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Text
the Itebibaliste’
or is it Jfatee?
JL SEPuMOlV,
PREACHED
AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM
PLACE, APRIL 25, 1875,
REV.
CHARLES
BY THE
VOYSEY.
Psalm CIII., 9. u He will not alnay be chiding, neither
keepeth he his anger for every
Y task this morning is anything but easy and
pleasant; and at its outset I ask for a fair and
candid weighing of my words, as in the face of God
I desire to say nothing but the simple truth. I have under
taken to make some answer to the all-important question, Is
the Gospel preached by Messrs. Moody and Sankey true, or
is it false ? The issues which depend on this alternative are
enormous, whether we consider them in their bearing on our
own individual destiny or as affecting the welfare of all man
kind. On such a momentous theme, it is not merely foolish
but heinous to halt between two opinions.
The documents from which I draw the particular state
ments of this Gospel are (1.) An elaborate account of the
New Evangelists published by Ward, Lock and Tyler, and
B
Rev. C. Voysey's sermons are to be obtained at St. George's
Hall, every Sunday morning, or from the Author (by post), Camden
House, Dulwich, S.E. Price one penny, postage a halfpenny.
�2
sold at every railway book-stall in the kingdom. (2.) The
book of Hymns and Songs used in the revival services. (3.)
Two pamphlets containing many sayings of Mr. Moody’s,
collated by the Bev. A. S. Herring, with the object of getting
subscriptions for a Church which he is hoping to build. (4.)
The various reports of his sermons which have appeared in
the newspapers.
On every ground, I would not for the world misrepresent
the doctrines I am about to attack; and I emphatically
repeat my conviction that these men thoroughly believe what
they say, and think they are doing God service.
I go further still, and say that they are far more consistent
in making all this stir than the thousands of clergy who hold
pretty nearly the same opinions and yet make comparatively
but little effort to rescue their brethren from perdition.
Now, what is their great theme, the key-note of all their
preaching and the essence of all their hymns ? It is Jesus.
In their own language, it is “ The old old story, of Jesus and
his love.” And in order to get at the kernel of their Gospel,
it will be necessary to raise a few questions.
1. Who is this Jesus?
2. In what was his love for man manifested ?
3. What benefit did his work on earth procure ?
4. How came man to be in need of that benefit which
they call salvation ?
5. Was it God, or was it the Devil, whose wrath was
pacified by Christ’s death ?
6. What is the penalty for disbelieving “the old old
story ? ”
I think when we have answered these questions in the
exact sense, if not always in the exact words, of the
Revivalists, we shall have before us a clear conception of what
they teach.
1. Who is this Jesus?
Nothing less than Almighty God; infinite and eternal
God. Only trustworthy as a Saviour because he is God ;
one of their hymns contains these two lines :—
�3
“ 0 Jesus the crucified ! Thee will I sing,
My blessed Redeemer, my God and my King.”
So entirely is this taken for granted, that seldom in the
sermons is any reference made to a contrary opinion. The
Revivalists—much to their credit—never touch scholastic
theology at all. I do not suppose the doctrine of the Trinity
ever enters their heads; but they undoubtedly believe in the
true Godhead of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost. When they go to Heaven they expect to meet, face
to face, God the Father and God the Son, as distinct as any
two persons on earth; though why they never speak hopefully
of seeing also God the Holy Ghost, I have not been able to
discover. At all events our first question needs no further
reply. They believe that Jesus is a God—God’s Eternal Son.
We turn next to the fact that nearly all their songs and
sermons are upon the love of Jesus. It is only just to say
that in quantity and emphasis this theme predominates
over every other, and may be called the cardinal doctrine of
their Creed. The question then to be next answered is,
2. In what was the love of Jesus manifested ?
It was in taking upon himself a human form and then
dying upon the cross that he might thus bear the whole
weight of the punishment due to the sins of mankind.
A hymn entitled Substitution, gives an exact answer to
our question :
“ 0 Christ, what burdens bowed thy head I
Our load was laid on Thee ;
Thou stoodest in the sinner’s stead,
Didst bear all ill for me.
