THE TEACHING OF JESUS

BY THE REV. GEORGE JACKSON, B. A. 

 "_Whosoever goeth onward and abideth not in the teaching of Christ, hath not God: he that abideth in the teaching, the same hath both the Father and the Son. _"--2 JOHN IX (R. V. ). 

1903

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TO MY CHILDREN DORA, KENNETH, BASIL, ARNOLD MY WISEST TEACHERS IN THETHINGS OF GOD

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PREFACE

The following chapters are the outcome of an attempt to set before alarge Sunday evening congregation--composed for the most part of workingmen and women--the teaching of our Lord on certain great selectedthemes. The reader will know, therefore, what to look for in thesepages. If he be a trained Biblical scholar he need go no further, for hewill find nothing here with which he is not already thoroughly familiar. On the other hand, the book will not be wholly without value even tosome of my brother-ministers if it serve to convince them that a man maypreach freely on the greatest themes of the gospel, and yet be sure thatthe common people will hear him gladly, if only he will state hismessage at once seriously and simply, and with the glow that comes ofpersonal conviction. Indeed, one may well doubt if there is any otherkind of preaching that they really care for. 

My indebtedness to other workers in the same field is manifold. As faras possible detailed acknowledgement is made in the footnotes. Wendt's_Teaching of Jesus_ and Beyschlag's _New Testament Theology_ have beenalways at my elbow, though not nearly in such continual use as Stevens'_Theology of the New Testament_, a work of which it is impossible tospeak too highly. Brace's _Kingdom of God_, Stalker's _Christology ofJesus_, Harnack's _What is Christianity?_ Horton's _Teaching of Jesus_, Watson's _Mind of the Master_, Selby's _Ministry of the Lord Jesus_, andRobertson's _Our Lord's Teaching_ (a truly marvellous sixpenny worth), have all been laid under contribution, not the less freely because Ihave been compelled to dissent from some of their conclusions. Like manyanother busy minister, I am a daily debtor to Dr. Hastings and his great_Dictionary of the Bible_. And, finally, I gladly avail myself of thisopportunity of expressing once more my unceasing obligations to the Rev. Professor James Denney, of Glasgow. Now that Dr. Dale has gone from us, there is no one to whom we may more confidently look for a reasonableevangelical theology which can be both verified and preached. 

It only remains to add that in these pages critical questions are forthe most part ignored, not because the pressure of the problems whichthey create is unfelt, but because as yet they have no place among thecertainties which are the sole business of the preacher when he passesfrom his study to his pulpit. 

 GEORGE JACKSON. 

EDINBURGH, 1903. 

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CONTENTS

I

INTRODUCTORY

 Luke xxiv. 19. "_A prophet mighty in word before God and all the people. _"

 John iii. 2. "_A teacher come from God. _"

II

CONCERNING GOD

 John xvii. 11. "_Holy Father. _"

III

CONCERNING HIMSELF

 Matthew xvi. 15. "_Who say ye that I am?_"

IV

CONCERNING HIS OWN DEATH

 Mark x. 45. "_The Son of Man came . . . To give His life a ransom for many. _"

V

CONCERNING THE HOLY SPIRIT

 John xiv. 16. "_I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth. _"

 John xvi. 7. "_It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go away, I will send Him unto you. _"

VI

CONCERNING THE KINGDOM OF GOD

 Matthew vi. 10. "_Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. _"

VII

CONCERNING MAN

 Luke xv. 10. "_There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. _"

VIII

CONCERNING SIN

 Luke xi. 2, 4. "_When ye pray, say, . . . Forgive us our sins. _"

IX

CONCERNING RIGHTEOUSNESS

 Matthew vi. 33. "_Seek ye first . . . His righteousness. _"

X

CONCERNING PRAYER

 Matthew vii. 9-11. "_What man is there of you, who, if his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone; or if he shall ask for a fish, will give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?_"

XI

CONCERNING THE FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES

 Matthew xviii. 21, 22. "_Then came Peter, and said to Him, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, until seven times; but, until seventy times seven. _"

XII

CONCERNING CARE

 Matthew vi. 25, 31, 34. "_Be not anxious for your life . . . Nor yet for your body. . . . Be not anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? . . . Be not anxious for the morrow. _"

XIII

CONCERNING MONEY

 Luke xviii. 24, 25. "_How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to enter in through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. _"

XIV

CONCERNING THE SECOND ADVENT

 Matthew xxiv. 30, 36. "_They shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. . . . Of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only. _"

XV

CONCERNING THE JUDGMENT

 Matthew xxv. 31-33. "_When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit on the throne of His glory: and before Him shall be gathered all the nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. _"

XVI

CONCERNING THE FUTURE LIFE

 Matthew vi. 20. "_Where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. _"

 Mark ix. 48. "_Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. _"

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INTRODUCTORY

 "O Lord and Master of us all! Whate'er our name or sign, We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, We test our lives by Thine. 

 We faintly hear, we dimly see, In differing phrase we pray; But, dim or clear, we own in Thee The Light, the Truth, the Way. " WHITTIER. 

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I

INTRODUCTORY

 "_A prophet mighty in word before God and all the people. _"--LUKE xxiv. 19. 

 "_A teacher come from God. _"--JOHN iii. 2. 

In speaking of the teaching of Jesus it is scarcely possible at thepresent day to avoid at least a reference to two other closely-relatedtopics, viz. The relation of Christ's teaching to the rest of the NewTestament, and the trustworthiness of the Gospels in which that teachingis recorded. Adequate discussion of either of these questions here andnow is not possible; it must suffice to indicate very briefly thedirection in which, as it appears to the writer, the truth may be found. 

First, then, as to the relation of the teaching of Jesus to the rest ofthe New Testament, and especially to the Epistles of St. Paul. There canbe no doubt, largely, I suppose, through the influence of the Reformers, that the words of Jesus have not always received the attention that hasbeen given to the writings of Paul. Nor is this apparent misplacing ofthe accent the wholly unreasonable thing which at first sight it mayseem. After all, the most important thing in the New Testament--thatwhich saves--is not anything that Jesus said, but what He did; not Histeaching, but His death. This, the Gospels themselves being witness, isthe culmination and crown of Revelation; and it is this which, in theEpistles, and pre-eminently the Epistles of Paul, fills so large aplace. Moreover, it ought plainly to be said that the Church has neverbeen guilty of ignoring the words of her Lord in the wholesale fashionsuggested by some popular religious writers of our day. Really, theGospels are not a discovery of yesterday, nor even of the day beforeyesterday. They have been in the hands of the Church from the beginning, and, though she has not always valued them according to their true andpriceless worth, she has never failed to number them with the choicestjewels in the casket of Holy Scripture. Nevertheless, it may be freelygranted that the teaching of Jesus has not always received its due atthe Church's hands. "Theology, " one orthodox and Evangelical divinejustly complains, "has done no sort of justice to the Ethics ofJesus. "[1] But in our endeavour to rectify one error on the one side, let us see to it that we do not stumble into another and worse on theother side. The doctrines of Paul are not so much theological baggage, of which the Church would do well straightway to disencumber itself. After all that the young science of Biblical Theology has done to revealthe manifold variety of New Testament doctrine, the book still remains aunity; and the attempt to play off one part of it against another--theGospels against the Epistles, or the Epistles against the Gospels--is tobe sternly resented and resisted. To St. Paul himself any such rivalrywould have been impossible, and, indeed, unthinkable. There was no claimwhich he made with more passionate vehemence than that the message whichhe delivered was not his, but Christ's. "As touching the gospel whichwas preached by me, " he says, "neither did I receive it from man, norwas I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ. "The Spirit who spoke through him and his brother apostles was not analien spirit, but the Spirit of Christ, given according to the promiseof Christ, to make known the things of Christ; so that there is a verytrue sense in which their words may be called "the final testimony ofJesus to Himself. " "We have the mind of Christ, " Paul said, and both inthe Epistles and the Gospels we may seek and find the teaching ofJesus. [2]

It is, however, with the teaching of Jesus as it is recorded in theGospels that, in these chapters, we are mainly concerned. We come, therefore to our second question: Can we trust the Four Gospels? Andthis question must be answered in even fewer words than were given tothe last. As to the external evidence, let us hear the judgment of thegreat German scholar, Harnack. Harnack is a critic who is ready to giveto the winds with both hands many things which are dear to us as lifeitself; yet this is how he writes in one of his most recent works:"Sixty years ago David Friedrich Strauss thought that he had almostentirely destroyed the historical credibility, not only of the fourth, but also of the first three Gospels as well. The historical criticism oftwo generations has succeeded in restoring that credibility in its mainoutlines. "[3] When, from the external, we turn to the internal evidence, we are on incontestable ground. The words of Jesus need no credentials, they carry their own credentials; they authenticate themselves. Christian men and women reading, _e. G. _, the fourteenth of St. John'sGospel say within themselves that if these are not the words of Jesus, agreater than Jesus is here; and they are right. The oft-quoted challengeof John Stuart Mill is as unanswerable to-day as ever it was. "It is ofno use to say, " he declares, "that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirablehas been super-added by the traditions of His followers. . . . Who amongHis disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing thesayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and characterrevealed in the Gospels?"[4]

I

Assuming, therefore, without further discussion, the essentialtrustworthiness of the Gospel records, let us pass on to consider inthis introductory chapter some general characteristics of Christ'steaching as a whole. 

Mark at the outset Christ's own estimate of His words: "The words that Ihave spoken unto you are spirit, and are life;" "If a man keep My wordhe shall never see death;" "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but Mywords shall not pass away;" "Every one which heareth these words of Mineand doeth them "--with him Christ said it should be well; but "every onethat heareth these words of Mine and doeth them not"--upon him ruinshould come to the uttermost. Sayings like these are very remarkable, for this is not the way in which human teachers are wont to speak oftheir own words; or, if they do so speak, this wise world of ours knowsbetter than to take them at their own valuation. But the astonishingfact in the case of Jesus is that the world has admitted His claim. Menwho refuse utterly to share our faith concerning Him and thesignificance of His life and death, readily give to Him a place apartamong the great teachers of mankind. I have already quoted the judgmentof John Stuart Mill. "Jesus, " says Matthew Arnold, "as He appears in theGospels . . . Is in the jargon of modern philosophy an absolute"[5]--wecannot get beyond Him. Such, likewise, is the verdict of Goethe: "Letintellectual and spiritual culture progress, and the human mind expand, as much as it will; beyond the grandeur and the moral elevation ofChristianity, as it sparkles and shines in the Gospels, the human mindwill not advance. "[6] It would be easy to multiply testimonies, but itis needless, since practically all whose judgment is of any account areof one mind. 

But now if, with these facts in our minds, and knowing nothing elseabout the teaching of Jesus, we could suppose ourselves turning for thefirst time to the simple record of the Gospels, probably our firstfeeling would be one of surprise that Jesus the Teacher had won forHimself such an ascendency over the minds and hearts of men. Forconsider some of the facts which the Gospels reveal to us. To beginwith, this Teacher, unlike most other teachers who have influencedmankind, contented Himself from first to last with merely oralinstruction: He left no book; He never wrote, save in the dust of theground. Not only so, but the words of Jesus that have been preserved bythe evangelists are, comparatively speaking, extremely few. Put them alltogether, they are less by one-half or two-thirds than the words whichit will be necessary for me to use in order to set forth His teaching inthis little book. And further, the little we have is, for the most part, so casual, so unpremeditated, so unsystematic in its character. Once andagain, it is true, we get from the Evangelists something approachingwhat may be called a set discourse; but more often what they give us isreports of conversations--conversations with His disciples, with chanceacquaintances, or with His enemies. Sometimes we find Him speaking inthe synagogues; but He is quite as ready to teach reclining at thedinner-table; and, best of all, He loved to speak in the open air, bythe wayside, or the lake shore. Once, as He stood by the lake ofGennesaret, the multitude was so great that it pressed upon Him. Near athand were two little fishing-boats drawn up upon the beach, for thefishermen had gone out of them, and were washing their nets. "And Heentered into one of the boats, which was Simon's, and asked him to putout a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the multitudesout of the boat. " It is all so different from what we should haveexpected; there is about it such an air of artless, homely simplicity. Finally, we cannot forget that Jesus was a Jew speaking to Jews. Son ofGod though He was, He was the son of a Jewish mother, trained in aJewish home, in all things the child of His own time and race. Whateverelse His message may have been, it was, first of all, a message to themen of His own day; therefore, of necessity, it was their language Heused, it was to their needs He ministered, it was their sins Hecondemned. The mould, the tone, the colouring of His teaching were alllargely determined by the life of His country and His time. 

Yet this is He concerning whom all ages cry aloud, "Never man spake likethis man. " This is He before whom the greatest and the wisest bow down, saying, "Lord" and "Master. " How are we to explain it? Much of theexplanation lies outside of the scope of our present subject; but if wewill turn back to the Gospels again we may find at least a partialanswer to our question. 

II

(I) I said just now that Christ's teaching was addressed in the firstplace to the Jews of His own day. Yet the note of universality is asunmistakable as are the local tone and colouring. Christ may speak asthe moment suggests, but His words are never for the moment only, butfor all time. He refused almost sternly to go unto any save unto thelost sheep of the house of Israel; yet the Gospels make it abundantlyplain that in His own thoughts His mission was never limited to the tinystage within which, during His earthly years, He confined Himself. "I amthe light of the world, " He said; and in His last great commission toHis disciples He bade them carry that light unto the uttermost parts ofthe earth. In the great High-Priestly prayer He intercedes not only forHis disciples, but for those who through their word should believe onHim. "I will build My church, " He declared, "and the gates of Hadesshall not prevail against it. "

(2) So, again, too, in regard to the form of Christ's sayings; to speakof their artlessness and homely simplicity is to tell only a small partof the truth concerning them. They are, indeed and especially thosespoken in Galilee, and reported for the most part in the Synoptists, theperfection of popular speech. How the short, pithy, sententious sayingscling to the memory like burs! Let almost any of them be commenced, andas Dr. Stalker says, the ordinary hearer can without difficulty finishthe sentence. Christ was not afraid of a paradox. When, _e. G. _, He said, "Whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also, "He was ready to risk the possibility of being misunderstood by someprosaic hearer, that He might the more effectually arouse men to aneglected duty. His language was concrete, not abstract; He taught byexample and illustration; He thought, and taught others to think, inpictures. How often is the phrase, "The kingdom of heaven is likeunto----" on His lips! Moreover, His illustrations were always such ascommon folk could best appreciate. The birds of the air, the lilies ofthe field, the lamp on the lamp-stand, the hen with her chickens underher wings, the servant following the plough, the shepherd tending hissheep, the fisherman drawing his net, the sower casting his seed intothe furrow, the housewife baking her bread or sweeping her house, --itwas through panes of common window-glass like these that Christ let inthe light upon the heaped-up treasures of the kingdom of God. No wonder"the common people heard Him gladly"; no wonder they "all hung upon Himlistening"; or that they "came early in the morning to Him in the templeto hear Him"! Yet, even in the eyes of the multitude the plain homespunof Christ's speech was shot with gleams of more than earthly lustre. There mingled--to use another figure--with the sweet music of thosesimple sayings a new deep note their ears had never heard before: "themultitudes were astonished at His teaching; for He taught them as onehaving authority, and not as their scribes. " It was not the authority ofpowerful reasoning over the intellect, reasoning which we cannot choosebut obey; it was the authority of perfect spiritual intuition. Christnever speaks as one giving the results of long and painful gropingsafter truth, but rather as one who is at home in the world to which Godand the things of the spirit belong. He asserts that which He knows, Hedeclares that which He has seen. 

(3) Another quality of Christ's words which helps us to understand theirworld-wide influence is their winnowedness, their freedom from the chaffwhich, in the words of others, mingles with the wholesome grain. Theattempt is sometimes made to destroy, or, at least, to weaken, our claimfor Christ as the supreme teacher by placing a few selected sayings ofHis side by side with the words of some other ancient thinker orteacher. And if they who make such comparisons would put into theirparallel columns all the words of Jesus and all the words of those withwhom the comparison is made, we should have neither right to complainnor reason to fear. Wellhausen puts the truth very neatly when he says, "The Jewish scholars say, 'All that Jesus said is also to be found inthe Talmud. ' Yes, all, and a great deal besides. "[7] The late ProfessorG. J. Romanes has pointed out the contrast in two respects between Christand Plato. He speaks of Plato as "the greatest representative of humanreason in the direction of spirituality"; yet he says "Plato is nowherein this respect as compared with Christ. " While in Plato there areerrors of all kinds, "reaching even to absurdity in respect of reason, and to sayings shocking to the moral sense, " there is, he declares, inliteral truth no reason why any of Christ's words should ever pass awayin the sense of becoming obsolete. And it is this absence from thebiography of Christ of any doctrines which the subsequent growth ofhuman knowledge--whether in natural science, ethics, political economy, or elsewhere--has had to discount which seems to him one of thestrongest arguments in favour of Christianity. [8]

(4) One other quality of Christ's words, which specially caught theattention of His hearers in the synagogue at Nazareth, should not beoverlooked: "All bare Him witness, and wondered at the words of gracewhich proceeded out of His mouth. " The reference is, as Dr. Brucesays, [9] rather to the substance of the discourse than to the manner. That there was a peculiar charm in the Teacher's manner is undoubted, but it was what He said, rather than the way in which He said it--themessage of grace, rather than the graciousness of the Messenger--whichcaused the eyes of all in the synagogue to be fastened on Him. He hadjust read the great passage from the Book of the prophet Isaiah:

 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor. He hath sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty them that are bruised, To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. "

Then, when the reading was finished, and He had given back the roll tothe attendant, and was sat down, He began to say unto them, "To-day haththis Scripture been fulfilled in your ears. " This was His own programme;this was what He had come into the world to do--to bear the burden ofthe weary and the heavy-laden, to give rest unto all who would learn ofHim. 

This, then, is the Teacher whose words we are to study together in thesepages. He Himself is saying to us again, "He that hath ears to hear lethim hear. " See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. And again He says, "Take heed how ye hear. " Gracious as He is, this Teacher can be alsovery stern. "If any man, " He says, "hear My sayings and keep them not, Ijudge him not. . . . He that receiveth not My sayings hath one thatjudgeth him; the word that I speak, the same shall judge him in the lastday. " We read of some to whom "good tidings" were preached, whom theword did not profit. Let us pray that to writer and readers alike it mayprove the word of eternal life. 

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CONCERNING GOD

 "Our Father, who art in Heaven. _What meaneth these words_?

 God lovingly inviteth us, in this little preface, truly to believe in Him, that He is our true Father, and that we are truly His children; so that full of confidence we may more boldly call upon His name, even as we see children with a kind of confidence ask anything of their parents. "--LUTHER'S CATECHISM. 

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II

CONCERNING GOD

 _"Holy Father. "_--JOHN xvii. 11. 

It is natural and fitting in an attempt to understand the teaching ofJesus that we should begin with His doctrine of God. For a man's idea ofGod is fundamental, regulative of all his religious thinking. As is hisGod, so will his religion be. Given the arc we can complete the circle;given a man's conception of God, from that we can construct the mainoutlines of his creed. What, then, was the teaching of Jesus concerningGod?

I

In harmony with what has been already said in the previous chapter, concerning Christ's manner and method as a teacher, we shall find littleor nothing defined, formal, systematic in Christ's teaching on thissubject. In those theological handbooks which piloted some of us throughthe troublous waters of our early theological thinking, one chapter isalways occupied with proofs, more or less elaborate, of the existence ofGod, and another with a discussion of what are termed the Divine"attributes. " And for the purposes of a theological handbook doubtlessthis is the right course to take. But this was not Christ's way. Searchthe four Gospels through, and probably not one verse can be found whichby itself would serve as a suitable definition for any religiouscatechism or theological textbook. Christ, we must remember, did not, inHis teaching, begin _de novo_. He never forgot that He was speaking to apeople whose were the law and the prophets and the fathers; throughoutHe assumed and built upon the accepted truths of Old Testamentrevelation. To have addressed elaborate arguments in proof of theexistence of God to the Jews would have been a mere waste of words; forthat faith was the very foundation of their national life. Nor didChrist speak about the "attributes" of God. Again that was not His way. He chose to speak in the concrete rather than in the abstract, and, therefore, instead of defining God, He shows us how He acts. In parable, in story, and in His own life He sets God before us, that so we maylearn what He is, and how He feels toward us. 

Christ, I say, built upon the foundation of the Old Testament. Tounderstand, therefore, the true significance of His teaching about God, we must first of all put ourselves at the point of view of a devout Jewof His day, and see how far he had been brought by that earlierrevelation which Christ took up and carried to completion. What, then, did the Jews know of God before Christ came?

They knew that God is One, Only, Sovereign: "Hear, O Israel, the Lordour God is one God. " It had been a hard lesson for Israel to learn. Centuries had passed before the nation had been purged of itsidolatries. But the cleansing fires had done their work at last, andperhaps the world has never seen sterner monotheists than were thePharisees of the time of Christ. [10] And He whom thus they worshipped asSovereign they knew also to be holy: "The Holy One of Israel, " "exaltedin righteousness. " True, Pharisaism had degraded the lofty conceptionsof the great Hebrew prophets; it had taught men to think of God ascaring more for the tithing of mint, and anise, and cumin than for theweightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith, makingmorality merely an affair of ceremonies, instead of the concern of theheart and the life. But, however Jewish teachers might blind themselvesand deceive their disciples, the Jewish Scriptures still remained totestify of God and righteousness, and of the claims which a righteousGod makes upon His people: "Wash you, make you clean; put away the evilof your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to dowell. " Nor, accustomed though we are to think of the God of the OldTestament as stern rather than kind, were the tenderer elements wantingfrom the Jewish conception of Deity. Illustration is not now possible, but a very little thought will remind us that it is to the Hebrewpsalmists and prophets that we owe some of the most gracious and tenderimagery of the Divine love with which the language of devotion has everbeen enriched. 

Nevertheless, with every desire to do justice to a faith which has notalways received its due, even at Christian hands, it is impossible forus, looking back from our loftier vantage-ground, to ignore its seriousdefects and limitations. It was an exclusive faith. It magnified theprivileges of the Jews, but it shut out the Gentiles. God might be aFather to Israel, but to no other nation under heaven did He stand inany such relation. It was the refusal of Christ to recognize thebarriers which the pride of race had set up which more than anythingelse brought Him into conflict with the authorities at Jerusalem. Andwhen once from the mind and heart of the Early Church the irrevocableword had gone forth, "God is no respecter of persons; but in everynation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable toHim, " the final breach was made; no longer could the new faith live withthe old. And even within the privileged circle of Judaism itself men'sbest thoughts of God and of His relation to them were maimed andimperfect. He was the God of the nation, not of the individual. Here andthere elect souls like the psalmists climbed the heights whereon manholds fellowship with God, and spake with Him face to face, as a manwith his friend. But with the people as a whole, even as with theirgreatest prophets, not the individual, but the nation, was the religiousunit. 

Such was the Old Testament idea of God. Now let us return to theteaching of Jesus. And at once we discover that Christ let go nothing ofthat earlier doctrine which was of real and abiding worth. The God ofJesus Christ is as holy, as sovereign--or, to use the modern term--astranscendent as the God of the psalmists and the prophets. Theirfavourite name for God was "King, " and Christ spake much of the "kingdomof God. " To them God's people were His servants, owing to Him allegianceand service to the uttermost; we also, Christ says, are the servants ofGod, to every one of whom He has appointed his task, and with whom oneday He will make a reckoning. But if nothing is lost, how much isgained! It is not merely that in Christ's teaching we have the OldTestament of God over again with a _plus_, the new which is added has sotransformed and transfigured the old that all is become new. To JesusChrist, and to us through Him, God is "the Father. "

It is, of course, well known that Christ was not the first to apply thisname to God. There is no religion, says Max Müller, [11] which issufficiently recorded to be understood that does not, in some sense orother, apply the term Father to its Deity. Yet this need not concern us, for though the name be the same the meaning is wholly different. Thereis no true comparison even between the occasional use of the word in theOld Testament and its use by Christ. For, though in the Old TestamentGod is spoken of as the Father of Israel, it is as the Father of thenation, not of the individual, and of that nation only. Even in a greatsaying like that of the Psalmist:

 "Like as a father pitieth his children, So the Lord pitieth them that fear Him, "

it is still only Israel that the writer has in view, though we rightlygive to the words a wider application. But there is no need of argument. Every reader of the Old Testament knows that its central, ruling idea ofGod is not Fatherhood, but Kingship: "The Lord reigneth. " Even in thePsalms, in which the religious aspiration and worship of the ages beforeChrist find their finest and noblest expression, never once is Godaddressed as Father. But when we turn to the Gospels, how great is thecontrast! Though not even a single psalmist dare look up and say, "Father, " in St. Matthew's Gospel alone the name is used of God morethan forty times. Fatherhood now is no longer one attribute among many;it is the central, determining idea in whose revealing light all othernames of God--Creator, Sovereign, Judge--must be read and interpreted. And the God of Jesus Christ is the Father, not of one race only, but ofmankind; not of mankind only, but of men. 

II

It was indeed a great and wonderful gospel which Christ proclaimed--sogreat and wonderful that all our poor words tremble and sink down underthe weight of the truth they vainly seek to express. By what means hasChrist put us into possession of such a truth? How have we come to thefull assurance of faith concerning the Divine Fatherhood? In two ways:by His teaching and by His life; by what He said and by what He did. Andonce more a paragraph must perforce do, as best it can, the work of anessay. 

To the ear and heart of Christ all nature spoke of the love and care ofGod. "Behold the birds of the heaven, " He said; "they sow not, neitherdo they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeththem. Are not ye of much more value than they?" And again He said, "Consider the lilies of the field"--not the pale, delicate blossom weknow so well, but "the scarlet martagon" which "decks herself in red andgold to meet the step of summer"--"Consider the lilies of the field, howthey grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; yet I say unto you thateven Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Butif God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, andto-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O yeof little faith?" Or, He bade men look into their own hearts and learn. "God's possible is taught by His world's loving;" from what is bestwithin ourselves we may learn what God Himself is like. Once Christspoke to shepherds: "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, and havinglost one of them"--how the faces in the little crowd would light up, andtheir ears drink in the gracious argument! You care for your sheep, buthow much better is a man than a sheep? If you would do so much for them, will God do less for you? And once the word went deeper still, as Hespoke to fathers: "What man is there of you, who, if his son shall askhim for a loaf, will give him a stone; or if he shall ask for a fishwill give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give goodgifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is inheaven give good things to them that ask Him?" Why, Christ asks, why doyou not let your own hearts teach you? If love will not let you mockyour child, think you, will God be less good than you yourselves are?

But more even than by His words did Christ by His life reveal to us theFather. "He that hath seen Me, " He said to Philip, "hath seen theFather. " In what He was and did, in His life and in His death, we readwhat God is. We follow Him from Bethlehem to Nazareth, from Nazareth toGennesaret, from Gennesaret to Jerusalem, to the Upper Room, toGethsemane, and to Calvary, and at every step of the way He says to us, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. " We are with Him at themarriage feast at Cana of Galilee, and in the midst of the mourners bythe city gate at Nain; we see Him as He takes the little children intoHis arms and lays His hands upon them and blesses them; we hear His wordto her that was a sinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee; we standwith John and with Mary under the shadow of the Cross; and still, alwaysand everywhere, He is saying to us, "He that hath seen Me hath seen theFather; if ye had known Me ye should have known my Father also. " Withinthe sweep of this great word the whole life of Jesus lies; there isnothing that He said or did that does not more fully declare Him whom noman hath seen at any time. To read "that sweet story of old" is to putour hand on the heart of God; it is to know the Father. 

III

"Yes, " says some one, "it is a beautiful creed--if only one couldbelieve it. " Christ took the birds and the flowers for His text, andpreached of the love of God for man, but is that the only sermon thebirds and flowers preach to us? Does not "nature, red in tooth and clawwith ravine, " shriek against our creed? And when we turn to human lifethe tragedy deepens. Why, if Love be law, is the world so full of pain?Why do the innocent suffer? Why are our hearts made to sicken every daywhen we take up our morning paper? Why does not God end the hauntinghorror of our social ills? They are old-world questions which no man cananswer. Yet will I not give up my faith, and I will tell you why. "Icannot see, " Huxley once wrote to Charles Kingsley, "one shadow ortittle of evidence that the great unknown underlying the phenomena ofthe universe, stands to us in the relation of a Father--loves us, andcares for us as Christianity asserts. " And, perhaps, if I looked forevidence only where Huxley looked, I should say the same; but I haveseen Jesus, and that has made all the difference. It is He, and Healone, who has made me sure of God. He felt, as I have never felt, thehorrid jangle and discord of this world's life; sin and suffering toreHis soul as no soul of man was ever torn; He both saw sufferinginnocence and Himself suffered being innocent, and yet to the end Heknew that love was through all and over all, and died with the name"Father" upon His lips. And, therefore, though the griefs and graves ofmen must often make me dumb, I will still dare to believe with Jesusthat God is good and "Love creation's final law. "

But while thus, on the one hand, we use Christ's doctrine of God to ourcomfort, let us take care lest, on the other hand, we abuse it to ourhurt and undoing. There has scarcely ever been a time when the Churchhas not suffered through "disproportioned thoughts" of God. To-day ourperil is lest, in emphasizing the Divine Fatherhood, we ignore theDivine Sovereignty, and make of God a weak, indulgent Eli, withouteither purpose or power to chastise His wilful and disobedient children. "God is good; God is love; why then should we fear? Will He not dealtenderly with us and with all men, forgiving us even unto seventy timesseven?" The argument is true--and it is false. As an assurance to thepenitent and to the broken in heart, it is true, blessedly true; in anyother sense it is false as hell. He whom Christ called, and taught us tocall "Father, " He also called "Holy Father" and "Righteous Father. " Havewe forgotten Peter's warning--we do not need to ask at whose lips helearned it--"If ye call on Him as Father . . . Pass the time of yoursojourning in fear. " This is no contradiction of the doctrine ofFatherhood; strictly speaking, it is not even a modification of it;rather is it an essential part of any true and complete statement of it. Peter does not mean God is a Father, and He is also to be feared; thatis to miss the whole point of his words; what he means is, God is aFather, and, therefore, He is to be feared; the fear follows necessarilyon the true idea of Fatherhood. Ah, brethren, if we understood Peter andPeter's Lord aright, we should be not the less, but the more anxiousabout our sins, because we have learnt to call God "Father. " "Evil, " ithas been well said, "is a more terrible thing to the family than to thestate. "[12] Acts which the law takes no cognizance of a father dare not, and cannot, pass by; what the magistrate may dismiss with light censurehe must search out to its depths. The judgment of a father--there is nojudgment like that. And if it is a fearful thing to fall into the handsof the living God, for him who all his life through has set himselfagainst the Divine law and love, it is a still more fearful thingbecause those hands are the hands of a Father. 

