Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing?
Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where no gin is for him? shall one take up a snare from the earth, and have taken nothing at all?
Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?
Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.
The lion hath roared, who will not fear? The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy? – Amos 3:3-83Can two walk together, except they be agreed? 4Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing? 5Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where no gin is for him? shall one take up a snare from the earth, and have taken nothing at all? 6Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it? 7Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. 8The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy? (Amos 3:3‑8).
The speculations concerning the Person of Christ, which have been prevalent the last few years, have been the occasion of much distress among us. A special cause of trouble has been that some brethren of weight, whom we all love and honor have lent their countenance to them, instead of repelling them as unworthy to be entertained for a moment. Such speculations lead inevitably to a separation of the divine and human natures in the Person of Christ, so that that blessed Person, as Scripture presents Him to our faith is virtually lost, and even if it does not end in this, the affection and adoration with which His Person is enshrined in the heart of the believer, are imperceptibly diminished in these discussions. More than forty years ago we had something of the same kind from which souls then suffered greatly. From the first, brethren should not only have refused to allow these questions to be raised amongst us, but they should have been met with indignant and summary judgment. Failing to do this, the sense of their evil nature has been gradually lost and they have spread far and wide. They have been carried to places abroad from their focus near London, where the writer met with them as well as in England since his return.
The desire in writing this paper has been that the souls of those who have been thus affected may be recovered to truer thoughts about the Lord, and right appreciation of His glory and may judge in themselves that state of soul which has accepted these lowering views of the highest and dearest Object of the heart.
At first the hope was entertained that the warnings of danger that have been given, and the pain which these discussions had occasioned in godly minds, would have deterred those who had indulged in them from pursuing them further, and that their own minds moreover would have recoiled from the evident, though unintentional disloyalty to Christ displayed in them. But it has not been so, and now we have to face the fact that these determined and persistent attempts to discover something new and distinguishing have found their natural issue in dividing the Person of Christ; so much so that at last we have two lives, not merely the life of the body which could be surrendered on the Cross, nor the varied display of life which every Christian believes, but the upper and the lower, different relationships in different spheres, distinct and independent of each other.
The fact is, that no one can entertain these sentiments without suffering loss, and having their thoughts of the blessed Lord beclouded by them. Hence, those we believe to have been truly loyal to Christ, having permitted themselves to be drawn into them, have necessarily lost their footing and unconsciously have been led to make statements which darken His proper glory.
These statements will be found in the sequel, where they are accompanied by their antidote. To give them here in all their number and undisguised plainness, as the writer has met with them, would be too painful and would greatly distress every right-minded saint. Their true character has been shown in a letter that has been circulated among saints and afterwards withdrawn. That a letter containing such sentiments, on such a subject, from one so prominent, to another well-known and esteemed servant of Christ, should be in circulation amongst us for months, is an ominous fact but in various parts of England teachers are more or less impregnated with them and imparting them to others, and this was only to be expected, if they were not stamped out at the first. A recent instance we have met with (alluding to the beautiful display of divine sympathy in John 11) is – “Eternal life never wept!”
Mr. {F. E.} Raven declines being in any way “identified” with the letter referred to, printed at the end of a pamphlet entitled Be not Deceived. No one could fairly identify Mr. Raven with what is there expressed, but to say that he has no responsibility with regard to it is quite another matter. If he originated the thoughts concerning the Lord which are worked out in it, and which have now, alas! spread so widely, we cannot hold him clear of responsibility for them.
His letter to Mr. Barker, penned expressly in reply to earnest inquiries as to what was contained in a previous letter to a brother in Ealing, makes this too evident. Mr. Barker forwards to Mr. R. the following questions
1. Is it true that Mr. Raven has owned (as I am informed) that he was the author of the sentence “Fancy a helpless babe an expression of eternal life?”
2. Does Mr. Raven hold that eternal life was in the Son with the Father before the world was?
3. Does he hold that eternal life is imparted to us?
Mr. Raven replies to Mr. Barker
Greenwich, March 6 1890.
My dear brother, – I return Mr. {H. H.} Snell’s letter. In regard to the first point, I am not aware that I ever penned the sentence supposed to be mine. It is for Major McCarthy, who I believe is the author of the paper, in which the sentence appears in inverted commas, to prove whence he derived it.
As to the other points I think I would bow to Scripture in a moment, but Scripture does not speak of Christ having been the eternal life which was with the Father before the world was. That the Eternal life was with the Father (as I should say essentially) Scripture says, and I have no doubt whatever that the reference is to the Son: but the importance of the difference is that John in his Epistle is giving prominence to the condition because we have part in it.
