Part 47

"No one can read the Bible with serious attention, without feeling that he is brought into contact with God. While intently fixed on the subject which engages his attention, he feels isolated from others--existing apart from others, yet existing in immediate connection with God and the eternal world. The same novel effect is sometimes produced, and often to a greater degree, when a congregation is attentively listening to the ministrations of the pulpit. People are drawn together into a place of worship: the reading, the singing, and the prayer are gone through; and then the preaching commences. The preacher is known, but he is soon lost sight of; his subject absorbs attention, excites emotion; impression succeeds impression; and though, in some instances, there may be a momentary degree of astonishment awakened as to the source from whence the preacher has obtained his knowledge of individual character, yet that astonishment soon subsides, and nothing is left to engross the attention of the hearer, but an overwhelming sense of his own guilt, misery, and danger, which is now discovered, and felt, FOR THE FIRST TIME. Yes, many a person has entered this chapel to scorn, who has left it to breathe the prayer of the publican--'God be merciful to me a sinner.' Yes, many a person has taken his seat with others, and by being blended with the mass of the congregation, has seemed to lose the individuality of his existence; but the high and lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, speaks--and though his voice is not heard, it is felt--'I have seen his ways.' Yes, O sinner, he has seen your ways in the gone-by times of your impenitence, when you were living without him, and without hope in the world. Yes, he has seen your ways, when you either neglected the ordinances of religion, or observed them with careless indifference, as though they bore no relation to the Holy One, who inhabiteth eternity. Yes, he has seen the ways you have adopted to obliterate your religious impressions; to pacify your consciences; and to reconcile your habits of gaiety and folly, with a sense of your obligations to him. But he has never yet seen you walking in the narrow way that leadeth to eternal life. He has never seen you at his footstool deploring the error of your ways, and praying for mercy. Shall he abandon you to your irreligious course, and leave you to perish? or shall he come to heal you, to guide you, and to comfort you?"

His attention was arrested; he looked and listened as though he had never previously seen a minister in a pulpit, or heard a sermon; and on his countenance there was impressed an air of expressive solemnity, indicating profound thought.

I saw him again on the next Sabbath evening, then I missed him for several Sabbaths; he again re-appeared, became more frequent in his attendance, and at length I saw him walking up the area of the chapel accompanied by a lady, whom I presumed to be his wife. On this occasion he was invited into a pew belonging to one of my elders; and at the close of the service they left the chapel together. On inquiry I found that this elder knew him; and from him I obtained the outlines of his history, which he prefaced by saying, "I was not at the chapel on the first night of his attendance, and was rather surprised when he told me of it, because I rather apprehend he is a sceptic, though he does not avow it. However, though he gave me no reason to expect that he should repeat his visit, he made one remark which I was gratified to hear, as it was a proof that he had listened to the discourse, and was rather pleased than otherwise. 'The sermon,' he said, 'was simple and plain, yet somewhat original. I have heard more eloquent, and more argumentative discourses, both in my own country, and in England, but I never heard one which took such a firm hold of my attention, or one which brought after it such a train of novel thought; indeed, I cannot escape from a recollection of it.'"

Mr. Christopher Lobeck, the gentleman in question, was born in Berlin, in 1794. His parents were Protestants, with whom he lived till he had finished his literary education; and then he travelled for two years, visiting Spain, France, and Switzerland, and the principal manufacturing districts and marts of commerce of his own country, to qualify himself to engage in mercantile pursuits. Soon after the termination of the war in 1815, he was introduced to an English merchant, with whom he made an arrangement to serve his establishment in the capacity of a corresponding clerk; and this led to his settlement in London. While in this situation, which he held for seven years, he married the daughter of a citizen of worth and distinction; and by his advice, and with the concurrence of the house in which he had been engaged, he accepted an eligible offer of partnership in a firm of high respectability in ----, to which place he removed in 1822. His private residence was situated about a mile and a half from the centre of the town, a neat snug cottage, with the usual appurtenances, &c., &c. "He is," the elder added, "both intelligent and communicative, and has acquired a large amount of scientific and general information; and notwithstanding his doubts on the great question of the Christian faith, he generally attends church on Sabbath morning with his wife and children. Mrs. Lobeck is a contrast to her husband on religious matters; he looks with equal indifference on all the external forms of Christianity--she is one of the most impassioned admirers of Episcopacy and its clergy I ever knew. She is, in fact, what may be termed a devotee--excited, as by an electrical shock, if she hear any remark derogatory to the absolute perfection of her church and its priestly orders." He concluded by saying, "I think you should now go and see them; as they have both been to hear you preach, I think it likely they will be expecting it as an act of courtesy. It is possible that this may be the opening of a new epoch in their moral history, which may lead to some grand spiritual result."