But this is not the note on which to close a sermon on the Fatherhood ofGod. Let us go back to a chapter from which, though I have only oncequoted its words, we have never been far away--the fifteenth of St. Luke, with its three-fold revelation of the seeking love of God. Theparables of the chapter are companion pictures, and should be studiedtogether in the light of the circumstances which were their commonorigin. "The Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, This manreceiveth sinners and eateth with them. " These parables are Christ'sanswer. Mark how He justifies Himself. He might have pleaded the need ofthose whom the Pharisees and scribes had left alone in theirwretchedness and sin, but of this He says nothing; His thoughts are allof the need of God. The central thought in each parable is not what manloses by his sin, but what God loses. As the shepherd misses his lostsheep, and the woman her lost coin, and the father his lost son, so, Christ says, we are all missed by God until, with our heart's love, wesatisfy the hunger of His. The genius of a prose poet shall tell us therest. We have all read of Lachlan Campbell and his daughter Flora, howshe went into the far country, and what brought her home again. "It issweary to be in London"--this was Flora's story as she told it to MargetHowe when she was back again in the glen--"it iss weary to be in Londonand no one to speak a kind word to you, and I will be looking at thecrowd that is always passing, and I will not see one kent face, and whenI looked in at the lighted windows the people were all sitting round thetable, but there was no place for me. Millions and millions of people, and not one to say 'Flora, ' and not one sore heart if I died thatnight. " Then one night she crept into a church as the people weresinging. "The sermon wass on the Prodigal Son, but there is only oneword I remember. 'You are not forgotten or cast off, ' the preacher said:'you are missed. ' Sometimes he will say, 'If you had a plant, and youhad taken great care of it, and it was stolen, would you not miss it?'And I will be thinking of my geraniums, and saying 'Yes' in my heart. And then he will go on, 'If a shepherd wass counting his sheep, andthere wass one short, does he not go out to the hill to seek for it?'and I will see my father coming back with that lamb that lost itsmother. My heart wass melting within me, but he will still be pleading, 'If a father had a child, and she left her home and lost herself in thewicked city, she will still be remembered in the old house, and herchair will be there, ' and I will be seeing my father all alone with theBible before him, and the dogs will lay their heads on his knee, butthere iss no Flora. So I slipped out into the darkness and cried, 'Father, ' but I could not go back, and I knew not what to do. But thiswass ever in my ear, 'missed, '"--and this was the word that brought herback to home and God. [13]

 * * * * *

CONCERNING HIMSELF

 "Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or He was Divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma. It is inexorable. "

 JOHN DUNCAN, _Colloquia Peripatetica_. 

 * * * * *

III

CONCERNING HIMSELF

 "_Who say ye that I am_?"--MATT. Xvi. 15. 

I

This was our Lord's question to His first disciples; and this, by themouth of Simon Peter, was their answer: "Thou art the Christ, the Son ofthe living God. " And in all ages this has been the answer of the HolyCatholic Church throughout all the world. In the days of New TestamentChristianity no other answer was known or heard. The Church of theapostles had its controversies, as we know, controversies in which thevery life of the Church was at stake. Division crept in even among theapostles themselves. But concerning Christ they spoke with one voice, they proclaimed one faith. The early centuries of the Christian era werecenturies of keen discussion concerning the Person of our Lord; but thediscussions sprang for the most part from the difficulty of rightlydefining the true relations of the Divine and the human in the onePerson, rather than from the denial of His Divinity; and, as Mr. Gladstone once pointed out, since the fourth century the Christianconception of Christ has remained practically unchanged. Amid the fierceand almost ceaseless controversies which have divided and sometimesdesolated Christendom, and which, alas! still continue to divide it, theChurch's testimony concerning Christ has never wavered. The GreekChurch, the Roman Catholic Church, the various Protestant Churches, Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, Christian men and women out of every tribe and tongue and people andnation, --all unite to confess the glory of Christ in the words of theancient Creed: "I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begottenSon of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Lightof Light, Very God of very God. "

This, beyond all doubt, has been and is the Christian way of thinkingabout Christ. But now the question arises, Was this Christ's way ofthinking about Himself? Did He Himself claim to be one with God? or, isit only we, His adoring disciples, who have crowned Him with glory andhonour, and given Him a name that is above every name? To those of uswho have been familiar with the New Testament ever since we could read, the question may appear so simple as to be almost superfluous. Half-a-dozen texts leap to our lips in a moment by way of answer. Did Henot claim to be the Messiah in whom Old Testament history and prophecyfound their fulfilment and consummation? Did He not call Himself the Sonof God, saying, "The Father hath given all judgment unto the Son; that allmay honour the Son, even as they honour the Father"? Did He not declare, "I and My Father are one"? and again, "All things have been deliveredunto Me of My Father: and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father;neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever theSon willeth to reveal Him"? And when one of the Twelve bowed down beforeHim, saying, "My Lord and my God, " did He not accept the homage asthough it were His by right? What further need, then, have we ofwitnesses? Is it not manifest that the explanation of all that has beenclaimed for Christ, from the days of the apostles until now, is to befound in what Christ claimed for Himself?

This is true; nevertheless it may be well to remind ourselves thatChrist Himself did not thrust the evidence on His disciples in quitethis wholesale, summary fashion. It is an easy thing for us to scour theNew Testament for "proof-texts, " and then, when they are heaped togetherat our feet like a load of bricks, to begin to build our theologicalsystems. But Peter and Thomas and the other disciples could not do this. The revelation which we possess in its completeness was given to themlittle by little as they were able to receive it. And the moment webegin to study the life of Jesus, not in isolated texts, but as day byday it passed before the eyes of the Twelve, we cannot fail to observethe remarkable reserve which, during the greater part of His ministry, He exercised concerning Himself. When first His disciples heard His calland followed Him, He was to them but a humble peasant teacher, who hadflung about their lives a wondrous spell which they could no moreexplain than they could resist. Indeed, there is good reason to believe, as Dr. Dale has pointed out, [14] that the full discovery of Christ'sDivinity only came to the apostles after His Resurrection from the dead. At first, and for long, Christ was content to leave them with theirpoor, imperfect thoughts. He never sought to carry their reason bystorm; rather He set Himself to win them--mind, heart, and will--by slowsiege. He lived before them and with them, saying little directly aboutHimself, and yet always revealing Himself, day by day training them, often perhaps unconsciously to themselves, "to trust Him with the sortof trust which can be legitimately given to God only. "[15] And when atlast the truth was clear, and they knew that it was the incarnate Son ofGod who had companied with them, their faith was the result not of thisor that high claim which He had made for Himself, but rather of "thesum-total of all His words and works, the united and accumulatedimpression of all He was and did" upon their sincere and receptivesouls. [16]

Are there not many of us to-day who would do well to seek the same goalby the same path? We have listened, perhaps, to other men's argumentsconcerning the Divinity of our Lord, conscious the while how little theywere doing for us. Let us listen to Christ Himself. Let us put ourselvesto school with Him, as these first disciples did, and suffer Him to makeHis own impression upon us. And if ours be sincere and receptive soulsas were theirs, from us also He shall win the adoring cry, "My Lord andmy God. " Let us note, then, some of the many ways in which Christ bearswitness concerning Himself. In a very true sense all His sayings are"self-portraitures. " Be the subject of His teaching what it may, Hecannot speak of it without, in some measure at least, revealing Histhoughts concerning Himself; and it is this indirect testimony whosesignificance I wish now carefully to consider. 

II

Observe, in the first place, how Christ speaks of God and of His ownrelation to Him. He called Himself, as we have already noted, "the Sonof God. " Now, there is a sense in which all men are the sons of God, forit is to God that all men owe their life. And there is, further, as theNew Testament has taught us, another and deeper sense in which men whoare not may "become" the sons of God, through faith in Christ. ButChrist's consciousness of Sonship is distinct from both of these, andcannot be explained in terms of either. He is not "_a_ son of God"--oneamong many---He is "_the_ son of God, " standing to God in a relationshipwhich is His alone. Hence we find--and we shall do well to mark themarvellous accuracy and self-consistency of the Gospels in thismatter--that while Jesus sometimes speaks of "_the_ Father, " andsometimes of "_My_ Father, " and sometimes, again, in addressing Hisdisciples, of "_your_ Father, " never does He link Himself with them soas to call God "_our_ Father. " Nowhere does the distinction, alwayspresent to the mind of Christ, find more striking expression than inthat touching scene in the garden in which the Risen Lord bids Mary gounto His brethren and say unto them, "I ascend unto My Father and yourFather, and My God and your God. "

This sense of separateness is emphasized when we turn to the prayers ofChrist. And in this connection it is worthy of note that though Christhas much to say concerning the duty and blessedness of prayer, andHimself spent much time in prayer, yet never, so far as we know, did Heask for the prayers of others. "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked tohave you, that he might sift you as wheat: but I made supplication forthee, that thy faith fail not. " So did Jesus pray for His disciples; butwe never read that they prayed for Him, or that He asked for Himself aplace in their prayers. How significant the silence is we learn when weturn to the Epistles of St. Paul and to the experience of the saints. "Brethren, pray for us"--this is the token in almost every Epistle. Inthe long, lone fight of life even the apostle's heart would have failedhim had not the prayers of unknown friends upheld him as with unseenhands. There is no stronger instinct of the Christian heart than theplea for remembrance at the throne of God. "Pray for me, will you?" wecry, when man's best aid seems as a rope too short to help, yet longenough to mock imprisoned miners in their living tomb. But the cry whichis so often ours was never Christ's. 

It has further been remarked that, intimate as was Christ's intercoursewith His disciples, He never joined in prayer with them. [17] He prayedin their presence, He prayed for them, but never with them. "It came topass, as He was praying in a certain place, that when He ceased, one ofHis disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray, even as John alsotaught his disciples. And He said unto them, When ye pray, say----. "Then follows what we call "The Lord's Prayer. " But, properly speaking, this was not the Lord's prayer; it was the disciples' prayer: "When _ye_pray, say------. " And when we read the prayer again, we see why it couldnot be His. How could He who knew no sin pray, saying, "Forgive us oursins"? The true "Lord's Prayer" is to be found in the seventeenthchapter of St. John's Gospel. And throughout that prayer the holySuppliant has nothing to confess, nothing to regret. He knows that theend is nigh, but there are no shadows in His retrospect; of all that isdone there is nothing He could wish undone or done otherwise. "Iglorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thouhast given Me to do. " It is so when He comes to die. Among the SevenWords from the Cross we are struck by one significant omission: thedying Sufferer utters a cry of physical weakness--"I thirst"--but Hemakes no acknowledgement of sin; He prays for the forgiveness ofothers--"Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do"--He asksnone for Himself. The great Augustine died with the penitential Psalmshung round his bed. Fifty or sixty times, it is said, did sweet St. Catharine of Siena cry upon her deathbed, _Peccavi, Domine misereremei_, "Lord, I have sinned: have mercy on me. " But in all the prayers ofJesus, whether in life or in death, He has no pardon to ask, no sins toconfess. 

We are thus brought to the fact upon which of recent years so muchemphasis has been justly laid, namely, that nowhere throughout theGospels does Christ betray any consciousness of sin. "Which of you, " Hesaid, "convicteth Me of sin?" And no man was able, nor is any man nowable, to answer Him a word. But the all-important fact is not so muchthat they could not convict Him of sin; _He could not convict Himself. _Yet it could not be that He was self-deceived. "He knew what was inman;" He read the hearts of others till, like the Samaritan woman, theyfelt as though He knew all things that ever they had done. Was itpossible, then, that He did not know Himself? Not only so, but the lawby which He judged Himself was not theirs, but His. And what that was, how high, how searching, how different from the low, conventionalstandards which satisfied them, we who have read His words and Hisjudgments know full well. Nevertheless, He knew nothing against Himself;as no man could condemn Him neither could He condemn Himself. Looking upto heaven, He could say, "I do always the things that are pleasing toHim. "[18] This is not the language of sinful men; it is not the languageof even the best and holiest of men. Christ is as separate from "saints"as He is from "sinners. " The greatest of Hebrew prophets cries, "Woe isme! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell inthe midst of a people of unclean lips. " The greatest of Christianapostles laments, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out ofthe body of this death?" Even the holy John confesses, "If we say thatwe have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. " It isone of the commonplaces of Christian experience that the holier menbecome the more intense and poignant becomes the sense of personalshortcoming. "We have done those things which we ought not to have done;we have left undone those things which we ought to have done:" among allthe sons of men there is none, who truly knows himself, who dare besilent when the great confession is made--none save the Son of Man; forHe, it has well been said, was _not_ the one thing which we all are; Hewas _not_ a sinner. 

This consciousness of separateness runs through all that the evangelistshave told us concerning Christ. When _e. G. _ He is preaching He neverassociates Himself, as other preachers do, with His hearers; He neverassumes, as other preachers must, that His words are applicable toHimself equally with them. We exhort; He commands. We say, like thewriter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "Let us go on unto perfection"; Hesays, "Ye shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. " Wespeak as sinful men to sinful men, standing by their side; He speaks asfrom a height, as one who has already attained and is already madeperfect. Or, the contrast may be pointed in another way. We all knowwhat it is to be haunted by misgivings as to the wisdom of some coursewhich, under certain trying circumstances, we have taken. We had somedifficult task to perform--to withstand (let us say) a fellow-Christianto his face, as Paul withstood Peter at Antioch; and we did theunpleasant duty as best we knew how, honestly striving not only to speakthe truth but to speak it in love. And yet when all was over we couldnot get rid of the fear that we had not been as firm or as kindly as weshould have been, that, if only something had been which was not, ourbrother might have been won. There is a verse in Paul's second letter tothe Church at Corinth which illustrates exactly this familiar kind ofinternal conflict. Referring to the former letter which he had sent tothe Corinthians, and in which he had sharply rebuked them for theirwrong-doing, he says, "Though I made you sorry with my epistle, I do notregret it, though I did regret"--a simple, human touch we can allunderstand. Yes; but when did Jesus hesitate and, as it were, go backupon Himself after this fashion? He passed judgment upon men and theirways with the utmost freedom and confidence; some, such as thePharisees, He condemned with a severity which almost startles us;towards others, such as she "that was a sinner, " He was all love andtenderness. Yet never does He speak as one who fears lest either in Histenderness or His severity He has gone too far. His path is alwaysclear; He enters upon it without doubt; He looks back upon it withoutmisgiving. 

This contrast between Christ and all other men, as it presented itselfto His own consciousness, may be illustrated almost indefinitely. Hisforerunners the prophets were the servants of God; He is His Son. Allother men are weary and in need of rest; He has rest and can give it. All others are lost; He is not lost, He is the shepherd sent to seek thelost. All others are sick; He is not sick, He is the physician sent toheal the sick. All others will one day stand at the bar of God; but Hewill be on the throne to be their Judge. All others are sinners--this isthe great, final distinction into which all others run up--He is theSaviour. When at the Last Supper He said, "This is My blood of thecovenant which is shed for many unto remission of sins"; and again, whenHe said, "The Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many, " Heset Himself over against all others, the one sinless sacrifice for asinful world. 

There is in Edinburgh a Unitarian church which bears carved on its frontthese words of St. Paul. "There is one God, and one mediator between Godand man, the man Christ Jesus. " I say nothing as to the fitness of anyof Paul's words for such a place--perhaps we can imagine what he wouldhave said; I pass over any questions of interpretation that might veryjustly be raised; I have only one question to ask: Why was the quotationnot finished? Paul only put a comma where they have put a full stop; thenext words are: _"Who gave Himself a ransom for all. "_ But how could Hedo that if He was only "the _man_ Christ Jesus"?

 "No man can save his brother's soul, Nor pay his brother's debt, "

and how could He, how dare He, think of His life as the ransom for ourforfeited lives, if He were only one like unto ourselves? There is butone explanation which does really explain all that Christ thought andtaught concerning Himself; it is that given by the first disciples andre-echoed by every succeeding generation of Christians--

 "THOU ART THE KING OF GLORY, O CHRIST. THOU ART THE EVERLASTING SON OF THE FATHER. "

 * * * * *

CONCERNING HIS OWN DEATH

 "While there is life in thee, in this death alone place thy trust, confide in nothing else besides; to this death commit thyself altogether; with this shelter thy whole self; with this death array thyself from head to foot. And if the Lord thy God will judge thee, say, Lord, between Thy judgment and me I cast the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; no otherwise can I contend with Thee. And if He say to thee, Thou art a sinner, say, Lord, I stretch forth the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my sins and Thee. If He say, Thou art worthy of condemnation, say, Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my evil deserts and Thee, and His merits I offer for those merits which I ought to have, but have not of my own. If He say that He is wroth with thee, say, Lord, I lift up the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between Thy wrath and me. "--ANSELM. 

 * * * * *

IV

CONCERNING HIS OWN DEATH

 _"The Son of Man came . . . To give His life a ransom for many. "_--MARK X. 45. 

The death of Jesus Christ has always held the foremost place in thethought and teaching of the Church. When St. Paul writes to theCorinthians, "I delivered unto you first of all that which also Ireceived, how that Christ died for our sins according to theScriptures, " he is the spokesman of every Christian preacher andteacher, of the missionary of the twentieth century no less than of thefirst. It is with some surprise, therefore, we discover when we turn tothe teaching of Jesus Himself, that He had so little to say concerning asubject of which His disciples have said so much. It is true that theGospels, without exception, relate the story of Christ's death with afullness and detail which, in any other biography, would be judgedabsurdly out of proportion. But this, it is said, reveals the mind ofthe evangelists rather than the mind of Christ. And those who love thatfalse comparison between the Gospels and the Epistles of which so muchis heard to-day, have not been slow to seize upon this apparentdiscrepancy as another example of the way in which the Church hasmisunderstood and misinterpreted the simple message of the GalileanProphet. 

But, in the first place, as I will show in a moment, the contrastbetween the Gospels and Epistles in this matter is by no means sosharply defined as is often supposed. And further, granting that thereis a contrast--that what in the Gospels is only a hint or suggestion, becomes in the Epistles a definite and formal statement--it is one whichadmits of a simple and immediate explanation. Christ--this was Dr. Dale's way of putting it--did not come to preach the gospel; He camethat there might be a gospel to preach. This must not be pressed so faras to imply that it is only the death and not also the life of Christthat has any significance for us to-day; but if that death had anysignificance in it at all, if it was anything more to Him than death isto us, if it stood in any sort of relation to us men and our salvation, manifestly the teaching which should make this plain would morefittingly follow than precede the death. And they at least who acceptChrist's words, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannotbear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shallguide you into all truth"--they, I say, who accept these words can findno difficulty in believing that part of the revelation which it was thegood pleasure of the Father to give to us in His Son, came through thelips of men who spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Moreover, when we turn to the Gospels we see at once that the interpretation ofChrist's death was just one of those things which the disciples as yetwere unable to bear. The point is so important that it is worth whiledwelling upon it for a moment. So far were the Twelve from being able tounderstand their Lord's death, that they would not even believe that Hewas going to die. "Be it far from Thee, Lord, " cried Peter, when Christfirst distinctly foretold His approaching end; "this shall never be untoThee. " When, at another time, He said unto His disciples, "Let thesewords sink into your ears; for the Son of Man shall be delivered up intothe hands of men, " St. Luke adds, "But they understood not this saying. "And again, after another and similar prophecy, the evangelist writeswith significant reiteration, "They understood none of these things; andthis saying was hid from them, and they perceived not the things thatwere said. " So was it all through those last months of our Lord's life. His thoughts were not their thoughts, neither were His ways their ways. They followed Him as He pressed along the highway, His face steadfastlyset to go up to Jerusalem, but they could not understand Him. Why, if asHe had said, death waited Him there, did He go to seek it? Think whatutter powerlessness to enter even a little way into His thoughts isrevealed in a scene like this: Two of His disciples, James and John, came to Him to ask Him that they might sit, one on His right hand, andone on His left hand, in His glory. Jesus said unto them, "Ye know notwhat ye ask. Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to bebaptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" And they said untoHim, "We are able. " What could Jesus do with ignorance likethis--ignorance that knew not its own ignorance? He could be "sorry fortheir childishness"; but how could He show them the mystery of HisPassion? What could He do but wait until the Cross, and the empty grave, and the gift of Pentecost had done their revealing and enlighteningwork?

At the same time, as I have already pointed out, it is altogether amistake to suppose that Christ has left us on this subject wholly to theguidance of others. From the very beginning of His ministry the end wasbefore Him, and as it drew nearer He spoke of it continually. At firstHe was content to refer to it in language purposely vague andmysterious. Just as a mother who knows herself smitten with a sicknesswhich is unto death, will sometimes try by shadowed hints to prepare herchildren for what is coming, while yet she veils its naked horror fromtheir eyes, so did Jesus with His disciples. "Can the sons of thebride-chamber fast, " He asked once, "while the bridegroom is with them?. . . But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away fromthem, and then will they fast in that day. " But from the time of Peter'sgreat confession at Cĉsarea Philippi all reserve was laid aside, andChrist told His disciples plainly of the things which were to come topass: "From that time began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how thatHe must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders andchief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raisedup. " And if we will turn to any one of the first three Gospels, we shallfind, as Dr. Denney says, that that which "characterized the last monthsof our Lord's life was a deliberate and thrice-repeated attempt to teachHis disciples something about His death. "[19] Let me try, very briefly, to set forth some of the things which He said. 

I

First of all, then, _Christ died as a faithful witness to the truth. _Like the prophets and the Baptist before Him, whose work and whose endwere so often in His thoughts, He preached righteousness to anunrighteous world, and paid with His life the penalty of His daring. That is the very lowest view which can be taken of His death. NoUnitarian, no unbeliever, will deny that Jesus died as a good man, choosing rather the shame of the Cross than the deeper shame of treasonto the truth. And thus far Christ is an example to all who follow Him. In one sense His cross-bearing was all His own, a mystery of sufferingand death into which no man can enter. But in another sense, as St. Peter tells us, He has left us by His sufferings an example that weshould follow His steps. It is surely a significant fact that the wordswhich immediately follow Christ's first distinct declaration of Hisdeath are these, "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. " His death was the supremeillustration of a law which binds us, the servants, even as it boundHim, the Master. In the path of every true man there stands the crosswhich he must bear, or be true no more. Let no one grow impatient andsay this is no more than the fringe of Christ's thoughts about Hisdeath; even the fringe is part of the robe, and if, as the words I havequoted seem clearly to indicate, Christ thought of His death as in anysense at all a pattern for us, let us not miss this, the first andsimplest lesson of the Cross. 

There are few more impressive scenes in the history of the Christianpulpit than that in which Robertson of Brighton, preaching the AssizeSermon at Lewes, turned as he closed to the judges, and counsel, andjury, and bade them remember, by "the trial hour of Christ, " by "theCross of the Son of God, " the sacred claims of truth: "The first lessonof the Christian life is this, Be true; and the second this, Be true;and the third this, Be true. "

II

But though this be our starting-point, it is no more than a starting-point. If Jesus was only a brave man, paying with His life the penaltyof His bravery in the streets of Jerusalem, it is wasting words to callHim "the Saviour of the world. " If His death were only a martyrdom, then, though we may honour Him as we honour Socrates, and many anothername in the long roll of "the noble army of martyrs, " yet He can no morebe our Redeemer than can any one of them. But it was not so that Christthought of His death. The martyr dies because he must; Christ diedbecause He would. The strong hands of violent men snatch away themartyr's life from him; but no man had power to take away Christ's lifefrom Him: "I lay it down of Myself, " He said. The Son of Man _gave_ Hislife. He was not dragged as an unwilling victim to the sacrifice andbound upon the altar. He was both Priest and Victim; as the apostle putsit, "He gave Himself up. " True, the element of necessity was there--"theSon of Man _must_ be lifted up"; but it was the "must" of His own love, not of another's constraint. Not Roman nails or Roman thongs held Him tothe Cross, but His own loving will. It is important to emphasize thisfact of the _voluntariness_ of our Lord's death, because at once it setsthe Cross in a clearer light. It changes martyrdom into sacrifice; andChrist's death, instead of being merely a fate which He suffered, becomes now, as Principal Fairbairn says, a work which Heachieved--_the_ work which He came into the world to do: "The Son of Mancame . . . To give His life. "[20]

III

Again, Christ taught us that His death was _the crowning revelation ofthe love of God for man. _ And it is well to remind ourselves of our needof such a revelation. We speak sometimes as though the love of God was aself-evident truth altogether independent of the facts of New Testamenthistory. "God is love"--of course, we say; this at least we are sure of, whatever becomes of the history. But this jaunty assurance will not bearlooking into. The truth is that, apart from Christ, we have no certaintyof the love of God. A man may cry aloud in our ears, "God is love, Godis love"; but if he have no more to say than that, the most emphaticreiteration will avail us nothing. But if he can say, "God is love, andHe so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son"; if, that isto say, he can point us to the Divine love made manifest in life, thenhe is proclaiming a gospel indeed. But let us not deceive ourselves andimagine that we can have Christ's gospel apart from Christ. 

Now, according to the teaching of the Gospels, all Christ's life--all Hewas and said and did--is a revelation of the love of God. But the crownof the revelation was given in His death. It is the Cross which was, ina special and peculiar sense, as Christ Himself declared, [21] the gloryboth of the Father and the Son. And the apostles, with a unanimity whichcan only be explained as the result of His own teaching, alwaysassociate God's love with Christ's death in a way in which they neverassociate God's love with Christ's life. "God, " says St. Paul, "commendeth His own love toward us, in that . . . Christ died for us. "

Christ's death, then, we say, establishes the love of God. But how doesthis come to pass? How does the death of one prove the love of another?If--to use a very simple illustration--I am in danger of drowning, andanother man, at the cost of his own life, saves mine, his actundoubtedly proves his own love; but how does it prove anythingconcerning God's love? If the apostle had said, "_Christ_ commendeth Hisown love towards us, in that He died for us, " we could have understoodhim; but how, I ask again, does Christ's death prove _God's_ love? Thequestion is answerable, as indeed the whole of the New Testament isintelligible, only on the assumption of the Trinitarian doctrine ofChrist. If Christ were indeed the Son of God, standing to God in such arelation that what He did was likewise the doing of God the Father, wecan understand the apostle's meaning. On any other hypothesis hislanguage is a riddle of which the key has been lost. A further questionstill remains to be answered. I said just now that if St. Paul hadwritten, "_Christ_ commendeth His own love towards us, in that He diedfor us, " we could have understood Him. But here, also, something isimplicit which requires to be made explicit. How does Christ in Hisdeath prove His love for us? Obviously, only in one way: by bearingresponsibilities which must otherwise have fallen upon us. There mustbe, as Dr. Denney rightly argues, some rational relation between ournecessities and what Christ has done before we can speak of His act as aproof of His love. If, to borrow the same writer's illustration, a manlose his own life in saving me from drowning, this is love to theuttermost; but if, when I was in no peril, he had thrown himself intothe water and got drowned "to prove his love for me, " the deed and itsexplanation would be alike unintelligible. We must take care when wespeak of the death of Christ that we do not make it equally meaningless. How Christ Himself thought of it as related to the necessities of sinfulmen, the next and last division of this chapter will, I hope, makeplain. 

IV

_"The Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many;" "This is Myblood of the covenant which is shed for many unto remission of sins. "_These are the two great texts which reveal to us the mind of Christconcerning the significance of His death. There has been much discussionof their meaning into which it is impossible here to enter. But whateverquestions modern scholarship may raise, there can be little doubt as tothe sense in which Christ's words were understood by the firstdisciples. "His own self, " said Peter, "bare our sins in His body uponthe tree. " "Herein is love, " said John, "not that we loved God, but thatHe loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. " He"loved me, " said Paul, "and gave Himself for me. " It is open, doubtless, to question the legitimacy of these apostolic deductions, and to fallback upon Matthew Arnold's _Aberglaube;_ but who, it has been well said, "are most likely to have correctly apprehended the significance whichJesus attached to His death, men like John and Peter and Paul, or anequal number of scholars in our time, however discerning and candid, whoundertake to reconstruct the thoughts of Jesus, and to disentangle themfrom the supposed subjective reflections of His disciples? Where is thesubjectivity likely to be the greatest--in the interpretations of theeye and ear witness, or in the reconstructions of the moderns?"[22]

Christ gave His life "a ransom for many. " The truth cannot be put toosimply: "God forgives our sins because Christ died for them;" "in thatdeath of Christ our condemnation came upon Him, that for us there mightbe condemnation no more;" "the forfeiting of His free life has freed ourforfeited lives. "[23]

 "Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned He stood; Sealed my pardon with His blood; Alleluia! what a Saviour!"

