God's business out of His hands to ask any such question about our future salvation.
These instances—and many similar ones might be given, were it necessary—were not recent; but do they not very significantly indicate the quality of much of the thought which has been current among us, and which is still to be somewhat found? The misapprehension is not the same as the Belgian Catholic's; but is it not nearly akin to it, only substituting God for the priest? This is the idea,—that God has so 'fixed' things in Christ that our salvation hereafter is their 'affair,' not ours at all; and that, while we may properly be anxious to live a good life here, we have no concern as to what is beyond, since it is certain that God and Christ have us so in charge that we have only to die to find ourselves, whether we have lived a good life or a bad one, safely in heaven. Our 'evangelical' friends must not think to use this statement against us, for, though it lies somewhat differently in minds accepting their doctrines, this same essential idea that our future immortal salvation is primarily God's 'affair,' is found nowhere more common, and scarcely anywhere in more mischievous forms, than, in one shape or another, among them. In fact, as it exists among us, though formally put in another way, it is only a part of the undesirable inheritance we have derived from them. Happily, in our case, as has heretofore been stated, the doctrine in which this idea as found among us had its origin is not now prevalent as formerly; and yet—so do mischievous notions survive in effect long after they in form are dead—it is to be feared that, despite our improved theory as to the relations of character here to condition hereafter, our popular denominational thought is ​largely pervaded and vitiated by the old leaven, first, of 'orthodoxy,' as to what salvation is, and then, of that stage of our doctrinal development which put all souls at once into heaven at death, as to why salvation is none of our 'affair.'
Under these circumstances, we need a thorough review of the whole ground, and thus need to have a New Departure in a general and systematic presentation of this grand Gospel theme of salvation, such as not a few have always been accustomed to give, which will put our whole Church more distinctly upon the true basis, and thus secure the direct and personal enforcement of the conditions of salvation which meets us everywhere in the Bible. For, consider, where can we read any treatment of this topic in the Bible, and not find ourselves pressed with what we have to do, as well as encouraged by what God has done and will do? Well would it be for us all could this fact be understood in all its bearings and admonitions. I know of nothing, indeed, doctrinally, for which the whole Christian world is more suffering to-day than for an accurate conception of this subject as the Bible presents it, and especially as it lay in the thought of our Lord; and for ourselves, I am satisfied there is scarcely another truth of the Gospel a clear understanding of which, in all its relations, would do so much for us in clarifying the whole current of our opinions, and in securing that wiser and more effective appreciation of motive and obligation which is our great lack.
What is salvation? Much would be done to simplify the subject, and to send it home with fresh power to consciences and hearts, if a proper understanding of the answer to this question could but be secured. Words falsely defined confuse thought, by suggesting meanings or distinctions which have no existence in fact. The creeds have long made salvation, not at all an inward process, but an external rescue, and a happy admission into heaven; and so ingrained has this idea become in the popular thought, determining and perverting every conception in the case, that, as Dr. Ballou once said, in substance, though they "have decidedly rejected it in its naked form, it enters more or less into the habitual impressions of Universalists themselves, so as to affect their ​language and their forms of argument." But the Bible nowhere indicates, or warrants any such idea. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins." This epitomizes the invariable burden of the Bible on this point. And to be saved from sin is—what but to be helped to be good? And wishing to be good—how, anywhere, are we to reach this result? How, under God, but by personal resolve and effort? What, then, have we but the whole doctrine of salvation through Christ, as to substance and method, summed up in these few words—showing that salvation is a deliverance from ignorance and sin, in a growing goodness, attained through our own personal resolve and effort, in an acceptance of Christ's help, under God's blessing? And could this but be once generally perceived and felt, would any further misconception as to whose 'affair' salvation is be possible? or should we be likely to see so much indifference and neglect concerning it?
