_THE CONVERSATIONS OF THE GREAT FORTY DAYS._
"They therefore, when they were come together, asked Him, saying,
Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And
He said unto them, It is not for you to know times or seasons,
which the Father hath set within His own authority. But ye shall
receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall
be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa and Samaria,
and unto the uttermost part of the earth."--ACTS i. 6-9.
The conversations and intercourse between our Lord and His apostles
during the forty days which elapsed from the resurrection to the
ascension must have been of intensest interest, yet, like so much that
we should esteem interesting concerning the heroes of Scripture and
their lives, these things are wrapped round with thickest darkness. We
get a glimpse of the risen Christ here and there. We are told He was
conversing with His disciples touching the things concerning the
kingdom of God. And then we are practically referred to the Acts of
the Apostles if we wish to know what topics His resurrection
discourses dealt with. And when we do so refer to the Acts we find
that His disciples moved along the line of Christian development with
steps sure, unfaltering, and decided, because they doubtless felt
themselves nerved by the well-remembered directions, the conscious
guidance of the Eternal Son of God, vouchsafed in the commandments
given by Him in the power of the Holy Ghost.
Let us reflect for a little on the characteristics of Christ's risen
appearances to His disciples. I note then in the first place that they
were intermittent, and not continuous,--here and there, to Mary
Magdalene at one time; to the disciples journeying to Emmaus, to the
assembled twelve, to five hundred brethren at once, at other times.
Such were the manifestations of our Lord; and some may feel inclined
to cavil at them, and ask, Why did He not dwell continuously and
perpetually with His disciples as before His resurrection? And yet,
reading our narrative in the light of other scriptures, we might
expect the resurrection appearances of Christ to have been of this
description. In one place in the Gospel narrative we read that our
Lord replied thus to a section of His adversaries: "In the
resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as
angels in heaven." Now we often read of angelic appearances in Holy
Scripture, in the Old and New Testament alike. We read too of
appearances of Old Testament saints, as of Moses and Elias on the
Mount of Transfiguration. And they are all like those of our Lord
Jesus Christ after His resurrection. They are sudden, independent of
time or space or material barriers, and yet are visible and tangible
though glorified. Such in Genesis was Abraham's vision of angels at
the tent door, when they did eat and drink with him. Such was Lot's
vision of angels who came and lodged with him in wicked Sodom. Such
was Peter's vision when an angel released him, guided him through the
intricate mazes of Jerusalem's streets; and such were Christ's
appearances when, as on this occasion, His disciples, now accustomed
to His risen and glorified form, tested Him as of old with the
question, "Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to
Israel?"
I. _Now let us here notice the naturalness of this query concerning
the restoration of the kingdom._ The Apostles evidently shared the
national aspirations of the Jews at that time. A large number of books
have come to light of late years, which show what a keen expectation
of the Messiah's kingdom and His triumph over the Romans existed at
the time, and prior to the time, of our Saviour. The book of Enoch,
discovered one hundred years ago in Abyssinia, and translated into
English in the beginning of the present century, was written a century
at least before the Incarnation.[20] The book of Jubilees was written
in Palestine about the time of our Lord's birth; the Psalter of
Solomon dates from the same period. All these works give us clearest
glimpses into the inner mind, the religious tone, of the Jewish nation
at that time.[21] The pious unsophisticated people of Galilee were
daily expecting the establishment of the Messianic kingdom; but the
kingdom they expected was no spiritual institution, it was simply an
earthly scene of material glory, where the Jews would once again be
exalted above all surrounding nations, and the hated invader expelled
from the fair plains of Israel. We can scarcely realize or understand
the force and naturalness of this question, "Dost Thou at this time
restore the kingdom to Israel?" as put by these Galilean peasants till
one takes up Archbishop Laurence's translation of the book of Enoch,
and sees how this eager expectation dominated every other feeling in
the Jewish mind of that period, and was burned into the very secrets
of their existence by the tyranny of Roman rule. Thus, let us take the
forty-seventh chapter of the book of Enoch, which may very possibly
have been in the thoughts of the Apostles as they presented this query
to their Lord. In that chapter we read the following words, attributed
unto Enoch: "There I beheld the Ancient of Days, whose head was like
white wool; and with Him another, whose countenance resembled that of
man. His countenance was full of grace, like that of one of the holy
angels. Then I inquired of one of the angels who went with me, and who
showed me every secret thing concerning this Son of Man, who He was,
whence He was, and why He accompanied the Ancient of Days. He answered
and said to me, This is the Son of Man, to whom righteousness belongs,
with whom righteousness has dwelt, and who will reveal all the
treasures of that which is concealed. For the Lord of Spirits has
chosen Him, and His portion has surpassed all before the Lord of
Spirits in everlasting uprightness. This Son of Man whom thou
beholdest shall raise up kings and the mighty from their couches, and
the powerful from their thrones; shall loosen the bridles of the
powerful, and break in pieces the teeth of sinners. He shall hurl
kings from their thrones and their dominions, because they will not
exalt and praise Him, nor humble themselves before Him, by whom their
kingdoms were granted to them. The countenance likewise of the mighty
shall He cast down, filling them with confusion. Darkness shall be
their habitation, and worms shall be their bed; nor from that their
bed shall they hope to be again raised, because they exalted not the
Name of the Lord of Spirits." This is one specimen of the Messianic
expectations, which were just then worked up to fever pitch among the
Galileans especially, and were ever leading them to burst out into
bloody rebellion against the power of the Romans. We might multiply
such quotations fourfold did our space permit. This one extract must
suffice to show the tone and quality of the religious literature upon
which the souls of the Apostles had fed and been sustained, when they
proposed this query, "Dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to
Israel?" They were thinking simply of such a kingdom as the book of
Enoch foretold.