If this is true, the New Testament has a meaning, and, what is more, wesinful men have a gospel. If it is not true, it is difficult to know whythe New Testament was written, and still more difficult to know what wemust do to be saved. It does not help to point us to the parable of theProdigal Son, and tell us that there is a story of salvation without anatonement. The whole gospel cannot be put into a parable, not even intosuch a parable as this. Besides, if the argument proves anything, itproves too much. The parable is not only a story of salvation without anatonement, it is a story of salvation without Christ; and if no more isneeded than what is given here, Christ Himself is no part of His owngospel, forgiveness can be had with no reference to Him. But it is notso the redeemed have learned Christ; it is not thus they have receivedforgiveness. They _know_ that it is "in Him" they have their redemption, through His blood; and apart from Him there is no salvation and nogospel. 

It is time to bring our reasonings to an end. We are under the shadow ofthe Cross; let us worship and adore. When Christ died on the treenineteen hundred years ago, there were some that mocked, and some thatwatched and yet saw nothing--nothing but a miserable criminal'smiserable end; a few there were that wept, and one there was who cried, with lips already white with death, "Jesus, remember me when Thou comestin Thy kingdom. " And still does that Cross divide men. Where is ourplace, and with whom are we? Not, I think, with them that mock; forthese to-day are a broken and discredited few. We choose rather thecenturion's cry, "Certainly this was a righteous man. " But is this allwe have to say? He who gave His life-blood for us, shall He have no morethan this--the little penny-pieces of our respect? If we owe Him aughtwe owe Him all; and if we give Him aught let us give Him all--not ourthanks but our souls. "He loved _me_, and gave Himself up for _me_"--there is the secret of the Cross which no man knows save he who cannotspeak of it without the personal pronouns. Until then we are but asblind watchers that look and see not. "Jesus, remember me"--this is theword that becomes us best. Let us cry unto Him now, and He who heard therobber's prayer on the Cross will hear and save us. 

 * * * * *

CONCERNING THE HOLY SPIRIT

 "Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, And lighten with celestial fire; Thou the Anointing Spirit art, Who dost Thy sevenfold gifts impart. Thy blessed unction from above Is comfort, life, and fire of love: Enable with perpetual light The dullness of our blinded sight; Anoint and cheer our soiled face With the abundance of Thy grace; Keep far our foes; give peace at home; Where Thou art guide no ill can come; Teach us to know the Father, Son, And Thee of Both, to be but One: That, through the ages all along, This, this may be our endless song, 'Praise to Thy eternal merit, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!'" Amen! BISHOP JOHN COSIN. 

 * * * * *

V

CONCERNING THE HOLY SPIRIT

 _"I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth. "_--JOHN xiv. 16. 

 _"It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send Him unto you. "_--JOHN xvi. 7. 

It was the night in which He was betrayed. Jesus and His disciples werespending their last hours together before His death. For Him the morrowcould bring with it no surprise. He knew that His hour was come--thehour to which all other hours of His past had pointed; and He was ready. Before He left that Upper Room, He lifted up His eyes to heaven andsaid, "Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son. " But to the disciplesthat night was a night of darkness, and terror, and confusion. Theyremembered how He had told them He must die; they knew the bloodhoundsin Jerusalem were on His track; they could see the shadow's black edgecreeping nearer and nearer; and yet they could do nothing; they couldnot even persuade Him that anything needed to be done. Nay, it almostseemed as if He were taking part with His enemies against them. "It isexpedient for you, " He said, "that I go away"--veiling in His pity thehorror of His going. "Expedient" for them? How could He speak like that?Was He not everything to them? If He went away, what was to befall them?They would be as sheep in the midst of wolves, as orphans in an unkindlyworld. Is it any wonder that sorrow filled their hearts?

And not only to these His first disciples, but to many of His followersin later days, this word of Jesus has proved a hard saying. If only, wethink, He were with us as He was with Peter and James and John; if onlywe could hear Him teach in our streets, or in our church, as once Hetaught in the streets of Jerusalem and the synagogue at Nazareth; ifonly He could enter our homes, as once He entered the home at Bethany, how easy it would be to believe! But, now He is no longer here, the airis filled with doubting voices, and faith is very hard. 

So sometimes we speak. But, have we noticed, this is never the languageof the New Testament. To begin with, it is not the language of Christ. There is an unmistakable emphasis in His words: "Because I have spokenthese things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless, Itell you the truth: it is expedient for you that I go away. " When Paulwas a prisoner in Rome, he wrote to the Philippians, saying, "I am in astrait betwixt the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ;for it is very far better; yet to abide in the flesh is more needful foryour sake. " That is how a good man, in the prospect of death, naturallyfeels towards those who are in any way dependent on him. But Christ'slanguage is the very opposite of this; He says, not that it is needfulto abide, but that it is expedient to depart. And in every reference toChrist by the apostles after His Ascension, the same note is struck. Itis hardly too much to say, as one writer does, "that no apostle, no NewTestament writer, ever _remembered_ Christ. "[24] They thought of Him asbelonging, not to the past, but to the present; He was the object, notof memory, but of faith. Never do they wish Him back in their midst;never do they mourn for Him as for a friend whom they have lost. On thecontrary, they felt that Christ was with them now in a sense in which Hehad never been. There is no hint that any even of the Twelve would havegone back to the old days had it been possible. They had lost, but theyhad also gained, and their gain was greater than their loss. "Eventhough we have known Christ after the flesh, " they also would have said, "yet now we know Him so no more. " Read over again St. Luke's account ofour Lord's Ascension: "He led them out until they were over againstBethany; and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. And it came topass, while He blessed them, He parted from them, and was carried upinto heaven. And they worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem withgreat joy; and were continually in the temple, blessing God. " Christ hadgone from them a second time, no more to return as before He hadreturned from the tomb; yet now it is not despair but joy which fillstheir hearts: "They returned to Jerusalem with great joy. " When in theUpper Room, Christ had said, "It is expedient for you that I go away, "sorrow had filled their hearts; but, now that He is gone, their sorrowis turned into joy. How shall we explain this strange reversal?

I

It is to be explained in part, of course, by the Resurrection of Christfrom the dead, but mainly--and this is the fact with which just now weare concerned--by the gift of the Holy Spirit whom Christ had promisedto His disciples to abide with them for ever. But now, what do we meanwhen we speak of the gift of the Holy Spirit? What is the Holy Spirit, and what is it that He does for us? Many of us, I think, must have felthow extremely unreal, and therefore unsatisfying, the discussions ofthis great subject often are. The doctrine somehow fails to find a placeamong the proved realities of our Christian experience. It remains, soto speak, outside of us, a foreign substance which life has notassimilated. And hence it has come to pass that there is no small dangerto-day lest New Testament phrases about being filled with the Spirit, baptized with the Spirit, and so forth, become the mere jargon of aschool which wholly fails to interpret the mind of Christ. Doubtlessthere are faults on both sides, the faults of neglect and the faults offalse emphasis, and for both the true remedy is a more careful study ofthe teaching of Jesus. 

What, then, is the Holy Spirit, and what is it He does for us? "I willpray the Father, " Christ said, "and He shall give you anotherComforter, " or "another Paraclete. " The word translated "Comforter, "which occurs so often in this discourse of our Lord, is found nowhereelse in the New Testament except in the First Epistle of St. John, whereit is rendered "Advocate"; "If any man sin, we have an Advocate with theFather, Jesus Christ, the righteous. " And this, without doubt, is a morefaithful rendering of the word which Christ used than the more familiar"Comforter. " An advocate is one who is called to our side to be ourfriend and helper, more especially to plead our cause in a court ofjustice; and this also is the meaning of the word "Paraclete. " Perhaps, however, the word "Comforter" may be retained without loss, if only weremember to give it its full and original meaning. To "comfort" is notprimarily and originally to console, but to strengthen, to _fort_ify;and the "Comforter" whom Christ promised to His disciples was not onlyone who should soothe them in their sorrows, but should stand by them inall their conflicts, their unfailing friend and helper. 

Further, Christ said God "shall give you _another_ Comforter. " That isto say, Christ Himself was a Comforter, and all that He had been to Hisdisciples the Holy Spirit should be also. And, if we examine the threechapters of this Gospel which contain this great discourse of our Lord, we shall find this idea taken up, and repeated, and developed in passageafter passage. The Holy Spirit was to come in Christ's name, as Christ'srepresentative and interpreter. "He shall not speak from Himself, "Christ said; "He shall bear witness of Me. He shall glorify Me; for Heshall take of Mine, and shall declare it unto you. " In the presence ofthe Spirit Christ Himself would be present: "I will not leave youdesolate, " He said; "I come unto you;" "I will see you again, and yourheart shall rejoice. " And, for the sake of such a presence, a presencewhich was to be not for a little while but for ever, it was best for Hisfriends that He should leave them. [25]

It is in these words, I believe, that we have the key to the NewTestament doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the Spirit ofChrist; He is sent by Christ; He comes to continue the work of Christ. He is, as one writer has it, Christ's _alter ego_, or, as it was saidlong ago, Christ's "Vicar, " or substitute, on the earth. [26] When, therefore, we speak of the presence of the Spirit, what we mean, or whatwe ought to mean, is the spiritual presence of Christ. In the HolySpirit Christ Himself is present, wherever, as He said, two or three aregathered together in His name. In the Holy Spirit, given to be with usfor ever, He makes good to His disciples the great word of His promise, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. " This is thefact continually to be kept in mind--the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ;for, if this be forgotten, then, as all experience shows, either thedoctrine is wholly ignored, or it is made the subject of that vague, unreal way of speaking, which, alas! is so often the bane of spiritualtruth. 

At the same time, what has been said must not be interpreted so as tosuggest that the Holy Spirit is merely an impersonal influence. On thecontrary, the words of our Lord quoted above distinctly imply what wecall "personality, " and a personality separate from His own. If all thatJesus really meant to teach was that He would manifest His own invisiblepresence to His disciples by spiritual influences, we can only concludethat His words have been tampered with; as they stand, it is impossiblethat this should exhaust their meaning. To teach, to bear witness, toguide, to bring to remembrance, to declare the things that are tocome, --these are the acts, not of a Power, but of a Person; and allthese things, Christ said, the Holy Spirit should do. Indeed, it is noteasy to see how language could have been framed to set forth the idea ofa Divine Person, separate alike from the Father and the Son, moreexplicitly than we find it in these chapters. [27]

II

We turn now to the second part of our question: What is it that the HolySpirit does for us? Christ's teaching on the work of the Spirit may begathered up under two heads: (1) His work in the Church; (2) His work inthe world. 

(1) When we speak of the Spirit's work in the Church, it must beunderstood that the reference is to no particular ecclesiasticalorganization, but to the people of Christ generally, "the men and womenin whom the spiritual work of Christ is going forward. " And among thesethe Holy Spirit works in two ways. 

(_a_) He is the Spirit of truth, the Divine Remembrancer: "He shallguide you into all the truth;" "He shall take of Mine, and shall declareit unto you;" "He shall teach you all things, and bring to yourremembrance all that I said unto you. " It is not, it will be observed, all truth, but all the truth of Christ, with which the Spirit deals--thetruth concerning Him, and the truth which He taught. Nor is it a newrevelation which the Spirit gives, but rather a more perfectunderstanding of that which has been already given in Christ. Here, then, is the test by which to try all that claims the authority ofspiritual truth. Does it "glorify" Christ? Does it lead us into a fullerknowledge of Him "in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledgehidden"? "Whosoever goeth onward, " says St. John, in a remarkablepassage, for which English readers are indebted to the Revised Version, "and abideth not in the teaching of Christ, hath not God. " In otherwords, no true progress is possible except as we abide in Christ. If Hebe ignored and left behind, though we still keep the name and boastourselves "progressives, " we have lost the reality. On the other hand, every new discovery, every movement in the life of men, everyintellectual and spiritual awakening which serves to make manifest theglory of Christ as Creator, or Revealer, or Redeemer, is a freshfulfilment of His promise concerning the guiding Spirit of truth. Perhaps our best commentary is the history of the Church. In the NewTestament itself we have the first-fruits of the Spirit's work. There wemay see, in Gospels and Epistles, how the Spirit took of the things ofChrist and showed them unto His disciples. And all through the variedhistory of the Church's long past, that same Divine Remembrancer hasbeen at work, calling us through the lips of an Augustine, a Luther, ora Wesley, into the fullness of the inheritance of truth which is ours inChrist Jesus. 

(_b_) The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of power. "Behold, " said theascending Christ, "I send forth the promise of My Father upon you; buttarry ye in the city until ye be clothed with power from on high. " And, again, "Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you. "Of Jesus Himself it was said by one of His disciples "that God anointedHim with the Holy Ghost and with power"; and of His disciples Jesussaid: "He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall He do also;and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father. "Here, again, our best commentary is the history of the Church, andespecially the first chapter of that history as it is written in theActs of the Apostles. This was the promise, "Ye shall receive power, "and this, in brief, the story of its fulfilment, "With great power gavethe apostles their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. " Letany one read the early chapters of St. Luke's narrative; let him markthe utter disparity between the "acts" and the "apostles"--between thethings done and the men by whom they were done--and then let him ask ifthere is any explanation which does really bridge the gulf short ofthis, that behind Peter and John and the rest there stood Another, speaking through their lips, working through their hands, Himself thereal Doer in all those wondrous "acts"? When D. L. Moody was holding inBirmingham one of those remarkable series of meetings which so deeplystirred our country in the early 'seventies, Dr. Dale, who followed thework with the keenest sympathy, and yet not without a feeling akin tostupefaction at the amazing results which it produced, once told Moodythat the work was most plainly of God, for he could see no real relationbetween him and what he had done. Is not this disparity the verysign-manual of the Holy Spirit's presence? "Why, " asked Peter, when themultitude were filled with wonder and amazement at the healing of thelame man, "Why fasten ye your eyes on us as though by our own power orgodliness we had made him to walk?" Work that is really of God can neverbe accounted for in that fashion. There is always a something in theeffects which cannot be traced back to a human cause. Let "our own powerand godliness" be what they may--and they can never be too great--theyare all vain and helpless apart from the power of God. "I planted, Apollos watered; God gave the increase. " Wherefore let the Church trustneither in him that planteth nor in him that watereth, but in God whogiveth the increase. 

(2) We come now to the Holy Spirit's work in the world. And, just as inspeaking of the "Church" it was not any visible organization which wehad in mind, so now by the "world" is not meant merely the persons whoare outside all such organizations. There is, as we are often remindednowadays, a Church outside the Churches; and, on the other hand, not alittle of what Christ meant by the "world" is often to be found insidewhat we mean by the "Church. " The "world, " then, is simply the mass ofmen, wherever they are to be found, who are living apart from God. Now, of this world Christ said it "cannot receive" the Spirit of truth; "itbeholdeth Him not, neither knoweth Him. " If, therefore, there is aministry of the Spirit in the world, it must be wholly different in kindfrom that spoken of above. And this is what we learn from Christ'steaching: "He, when He is come, will convict the world in respect ofsin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. " There is a ring of judicialsternness in the words; they call up to our minds the solemnities of acourt of justice--the indictment, the conviction, the condemnation. Andyet one can well believe that there were hours in the after life of theapostles when, of all the comforting, reassuring words which Christ hadspoken to them in that Upper Room, there were none more helpful thanthese. For they knew now that, when they stood up to bear their witnessbefore a hostile world, they had a fellow-witness in men's hearts. Theycould go nowhere--in Jerusalem, Judĉa, Samaria, or the uttermost partsof the earth--where the gracious ministries of the Spirit had notpreceded them. He, the Paraclete, was not only with them, their"strong-siding Champion, " He was in the world also, in the hearts evenof them who set themselves most stoutly against the Lord and against HisAnointed, subduing their rebelliousness and reconciling them to God. Wewho teach and preach to-day, do we think of these things as we ought?Does not our message sometimes win a response which is at once asurprise and a rebuke to us? We knew that the seed which we cast intothe ground was the word of God; but the soil seemed so poor and thin wescarce had looked for any harvest; yet the seed sprang up and grew, weknew not how. We had forgotten that over all that wide field which isthe world the Divine Husbandman is ever at work, at work while mensleep, breaking up the fallow ground, and making ready the soil for theseed. We need to learn to count more on God, to grasp more fully theglorious breadth of promise which He has given us in His Spirit, toremember that, not only in the Church, but in the world--which is Hisworld--that Spirit is always present to testify of God, to convict menof sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. 

And yet, while we encourage ourselves with thoughts like these, we darenot forget that men may resist, they may grieve, they may quench theHoly Spirit. He is grieved whensoever He is resisted; He may be resisteduntil He is quenched. It was Christ Himself who spoke of a sin againstthe Holy Spirit which "hath never forgiveness. " Is there any morepainful, perplexing, and yet more certain fact in life than this, thatman can resist God? Is there any that has bound up with it more terribleand inevitable issues? "Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart andears, " cried the martyr Stephen to his judges, "ye do always resist theHoly Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. " And the end for theirfathers and for them we know. Wherefore the Holy Spirit saith: "To-day, if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts. "

 * * * * *

CONCERNING THE KINGDOM OF GOD

 "The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. "--ST. PAUL. 

 * * * * *

VI

CONCERNING THE KINGDOM OF GOD

 "_Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. _"--MATT. Vi. 10. 

I

One of the most obvious features of the teaching of Jesus is theprominence which it gives to what is called "the kingdom of heaven, " or, "the kingdom of God. " And this prominence becomes the more striking whenwe turn from the Gospels to the Epistles where the phrase is only rarelyto be found. With Jesus the kingdom was a kind of watchword which wascontinually on His lips. Thus, _e. G. _, St. Mark begins his account ofthe preaching of Jesus in these words: "After that John was deliveredup, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of God and saying, Thetime is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, andbelieve in the Gospel. " In like manner, St. Matthew tells us that "Jesuswent about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preachingthe gospel of the kingdom. " Parable after parable opens with the formula"The kingdom of heaven is like unto--, " or, "So is the kingdom of God asif--, " or, "How shall we liken the kingdom of God?" When Christ sentforth the Twelve, this was His command, "Go . . . And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. " Again, when He sent forth theSeventy, He said, "Into whatsoever city ye enter . . . Say unto them, Thekingdom of God is come nigh unto you. " And in the great Forty Days, before He was received up, it was still of "the things concerning thekingdom of God" that He spake unto His disciples. Every time a littlechild is baptized we call to mind His words, "For of such is the kingdomof God. " Every time we repeat the prayer He taught His disciples to praywe say, "Thy kingdom come. " In all, it is said, there are no less thanone hundred and twelve references to the kingdom to be found in theGospels. 

When, however, we turn to the Epistles what do we find? In the whole ofSt. Paul's Epistles the kingdom is not named as often as in the briefestof the four Gospels. It is mentioned only once by St. Peter, once by St. James, once by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and not at allin the three Epistles of St. John. Not only so, but at least until quiterecent times, the Church of Christ has in the main followed the lead ofthe apostles, and has said but little of the kingdom of God. How is thisto be explained? Does it mean that the whole Church of Christ, includingthe Church of the apostles, has failed to understand the mind of theMaster, and has let slip an essential element of His teaching? So somerecent writers do not hesitate to declare. Burke once said that he didnot know how to draw up an indictment against a whole people; but these, apparently, have no difficulty in drawing up an indictment against thewhole Church. "With all respect to the great Apostle, " writes one ofthem, "one may be allowed to express his regret that St. Paul has notsaid less about the Church and more about the Kingdom. "[28] To which Ihope one may be forgiven if he is tempted to retort that the greatapostle probably knew what he was about as well as his modern critic cantell him. We shall do well to pause, and pause again, before we acceptany interpretation of the facts of the New Testament which implies thatwe to-day have a better understanding of the mind of Christ than theapostles had. For my own part, whenever I come across any writer whotries to correct Paul by Jesus, I find it safest to assume that he hasmisread Paul, or Jesus, or both. Moreover, though we need make no claimof infallibility for the Church, yet, if we believe in a Holy Spiritgiven to guide the disciples of Christ into all the truth of Christ, weshall find it difficult to believe at the same time that the wholeChurch has from the beginning missed the right way, and in a matter soimportant as this, failed to apprehend the thought of Christ. 

We are not, however, shut up to any such unworthy conclusions. There isanother and sufficient explanation of the facts to which reference hasbeen made. It was natural that Jesus, speaking in the first instance toJews, should move as far as possible within the circle of ideas withwhich they were already familiar. Now, no phrase had a more thoroughlyfamiliar sound to Jewish ears than this of the kingdom of God. Itneeded, of course, to be purified and enlarged before it could be madethe vehicle of the loftier ideas of Jesus. Still, the idea was there, "apoint of attachment, " as one writer says, in the minds of his hearers towhich Jesus could fasten what He wished to say. But after our Lord'sResurrection and Ascension, and especially after the fall of Jerusalem, the whole condition of things was changed. A phrase which in thesynagogues of the Jews proved helpful and illumining, might easilybecome, among the populations of Asia Minor, of Greece, and of Italy, towhom the gospel was now preached, useless, and even misleading. Is itany wonder, therefore, if the first Christian missionaries quietlydropped the old phrase and found others to take its place? Men who knewthemselves guided by the Spirit of Jesus would not feel compelled toquote the words of Jesus, if, under altered circumstances, other wordsmore fittingly expressed His thoughts. [29]

II

What did Jesus mean when He spoke of the kingdom of God? The idea as setforth in the Gospels is so complex, the phrase is used to cover so manyand different conceptions, that it is practically impossible to frame adefinition within which all the sayings of Jesus concerning the kingdomcan be included. The nearest approach to a definition which it isnecessary to attempt is suggested by the two petitions in the Lord'sPrayer which are quoted above. The second petition explains the first:the kingdom comes in proportion as men do on earth the will of God. Forour present purpose, therefore, we may think of the kingdom as aspiritual commonwealth embracing all who do God's will. To much thatChrist taught concerning the kingdom--its Head, its numbers, its growthand development--it is impossible, in one brief discourse, even torefer. Here again, it must suffice to single out one or two points forspecial emphasis:

(1) In the doctrine of the kingdom of God, we have set before us thesocial aspect of Christ's teaching; it reminds us of what we owe, notonly to Him who is its King, but to those who are our fellow-subjects. Of particular duties it is impossible to speak, though these, as weknow, fill a large place in the teaching of Jesus. But let us at leastbring home to ourselves the thought of obligation, obligation involvedin and springing out of our common relationship as members of thekingdom of God. The obligation is writ large on every page of the NewTestament--in the Gospels, in the doctrine of the kingdom; in theEpistles, in the corresponding doctrine of the Church. It can hardly besaid too often, that, according to the New Testament ideal, there are nounattached Christians. The apostles never conceive of religion as merelya private matter between the soul and God. All true religion, as JohnWesley used to say, is not solitary but social. Its starting-point isthe individual, but its goal is a kingdom. Christ came to save men andwomen in order that through them He might build up a redeemed society inwhich the will of God should be done. We do, indeed, often hear ofChristians whose religion begins and ends with getting their own soulssaved. This simply means that so far as it is true they are not yetChristian. To think only of oneself is to deny one of the firstprinciples of the kingdom. Wesley taught the early Methodists to sing--

 "A charge to keep I have. A God to glorify; A never-dying soul to save, And fit it for the sky;"

and some of his followers, both early and later, seem to have thoughtthat this was the whole of the hymn; but the verse goes on without afull stop--

 "To serve the present age, My calling to fulfil; O may it all my powers engage To do my Master's will!"

And until we who profess and call ourselves Christians have learned thislesson of service, and have entered into Christ's thought of thekingdom, with its interlacing network of obligations, we have still needthat some one teach us again the rudiments of the first principles ofthe oracles of God. 

(2) Again, the kingdom of God, Christ taught, is _present_; it is notof, but it is in, this world, set up in the midst of the existing orderof things. There are, it is true, passages in which Christ speaks of thekingdom as in the future, and to come. Thus, _e. G. _, He speaks of a timewhen men "shall come from the east and west, and from the north andsouth, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God"; when "the righteousshall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father"; when theyshall "inherit the kingdom prepared for" them "from the foundation ofthe world"; and so forth. But there is no real contradiction betweenthis and what has been already said. The kingdom is a growth, a movementworking itself out in history, and therefore it may be said to be past, present, or future, according to our point of view. In the sense that ithas not yet fully come, that its final consummation is still waited for, it is future; and so sometimes Christ speaks of it. But it is simplyimpossible to do justice to all His sayings and deny that in His thoughtthe kingdom is also present. Its consummation may belong to the future, its beginnings are here already. When Christ calls it the kingdom of_heaven_, it is rather its origin and character that are suggested thanthe sphere of its realization. In parable after parable He speaks of itas a secret silent energy already at work in the world. He called on menhere and now to seek it, and to enter it. So eagerly were the lost andthe perishing pressing into it that once He declared that from the daysof John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven suffered violence. Not in somefuture heaven but here "on earth" He bade His disciples pray that God'swill might be done. "When Jesus said the kingdom of heaven, be sure Hedid not mean an unseen refuge, whither a handful might one day escape, like persecuted and disheartened Puritans fleeing from a hopelessEngland, but He intended what might be and then was in Galilee, whatshould be and now is in England. "[30] "Thy kingdom come"--it is here onearth we must look for the answer to our prayer. And every man whohimself does, and in every possible way strives to get done, God's willamong men, is Christ's co-worker and fellow-builder. 

 "I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land. "

That is the spirit of all the true servants of Jesus. 

(3) But the most important fact concerning the kingdom in Christ's viewof it is that it is _spiritual_. And, because it is spiritual, it failedwholly to satisfy the earth-bound ambitions of the Jews. For generationsthey had fed their national pride with visions of a world obedient toIsrael's sway, and when one who claimed to be the Messiah neverthelesstold them plainly that His kingdom was not of this world, they turnedfrom Him as from one that mocked. He and they both spoke of a kingdom ofGod, but while they emphasized the "kingdom" He emphasized "God. " Sowholly did men fail to enter into His mind that on one occasion two ofHis own disciples came to Him asking that they might sit, one on theright hand, and one on the left hand in His glory. And even when He wasjust about to leave them, and to return to His Father, the old ambitionsstill made themselves heard. "Lord, " said they, "dost Thou at this timerestore again the kingdom to Israel?" But with all such dreams oftemporal sovereignty Christ would have nothing to do; He had put themfrom Him, definitely and for ever, in the Temptation in the wilderness. He completely reversed the current notions concerning the kingdom. "Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God cometh, Heanswered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation;neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the kingdom of Godis within you. " And when self-complacent religious leaders flatteredthemselves that, of course, the first places in the kingdom would betheirs, He sternly warned them that they might find themselvesaltogether shut out while the publicans and harlots whom they despisedwere admitted. Through all His teaching Christ laid the emphasis oncharacter. Pride, and love of power, and sordid ambitions, and allself-seeking--for these things, and for them that cherished thesethings, the kingdom had no place. "Blessed, " Christ said, "are the poorin spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. " "Except ye turn, andbecome as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom ofheaven. " "Whosoever would become great among you, shall be yourminister; and whosoever would be first among you shall be servant ofall"--these are they that are accounted worthy of the kingdom of God. 