A victim led, Thy blood was shed,
Now there’s no load for me.
Death and the curse were in our cup—
O Christ, ’twas full for Thee!
But thou hast drained the last dark drop—
’Tis empty now for me.
That bitter cup—Love drank it up ;
Now blessings’ draught for me.”
This is only one specimen out of scores that I could quote.
The whole Hymn Book rings with the same note. Let us
ask in passing, Who can wonder at men loving Jesus, if
Jesus so loved men ? His heart inust be a heart of stone
�4
who could withhold his love and gratitude for such a
deliverance!
The third question, “ What benefit did his work on earth
procure ? ” is partly answered by the hymn just quoted. The
benefit is two-fold (a) the cancelling of a debt due by the
sinner, the release from a sentence of eternal woe; and (6)
the peace of mind which the knowledge of that cancelling or
release brings with it. Sinners are not only set free from an
awful penalty, but they are delivered from their fears of it,
and are assured of everlasting happiness instead of everlasting
misery.
To quote again from the Hymns :
“ Your many sins are all forgiven,
Oh hear the voice of Jesus ;
Go on your way in peace to heaven,
And wear a crown with Jesus.
All glory to the dying Lamb!
I now believe in Jesus;
I love the blessed Saviour’s name,
I love the name of Jesus.
His name dispels my guilt and fear
No other name but Jesus;
Oh how my soul delights to hear
The blessed name of Jesus! ”
Who, I ask again, can wonder at such absorbing regard
for Jesus, if the “ old old story ” be true?
I pass on to the fourth question, “ How came man to be in
need of that benefit which they call Salvation ? ”
Here again, as in the matter of the Godhead of Jesus, we
find very little information. The preachers studiously avoid
controversy unless it be forced upon them. They take for
granted that their hearers believe already that they are lost
and doomed through Adam’s fall and their own trans
gressions ; and that for these sins they deserve to be cast
into an endless hell. One hymn certainly contains the
doctrine :
“ God loved the world of sinners lost
And ruined by the fall;
Salvation full at highest cost
He offers free-to all.
0 ’twas love, ’twas wondrous love,
�5
The love of God to me ;
It brought my Saviour from above
To die on Calvary.”
But though the repulsive doctrine of the curse against
mankind for the sin of our first parents, and the still more
awful sentence of everlasting torments, are not obtrusively
prominent in either sermons or hymns, the preachers rest
upon these frightful tenets just as much as they do on the
Godhead of Jesus. Their preaching would be sheer nonsense
if the story of the fall and the doom of mankind and the
reality of hell-fire were to be by them for one moment
doubted. All their rapture for Jesus and their songs to his
love turn upon the supposed reality of this awful curse from
which he is believed to have saved them. Salvation, on their
lips, is the correlative of eternal damnation ; the former has
no meaning in their theology without the latter. In a sermon
Mr. Moody says, “ I believe in the old-fashioned hell, if I did
not believe in hell for ever, would I come here to preach
night after night ?” Indeed it is here chiefly that their move
ment deserves the name of a Revival, inasmuch as the doctrine
of a lost and ruined race, of an everlasting fire for the
damned was rapidly dying out and the belief in it con
siderably modified. The theology of Mr. Maurice and his
school has shaken also the belief in substitution. If the
Revivalists produce any desired effect on their hearers, it will
be to restore these horrible doctrines to the position' which'
they have recently 1-ost, and to excite afresh fears which were
nearly quelled. I am therefore not misrepresenting them
when I affirm that the doctrines of the fall and the conse
quent doom of mankind to endless, hopeless, misery lie at
the very foundation of their Gospel th at . Je sus came and
died to save us.
The fifth question, Was it G id, or was it the Devil whose
wrath was pacified by Christ’s death? may be readily
answered by some more verses of a hymn already quoted:
“ Jehovah lifted up his rod—
0 Christ, it fell on Thee !
•
Thou wast sore stricken by thy God,
There’s not one stroke for me.
Thy tears, Tby blood, beneath it flowed ;
Thy bruising healeth me.
