once one of the worst of his enemies. Breathing out threatenings he
meets Him. "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" says Christ. He
might have added, "What have I done to you? Have I injured you in any
way? Did I not come to bless you? Why do you treat Me thus, Saul?" And
then Saul asks, "Who art thou, Lord?"
"I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest." You see, He was not
ashamed of His name, altho He had been in heaven; "I am Jesus of
Nazareth." What a change did that one interview make to Saul! A few
years afterward we hear him say, "I have suffered the loss of all
things, and do count them but dross that I may win Christ." Such a
testimony to the Savior!
But I shall go still further. I shall go away from earth into the
other world. I shall summon the angels and ask what they think of
Christ. They saw Him in the bosom of the Father before the world was.
Before the dawn of creation, before the morning stars sang together,
He was there. They saw Him leave the throne and come down to the
manger. What a scene for them to witness! Ask these heavenly beings
what they thought of Him then. For once they are permitted to speak;
for once the silence of heaven is broken. Listen to their song on the
plains of Bethlehem, "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,
which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the
city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord." He leaves the
throne to save the world. Is it a wonder the angels thought well of
Him?
Then there are the redeemed saints--they that see Him face to
face. Here on earth He was never known, no one seemed really to be
acquainted with Him; but He was known in that world where He had been
from the foundation. What do they think of Him there? If we could hear
from heaven we should hear a shout which would glorify and magnify His
name. We are told that when John was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day,
and being caught up, he heard a shout around him, ten thousand times
ten thousand, and thousands and thousands of voices, "Worthy is the
Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and
strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing!" Yes, He is worthy of
all this. Heaven cannot speak too well of Him. Oh, that earth would
take up the echo and join with heaven in singing, "Worthy to receive
power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and
blessing!"
But there is still another witness, a higher still. Some think that
the God of the Old Testament is the Christ of the New. But when Jesus
came out to Jordan, baptized by John, there came a voice from heaven.
God the Father spoke. It was His testimony to Christ: "This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Ah, yes! God the Father
thinks well of the Son. And if God is well pleased with Him, so ought
we to be. If the sinner and God are well pleased with Christ, then the
sinner and God can meet. The moment you say, as the Father said, "I am
well pleased with Him," and accept Him, you are wedded to God. Will
you not believe the testimony? Will you not believe this witness, this
last of all, the Lord of hosts, the King of kings himself? Once more
he repeats it, so that all may know it. With Peter and James and John,
on the mount of transfiguration, He cries again, "This is my beloved
Son; hear him." And that voice went echoing and reechoing through
Palestine, through all the earth from sea to sea; yes, that voice is
echoing still, Hear Him! Hear Him!
My friend will you hear Him to-day? Hark! what is He saying to you?
"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and
lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke
is easy, and my burden is light." Will you not think well of such a
Savior? Will you not believe in Him? Will you not trust in Him with
all your heart and mind? Will you not live for Him? If He laid down
His life for us, is it not the least we can do to lay down ours for
Him? If He bore the cross and died on it for me, ought I not to be
willing to take it up for Him? Oh, have we not reason to think well of
Him? Do you think it is right and noble to lift up your voice against
such a Savior? Do you think it is just to cry, "Crucify Him! crucify
Him!" Oh, may God help all of us to glorify the Father, by thinking
well of His only-begotten Son.
FOWLER
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Charles H. Fowler, Methodist Episcopal divine, was born 1837 in
Burford, Ontario, Canada, was educated at Syracuse University and the
Garrett Biblical Institute, Evanston, Ill. He was ordained in 1861
and after filling pastorates in many places was made president of
the Northwestern University in 1872, but vacated this post to become
editor of the _Christian Advocate_; four years later he was appointed
missionary secretary and in 1884 was elected bishop. He was well-known
as an able preacher and administrator. He died in 1908.
FOWLER
1837--1908
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST
_Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of
his_.--Rom. viii., 9.
I read that with the conviction that it is one of the most searching
passages that can be found in the Book of God. It takes hold of the
question of our salvation as a very substantial and thorough question.