God is over all in respect to our salvation, it is true, and as "His unspeakable gift," Christ is "made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." This the whole New Testament teaches. But are we anywhere independent of God? Is He not in a like sense over all in every department of our interests, and wherever blessings of whatever sort are possible to us, does He not graciously bestow the help and opportunity in the improvement of which we are to attain them? In no single instance, however, are we absolved from the necessity of accepting the help and improving the opportunity, if the blessing is to be enjoyed. Personal effort, indeed, co-operating with God in the use of the means He has bestowed, is not this, look where we will, the one cardinal and inexorable condition of all real attainment and success? In intellectual pursuits, in secular prosperities, who expects to be anything, or to accomplish anything, save as he himself works for it? And holding in respect to everything else, is it reasonable to suppose that this law is suspended only in respect to moral interests and spiritual possessions—the most precious of all? Nay, by the very necessities of the case, must it not hold even more rigorously as the price of these? Even more rigorously, I say: for one may come into wealth, or eminent ​social or political position, and so attain to what passes for success by inheritance, or through favoring circumstances. But who can inherit goodness—as a positive quality? Or, however propitious circumstances may be, who ever was made, or can be made, spiritually wise and consecrate by them, except as he or she has willed and wrought, or does will and work, to become so? There is, indeed, a kind of negative goodness, the result of a happily balanced temperament and the absence of any occasion of evil—as a vegetable stalk stands erect because nothing has touched it to bend it, or as a brook runs a certain undeviating course because its banks enclose it, and nothing interposes to divert it. But such goodness has no absolute moral worth; is only the innocence of a child, not the tried virtue, or the rugged, resolute rightness of a man. This positive goodness must be acquired—often through wrestling, resistance, and hard-earned victory,—always as the fruit, under God, of our own purpose and exertion. Nobody can make me thus good—with becoming reverence, is it too much to say that, unless by annulling all the laws of my moral nature, and dealing with me as a thing, and not as a soul, God himself cannot make me thus good?—except as I am myself moved to desire and labor to become so.
And this is no temporary appointment, we have reason to believe. The Bible and all that belongs to the case indicate that it is a perpetual law, because inherent in the very constitution of the human soul and the methods of influence God has ordained for it. It is not a thing of time, or place, therefore. Holding here, it holds with equal inflexibility wherever the soul as a soul may go, in whatever states or stages of its being. Live where, or as long as, or under whatever circumstances the soul may, the continuity of its life is simply the continuity of its consciousness and its powers, and the instant and constant assertion of the same essential spiritual laws. Destroy this consciousness, impair these powers, or suspend these laws, and the reality and identity of its life are so far suspended or destroyed. Hence, wherever they may be, so long as souls remain the same moral entities and agents, they must not only carry the same moral consciousness and retain the same moral ​powers, but must be subject to substantially the same spiritual laws.
What, then, follows? Identical as our growing goodness and our salvation are, salvation can pertain no more to the future immortal world than goodness, and is, therefore, to be reached, there or anywhere, only on the same conditions. We are saved here just in the same way, and just so far, as through the help and uplifting power of Christ, we become good here; and hereafter, we can be saved in no other way and to no other extent. Salvation there, therefore, is dependent on our own faith and choice, on our own effort and self-surrender, precisely as, and for the same reason that, our growth in virtue and Christian character is dependent on these conditions here. Salvation anywhere is possible only as goodness is possible.
The conclusion is apparent. If salvation, either here or hereafter, seems to us a thing to be at all desired, we are to understand that it is, under God, our concern exactly in the same sense as any advance in knowledge, or goodness, or as any attainment of desirable qualities or possessions, is our concern, and is to be realized only as we pay the exacted price of choosing and working for it. Sin being the voluntary surrender of ourselves to motives and purposes alien to God and good, salvation must, necessarily, be our equally voluntary election of better motives and purposes. In other words, if we are to be directly and personally benefited by Christ as our Saviour anywhere, not only is there something for us to believe, but something for us to do; not only something to be done for us, but something to be done by us. Christianity, that is to say, is no moral 'labor-saving machine.' It opens no free bridge, it places us on no royal road to heaven; and God's plan of redemption in Christ is no contrivance to get us saved, passively,—only a means whereby, co-operating with God, under the lead of Christ, we may save ourselves.