Again, Scripture does not I think speak of our having had eternal life imparted to us. What is imparted to us, as I understand it, is life in the power of the Holy Spirit, a well of water in the believer.
Eternal life is in the Son and we are in Him, and live by Him in the power of the Spirit. This is the form in which eternal life is now given to us. I will send you a further line as to the remaining part of your letter.
Your affectionate Brother, F. E. Raven
Mr. Barker to Mr. Raven
Tonquay, March 19, 1890.
Dear brother, – I shall be very glad if you will place me in the position to say that the sentence with which Major McCarthy’s tract begins never emanated from you.
The sentence I mean is, “Fancy a helpless babe an expression of eternal life!” Possibly in passing from one to another the sentence may have undergone some unintentional change while the substance of the thing remained. So I shall be more than thankful if you can tell me that not only the sentence as it stands but no such sentence ever came from you.
If you can do this I think you should be cleared from so serious an imputation. That such a sentence whoever be its author, is a serious one, you yourself I am sure will readily admit, for if the words “eternal life” were struck out and “the true God” put in, then there are but few who would distinguish it from blasphemous Unitarianism, though the author of it might himself be sound as to the deity of the Son while unwittingly betrayed into a loose way of speaking.
Many letters reach me from various quarters as to these matters, and in moving about from place to place I find brethren speaking of them, and therefore I am anxious to be able to contradict the sentence in Major McCarthy’s tract.
One line in your last letter to me seems somewhat confused; you say, “I think that morally life is there the moment a person is born again.” But how can you speak of life “morally” except as the operation of life actually imparted.
I still hope that you may be led to put forth a simple statement to the effect that you had and have no thought either of denying or enfeebling the fact that Christ was ever “that eternal life which was with the Father” manifested indeed on earth in incarnation, so that it could be seen and handled, but was ever that.
Secondly, that the life of which He is the source eternal life, is the life with which He quickens and is the life imparted to all believers now.
May I ask that the line you may send me in reply should be a plain answer, such as will need no explanation when giving it to simple souls. – Ever affectionately yours in Christ
William Barker
F. E. Raven to W. Barker
Greenwich, March 20, 1890.
My Dear brother,
– I thank you for your letter, and hasten to reply, I trust plainly.
I have understood that Major McCarthy printed the words, “Fancy a helpless babe an expression of eternal life,” supposing them to be an extract from a letter of mine. I am satisfied I never used these words.
When an earlier paper of Major McCarthy’s appeared, in writing to a brother at Ealing I pointed out the monstrosity of an assertion of the Major’s, that the Lord never ceased to be the EXHIBITION of eternal life from a babe in the manger to the throne of the Father. It was no question of what was there in the babe – God manifest in the flesh, eternal life, and all else, but of what He was the exhibition, for Major McCarthy meant in detail. He was as a babe the EXHIBITION of infancy in its helplessness, for all else, though there, was for the moment veiled, and it was His glory, for in being made of a woman becoming man, He came truly and really into humanity in its conditions here, grew and increased in wisdom and stature.
As to new birth being life “morally,” I mean that it is not life in power, and power is an essential of life.
A newborn soul is alive, sees and appreciates and delights in what is of God, but wants deliverance and power, the cross, and the well of water within springing up to everlasting life. Liberty and the spring of energies, affections activities, and enjoyment is, in the believer, in the Spirit of Christ.
I trust, in spite of being harassed by these questions you are having a good time.
Your affectionate Brother, F. E. Raven
What are we to think of such a reply, or of the refusal of Mr. Raven’s friends at Ealing to produce the letter in question which contains some sentence which they at first communicated, and which undeniably embodies a lowering reflection upon the Person of the only begotten Son of God?
Where is the care for the glory of God, when the Lord Himself is in question, and when Mr. Raven and his friends at Ealing persist in concealing that which has given so much occasion for distress among those gathered to the name of Christ. “He that doeth truth cometh to the Light that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God.”
Is the Person of the Lord held in so little estimation that such conduct can be passed over, or is the credit of Mr. Raven’s character to be held of more importance? His own statement in reply to Mr. Barker, painful as it is, is a confirmation of the deeper gravity of the sentence they agree to conceal.
Alas! it appears of far more consequence to some that the unity of brethren should be preserved than that the dignity and glory of the Son of God should be maintained unsullied.
A loud outcry has been raised about the former, but the latter passed over, how lightly! The same may be said with reference to Mr. ____ ’s letter, now withdrawn, much more being made by some of its being printed, than of such doctrines being written and circulated.