The earliest account of Christ's preaching which has already beenquoted, gives us the right point of view for the interpretation ofChrist's idea of the kingdom as spiritual: "Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and thekingdom of God is at hand: Repent ye, and believe in the gospel. " He hadcome to establish a kingdom whose dominion should be for ever, againstwhich the gates of hell should not prevail, and the foundation of it Helaid in the penitent and obedient hearts of men. This explains whyChrist had so little to do with programmes, and so much to do with men. If a man's right to the title of reformer be judged by the magnitude ofthe revolution which he has effected, it is but bare justice to call Himthe greatest reformer who ever lived. Yet He put out no programme; Hemade Himself the spokesman of no party, the advocate of no social orpolitical reform. To the disappointment of His friends, as much as tothe confusion of His enemies, He absolutely refused to take sides on thevexed political questions of the hour. "Unto Caesar, " He said, "renderthe things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. "But on individuals He spent Himself to the uttermost. "He is not onlyindifferent to numbers, but often seems disinclined to deal withnumbers. He sends the multitude away; He goes apart into a mountain withHis chosen disciples; He withdraws Himself from the throng in Jerusalemto the quiet home in Bethany; He discourses of the profoundest purposesof His mission with the Twelve in an upper room; He opens the treasuresof His wisdom before one Pharisee at night, and one unresponsive womanby the well. "[31] Always His work is done not by "external organizationor mass-movements or force of numbers, " but from within: "Repent ye andbelieve in the gospel. "

Now, this was the vary last kind of message that the Pharisees ofChrist's day were looking for. They wanted the world putright--according to their own ideas of right--it is true; but to be toldthat they must begin with themselves was not at all what they wanted. Are not many of us in the same case to-day? We are all eager forreforms, at least so long as they are from without. We have a touchingfaith in the power of machinery and organization. We are quite sure thatif Parliament would only pass this, that, and the other bit oflegislative reform, on which our hearts are set, the millennium would behere, if not by the morning post, at least by the session's end. Andthere is much, undoubtedly, that Parliament can and ought to do for us. Nevertheless, was not Christ right? Instead of the old prayer, "Createin me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me, " some ofus, as one writer says, would rather pray, "Create a better socialorder, O God; and renew a right relation between various classes ofmen. " We are ready to begin anywhere rather than with ourselves, at anypoint in the big circumference rather than at the centre. "I don't deny, my friends, " wrote Charles Kingsley to the Chartists, "it is muchcheaper and pleasanter to be reformed by the devil than by God; for Godwill only reform society on the condition of our reforming every man hisown self, while the devil is quite ready to help us to mend the laws andthe Parliament, earth and heaven, without ever starting such animpertinent and 'personal' request as that a man should mend himself. "Yet without self-reform nothing is possible. "The character of theaggregate, " says Herbert Spencer, "is determined by the characters ofthe units. " And he illustrates thus: Suppose a man building with good, square, well-burnt bricks; without the use of mortar he may build a wallof a certain height and stability. But if his bricks are warped andcracked or broken, the wall cannot be of the same height and stability. If again, instead of bricks he use cannon-balls then he cannot build awall at all; at most, something in the form of a pyramid with a squareor rectangular base. And if, once more, for cannon-balls we substituterough, unhewn boulders, no definite stable form is possible. "Thecharacter of the aggregate is, determined by the characters of theunits. " Every attempt to reconstruct society which leaves out of accountthe character of the men and women who constitute society is foredoomedto failure. Behind every social problem stands the greater problem ofthe individual, the redemption of character. We may get, as assuredly weought to get, better houses for the working-classes; but unless we alsoget better working-classes for the houses, we shall not have greatlymended matters. And no turn of the Parliamentary machine will producethese for us. We can pass new laws; only the grace of God can make newmen. "For my part, " says Kingsley once more, speaking through the lipsof his tailor-poet, "I seem to have learnt that the only thing toregenerate the world is not more of any system, good or bad; but simplymore of the Spirit of God. " "_Except a man be born anew, he cannot seethe kingdom of God. _"

 * * * * *

CONCERNING MAN

 "Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll Round us, each with different powers, And other forms of life than ours, What know we greater than the soul?" TENNYSON. 

 * * * * *

VII

CONCERNING MAN

 "_There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. _"--LUKE XV. 10. 

This is one of many sayings of our Lord which reveal His sense of theinfinite worth of the human soul, which is the central fact in Histeaching about man, and the only one with which in the present chapterwe shall be concerned. Other aspects of the truth will come into view inthe following chapter, when we come to consider Christ's teaching aboutsin. 

I

"The infinite worth of the human soul"--this is a discovery the glory ofwhich, it is no exaggeration to say, belongs wholly to Christ. It issaid that one of the most magnificent diamonds in Europe, which to-dayblazes in a king's crown, once lay for months on a stall in a piazza atRome labelled, "Rock-crystal, price one franc. " And it was thus that forages the priceless jewel of the soul lay unheeded and despised of men. Before Christ came, men honoured the rich, and the great, and the wise, as we honour them now; but man as man was of little or no account. Ifone had, or could get, a pedestal by which to lift himself above thecommon crowd, he might count for something; but if he had nothing savehis own feet to stand upon, he was a mere nobody, for whom nobody cared. We turn to the teaching of Jesus, and what a contrast! "Of how much morevalue, " He said, "are ye than the birds!" "How much then is a man"--nota rich man, not a wise man, not a Pharisee, but a man--"of more valuethan a sheep!" "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the wholeworld and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange forhis soul?" It was by thought-provoking questions such as these thatJesus revealed His own thoughts concerning man. And, of course, when Hespoke in this way about the soul, when He said that a man might gain thewhole world, but that if the price he paid for it were his soul, he wasthe loser, He was not speaking of the souls of a select few, but of thesouls of all. Every man, every woman, every little child--all wereprecious in His sight. It is man as man, Christ taught, that is of worthto God. 

Consider how much is involved in the bare fact that Christ came into theworld the son of a poor mother, and lived in it a poor man. "A man'slife, " He said, "consisteth not in the abundance of the things which hepossesseth. " And the best commentary on the saying is just His own life;for He had nothing. There is something very suggestive in Christ's useof the little possessive pronoun "My. " We know how we use the word. Listen to the rich man in the parable: "My fruits, " "my barns, " "mycorn, " "my goods. " Now listen to Christ. He says: "My Father, " "MyChurch, " "My friends, " "My disciples"; but He never says "My house, " "Mylands, " "My books. " The one perfect life this earth has seen was thelife of One who owned nothing, and left behind Him nothing but theclothes He wore. And not only was Christ poor Himself, He spent His lifeamong the poor. "To believe that a man with £60 a year, " Canon Liddononce said, "is just as much worthy of respect as a man with £6000, youmust be seriously a Christian. " You must indeed. Yet that which is forus so hard never seems to have cost Christ a struggle. We cannot so muchas think of mere money, more or less, counting for anything in Hissight. The little artificial distinctions of society were to Himnothing, and less than nothing. He went to be guest with a man that wasa sinner. A woman that was a harlot He suffered to wash His feet withher tears, and to wipe them with her hair. "This man, " said His enemies, with scorn vibrant in every word, "receiveth sinners and eateth withthem. " And they were right; but what they counted His deepest shame wasin reality His chiefest glory. 

Now, what does all this mean but simply this, that it was for man as manthat Christ cared? Observe the difference in the point at which He andwe become interested in men. We are interested in them, for the mostpart, when, by their work, or their wealth, or their fame, they haveadded something to themselves; in other words, we become interested whenthey become interesting. But that which gave worth to man in Christ'seyes lay beneath all these merely adventitious circumstances of hislife, in his naked humanity, in what he was, or might be, in himself. This is why to Him all souls were dear. We love them that love us, theloving and the lovable; Christ loved the unloving and the unlovable. Hewas named, and rightly named, "Friend of publicans and sinners. " Thenwere bad men of worth to Christ? They were; for, as Tennyson says, "Ifthere be a devil in man, there is an angel too. " Christ saw the possibleangel in the actual devil. He knew that the lost might be found, and thebad become good, and the prodigal return home; and He loved men, notonly for what they were, but for what they might be. 

It would be easy to show that this high doctrine of man underlies, andis involved in, the whole life and work and teaching of Jesus. It isinvolved in the doctrine of God. Indeed, as Dr. Dale says, the Christiandoctrine of man is really a part of the Christian doctrine of God. [32]Because God is a Father, every man is a son of God, or, rather, everyman has within him the capacity for sonship. It is involved in thedoctrine of the Incarnation; that stupendous fact reveals not only thecondescension of God but the glory and exaltation of man. If God couldbecome man, there must be a certain kinship between God and man; sinceGod has become man, our poor human nature has been thereby lifted up andglorified. The same great doctrine is implied in the truth of Christ'satonement. When He who knew Himself to be the eternal Son of God spokeof His own life as the "ransom" for the forfeited lives of men, Herevealed once more how infinite is the worth of that which could beredeemed only at such tremendous cost. 

Such, then, is Christ's teaching about man. And, as I have already said, it was a new thing in human history. Nowhere is the line which dividesthe world B. C. From the world A. D. More sharply defined than here. Before Christ came, no one dared to say, for no one believed, that thesoul of every man, and still less the soul of every woman and child, wasof worth to God, that even a slave might become a son of the Most High. But Christ believed it, and Christ said it, and when He said it, the newworld, the world in which we live, began to be. The great differencebetween ancient and modern civilizations, one eminent historian hassaid, is to be found here, that while ancient civilization cared onlyfor the welfare of the favoured few, modern civilization seeks thewelfare of all. And when we ask further what has made the difference, history sends us back for answer to the four Gospels and the teaching ofJesus concerning the infinite worth of the soul of man. 

II

And now, to bring matters to a practical issue, have we who profess thefaith of Christ learnt to set, either upon others or upon ourselves, thevalue which Christ put upon all men? Far as we have travelled fromancient Greece and Rome, are we not still, in our thoughts about men, often pagan rather than Christian? Our very speech bewrayeth us, andshows how little even yet we have learnt to think Christ's thoughtsafter Him. He declared, in words which have already been quoted, that "aman's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which hepossesseth. " Nevertheless, in our daily speech we persist in measuringmen by this very standard; we say that a man "is worth" so much, though, of course, all that we mean is that he has so much. Again, we allowourselves to speak about the "hands" in a factory, as if with the handthere went neither head nor heart. If we must put a part for the whole, why should it not be after the fashion of the New Testament? "And therewere added unto them in that day"--so it is written in one place--"aboutthree thousand souls"--"souls, " not "hands. "[33] And we may depend uponit there would be less soulless labour in the world, and fewer men andwomen in danger of degenerating into mere "hands, " if we would learn tothink of them in Christ's higher and worthier way. 

Let me try to show, by two or three examples, how Christ's teachingabout man is needed through all our life. 

(1) There was, perhaps, never a time when so many were striving tofulfil the apostle's injunction, and, as they have opportunity, to dogood unto all men. More and more we busy ourselves to-day with the goodworks of philanthropy and Christian charity. And what we must rememberis that our philanthropy needs our theology to sustain it. They onlywill continue Christ's work for man who cherish Christ's thoughts aboutman. Sever philanthropy from the great Christian ideas which havecreated and sustained it, and it will very speedily come to an end ofits resources. All experience shows that philanthropy cut off fromChrist has not capital enough on which to do its business. And thereason is not far to seek. They who strive to save their fellows, theywho go down into the depths that they may lift men up, see so much ofthe darkened under-side of human life, they are brought so close up tothe ugly facts of human baseness, human trickery, human ingratitude, that, unless there be behind them the staying, steadying power of thefaith and love of Christ, they cannot long endure the strain; they growweary in well-doing, perchance even they grow bitter and contemptuous, and in a little while the tasks they have taken up fall unfinished fromtheir hands. "Society" takes to "slumming" for a season--just as foranother season it may take to ping-pong--but the fit does not last; andonly they keep on through the long, grey days, when neither sun norstars are seen, who have learnt to look on men with the eyes, and tofeel toward them with the heart, of Jesus the Man of Nazareth. 

(2) "Whoso shall cause one of these little ones that believe on Me tostumble, it is profitable for him that a great mill-stone should behanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of thesea. " Once more is revealed Christ's thought of the worth of the soul. How the holy passion against him who would hurt "one of these littleones" glows and scorches in His words! Is this a word for any of us? Isthere one among us who is tempting a brother man to dishonesty, todrink, to lust; who is pushing some thoughtless girl down the steep andslippery slope which ends--we know where? Then let him stop and listen, not to me, but to Christ. Never, I think, did He speak with such solemn, heart-shaking emphasis, and He says that it were better a man shoulddie, that he should die this night, die the most miserable and shamefuldeath, than that he should bring the blood of another's soul upon hishead. It must needs be that occasions of stumbling come, but woe, woe tothat man by whom they come, when he and the slain soul's Saviour shallstand face to face! Oh, if there be one among us who is playing thetempter, and doing the devil's work, let him get to his knees, and crywith the conscience-smitten Psalmist, "Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, Thou God of my salvation"; and peradventure even yet He may hearand have mercy. 

(3) Let fathers and mothers ponder what this teaching of Jesusconcerning man means for them in relation to their children. There cameinto your home a while ago a little child, a gift from God, just such ababe as Jesus Himself was in His mother's arms in Bethlehem. The childis yours, bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, and it bears yourlikeness and image; but it is also God's child, and it bears His image. What difference is the coming of the little stranger making in you? I donot ask what difference is it making _to_ you, for the answer would beready in a moment, "Much, every way"; but, what difference is it making_in_ you? Does it never occur to you that you ought to be a differentman--a better man--that you ought to be a different woman--a betterwoman--for the sake of the little one lying in the cradle? Do you knowthat of all the things God ever made and owns, in this or all Hisworlds, there is nothing more dear to Him than the soul of the littlechild He has committed to your hands? What hands those should be thatbear a gift like that! Perhaps we never thought of it in that waybefore. But it is true, whether we think of it or not. Is it not time tobegin to think of it? This night, as we stand over our sleeping child, let us promise to God, for the child's sake, that we will be His. 

(4) Last of all, we must learn to set Christ's value upon ourselves. This is the tragedy of life, that we hold ourselves so cheap. We aresprung of heaven's first blood, have titles manifold, and yet, when thecrown is offered us, we choose rather, like the man with the muck-rake, in Bunyan's great allegory, to grub among the dust and sticks and strawsof the floor. In the times of the French Revolution, French soldiers, itis said, stabled their horses in some of the magnificent cathedrals ofFrance; but some of us are guilty of a far worse sacrilege in that holyof holies which we call the soul. "Ye were redeemed, not withcorruptible things, with silver or gold, " but with blood, preciousblood, even the blood of Christ. And the soul which cost that, we areready to sell any day in the open market for a little more pleasure or alittle more pelf. The birthright is bartered for the sorriest mess ofpottage, and the jewel which the King covets to wear in His crown ourown feet trample in the mire of the streets. The pity of it, the pity ofit!

In one of Dora Greenwell's simple and beautiful _Songs of Salvation_, apitman tells to his wife the story of his conversion. He had got a wordlike a fire in his heart that would not let him be, "Jesus, the Son ofGod, who loved, and who gave Himself for me. "

 "It was for me that Jesus died! for me, and a world of men, Just as sinful, and just as slow to give back His love again; And He didn't wait till I came to Him, but He loved me at my worst; He needn't ever have died for me if I could have loved Him first. "

And then he continues:--

 "And could'st Thou love such a man as me, my Saviour! Then I'll take More heed to this wand'ring soul of mine, if it's only for Thy sake. "

Yes, we are all of worth to God, but we must needs go to the Cross tolearn how great is our worth; and, as we bow in its sacred shadow, maywe learn to say: "For Thy sake, O Christ, for Thy sake, I'll take moreheed to this wandering soul of mine. "[34]

 * * * * *

CONCERNING SIN

 "O man, strange composite of heaven and earth! Majesty dwarfed to baseness! fragrant flower Running to poisonous seed! and seeming worth Choking corruption! weakness mastering power! Who never art so near to crime and shame, As when thou hast achieved some deed of name. " NEWMAN. 

 * * * * *

VIII

CONCERNING SIN

 "_When ye pray, say. . . . Forgive us our sins. _"--LUKE xi. 2, 4. 

A recent writer has pointed out that sin, like death, is not seriouslyrealized except as a personal fact. We really know it only when we knowit about ourselves. The word "sin" has no serious meaning to a man, except when it means that he himself is a sinful man. And hence it comesto pass that we can still turn to the penitential Psalms, to the seventhchapter of Romans, to the _Confessions_ of St. Augustine, or to the_Grace Abounding_ of John Bunyan, and make their words the language ofour own broken and contrite hearts. For when Bunyan and Augustine andPaul and the psalmists spoke of sin, they spoke not the thoughts ofothers, but their knowledge of themselves; they looked into their ownhearts and wrote. That is why their words "find" us to-day. Nevertheless, paradox though it may seem, our greatest Teacherconcerning sin, Himself "knew no sin. " Born without sin, living anddying without sin, Christ yet "knew what was in man, " knew the sin thatwas in man, and from His own sinless height once for all revealed andjudged and condemned it. Let us seek, then, to learn the mind of Christon this great matter. 

And once more, as I have had occasion to point out in a previouschapter, we must not look for anything formal, defined, systematic inChrist's teaching. We cannot open the Gospels, as we might some moderntheological treatise, and read out from them a scientific exposition ofsin--its origin, its nature, its treatment. The New Testament is notlike a museum, where the flowers are dried and pressed, and the fossilslie carefully arranged within glass cases, and everything is dulyclassified and labelled. Rather it is like nature itself, where theflowers grow wild at our feet, and the rocks lie as the Creator's handleft them, and where each man must do the classifying and labelling forhimself. Museums have their uses, and there will always be those whoprefer them--they save so much trouble. But since Christ's aim was notto save us trouble, but to teach us to see things with our own eyes, tosee them as He saw them, and to think of them as He thinks, it is nowonder that He has chosen rather to put us down in the midst of a worldof living truths than in a museum of assorted and dead facts. 

I

What, then, is the teaching of Jesus concerning sin? His tone is at oncesevere and hopeful. Sometimes His words are words that shake our heartswith fear; sometimes they surprise us with their overflowing tendernessand pity. But however He may deal with the sinner, we are always made tofeel that to Jesus sin is a serious thing, a problem not to be slurredover and made light of, but to be faced, and met, and grappled with. Christ's sense of the gravity of sin comes out in many ways. 

(1) It is involved in His doctrine of man. He who made so much of mancould not make light of man's sin. It is because man is so great thathis sin is so grave. No one can understand the New Testament doctrine ofsin who does not read it in the light of the New Testament doctrine ofman. When we think of man as Christ thought of him, when we see in himthe possibilities which Christ saw, the Scripture language concerningsin becomes intelligible enough; until then it may easily seemexaggerated and unreal. It is the height for which man was made andmeant which measures the fall which is involved in his sin. 

(2) Call to mind the language in which Christ set forth the effects ofsin. He spoke of men as blind, as sick, as dead; He said they were assheep gone astray, as sons that are lost, as men in debt which they cannever pay, in bondage from which they can never free themselves. Thevery accumulation of metaphors bears witness to Christ's sense of thehavoc wrought by sin. Nor are they metaphors merely; they are Hisreading of the facts of life as it lay before Him. Let me refer brieflyto two of them, (_a_) Christ spoke of men as in bondage through theirsin. "If, " He said once, "ye abide in My word . . . Ye shall know thetruth, and the truth shall make you free. " And straightway jealousJewish ears caught at that word "free. " "Free?" they cried, "Free? we beAbraham's seed, and have never yet been in bondage to any man: howsayest Thou, Ye shall be made free?" Yet even as they lift their handsin protest Christ hears the clink of their fetters: "Verily, verily, Isay unto you, every one that committeth sin is the bond-servant--theslave--of sin. " "To whom ye present yourselves as servants untoobedience, his servants--his slaves--ye are whom ye obey; whether of sinunto death, or of obedience unto righteousness. " Apostle and Lord meanthe same thing, true of us as it was true of the Jews: "Every one thatcommitteth sin is the slave of sin. " (_b_) Further, Christ says, men arein debt through their sin. In one parable He tells us of a certainlender who had two debtors; the one owed five hundred pence, and theother fifty; but neither had wherewith to pay. In another parable wehear of a servant who owed his lord ten thousand talents--a giganticsum, vague in its vastness, "millions" as we might say--and he likewisehad not wherewith to pay. Further, in the application of each parable, it is God to whom this unpayable debt is due. Now, it is just at thispoint that our sense of sin to-day is weakest. The scientist, thedramatist, the novelist are all proclaiming our responsibility towardthem that come after us; with pitiless insistence they are telling usthat the evil that men do lives after them, that it is not done withwhen it is done. Yet, with all this, there may be no thought of God. Itis the consciousness not merely of responsibility, but of responsibilityGod-ward, which needs to be strengthened. When we sin we may wrongothers much, we may wrong ourselves more, but we wrong God most of all;and we shall never recover Christ's thought of sin until, like thepsalmist and the prodigal, we have learned to cry to Him, "Against Theehave I sinned, and done that which is evil in Thy sight. "

(3) But sin, in Christ's view of it, is not merely something a man does, it is what he is. Go through Paul's long and dismal catalogue of "theworks of the flesh": "Fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. "Yet even this is not the whole of the matter. Sin is more than thesum-total of man's sins. The fruits are corrupt because the tree whichyields them is corrupt; the stream is tainted because the fountainwhence it flows is impure; man commits sin because he is sinful. It wasjust here that Christ broke, and broke decisively, with the traditionalreligion of His time. To the average Jew of that day righteousness andsin meant nothing more than the observance or the non-observance ofcertain religious traditions. "For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands diligently, eat not, holding the traditionof the elders: and when they come from the market-place, except theywash themselves, they eat not; and many other things there be which theyhave received to hold, washings of cups, and pots, and brazen vessels. ""Nay, " said Jesus, "you are beginning at the wrong end, you areconcerned about the wrong things, for from within, out of the heart ofmen, evil thoughts proceed, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetings, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, railing, pride, foolishness: all these evil things proceed from within. " Deep inthe heart of man evil has its seat, and until that is touched nothing isdone. 

(4) And, lastly, Christ says all men are sinful. Of course, He did notsay, nor did He imply that all are equally sinful. On the contrary, Hesaid plainly that whereas the debt of some is as fifty pence, the debtof others is as five hundred pence. Neither did Christ teach that man iswholly sinful, in the sense that there is in man nothing that is good, or that every man is by nature as bad as he can be. Nor, let it be saidin passing, is this what theology means when it speaks, as it stillsometimes does, about the "total depravity" of human nature. What ismeant is, as Dr. Denney says, that the depravity which sin has producedin human nature extends to the whole of it. [35] If I poison my finger, it is not only the finger that is poisoned; the poison is in the blood, and, unless it be got rid of, not my finger merely, but my life is inperil. And in like manner the sin which taints my nature taints my wholenature, perverting the conscience, enfeebling the will, and darkeningthe understanding. But with whatever qualifications Christ's indictmentis against the whole human race. He never discusses the origin of sin, but He always assumes its presence. No matter how His hearers mightvary, this factor remained constant. "If ye, being evil" that mournfulpresupposition could be made everywhere. He spoke of men as "lost, " andsaid that He had come to seek and save them. He summoned men, withoutdistinction, to repentance. He spoke of His blood as "shed for many untoremission of sins. " The gospel which, in His name, was to be preachedunto all the nations was concerning "repentance and remission of sins. "Even His own disciples He taught, as they prayed, to say, "Forgive usour sins. " And though it is true He said once that He had not come tocall the righteous but sinners to repentance, He did not thereby mean tosuggest that there really are some righteous persons who have no need ofrepentance; rather was He seeking by the keenness of His Divine irony topierce the hard self-satisfaction of men whose need was greater justbecause it was unfelt. 

"All have sinned;" but once more let us remind ourselves, sin is notseriously realized except as a personal fact. The truth must come homeas a truth about ourselves. The accusing finger singles men out andfastens the charge on each several conscience: "Thou art the man!" Andas the accusation is individual, so, likewise, must the acknowledgementbe. It is not enough that in church we cry in company, "Lord have mercyupon us, miserable offenders"; each must learn to pray for himself, "Godbe merciful to me a sinner. " Then comes the word of pardon, personal andindividual as the condemnation, "The Lord also hath put away thy sin. "

II

In what has been said thus far I have dwelt, for the most part, on thesterner and darker aspects of Christ's teaching about sin. And, as everystudent of contemporary literature knows, there are voices all around usto-day ready to take up and emphasize every word of His concerning themischief wrought by moral evil. Take, _e. G. _, a passage like this fromThomas Hardy's powerful but sombre story, _Tess_:--

 "Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"

 "Yes. "

 "All like ours?"

 "I don't know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to me like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound--a few blighted. "

 "Which do we live on--a splendid one, or a blighted one?"

 "A blighted one. "

Or, turn to the works of George Eliot. No prophet of righteousness everbound sin and its consequences more firmly together, or proclaimed withmore solemn emphasis the certainty of the evil-doer's doom. "Our deedsare like children that are born to us, " she says; "nay, children may bestrangled, but deeds never"--this is the note one hears through all herbooks. If we have done wrong, it is in vain we cry for mercy. We aretaken by the throat and delivered over to the tormentors until we havepaid the uttermost farthing. 

 "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. "

And this is all that writers such as these have to say to us. Retribution they know, but not Redemption. "There are no arrestingangels in the path"--only the Angel of Justice with the drawn sword. 

But this is not the teaching of Jesus concerning sin. He is not blind, and if we give ear to Him He will not suffer us to be blind, either toits character or its consequences; but He says that sin can be forgiven, and its iron bondage broken. Jesus believed in the recoverability of manat his worst. It is a fact significant of much that the first mention ofsin in the New Testament is in a prophecy of its destruction: "Thoushalt call His name Jesus; for it is He that shall save His people fromtheir sins. " And throughout the first three Gospels sin is named almostexclusively in connection with its forgiveness. [36] What Christ hathjoined together let no man put asunder. Herein is the very gospel ofGod, that Christ came not to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved. "Do you know what Christ would say to you, my girl?" said a missionary to a poor girl dying. "He would say, 'Thysins are forgiven thee. '" "Would He, though, would He?" she cried, starting up; "take me to Him, take me to Him. " Yes, thank God, we knowwhat to do with our sin; we know what we must do to be saved. 

Let us go back again for a moment over the ground we have alreadytravelled. We are in debt, with nothing to pay; but Christ has taken thelong account, and has crossed it through and through. We are in bondage, with no power to set ourselves free; but Christ has come to rend theiron chain and proclaim deliverance to the captives. We are wrong, wrongwithin, wrong at the core; but again He is equal to our need, forconcerning Him it is written that He shall take away not only the "sins"but the "sin" of the world. Is anything too hard for Him? Just as alover of pictures will sometimes discover a portrait, the work of an oldmaster, marred and disfigured by the dirt and neglect of years, and willpatiently cleanse and retouch it, till the lips seem to speak again, andthe old light shines in the eyes, and all its hidden glory is revealedonce more, so does Christ bring out the Divine image, hidden but neverlost, in the sinful souls of men. And all this He can do for all men;for Christ knows no hopeless ones. 

One of the saddest sights in a great city is its hospital forincurables. Who can think but with a pang of pity and of pain ofthese--old men and little children joined in one sad fellowship--forwhom the physician's skill has done its best and failed, for whom nownothing remains save to suffer and to die? But in the world's greathospital of ailing souls, where every day the Good Physician walks, there is no incurable ward. He lays His hands on the sick, and they arehealed; He touches the eyes of the blind, and they see; unto the leperas white as snow his flesh comes again as the flesh of a little child;even souls that are dead through their trespasses and sins He restoresto life. But never, never does He turn away from any, saying, "Thou arttoo far gone; there is nothing that I can do for thee. " "I spake to Thydisciples, " cried the father of the child which had a dumb spirit, "Ispake to Thy disciples that they should cast it out; and they were notable. " "Bring him unto Me, " said Jesus. Then He rebuked the uncleanspirit, saying unto him, "Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I command thee, come out of him and enter no more into him. " Verily, with authority Hecommandeth even the unclean spirits and they obey Him. 

Therefore let us despair of no man; therefore let no man despair ofhimself. If we will, we can; we can, because Christ will. "I wasbefore, " says St. Paul, "a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious;howbeit I obtained mercy. " "I am a wretched captive of sin, " criesSamuel Rutherford, "yet my Lord can hew heaven out of worse timber. "There is no unpardonable sin--none, at least, save the sin of refusingthe pardon which avails for all sin. "'Mine iniquity is greater than canbe forgiven. '[37] No, Cain, thou errest; God's mercy is far greater, couldst thou ask mercy. Men cannot be more sinful than God is mercifulif, with penitent hearts, they will call upon Him. "

We have all read of the passing of William MacLure in Ian Maclaren'stouching idyll. "A'm gettin' drowsy, " said the doctor to Drumsheugh, "read a bit tae me. " Then Drumsheugh put on his spectacles, and searchedfor some comfortable Scripture. Presently he began to read: "In MyFather's house are many mansions;" but MacLure stopped him. "It's abonnie word, " he said, "but it's no' for the like o' me. It's ower guid;a' daurna tak' it. " Then he bid Drumsheugh shut the book and let it openof itself, and he would find the place where he had been reading everynight for the last month. Drumsheugh did as he was bidden, and the bookopened at the parable wherein the Master tells what God thinks of aPharisee and a penitent sinner. And when he came to the words, "And thepublican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes toheaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me asinner, " once more the dying man stopped him: "That micht hae beenwritten for me, Paitrick, or ony ither auld sinner that hes feenishedhis life, an' hes naething tae say for himsel. "

Nothing to say for ourselves--that is what it comes to, when we know thetruth about ourselves. And when at last our mouth is stopped, when ourlast poor plea is silenced, when with penitent and obedient hearts weseek the mercy to which from the first we have been utterly shut up, then indeed we

 "have found the ground wherein Sure our soul's anchor may remain. "

"Not by works done in righteousness, which we did ourselves, butaccording to His mercy He saved us. "

 * * * * *

CONCERNING RIGHTEOUSNESS

 "I spend my whole life in going about and persuading you all to give your first and chiefest care to the perfection of your souls, and not till you have done that to think of your bodies, or your wealth; and telling you that virtue does not come from wealth, but that wealth, and every other good thing which men have, whether in public, or in private, comes from virtue. "--SOCRATES. 

 * * * * *

IX

CONCERNING RIGHTEOUSNESS

 "_Seek ye first_ . . . _His righteousness. _"--MATT. Vi. 33. 

Righteousness, as it was understood and taught by Christ, includes thetwo things which we often distinguish as religion and morality. It isright-doing, not only as between man and man, but as between man andGod. The Lawgiver of the New Testament, like the lawgiver of the Old, has given to us two tables of stone. On the one He has written, "Thoushalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind "; and on the other, "Thou shalt love thyneighbour as thyself. " In these two commandments the whole law is summedup, the whole duty of man is made known. It is well to emphasize thistwo-fold aspect of the truth at a time when we are often tempted todefine religion wholly in the terms of morality, and, while insisting onthe duties which we owe to each other, to forget those which we owe toGod. If there be a God righteousness must surely have a meaning inrelation to Him; it cannot be simply another name for philanthropy. Christ at least will not call that man just and good who does right toall except his Maker. In the Christian doctrine of the good life roommust be found for God. At the present moment, however, it is the subjectin its man-ward aspect that I wish specially to keep in view, partlybecause some limitation is obviously necessary, and partly also becauseit is this of which Christ Himself had most to say. 

