But the signs of the times are full of hope. In social work at home,
in the progress of missions abroad, in revivals of one kind and
another, in growing reverence for holy things, in a renewed interest in
religion as the most vital of all topics, even in strange spiritual
manifestations not within the Church, we have, amid all that is
discouraging and depressing, indication of the coming kingdom. The
cry, 'Back to Christ,' with all the truth that is in it, is only half a
truth if it does not also mean 'Forward to Christ.' He is before us as
well as behind us, and the Hope of the World is the gathering together
of all things in Him. Should there be, as there has been over and over
again in days gone by, a widespread unbelief, a rejection of His Divine
Revelation, of this we may be sure--it will be only for a time. When
the sceptical physician, in Tennyson's poem, murmured:
'The good Lord Jesus has had his day,'
{213} the believing nurse made the comment:
'Had? has it come? It has only dawned: it will
come by and by.'
A thought most sad, though most inspiring. 'Only dawned.' Why is
Christianity after all these centuries only beginning to be manifested?
It is at least partly because of the apathy, the divisions, the evil
lives of us who profess and call ourselves Christians, because we have
wrangled about the secondary and the comparatively unimportant, and
have neglected the weightier matters of the law, because we have so
left to those beyond the Church the duty of proclaiming and enforcing
principles which our Lord and His Apostles put in the forefront of
their teaching. We have narrowed the Kingdom of Christ, we have
claimed too little for Him, we have forgotten that He has to do with
the secular as well as with the spiritual, that He must be King of the
Nation as well as of the Church. But now in the growing {214}
prominence of Social Questions, which so many fear as an evidence of
the waning of religion, have we not an incentive to show that the
social must be pervaded by the religious, that our duties to one
another are no small part of the Kingdom of Christ? For all sorts and
conditions of men, for masters and servants, for rulers and ruled, for
employers and employed, there is ever accumulating proof that only as
they bear themselves towards each other in the spirit of the New
Testament can there be true harmony and mutual respect; that only, in
short, as the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and
of His Christ will men in reality bear one another's burdens; that only
as the Everlasting Gospel of the Everlasting Love prevails will all
strife and contention, whether personal or political or ecclesiastical
or national, come to an end; that only as men enter into the fellowship
of that Son of Man Who came not to be {215} ministered unto but to
minister and to give His Life a ransom for many will the glorious
vision of old be fulfilled: I saw in the night vision, and behold One
like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven and came to the
Ancient of Days and they brought Him near before Him. And there was
given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all people, nations
and languages shall serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion
which shall not pass away and His kingdom that which shall not be
destroyed.
[1] In this Lecture are included some paragraphs from a sermon long out
of print, _The Witness of Scepticism to Christ_, preached before the
Synod of Lothian and Tweeddale.
[2] G. Lommel, _Jesus von Nazareth_ (quoted in Pfannmueller's _Jesus im
Urteil der Jahrhunderte_).
[3] Appendix XXIII.
[4] _Jesus in Modern Criticism_.
[5] H. Weinel, _Jesus im neunzehnten Jahrhundert_.
[6] Quoted in E. Naville, _Le Temoignage du Christ_.
[7] _First and Last Things: a Confession of Faith and Rule of Life_.
[8] Appendix XXIV.
[9] Appendix XXV.
[10] _Lux Hominum_, Preface.
[11] _Lux Hominum_, p. 84.
[12] _The Oriental Christ_.
[13] _Esoteric Christianity_.
[14] Appendix XXVI.
[15] J. Warschauer, _The New Evangel_.
[16] Appendix XXVII.
[17] Appendix XXVIII.
{219}