It removes indefinitely, almost infinitely, from this problem of our
destiny, all shadow of uncertainty or of doubt. It brings us squarely
to the facts in our character. On the force of this Scripture we are
borne up on to a platform where we stand with our hearts uncovered and
naked before the eye of God.
This means that the saint must be great in the arduous greatness of
things achieved; that there is no chance for sainthood by any fixt,
imputed plan, but that our real selves shall test and make our real
future.
I never read this Scripture in the presence of a Christian
congregation without feeling that I have in some way chopped down
through every heart with a great broadaxe. There is no whitewashing
this passage: "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none
of his." Not, "He will do tolerably well, but not quite as well as he
might do"; not that he will get on after a fashion, and have quite a
respectable entrance into the city of the great King, tho he may not
push quite as far toward the front as he might have done if he had had
the Spirit of the Lord Jesus. Not that at all; but, if any man have
not the Spirit of Christ, there is not the remotest shadow of a chance
for him: "he is none of his."
And so I put this at you, asking you, on account of the great fact
that you are going hence, to so apply this critical test to your
hearts and lives that you may see and feel your need, and that you may
take hold on the great supply, and have that actual transformation of
character that will justify you in believing that you have the Spirit
of Christ.
The success of the missionary cause turns upon exactly the spirit of
this text. I have no faith in the final triumph, of the missionary
cause based upon any other ground than that of the honest, deep-down
conviction of the people of God that the Lord God of Heaven wants this
work done. I am here as a believer in a supernatural gospel--not with
philosophy that may be framed out of the human life of Jesus, but with
a religion that is based upon the supernatural life of the divine
Christ. And I appeal to you on this subject of missions as to a
company of men who believe in the divine authority of the Book of God;
who believe in a blood atonement; who believe in salvation by faith
only; who believe in the pardon of sin and in the regeneration of your
natures; who believe in the power of the Holy Ghost; who believe, in
short, in the sum and substance of an old-fashioned orthodoxy. And I
put this cause upon you as such believers, knowing that, if such
is your position, you have at least the large part of the argument
wrought into the very fiber of your being, by which you cannot stop
short of the conviction that what you have need of for your salvation
other people will need for their salvation. You know that you need a
divine Redeemer; you know that you need the divine pardoning of your
sins; you know that you need the supernatural and divine cleansing of
your hearts; you know that you need the divine, unbreakable promises;
you know that you need this Word, and the way to salvation set forth
in this Book of God, by which you know that there is none other name
given under heaven among men, whereby we must be saved. And so I
come to you as to those who have had some experience in supernatural
matters, with the cause based upon this Book of God, asking that your
experience may be made possible for the multitudes beyond, who have
not yet had this opportunity.
Let us take some of the simpler and plainer things in this question,
that we may come up to it without any hesitation. Now, I do not need
to go into the question as to what God will do with the heathen. I
don't know what He will do with them. I know as much about it as you
do, or anybody else, because I know what the Book says about it. God
knows better about this than I do, and will find a way that I cannot
dream of. But, because the words are not uttered by divine authority,
I dare not stand here and utter any word of hope for any man beyond
the gospel committed to me to preach. This I know: That if the heathen
have the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, whether they ever saw the Lord
Jesus or not, they are of His. And this I know: That if this
congregation have not the spirit of the Lord Jesus, tho it may have
seen Him, they are not of His. And this I know: That He will save a
Jew and a Gentile on the same terms; that He will do no better for the
Gentile than He will for the Jew, and no better for the Jew than for
the Gentile. And if there was no other name given under heaven among
men by which an ancient Jew or an ancient Gentile might be saved, that
is true to-day. The Lord Jesus thought that these people needed the
gospel, and that they needed it so much that He actually came and
submitted Himself unto death that they might have the gospel. And
God seems so thoroughly to believe that they need the gospel that He
actually gives His only-begotten Son to die, that they may have the
gospel. He treats the case just exactly as if He thought, at least,
that they do really need this divine Redeemer. He has done, in every
step and process of this great work of world-saving, just exactly as
He would have done had He absolutely thought and believed that they
needed a divine Redeemer.