I

What, then, is Christ's idea of righteousness? In other words, what didHe teach concerning the good life? Now here also, as in His teachingabout God, Christ did not need to begin _de novo_. Those to whom Hespoke had already their own ideals of duty and holiness. True, thesewere sadly in need of revision and correction. Nevertheless, such asthey were, they were there, and Christ could use them as Hisstarting-point. Consequently, therefore, we find His ideas ofrighteousness defined largely by contrast with existing ideas. "It wassaid to them of old time . . . But I say unto _you_. " This is the noteheard all through the Sermon on the Mount. The contrast may be statedin two ways. 

(1) In the first place, Christ said that the righteousness of Hisdisciples must exceed that of publicans and heathen: "If ye love themthat love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same?And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do noteven the Gentiles the same?" There are virtues exhibited in the lives ofeven wholly irreligious men. There are rudimentary moral principleswhich they that know not God nevertheless acknowledge and obey. It wasso in Christ's time; it is so still. The popular American ballad, "JimBludso, " and Ian Maclaren's touching story of the Drumtochty postman, are familiar illustrations of self-sacrificing virtues revealed by menof coarse and vicious lives. Nor ought we to deny the reality of suchvirtues; still less ought we to follow the bad example of St. Augustineand call them "splendid vices. " Such was not Christ's way. He assumedthe existence and reality of this "natural goodness, " and with familiarillustrations of it on His tongue turned upon His disciples with thequestion, "What do ye more?"

"What do ye more?" Yet in some respects, it is to be feared, themorality of the Church sometimes falls behind that of the world. One ofthe most painful passages in St. Paul's epistles is that in which hetells the Corinthian Christians that one of their own number had beenguilty of immorality such as would have shocked even the conscience ofan unbelieving Gentile. And it was but the other day that I came acrossthis sentence from the pen of an observant and friendly critic ofcontemporary religious life: "I am afraid, " he said, "it must beadmitted that the idea of honour, though in itself an essential part ofChristian ethics, is much stronger outside the Churches than withinthem. " How far facts justify the criticism I will not stay to inquire;but the very fact that a charge like this can be made should prove asharp reminder to us of the stringency of the demands which Jesus Christmakes upon us. There is no kind of sound moral fruit which is to befound anywhere in the wide fields of the world which He does not lookfor in richer and riper abundance within the garden of His Church. 

A great Christian preacher has given an admirable illustration of oneway in which we may examine ourselves in this matter. He has groupedtogether a number of precepts from the writings of some of the greatheathen moralists, such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and then hasurged the question how far we who profess to be the disciples of aloftier faith are true even to these ancient heathen ideals. [38]Perhaps, however, this is not a method of self-examination which is opento us all. But this, at least, we can do: we can test ourselves by thatmoral law, which God gave to the Jews by Moses, and which Christreinterpreted in the Sermon on the Mount. "Thou shalt not kill, thoushalt not commit adultery"--all these commandments in their literalmeaning we must observe; yet this is not enough; "do not even thepublicans the same?" and Christ's demand is, "What do ye more thanothers?" The murderous thought, Christ says, that is murder; the lustfullook, that is adultery. "Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt lovethy neighbour, and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love yourenemies, and pray for them that persecute you. " As we listen to wordslike these must not we also confess, "Either these sayings are notChrist's, or we are not Christians"?

(2) Christ's idea of righteousness is further defined by contrast withthat of the Pharisees: "Except your righteousness shall exceed therighteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enterinto the kingdom of heaven. " What was the Pharisees' idea of religion?Let us take the words which Christ Himself put into the lips of arepresentative of his class: "God, I thank Thee, that I am not as therest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I get. " This is afull-length portrait of the finished Pharisee. Religion to him was around of prescribed ritual, a barren externalism, a subjection to thedominion of the letter, which never touched the heart, nor bowed thespirit down in penitence and humility before God. The Pharisee's wholeconcern was with externals; but Christ declared that he who is onlyright outwardly is not right at all. There is no such thing, He said, asgoodness which is not from within. The alms-deeds, the prayer, thefasting of the Pharisee were all done before men, to be seen of them;and so long as that which men saw was right and seemly, he wassatisfied. But Christ went back behind the outward act to the heart. Aman is really, He said, what he is there. You may hang grapes on athorn-bush, that will not make it a vine; you may put a sheep's fleeceon a wolf's back, but that will not change its wolfish heart. And menare what they are within. Just as to get good fruit you must first ofall make the tree good, so to secure good deeds you must first make goodmen. This was the truth which Pharisaism ignored; with what results allthe world knows. In the long history of man, it remains, perhaps, thesupreme illustration of the fatal facility with which religion andmorality are divorced when once the emphasis is laid upon the outwardand ceremonial instead of the inward and spiritual. All experience helpsus to understand how the system works. There is no deliberate intentionof setting ritual above righteousness, but it is so much easier to countone's beads than to curb one's temper, so much easier to fast in Lentthan to be unswervingly just, that if once the easier thing getsattached to it an exaggerated importance, fidelity in it is allowed toatone for laxity in greater things, and the last result is Pharisaism, where we see conscience concerned about the tithing of garden herbs, butwith no power over the life, and religion not merely tolerating butactually ministering to moral evil. It was in the name of religion thatthe Pharisees suffered a man to violate even the sanctities of the FifthCommandment, and to do dishonour to his father and mother. The righteousman in their eyes was not he who loved mercy, and did justly, and walkedhumbly with his God, but he who observed the traditions of the elders. So that, as Professor Bruce says, [39] it was possible for a man tocomply with all the requirements of the Rabbis and yet remain in heartand life an utter miscreant. "Outwardly, " said Christ, "ye appearrighteous unto men, but inwardly ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. "Is it any wonder that He should call down fire from heaven to consume asystem which had yielded such bitter, poisonous fruits as these?

But let us remember, as Mozley well says, [40] there are no extinctspecies in the world of evil. The value for us of Christ's condemnationlies in this, that it is a permanent tendency of human nature which Heis condemning. Pharisaism is not dead. Have I not seen the Phariseedressed in good broad-cloth and going to church with his Bible under hisarm? And have I not seen him sitting in church and reading thetwenty-third chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, and thinking to himself whatshockingly wicked people these men must have been of whom Christ spokesuch terrible words, and never once supposing that there is anything inthe chapter that concerns him? No, Pharisaism is not dead; and when weread of those who devoured widows' houses and for a pretence made longprayers, using their religion as a cloak for their villainy, let usremember that Christ says to His disciples to-day, even as He said tothem centuries ago, "Except your righteousness shall exceed therighteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enterinto the kingdom of heaven. "

II

Thus far we have considered Christ's idea of righteousness only incontrast with other ideas. When we seek to define it in itself we fallback naturally on the words of the two great commandments which havealready been quoted: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thyheart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind;" and "Thou shaltlove thy neighbour as thyself. " Righteousness, Christ says, is love, love to God and love to man. 

But to them of old time it was said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour. "Where, then, is the difference between the old commandment and the new?It lies in the new definition of "neighbour. " The old law which said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour, " said also, "and hate thine enemy";which meant that some are and some are not our neighbours, and thattoward those who are not love has no obligations. But Christ broke downfor ever the middle wall of partition, and declared the old distinctionnull and void. In His parable of the Good Samaritan He taught that everyman is our neighbour who has need of us, and to whom it is possible forus to prove ourselves a friend. As we have opportunity we are to do goodunto all men. The same lesson with, if possible, still greater emphasis, Christ taught in the Upper Room: "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also loveone another. " A love that goes all the way with human need, that givesnot itself by measure, that is not chilled by indifference, nor thwartedby ingratitude, that fights against evil until it overcomes it--such wasthe love He gave, and such is the love He asks. And in that command allother commands are comprehended. Christ might have made His own thedaring word of St. Augustine, "Love, and do what you like. "

When first men heard this law of the heavenly righteousness how wondroussimple it must have seemed in contrast with the elaborate scribe-madelaw which their Rabbis laid upon them. Pharisaism had reduced religionto a branch of mechanics, a vast network of rules which closed in thelife of man on every side, a burden grievous and heavy to be borne, which crushed the soul under its weary load. This was the yoke of whichPeter said that neither they nor their fathers were able to bear it. Wasit any marvel that from such a system men should turn to Him who cried, "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for My yoke is easy, and Myburden is light"? But if Christ's law of love is simpler it is also farmore exacting than the old law which it superseded. It has meshes farfiner than any that Pharisaic ingenuity could weave. Rabbinical law cansecure the tithing of mint and anise and cumin, the washing of cups andpots, and many such like things; it can regulate the life of ritual andoutward observance; and after that it has no more that it can do. ButChrist's law of love is a mentor that searches out the deep things ofman. The inside of the cup and platter, the things that are within, thehidden man of the heart--it is on these its eyes are fixed. It givesheed both to the words of the mouth and the meditations of the heart. And, sometimes, when the lips are speaking fair, suddenly it will flingopen the heart's door and show us where, in some secret chamber, Greedand Pride and Envy and Hate sit side by side in unblest fellowship. Verily this law of love is living and active, sharper than any two-edgedsword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both jointsand marrow, quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. 

There is no room to do more than mention the fact which crowns therevelation of this new law of righteousness. Christ's words aboutgoodness do not come to us alone; they come united with a life which istheir best exposition. Christ is all His followers are to be; in Him therighteousness of the kingdom is incarnate. From henceforth the righteousman is the Christ-like man. The standard of human life is no longer acode but a character; for the gospel does not put us into subjection tofresh laws; it calls us to "the study of a living Person, and thefollowing of a living Mind. "[41] And when to Jesus we bring the oldquestion, "Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternallife?" He does not now repeat the commandments, but He says, "If thouwouldest be perfect, follow Me, learn of Me, do as I have done to you, love as I have loved you. "

III

Such, then, is the good life which Christ reveals, and to which He callsus. To say that to Him we owe our highest ideal of righteousness, isonly to affirm what no one now seriously denies. John Stuart Mill has, it is true, alleged certain defects against Christianity as an ethicalsystem, yet Mill himself has frankly admitted that "it would not be easynow, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule ofvirtue from the abstract to the concrete, than to endeavour so to livethat Christ would approve our life. " If Christ be not our one Master inthe moral world, it will at least be soon enough to discuss a rival'sclaims when he appears; as yet there is no sign of him. But the point Iam most anxious to emphasize just now is not simply that Jesus has putbefore us an ideal, the highest of its kind in the world, but that thereis nothing of any kind to be desired before it. To be good as Christ wasgood, here in very truth is the _summum bonum_ of life, the greatestthing in the world, that which, before all other things, a man shouldseek to make his own, There are times, perhaps, in the lives of all ofus when we are tempted to doubt it--times when the kingdoms of thisworld, the kingdoms of wealth and power and knowledge lie stretched atour feet, and the whispering fiend at our elbow bids us bow and enterin. But once again, if we be true men, the moment comes, "When the spirit's true endowments Stand out plainly from its false ones, "

when the sacred, saving faith in righteousness returns, and we know thatChrist was right, that for ever and for ever it is true that better thanto be rich, or to be clever, or to be famous, is it to be true, to bepure, to be good. 

Yes, goodness is the principal thing; therefore get goodness, and withall thy getting--at the price of all that thou hast gotten (such is thetrue meaning of the words)[42]--get righteousness. Is this what we aredoing? Goodness is the first thing; are we putting it first? Day by dayare we saying to it, "Sit thou on my right hand, " while we put all otherthings under our feet? "Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth ifI remember thee not; if I prefer not thee above my chief joy"--is thisthe kind of honour that we are paying to it? "We make it our ambition, "said St Paul, "to be well pleasing unto Him. "[43] Where this is themaster ambition, all other lawful ambitions may be safely cherished andgiven their place. But if some lesser power rule, whose right it is notto reign over us, the end is chaos and night. "Seek ye first Hisrighteousness;" we subvert Christ's order at our peril. And thisrighteousness must be sought. As men seek wealth, as men seek knowledge, as men seek power, so must we seek goodness. "Wherefore giving alldiligence"--in no other way can the pearl of great price be secured; itdoes not lie by the roadside for any lounger to pick up. "With toil ofheart and knees and hands, " so only can the "path upward" and the prizebe won. "Blessed, " said Jesus, "are they that hunger and thirst afterrighteousness. " Blessed, He meant, are they who long more than anythingelse to be good; for all such longing shall be abundantly satisfied. Exalt righteousness, and she shall promote thee; she shall bring thee tohonour when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head achaplet of grace; a crown of beauty shall she deliver to thee. 

It is fitting that a chapter on righteousness should follow one on sin, for this may find some to whom the other made no appeal. At a meeting ofChristian workers held some years ago in Glasgow, the chairman invitedthe late Professor Henry Drummond, who was present, though his name wasnot on the programme, to say a few words. He accepted the invitation, but said he would do no more than state a fact and ask a question. Thefact was this, that in recent revival movements, in which he had hadlarge experience, there were few indications of that deep andoverwhelming conviction of sin which had been so characteristic afeature of similar revivals in past days. And this was the question, Didit mean that the Holy Spirit was in any way modifying the method of Hisoperation? What answer the wise men of the meeting gave to theProfessor's question I do not know. But fact and question alike deserveto be carefully pondered. The Spirit, when He is come, Christ said, "will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and ofjudgment. " "Will convict the world of righteousness"--have we notsometimes forgotten this? Have we not put the full stop at "sin, " asthough the Holy Spirit's convicting work ended there? Nevertheless, there are many to-day whose religious life begins, not so much in asense of their own sin and guilt and need, as rather in theconsciousness of the glory and honour of Christ. It is what they findwithin themselves which brings some men to Christ; it is what they findin Him which brings others. Some are driven by the strong hands of sternnecessity; some are wooed by the sweet constraint of the sinless Son ofGod. Some are crushed and broken and humbled to the dust, and theirfirst cry is "God be merciful to me a sinner"; some when they hear thecall of Christ leap up to greet Him with a new light in their eyes andthe glad confession on their lips, "Lord I will follow Theewhithersoever Thou goest. "

What, then, shall we say to these things? What but this, "There arediversities of workings, but the same God, who worketh all things inall. " Travellers to the same country do not always journey by the sameroute; and for some of the heavenly pilgrims the Slough of Despond lieson the other side of the Wicket Gate. After all, it is of small momentwhat brings a man forth from the City of Destruction; enough if he havecome out and if now his face is set toward the city which hath thefoundations, whose builder and maker is God. 

 * * * * *

CONCERNING PRAYER

 "Who seeketh finds: what shall be his relief Who hath no power to seek, no heart to pray, No sense of God, but bears as best he may, A lonely incommunicable grief? What shall he do? One only thing he knows, That his life flits a frail uneasy spark In the great vast of universal dark, And that the grave may not be all repose. Be still, sad soul! lift thou no passionate cry, But spread the desert of thy being bare To the full searching of the All-seeing eye: Wait--and through dark misgiving, blank despair, God will come down in pity, and fill the dry Dead plain with light, and life, and vernal air. " J. C. SHAIRP. 

 * * * * *

X

CONCERNING PRAYER

 "_What man is there of you, who, if his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone; or if he shall ask for a fish, will give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him_?"--MATT. Vii. 9-11. 

There has been in our day much painful disputation concerning prayer andthe laws of nature. Whole volumes have been written to prove that it ispossible, or that it is impossible, for God to answer prayer. I am notgoing to thresh out again this dry straw just now. Discussions of thiskind have, undoubtedly, their place; indeed, whether we will or no, theyare often forced upon us by the conditions of the hour; but they had noplace in the teaching of Jesus, and I do not propose to say anythingabout them now. I wish rather, imitating as far as may be the gracioussimplicity and directness of the argument of Jesus which we have justread, to gather up some of the practical suggestions touching this greatmatter which are strewn throughout the Gospels alike in the precepts andpractice of our Lord. 

I

First of all, then, let us get fixed in our minds the saying of Jesusthat "men ought always to pray and not to faint. " The very form of thesaying suggests that Christ knew how easy it is for us to faint and growweary in our prayers. Men cease from prayer on many grounds. Some thereare in whom the questioning, doubting spirit has grown so strong thatfor a time it has silenced even the cry of the heart for God. Some thereare who are so busy, they tell us, that they have no time for prayer;and after all, they ask, Is not honest work the highest kind of prayer?And some there are who have ceased to pray, because they have beendisappointed, because nothing seemed to come of their prayers. Theyasked but they did not receive, they sought but they did not find, theyknocked but no door was opened to them; there was neither voice, nor anyto answer, nor any that regarded; and now they ask, they seek, theyknock no more. And some of us there are who do not pray because, as oneof the psalmists says, our soul "cleaveth unto the dust. " The things ofGod, the things of the soul, the things of eternity--what Paul calls"the things that are above"--are of no concern to us; we have soldourselves to work, to think, to live, for the things of the earth andthe dust. 

Nevertheless, be the cause of our prayerlessness what it may, Christ'sword remains true. Man made in the image of God ought always to pray andnot to faint. And even more than by His words does Christ by His exampleprompt us to prayer. Turn, _e. G. _, to the third Gospel. All theEvangelists show us Jesus at prayer; but it is to Luke that we owealmost all our pictures of the kneeling Christ. Let us glance at them asthey pass in quick succession before our eyes:

"Jesus having been baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened" (iii. 21). 

"He withdrew Himself in the deserts, and prayed" (v. 16). 

"It came to pass in these days, that He went out into the mountain topray; and He continued all night in prayer to God". (vi. 12). 

"It came to pass, as He was praying alone, the disciples were with Him"(ix. 18). 

"It came to pass about eight days after these sayings, He took with HimPeter and John and James and went up into the mountain to pray. And asHe was praying the fashion of His countenance was altered, and Hisraiment became white and dazzling" (ix. 28, 29). 

"It came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, that when Heceased, one of the disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray, evenas John also taught his disciples" (xi. 1). 

"Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift youas wheat; but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not"(xxii. 32). 

"And He kneeled down and prayed, saying, Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me: nevertheless not My will, but Thine be done. . . . And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat became asit were great drops of blood falling down upon the ground" (xxii. 41, 44). 

"And Jesus said, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do"(xxiii. 34). 

And if thus He, the Redeemer, prayed, how much greater need have we, theredeemed, always to pray and not to faint?

"But we are so busy, we have no time. " Then let us look at anotherpicture. This time it is Mark who is the painter. He has chosen as hissubject our Lord's first Sabbath in Capernaum. The day begins withteaching: "He entered into the synagogue and taught. " After teachingcomes healing: "There was in their synagogue a man with an uncleanspirit;" him, straightway, Jesus healed. Then, "straightway, when theywere come out of the synagogue, they came into the house of Simon andAndrew, with James and John. Now Simon's wife's mother lay sick of afever, and straightway they tell Him of her; and He came and took her bythe hand, and raised her up. " So the day wore on toward evening andsunset, when "they brought unto Him all that were sick, and them thatwere possessed with devils. And all the city was gathered together atthe door. And He healed many that were sick with divers diseases andcast out many devils. " So closed at last the long day's busy toil. "_Andin the morning, a great while before day, He rose up and went out anddeparted into a desert place, and there prayed_;" as if just because Hewas so much with men the more did He need to be with God. _Laborare estorare_, we say, "work is prayer. " And, undoubtedly, "work may beprayer"; but we are deceiving ourselves and hurting our own souls, if wethink that work can take the place of prayer. And if there is one lessonthat these earthly years of the Son of Man--busy as they were prayerful, prayerful as they were busy--can teach us, it is surely this, that justbecause our activities are so abounding, the more need have we to make aspace around the soul wherein it may be able to think, and pray, andaspire. 

One of the best-known pictures of the last half century is Millet's"Angelus. " The scene is a potato-field, in the midst of which, andoccupying the foreground of the picture, are two figures, a young manand a young woman. Against the distant sky-line is the steeple of achurch. It is the evening hour, and as the bell rings which calls thevillagers to worship, the workers in the field lay aside the implementsof their toil, and with folded hands and bowed heads, stand for a momentin silent prayer. It is a picture of what every life should be, of whatevery life must be, which has taken as its pattern the Perfect Life inwhich work and prayer are blent like bells of sweet accord. 

II

Another saying of Christ's concerning prayer, not less fundamental isthis: "When ye pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven. " Howessential to prayer is a right thought of God it can hardly be necessaryto point out. "When ye pray say----" what? All depends on how we fillin the blank. Our thought of God determines the character of all ourintercourse with Him. If "God" is only the name which we give to thevast, unknown Power which lies behind the visible phenomena of theuniverse, if He is only a dim shadow projected by our own minds, or acollection of attributes whose names we have learned from the Catechism, our prayers will soon come to an end. When Jesus prayed He said always"Father"; and the Father to whom He prayed, and whom He revealed, He itis to whom our prayers should be offered. 

This is a matter the practical importance of which it would be hard toexaggerate. Think, _e. G. _, of the questions concerning prayer whichwould be answered straightway, had we but made our own Christ's thoughtof God. We are all familiar with the little problems about prayer withwhich some good people are wont to tease themselves and their friendsand their ministers: Is it right to pray for rain, for fine weather forthe recovery of health, for the success of some temporal enterprize, andso forth? How shall we meet questions of this sort? Shall we draw a lineand say, all things on this side of the line we may pray about, allthings on that side of the line we may not pray about? This will nothelp us. Rather we must keep Christ's great word before us: "When yepray, say, Father. " There or nowhere is the answer to be found. Just asevery wise father seeks to train his child to make of him his confidant, to have no secrets from him, to trust him utterly, and in everything, sowould God have us feel towards Him; as free, as frank, as unfettered, should our fellowship with Him be. To put it under constraint, to fenceit about with rules, would be to rob it of all that gives it worth, And, therefore, I cannot tell any man, and I do not want any man to tell me, what we may pray for, or what we may not pray for. "When ye pray, say, Father;" and for the rest let your own heart teach you. But if we areleft thus free shall we not ask many things which we have no right toask, which God cannot grant? Undoubtedly we shall, just as a boy of fivewill ask many things that his father, because he loves him, must refuse. Nevertheless, no wise father would wish to check the childish prattle. There is nothing that he values more than just these frank, uncalculating confidences, for he knows that it is by means of them thatthe shaping hands of love can do their perfect work. And the remedy forour mistakes in prayer is not a set of little man-made rules, telling uswhat to pray for and what not to pray for, but rather a deeper insightinto, and a fuller understanding of, the glory and blessedness of theDivine Fatherhood. 

III

Passing now from these preliminary counsels concerning prayer, let usnote how great is the importance which, both by His precepts and Hisexample, Christ attaches to the duty of intercessory prayer. I have beenmuch struck of late in reading several books on this subject, to notehow one writer after another judges it needful to warn his readersagainst the idea that prayer is no more than petition. What they say is, of course, true; prayer is much more than petition. But, unless Imisread the signs of the times, this is not the warning which just nowwe most need to hear. Rather do we need to be told that prayer is morethan communion, that petition, simple asking that we may obtain, is apart, and a very large part of prayer. "Who rises from prayer a betterman, " says George Meredith, "his prayer is answered. " This is true, butit is far from being the whole truth. The duty of intercession, ofprayer for others, is writ large on every page of the New Testament; butintercession has simply no meaning at all unless we believe that Godwill grant our requests as may be most expedient for us and for them forwhom we pray. Let me illustrate the wealth of Christ's teaching on thismatter by two or three examples. 

(1) We have all read Tennyson's question--

 "What are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friends?"

For themselves and those who call them friends--but Christ will notsuffer us to stop there. "Bless them that curse you, " He said; "pray forthem that despitefully use you. " So He spoke, and on the Cross He madethe great word luminous for ever by His own prayer for His murderers:"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. "

(2) Christ prayed for His disciples and for His Church: "I pray for them. . . Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe onMe through their word. " "I will pray the Father and He shall give you----. " Only once are the actual words recorded, but they cover, we aresure, great stretches of Christ's intercourse with God. And when once intheir work for Him they had failed, He puts His finger on the secret oftheir failure thus: "This kind can come out by nothing save by prayer. "Do we pray for our Church? We find fault with it; but do we pray for it?We blame its office--bearers and criticize its ministers; but do we prayfor them? We go to the house of God on the Sabbath day; but no fire isburning on the altar, the minister has no message for us, we come awayno whit better than we went. Whose is the blame? Let the man in thepulpit take his share; but is it all his? Must not some of it be laid atthe door of his people? How many of them during the week had prayed forhim, that his eyes might be opened and his heart touched, that as he satand worked in his study he might get from God to give to them? Dr. Daleused to say that if ever he preached a good sermon, a sermon that reallyhelped men, it was due to the prayers of his people as much as toanything he had done himself. If in all our churches we would butproclaim a truce to our bickerings and fault-findings, and try whatprayer can do!

(3) Christ prayed for the children: "Then were there brought unto Himlittle children that He should lay His hands on them, and pray. . . . AndHe took them in His arms, and blessed them, laying His hands upon them. "It is surely needless to dwell on this. What man is there who, if hehave a child, will not speak to God in his behalf? "And all the peoplesaid unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God that wedie not. . . . And Samuel said unto the people, God forbid that I shouldsin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you. " God have mercy on himwho has little children who bear his name, but who never cries to heavenin their behalf! "He blessed them, " _i. E. _ He invoked a blessing, God'sblessing, upon them. And we are sure the prayer was heard, and thelittle ones were blessed. And will not God hear our prayers for ourchildren? When Monica, the saintly mother of Augustine, besought anAfrican bishop once and again to help her with her wilful, profligateson, the good man answered her, "Woman, go in peace; it cannot be thatthe child of such tears should be lost. " "God's seed, " wrote SamuelRutherford to Marion M'Naught about her daughter Grizel, "shall come toGod's harvest. " It shall, for the promise holds, and what we have sownwe shall also reap. 

(4) And, lastly, Christ prayed for individuals: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, --all of you, " that is; the pronoun is plural--"that he might sift you as wheat; but I made supplication for thee"--"thee, Peter"; now the singular pronoun is used--"that thy faith failnot. " The words point to a definite crisis in the experience of Peter, when the onset of the Tempter was met by the intercession of theSaviour. To me Gethsemane itself is not more wonderful than this pictureof Christ on His knees before God, naming His loved disciple by name, and praying that, in this supreme hour of his life, his faith should notutterly break down. "Making mention of thee in my prayers"--does thisnot bring us near to the secret of prevailing prayer? We are afraid tobe individual and particular; we lose ourselves in large generalities, until our prayers die of very vagueness. There is surely a moreexcellent way. "My God, " Paul wrote to the Philippians, "shallfulfil"--not merely "all your need, " as the Authorized Version has it, but--"every need of yours. " There is a fine discrimination in the Divinelove which sifts and sorts men's needs, and applies itself to them oneby one, just as the need may be. And when in prayer we speak to God, letit be not only of "all our need, " flung in one great, careless heapbefore Him, but of "every need of ours, " each one named by its name, andall spread out in order before Him. 

IV

And as Christ teaches us to pray for others, so also does He teach us topray for ourselves. Two points only in this connection can be noted. 

(1) Let us pray when we enter into our Gethsemane; for every life hasits Gethsemane. Some there are who have not yet entered it; they areyoung, and their way thus far has teen among the roses and lilies oflife. But for them, too, the path leads to Gethsemane, and some day theyalso will lie prostrate in an agony, under the darkening olive trees. And some there are to whom life seems but one long Gethsemane. In thatdread agony God help us to pray! Nay, what else then can a man do but, as Browning says, catch at God's skirts and pray? But that he can do. Death may build its dividing walls great and high, such as our feet cannever scale; it cannot roof them over and shut us out from God. Weremember how it was with Enoch Arden, stranded on an isle, "theloneliest in a lonely sea":--

 "Had not his poor heart Spoken with That, which being everywhere Lets none, who speaks with Him, seem all alone, Surely the man had died of solitude. "

Were it not for the doors opened in heaven what should man that is bornof a woman do? But when in our Gethsemane we offer up "prayers andsupplications, with strong crying and tears, " it is after Christ'smanner that we must pray. I said just now that there are some to whomlife seems one long Gethsemane. Can it be because hitherto they haveonly prayed, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass awayfrom me"? Not until with Christ we bow our heads and say, "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt, " will the iron gates unfold and theshadows of the Garden lie behind us. 

(2) "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. " And if there besome to whom my last word had little or no meaning, here, at least, Christ speaks to all. And this time I have nothing of my own to add byway of comment; but I copy out this passage from Charles Kingsley's_Yeast_, for every young man who reads these words to lay to heart: "Iam no saint, " says Colonel Bracebridge, "and God only knows how muchless of one I may become; but mark my words--if you are ever tempted bypassion, and vanity, and fine ladies, to form liaisons, as the Jezebelscall them, snares, and nets and labyrinths of blind ditches, to keep youdown through life, stumbling and grovelling, hating yourself and hatingthe chain to which you cling--in that hour pray--pray as if the devilhad you by the throat--to Almighty God, to help you out of that cursedslough! There is nothing else for it!--pray, I tell you!"

 * * * * *

CONCERNING THE FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES

 "She, who kept a tender Christian hope, Haunting a holy text, and still to that Returning, as the bird returns, at night, 'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, ' Said, 'Love, forgive him:' but he did not speak; And silenced by that silence lay the wife, Remembering her dear Lord who died for all, And musing on the little lives of men, And how they mar this little by their feuds. " TENNYSON. 