How but in this form does the Bible invariably present the subject? Its word in reference to this world is, "If any will not work, neither shall he eat;" and it has just as little indulgence for indolence in respect to the bread of everlasting life. It says to us in our secular and business rela​tions, "Work with your own hands: . . . that ye may walk honestly, . . . and have lack of nothing;" and even when most positively certifying us of the time when, "at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, . . . and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father," it says to us with still more emphasis in our spiritual relations, "Wherefore, . . . work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,"—or with anxiety and self-distrust (Conybeare and Howson). And this is the manner in which this side of the subject is always presented. Thus, in the Old Testament, the summons is, "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon:"—and this, too, in connection with the most positive assurance that God's purpose of grace shall, beyond all peradventure, be accomplished. And in the New Testament, the word is, "I am the door; by me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved." "Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Christ, we are told, "became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him," and "is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him." The Bible knows nothing of any salvation through Christ that is not dependent on these and like conditions.
And these are conditions, let it be noted, that imply much more than saying, I believe in Christ,—or, I am sorry,—or, O God, help me; and therefore forbid any theory of salvation which warrants a man in thinking that he can, all his days, live a life of godlessness and crime, and then, through some technical formula, 'swing from the gallows into glory,' as the Methodist divine, Rev. Dr. Abel Stevens, once expressed it, or on his death-bed, suddenly call a minister, and through his shriving, find himself in a few minutes in heaven. The conditions specified imply not simply a momentary penitence, but an entire revolution in the soul; a change not only in the direction, but in the whole quality and substance of life. It is not barely a crisis that they demand, but a regenerative process, purifying and uplifting ​the whole man in a christianized and sanctified character. Goodness is character of the right sort. Hence only by faith, penitence, resolve, effort, taking hold of Christ, and becoming transmuted into whitened and holy character, thus attuning the soul with God, can these conditions of salvation be fulfilled, or can a soul find itself really redeemed. But all this is the work of time. Sudden, even instantaneous changes there may be, and frequently are, in thought, aim, purpose. Living heedlessly or badly, one may be suddenly arrested and resolve upon a better life. And forgiveness, acceptance there is for the prodigal, however much a prodigal he may have been, in proportion as he renounces his past and rises into something better. But salvation, as a completed state of the soul, ending in what the Bible calls heaven, is a different thing, and is possible only as a completely renovated character is possible, wrought out through the help of Christ, by the soul's own struggles and effort, and taking form in a goodness that knows no taint of sin.
But this is salvation by works, perhaps it will be said, whereas the New Testament peremptorily declares that we are "saved by grace, not of works," and that "eternal life is the gift of God." Very true, the New Testament does so affirm; and a most encouraging and comforting sense of God's merciful thoughtfulness it gives us so to believe. But in the words of Dr. Ballou, "so far as we have observed, every text which asserts that salvation is of grace, or not of works, speaks of it, at the same time, as experienced in this life, and effected by moral influences,—as, 'By grace are ye saved [that is, already saved], through faith;' so that, after all, it is the same salvation which is represented, in other passages, as attained by human agency." Nobody supposes that salvation, so far as we here experience it in a growing holiness and spirituality, is something conferred upon us independent of our own faith or purpose. It is something we attain in the use of the means furnished. ​Hence, evidently, it is to these means, and not to salvation as an end accomplished, that reference is made when it is said that salvation is of grace, and that eternal life is the gift of God. The means have been freely bestowed, and God is ever pleading with us to accept and use them; but they avail nothing except as they are used in compliance with the appointed conditions; nor, though they have been so freely given, can we hope for anything, either here or beyond, on account of them, only as we appropriate them, seeking to enter into life through them.