And then I understand another thing out of the Book: That the very
last and supreme utterance of the Master on earth grew out of His
conviction that we should do exactly this thing. And see how He comes
up to it, little by little! He does not rush suddenly upon it--He does
not, upon any truth. It is not in the divine plan to flash upon us
in anything. Truths grow; moral ideas grow. They come into the race
little, and hardly able to stand at all; we can barely find them
beneath us in the lower strata of our being. But they struggle into
power and strength until they fill the field of vision. Nearly every
great truth of Old and New Testament Scripture is to be found in
the Book of Genesis. In Genesis you will find the principle of the
atonement; you will find the division of animals into clean and
unclean, foreshadowing sacrifice; you will find the principle of the
acceptance of offerings that came out of the flock, and the rejection
of the offerings out of the field; you will find the pardon of sin and
the giving of covenants--all the essential parts of the New Testament
growing with their roots away back in Genesis. There is the first
declaration of the coming of this wondrous Redeemer. It was so dim and
uncertain that it was hard to tell what it meant; somehow, somewhere,
some time, "the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." It
was so dim that our first great mother, when she had gotten her first
son, cried out in her joy, "I have gotten a man from the Lord!" She
thought she had the Redeemer, but she had only a murderer. It was
many a century before the Redeemer would come. The truth was unfolded
little by little; a little brighter it shone on the altars of the
patriarchs; it was unfolded a little more in the visions of the
prophets; was exemplified in the ceremonials of the temple; and in the
fullness of time it came with the Master and His disciples and the
outpouring of the Holy Ghost.
And then see, when the Master comes, how He takes hold of us, knowing
that we are but little, and that we have to be lifted up and enlarged
before we can take in these great truths! He says: "I have more to
tell you: you cannot bear it to-day; I will tell you to-morrow." And
so He gives lesson and instruction, and parable and illustration, all
through. His life, teaching these disciples, chosen on account of
their particular adaptation for the reception of His truth; walking
with them day by day, trying to lift their thought toward the
spiritual and the eternal; teaching them that it is not His plan to
put them on His right hand and His left, and trying to lift them up
toward a spiritual and eternal kingdom. So He keeps on all the time,
lifting them out of their littleness, saying to them later: "You shall
be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and in the
uttermost parts of the earth." They did not know what to make of that.
He was lifting them out of their narrowness. And so He pushes on still
further with them, lifting them up, until, in the supreme hour of His
earthly history--after His agony, after the cross, after He had broken
asunder the bars of the sepulcher, after He had risen, and been
declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead--He
hovers over the Church, coming down to speak to them by the sea-side
and mountain-side; appearing to them suddenly, vanishing as quickly;
offering His hands to their touch, showing His body to their vision,
yet all the time lifting them up, until He brought them to the thought
and gave to the Church the idea of His ubiquity, saying: "Lo! I am
with you alway, even unto the end of the world"; and they appreciated
the feeling that He was within hand-reach, and that this was a
spiritual kingdom, and that they could take hold upon the great
spiritual forces. And thus He lifted them up and prepared them for
His great truth, until at last, in the supreme moment of His earthly
history, we see Him yonder on the summit of the mount--the earth
beneath Him, the angels gathered above Him--with His hands spread out
over His followers, with the summit of Olivet receding beneath His
feet. He cries out to them: "All power is given unto me in heaven and
in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching
them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo!
I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." And the
unspeakable glory took Him out of their sight.
That is the supreme utterance of the Master after many a century of
preparation, opening our hearts, bringing us to this great truth, and
that this one thing He wants done is His final charge to believers: Go
everywhere; teach, preach, baptize, agonize, give, sacrifice--out to
the very ends of the earth. And lo! I am with you alway, and you shall
lack no good thing. Surely, there can be no doubt that the Master, at
least, thinks that these people have a great need for this gospel.