 * * * * *

XI

CONCERNING THE FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES

 "_Then came Peter, and said to Him, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, until seven times; but, until seventy times seven. _"--MATT, xviii. 21, 22. 

This would seem to be plain enough, even though we had nothing more fromthe lips of Jesus concerning the duty of forgiveness. In point of fact, however, the lesson of these words is repeated a full half-dozen timesthroughout the Gospels. It may be well, therefore, to begin by bringingtogether our Lord's sayings on the subject. 

I

We turn first to the Sermon on the Mount: "Ye have heard that it wassaid, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy; but I sayunto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you. "Then, in the Lord's Prayer we have the familiar petition, "Forgive usour trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. " And it issurely a fact full of significance that at the close of the prayer ourLord should single out this one petition from the rest with thisemphatic comment: "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenlyFather will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men theirtrespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. " The wordsquoted thus far are taken from the first Gospel. Similar teaching isfound in the second and third. Thus, in Mark, we read: "And whensoeverye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any one; that yourFather also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses;" and inLuke: "If thy brother sin, rebuke him, and if he repent, forgive him. And if he sin against thee seven times in the day, and seven times turnagain to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him. " Again, we havethe teaching recorded by Matthew, out of which Peter's questionsprang--"If thy brother sin against thee, go, show him his fault betweenthee and him alone; if he hear thee, thou hast gained thybrother"--followed by the parable of the Unforgiving Servant, with itssolemn warning of inimitable doom: "So shall also My heavenly Father dounto you, if ye forgive not every one his brother from your hearts. "And, finally, all these words are made fast for ever in the minds andconsciences of men, by the great act on the Cross when the dyingRedeemer prayed for the men who slew Him: "Father, forgive them; forthey know not what they do. "

The meaning of all this is unmistakable. No child could miss the pointof the solemn parable to which I have referred. At the same time, it maynot be out of place to point out that there are not a few instances inwhich people may feel themselves wronged, which, nevertheless, do notcome within the scope of Christ's teaching about forgiveness. Anillustration will best explain my meaning. It sometimes happens, both inbusiness life and in the Church, that two men, equally honourable andtrue, but with almost nothing else in common, are often thrown into eachother's company. They have to deal with the same facts, but they lookupon them with wholly different eyes, they approach them from whollydifferent points of view. The results are obvious. There are not onlywidely differing opinions, but occasional misunderstandings, andsometimes sharper words than ought ever to pass between Christian men. Now, to say broadly that one is right and the other wrong, that the oneowes confession and the other forgiveness, is simply not true; what istrue is that the men are different, different in temperament, differentin training, different in their whole habits of thought and life. Andwhat is needed is that each should learn frankly to recognize the fact. This is not a case for rebuking, and repenting, and forgiving, but formutual forbearance. There are multitudes of good people, people whosegoodness no one who knows them would ever question, whom yet we cannottake to our bosoms, and treat as intimate personal friends. Evenreligion does not all at once straighten out all the twists in humannature, nor rub down all its hard angularities. And, as I say, it is oursimple, common-sense duty to recognize the fact; and if sometimes wefind even our fellow--Christians "very trying, " well, we must learn tobear and forbear, always remembering that others probably find us noless trying than we sometimes find them. But where grave and undeniableinjury has been done, immediately Christ's teaching comes intooperation. The injured one must banish all thought of revenge. Nevermust we say, "I will do so to him as he hath done to me; I will renderto the man according to his work. " Rather must we strive to overcomeevil by good, and by the manifestation of a forgiving spirit to win thewrong-doer to repentance and amendment. 

II

When, now, we take these precepts of Jesus and lay them side by sidewith the life of the world, or even with the life of the Church, as dayby day it passes before our eyes, our first thought must be, how littleyet do men heed the words of Jesus, how much mightier is the paganspirit of revenge than the Christian spirit of forgiveness. Indeed, ofall the virtues which Christ inculcated, this, perhaps, is the mostdifficult. True forgiveness--I do not speak of the poor, bloodlessphantom which sometimes passes by the name:

 "Forgive! How many will say 'forgive, ' and find A sort of absolution in the sound To hate a little longer, "

--not of such do I speak, but of true forgiveness, and this, I say, cannever for us men be an easy thing. Perhaps a frank consideration of someof the difficulties may contribute to their removal. 

(1) One chief reason why Christ's command remains so largely a deadletter is to be found in our unwillingness to acknowledge that we havecommitted an injury. That another should have wronged us we find nodifficulty in believing; that we have wronged another is very hard tobelieve. Look at the very form of Peter's question: "How oft shall mybrother sin against me, and I forgive him?" "My brother" the wrong-doer, myself the wronged--that is what we are all ready to assume. But what ifit is I who have need to be forgiven? But this is what our pride willnot suffer us to believe. That "bold villain" Shame, who pluckedFaithful by the elbow in the Valley of Humiliation, and sought topersuade him that it is a shame to ask one's neighbour forgiveness forpetty faults, or to make restitution where we have taken from any, isalways quick to seize his opportunity. And he is especially quick whenacknowledgement is due to one who is socially our inferior. If anemployee be guilty of some gross discourtesy towards his master, or aservant towards her mistress, the master or mistress may demand a promptapology on pain of instant dismissal. But when it is the servant oremployee who is the injured person he has no such remedy; yet surely, inChrist's eyes, his very dependence makes the duty of confession doublyimperative. "If, " Christ said, "thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee"--noteexactly Christ's words; He did not say, "If thou rememberest that thouhast aught against thy brother"; alas, it is very easy for most of us todo that; what He said was, "If thou rememberest that thy brother hathaught against thee. " Whom did I overreach in business yesterday? Whosegood name did I drag through the mire? What heart did I stab with mycruel words? "If thou rememberest that thy brother hath aught againstthee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first bereconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. "

(2) If the difficulties are great when we have committed the wrong, theyare hardly less when we have suffered it. Thomas Fuller tells how oncehe saw a mother threatening to beat her little child for not rightlypronouncing the petition in the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us ourtrespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. " The childtried its best, but could get no nearer than "tepasses, " and"trepasses. " "Alas!" says Fuller, it is a shibboleth to a child's tonguewherein there is a confluence of hard consonants together; and then hecontinues, "What the child could not pronounce the parents do notpractise. O how lispingly and imperfectly do we perform the close ofthis petition: As we forgive them that trespass against us. " In the oldGreek and Roman world, we have been told, people not only did notforgive their enemies, but did not wish to do so, nor think better ofthemselves for having done so. That man considered himself fortunatewho, on his deathbed, could say, on reviewing his past life, that no onehad done more good to his friends or more mischief to his enemies. Andthough we profess and call ourselves Christians, how strong in many ofus still is the old heathen desire to be "even with" one who has wrongedus, and to make him smart for it. Many of us, as Dr. Dale says, [44] havegiven a new turn to an old text. In our own private Revised Version ofthe New Testament we read: "Whosoever speaketh a word or committeth awrong against God, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh aword or committeth a wrong against me, it shall not be forgiven him;certainly not in this world, even if it is forgiven in the world tocome. " Resentment against moral evil every good man must feel; but whenwith the clear, bright flame of a holy wrath there mingle the dark fumesof personal vindictiveness, we do wrong, we sin against God. 

Nowhere in Scripture, perhaps, have we such a lesson on the difficultyof forgiveness as in the reference to Alexander the coppersmith, in St. Paul's last letter to Timothy. Even if we read his words in the modifiedand undoubtedly accurate form in which they are found in the RevisedVersion, we still feel how far short they come of the standard ofChrist. "Paul, " says Dr. Whyte, "was put by Alexander to the last trialand sorest temptation of an apostolic and a sanctified heart. "[45] Andwith all the greatness of our regard for the great apostle, we dare notsay that he came out of the trial wholly unscathed. Did ever any mancome out of such a fire unhurt--any save One? Yet it is not for me tosit in judgment on St. Paul; only let us remember we have no warrantfrom God to hate any man and to hand him over to eternal judgment eventhough, like Alexander, he heap insult and injury, not only uponourselves, but upon the cause and Church of Christ. 

(3) And then to this native, inborn unwillingness to forgive there comesin to strengthen it our knowledge of the fact that forgiveness issometimes mistaken for, and does, in fact, sometimes degenerate into, the moral weakness which slurs over a fault, and refuses to strike onlybecause it dare not. Nevertheless, though there be counterfeits current, there is a reality; there is a forgiving spirit which has no kinshipwith cowardice or weakness or mere mushiness of character, but which isthe offspring of strength and goodness and mercy, in short, of all inman that is likest God. And it is _this_ not that which God bids us makeour own; and not the less so because in the rough ways of the world thatso often passes for this. 

III

It would be easy to go on enumerating difficulties, but long as theenumeration might be, Christ's command would still remain in all itsexplicitness, the Divine obligation would be in no way weakened. We mustforgive; we must forgive from our hearts; and there must be no limit toour forgiveness. Nor is this all. The whole law of forgiveness is notfulfilled when one who has done us an injury has come humbly makingconfession, and we have accepted the confession and agreed to letbygones be bygones. We should be heartless wretches indeed, if, undersuch circumstances, we were not willing to do as much as that. But wemust do more: "If thy brother sin against thee, go, show him his faultbetween thee and him alone; if he hear thee, thou hast gained thybrother. " We, we who have been wronged, must take the first step. Wemust not wait for the wrong-doer to come to us; we must go to him. Wemust lay aside our vindictiveness, and earnestly, patiently, making ourappeal to his better self, by every art and device which love cansuggest, we must help him to take sides against the wrong which he hasdone, until at last forgiving love has led him captive, and our brotheris won. This is the teaching of Jesus. Let me suggest, in conclusion, athree-fold reason why we should give heed to it. 

Let us forgive _for our own sake_. A man of an unforgiving spirit isalways his own worst enemy. He "that studieth revenge, " says Bacon, "keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well. ""If thou hast not mercy for others, " says Sir Thomas Browne, "yet be notcruel unto thyself; to ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes uponinjuries, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of ourenemies. " There is no misery worse than that of a mind which broodscontinually over its own wrongs, be they real or only fancied. There isno gloom so deep and dark as that which settles on a hard andunrelenting soul. And, on the other hand, there is no joy so pure, thereis none so rewarding, as that of one who, from his heart, has learned tosay, "I forgive. " He has tasted the very joy of God, the joy of Him ofwhom it is written that He delighteth in mercy. Just as when a sea-wormperforates the shell of an oyster, the oyster straightway closes thewound with a pearl, so does a forgiving spirit heal the hidden hurt ofthe heart, and win for itself a boon even at the hands of its foe. 

Let us forgive _for our brother's sake_. "What, " asks George MacDonald, "am I brother for, but to forgive?" And how much for my brother myforgiveness may do! All love, not Christ's love only, has within it astrange redemptive power. We often profess ourselves puzzled by thathard saying of Jesus concerning the binding and loosing of men's sins. Yet this is just what human love, or the want of it, is doing every day. When we forgive men their sins, we so far loose them from them; we helpthem to believe in the power and reality of the Divine forgiveness. Whenwe refuse to forgive, we bind their sins to them, we make them doubt thelove and mercy of God. Have we forgotten the part which Ananias playedin the conversion of Saul of Tarsus? St. Augustine used to say that theChurch owed Paul to the prayers of Stephen. Might he not have said, withequal truth, that the Church owed Paul to the forgiveness of Ananias?For three days, without sight, and without food or drink, Saul waited inDamascus, pondering the meaning of the heavenly vision. Then came untohim, sent by God, the man whose life he had meant to take: "Ananiasentered into the house; and, laying his hands on him, said, BrotherSaul, the Lord, even Jesus, who appeared unto thee in the way which thouearnest, hath sent me. " "_Brother_ Saul"--how his heart must have leaptwithin him at the sound of the word! It was a voice from withoutconfirming the voice within; it was the love and forgiveness of mansealing and making sure the love and forgiveness of God. Wherefore, letus take heed lest, by our sullen refusal to forgive, we be thrustingsome penitent soul back into the miry depths, whence, slowly andpainfully, it is winning its way into the light and love of God. 

Let us forgive _for Christ's sake_, because of that which God throughHim has done for us. When, day by day, we pray, "Forgive us ourtrespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us, " what we areasking is, that God will deal with us as we are dealing with others. Dowe mean what we say? Are we showing a mercy as large as we need?Chrysostom tells us that many people in his day used to omit the words, "As we forgive them that trespass against us. " They did not dare to askGod to deal with their sins as they were dealing with the sins of thosewho had wronged them, lest they brought upon themselves not a blessingbut a curse. And would it not go hardly with some of us, if, with themeasure we mete, God should measure to us again? Yet there is nomistaking Christ's words: "If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. " Therefore, let methink of myself, of my own sin, of the forgiveness even unto seventytimes seven which I need; and then let me ask, can I, whose need is sogreat, dole out my forgiveness with a grudging hand, counting till apoor "seven times" be reached, and then staying my hand? Rather, let mepray, Lord, "Make my forgiveness downright--such as I Should perish if I did not have from Thee. "

"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing, beput away from you, with all malice; and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgaveyou. "

 "O man, forgive thy mortal foe, Nor ever strike him blow for blow; For all the souls on earth that live To be forgiven must forgive, Forgive him seventy times and seven: For all the blessed souls in Heaven Are both forgivers and forgiven. "

 * * * * *

CONCERNING CARE

 "My spirit on Thy care, Blest Saviour, I recline; Thou wilt not leave me in despair, For Thou art Love Divine. 

 In Thee I place my trust, On Thee I calmly rest; I know Thee good, I know Thee just, And count Thy choice the best. 

 Whate'er events betide, Thy will they all perform; Safe in Thy breast my head I hide, Nor fear the coming storm. 

 Let good or ill befall, It must be good for me, Secure of having Thee in all, Of having all in Thee. " H. F. LYTH. 

 * * * * *

XII

CONCERNING CARE

 "_Be not anxious for your life_ . . . _nor yet for your body_. . . . _Be not anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? . . . Be not anxious for the morrow. _"--MATT. Vi. 25, 31, 34. 

I

"_Take no thought for_ your life" is the more familiar rendering of theAuthorized Version. And if the words conveyed the same meaning to usto-day as they did to all English-speaking people in the year 1611, there would have been no need for a change. A great student of words, the late Archbishop Trench, tells us that "thought" was then constantlyused as equivalent to anxiety or solicitous care; and he gives threeillustrations of this use of the word from writers of the Elizabethanage. Thus Bacon writes: "Harris, an alderman in London, was put introuble, and died with _thought_ and anxiety before his business came toan end. " Again, in one of the _Somer's Tracts_, we read, "QueenKatharine Parr _died of thought_"; and in Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_, "_Take thought_ and die for Caesar, " where "to take thought" is to takea matter so seriously to heart that death ensues. [46] In 1611, therefore, the old translation did accurately reproduce Christ'sthought. To-day, however, it is altogether inadequate, and sometimes, itis to be feared, positively misleading. For neither in this chapter noranywhere in Christ's teaching is there one word against what we callforethought, and they who would find in the words of Jesus anyencouragement to thriftlessness are but misrepresenting Him anddeceiving themselves. Every man, who is not either a rogue or a fool, must take thought for the morrow; at least, if he does not, some onemust for him, or the morrow will avenge itself upon him without mercy. What our Lord forbids is not prudent foresight, but worry: "Be ye not_anxious_!" The word which Christ uses ((Greek: merimnate)) is a verysuggestive one; it describes the state of mind of one who is drawn indifferent directions, torn by internal conflict, "distracted, " as wesay, where precisely the same figure of speech occurs. A similar counselis to be found in another and still more striking word which only Lukehas recorded, and which is rendered, "Neither be ye of doubtful mind. "There is a picture in the word ((Greek: meteorizesthe)) the picture of avessel vexed by contrary winds, now uplifted on the crest of some hugewave, now labouring in the trough of the sea. "Be ye not thus, " Christsays to His disciples, "the sport of your cares, driven by the wind andtossed; but let the peace of God rule in your hearts, and be ye not ofdoubtful mind. "

It cannot surprise us that Jesus should speak thus; rather should wehave been surprised if it had been otherwise. How could He speak to menat all and yet be silent about their cares? For how full of care thelives of most men are! One is anxious about his health, and anotherabout his business; one is concerned because for weeks he has beenwithout work, and another because his investments are turning out badly;some are troubled about their children, and some there are who aremaking a care even of their religion, and instead of letting it carrythem are trying to carry it; until, with burdens of one kind or another, we are like a string of Swiss pack-horses, such as one may sometimessee, toiling and straining up some steep Alpine pass under a blazingJuly sun. Poor Martha, with her sad, tired face, and nervous, fretfulways, "anxious and troubled about many things, " is everywhere to-day. Nor is it the poor only whose lives are full of care. It was not a poorman amid his poverty, but a rich man amid his riches, who, in Christ'sparable, put to himself the question, "What shall I do?" The birds ofcare build their nests amid the turrets of a palace as readily as in thethatched roof of a cottage. The cruel thorns--"the cares of this life, "as Jesus calls them--which choke the good seed, sometimes spring up moreeasily within the carefully fenced enclosure of my lord's park than inthe little garden plot of the keeper of his lodge. On the whole, perhaps, and in proportion to their number, there is less harassing, wearing anxiety in the homes of the poor than in those of the wealthy. And what harsh taskmasters our cares can be! How they will lord it overus! Give them the saddle and the reins, and they will ride us to death. Seat them on the throne, and they will chastise us not only with whipsbut with scorpions. It is no wonder that Christ should set Himself tofree men from this grinding tyranny. He is no true deliverer for us whocannot break the cruel bondage of our cares. 

II

Let us listen, then, to Christ's gracious argument and wiseremonstrances. What, He asks, is the good of our anxiety? What can it dofor us? "Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto hisstature? If, then, ye are not able to do that which is least, why are yeanxious concerning the rest?" "But, the morrow! the morrow!" we cry. "Let the morrow, " Christ answers, "take care of itself; sufficient untothe day is the evil thereof; learn thou to live a day at a time. " "Ourearliest duty, " says a great writer of our day, "is to cultivate thehabit of not looking round the corner;" which is but another version ofChrist's simple precept. And the saying, simple and obvious as it mayseem, never fails to justify itself. For one thing, the morrow rarelyturns out as our fears imagined it. Our very anxiety blurs our vision, and throws our judgment out of focus. We see things through anatmosphere which both magnifies and distorts. We remember how it waswith Mr. Fearing: "When he was come to the entrance of the Valley of theShadow of Death, I thought"--it is Greatheart who tells the story--"Ishould have lost my man: not for that he had any inclination to goback, --that he always abhorred; but he was ready to die for fear. Oh, the hobgoblins will have me! the hobgoblins will have me! cried he; andI could not beat him out on't. " Yet see how matters fell out. "This Itook very great notice of, " goes on Greatheart, "that this valley was asquiet while he went through it as ever I knew it before or since. " Andagain, when Mr. Fearing "was come at the river where was no bridge, there again he was in a heavy case. Now, now, he said, he should bedrowned for ever, and so never see that face with comfort, that he hadcome so many miles to behold. " But once more his fears were put toshame: "Here, also, I took notice of what was very remarkable: the waterof that river was lower at this time than ever I saw it in all my life. So he went over at last, not much above wet-shod. "

And even though the morrow should prove as bad as our fears, Christ'sprecept is still justified, for the worst kind of preparation for such aday is worry. Worry, like the undue clatter of machinery, means waste, waste of power. Anxiety, it has been well said, does not empty to-morrowof its sorrows, but it does empty to-day of its strength. Therefore, letus not be anxious. Let us climb our hills when we come to them. Godgives each day strength for the day; but when, to the responsibilitiesof to-day we add the burdens of to-morrow, and try to do the work of twodays in the strength of one, we are making straight paths for the feetof failure and disappointment. All the many voices of reason andexperience are on Christ's side when He bids us, "Be not anxious. "

Yet, true as all this is, how inadequate it is! When the tides of careare at the flood they will overrun and submerge all such counsels asthese, as the waves wash away the little sand-hills which children buildby the sea-shore. "We know it is no good to worry, " people will tell us, half-petulantly, when we remonstrate with them; "but we cannot helpourselves, and if you have no more to say to us than this, you cannothelp us either. " And they are right. Care is the cancer of the heart, and if our words can go no deeper than they have yet gone, it can neverbe cured. It is an inward spiritual derangement, which calls forsomething more than little bits of good advice in order to put it right. And if, again, we turn to the words of Jesus, we shall find the neededsomething more is given. The care-worn soul, for its cure, must be takenout of itself. "Oh the bliss of waking, " says some one, "with all one'sthoughts turned outward!" It is the power to do that, to turn, and tokeep turned, one's thoughts outwards that the care-ridden need; andChrist will show us how it may be ours. 

"Be not anxious, " says Jesus; and then side by side with this negativeprecept He lays this positive one: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God. "Christ came to establish a kingdom in which "all men's good" should be"each man's rule, " and love the universal law. When, therefore, He bidsthe anxious seek the kingdom, what He means is that they are to find anescape from self and self-consuming cares in service. "When you findyourself overpowered by melancholy, " said John Keble, "the best way isto go out and do something kind to somebody or other. " And thousands whoare sitting daily in the gloom of a self-created misery, with all theblinds of the spirit drawn, if they would but "go out" and begin to carefor others, would speedily cease their miserable care for themselves. "When I dig a man out of trouble, " some one quaintly writes, "the holehe leaves behind him is the grave in which I bury my own trouble. "[47]This is not the whole cure for care; but if the mind is to be kept fromburrowing in the dark of its own fears and anxieties, it must be setresolutely and constantly on those nobler ends to which Christ in Hisgospel summons us all. 

The care-worn, Christ says, must think of others; and, most of all, theymust think of God. "Let not your heart be troubled . . . Believe. " This isthe great argument into which all other arguments run up. This is thelarger truth, within whose wide circumference lie all Christ's wordsconcerning care. We are not to care because we are cared for, cared forby God. There is, Christ teaches us, a distribution of duties betweenourselves and God. We, on our part, make it our daily business to getGod's will done on earth as it is done in heaven; He, on His, undertakesthat we shall not want. 

 "Make you His service your delight, He'll make your wants His care. "

Once more we see how fundamental is Christ's doctrine of the DivineFatherhood. It is not so much because our anxiety is useless, or becauseit unfits us for service, but because God is what He is, that our worryis at once a blunder and a sin. It is mistrust of the heavenly love thatcares for us. The sovereign cure for care is--God. 

III

But now a difficulty arises. Christ's doctrine of the Divine Fatherhoodis, without doubt, fundamental; but is it true? A God who clothes theblowing lilies with their silent beauty, without whom no sparrow fallethto the ground, who numbers the very hairs of our head--it is a gloriousfaith, if one could but receive it. But can we? It was possible once, wethink, in the childhood of the world; but that time has gone, and we arethe children of a new day, whose thoughts we cannot choose but think. Solong as men thought of our earth as the centre of the universe, it wasnot difficult to believe that its inhabitants were the peculiar care oftheir Creator. But astronomy has changed all that; and what once wethought so great, we know now to be but a speck amid infinite systems ofworlds. The old question challenges us with a force the Psalmist couldnot feel: "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, themoon and the stars which Thou hast ordained; what is man that Thou aremindful of him? and the son of man that Thou visitest him?" The infinityof God, the nothingness of man: the poor brain reels before thecontrast. Is it thinkable, we ask, that He whose dwelling-place iseternity should care for us even as we care for our children? So thequestion is often urged upon us to-day. But arguments of this kind, ithas been well said, are simply an attempt to terrorize the imagination, and are not to be yielded to. As a recent writer admirably says: "Weknow little or nothing of the rest of the universe, and it may very wellbe that in no other planet but this is there intelligent and moral life;and, if that be so, then this world, despite its materialinsignificance, would remain the real summit of creation. But even ifthis be not so, still man remains man--a spiritual being, capable ofknowing, loving, and glorifying God. Man is that, be there what myriadsof worlds there may, and is not less than that, though in other worldswere also beings like him. . . . No conception of God is less imposing thanthat which represents Him as a kind of millionaire in worlds, somaterialized by the immensity of His possessions as to have lost thesense of the incalculably greater worth of the spiritual interests ofeven the smallest part of them. "[48]

But this is not the only difficulty; for some it is not the chiefdifficulty. We have no theories of God and the universe which bar thepossibility of His intervention in the little lives of men. There isnothing incredible to us in the doctrine of a particular Providence. Butwhere, we ask, is the proof of it? We would fain believe, but the factsof experience seem too strong for us. A hundred thousand Armeniansbutchered at the will of an inhuman despot, a whole city buried under avolcano's fiery hail, countless multitudes suffering the slow torture ofdeath by famine--can such things be and God really care? Nor is it onlygreat world tragedies like these which challenge our faith. The questionis pressed upon us, often with sickening keenness, by the commonplaceills of our own commonplace lives: the cruel wrong of another's sin, thelong, wasting pain, the empty cradle, the broken heart. How can we lookon these things and yet believe that Eternal Love is on the throne?

Except we believe in Jesus we cannot; if we do, we must. For remember, Jesus was no shallow optimist; He did not go through life seeing onlyits pleasant things; He was at Cana of Galilee, but He was also at Nain;over all His life there lay a shadow, the shadow of the Cross; He diedin the dark, betrayed of man, forsaken of God; surely He hath borne ourgriefs and carried our sorrows. And yet through all, His faith in Godnever wavered. He prayed, and He taught others to pray. When He liftedHis eyes towards heaven, it was with the word "Father" upon His lips;and in like manner He bade His disciples, "When ye pray, say 'Father. '"He took the trembling hands of men within His own, and looking intotheir eyes, filled as they were with a thousand nameless fears, "Fearnot, " He said, "our heavenly Father knoweth; let not your heart betroubled, neither let it be afraid. "

"Learn of Me . . . And ye shall find rest unto your souls;" herein is thesecret of peace. But it is not enough that we give ear to the words ofChrist; we must make our own the whole meaning of the fact of Christ. "God's in His heaven, " sings Browning; "all's right with the world. " Butif God is only in His heaven, all is _not_ right with the world. InChrist we learn that God has come from out His heaven to earth; and inthe Cross of Christ we find the eternal love which meets and answers allour fears. Fear not, "Or if you fear, Cast all your cares on God; that anchor holds. "

"Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. "

 * * * * *

CONCERNING MONEY

 "Now I saw in my dream, that at the further side of that plain was a little hill called Lucre, and in that hill a silver-mine, which some of them that had formerly gone that way, because of the rarity of it, had turned aside to see; but going too near the brink of the pit, the ground being deceitful under them, broke, and they were slain;-some also had been maimed there, and could not to their dying day be their own men again. "--JOHN BUNYAN. 

 * * * * *

XIII

CONCERNING MONEY

 _"How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to enter in through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. _"--LUKE xviii. 24, 25. 

I

The most significant thing in the teaching of Jesus concerning money isthe large place which it fills in the records of our Lord's publicministry. How large that place is few of us, perhaps, realize. Evenreligious writers who take in hand to set forth Christ's teaching indetail, for the most part, pass over this subject in silence. InHastings' great _Dictionary of the Bible_ we find, under "Money, " a mostelaborate article, extending to nearly twenty pages, and discussing withgreat fullness and learning the coinage of various Biblical periods; butwhen we seek to know what the New Testament has to say concerning theuse and perils of wealth, the whole subject is dismissed in some ninelines. 

Very different is the impression which we receive from the Gospelsthemselves. It is not possible here to bring together all Christ's wordsabout money, but we may take the third Gospel (in which the referencesto the subject are most numerous) and note Christ's more strikingsayings in the order in which they occur. In the parable of the sower, in the eighth chapter, the thorns which choke the good seed are the"cares and riches and pleasures of this life. " Chapter twelve contains awarning against covetousness, enforced by the parable of the rich fooland its sharp-pointed application, "So is he that layeth up treasure forhimself, and is not rich toward God. " The fourteenth chapter sheds a newlight on the law of hospitality: "When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, nor thy kinsmen, nor richneighbours . . . But when thou makest a feast, bid the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; and thou shalt be blessed. " Chapter fifteen tellshow a certain son wasted his substance with riotous living. Chaptersixteen opens with the parable of the unjust steward; then followweighty words touching the right use of "the mammon of unrighteousness. "But the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, when they heard thesethings, "scoffed at Him. " Christ's answer is the parable of Dives andLazarus, with which the chapter closes. Chapter eighteen tells of a richyoung ruler's choice, and of Christ's sorrowful comment thereon: "Howhardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God. " Andthen, lastly, in the nineteenth chapter, we hear Zacchĉus, into whosehome and heart Christ had entered, resolving on the threshold of his newlife that henceforth the half of his goods he would give to the poor, and that where he had wrongfully exacted aught of any man he wouldrestore four-fold. It is indeed a remarkable fact, the full significanceof which few Christians have yet realized, that, as John Ruskin says, the subject which we might have expected a Divine Teacher would havebeen content to leave to others is the very one He singles out on whichto speak parables for all men's memory. [49]

II

The question is sometimes asked how the teaching of Jesus concerningmoney is related to that strange product of civilization, the modernmillionaire. The present writer, at least, cannot hold with those whothink that Christ was a communist, or that He regarded the possession ofwealth as in itself a sin. Nevertheless, it is impossible not tosympathize with the feeling that the accumulation of huge fortunes inthe hands of individuals is not according to the will of Christ. Mr. Andrew Carnegie is reported to have said that a man who dies amillionaire dies disgraced; and few persons who take their New Testamentseriously will be disposed to contradict him. But, inasmuch as allmillionaires are not prepared like Mr. Carnegie to save themselves fromdisgrace, the question is beginning to arise in the minds of many, whether society itself should not come to the rescue--its own and therich man's. No man, it may be pretty confidently affirmed, can possibly_earn_ a million; he may obtain it, he may obtain it by methods whichare not technically unjust, but he has not earned it. Be a man's powerswhat they may, it is impossible that his share of the wealth which hehas helped to create can be fairly represented by a sum so vast. If hereceives it, others may reasonably complain that there is somethingwrong in the principle of distribution. And unless, both by a largerjustice to his employees, and by generous benefactions to the public, hedo something to correct the defects in his title, he must not besurprised if some who feel themselves disinherited are driven to askominous and inconvenient questions. 

