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Spiritual Discernment

A SERMON

MELLVILLE B. CHAPMAN, D.D.

Spiritual Discernment:

A SERMON

PREACHED IN THE

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

September io, 1887

By
MELLVILLE B. CHAPMAN, D.D.
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PASTOR

Stenographically reported by Edward S. Smith, M.D.
PUBLISHED BY THE CHURCH

What is true of the knowledge that comes to us through
the senses, and the reason, is thus, we see, especially true
of the knowledge that comes through the feelings. Such
knowledge must be felt before it can be known.
There are people, for instance, with so little sense of
music, that, to them, it is only a variety of noise. By no
mental process — by no self-struggle can they enter into
the songs of Mendelssohn, until their musical sensibilities
have been strung to the key of those immortal harmonies.
There are others who have but a faint perception of
beauty. They are not touched by the tender grace of a
flower, the delicate curve of a coast line, or the splendid
flame of a sunset sky. The secret of nature's beauty is in
the eye that pastures, in the heart that feels. Who knows
anything about patriotism, who has never looked upon his
country's flag and felt his spirit leap in its scabbard ?
Who that is selfish knows anything about the joy of
self-bestowal — the deep delight of self-sacrifice ?
The secret of truth is with the true, the secret of purity
is with the pure, the secret of goodness is with the good,
the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.
In this text St. Paul simply declares that what is true of
all other knowledge is especially true of religious knowl
edge. The natural man cannot understand the things of
the spirit, for the reason, that they are spiritually dis
cerned. They are above his head, out of his reach,
beyond his natural capacity. Sensuous things require
sensuous organs, insight, experience. Intellectual things
require intellectual organs, insight, experience. Spiritual
things require spiritual organs, insight, experience. The
natural man knows as far as he has gone — when he has
gone farther he will know more. But between him and
his spiritual capacities and possibilities, is that divine
quickening, that touch of life, which we call regeneration.
The natural man is born once. He is born of the flesh,
and lives a natural and earthly life. He is immortal but
not spiritual, he survives the earthly, but does not belong
to the Heavenly. The spiritual man is born twice, born

of the flesh, and born again of the spirit, so that he par
takes in the nature, the blessedness, and the destiny of
God. He shares in the divine sympathies, solicitudes and
purposes, he has fellowship with unseen beings — citizen
ship in unseen worlds — he is in this world but not of this
world — he follows an unearthly and divine guide through
unearthly and divine paths, is transformed into the same
image, is changed from glory unto glory as by the spirit
of the Lord.
„The natural man is spiritually unborn, and belongs to a
lower, and rudimentary order of being. He has no natural
capacity to discern the beauty of holiness, and the blessed
ness of divine things. Religion is an intrusion, an unpleas
ant and distasteful intrusion to the natural man. Social
customs may require him to respect it, his own personal
needs and yearnings may lead him to seek it, but nothing
but religion itself can make him like it. He has a natural,
hereditary distaste for the holy, and disrelish for the
divine. Its pleasures to him are not pleasing, its blessed
ness to him is not blessed, its Heaven to him is not
heavenly. He receiveth not, neither can he know the
things of the spirit of God.
In the light of this exposition several things may per
haps become clear to us.
I. We see why it is that the natural man cares so little
for the Bible. He is so indifferent because he is so ignor
ant — becausp the Word that means so much to the Chris
tian means so little to him.
The illumination of the Spirit is as needful to properly
read the Bible as it was to write it. It is one thing to
read the Bible, it is another thing to read the Word.
Scholarship may read the book, and get an intellectual
apprehension of its principles and philosophy, but what
scholarship ever crossed the threshold of the Epistle to
the Ephesians, or fathomed the profound depths of the
last utterances of our Lord. Only the spiritually quick
ened and illumined can read the Word, and enter into

the mind of God. Spiritualized ignorance is wiser than
materialized scholarship.
Hence the Bible is interpreted and cherished, according
to the measure of the spirit we possess, and like the
natural world around us, means more and more as we
have eyes to see it, and capacity to apprehend it. I
remember when a tree meant a thing to climb, or a shade
under which to play. Then I began to look at trees in
the light of timber, with a view to bows, and whistles and
whip stalks. Then I found in them a lesson in botany.
Then I began to see their beauty and note their grace of
line and play of color, and at last I see in these noble
elms that overhang our city a revelation of God, a dis
closure of his stately patient purposes, his upholding and
unfailing power, "till every common bush is afire with
God, and I take off my shoes on holy ground." So
under the suggestion of the spirit as we study the Bible
we come to know the Bible. Its inner meanings flash
upon the wondering explorer, it discloses deeper depths,
and higher heights, as the word in the book echoes and
answers the word in the soul.
And yet no man, no generation of men, has ever com
passed the full meaning, or exhausted the revelation
of God. Under the illumination of the spirit new light
and new truth is ever breaking forth from the Word. It
means more to us than it did to the fathers, more than it
did to Augustine, or to Luther, or to Wesley, and it will
mean more to the generations to come than it does to us.
A greater capacity to receive the truth, a greater measure
of the spirit to interpret the truth, will give to future
Bible explorers a richer discovery, and a grander concep
tion of the truth of God.
Furthermore, obedience affords the highest and truest
exegesis, and as the Christian world bows in profounder
loyalty to the truth the horizon of its knowledge will be
magnificently enlarged.
The Bible, Nature, the whole world is charged with
spiritual suggestions, which the race has never appre-