Reference was made, at the opening of this chapter, to those who expect salvation on the supposition that they have only to die to find themselves, without care or agency of theirs, happy in heaven—just as they came into this world, from their pre-natal state, through birth, or just as some kindly power might transfer them from a home of poverty, on one side of the street, to a splendid mansion on the other. But even granting the correctness of the theory of the Resurrection on which this expectation proceeds, how can the mere getting into a place called heaven consummate the spiritual change which salvation involves? Heaven is a place, no doubt, beautiful, glorious, beyond our conception. But will getting into the place make any one blessed, as one becomes warm by going into a heated room? Surely not. Holiness, harmony with God, is the essence of its felicity; and without this, though the place were ten thousand times more glorious, happiness would be impossible there. Really, then, heaven is a state of the soul, rather than a place in which the soul lives; and one entering the place, can find it heaven only as he carries in himself the fulfilled conditions of its blessedness. Concede, therefore, that the Resurrection is, as is so commonly supposed, simply our passing on into another realm of being,—our rising out of this mortal into an immortal life, what can it do towards putting into a soul these fulfilled conditions of blessedness? A soul cannot be emptied or stripped of its sin by any such change of place, as a bottle may be emptied of its contents, or a body be stripped of a garment in such a transit; nor can it be filled or clothed with holiness, as a jar may have some pure liquid poured into it, or a body be clad in a clean garment. ​As Dr. Ballou has well said, "He knows little of our nature who imagines that faith and righteousness can be communicated to the mind, without any agency on our part, as water may be poured into a vessel or passive receiver; for faith and righteousness are themselves but exercises of the understanding and affections. They are the results of active thought and feeling." Sin or holiness is a state of the affections; a condition or posture of the mind and heart. Change places, change worlds even, though we do, we are not changed save as our affections, our minds and hearts are changed. Go where we may, therefore, we cannot pass out of the necessity of our own right will and effort, and so of our own moral activity, as the one irremissible price of salvation, for the reason that we are moral beings, and that salvation concerns us—not as a mechanical work, as if we were things, but as a moral process, "implying the exercise of conscience and free-will," in the recognition of the fact that we are souls. Whatever may be true, then, as to the manner in which we might be dealt with if we were things, there clearly can be no moral action, or result, except as our moral faculties move and concur to produce it; and were it possible for us to be saved through the Resurrection, without this, we should be saved as things, not as souls.
As has been said on one of our earlier pages, no one can tell what is to be the effect of the soul's emancipation from the body into the new circumstances of the Immortal Life. No theory of salvation is complete, or scriptural, that does not duly take into account all the possibilities of this emancipation, and of the soul's new surroundings in consequence. But do new circumstances and associations here, of themselves, transform us? Transport one who has lived a low and sensual life from all such associations into the best and most spiritually electric companionships, and do you thereby make him moral and religious? Such a change of circumstances is favorable to a better life, if one will accept what they give, and choose and will as they suggest. Not otherwise. They have no necessary or instantaneous transforming power. And if not here, why hereafter, even though the body is thrown aside, since character is not of the body, but of the soul? Admit all that can be properly ​claimed as to the helpful tendency of such changed circumstances towards a corresponding change of character, still this much we know by virtue of our nature as moral beings—that as one here transferred from vicious to virtuous associations, must himself choose and work towards goodness, if he is to become really good, so a similar exercise of our moral faculties must always be necessary, wherever we may be, if we are to reach any actual attainment in personal holiness. Hereafter as certainly as here, therefore, salvation is possible to any soul only as, in such an exercise of its own powers, it believes, repents, and, clasping Christ, says, Lord, thou art mine; help me to be wholly thine,—working meantime to climb upward and be like him.