This, however, is a matter which it is impossible now to discussfurther. Turning again to Christ's sayings about money, we may summarizethem in this fashion: Christ says nothing about the making of money, Hesays much about the use of it, and still more about its perils and theneed there is for a revised estimate of its worth. Following the exampleof Christ, it is the last point of which I wish more especially tospeak. But before coming to that, it may be well briefly to recall someof the things which Christ has said touching the use of wealth. Wealth, He declares, is a trust, for our use of which we must give account untoGod. In our relation to others we may be proprietors; before God thereare no proprietors, but all are stewards. And in the Gospels there areindicated some of the ways in which our stewardship may be fulfilled. Iwill mention two of them. 

(1) "When thou doest alms"--Christ, you will observe, took for grantedthat His disciples would give alms, as He took for granted that theywould pray. He prescribes no form which our charity must take; we haveto exercise our judgment in this, as in other matters. Obedience is leftthe largest liberty, but not the liberty of disobedience; and they whoopen their ears greedily to take in all that the political economist andothers tell us of the evils of indiscriminate charity, only that theymay the more tightly button up their pockets against the claims of theneedy, are plainly disregarding the will of Christ. If what we are toldis true, the more binding is the obligation to discover some other wayin which our alms-giving may become more effective. The duty itself noman can escape who calls Christ Jesus Lord and Master. 

(2) But wealth, Christ tells us, may minister not merely to the physicalnecessities, but to the beauty and happiness of life. When Christ wasinvited to the marriage-feast at Cana of Galilee, when Matthew thepublican made for Him a feast in His own house, He did not churlishlyrefuse, saying that such expenditure was wasteful and wicked excess. When in the house of Simon the leper Mary "took a pound of ointment ofspikenard, very precious, and anointed the feet of Jesus, " and they thatsat by murmured, saying, "To what purpose is this waste? for thisointment might have been sold for above three hundred pence and given tothe poor, " Jesus threw His shield about this woman and her deed of love:"Let her alone; why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work on Me. "These words, it has been well said, are "the charter of all undertakingswhich propose, in the name of Christ, to feed the mind, to stir theimagination, to quicken the emotions, to make life less meagre, lessanimal, less dull. "[50] Do not let us speak as though the only friendsof the poor were those who gave them oatmeal at Christmas, or who securefor them alms-houses in their old age. There is a life which is morethan meat, and all heavenly charity is not to be bound up in bags offlour. He who strives to bring into the grey, monotonous lives of thetoilers of our great cities the sweet, refining influences of art, andmusic and literature, he who helps his fellows to see and to love thetrue and the beautiful and the good, is not one whit less a benefactorof his kind than he who obtains for them better food and better homes. Man shall not live by bread alone, and they who use their wealth tominister to a higher life serve us not less really than they who providefor our physical needs. 

III

Much, however, as Christ has to say concerning the noble uses to whichwealth may be put, it is not here, as every reader of the Gospels mustfeel, that the full emphasis of His words comes. It is when He goes onto speak of the perils of the rich, and of our wrong estimates of theworth of wealth, that His solemn warnings pierce to the quick. Christdid not live, nor does He call us to live, in an unreal world, thoughperhaps there are few subjects concerning which more unreal words havebeen spoken than this. The power of wealth is great, the power ofconsecrated wealth is incalculably great; and this the New Testamentfreely recognizes; but wealth is _not_ the great, necessary, all-sufficing thing that ninety-nine out of a hundred of us believe itto be. And when we put it first, and make it the standard by which allthings else are to be judged, Christ tells us plainly that we arefalling into a temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtfullusts; we are piercing ourselves through with many sorrows. For once atleast, then, let us try to look at money with His eyes and to weigh itin His balances. 

Christ was Himself a poor man. His mother was what to-day we should calla working-man's wife, and probably also the mother of a large family. When, as an infant, Jesus was presented in the Temple, the offeringwhich His parents brought was that which the law prescribed in the caseof the poor: "a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. " When He cameto manhood, and entered on His public ministry, He had no home He couldcall His own. In His Father's house, He said, were many mansions; but onearth He had not where to lay His head. Women ministered unto Him oftheir substance. We never read that He had any money at all. When onceHe wanted to use a coin as an illustration, He borrowed it; when, atanother time, He needed one with which to pay a tax, He wrought amiracle in order to procure it. As He was dying, the soldiers, we aretold, parted His garments among them--that was all there was to divide. When He was dead, men buried Him in another's tomb. More literally truethan perhaps we always realize was the apostle's saying, "He becamepoor. "

Who, then, will deny that a man's life consisteth not in the abundanceof the things which he possesseth? Yet how strangely materialized ourthoughts have become! Our very language has been dragged down and made apartner with us in our fall. When, for example, our Authorized Versionwas written in 1611, the translators could write, without fear of beingmisunderstood, "Let no man seek his own, but every man another's_wealth_" (i Cor. X. 24). [51] But though the nobler meaning of the wordstill survives in "well" and "weal, " "wealth" to-day is rarely used saveto indicate abundance of material good. When Thackeray makes "BeckySharp" say that she could be good if she had £4000 a year, and when. Mr. Keir Hardie asks if it is possible for a man to be a Christian on apound a week, the thoughts of many hearts are revealed. There is nothingto be done without money, we think; money is the golden key whichunlocks all doors; money is the lever which removes all difficulties. This is what many of us are saying, and what most of us in our heartsare thinking. But clean across these spoken and unspoken thoughts ofours, there comes the life of Jesus, the man of Nazareth, to rebuke, andshame, and silence us. Who in His presence dare speak any more of thesovereign might of money?

This is the lesson of the life of the Best. Is it not also the lesson ofthe lives of the good in all ages? The greatest name in the great worldof Greece is Socrates; and Socrates was a poor man. The greatest name inthe first century of the Christian era is Paul; and Paul was aworking-man and sometimes in want. It was Calvinism, Mark Pattison said, that in the sixteenth century saved Europe, and Calvin's strength, aPope once declared, lay in this, that money had no charm for him. JohnWesley re-created modern England and left behind him "two silverteaspoons and the Methodist Church. " The "Poets' Corner" in WestminsterAbbey, it has been said, commemorates a glorious company of paupers. Andeven in America, the land of the millionaire and multi-millionaire, thenames that are graven on the nation's heart, and which men delight tohonour, are not its Vanderbilts, or its Jay Goulds, but Lincoln, andGrant, and Garfield, and Webster, and Clay. 

This is not mere "curb-stone rhetoric"; I speak the words of sobernessand truth. Would that they in whose blood the "narrowing lust of gold"has begun to burn might be sobered by them! In the name of Jesus ofNazareth, and of all the noblest of the sons of men, let us deny anddefy the sordid traditions of mammon; let us make it plain that we atleast do not believe "the wealthiest man among us is the best. ""Godliness with contentment, " said the apostle, "is great gain;" andthough these are not the only worthy ends of human effort, yet he whohas made them his has secured for himself a treasure which faileth not, which will endure when the gilded toys for which men strive and sweatare dust and ashes. 

It is further worthy of note that it was always the rich rather than thepoor whom Christ pitied. He was sorry for Lazarus; He was still moresorry for Dives. "Blessed are ye poor. . . . Woe unto you that are rich. "This two-fold note sounds through all Christ's teaching. And the reasonis not far to seek. As Jesus looked on life, He saw how the passionatequest for gold was starving all the higher ideals of life. Men wereconcentrating their souls on pence till they could think of nothingelse. For mammon's sake they were turning away from the kingdom ofheaven. The spirit of covetousness was breaking the peace of households, setting brother against brother, making men hard and fierce andrelentless. Under its hot breath the fairest growths of the spirit weredrooping and ready to die. The familiar "poor but pious" which meets usso often in a certain type of biography could never have found a placeon the lips of Jesus. "Rich but pious" would have been far truer to thefacts of life as He saw them. "The ground of a certain rich man broughtforth plentifully, " and after that he could think of nothing but barns:there was no room for God in his life. "The Pharisees who were lovers ofmoney heard these things; and they scoffed at Him;" of course, whatcould their jaundiced eyes see in Jesus? And even to one of whom it iswritten that Jesus, "looking upon him loved him, " his great possessionsproved a magnet stronger than the call of Christ. It was Emerson, Ithink, who said that the worst thing about money is that it so oftencosts so much. To take heed that we do not pay too dearly for it, is thewarning which comes to us from every page of the life of Jesus. Arethere none of us who need the warning? "Ye cannot serve God and mammon;"we know it, and that we may the better serve mammon, we are sacrificingGod and conscience on mammon's unholy altars. And to-day, perhaps, weare content that it should be so. But will our satisfaction last? Shallwe be as pleased with the bargain to-morrow and the day after as wethink we are to-day? And when our last day comes--what? "Forefancy yourdeathbed, " said Samuel Rutherford; and though the counsel ill fits themood of men in their youth and strength, it is surely well sometimes tolook forward and ask how life will bear hereafter the long look back. "This night is thy soul required of thee; and the things which thou hastprepared whose shall they be?"--not his, and he had nothing else. He hadlaid up treasure for himself, but it was all of this world's coinage; ofthe currency of the land whither he went he had none. In one of Lowell'smost striking poems he pictures the sad retrospect of one who, throughfourscore years, had wasted on ignoble ends God's gift of life; hishands had

 "plucked the world's coarse gains As erst they plucked the flowers of May;"

but what now, in life's last hours, are gains like these?

 "God bends from out the deep and says, 'I gave thee the great gift of life; Wast thou not called in many ways? Are not My earth and heaven at strife? I gave thee of My seed to sow, Bringest thou Me My hundred-fold?' Can I look up with face aglow, And answer, 'Father, here is gold'?"

And the end of the poem is a wail:

 "I hear the reapers singing go Into God's harvest; I, that might With them have chosen, here below Grope shuddering at the gates of night. "

Wherefore let us set not our minds on the things that are upon earth;let us covet earnestly the best gifts; let us seek first the kingdom ofGod; and all other things in due season and in due measure shall beadded unto us. [52]

 * * * * *

CONCERNING THE SECOND ADVENT

 "Lo as some venturer, from his stars receiving Promise and presage of sublime emprise, Wears evermore the seal of his believing Deep in the dark of solitary eyes, Yea to the end, in palace or in prison, Fashions his fancies of the realm to be, Fallen from the height or from the deeps arisen, Ringed with the rocks and sundered of the sea;--

 So even I, and with a heart more burning, So even I, and with a hope more sweet, Groan for the hour, O Christ! of Thy returning, Faint for the flaming of Thine advent feet. " F. W. H. MYERS, _Saint Paul_. 

 * * * * *

XIV

CONCERNING THE SECOND ADVENT

 "_They shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. . . . Of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only. "_--MATT. Xxiv. 30, 36. 

The doctrine of our Lord's Second Coming occupies at the present momenta curiously equivocal position in the thought of the Christian Church. On the one hand by many it is wholly ignored. There is no consciousdisloyalty on their part to the word of God; but the subject makes noappeal to them, it fails to "find" them. Ours is a sternly practicalage, and any truth which does not readily link itself on to thenecessities of life is liable speedily to be put on one side andforgotten. This is what has happened with this particular doctrine inthe case of multitudes; it is not denied, but it is banished to what Mr. Lecky calls "the land of the unrealized and the inoperative. " But if, onthe one hand, the doctrine has suffered from neglect, on the other ithas suffered hardly less from undue attention. Indeed of late years thewhole subject of the "Last Things" has been turned into a kind of happyhunting-ground for little sects, who carry on a ceaseless wordy warfareboth with themselves and the rest of the Christian world. Men and womenwithout another theological interest in the world are yet keen to argueabout Millenarianism, and to try their 'prentice hands on theinterpretation of the imagery of the apocalyptic literature of both theOld Testament and the New. As Spurgeon used to say, they are so taken upwith the second coming of our Lord that they forget to preach the firstSo that one hardly knows which to regret more, the neglect andindifference of the one class, or the unhealthy, feverish absorption ofthe other. 

As very often happens in cases of this kind each extreme is largelyresponsible for the other. Neglect prepares the way for exaggeration;exaggeration leads to further neglect. Moreover, in the case before us, both tendencies are strengthened by the very difficulty in which thesubject is involved. Vagueness, uncertainty, mystery, attract some mindsas powerfully as they repel others. And, assuredly, the element ofuncertainty is not wanting here. In the first place, this is a subjectfor all our knowledge of which we are wholly dependent upon revelation. Much that Christ and His apostles have taught us we can bring to thetest of experience and verify for ourselves. But this doctrine we mustreceive, if we receive it at all, wholly on the authority of One whom, on other grounds, we have learned to trust. Verification, in the natureof the case, is impossible. Further, we have gone but a little way whenrevelation itself becomes silent; and, as I have said, when that guideleaves us, we enter at once the dark forest where instantly the track islost. 

Let us seek to learn, then, what Christ has revealed, and what He hasleft unrevealed, concerning His coming again. 

I

As to the _fact_ of Christ's coming we are left in no doubt. Our Lord'sown declarations are as explicit as language can make them. Thus, inMatthew xvi. 27 we read that "the Son of Man shall come in the glory ofHis Father with His angels; and then shall He render unto every manaccording to his deeds. " In the great discourse on the Last Things, recorded by all the Synoptists, after speaking of the fall of Jerusalem, Christ goes on, "Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven;and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see theSon of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. "And again, in the Upper Room, He said to His disciples, "I go to preparea place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto Myself; that where I am ye may be also. " Thehope of that return shines on every page of the New Testament: "ThisJesus, " said the angels to the watching disciples, "which was receivedup from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye beheld Himgoing into heaven. " The early Christians were wont to speak, withoutfurther definition, of "that day. " St. Paul reminds the Thessalonianshow that they had "turned unto God from idols, to serve a living andtrue God, and to wait for His Son from heaven. " _Maran atha_--"our Lordcometh"--was the great watchword of the waiting Church. When, at thetable of the Lord, they ate the bread and drank the cup, they proclaimedHis death "till He come. " "Amen; come, Lord Jesus, " is the passionatecry with which our English Scriptures close. 

For all those, then, to whom the New Testament speaks with authority, the fact of Christ's return is established beyond all controversy. Butwhat will be the nature of His coming? Will it be visible and personal, or spiritual and unseen? Will it be once and never again, or repeated?Will Christ come at the end of history, or is He continually coming inthose great crises which mark the world's progress towards its appointedend? These questions have been answered with such admirable simplicityand scriptural truth by Dr. Denney that I cannot do better than quotehis words: "It may be frankly admitted, " he says, "that the return ofChrist to His disciples is capable of different interpretations. He cameagain, though it were but intermittently, when He appeared to them afterHis resurrection. He came again, to abide with them permanently, whenHis Spirit was given to the Church at Pentecost. He came, they would allfeel who lived to see it, signally in the destruction of Jerusalem, whenGod executed judgment historically on the race which had rejected Him, and when the Christian Church was finally and decisively liberated fromthe very possibility of dependence on the Jewish. He comes still, as Hisown words to the High Priest suggest--From this time on ye shall see theSon of Man coming--in the great crises of history, when the old orderchanges, yielding place to the new; when God brings a whole age, as itwere, into judgment, and gives the world a fresh start. But all theseadmissions, giving them the widest possible application, do not enableus to call in question what stands so plainly in the pages of the NewTestament, --what filled so exclusively the minds of the firstChristians--the idea of a personal return of Christ at the end of theworld. We need lay no stress on the scenery of New Testament prophecy, any more than on the similar element of Old Testament prophecy; thevoice of the archangel and the trump of God are like the turning of thesun into darkness and the moon into blood; but if we are to retain anyrelation to the New Testament at all, we must assert the personal returnof Christ as Judge of all. "[53]

So far I think is clear. It is when we come to speak of the time of ourLord's return that our difficulties begin. It appears to me impossibleto doubt that the first Christians were looking for the immediate returnof our Lord to the earth. At one time even St. Paul seems to haveexpected Him within his own life-time. Nor does this fact in itselfcause us any serious perplexity. What does perplex us is to find in theGospels language attributed to Christ which apparently makes Him asupporter of this mistaken view. _E. G. _, we have these three separatesayings, recorded in St. Matthew's Gospel: "But when they persecute youin this city, flee into the next; for verily I say unto you, Ye shallnot have gone through the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man be come"(x. 23); "Verily I say unto you, There be some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of Mancoming in His kingdom" (xvi. 28); "Verily I say unto you, Thisgeneration shall not pass away, till all these things be accomplished"(xxiv. 34). This seems plain enough; and if we are to take the words asthey stand, we seem to be shut up to the conclusion that our Lord wasmistaken, that He ventured on a prediction which events have falsified. Let us see if this really be so. I leave, for the moment, the words Ihave quoted in order to cite other words which point in a quitedifferent direction. 

To begin with, we have the emphatic statement: "But of that day and hourknoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but theFather only. " We remember also Christ's words to His disciples, on theeve of the Ascension, "It is not for you to know times or seasons, whichthe Father hath set within His own authority. " There is, further, awhole class of sayings, exhortations, and parables, which seem plainlyto involve a prolonged Christian era, and, consequently, thepostponement to a far distant time, of the day of Christ's return. Thus, there are the passages which speak of the preaching of the gospel to thenations beyond: "Wheresoever the gospel shall be preached throughout thewhole world, that also which this woman hath done shall be spoken of fora memorial of her" (Mark xiv. 9); "This gospel of the kingdom shall bepreached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; andthen shall the end come" (Matt. Xxiv. 14). There is the parable whichtells of the tarrying of the bridegroom till even the wise virginsslumbered and slept. "After a long time, " we read in another parable, "the Lord of those servants cometh and maketh a reckoning with them. "What is the significance of the parable of the leaven hid in threemeasures of meal, and still more, of that group of parables which depictthe growth of the kingdom--the parables of the sower, the wheat andtares, the mustard-seed, and the seed growing gradually? Does not allthis point not to a great catastrophe nigh at hand, which should bringto an end the existing order of things, but rather to just such a futurefor the kingdom of God on earth as the actual course of history reveals?And this, and no other, was, I believe, the impression which Christdesired to leave on the minds of His disciples. 

What, then, are we to make of those other and apparently contrary wordswhich I have quoted, but meanwhile have left unexplained? Theyconstitute, without doubt, one of the most perplexing problems which theinterpreter of the New Testament has to face, [54] and any suggestion formeeting the difficulty must be made with becoming caution. I can butbriefly indicate the direction in which the probable solution may befound. Our Lord, as we have already seen, spoke of His coming again, notonly at the end of the world, but in the course of it: in the power ofHis Spirit, at the fall of Jerusalem, in the coming of His kingdom amongmen. But the minds of the disciples were full of the thought of His_final_ coming, which would establish for ever the glory of HisMessianic kingdom; and it would seem that this fact has determined boththe form and the setting of some of Christ's sayings which they havepreserved for us. Words which He meant to refer to Israel's comingjudgment-day they, in the ardour of their expectation, referred to thelast great day. In the first Gospel, especially, we may trace some suchinfluence at work. When, _e. G. _, Matthew represents our Lord as saying, "There be some of them that stand here which shall in no wise taste ofdeath till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom, " it isevident, both from the words themselves and from the context, that heunderstood them to refer to the final return. Luke, however, speaks onlyof seeing "the kingdom of God, " and Mark of seeing "the kingdom of Godcome in power. " And if these words were our only version of the prophecythey would present no difficulty; we should feel that they had receivedadequate fulfilment in the events of the great day of Pentecost. Weconclude, therefore, that of the three reports before us the second andthird, which are practically the same, reproduce more correctly thewords actually spoken by Christ; and that the account given in the firstGospel was coloured by the eager hope of the early followers of Christfor their Master's speedy return. [55]

To sum up in a sentence the results of this brief inquiry: Christ'steaching concerning His return leaves us both in a state of certaintyand uncertainty. "We believe that Thou shalt come to be our Judge"--thatis our certainty; "Of that day and hour knoweth no one"--that is ouruncertainty. And each of these carries with it its own lesson. 

II

"Of that day and hour knoweth no one;" and we must be content not toknow. There are things that are "revealed"; and they belong to us and toour children. And there are "secret things, " which belong neither to us, nor to our children, but to God. Just as a visitor to Holyrood Palacefinds some rooms open and free, through which he may wander at will, while from others he is strictly excluded, so in God's world there arelocked doors through which it is not lawful for any man to enter. And itis our duty to be faithful to our ignorance as well as to our knowledge. There is a Christian as well as an anti-Christian agnosticism. To pryinto the secret things of God is no less a sin than wilfully to remainignorant of what He has been pleased to make known. The idly inquisitivespirit which is never at rest save when it is poking into forbiddencorners, Christ always checks and condemns. "Lord, " asked one, "arethere few that be saved?" But He would give no answer save this: "Striveto enter in by the narrow door. " "Lord, and this man what?" said Peter, curious concerning the unrevealed future of his brother apostle. Butagain idle curiosity must go unsatisfied: "If I will that he tarry tillI come, what is that to thee? Follow thou Me. " "Lord dost Thou at thistime restore the kingdom to Israel?" But once more He will give noanswer: "It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Fatherhath set within His own authority. " And yet, strangely enough, thatwhich Christ has seen good to leave untold is the one thing concerningHis coming on which the minds of multitudes have fastened. It sayslittle, either for our religion or our common-sense, that one of themost widely circulated religious newspapers of our day is one whichfills its columns with absurd guesses and forecasts concerning thosevery "times" and "seasons" of which Christ has told us that it is notfor us to know. Christ has given us no detailed map of the future, andwhen foolish persons pester us with little maps of their own making, letus to see to it that they get no encouragement from us. Let us darealways to be faithful to our ignorance. 

But if there is much we do not know, this we do know: the Lord willcome. And, alike on the ground of what we know and of what we do notknow, our duty is clear: we must "watch, " so that whether He come ateven, or at midnight, or at cock-crowing, or in the morning, He shallfind us ready. Christ's solemn injunction left an indelible mark on themind of the Early Church. "Yourselves know perfectly, " St. Paul writesin the first of his apostolic letters, "that the day of the Lord socometh as a thief in the night . . . So then let us not sleep, as do therest, but let us watch and be sober. " As St. Augustine says, "The lastday is hidden that every day maybe regarded. " But what, exactly, is themeaning of the command to "watch"? It cannot be that we are to be always"on the watch. " That would simply end in the feverish excitement andunrest which troubled the peace of the Church of Thessalonica. The truemeaning is given us, I think, in the parable of the Ten Virgins. Fivewere wise, not because they watched all night for the bridegroom, for itis written "they _all_ slumbered and slept, " but because they wereprepared; and five were foolish, not because they did not watch, butbecause they were unprepared. "The fisherman's wife who spends her timeon the pier-head watching for the boats, cannot be so well prepared togive her husband a comfortable reception as the woman who is busy abouther household work, and only now and again turns a longing lookseaward. "[56] So Christ's command to "watch" means, not "Be ye always onthe watch, " but, "Be ye always ready. "

Spurgeon once said, with characteristic humour and good sense, thatthere were friends of his to whom he would like to say, "Ye men ofPlymouth, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? Go on with your work. " Hewho in a world like ours can sit and gaze with idly folded hands--letnot that man think he shall receive anything of the Lord. A lady onceasked John Wesley, "Suppose that you knew you were to die at twelveo'clock to-morrow night, how would you spend the intervening time?""How, Madam?" he replied; "why just as I intend to spend it now. Ishould preach this night at Gloucester, and again at five to-morrowmorning. After that I should ride to Tewkesbury, preach in theafternoon, and meet the societies in the evening. I should then repairto friend Martin's house, who expects to entertain me, converse and praywith the family as usual, retire to my room at ten o'clock, commendmyself to my heavenly Father, lie down to rest, and wake up in glory. "This is the right attitude for the Christian. The old cry must not fadefrom our lips, nor the old hope from our heart: _Maran atha_, "our Lordcometh. " But meanwhile He hath given to every man his work; and we maybe sure there is no preparation for His coming like the faithful doingof the appointed task. "Blessed is that servant whom His Lord when Hecometh shall find so doing. "

 * * * * *

CONCERNING THE JUDGMENT

 "I often have a kind of waking dream; up one road the image of a man decked and adorned as if for a triumph, carried up by rejoicing and exulting friends, who praise his goodness and achievements; and, on the other road, turned back to back to it, there is the very man himself, in sordid and squalid apparel, surrounded not by friends but by ministers of justice, and going on, while his friends are exulting, to his certain and perhaps awful judgment. "--R. W. CHURCH. 

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XV

CONCERNING THE JUDGMENT

 "_When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit on the throne of His glory: and before Him shall be gathered all the nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. _"--MATT. XXV. 31-33. 

He, the speaker, will do this. It is the most stupendous claim that everfell from human lips. A young Jewish carpenter whose brief career, as HeHimself well knew, was just about to end in a violent and shamefuldeath, tells the little, fearful band which still clung to Him, that aday is coming when before Him all the nations shall be gathered, and byHim be separated as a shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats. Inthe world's long history there is nothing like it. 

That Jesus did really claim to be the Judge of all men, it is, Ibelieve, impossible to doubt. The passage just quoted is by no means ouronly evidence. In the Sermon on the Mount, which foolish persons wholove to depreciate theology sometimes speak of as though it were thepith and marrow of the Christian gospel, Christ says, "Many will say toMe in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by Thy name, and by Thyname cast out devils, and by Thy name do many mighty works? And thenwill I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that workiniquity. " Again, He says, "Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of Mywords in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man alsoshall be ashamed of Him when He cometh in the glory of His Father withthe holy angels;" and again, "The Son of Man shall come in the glory ofHis Father with His angels; and then shall He render unto every manaccording to His deeds. " The fourth Gospel also represents Him assaying, "Neither doth the Father judge any man, but He hath given alljudgment to the Son . . . And He gave Him authority to execute judgmentbecause He is the Son of Man. " And if still further evidence benecessary it would be easy to show both from the Acts and the Epistlesthat from the very beginning all the disciples of Jesus believed andtaught that He would come again to be their Judge. 

Consider what this means. Reference has already been made in an earlierchapter to Christ's witness concerning Himself, to His deep andunwavering consciousness of separateness from all others. But morestriking, perhaps, than any illustration mentioned there is thatfurnished by the fact before us now. What must His thoughts aboutHimself have been who could speak of Himself in relation to all othersas Christ does here? When men write about Jesus as though He were merelya gentle, trustful, religious genius, preaching a sweet gospel of thelove of God to the multitudes of Galilee, they are but shutting theireyes to one half of the facts which it is their duty to explain. Speaking generally, we do well to distrust the dilemma as a form ofargument; but in this case there need be no hesitation in putting thealternative with all possible bluntness: either Christ was God, or Hewas not good. That Jesus, if He were merely a good man, with a goodman's consciousness of and sensitiveness to His own weakness andlimitations, could yet have arrogated to Himself the right to be thesupreme judge and final arbiter of the destinies of mankind, is simplynot thinkable. And the more we ponder the stupendous claim which Christmakes, the more must we feel that it is either superhuman authoritywhich speaks to us here or superhuman arrogance. Either Christ spoke outof the depths of His own Divine consciousness, knowing that the Fatherhad committed all judgment unto the Son; or He made use of words and putforth claims which were, and which He must have known to have been, empty, false, and blasphemous. 

Such is the significance of Christ's words in their relation to Himself. It is, however, with their relation to ourselves that we are primarilyconcerned now. Of the wholly unimaginable circumstances of that day whenthe Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the nations be gatheredbefore Him I shall not attempt to speak. As Dean Church has wellsaid, [57] no vision framed with the materials of our present experiencecould adequately represent the truth, and, indeed, it is well that ourminds should be diverted from matters which lie wholly beyond our reach, that they may dwell upon the solemn certainties which Christ hasrevealed. Let us think, first of the fact, and secondly of the issues, of Judgment. 

