[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECIATOR.1 SIR,—As one who
has thought much and written on this im- portant subject, which one of your correspondents did me the favour to mention, I would ask permission to be allowed to draw attention to the fact that your correspondents are in imminent danger, from Mr. Drummond's book, of erecting the misleading doctrine of Substantive Regeneration.
The leading point is, that we are to consider regeneration to be a spiritual biogenesis, according to the law of natural bio- genesis, that as the mineral body becomes invested with life, so the natural man with spiritual life. Mr. Drummond says, "The change of state here is not, as in physics, a mere change of direc- tion, the affections directed to a new object, the will into a new channel. The change involves all this, but is something deeper. It is a change of nature, a regeneration, a passing from death into life."
This doctrine, in the above sense, is not the doctrine of the Bible, which teaches a moral regeneration only, a regeneration of the moral nature, and not of the nature in itself. The Scrip- tures declare the unregenerated man to be dead ; but, mark, they call to him, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." This death is manifestly, therefore, a moral death, voluntarily chosen, and the way out of it is by voluntarily awaking to light and life. They declare him to be in darkness, but teach this is the con- demnation, that "light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light ;" and declare, "He that hateth his brother is in darkness." The carnal mind, which is in enmity against God, is not a substance, or a nature in itself that hates God, which were impossible ; we cannot have a moral substance of any kind. Enmity is ill-will, is a disposition of mind, and is the minding of the flesh,—viz., a voluntary committal of the mind to the desires of the flesh, and is, therefore, a guilty state of mind. The Scriptures declare that men require to be regenerated; but define regeneration as "the interrogation of a good conscience towards God" (Revised Version) to be a washing away of sins. Similarly, the passing from darkness to light is from the moral darkness of sin, to the moral light of righteousness. There is a new creation, or a new creature ;,but it is in righteousness and true holiness. That the new creation and new image is only moral, and not of the nature in itself, is put beyond all doubt by St. Peter, when he writes to Christians asking them to be "obedient children, not fashioning themselves according to the former lusts." The members which have been yielded unto. iniquity are not to have their nature changed, but are to ne yielded unto God.
It is important to notice the logical outcome of the doctrine of spiritual biogenesis. If the biogenesis is to be taken absolutely, to be rational, we must pity only, and never blame the sinner. His nature is dark and dead, and re- quires to be changed. The blame and guilt which the Bible lays to his charge, and his future punishment, are, if we use our reason, in the highest degree irrational and unjust, from. the point of view of biogenesis. How can he help reject- ing Christ ? Christ is God, and the nature of his mind is enmity against God. But, and if, we refuse to reason, then we have another bewildering mystery linked to the mystery of spiritual biogenesis. Again, the command of the Bible to. repent, that is, for the man to blame himself and justify God, is honestly impossible. So that the tendency of this doctrine is either to produce hypocrisy, universalism, or atheism.
Turn we now to Scriptural teaching, and instead of mystery linked to mystery, all is intelligible. Our primitive creation in Adam placed us in purpose already in the spiritual kingdom ; but in him we fell, and it has come to pass that we have given our faculties to the service of the kingdom of darkness, instead of the kingdom of light. It is not our nature in itself of which the- Bible complains, but the wrong use to which we have put it. We have established psychical affiliations with wrong and worth- less interests, instead of with the right and infinitely valuable interests of God. It is the affiliations that must be changed, and not the nature. We must repent, change our minds, must make to ourselves a new heart and a right spirit; and God makes them, by furnishing us with all the moral suasion, by his truth and his Spirit, necessary to accomplish these things. By his Spirit be also washes our nature from the roots of wrong affiliations, but does not change the nature. Moreover, he abides in us, not incarnate, according to the teaching of biogenesis (which, by the way, is an unadvised thing to say,— there has been but one Incarnation), but as a personal being, evermore essentially himself, and evermore holding personal and moral converse with the soul. The union, moreover, of "one spirit with the Lord" is not substantive, but moral ; we can break it, can grieve or resist the gentle guest whose presence hallows and sanctifies our nature, and confers on us the fellow- ship of the spiritual kingdom of God.
It will thus be seen that, according to the light of Scripture, of true moral science, and of right reason, the whole fabric of the doctrine of spiritual biogenesis, according to the natural law of biogenesis (except as a beautiful parable), comes entirely
to the ground.—I am, Sir, &c., W. WOODS SMYTH..
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