hended because it has not attained to the requisite experi
ence, the religious capacity, the spiritual insight, to inter
pret and understand them. This is why the Bible can
never become obsolete or outgrown in the religious devel
opment, or the social progress of the race. A finer moral
fibre, a more sensitive conscience, a more spiritualized soul
will discover in the Word illimitable revelations of truth,
and disclosures of God.
All progress is toward the Bible, and not away from it.
The race may reject the Bible, may deteriorate morally,
disintegrate socially, may degenerate toward dynamite
and dirt, but it cannot grow better without growing more
Biblical. The Bible may be rejected but never surpassed.
And when the race has reached the shining summits of
virtue, when it has forsaken the flesh for the spirit, and
climbed into its highest nature, and divinest life, it will
still stand with its face toward the oracles of God, utter
ing the ancient prayer, " Open Thou mine eyes that I
may behold wondrous things out of thy law."
As Heaven is a prepared place for prepared people, so
the Bible is a prepared book for prepared minds. It is
spiritually discerned,
2. We see why it is, that so many who are eminent in
scholarship, profound in physical or metaphysical research
ignore or deny Christian truth; and discredit Christian
experience. They have never approached it in the right
spirit, or sought it in the right way.
You cannot draw music out of that organ with a cork
screw, or sweep up sunshine with a broom, or demon
strate Christian truth with a syllogism.
You cannot discover God as you discover an asteroid,
or a new element of mathematics, or a new principle in
sociology. Natural methods of research can lead no man
toward supernatural discoveries. Supernatural things are
supernaturally discerned.
And further, what men are unable to apprehend, they
are incompetent to judge. A critic should at least know
something of what he criticises, and be in touch and sym-

8
pathy with what he judges. He who would interpret,
and criticise poetry must have something of the insight,
the feeling, the soul of the poet.
Gradgrind — your hardheaded, unimaginative, unemo
tional Philistine of the street, may know all about hides or
horses, but he is not thereby qualified to sit in judgment
upon Tennyson or Browning. A man may have a good
eye for mechanics, or a quick turn at figures, or a knack
at trade, but he needs something more to make him a
critic of Art. And so men may be critical, and scholarly,
and scientific, they may know all about rocks and mole
cules and gases, and yet be utterly incompetent to sit in
judgment upon Christianity.
Physical truth requires physical evidences. Philosoph
ical truth philosophical evidences. Moral truth moral
evidences. Spiritual truth spiritual evidences. The court
is incompetent, because the evidence is undiscerned.
I am weary with the impertinence of men, who imagine
that scientific eminence entitles them to weigh Christian
ity in a balance, and because they are experts with the
microscope, or the scalpel, that they are necessarily
experts in religion. It is out of their horizon, it moves in
realms of experience to which they are strangers and for
eigners, and having no sympathy with Christianity, they
can have no insight into its divine philosophy, or its
supernatural life. No man knows anything of essential
Christianity until he is a Christian. Christianity judges
all things, yet is itself judged of no man, who has not been
enlightened by its spirit, transformed by its grace, regen
erated by its power.
3. We see why it is that the criticism of Christianity by
scholarly skeptics, the denial of Christ by his enemies, or
the betrayal of Christ by fancied friends, does not disturb,
or dishearten the Christian.
He has his own evidence of the truth of Christianity.
It matters not to me how many men look at the plunge of
Niagara and see only a mill privilege — or look at the
western sky aflame with a glow, as of some vast celestial

furnace where new worlds were being cast, and see only
fair weather to-morrow — or hear the quail whistle in the
brown meadows, or the Tannhauser singing in the high
orchestral strings, and call it only a noise — or see my mother
with her dim eyes and clouded vision, but undimmed and
unclouded love, and say she is only common clay— or
speculate about God, and say they cannot find Him — or
analyze the passion for Jesus Christ, and say it is a mere
evolution of the religious instinct, an expression of the
religious feeling.
I know better. I have my own evidence of the reality
of these things. I cannot prove their reality by any
logical process. I believe in their reality not because I can
prove them to be true, but because I feel them to be true.
No man by searching, by rational demonstration, by the
mastery of evidences, or the scaling of theologies ever
climbed into any certainty about God, or found any
peace for his troubled conscience, any rest for his aching
heart, any pillow for his dying head. The spiritual man
has his own secret certainties of spiritual things, his
own sufficient evidence of the great verities of his faith.
The Spirit itself witnesses with his spirit that he is a child
of God, and by an instinct of his own, by an incommuni
cable sense of recognition he has fellowship with an
unseen and ever living Saviour, and is sure that He who
died to bring him to God, lives to bring him to glory.
What eye hath not seen, or ear heard, or the natural
heart of man conceived, the things that God hath pre
pared for them that love Him, the blessedness of being
that makes not merely Heaven hereafter, but Heaven
here and now — -these supernal experiences God hath
revealed unto us by his Spirit, and having this inward
evidence, the testimony of generations of agnostics who
do not know, are as the small dust in the balance.
This is the reason why Christianity does not wane, or
weaken, but grows in spite of all the frailty of its friends,
and the fury of its foes. Again and again Bethlehem has