In these letters we have also the three principal facts relating to these doctrines concerning Eternal Life. First, the denial that Christ is spoken of personally as the Eternal Life that was with the Father! secondly, that it is not imparted to us; thirdly, that it is a “condition” or state; fourthly, we may add, from Mr. Raven’s letter, obtainable from Vassall Road, that it was not manifested to the world. It results from this that it is not to be manifested in the Christian either, and becomes a mystic, ideal thing, altogether different from the practical exhibition of it, which is insisted on in Scripture.
But let us unravel the sentence in the above quoted letter March 20
In writing to a brother at Ealing, I pointed out the monstrosity of an assertion of the Major’s that the Lord never ceased to be the EXHIBITION of eternal life from a babe in the manger to the throne of the Father.
Though Mr. Raven admits all was there in the Person of Christ, he will allow nothing but the exhibition of infancy in its helplessness, because “all else, though there, was for the moment veiled,” for He had come “into humanity in its conditions here.” And they were undoubtedly limited enough.
In the sight of God and of faith, He was, as we have shown in the following pages, ever the exhibition of Eternal Life or what was divine. It belongs to the essential nature and glory of His Person, and this is said to be a “monstrosity”!
No doubt it would be a mistake to say that He was presented formally to Israel as the exhibition of Eternal Life, until His public ministry began. But to characterize as a monstrosity this declaration of the glory of Christ shows how dimmed that glory must have been, and betrays unmistakably the hand of the enemy. It is simply a profanation of His glorious Person.
Can we, then, be surprised, when pondering these things and their gravity in the sight of God, that He has made a breach upon us? God will not let Uzzah put his hand upon the Ark, and He will not pass by this indignity rendered to the Person of His Son.
It is remarkable, also, that this breach should have been first made at the place where the questionable letter was sent which is still concealed. With us it is a question of unity with God it is a question of a slight put upon the Person of His Son, before which no associations can stand or be allowed a place in His sight. We are far from charging any intention of doing this, even upon those who have gone the furthest in it. It has been done in ignorance of the danger involved in it. Hence, in exposing the serious evil of the expressions that have been used, no names are given, in order to avoid causing needless pain or offence, the desire of the writer being to recover those who have been beguiled into them, by the presentation of Christ in His own glory and blessedness, as the Word of God keeps Him before us. Not that this is to be viewed as a light thing in the sight of God for when the Ark of God, which was a figure of the Person of Christ and the special link of God’s presence with His people, His strength and His glory, and theirs likewise, was desecrated by those Israelites who profanely looked into it the judgment of God fell upon them. Not only this, but when the hand of Uzzah was put forth to steady it, as he thought because the oxen shook it, he was smitten by God for his inadvertence, so that the place was called Perez Uzzah, or the breach of Uzzah. But David has to justify God in His resenting the touch of this unholy hand, calling upon the Levites, who were set apart as holy persons for this service to sanctify themselves in order to bring up the Ark, and adding, “Because ye did it not at the first, the Lord our God made a breach upon us.”
What makes all this more serious, is that the Person of Christ is at present the evident object of Satan’s attack, not only amongst ourselves, but all around us. In a recent publication of a volume of Essays, the joint production of twelve Oxford clergymen and professors of the High Church school, entitled “Lux Mundi,” – i.e., The Light of the World – treating on the Person of Christ and the sanction which he puts on Old Testament Scripture, this dividing of His Person into different spheres is carried so far that He is stated to have been ignorant in His human nature of what He knew in His divine nature; and Luke 2:5252And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. (Luke 2:52) is appealed to in support of this doctrine, the same Scripture that is brought forward by those amongst ourselves who lightly venture to reason on this subject. Brethren in Switzerland, France, Germany, the United States, and Canada are decided in their rejection of these views, and marvel at what they deem the spiritual blindness of their brethren in England, who do not discern their grave import. We have, in addition, been warned against them almost with the dying breath of two of the most devoted experienced, and faithful servants of the Lord, and who have been most blessed in their service, now taken “from the evil to come,” but this, instead of producing serious inquiry and awakening and self-judgment before God, as to why these watchmen of Israel have sounded the alarm, has only brought out the painful self-confidence that marks this movement both in its spirit and teaching, with the intimation that they have been removed in judgment!
Two printed papers of Mr. Raven’s have just reached us one on Eternal Life, the other, A Letter to a Brother, having the address of 73 Vassall Road. The former does not attempt to recall anything that Mr. Raven has written, but carefully evades the points which have been challenged in his views and puts forward what most, with some exceptions, would accept, and whilst pressing eternal life as the new sphere, and speaking of it as in Christ as Man, carefully avoids stating that He was the Eternal Life personally before the world began, though quoting the Scripture which says, “He is the true God and Eternal Life.” This, which is illusive, is explained in the letter below to be applicable to Him after incarnation, because this “condition,” this “something,” was then expressed in Him.