I

The persistent definiteness with which the fact of judgment is affirmedby the New Testament we have already seen. Nor is the New Testament ouronly witness. The belief in a higher tribunal before which the judgmentsof time are to be revised, and in many cases reversed, may be said to bepart of the creed of the race. Plato had his vision of judgment as wellas Jesus. And in the Old Testament, and especially in the Book ofPsalms, the same faith finds repeated and magnificent utterance: "OurGod shall come, and shall not keep silence; a fire shall devour beforeHim, and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him. He shall call tothe heavens above, and to the earth, that He may judge His people;" andagain, "For He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth: He shall judgethe world with righteousness and the peoples with His truth. "

Here, then, is the fact which demands a place in the thoughts of each ofus--we are all to be judged. Life is not to be folded up, like a pieceof finished work, and then laid aside and forgotten; it is to be goneover again and examined by the hand and eyes of Perfect Wisdom andPerfect Love. Each day we are writing, and often when the leaf is turnedthat which has been written passes from our mind and is remembered nomore; but it is there, and one day the books--the Book of Life, of ourlife--will be opened, and the true meaning of the record revealed. Lifebrings to us many gifts of many kinds, and as it lays them in our hands, for our use and for our blessing, it is always, had we but ears to hear, with the warning word, "Know thou, that for all these things, God willbring thee into judgment. "

It is, indeed, a tremendous thought. When Daniel Webster was once askedwhat was the greatest thought that had ever occupied his mind, heanswered, "the fact of my personal accountability to God. " And no mancan give to such a fact its due place without feeling its steadying, sobering influence through all his life. Lament is often made to-day, and not without reason, of our failing sense of the seriousness of life. A plague of frivolity, more deadly than the locusts of Egypt, has fallenupon us, and is smiting all our green places with barrenness. Somehow, and at all costs, we must get back our lost sense of responsibility. Ifwe would remember that God has a right hand and a left hand; if we wouldput to ourselves Browning's question, "But what will God say?" ifsometimes we would pull ourselves up sharp, and ask--this that I amdoing, how will it look then, in that day when "Each shall standfull-face with all he did below"? if, I say, we would do this, couldlife continue to be the thing of shows and make-believe it so often is?It was said of the late Dean Church by one who knew him well: "He seemedto live in the constant recollection of something which is awful, evendreadful to remember--something which bears with searching force on allmen's ways and hopes and plans--something before which he knew himselfto be as it were continually arraigned--something which it was strangeand pathetic to find so little recognized among other men. " But, alas!this is how we refuse to live. We thrust the thought of judgment fromus; we treat it as an unwelcome intruder, a disturber of our peace; weblock up every approach by which it might gain access to our minds. Wedo not deny that there is a judgment to come; but our habitual disregardof it is verily amazing. "Judge not, " said Christ, "that ye be notjudged;" yet every day we let fly our random arrows, careless in whosehearts they may lodge. "Every idle word that men shall speak, they shallgive account thereof in the day of judgment;" yet with what superbrecklessness do we abuse God's great gift of speech! "We shall all standbefore the judgment-seat of God;" yes, we know it; but when do we thinkof it? What difference does it make to us?

What can indifference such as this say for itself? How can it justifyitself before the bar of reason? Do we realize that our neglect hasChrist to reckon with? These things of which I have spoken are not thegossamer threads of human speculation; they are the strong cords ofDivine truth and they cannot be broken. "You seem, sir, " said Mrs. Adamsto Dr. Johnson, in one of his despondent hours, when the fear of deathand judgment lay heavy on him, "to forget the merits of our Redeemer. ""Madam, " said the honest old man, "I do not forget the merits of myRedeemer; but my Redeemer has said that He will set some on His righthand and some on His left. " Yes, it is the words of Christ with which wehave to do; and if we are wise, if we know the things which belong untoour peace, we shall find for them a place within our hearts. 

II

The issues of the Judgment may be summed up in a singleword--separation: "He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but thegoats on the left. " Stated thus broadly, the issue of the Judgmentsatisfies our sense of justice. If there is to be judgment at all, separation must be the outcome. And in that separation is vindicated oneof man's most deep-seated convictions. As right is right and wrong iswrong, and right and wrong are not the same, so neither can their issuesbe the same. "We have a robust common-sense of morality which refuses tobelieve that it does not matter whether a man has lived like the ApostlePaul or the Emperor Nero. " We can never crush out the conviction thatthere must be one place for St. John, who was Jesus' friend, and anotherfor Judas Iscariot, who was His betrayer. "[58] This must be, "Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is. "

We must be sure that God has a right hand and a left, that good and evilare distinct, and will for ever remain so, that each will go to his ownplace, the place for which he is prepared, for which he has preparedhimself, or our day would be turned into night and our whole life put toconfusion. 

So far, Christ's words present no difficulty. To many, however, it is aserious perplexity to find that Christ speaks of but two classes intowhich by the Judgment men are divided. There are the sheep and thegoats, the good and the bad, and there are no others. To us it seemsimpossible to divide men thus. They are not, we think, good _or_ bad, but good _and_ bad. "I can understand, " some one has said, "what is tobecome of the sheep, and I can understand what is to become of thegoats, but how are the alpacas to be dealt with?"[59] The alpaca, itshould be said, is an animal possessing some of the characteristics bothof the sheep and the goat, and the meaning of the question is, ofcourse, what is to become of that vast middle class in whose livessometimes good and sometimes evil seems to rule?

Now it is a remarkable fact that Scripture knows nothing of any suchmiddle class. Some men it calls good, others it calls evil, but it hasno middle term. Note, _e. G. _, this typical contrast from the Book ofProverbs: "The path of the righteous is as the light of dawn, thatshineth more and more unto the noon-tide of the day. The way of thewicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble. " Or listen toPeter's question: "If the righteous is scarcely saved, where shall theungodly and sinner appear?" In both instances the assumption is thesame: there, on the one hand, are the righteous; and there, on theother, are the wicked; and beside these there are no others. The sameclassification is constant throughout the teaching of Jesus. He speaksof two gates, and two ways, and two ends. There are the guests whoaccept the King's invitation and sit down in His banqueting hall, andthere are those who refuse it and remain without. In the parable of thenet full of fishes the good are gathered into vessels, but the bad arecast away. The wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest; thenthe wheat is gathered into the barn, and the tares are cast into thefire. The sheep are set on the right hand, and the goats on the lefthand; and there is no hint or suggestion that any other kind ofclassification is necessary in order that all men may be truly andjustly dealt with. 

All this may seem very arbitrary and impossible until we remember thatthe classification is not ours but God's. It is not we who have todivide men, setting one on the right hand and another on the left; thatis God's work; and it is well to remind ourselves that He invites noneof us to share His judgment-throne with Him, or, by any verdict of ours, to anticipate the findings of the last great day. And because to us sucha division is impossible, it does not therefore follow that it should beso to Him before whom all hearts are open and all desires known. _We_cannot separate men thus because human character is so complex. Butcomplexity is a relative term; it depends on the eyes which behold it;and our naming a thing complex may be but another way of declaring ourignorance concerning it. We all know how a character, a life, a courseof events, which, on first view, seemed but a tangled, twisted skein, oncloser acquaintance often smooths itself out into perfect simplicity. And there is surely no difficulty in believing that it should be so withhuman life when it is judged by the perfect knowledge of God. Life islike a great tree which casts forth on every side its far-spreadingbranches. Yet all that moving, breathing mystery of twig and branch andfoliage springs from a single root. To us the mystery is baffling in itscomplexity: we have looked at the branches. To God it is simple, clear:He sees the hidden root from which it springs. So that, to go back toour former illustration, it is only our ignorance which compels us tospeak of "alpacas" in the moral world. To perfect knowledge they willprove to be, as Mr. Selby says, either slightly-disguised sheep orslightly-disguised goats. 

There is a further fact also to be taken into account in consideringChrist's two-fold classification. Since it is the work of infiniteknowledge and justice it will have regard to all the facts of our life. God looks not only at the narrow present, but back into the past, andforward into the future. He marks the trend of the life, the bent andbias of the soul. He chalks down no line saying, "Reach this or you areundone for ever. " He sets up no absolute standard to which if a manattain he is a saint, or falling short of which he is a sinner. And whenHe calls one man righteous and another wicked, He means very much morethan that one has done so many good deeds, and another so many evildeeds; "righteous" and "wicked" describe what each is in himself, whateach will decisively reveal himself to be, when present tendencies havefully worked themselves out. There are two twilights, the twilight ofevening and the twilight of morning; and therefore God's question to usis not, how much light have we? but, which way do we face? to the nightor to the day? Not "What art thou?" but "What wilt thou?" is the supremequestion; it is the answer to this which sets some on the right hand andsome on the left. 

 * * * * *

Let us close as we began, remembering that it is Christ who is to be ourJudge. Therefore will the judgment be according to perfect truth. Weknow how He judged men when He was here on earth--without respect ofpersons, undeceived by appearances, seeing things always as they are, calling them always by their true names. And such will His judgment behereafter. On the walls of the famous Rock Tombs of Thebes, there is agroup of figures representing the judging of the departed spirit beforeOsiris, the presiding deity of the dead. In one hand he holds ashepherd's crook, in the other a scourge; before him are the scales ofjustice; that which is weighed is the heart of the dead king upon whoselot the deity is called to decide. The pictured symbol is a dimforeshadowing of that perfect judgment which He who looketh not at theoutward appearance but at the heart will one day pass on all the livesof men. And yet an apostle has dared to write of "boldness in the day ofJudgment"! Surely St. John is very bold; yet was his boldnesswell-based. He remembered the saying of his own Gospel: "The Father hathgiven all judgment unto the Son . . . Because He is the Son of Man. " Yes;He who will come to be our Judge is He who once for us men, and for oursalvation, came down from heaven, and was made man, and upon the Crossdid suffer death for our redemption. Herein is the secret of the"boldness" of the redeemed. 

 "Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress; 'Midst flaming worlds in these arrayed, With joy shall I lift up my head. 

 Bold shall I stand in that great day, For who aught to my charge shall lay? Fully absolved through these I am, From sin and fear, from guilt and shame. "

 * * * * *

CONCERNING THE FUTURE LIFE

 "My knowledge of that life is small, The eye of faith is dim; But 'tis enough that Christ knows all, And I shall be with Him. " RICHARD BAXTER. 

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XVI

CONCERNING THE FUTURE LIFE

 "_Where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. _"--MATT. Vi. 20. 

 "_Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. _"--MARK ix. 48. 

These are both sayings of Christ, and each has reference to the lifebeyond death; together they illustrate the two-fold thought of thefuture which finds a place in all the records of our Lord's teaching. 

Popular theology, it is sometimes said, seriously misunderstands andmisinterprets Jesus. And so far as the theology of the future life isconcerned there need be no hesitation in admitting that, notunfrequently, it has been disfigured by an almost grotesque literalism. The pulpit has often forgotten that over-statement is always a blunder, and that any attempt to imagine the wholly unimaginable is most likelyto end in defeating our own intentions and in dissipating, rather thanreinforcing, our sense of the tremendous realities of which Christspoke. Nevertheless, much as theology may have erred in the form of itsteaching concerning the future, its great central ideas have always beenderived direct from Christ. It has not, we know, always made its appealto what is highest in man; it has sometimes spoken of "heaven" and"hell" in a fashion that has left heart and conscience wholly untouched;nevertheless, the time has not yet come--until men cease to believe inChrist, the time never will have come--for banishing these words fromour vocabulary. Unless Christ were both a deceiver and deceived, theyrepresent realities as abiding as God and the soul, realities towardswhich it behoves every man of us to discover how he stands. In theteaching of Jesus, no less than in the teaching of popular theology, thefuture has a bright side and it has a dark side; there is a heaven andthere is a hell. 

I

That there is a life beyond this life, that death does not end all, isof course always assumed in the teaching of Jesus. But it is much morethan this that we desire to know. What kind of a life is it? What areits conditions? How is it related to the present life? What is the"glory" into which, as we believe, "the souls of believers at theirdeath do immediately pass"? Perhaps our first impression, as we searchthe New Testament for an answer to our questions, is one ofdisappointment; there is so much that still remains unrevealed. We doindeed read of dead men raised to life again by the power of God, but ofthe awful and unimaginable experiences through which they passed not aword is told. 

 "'Where wert thou, brother, those four days?' There lives no record of reply. . . . . . Behold a man raised up by Christ! The rest remaineth unreveal'd; He told it not; or something seal'd The lips of that Evangelist. "

How much even Christ Himself has left untold! At His incarnation, andagain at His resurrection, He came forth from that world into which weall must pass; yet how few were His words concerning it, how little ablewe still are to picture it! Nevertheless, if He has not told us all, Hehas told us enough. Let us recall some of His words. 

He spoke of "everlasting habitations"--"eternal tabernacles"--into whichmen should be received. Here we are as pilgrims and sojourners, dwellingin a land not our own. 

 "Earth's but a sorry tent, Pitched but a few frail days;"

and the chances and changes of this mortal life often bear heavily uponus. But there these things have no place. Moth and rust, change anddecay, sorrow and death cannot enter there. 

 "The day's aye fair I' the land o' the leal. "

Again, Christ said, "I go to prepare a place for you. " Just as when alittle child is born into the world it comes to a place made ready forit by the thousand little tendernesses of a mother's love, so does deathlead us, not into the bleak, inhospitable night, but into the "Father'shouse, " to a place which love has made ready for our coming. "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit. " _Into Thy hands_--thither Jesuspassed from the Cross and the cruel hands of men; thither have passedthe lost ones of our love; thither, too, we in our turn shall pass. Why, then, if we believe in Jesus should we be afraid? "Having death for myfriend, " says an unknown Greek writer, "I tremble not at shadows. "Having Jesus for our friend we tremble not at death. 

Further, Christ taught us, the heavenly life is a life of service. Everyone knows how largely the idea of rest has entered into our commonconceptions of the future. It is indeed a pathetic commentary on theweariness and restlessness of life that with so many rest should almosthave come to be a synonym for blessedness. But rest is far from beingthe final word of Scripture concerning the life to come. Surely life, with its thousandfold activities, is not meant as a preparation for aParadise of inaction. What can be the meaning and purpose of the lifewhich we are called to pass through here, if our hereafter is to be butone prolonged act of adoration? We shall carry with us into the futurenot character only but capacity; and can it be that God will lay asideas useless there that which with so great pains He has sought to perfecthere? It is not so that Christ has taught us to think: "He that receivedthe five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thoudeliverest unto me five talents: lo, I have gained other five talents. His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant: thou hastbeen faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things: enterthou into the joy of thy lord. " God will not take the tools out of theworkman's hands just when he has learned how to handle them; He will not"pension off" His servants just when they are best able to serve Him. The reward of work well done is more work; faithfulness in few thingsbrings lordship over many. Have we not here a ray of light on themystery of unfinished lives? We do not murmur when the old and tired aregathered to their rest; but when little children die, when youth fallsin life's morning, when the strong man is cut off in his strength, weknow not what to say. But do not "His servants serve Him" there as wellas here? Their work is not done; in ways beyond our thoughts it is goingforward still. [60]

One other question concerning the future with which, as by an instinct, we turn to Christ for answer is suggested by the following touchinglittle poem:

 "I can recall so well how she would look-- How at the very murmur of her dress On entering the room, the whole room took An air of gentleness. 

 That was so long ago, and yet his eyes Had always afterwards the look that waits And yearns, and waits again, nor can disguise Something it contemplates. 

 May we imagine it? The sob, the tears, The long, sweet, shuddering breath; then on her breast The great, full, flooding sense of endless years, Of heaven, and her, and rest. "

Can we quote the authority of Jesus for thoughts like these? The pointis, let it be noted, not whether we shall know each other again beyonddeath, but whether we shall be to each other what we were here. At thefoot of the white marble cross which his wife placed upon the grave ofCharles Kingsley are graven these three words: _Amavimus, Amamus, Amabimus_ ("We have loved, we love, we shall love"). After Mrs. Browning's death her husband wrote these lines from Dante in herTestament: "Thus I believe, thus I affirm, thus I am certain it is, thatfrom this life I shall pass to another better, there, where that ladylives, of whom my soul was enamoured. " Will Christ counter-sign a hopelike this? I do not know any "proof-text" that can be quoted, yet itwere profanation to think otherwise. There are many flowers of time, weknow, which cannot be transplanted; but "love never faileth, " love isthe true _immortelle_. And whatever changes death may bring, those whohave been our nearest here shall be our nearest there. And though, as Isay, we can quote no "proof-text, " our faith may find its guarantee inthe great word of Jesus: "If it were not so, I would have told you. "This is one of the instincts of the Christian heart, as pure and good asit is firm and strong. Since Christ let it pass unchallenged, may we notclaim His sanction for it? If it were not so, He would have told us. 

II

I turn now to the reverse side of Christ's teaching concerning thefuture. And let us not seek to hide from ourselves the fact that there_is_ a reverse side. For, ignore it as we may, the fact remains: thosesame holy lips which spoke of a place, "where neither moth nor rust dothconsume, " spoke likewise of another place, "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. "

In considering this solemn matter we must learn to keep wholly separatefrom it a number of difficult questions which have really nothing to dowith it--with which, indeed, we have nothing to do--and the introductionof which can only lead to mischievous confusion and error. What is tobecome of the countless multitudes in heathen lands who die withouthaving so much as heard of Christ? How will God deal with those even inour own Christian land to whom, at least as it seems to us, this lifehas brought no adequate opportunity of salvation? What will happen inthat dim twilight land betwixt death and judgment which men call "theintermediate state"? Will they be few or many who at last will be forever outcasts from the presence of God? These are questions men willpersist in asking, but the answer to which no man knows. Strictlyspeaking, they are matters with which we have nothing to do, which wemust be content to leave with God, confident that the Judge of all theearth will do right, even though He does not show us how. What we haveto do with, what does concern us, is the warning of Jesus, emphatic andreiterated, that sin will be visited with punishment, that retribution, just, awful, inexorable, will fall on all them that love and workiniquity. 

"But why, " it may be asked, "why dwell upon these things? Is there notsomething coarse and vulgar in this appeal to men's fears? And, afterall, to what purpose is it? If men are not won by the love of God, ofwhat avail is it to speak to them of His wrath?" But fear is as real anelement in human nature as love, and when our aim is by all means tosave men, it is surely legitimate to make our appeal to the whole man, to lay our fingers on every note--the lower notes no less than thehigher--in the wide gamut of human life. The preacher of the gospel, moreover, is left without choice in the matter. It is no part of hisbusiness to ask what is the use of this or of that in the message givento him to deliver; it is for him to declare "the whole counsel of God, "to keep back nothing that has been revealed. And the really decisiveconsideration is this--that this is a matter on which Christ Himself hasspoken, and spoken with unmistakable clearness and emphasis. Shall, then, the ambassador hesitate when the will of the King is made known?More often--five times more often, it is said[61]--than Jesus spoke offuture blessedness did He speak of future retribution. The New Testamentis a very tender book; but it is also a very stern book, and itssternest words are words of Jesus. "For the sins of the miserable, theforlorn, the friendless, He has pity and compassion; but for the sins ofthe well-taught, the high-placed, the rich, the self-indulgent, forobstinate and malignant sin, the sin of those who hate, and deceive, andcorrupt, and betray, His wrath is terrible, its expression isunrestrained. "[62] "Jesu, Thou art all compassion, " we sometimes sing;but is it really so? St. Paul writes of "the meekness and gentleness ofChrist"; and for many of the chapters of Christ's life that is the rightheadline; but there are other chapters which by no possible manipulationcan be brought under that heading, and they also are part of the story. It was Jesus who said that in the day of judgment it should be moretolerable for even Tyre and Sidon than for Bethsaida and Chorazin; itwas Jesus who uttered that terrible twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, with its seven times repeated "Woe unto you, scribesand Pharisees, hypocrites!" it was Jesus who spoke of the shut door andthe outer darkness, of the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is notquenched, of the sin which hath never forgiveness, neither in thisworld, nor in that which is to come, and of that day when He who weptover Jerusalem and prayed for His murderers and died for the world willsay unto them on His left hand, "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into theeternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels. " These are_His_ words, and it is because they are His they make us tremble. He_is_ "gentle Jesus, meek and mild"; that is why His sternness is soterrible. 

These things are not said in order to defend any particular theory offuture punishment--on that dread subject, indeed, the present writer hasno "theory" to defend; he frankly confesses himself an agnostic--butrather to claim for the solemn fact of retribution a place in our mindsakin to that which it held in the teaching of our Lord. We need have nofurther concern than to be loyal to Him. Does, then, such loyalty admitof a belief in universal salvation? Is it open to us to assert that inChrist the whole race is predestined to "glory, honour, andimmortality"? The "larger hope" of the universalist--

 "that good shall fall At last--far off--at last, to all, And every winter change to spring"--

is, indeed, one to which no Christian heart can be a stranger; yearningssuch as these spring up within us unbidden and uncondemned. But when itis definitely and positively asserted that "God has destined all men toeternal glory, irrespective of their faith and conduct, " "that noantagonism to the Divine authority, no insensibility to the Divine love, can prevent the eternal decree from being accomplished, " we shall dowell to pause, and pause again. The old doctrine of an assured salvationfor an elect few we reject without hesitation. But, as Dr. Dale haspointed out, [63] the difference between the old doctrine and the new ismerely an arithmetical, not a moral difference: where the old put"some, " the new puts "all"; and the moral objections which are validagainst the one are not less valid against the other also. I dare notsay to myself, and therefore I dare not say to others, that, let a manlive as he may, it yet shall be well with him in the end. The facts ofexperience are against it; the words of Christ are against it. "The veryconception of human freedom involves the possibility of its permanentmisuse, of what our Lord Himself calls 'eternal sin. '" If a man can goon successfully resisting Divine grace in this life, what reason have wefor supposing that it would suddenly become irresistible in anotherlife? Build what we may on the unrevealed mercies of the future for themthat live and die in the darkness of ignorance, let us build nothing forourselves who are shutting our eyes and closing our hearts to the Divinelight and love which are already ours. 

 * * * * *

"Behold, then, the goodness and severity of God;" and may His goodnesslead us to repentance, that His severity we may never know. This is, indeed, His will for every one of us: He has "appointed us not untowrath, but unto the obtaining of salvation through our Lord JesusChrist. " If we are lost we are suicides. 

THE END

Footnote 1: J. Stalker, _The Christology of Jesus_, p. 23, footnote. 

Footnote 2: "The sources for our knowledge of the actual teaching ofJesus do not lie merely in the Gospel accounts, but also in theliterature of the apostolic age, especially in the Epistles of Paul. . . . Even had no direct accounts about Jesus been handed down to us, weshould still possess, in the apostolic literature, a perfectly validtestimony to the historical existence and epoch-making significance ofJesus as a teacher. "--H. H. Wendt, _Teaching of Jesus_, vol. I, p. 28. 

Footnote 3: _What is Christianity?_ p. 20. 

Footnote 4: _Three Essays on Religion_, p. 253. 

Footnote 5: _Literature and Dogma_, p. 10. 

Footnote 6: See Harnack's _What is Christianity_? p. 4. 

Footnote 7: See A. S. Peake's _Guide to Biblical Study_, p. 244. 

Footnote 8: _Thoughts on Religion_, p. 157. 

Footnote 9: _The Kingdom of God_, p. 50. 

Footnote 10: "Christian apologists, " says Dr. Sanday, "have often donescant justice to the intensity of this [monotheistic] faith, which wasutterly disinterested and capable of magnificent self-sacrifice. "--Art. "God, " Hastings' _Dictionary of the Bible_, vol. Ii, p. 205. 

Footnote 11: See R. F. Horton's _Teaching of Jesus_, p. 59. 

Footnote 12: A. M. Fairbairn, _Christ in Modern Theology_, p. 244. 

Footnote 13: On the subject of this chapter see especially G. B. Stevens'_Theology of the New Testament_, chap. Vi. 

Footnote 14: _Christian Doctrine, _ p. 77. 

Footnote 15: Bishop Gore, _Bampton Lectures, _ 1891, p. 13. 

Footnote 16: J. Denney, _Studies in Theology_, p. 25. 

Footnote 17: For an admirable statement of the argument of thisparagraph see D. W. Forrest's _Christ of History and experience_, chap. I. And note 4, p. 385. 

Footnote 18: Cp. Denney's note on St. Paul's description of Christ, "Himwho knew no sin, " in 2 Cor. V. 21: "The Greek negative (mae), asSchmiedel remarks, implies that this is regarded as the verdict of someone else than the writer. It was Christ's own verdict upon Himself. "

Footnote 19: _The Death of Christ_, p. 28. 

Footnote 20: _The Philosophy of the Christian Religion_, p. 408. 

Footnote 21: John xii. 27, 28; xiii. 31; xvii. 1. 

Footnote 22: G. B. Stevens, _Theology of the New Testament_, p. 133. 

Footnote 23: I quote once more from Dr. Denney. 

Footnote 24: J. Denney, _Studies in Theology_, p. 154. 

Footnote 25: See W. N. Clarke's _Outlines of Christian Theology_, p. 373. 

Footnote 26: "It is the Holy Spirit who supplies the _bodily presence_of Christ, and by Him doth He accomplish all His promises to the Church. Hence, some of the ancients call Him 'Vicarium Christi, ' 'The Vicar ofChrist, ' or Him who represents His person and dischargeth His promisedwork: _Operam navat Christo vicariam. "_--Owen, _Works, _ vol. Iii. P. 193. 

Footnote 27: "Our sources with the utmost possible uniformity refer tothe Spirit in terms implying personality. "--Stevens, _Theology of theNew Testament_ (p. 215), where the whole question is discussed withgreat fullness and fairness. 

Footnote 28: John Watson, _The Mind of the Master_, p. 321. May weremind Dr. Watson of what he has himself written on the first page ofhis _Doctrines of Grace_: "It was the mission of St. Paul to declare thegospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to the nations, and none ofhis successors in this high office has spoken with such persuasivepower. _Any one differs from St. Paul at his intellectual peril_, andevery one may imitate him with spiritual profit. "

Footnote 29: See, in confirmation of the argument of this paragraph, Orr's _Christian View of God and the World_, p. 401 ff. , and Art. "TheKingdom of God, " in Hastings' _Dictionary of the Bible_; Denney's_Studies in Theology_, Lect. VIII. 

Footnote 30: J. Watson, _The Mind of the Master_, p. 323. 

Footnote 31: F. G. Peabody, _Jesus Christ and the Social Question_, pp. 88, 89. 

Footnote 32: _Fellowship with Christ_, p. 157. 

Footnote 33: See Trench's _Study of Words_, p. 100. 

Footnote 34: The chapter entitled "Christ's Doctrine of Man" is one ofthe most suggestive chapters in Dr. Bruce's admirable work _The Kingdomof God_. 

Footnote 35: _Studies in Theology_, p. 83. 

Footnote 36: See Hastings' _Dictionary of the Bible_, Art. "Sin, " vol. Iii. P. 533. 

Footnote 37: This is the R. V. Marginal rendering of Gen. Iv. 13. 

Footnote 38: R. W. Dale, _Evangelical Revival and other Sermons_, p. 66ff. 

Footnote 39: _The Kingdom of God_, p. 203. 

Footnote 40: In his famous sermon on the Pharisees, _UniversitySermons_, p. 32. 

Footnote 41: R. W. Church, _Gifts of Civilisation_, p. 71. 

Footnote 42: Prov. Iv. 7: "Get wisdom; and with all thy getting getunderstanding, " which does not mean simply, "Whatever else you get, besure to get understanding. " The marginal reference is to Matt. Xiii. 44:wisdom, like the pearl of great price, is to be secured with, _i. E. _ atthe cost and sacrifice of, everything else that can be gotten. (See J. R. Lumby on "Shortcomings of Translation, " _Expositor_, second series, VOL. Iii. P. 203. )

Footnote 43: 2 Cor. V. 9 R. V. Margin. 

Footnote 44: _Laws of Christ for Common Life_, p. 59. 

Footnote 45: _Bible Characters: Stephen to Timothy_, p. 95. 

Footnote 46: _On the Authorized Version of the New Testament_, p. 14. 

Footnote 47: I am indebted for these two quotations to Bishop Paget's_Spirit of Discipline_, p. 66. 

Footnote 48: P. Carnegie Simpson, _The Fact of Christ_, pp. 116, 117. 

Footnote 49: _Time and Tide_, p. 224. 

Footnote 50: F. G. Peabody, _Jesus Christ and the Social Problem_, p. 219. 

Footnote 51: Emerson had surely overlooked this nobler meaning of theword when he wrote, "They [the English] put up no Socratic prayer, muchless any saintly prayer, for the queen's mind; ask neither for light norright, but say bluntly, 'grant her in health and wealth long to live'"(_English Traits_). 

Footnote 52: To those who are interested in the subject of this chapterProf. Peabody's book already referred to, and an article entitled "TheTeaching of Christ concerning the Use of Money" _(Expositor, _ thirdseries, vol. Viii. P. 100 ff. ) may be recommended. 

Footnote 53: _Studies in Theology_, p. 239. 

Footnote 54: "There is no subject on which it is more difficult toascertain the teaching of Christ than that which relates to the futureof the kingdom. "--A. B. Bruce, _The Kingdom of God_, p. 273. 

Footnote 55: J. Agar Beet, _The Last Things_, p. 46. 

Footnote 56: Marcus Dods, _The Parables of our Lord_ (first series), p. 238. 

Footnote 57: _Cathedral and University Sermons_, p. 10. 

Footnote 58: John Watson, _The Mind of the Master_, pp. 203, 204. 

Footnote 59: See T. G. Selby's _Imperfect Angel and other Sermons_, p. 211. Cf. Zachariah Coleman in "Mark Rutherford's" _Revolution in TannersLane_: "That is a passage that I never could quite understand. I neverhardly see a pure breed, either of goat or sheep. I never see anybodywho deserves to go straight to heaven or who deserves to go straight tohell. When the Judgment Day comes it will be a difficult task. "

Footnote 60: See the very striking and beautiful chapter entitled "TheContinuity of Life" in Watson's _Mind of the Master_. 

Footnote 61: See T. G. Selby's _Ministry of the Lord Jesus_, p. 279. 

Footnote 62: R. W. Church, _Human Life and its Conditions_, p. 103. 

Footnote 63: In a striking article entitled "The Old Antinomianism andthe New" (_Congregational Review_, Jan. 1887).