John Langdon Dudley

Tides and Tendencies of Religious Thought John Langdon Dudley

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 Excerpt: ... is the way of salvation. This I said in my last Sunday's discourse. But there is another view or theory; and it is old. I don't know of any doctrine much older, that has been ordained and authorized by the church, than this which I propose to set forth this morning. I am glad to have you know this other view. Indeed, you know it already. But, as I said at the outset, it is wonderfully instructive to contemplate opposites together. The theory of salvation that we will state this morning, begins with the idea that man is lost in the premises of his nature; that in the fall of the supposed first man we all went down; and there we are, to begin with. It is assumed in the outset that we are sinners, condemned, and liable to the pains of hell forever; and the more dismal, abject and vile the picture we can make of ourselves, the nearer we are supposed to be to Divine truth on the subject. Thus all the world lies exposed to hell; and the refrain of most of the praying and believing of Christendom for the ages between us and the advent of Christ, has been a world, generation after generation, rolling on like billows over the sea to darkness and death. I don't wonder it has stirred the Christian heart to the very depths. Accordingly, the first thing to be done in this way of salvation, is to become convicted of this terrible THE OLD THEORY OF SALVATION: 159 truth; not only somehow to know it, but to be burdened by a sense of it. The next thing is to get a conception, vitally in the mind and heart, that Christ died for us; in the first place as a substituted sufferer for our sufferings, as sin in place of our sin; that he took punishment in place of our punishment, and paid our debts. And in the second place, that by that death he has so appeased the wrath of God, a...