Evangelical

“ We must sit down humbly in the presence of God, look the whole subject in the face, examine clearly what the Lord Jesus calls sin, and what the Lord Jesus calls doing His will. We must then try to realize that it is terribly possible to live a careless, easy–going, half–worldly life, and yet at the same time to maintain evangelical principles and call ourselves evangelical people! Once we see that sin is far viler and far nearer to us and sticks more closely to us than we supposed, we will be led, I trust and believe, to get nearer to Christ. ”

“ Evangelical means and order they love to keep, for they diligently assemble themselves to wait upon God, to enable them to worship Him, where they both pray and prophesy, one by one, as prepared and moved in their hearts by His Spirit, and as anything is revealed to them. ”

“ But they are also evangelical in this higher sense, that, while they build upon evangelical fact and evangelical dogma, and assume that the teachings of Christ and the Apostles are divine, they do not merely reiterate, but explain, defend, illustrate and enforce these evangelical elements. There is throughout an endeavor to show the reasonableness of gospel truth—its internal harmony—its conformableness to the fitness of things, and its agreement with the natural impressions of the human mind and the demands of the moral sense. ”

“ The evangelical precepts are no other than divine lessons, they are the foundation of hope, the strengthening of faith, the food of charity; the Gospel is a rudder to steer our way through life, and helps us to reach the harbour of salvation. ”

“ After my long experience, after my patience and forbearance, I have surely the right to protest against the untruth (would that I could apply to it any other word!) that evangelical religion, or any religion in a violent form, is a wholesome or valuable or desirable adjunct to human life. It divides heart from heart. ”

“ Evangelical religion, like the religion of the New Testament, requires us not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed in the renewing of our mind, and it produces a distaste for those frivolous and pernicious amusements in which the votaries of this world delight; but I am not aware that it has an antisocial tendency, unless you mean by that expression, that its tendency is to mark out the essential difference between a real Christian and one who bears only the name. ”

“ The history of evangelical theology, with its conviction of sin, its self-despair, and its abandonment of salvation by works, is the deepest of possible examples, but we meet others in every walk of life. ”

“ Observe, reader, how adroitly they can adorn lies, and how frightfully they can suppress and despise truth under cover of virtue. All the evangelical Scriptures teach us that the church of Christ was and is, in doctrine, life, and worship, a people separated from the world. ”

“ A pure evangelical faith embraces all that seems necessary to salvation, namely, the most perfect self-abasement before God, together with a lively sense of human unworthiness, full implicit confidence in the free gift of atoning mercy as the only way to everlasting glory, and an earnest desire, by increasing holiness and obedience, to prove ourselves the children of God. ”

“ Most American Evangelical denominations are now willing freely to admit that the essential verities of Christianity are held by their associated communions, and that a true Christian life is possible in each of them. ”

“ The law and faith in Jesus Christ—that means love towards our fellow men; it means equality; it means fraternity; it means revolt against the idolatries, in whose name the greatest malefactors are and believe themselves absolved of their crimes by the purchase of indulgences! Only through faith and the practice of the Evangelical law will our sins be remitted. ”

“ An evangelical ministry is instituted to promote the edification of them that believe, no less than to convert sinners from the error of their ways; to guard them against those misconceptions of truth, which may prove injurious to their happiness and spiritual prosperity; and to explain that mysteriousness which rests over their earlier experience, when there is a constant, and often a rapid interchange of hope and of fear, of sorrow and of joy, of a bright prospect of [159] future blessedness, and a foreboding apprehension of future woe. ”

“ It was in humble homes, among the yeomanry and the artisans, that evangelical truth took the deepest hold, as in primitive times, and produced the fervent Christians of succeeding centuries, such as no other country has produced. ”

“ With regard to the composition of your sermons: first, let the matter be evangelical. The doctrine of the Gospel is a mould from heaven, and not changed. It puts its own impress and shape on the professor that is melted into it, so that his justification, sanctification, and all his salvation, flow from the merits of Christ; and all through God’s grace, and not of ourselves. The gospel, as a glass, should be kept clean and clear in the pulpit, that the hearers may see the glory of Christ, and be changed to the same image. Every duty is to be urged by evangelical motives. ”

“ The religion in which the children of an Evangelical home were reared was an intensely vivid and energetic principle, passionate on its emotional side, definite in its theory, imperious in its demands, practical, visible, and tangible in its effects. ”

“ The plain truth is, that I see no other ground to occupy, and find no other rest for the sole of my foot. I lay no claim to infallibility, and desire to be no man's judge. But the longer I live and read, the more I am convinced and persuaded that Evangelical principles are the principles of the Bible, of the Articles and Prayer-book, and of the leading Divines of the reformed Church of England. Holding these views, I cannot write otherwise then I have written.
I now send forth this volume with an earnest prayer that God the Holy Ghost may bless it, and make it useful and helpful to many souls. ”

“ Such evangelical Confession and Absolution establishes and maintains the true relation that should exist between an evangelical pastor and the members of his flock. Instead of a mere preacher, a platform orator, he becomes a true spiritual guide, a curate for the cure of souls. ”

“ All these were distinctly creations of the Evangelical movement, as were also the Societies for the Reformation of Manners and for the Better Observance of the Lord's Day. Religious education found in the Evangelical party its most active friends. ”

“ When this branch of the evangelic system was fully revealed to the Apostles, and taught by them to others, that part of the meaning of our Lord’s parable which was not at first developed was more particularly discovered to his inspired followers. The calling of guests to the evangelical feast, we then more fully learn, was not the mere calling of men to partake of spiritual benefits; but calling them also to form a spiritual society composed of Jews and Gentiles, the believing men of all nations ”

