Vigils Reading

A reading from

ST JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

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The real difference between the true and the [merely] professing

Christian seems to be given us in the text [from Scripture], –

“If there be a willing

mind, it is accepted.” St Paul is speaking of almsgiving; but what he says seems

to apply generally. He is laying out a principle, which applies of course in many

distinct cases, though he uses it with reference to one in particular. An honest,

unaffected desire of doing right is the test of God’s true servants.

On the other hand, a double mind, a pursuing other ends besides the

truth, and in consequence an inconsistency in conduct, and a half-

consciousness…of inconsistency, and a feeling of the necessity of defending

oneself to oneself, and to God, and to the world; in a word, hypocrisy; these are

the signs of the merely professed Christian.

For instance: the two great Christian graces are faith and love. Now, how

are these characterized in Scripture? By their being honest or single-minded.

Thus St Paul, in one place, speaks of “the end of the commandment being love;”

what love? –

“love out of a pure heart,” he proceeds, “and of a good conscience;

” and still further, “and of faith unfeigned;” or, as it may be more literally

translated, “unhypocritical faith,” for so the word means in Greek.

In like manner, St Peter speaks of Christians “having purified their souls

in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unhypocritical love of the

brethren.” And in like manner, St James speaks of “the wisdom that is from

above, being first pure – without partiality, and without hypocrisy.”

Surely it is very remarkable that three Apostles, writing on different

subjects and occasions, should each of them thus speak about faith or love as

without hypocrisy. A true Christian, then, may almost be defined as one who

has a ruling sense of God’s presence within him. As none but justified persons

have that privilege, so none but the justified have that practical perception of it.

A true Christian, or one who is in a state of acceptance with God, is he

who, in such a sense, has faith in Him, as to live in the thought that He is present

with him, present not externally, not in nature merely, or in providence, but in

his innermost heart, or in his conscience. A man is justified whose conscience is

illuminated by God, so that he habitually realizes that all his thoughts, all the

first springs of his moral life, all his motives and his wishes, are open to

Almighty God.

Not as if he was not aware that there is very much in him impure and

corrupt, but he wishes that all that is in him should be bare to God. He believes

that it is so, and he even joys to think that it is so, in spite of his fear and shame

at its being so. He alone admits Christ into the shrine of his heart; whereas

others wish in some way or other, to be by themselves, to have a home, a

chamber, a self where God is not. [The true Christian] enthrones the Son of God

in his conscience, refers to Him as a sovereign authority, and uses no reasoning

with Him. He does not reason, but he says, “You, God, see me.”