There are some who have an idea that salvation is to be the sum and
substance of what we are. Well, I think that way myself: that, if you
find heaven on the other side of death, you will take it over with
you; if there is any condition of peace, you will take that condition
of peace with you. Death will be no more than going over a seam in
this carpet. The moment after death will differ from the moment before
death in your essential character no more than any two consecutive
moments in your life. If you are a mean, narrow, selfish, ugly, cross
man the moment before death, you will be a mean, narrow, selfish,
ugly, cross man the moment after death. If you find a good character
over yonder, you will take it over with you. If you have a good
character to take over with you, you will have it in the Lord Jesus
Christ here. If you live on that basis, I think this is pretty safe
that those millions out yonder in the darkness, plunged in ignorance
and superstition, knowing nothing about morality and nothing about
heaven--those millions want a chance, that the same law that governs
our lives will govern theirs. I surround my boy with the best possible
opportunities; I watch every book that comes in his hands; I watch
every playmate that I possibly can that comes in his path; I see to
it, as my highest business on this footstool--higher than my call to
this pulpit--that that boy has a fair chance for heaven. If I push him
out into the alley to herd with criminals, and be dandled in the lap
of vice, and be familiar with all corruption, I have no moral right to
expect to meet him in heaven. But if I multiply advantages about him,
give him the best possible books and surroundings, make him at home
with the Lord Jesus, so that he talks about his salvation and life
eternal as he does about matters in the home, I have a good right to
expect that the King will give me His eternal peace.
Now, I think that the law that holds over my boy holds over all boys
in China and Japan and Hindustan; that, just in proportion as we
multiply the light and the favorable circumstances about them, then in
that proportion we increase their fair chance for heaven. I think it
is sound in philosophy. I believe that, just in proportion as we act
by it, we will be safe.
Now, they are plunged in darkness. They know nothing about our way
of salvation, nothing about the pardon of sin, nothing about purity,
nothing about righteousness, nothing about heaven. We want to multiply
their chances to rid themselves of sin, and to take hold upon life,
and make their way in the path of peace. And the Master seems to so
think it that He says: "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations." And
if they will believe it, as I read, they will be saved. "But how can
they believe if they have not heard? And how can they hear without a
preacher? And how can they preach except they be sent?" So the Master
says, Go, send quick, everywhere. That I take to be the teaching of
the Book concerning their needs.
But there is another side of it, and that is the side that swings in
under the passage I have read this morning, and that is our side of
it, our relation to the cause: "If any man have not the Spirit of the
Lord Jesus, he is none of his."
Now, what is the spirit of Christ? I will tell you: He came not to be
ministered unto. Please remember that. Not to see how much He could
gather into His own bosom out of the lives of others. Not to be
ministered unto; not to be petted, and dandled, and lifted along and
fed all the way, with no burden and no care and no work--not that. He
came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister; to pour out of His
life into the lives of others; to see what He could do to make others
blest; and "to give his life a ransom for many." Not merely to give
the little pittance that He could spare and not know it any more than
one would miss the farthing with which he would buy his ride on the
street car, but to give His life a ransom for many. And if any man
have not that spirit, he is none of His.
Now I preach you a doctrine of salvation by faith only, and I put the
emphasis on the word only. That is exactly what I need as a sinner: I
want some sort of release from my past transgressions that will give
me a new start. I have gotten behind; I am borrowing money to
pay interest with, and I see no way out. I must have a spiritual
bankruptcy law. Somebody must come in to my relief, or I am
everlastingly undone. And so I preach this blest doctrine of the
Book of God: "By grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of
yourselves: it (the salvation) is the gift of God." I take salvation
as a divine gift, and take it with a glad heart. It gives me a new
chance; it unhinges my present struggle for heaven from the past
transgressions of my life, and gives me an open door to heaven that I
could not reach on any other platform. And so I preach this doctrine
to sinners, knowing that it is exactly what they need.
There is another part of it that covers the question of our pardon;
that takes all my past sins and wipes them out; that gives me a new
chance for righteousness. Now mind: That pardon, that new life, that
new chance works out all the time necessarily from my finger-ends; it
shows itself in my life, absolutely, as certainly as it is there; and
if I cannot find the fruit of it in the fruits of the Spirit, in the
interest in God's cause, in patience and teachableness, in gentleness
and love, I have the absolute demonstration that I have not the thing
itself. Saved by faith, kept alive, kept saved by work, in work, by
grace in work. Let me touch that theology just a little. If you
are pardoned, you are pardoned by the Lord in a second, through
faith--when you believe, that is. Pardon is an operation in God's mind
concerning myself; you cannot pardon yourself. God pardons. If we are
pardoned He can do it in a second, when we believe.