I made a call, and was gratified by my reception. Mr. Lobeck was very cordial, and Mrs. Lobeck very polite; he was free and easy in chit-chat, but she was rather reserved; yet both seemed to be pleased by my visit. After looking through his museum, which contained a choice though not very extensive collection of birds, reptiles, and fossils, a few coins of different ages and countries, and a good assortment of autographs, I then strolled round his garden and shrubbery, and took my leave of them--both equally pressing for a more lengthened visit. Their attendance at the chapel now became more regular on a Sabbath evening, and occasionally on a Sabbath morning; and after the lapse of a few weeks, I met a select tea-party at their house, and though nearly all were strangers to me, and most of them high church, yet I spent a very pleasant evening. No controversial subject was introduced for debate or discussion; conversation was desultory, without being frivolous, and was sustained without being prosy, or degenerating into dry common-place. Having intimated to Mr. Lobeck that it was my usual habit to conduct family prayer where I spent an evening, the Bible was presented to me; I read Psalm ciii., offering a few expository remarks, and then we knelt together at the throne of grace.

At a subsequent interview, when Mr. Lobeck called on me, he said, "We have decided on attending your chapel if we can be accommodated with a pew." On expressing some degree of surprise that Mrs. Lobeck should be willing to leave her church, with all its long-cherished predilections and associations, he replied--

"She still gives it the preference, but a paramount sense of duty now compels her to take this step. She was pleased with the extreme simplicity of your mode of worship the first time she came; and has on several occasions expressed her approbation of the momentous truths you have inculcated on the attention of your audience; but your discourse on Sabbath evening, from Acts xvi. 14, brought her long-hesitating mind to this decision. As we were returning home, after alluding to the hymn, and to the singing, which she very much enjoys, she remarked she now felt no surprise that I should prefer the preaching at the chapel to the preaching at the church; because, in her opinion, it is more interesting and instructive. 'It is,' she added, 'quite a relief to hear no more prosing about the regular succession question, or about the font and its mysteries. This clergyman makes one think of one's self, of God, of another world, and our Saviour Jesus Christ.'"

As they were now become my stated hearers, a close intimacy soon sprang up between us; and on one occasion, when alluding to the state of religion on the Continent, he said, with emphatic earnestness, "My country, Sir, is the land of spiritual barrenness; death reigns there. Infidelity is awfully dominant, and fatally powerful."

"But I have heard it now assumes an aspect somewhat different from the infidelity introduced by Voltaire, and which I believe was aided in its progress by the more fascinating genius of Rousseau."

"Yes, Sir, it is now the infidelity of Goethe, a man of extraordinary mental power--a most subtle and beguiling writer. Voltaire was an _intellectual_ sceptic, who denounced Christianity as an imposition on human credulity, and he advocated its suppression and extermination. Rousseau was a _sentimental_ sceptic, who contemplated Christianity with the same class of emotions as he surveyed the beauties and the deformities of nature; regarding it as a strange compound of moral grandeur and of meanness, which, in his estimation, might remain amongst a people without doing any social injury, and might be got rid of without their sustaining any irreparable loss. Goethe is a _rational_ sceptic, or what is called in Germany a rationalist. His disposition is not mocking like that of Voltaire and others, nor does he ever indulge in burlesque or ridicule, when speaking of the popular faith. He uniformly evinces a marked respect for the ordinary doctrines and ethics of Christianity, while the drift of his writings is to prove that the real religion of a man's heart, and the real end of his existence, lie in the refined cultivation of his mind and affections, and in subjecting all irregular impulses and passions to a course of due restraint."

"The infidelity of these sceptical writers who have done so much mischief on the Continent, and in England too, is substantially the same in its origin, in its essence, and in its tendencies, though there is a slight variation in its phases, its developments, and in its designs."

"Infidelity, Sir, under any phase, or in any form of development, is a destroying power; and its progress may be traced, like that of an epidemic, by the scenes of desolation which it leaves in its track. There would be some difficulty in adjusting the comparative injury which these distinguished sceptics have entailed on the moral and religious world; but it is very evident to any one who studies their writings, that they all tend to the same issue. The primary lessons which they all teach are these--that man needs no Divine instructor, which supersedes the necessity of revelation; that his own reason is sufficient to enable him to discover the safe road to true happiness and moral greatness, which supersedes the necessity of priestly instruction and training; and that he need do nothing more for his present well-being, and his future destiny, if there be a futurity, than cultivate his own tastes and social virtues."

