'I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift.'
Paul knew that he had something which he could give to these people,
and he calls it by a very comprehensive term, 'some spiritual
gift'--a gift of some sort which, coming from the Divine Spirit, was
to be received into the human spirit.
Now that expression--a spiritual gift--in the New Testament has a
variety of applications. Sometimes it refers to what we call
miraculous endowments, sometimes it refers to what we may call
official capacity; but here it is evidently neither the one nor the
other of these more limited and special things, but the general idea
of a divine operation upon the human spirit which fills it with
Christian graces--knowledge, faith, love. Or, in simpler words, what
Paul wanted to give them was a firmer grasp and fuller possession of
Jesus Christ, His love and power, which would secure a deepening and
strengthening of their whole Christian life. He was quite sure he had
this to give, and that he could impart it, if they would listen to
what he would say to them. But whilst thus he rises into the lofty
conception of the purpose and possible result of his meeting the
Roman Christians, he is just as conscious of the limitations of his
power in the matter as he is of the greatness of his function. These
are indicated plainly. The word which he employs here, 'gift' is
never used in the New Testament for a thing that one man can give to
another, but is always employed for the concrete results of the grace
of God bestowed upon men. The very expression, then, shows that Paul
thought of himself, not as the original giver, but simply as a
channel through which was communicated what God had given. In the
same direction points the adjective which accompanies the noun--a
'_spiritual_ gift'--which probably describes the origin of the gift
as being the Spirit of God, rather than defines the seat of it when
received as being the spirit of the receiver. Notice, too, as bearing
on the limits of Paul's part in the gift, the propriety and delicacy
of the language in his statement of the ultimate purpose of the gift.
He does not say 'that I may strengthen you,' which might have sounded
too egotistical, and would have assumed too much to himself, but he
says 'that ye may be strengthened,' for the true strengthener is not
Paul, but the Spirit of God.
So, on the one hand, the Christian teacher is bound to rise to the
height of the consciousness of his lofty vocation as having in
possession a gift that he can bestow; on the other hand, he is bound
ever to remember the limitations within which that is true--viz. that
the gift is not his, but God's, and that the Spirit of the Lord is
the true Giver of all the graces which may blossom when His word,
ministered by human agents, is received into human hearts.
And, now, what are the lessons that I take from this? Two very simple
ones. First, no Christian teacher has any business to open his mouth,
unless he is sure that he has received something to impart to men as
a gift from the Divine Spirit. To preach our doubts, to preach our
own opinions, to preach poor platitudes, to talk about politics and
morals and taste and literature and the like in the pulpit, is
profanation and blasphemy. Let no man open his lips unless he can
say: 'The Lord hath showed me this; and this I bring to you as His
word.' Nor has a Christian organisation any right to exist, unless it
recognises the communication and reception and further spreading of
this spiritual gift as its great function. Churches which have lost
that consciousness, and, instead of a divine gift, have little more
to offer than formal worship, or music, or entertainments, or mere
intellectual discourse, whether orthodox or 'advanced,' have no right
to be; and by the law of the survival of the fittest will not long
be. The one thing that warrants such a relationship as subsists
between you and me is this, my consciousness that I have a message
from God, and your belief that you hear such from my lips. Unless
that be our bond the sooner these walls crumble, and this voice
ceases, and these pews are emptied, the better. 'I have,' says, Paul,
'a gift to impart; and I long to see you that I may impart it to
you.' Oh! for more, in all our pulpits, of that burdened
consciousness of a divine message which needs the relief of speech,
and longs with a longing caught from Christ to impart its richest
treasures.
That is the one lesson. And the other one is this. Have you, dear
friends, received the gift that I have, under the limitations already
spoken of, to bestow? There are some of you who have listened to my
voice ever since you were children--some of you, though not many,
have heard it for well on to thirty years. Have you taken the thing
that all these years I have been--God knows how poorly, but God knows
how honestly--trying to bring to you? That is, have you taken Christ,
and have you faith in Him? And, as for those of you who say that
you are Christians, many blessings have passed between you and me
through all these years; but, dear friends, has the chief blessing
been attained? Are you being strengthened day by day for the burdens
and the annoyances and the sorrows of life by your coming here? Do I
do you any good in that way; are you better men than when we first
met together? Is Christ dearer, and more real and nearer to you; and
are your lives more transparently consecrated, more manifestly the
result of a hidden union with Him? Do you walk in the world like the
Master, because you are members of this congregation? If so, its
purpose has been accomplished. If not, it has miserably failed.