And this, there are those of us who think, as we read the New Testament, is what is signified by the Resurrection: not the mere passage of the soul forward into another sphere of being, but its gradual regeneration; its rising out of selfishness into all large and holy affections, out of all impiety and impurity and earthliness into the image of Christ, and therefore into harmony and communion with God; as Paul puts it, its deliverance "from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God." If this be so, then we have something to do in the very process of the Resurrection. And what but this does the Apostle mean (Phil. iii. 10, 11), when, describing his spiritual struggles, he says, "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead"?
At all events, not to make a point of this, whatever the Resurrection, it cannot relieve us from the necessity of caring for our salvation as our personal concern—as the Bible everywhere assures us it is. The bowing of the knee to Christ, and the confession of him as Lord, not in word only, but in the surrender of our whole being to his authority, and in the taking on of his image, are the New Testament symbols of our redemption. This, is a personal, and must be a willing, bowing and confession; and so long as these, or the faith and effort, the consecration and resolve thus signified, are postponed, be we where we may, our salvation ​will be postponed—be postponed until, of our own will, in response to the pleadings of God's grace, and in the use of Christ's help, we seek and find it. And we are Universalists, the most of us, only because we see a time when the most unbelieving will be awakened to faith, and the most obdurate be melted into contrition, and those most utterly lost and dead in the decay of will and spiritual faculty be quickened to call on God and resolve towards home, and when, therefore, all will be saved because all, through Christ as the Way, have sought and found the salvation God has provided for them.
To the general view thus presented, we are, as a Church, undeniably committed. It is our denominational position, so far as the pronounced convictions of the great majority of our ministers and most thoughtful people can determine this position. Shall we not, then, by common consent, have a New Departure as to our way of putting the subject, so that while God and Christ and their work shall be fully recognized, salvation shall henceforth be urged by us—not as their concern exclusively, but as ours,—a result finally dependent, under God, solely upon ourselves and our own resolve and endeavor? And shall not our summons, with great ardor and strenuousness, be, O souls that would be saved, see what you have at stake, and be up and doing? Was it not so that Christ preached? Was it not so that the Apostles preached? Is it not thus that Christianity constantly addresses a world estranged from God, and needing to be spiritually vitalized and reconciled to Him? How else have the indifferent ever been aroused, or the thoughtless stirred to attention, or the sinful awakened to penitence and amended living? Or, how else can we expect to become an awakening power to torpid, unbelieving, sin-cankered souls, or to see among us that sense of personal concern and that increased religious earnestness which we so much need? Men give little attention to that in respect to which they feel that they have nothing to do. If, therefore, we would be a life-giving power in the world, and see those to whom our message comes really moved with respect to spiritual things, inquiring with kindled hearts concerning ​their own salvation, and interested in furthering the salvation of others, we must be rid of the idea that salvation is, in any sense, a thing with which we have nothing to do, and, with something of prophetic and apostolic unction, first of all applying the words to ourselves, must take up the old cries, "Cast away from you all your transgressions, and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die?" and, "As though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead, Be ye reconciled to God."
This idea that our salvation anywhere is God's 'affair,' and not our pressing personal concern, has wrought us great harm; it will not cease to be a leaven of harm, so long as it at all survives among us. "What must I do to be saved?" we should hereafter cause it to be understood, is a question which we have, every one of us, occasion to ask with profound solicitude. Not, What shall I do to insure rescue from the wrath of God, and perdition in hell?—as one is rescued from deserved hanging, or from drowning; but, What shall I do to be saved from sin and its darkness and absence from God? What shall I do to become pure, unselfish, Christ-like, thoroughly good,—superior to temptation, and growing in freedom from sin? This is the grand question—not particularly with reference to the present, not particularly with reference to the future; but with reference to the everlasting Now in which we are always living, and always shall live, and because holiness alone is life, and any lack of harmony with God is spiritual poverty, death and woe. Only as we ask this question and act upon the sense of personal concern which it expresses, can we become Christians here, or find our way among the redeemed hereafter; and only as we awaken others thus to ask and act, are we following in the steps of Christ and the Apostles, or beginning to do the work of a Christian Church.