10
been ravaged, and the Christ and Christianity seemingly
been slain, and the Herods had their way.
But the revelation of God to the spiritually receptive
soul, the consciousness of Christ in us, and with us, and
for us, has survived and widened through the world. Out
of the tragic history of Christianity has sprung its cease
less triumphs, and the Angel that appeared in Egypt, has
re-announced in every century of Christian history, " They
are deadwhich sought the young child's life."
Sometimes in northern seas where the Arctic currents
are ever streaming toward the south, great ice-bergs are
seen moving toward the north, plowing the ice fields,
and crashing toward the Pole. The reason is, that these
ice-bergs are so deep that they reach down into the under
current that flows to the north, and are swept on in the
teeth of all surface opposition.
The surface currents are all against Christianity. It
preaches unpalatable truth in an unpalatable way. It
insists upon a course of life that crosses the wishes, the
desires, the habits of men. It despoils their fairest dreams,
it crucifies their deepest affections, it scourges their sweet
est and most succulent sins.
The Kingdom of Heaven is the most revolutionary
engine and agency that ever troubled a weak conscience,
or vexed an evil world. It is a proclamation of war
against every thing that this world most cherishes, and
that the heart of man most loves, and has in it the seed of
all social and individual insurrection and revolution. The
surface currents are all against Christianity, but the deep
under-currents of heart experience, the* conscious fellow
ship with Christ through the Holy Ghost, the silent,
secret Polar flow of love and life, carries the Kingdom of
God steadily on against all the tides of worldly antagon
ism, nor will Christianity ever perish from the earth so
long as there is power in the love of Christ, spiritually
discerned, to give peace in the conscience, joy in sorrow,
light in darkness, or hope in death.

II

Two final perplexities may now be explained.
i. The despair of the pulpit.
It vainly endeavors to make clear to unconverted and
unspiritual people the nature and power of Christian
experience. It has to speak of color to the blind, of music to the
deaf, of -life to the unborn, of the things of the spirit to
those who are unquickened by the spirit, and unillumined
by the ray from on high. The preacher must often preach
in the certainty that many of his hearers can have no per
ception of the real meaning of his message.
The peace of pardon, the joy of adoption, the comfort
of prayer, the deep delight of fellowship with the unseen
but ever present Saviour, the sense of his indwelling and
abounding love, to the natural man these are mysticisms,
"the stuff that dreams are made of." Thus the preacher
must often address a fraction of his congregation, and the
impossible problem of his life is to make spiritual truth
real to unspiritual people.
This problem is as old as the pulpit. He who spake as
never man spake, more than any of his preachers, sowed
seed by the wayside of unreceptive and unfruitful congre
gations, and the despair of his ministry finds expression in
the entreaty so often heard by the multitudes of Gallilee,
" He that hath ears to hear let him hear."
2. The despair of the pew.
To the natural man the language of spiritual experience
is, and must be, an unknown tongue. He wants to under
stand, he feels that he ought to understand, but a fatal
incapacity clouds his perceptions, and mocks his intelli
gence. He hears of the splendors of Christian experience
as a man born blind hears of the sunrise — the joy that
others feel has for him no glad suggestion — the blessed
ness that shines in saintly faces, quickens no pulse, stirs
no feeling, wakes no response, in his torpid heart. He has
no relish for the things of the spirit, devotion seems dis
tasteful, and the service of Christ a servitude. That
which others love, to him is 'not lovely, and when he

12

looks upon the Man of Sorrows there is no beauty that he
should desire him.
It makes a great difference whether we look at Chris
tianity from the outside, or from the inside.
Standing on the pavement before the great Cathedral,
and looking at the lofty window in its front, you wonder
that any thing so dull, so unattractive, should be the glory
of the city. Standing outside you see no beauty that you
should desire it. But come inside and look at the window.
It is aflame with light, and shines and burns like the sea of
glass mingled with fire. Heavenly faces flash out upon
the cloistered gloom. Patriarchs and prophets, saints and
seraphs, the cross and the crown are glorified together
in that celestial splendor, and the gray old walls are
touched and transfigured with an unearthly beauty, until
you feel that this is none other than the house of God,
and the gate of Heaven.
Brothers of the pavement ! Come inside, and some
thing will fall from your eyes like scales.

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