Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th CenturiesJones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)
Religion
Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries
Jones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)
Mysticism; Reformers
Religion, he says, is wholly a matter of the "operative manifestation
of Christ in a man--the divine Spirit living in a man."[88] To miss
that experience and to lack that inner life in God is to miss the very
heart of religion. "There be many and diverse Religions and Baptisms
among many and diverse peoples of the habitable world, but to be
baptized as a man in Christ--that is to be baptized into the living,
active God, so that the man has his salvation and eternal well-being
wrought in him by the Spirit and life of his God--is the only
best."[89] Those who lack "this real spiritual business" never attain
"the true Sabbath-rest of the soul." They go to meeting on "Sunday,
Sabbath or First day [_sic_] merely to hear such or such a rare divine
preach or discourse, or to participate in such or such Ordinances."[90]
They have "an artificiall, historicall Divinity [Theology] which they
have attained by the eye, that is by reading books, or by the ears,
that is, by hearing this or that man, or by gathering up
expressions"--their religion rests on "knowledge" and not on Christ
experienced within.[91] This external religion is not so much wrong as
it is inadequate and immature. "It is," he says, "like unto young
children, who with shells and little stones imitate a real
building!"[92] The religion which carries a man beyond shadows to true
realities and from the cockle-shell house to a permanent and eternal
temple for the Spirit is the religion which finds Christ within as the
Day-star in the man's own heart.[93]
There is throughout this simple little book a noble appreciation of
love as the "supream good" for the soul. "The God of infinite goodness
and eternal love" is a kind of refrain which bursts forth in these
pages again {265} and again. Love in _us_ is, he thinks, "a sparkle of
that immense and infinite Love of the King and Lord of Love."[94]
Salvation and eternal well-being consist for him in the formation of a
life "consecrated and united unto the true Light and Love of Christ."
The man who has this Life within him will always be willing and glad
when the time comes "to returne againe into the bosome of his heavenly
Father-God."[95] And not only is the man who has the Life of Christ in
him harmonized in love upwardly toward God; he is also harmonized
outwardly towards his fellows. "He is a member with all other men,
with the good as a lowly-minded disciple to them; with those that are
not in Christ, as a deare, sympathizing helper, doing his utmost to do
them good."[96] He has written his "little Treatise," he says, "as a
love-token from the Father" to help lead men out of the "darke pits of
the world's darkness" into the full Light of the soul's day-dawn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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