The letter which is subjoined, of later date than the others already given, shows that Mr. Raven’s views on the subject of Eternal Life are unchanged.
Greenwich, July 24, 1890
My dear brother, – It is Mr. Darby who over and over again maintains that eternal life consists in a condition of relationship and being,and he brings forward Eph. 1:4, 54According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, (Ephesians 1:4‑5), to illustrate it, and (seeing that that condition existed, and was manifested, and is now fully expressed, even as to bodily condition, in the Son) he says it is Christ. His words are: “It is Christ Himself and that revealed as man in glory,” and quotes 1 John 5:2020And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. (1 John 5:20) for it.
I strongly object to the talk about the personality of Eternal Life, because (as the reference is to Christ) it makes Eternal Life commensurate with the Person of the Eternal Son, and this I believe to be very wrong.
In the Epistle of John, the apostle is not, as I understand it, unfolding the Person of the Son; but declaring something that came to light and is now perfectly expressed in Him, and in which, in having him, we, too, have part. – Believe me your affectionate Brother
(Signed) F. E. Raven
To Mr. Edwards
We look in vain in either of the two printed papers especially the last, dated July 3rd, for some expression, or even acknowledgment of errors which have caused so much sorrow among brethren, but instead of this we have the statement of “suffering under charges without truth,” and that “no cherished truth is touched, or given up, or its force lessened or unduly pressed.” Reading these words we can only conclude that there must be some strange defect in Mr. Raven’s estimate of things, or in his memory.
When we recall the original statement which so startled brethren at Witney {1888} that the babes had not (in some sense) eternal life, which was dropped when generally refused; then that Eternal Life was a sphere, which, though denied, was proved at a meeting at Park Street to have been said by Mr. Raven, and then modified; then that our position in righteousness before God in Christ, “if it means anything means sin is to be completely displaced in us by Divine righteousness” – Divine righteousness being thus destroyed by a moral effect being substituted for it; this also was ostensibly modified subsequently; then, that the grand display of Divine righteousness, in Romans, in connection with God’s character as on the mercy-seat of gold and meeting man there, is reduced to a “reckoning.” Eternal Life denied to be Christ personally, with the statement that there is no such thing as responsibility in Christ, and all this, not to speak of the reflections on the Person of the Lord, summed up by Mr. Raven himself in the following terms
The key to almost all that I have said lies in my objection to apply in an absolute way to the believer in his mixed condition down here statements in Scripture which refer to what he is, or what is true of him viewed as “in Christ”: such a practice results in the statements becoming mere dogmas, conveying little sense of reality
–what can we think of the sentence that “no cherished truth has been touched, or its force lessened?” or what confidence can we feel in Mr. Raven’s representations of his own views?
This systematic weakening of the believer’s connection with God and standing before Him, is backed by accusations of his brethren as, “Limiting Divine righteousness to the believer being justified – and therefore to Christ being raised – confining `in Christ’ to a present position, so that it brings no light of eternal purpose or future glory – separating in the believer, eternal life from the Holy Ghost,” &c., charges which are dropped in the printed letter of March 21, without a word of the wrong done in making them. All this raises the saddest reflections as to their author, though we are far from thinking he intends or even knows the mischief which all this is working in the souls of many; but his declarations are the proof that he is being used by the enemy of souls and of the truth for his purposes, as indeed any of us may be, if we allow our minds to work upon the truth of God. Satan never gives us error pure and undiluted, but mixed up with and disguised by accompanying truth, which for the time being, causes the error to be overlooked.
With views such as these there can be no compromise.
We trust indeed that when godly souls perceive the length to which they have gone, and that the central Object of their faith and of heaven and earth has been thus assailed their hearts, if hitherto unsuspecting, will deeply feel that what is dearer than life itself (and hallowed by ten thousand associations of Divine life and love and glory), has been involved in this sorrowful trespassing upon holy ground.
Christian, can you suffer persons or associations however cherished, to stand in the way, when the Lord who bought you is in question? Will aught of these things compensate you for what will surely end in the loss of His Person, or even the partial eclipse of His glory? Bear with me, while for a moment, one who owes everything to that blessed Lord, and who loves you for His sake, seeks to recall the heart to a sense of His own blessedness and perfections, by presenting Him to you as the Holy Ghost sets Him before us, in the infallible word of truth.