"But I suppose Goethe has done more moral injury amongst the theologians of Germany than any other sceptical writer."

"I have no doubt of it; and also amongst all classes of literary men. I was once one of his devoted disciples; he ruled my mind with despotic sway. I revered him as an oracle. He stood, in my estimation, both in intellectual greatness and in the accuracy of his moral discoveries, far above any of the writers of the Old or New Testaments. He gave me a distaste for the Bible, and a loathing against its sublime and momentous doctrines; and I believe that his writings have tainted to a fearful extent the theology of the pulpits of Germany. There are a few able and eloquent men, who preach Christ and him crucified, in close imitation of Paul; but only a comparatively small number. Human reason is the popular idol amongst the majority; they keep the cross of Christ in the background; the atonement is repudiated by them. They maintain from the press and from the pulpit, and with as much strenuous earnestness as any of the infidel fraternity, that man has within himself a self-sufficient power to secure his present and his future happiness, without being at all dependent on the grace of God or the love of Christ."

"A sad change since the palmy days of Luther, and the other great Reformers."

"A most melancholy one; I should not like to return to live amidst such signs of decay and scenes of moral desolation--it is as Eden in ruins."

"Your removal, Sir, to England has proved a very important event in your history."

"It has indeed; a local change often leads to many other changes. If I had tarried in Berlin, I had not known my wife or had my three dear children; and most likely I should still have remained a disciple of Goethe, rather than become a disciple of Jesus Christ."

"Will you permit me to ask you one question, What circumstance induced you to come to the chapel the first time you came?"

"Your question, Sir, revives in my recollection a proposition which you illustrated by a series of facts, when delivering a discourse on John iv. 6, 7, and which, if my memory does not fail me, you stated in the following words:--'When a crisis approaches in the history of a nation, or even of a private individual, we may sometimes observe prognostic signs of its coming; and in taking a review after its occurrence, we may sometimes see a marked conjunction of determining events naturally leading to it.' The fact is, on the Sunday of my first visit to your chapel, we had arranged with a few friends to take a drive into the country; but just as we were in readiness to start, a tremendous thunderstorm compelled us to give up our jaunt. After it had cleared off, as it was too late for our country excursion, I took a walk into the town to see an old friend; but the rain again came down in torrents, just as I was passing your chapel; I ran into it for shelter, not for worship. I had no more thought of being converted to the faith of Christ when I entered your chapel, than the woman of Samaria expected to see the Messias when she left home to get some water from Jacob's well."

"The Psalmist, when calling on all the powers of the celestial and terrestrial creation to praise the Lord (Psal. cxlviii.), speaks of fire and hail, of snow and vapour, and stormy wind as fulfilling the Divine purpose; they come and go at his command, doing the work he assigns to them."

"So I _now_ believe. I recollect, when watching the coming up of the dark thunderstorm, feeling vexed that it should come just then, when we were all in such high glee, and in complete readiness to be off. I did not then know that on that storm my future destiny was depending. Had it not come when it did come, we should have been desecrating the Sabbath by recreative indulgence; and had it not been followed by the second storm, I should have been with my friend enjoying the convivialities of hospitality and mirth. In either case, when laying my head on my pillow, on that memorable night, my bosom would have heaved to other emotions than those which your discourse had stirred up within it. There and then I felt what I never expected to feel; and if the strange commotion had been predicted by an angel of God, I should have ridiculed it as a mere phantom. Indeed, my philosophy, which led me to believe that such a moral change as I have experienced was unnecessary, compelled me also to believe that it was impossible."

"I recollect the text from which I preached on the occasion to which you refer, but I do not recollect employing any arguments to expose the fallacy and delusions of scepticism, or any in confirmation of the Divine origin of the Christian faith."

"Argument, Sir, in favour of Christianity I could have withstood; but I could not withstand the great moral power by which I felt awe-struck and subdued."

"Do you think you were renewed in the spirit of your mind during the first service you attended at the chapel?"

"I know I felt very differently when I came out of the chapel that evening, from what I felt on entering; but whether I then actually passed from a state of spiritual death to newness of life, is a question I cannot decide. But now I can say what Paul said--By the grace of God I am what I am."

"Do you ever doubt the reality of the spiritual change which you have undergone?"