“ The Evangelical Alliance, made up of all orthodox denominations of the world, met only a few years ago, and here is their creed: They believe in the divine inspiration, authority and sufficiency of the holy Scriptures; the right and duty of private judgment in the interpretation of the holy Scriptures, but if you interpret wrong you are damned. They believe in the unity of the godhead and the Trinity of the persons therein. They believe in the utter depravity of human nature. There can be no more infamous doctrine than that. They look upon a little child as a lump of depravity. ”

“ Doctrines that deny the substance and practicality of all Christ's teachings cannot be evangelical; and evangelical religion can be established on no other claim than the authenticity of the Gospels, which support unequivocally the proof that Christian Science, as defined and practised by Jesus, heals the sick, casts out error, and will destroy death. ”

“ In the midst of so much in modern theological literature that is objectionable or doubtful, it is refreshing to meet with a clear, manly, outspoken exposition of those great evangelical doctrines which are in danger of being less ‘commonly believed among us’ than they were among our fathers. ”

“ That this evangelical righteousness and salvation shall not be confined to the Jewish nation, but shall be extended to the Gentiles; My arms shall judge the people. Those that will not yield to the judgments of God's mouth shall be crushed by the judgments of his hand. Some shall thus be judged by the gospel, for for judgment Christ came into this world; but others, and those of the isles, shall wait upon him, and bid his gospel, and the commands as well as the comforts of it, welcome. ”

“ See, my dear fellow, you really must get this into your head, that in order to succeed in our profession, evangelical virtues are more detrimental than useful, and that there are two things indispensable: first to have a good outside show, to stir yourself and to know how to intrigue to the utmost. ”

“ An evangelical church is composed of a number of persons who have come to agreement in a certain message about Christ and who desire to unite in the propagation of that message, as it is set forth in their creed on the basis of the Bible. No one is forced to unite himself with the body thus formed ”

“ This we {237} may see in all the ranks of life. All profess themselves to be evangelical; all boast of their Christian liberty; and yet give way to their lusts and passions, for example to covetousness, pride, envy, pleasures, and such like. ”

“ And it must be admitted that it has always been difficult to hold the average of Christians to an unfaltering faith in the evangelical doctrines of Christianity—the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the atonement, etc.—that but few have a clear conception of any of them, that many deny one or more of them, that no two understand them alike, and that all have doubts and fears with respect to them ”

“ When we read in the New Testament concerning the simple act of baptizing believers, and compare it with the customs and practises that had grown up in the Ante-Nicene church, we do not wonder that evangelical faith was soon afterwards almost entirely lost in ritualistic forms; that, like the Pharisees of old, men made the faith of God of none effect by their traditions. ”

“ If evangelical churches refuse fellowship with the Church of Christ, Scientist, or with Christian Science, they must rest their opinions of Truth and Love on the evidences of the physical senses, rather than on the teaching and practice of Jesus, or the works of the Spirit. ”

“ We shall not refer to the moral condition of man in countries under the influence of the gospel, compared with his condition in pagan lands. We will not dwell upon the fact which, of itself, is sufficient to establish at once and for ever the Divine origin of evangelical religion, and the truth of the distinctive views developed in the preceding chapters—that the most holy men and woman that have ever lived have been those who exercised most constant and implicit faith in Christ. ”

“ The real drama of Evangelicalism—and it has abundance of fine drama for any one who has genius enough to discern and reproduce it—lies among the middle and lower classes; and are not Evangelical opinions understood to give an especial interest in the weak things of the earth, rather than in the mighty? ”

“ While we hold the fundamental truths of Christianity in common with other evangelical Churches—points of agreement, each of which is infinitely more important than all the questions in regard to which there is a difference—all do not place the same emphasis we do on some of these truths. ”

“ It is true that what we must perforce call by the awkward names of 'Evangelicalism' and 'Methodism' had many points in common—that they were constantly identified by the common enemies of both—that they were both parts of what we have termed in the widest sense of the term 'the Evangelical revival'—that they, in fact, crossed and interlaced one another in so many ways that it is not always easy to disentangle the one from the other—that there are several names which one is in doubt whether to place on one side of the line or the other. ”

“ It is vain to expect Christian faith to abound without Christian doctrine. Moral and philosophical and monastical instructions will not effect for men what is to be expected from evangelical doctrine. ”

“ A Christian of eminent piety, a ripe scholar, and a preacher of peculiar gifts, mighty in the Scriptures, he was honoured of God to become a leading instrument in accomplishing that great revival of evangelical religion in the Church of England, which took place last century. ”

“ But it is no less maltreated when evangelical Christians fail to grasp its world-wide significance, or doubt that in lands where Christ's name has not been proclaimed there are souls groping for the light, and seeking to obey the law written on their hearts. ”

“ These principles, with the addition of a clear sense that we must adopt them, and become, through the divine spirit infused into our souls, awakened from the delusive securities of natural pride, and humbled by an abiding consciousness of our sins and infirmity, constitute a summary of the Christian system, and comprise all that is essentially evangelical. ”

“ Three principles seem to underlie all our work. First, that evangelical truth has the only claim for recognition as being in full accordance with the Word of God, and as being fitted to persuade men to be reconciled to God. Secondly, that the duty of proclaiming it does not exclusively rest on ordained ministers, but that all men share the obligation, which flows from the Divine command to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, and also to go into the lanes and hedges and invite men to the Gospel feast. ”