�6
Jehovah hade His sword awake—
0 Christ, it woke ’gainst Thee!
Thy blood the foaming blade must slake;
Thy heart its sheath mnst be—
All for my sake, my peace to make;
Now sleeps that sword for me,”
If any further reply to this question be needed, we have
only to turn to Mr. Moody’s sermon on “ The Blood,” which
seems tto have been elicited by a letter he had received
asking, “ If believing in Christ’s death or the shedding of
His blood as an atonement for sin, be the only way by which
a sinner can be saved, how is it that Christ himself never
spoke of it in that way ?, nor do we find it mentioned in the
Acts of the Apostles as the Gospel preached to the Gentiles.”
Mr. Moody, in reply to this letter “ wondered how this per
son had read his Bible. God helping him he would answer
the question, because he believed that the Blood was the
foundation of all their hopes. Take the Blood out of the
Bible and he would not carry it home. That book did not
teach anything else. For the last 4,000 years it has been
telling the one story that man was saved by the Blood. The
first glimpse they caught of the Blood was in the 21st verse
of the 3rd Chapter of Genesis, in which it was stated that
unto Adam and his wife the Lord made coats of skin. Skins
could not have been got from animals without the shedding
of blood. In the next chapter it was stated that Abel
brought of the firstlings of his flock, and that the Lord had
respect for Abel’s offering, but no respect for the offering of
Cain. Why ? Because there was no Blood in it. Abel came
to God according to God’s way. Cain came in his own way.
He was like a great many who were saying now, What
have I to do with blood : Why can I not come in my own
way ; if I do about as nearly right as I can, will it not be
all right with me ? Cain did not see why his beautiful fruit
should not have been more acceptable than a bleeding lamb,
which was repulsive to him ; but Abel came by way of Blood,
and his offering was accepted. There were a great many
Cainites now who did not like the doctrine ; but he challenged
them to find in the Bible any other way to Heaven save by
Blood. There was no doctrine that the world attacked so
much as that of the Blood ; but the more the world assailed
him (Mr. Moody) about it, the more thoroughly he was con
�7
vinced he was right. The whole Bible went the moment this
doctrine was touched. It was a terrible thing for a man to
speak contemptuously out of any pulpit of the doctrine of
Blood ; and he did not know when be was more shocked than
when he heard a minister of the Gospel in Dublin say of the
doctrine of the precious Blood of Christ that it was the doc
trine of the shambles. It was horrible—damnable. Might
God keep them from trampling the Blood of Christ under
foot! ”
There can be no doubt then on this head. It was the
wrath of God and not the wrath of the Devil that was
appeased by the Blood of Christ.
The sixth and last question is one that must have some
little interest for us, Cl What is the penalty for disbelieving
the old old story ? ”
Again a verse of a hymn shall be our answer :
“ But if you still this call refuse,
And. all His wondrous love abuse,
Soon will He sadly from you turn,
Your bitter prayer for pardon spurn.
‘ Too late 1 too late ! ’ will be the cry,
Jesus of Nazareth has passed by.”
“ Almost persuaded, harvest is past,
Almost persuaded, doom comes at last
‘ Almost ’ cannot avail;
‘ Almost ’ is but to fail!
Sad, sad, that bitter wail—
‘ Almost ’—but lost"
il A Terrifying death-bed.—A man had often been lovingly
warned, but no heed was taken. The unexpected messenger
showed itself. The agonising soul cried aloud, “ The har
vest is passed, the summer is ended, and I am not saved I ”
(Jeremiah viii. 20.) Weaker, he said it a second time ; in
a very faint whisper he again breathed it out, and instantly
expired. Yes, my dear unsaved friends, he died a Christless death, was wrapped in a Christless shroud, was put into
aChristless coffin, and lowered into a Christless grave.”
In a sermon entitled For or against Christ; this night or
never, Mr Moody said “ he believed thousands were
trembling in the balance between heaven and hell. Every
�8
one of them’ must decide the question for themselves
That very hour they would receive Him and be saved, or
reject Him and be damned.”