"No, Sir, that's impossible. I know that I was once living in a state of spiritual death, or mental alienation from God, neither loving nor fearing him--living without him in the world; but it's the reverse of this now. I now revere him as my sovereign, whose laws are my delight; and I now love him as my reconciled Father through Jesus Christ. All through life, up to my first visit to your chapel, the invisible world flitted before my imagination, more as a fairy land than a real world of spiritual beings; and the immortality of man I considered more a thing of speculation than of positive certainty; but now I am compelled to believe, and by the force of evidence which sophistry cannot falsify, that it is the habitation of the high and lofty One whose name is Holy, and before whom I hope to be presented faultless with exceeding joy when the crisis comes."

"But, Sir, does your old philosophy never suggest to you the idea that these new discoveries and emotions, with their consequent anticipations, may be referable to the mysterious action of a disturbed imagination, rather than the direct action of a supernatural power--what scepticism designates the flights of fancy?"

"I must confess that such an idea has more than once obtruded itself on my mind; but I at once dismiss it as an intangible fiction; for when I turned my attention to study the Christianity of the Bible, which I did very closely as soon as I felt the new impulse from your first sermon, I perceived that it not only offers remission of sin to the penitent and contrite sinner, but that it is essentially a restorative scheme of grace, constructed for the very purpose of rescuing man from the moral ruin in which sin has involved him, and ultimately to re-produce that spiritual similitude to the Divine likeness in which man was created, and which would still have adorned humanity, if the first transgression had not been committed. Hence the discoveries and emotions I have made and felt, and the conflicts through which I am now passing, are the initiate of this grand design of the high and lofty One--the preparatory steps in the progress of recovery, which is to lead to such a glorious issue."

"Have you, Sir, any distinct recollection of the order of thought which followed--the unanticipated impressions and emotions which you felt while listening to the sermon?"

"I recollect saying to myself, when passing home--I have heard many sermons in my own country, and many in England, more elaborate, more argumentative, and more brilliant; and yet no one ever produced such a series of novel and strange convictions and impressions as this simple and plain appeal to which I have been listening. Myself, my moral condition and danger, now absorbed my attention: I felt, and for the first time in my history, that I had been living without God--living the life of a practical atheist--that I deserved his anger, and that he might justly leave me to perish."

"Did you entertain any idea that this new moral discovery would lead to an eventful issue; or did you suppose it would vanish away, and leave you to live as in former years?"

"Why, Sir, I felt that the discovery I had made was no mental illusion, but a palpable and awful reality; and though it excited emotions of alarm and terror which I could scarcely endure, yet I felt more inclined to cherish than repress them; and at times during the ensuing week, I did indulge a vague hope that God would have mercy on me and comfort me."

"Did you tell Mrs. Lobeck where you had been, and what you felt?"

"No, Sir. I deemed it inexpedient to do that; because I knew it would distress her to hear that I had been to a Dissenting chapel. But there were other considerations which imposed silence. I knew not what opinion to form of the issue of the mental process through which I was passing. I thought it might bring on some change in my moral character and history; and I also thought it might end in nothing. I therefore resolved, while in this state of perplexity and confusion, not to say anything to any one on the subject, till I actually knew the result."

"Did you remain long in this state of mental perplexity and distraction?"

"For several months, during which time I accompanied my family to our church every Sabbath morning, and very generally I was at your chapel in the evening. I perceived that the religion of the two places is the same in its broad outlines; yet I soon discovered a great difference, not only in its impressiveness, but even in the doctrines of its public ministrations."

"The Rector and his Curate, I believe, dwell principally on the efficacy of the sacraments, and the absolute necessity of a steady adherence to the church, as an implied condition of salvation."

"Yes, Sir: they virtually reject what many of our Protestant ministers in Germany openly repudiate--the inherent depravity of man, the atonement for sin made by Jesus Christ, and the necessity of the agency of the Divine Spirit to enlighten and renovate the soul of man. In fact, they adopt the leading principle of Goethe's philosophy, and place our hope of future happiness on our doings and attainments. Goethe and his disciples work the principle without the alliance of any auxiliary powers or influences; but the clergymen of our church identify it with ecclesiastic ceremonies and associations. In either case, it is man doing something for himself which makes him his own saviour."

"I often wonder how it is that intelligent persons, who admit the authority of the Bible, can make such egregious mistakes as they often do on the question which relates to the way of salvation, or the method of a sinner's reconciliation with God; when it is stated with so much explicitness and precision by the sacred writers, 'Believe and be saved.' 'For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father' (Ephes. ii. 18)."

"The terms are very explicit and simple--believe and be saved: but judging from my own experience, I should say they are very difficult of apprehension, and for this reason, we cannot trace a connection between such an action of the mind and such a glorious result."

"Nor, Sir, are we required to do so: we are to rest our belief on Christ and his promise, and then expect the issue."