No doubt the explanation of their defeat which most naturally suggested
itself to these disciples would be that somehow or other--perhaps
because of Christ's absence--they had lost the gift which they knew
that they once had. And the same way of accounting for later want of
success lingers among Christian people still. You will sometimes hear
it said: 'God sends forth His Spirit in special fulness at special
times, according to His own sovereign will; and till then we can only
wait and pray.' Or, 'The miraculous powers which dwelt in the early
Church have been withdrawn, and therefore the progress is slow.' The
strong imaginative tendency to make an ideal perfect in the past
leads us to think of the primitive age of the Church as golden, in
opposition to the plain facts of the case. We fancy that because
apostles were its teachers, and the Cross within its memory, the
infant society was stronger, wiser, better than any age since, and had
gifts which we have lost. What had it which we do not possess? The
power of working miracles. What have we which it did not possess? A
completed Bible, and the experience of nineteen centuries to teach us
to understand it, and to confirm by facts our confidence that Christ's
gospel is for all time and every land. What have we in common with it?
The same mission to fulfil, the same wants in our brethren to meet, the
same gospel, the same spirit, the same immortal Lord. All that any age
has possessed to fit it for the task of witnessing for Christ we too
possess. The Church has in it a power which is ever adequate to the
conquest of the world; and that power is constant through all time,
whether we consider it as recorded in an unvarying gospel, or as
energised by an abiding spirit, or as flowing from and centred in an
unchangeable Lord.
We have a gospel which never can grow old. Its adaptation to the
deepest needs of men's souls remains constant with these needs.
These vary not from age to age. No matter what may be the superficial
differences of dress, the same human heart beats beneath every robe.
The great primal wants of men's spirits abide, as the great primal
wants of their bodily life abide. Food and shelter for the one,--a
loving, pardoning God, to know and love, for the other--else they
perish. Wherever men go they carry with them a conscience which needs
cleansing, a sense of separation from God joined with a dim knowledge
that union with Him is life, a will which is burdened with its own
selfhood, an imagination which paints the misty walls of this earthly
prison with awful shapes that terrify and faint hopes that mock, a
heart that hungers for love, and a reason which pines in atrophy
without light. And all these the gospel which is lodged in our hands
meets. It addresses itself to nothing in men that is not in man.
Surface differences of position, culture, clime, age, and the like,
it brushes aside as unimportant, and it goes straight to the universal
wants. People tell us it has done its work, and much confident dogmatism
proclaims that the world has outgrown it. We have a right to be
confident also, with a confidence born of our knowledge, that it has
met and satisfied for us the wants which are ours and every man's, and
to believe that as long as men live by bread, so long will this word
which proceedeth out of the mouth of God be the food of their souls.
Areopagus and Piccadilly, Benares and Oxford, need the same message
and will find the same response to all their wants in the same word.
Many of the institutions in which Christendom has embodied its
conceptions of God's truth will crumble away. Many of the
conceptions will have to be modified, neglected truths will grow, to
the dislocation of much systematic theology, and the Word better
understood will clear away many a portentous error with which the
Church has darkened the Word. Be it so. Let us be glad when 'the
things which can be shaken are removed,' like mean huts built
against the wall of some cathedral, masking and marring the
completeness of its beauty; 'that the things which cannot be shaken
may remain,' and all the clustered shafts, and deep-arched recesses,
and sweet tracery may stand forth freed from the excrescences which
hid them.
'The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away. But the
word of the Lord endureth for ever.'
We have an abiding Spirit, the Giver to us of a power without
variableness or the shadow of turning, 'I will pray the Father, and
He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for
ever.' The manner of His operations may vary, but the reality of His
energy abides. The 'works' of wonder which Jesus did on earth may no
more be done, but the greater works than these are still the sign of
_His_ presence, without whom no spiritual life is possible.
Prophecies may fail, tongues may cease, but the more excellent gifts
are poured out now as richly as ever. We are apt to look back to
Pentecost and think that that marked a height to which the tide has
never reached since, and therefore we are stranded amidst the ooze
and mud. But the river which proceeds from the throne of God and of
the Lamb is not like one of our streams on earth, that leaps to the
light and dashes rejoicingly down the hillside, but creeps along
sluggish in its level course, and dies away at last in the sands. It
pours along the ages the same full volume with which it gushed forth
at first. Rather, the source goes with the Church in all ages, and
we drink not of water that came forth long ago in the history of the
world, and has reached us through the centuries, but of that which
wells out fresh every moment from the Rock that follows us. The
Giver of all power is with us.
We have a Lord, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. 'Lo, I
am with you alway, even to the end of the world.' We have not merely
to look back to the life and death of Christ in history, and
recognise there the work, the efficacy of which shall endure for
ever. But whilst we do this, we have also to think of the Christ
'that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also
maketh intercession for us.' And the one thought, as the other,
should strengthen our confidence in our possession of all the might
that we need for bringing the world back to our Lord.
A work in the past which can never be exhausted or lose its power is
the theme of our message. The mists of gathering ages wrap in slowly
thickening folds of forgetfulness all other men and events in
history, and make them ghostlike and shadowy; but no distance has
yet dimmed or will ever dim that human form divine. Other names are
like those stars that blaze out for a while, and then smoulder down
into almost complete invisibility; but He is the very Light itself,
that burns and is not consumed. Other landmarks sink below the
horizon as the tribes of men pursue their solemn march through the
centuries, but the Cross on Calvary 'shall stand for an ensign of
the people, and to it shall the Gentiles seek.' To proclaim that
accomplished salvation, once for all lodged in the heart of the
world's history, and henceforth for ever valid, is our unalterable
duty. The message carries in itself its own immortal strength.
A living Saviour in the present, who works with us, confirming the
word with signs following, is the source of our power. Not till He is
impotent shall we be weak. The unmeasurable measure of the gift of
Christ defines the degree, and the unending duration of His life who
continueth for ever sets the period, of our possession of the grace
which is given to every one of us. He is ever bestowing. He never
withdraws what He once gives. The fountain sinks not a hairs-breadth,
though nineteen centuries have drawn from it. Modern astronomy begins
to believe that the sun itself by long expense of light will be shorn
of its beams and wander darkling in space, circled no more by its
daughter planets. But this Sun of our souls rays out for ever the
energies of life and light and love, and after all communication
possesses the infinite fulness of them all. 'His name shall be
continued as long as the sun; all nations shall call Him blessed.'
Here then, brethren, are the perpetual elements of our constant
power, an eternal Word, an abiding Spirit, an unchanging Lord.