This is a pleasant prospect for you and me, and I think
our anxiety to test the truth needs no apology. If it be
true, we are 11 in a parlous state ” instead.
I pause herefor one moment to gather up in the fewest possible
words the Gospel which these revivalists preach, that there may
be no mistake as to what we are about to attack. All man
kind were doomed for the sin of our first parents, and for
our subsequent sins, to everlasting woe. God was so angry
with men, that, but for Christ he would have sent them all
to hell. Christ, however, came down to earth and shed His
blood; God looked at the Blood and was satisfied. He
accepted the sufferings and death of Christ instead of the
everlasting sufferings of mankind, but only on one condition,
viz :—that men should accept it on their parts as He had
done on His part—should take it and believe it and be ,
thankful. Then they should be forgiven, and saved, and go
to heaven; but that if they did not believe it, they should
be damned after all, and Christ himself would turn against
them, become their fierce judge, and in the words of Mr
Moodythey would be lost for all eternity.”
Now, until very lately this has been the main Creed of
Christendom. Of course each church or sect adds somethingto it of its own. But they all agree in a lost and doomed
race, a dying, and bleeding God, and a salvation all owing to
Him. Messrs Moody and Sankey are only giving us the old
story of orthodox Christianity, the message of the greater
part of the New Testament, the “ the Gospel once for all
delivered to the saints.” They are now saying in striking
and novel language what the whole Church and aggregate
of Churches (except the Unitarian) have been saying ever .
since the day of Penticost. So when we challenge the truth
of their Gospel, we are challenging what the whole world
recognizes as the Christian Faith, which, however erroneously
it may be claimed to be based on the authority and teaching
of Jesus himself, is commonly called Christianity. Moreover,
it strangely shows itself as the common element in all the
divisions of Christendom, except the Unitarian. A revival
�9
of this Faith would be a revival of universal Christianity in
which every church and sect would share. No one calling
himself an orthodox Christian ought to breathe a word of
complaint against Messrs Moody and Sankey’s doctrines.
I now proceed to analyse this Gospel, and shew the grounds
on which I impugn it and declare it to be false.
May I not lay down as axioms that no doctrines can be
true which are based on a primary falsehood; and that every
proposition must be false which declares or implies that
God is unjust? I pass then from the structure of this
Gospel to the very foundation, and analyse the cardinal
assumption on which it all rests. It is over and over again
repeated that God cursed all mankind with an exceedingly
bitter curse and sentenced the whole of our race to endless
torments in hell, as a punishment for sin.
There is no shadow of doubt that nearly the whole of
Christendom has imputed to God this sentence of doom.
In spite of all they say about His love for lost sinners in
sending His Son to save them, there the awful charge stands
arrayed against Him. of having pronounced this;most unjust
and cruel sentence. He, the Maker of all things made this
pit of everlasting fire for the endless torment of his frail
creatures. We need not think of its matchless cruelty, but
only ask Was it just and right? Did man deserve such an
awful fate ? I demand an answer to this question from every
minister who preaches to me the Gospel of Salvation by
Christ. I claim to be told on what grounds of eternal
justice, even the most awful sin which man or devil could
commit, can be punished with endless, hopeless woe without
a chance of repentance ? Even if the sinner had been born
absolutely perfect, with fullest measure of reason and moral
power, in sovereign command of every faculty, and had
entered into solemn contract with the Almighty to do His
bidding without fault or wavering, and had, in spite of these
overwhelming advantages and responsibilities, set his
Maker at defiance and drawn a host of his fellows into
rebellion—even then, I say, a Being who had the power
over him, and who had the right of vengeance, would be a
fiend of the blackest dye if he condemned that rebel to neverending torture. But how awfully aggravated is the injustice
�10
ascribed to God in the damnation of a creature like man.
Putting aside the use of Adam and Eve as exceptional, the
whole of their posterity were born weak and sinful, and more
ready for evil than for holiness. Nay, the Gospellers are
never weary of expatiating on our total depravity by nature,
and our utter inability to keep the laws of God. And yet
they dare to say of the most Holy and Righteous God that
He has doomed us frail sinners to everlasting Hell, in order
that the Majesty of His Law might be vindica
ted !