I have said that I have to thank God for the unbroken affection that
has knit us together. But what is the use of such love if it does not
lead onwards to this? I have had enough, and more than enough, of
what you call popularity and appreciation, undeserved enough, but
rendered unstintedly by you. I do not care the snap of a finger for
it by comparison with this other thing. And oh, dear brethren! if all
that comes of our meeting here Sunday after Sunday is either praise
or criticism of my poor words and ways, our relationship is a curse,
and not a blessing, and we come together for the worse and not for
the better. The purpose of the Church, and the purpose of the
ministry, and the meaning of our assembling are, that spiritual gifts
may be imparted, not by me alone, but by you, too, and by me in my
place and measure, and if that purpose be not accomplished, all other
purposes, that are accomplished, are of no account, and worse than
nothing.
III. And now, lastly, note the lowly consciousness that much was to
be received as well as much to be given.
The Apostle corrects himself after he has said 'that I may impart
unto you some spiritual gift,' by adding, 'that is, that I may be
comforted (or rather, encouraged) together with you by the mutual
faith both of you and me.' If his language were not so transparently
sincere, and springing from deep interest in the relationship between
himself and these people, we should say that it was exquisite
courtesy and beautiful delicacy. But it moves in a region far more
real than the region of courtesy, and it speaks the inmost truth
about the conditions on which the Roman Christians should
receive--viz. that they should also give. There is only one Giver who
is only a Giver, and that is God. All other givers are also
receivers. Paul desired to see his Roman brethren that he might be
encouraged; and when he did see them, as he marched along the Appian
Way, a shipwrecked prisoner, the Acts of the Apostles tells us, 'He
thanked God and took courage.' The sight of them strengthened him and
prepared him for what lay before him.
Paul's was a richly complicated nature--firm as a rock in its will,
tremulously sensitive in its sympathies; like some strongly-rooted
tree with its stable stem and a green cloud of fluttering foliage
that moves in the lightest air. So his spirit rose and fell according
to the reception that he met from his brethren, and the manifestation
of their faith quickened and strengthened his.
And he is but one instance of a universal law. All teachers, the more
genuine they are, the more sympathetic they are, are the more
sensitive of their environment. The very oratorical temperament
places a man at the mercy of surroundings. All earnest work has ever
travelling with it as its shadow seasons of deep depression; and the
Christian teacher does not escape these. I am not going to speak
about myself, but this is unquestionably true, that every Elijah,
after the mightiest effort of prophecy, is apt to cover his head in
his mantle and to say, 'Take me away; I am not better than my
fathers.' And when a man for thirty years, amidst all the changes
incident to a great city congregation in that time, has to stand up
Sunday after Sunday before the same people, and mark how some of them
are stolidly indifferent, and note how others are dropping away
from their faithfulness, and see empty places where loving forms used
to sit--no wonder that the mood comes ever and anon, 'Then, said I,
surely I have laboured in vain and spent my strength for nought.' The
hearer reacts on the speaker quite as much as the speaker does on the
hearer. If you have ice in the pews, that brings down the temperature
up here. It is hard to be fervid amidst people that are all but dead.
It is difficult to keep a fire alight when it is kindled on the top
of an iceberg. And the unbelief and low-toned religion of a
congregation are always pulling down the faith and the fervour of
their minister, if he be better and holier, as they expect him to be,
than they are.
'He did not many works because of their unbelief.' Christ knew the
hampering and the restrictions of His power which came from being
surrounded by a chill, unsympathetic environment. My strength and my
weakness are largely due to you. And if you want your minister to
preach better, and in all ways to do his work more joyfully and
faithfully, the means lie largely in your own hands. Icy
indifference, ill-natured interpretations, carping criticisms, swift
forgetfulness of one's words, all these things kill the fervour of
the pulpit.
On the other hand, the true encouragement to give a man when he is
trying to do God's will, to preach Christ's Gospel, is not to pat him
on the back and say, 'What a remarkable sermon that was of yours!
what a genius! what an orator!' not to go about praising it, but to
come and say, 'Thy words have led me to Christ, and from thee I have
taken the gift of gifts.'
Dear brethren, the encouragement of the minister is in the conversion
and the growth of the hearers. And I pray that in this new lease of
united fellowship which we have taken out, be it longer or
shorter--and advancing years tell me that at the longest it must be
comparatively short--I may come to you ever more and more with the
lofty and humbling consciousness that I have a message which Christ
has given to me, and that you may come more and more receptive--not
of _my_ words, God forbid--but of Christ's truth; and that so we
may be helpers one of another, and encourage each other in the
warfare and work to which we all are called and consecrated.
[Footnote 1: Preached after long absence on account of illness.]