I demand an answer from these preachers ; Is
this right and just?
Is it conduct which the
Old Testament at all events bids us imitate ? Is it
not the exact opposite of that mercy and love which their
God Jesus is believed to have shown? Further, the damna
tion so unjust as against frail sinners is more unjust still as
against unbelievers ; for men cannot control their beliefs,
they must believe as they are convinced, and this is an in
tellectual process over which they can exercise little or no
control. Indeed, there is everything to induce them to
believe, for the Gospel says they will escape the awful
damnation and win an endless bliss if they will only believe
it; therefore if anyone refuses to believe, it is because he
cannot help it. So whether the doom of hell be pronounced
against sinners, as sinners, for their own and Adam’s trans
gression, or against unbelievers for their unbelief, it is a
monstrous and inexpressible injustice ; and all the sins of
the whole world piled up together are righteousness itself—
are as white as snow—compared with the infamy, the black
hearted fiendishness of sending one soul to perdition.
The doctrine of hell, then, is in our view the most fearful
blasphemy which can be spoken against God, and therefore
it cannot be true. Therefore, since it is absolutely false,
mankind are not, nor ever were, in danger of eternal damna
tion ; never needed the salvation which these preachers pro
claim ; therefore they did not need Jesus or anyone else—
God or man—to bear their punishment in their stead; if there
was no hell to be saved from, they wanted no saviour; if
there was no burning wrath of Jehovah against them, they
needed no mediator to slake it; if no death nor curse were
in their cup, they needed no Christ to drink its bitter draught.
The dying love of Jesus, and the precious Blood flowing to
�11
hide men’s guilty stains from the eye of the Christian
Moloch, are all a myth, a pure fable, as little worthy of
credit as the labours of Hercules or the banquet of Thyestes.
And it is not our fault that we utter this unwelcome rejection
of their Gospel. It is theirs and theirs alone. They have
put into our hands this very weapon to strike at the vitals of
their Gospel. They have kept on telling us that Christ
came to save the lost; that he would not have come at all,
but to rescue us out of the burning pit of destruction, and so
we have only to echo their ’ words and to shew the helpless
falsehood of their whole Gospel by exposing the utter
falseness and impiety of the fundamental assumption on
which the whole fabric is based. This conclusion was long
foretold by the orthodox themselves. The very first time
that the eternity of Hell-fire was questioned, they murmured
in sorrow and fear that if that went, Christianity would soon
follow. A Bishop once told me that if I did away with
everlasting Hell, there would be no ground for the atonement,
and if the atonement were needless, so also was the Incarna
tion and so too were all the miraculous events of Christ’s life
and death. He was quite right. He had been at the Bar and
knew how to reason. I deliberately therefore denounce the
Gospel according to Messrs. Moody and Sankey, and the
prevailing teaching of Christendom, as utterly false and
fabulous, resting entirely on a proposition inherently untrue,
because it charges God with the most wicked of crimes and
the most cruel injustice.
Time forbids me to say more to-day. I only wish that
this challenge or one of a similar kind may be sent to these
popular preachers and by them fairly met and answered. If
they are in earnest, as we may well believe, they will surely
find it to the interest of their cause to meet and not to evade
this challenge, to look again at the very foundation stone of
their religion, lest the whole fabric fall unawares upon
themselves and their deluded followers, and in its fall may
crush and bury all the good and pure and lovely thoughts
which, in spite of its falsehoods, still cluster around lt the old
old story of Jesus and his love.”
�LONDON:
CARTER & WILLIAMS, Steam Printers, 14, Bishopsgate Avenue,
Camomile-street, E.C.
�
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Is the revivalists's gospel true, or is it false?. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, April 25, 1875
Creator
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 11 p. : 19 cm.
Notes: A response to the Gospel preached by Moody and Sankey.
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[Carter & Williams]
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[1875]
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Christianity
Gospels
Revivalism