[20] The book of Enoch was translated into English by Archbishop
Laurence, and was first published about seventy years ago. There
is an exhaustive article on the subject in the second volume of
the _Dictionary of Christian Biography_, written by Professor
Lipsius of Jena.
[21] The book of Jubilees has never been published in English. An
interesting account of it will be found in the later editions of
Kitto's _Biblical Cyclopædia_. The reader will find another
account of the book of Jubilees in the _Dict. Christ. Biog._, iv.,
507. The Psalms of Solomon are contained in the _Cod. Pseud. Vet.
Test._ of J. A. Fabricius. There is a brief notice of them in the
_Dict. Chris. Biog._, iv., 508, under the title "Pseudepigrapha."
This very point seems to us one of the special and most striking
evidences for the inspiration and supernatural direction of the
writers of the New Testament. Their natural, purely human, and
national conception of the kingdom of God was one thing; their final,
their divinely taught and inspired conception of that kingdom is quite
another thing. I cannot see how, upon any ground of mere human
experience or human development, the Apostles could have risen from
the gross, material conceptions of the book of Enoch, wherein the
kingdom of the Messiah would have simply been a purified, reformed,
and exalted copy of the Roman Empire of that day, to the spiritual and
truly catholic idea of a kingdom not of this world, which ruled over
spirits rather than over bodies.[22] Some persons maintain that
Christianity in its doctrines, organisation, and discipline was but
the outcome of natural forces working in the world at that epoch. But
take this doctrine alone, "My kingdom is not of this world," announced
by Christ before Pilate, and impressed upon the Apostles by revelation
after revelation, and experience after experience, which they only
very gradually assimilated and understood. Where did it come from? How
was it the outcome of natural forces? The whole tendency of Jewish
thought was in the opposite direction. Nationalism of the most narrow,
particular, and limited kind was the predominant idea, specially among
those Galilean provincials who furnished the vast majority of the
earliest disciples of Jesus Christ. Our minds have been so steeped in
the principles of Christian liberalism, we have been so thoroughly
taught the rejection of race-prejudice, that we can scarcely realize
the narrow and limited ideas which must have ruled the minds of the
first Christians, and therefore we miss the full force of this
argument for the Divine character of the Christian religion. A Roman
Catholic peasant from Connaught, an Ulster Orangeman, a Celtic
Presbyterian Highlander, none of these will take a wide, tolerant,
generous view of religion. They view the question through their own
narrow provincial spectacles. And yet any one of them would have been
broad, liberal, and comprehensive when contrasted with the tone and
thought of the Galilean provincials of our Lord's day. They lived
lonely, solitary lives, away from the din, the pressure, and the
business of daily life; they knew nothing of what the great outside
world was thinking and doing; they fed their spirits on the glories of
the past, and had no room in their gloomy fanaticism for aught that
was liberal and truly spiritual. How could men like them have
developed the idea of the Catholic Church, boundless as the earth
itself, limited by no hereditary or fleshly bonds, and trammelled by
no circumstances of race, climate, or kindred? The magnificence of the
idea, the grandeur of the conception, is the truest and most
sufficient evidence of the divinity of its origin. "In Christ Jesus
there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female," the
rapt expression of an inspired and illuminated Apostle, when compared
with this query, "Dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to
Israel?" the darkened utterance of carnal and uninspired minds groping
after truth, furnishes to the thinking soul the clearest evidence of
the presence of a supernatural power, of a Divine enlightenment,
vouchsafed to the Apostles upon the Day of Pentecost. If this higher
knowledge, this nobler conception, this spiritualised ideal, came not
from God, whence did it come?
[22] The strongest argument, from a mere literary point of view,
for the existence of a supernatural element in Christianity and
primitive Christian literature will be derived from a contrast
between the Jewish literature of the period of the Christian era
and the New Testament. Take, for instance, the book of Jubilees.
It was written about the time of our Lord, and probably in
Galilee. It represents the current tone of Jewish religion, and
shows us, with its narrowness and absurdities, what the New
Testament would have been had it been the product of unassisted
human nature. The book of Jubilees or of Enoch is the strongest
argument for the inspiration of the New Testament. I cannot even
imagine what explanation can be offered of the difference in tone
between the Christian and the Jewish writings save that of the
inspiration of the Christian.
I do not think we can press this point of the catholicity and
universality of the Christian idea and the Christian society too far.
We cannot possibly make too much of it. There were undoubtedly
Christian elements, or elements whence Christian ideas were developed,
prevalent in the current Judaism of the day. Many a clause of the
Lord's Prayer and of the Sermon on the Mount can be paralleled almost
word for word from the Jewish teachers and writings of the times
immediately preceding our Lord. There was nothing in Christ of that
petty vanity of little minds which craves after complete originality,
and which will be nothing if not completely new. He was indeed the
wise and the good householder, who brought forth out of His treasures
things old as well as things new. Many a teacher and thinker, like
Philo, whose ideas had been broadened by the Divine training of
banishment and enforced exile in Alexandria or in Asia Minor, had
risen to nobler and wider views than were current in Palestine. But it
was not among these, or such as these, that the catholic ideas of the
gospel took their rise. Christianity took its rise among men whose
ideas, whose national aspirations, whose religious hopes, were of the
narrowest and most limited kind; and yet, amid such surroundings and
planted in such a soil, Christianity assumed at once a world-wide
mission, rejected at once and peremptorily all mere Judaic
exclusiveness, and claimed for itself the widest scope and
development. The universality of the Gospel message, the
comprehensive, all-embracing character of the Gospel teaching, as set
forth in our Lord's parting words, is, we conclude, an ample evidence
of its Divine and superhuman origin.
II. _In this passage again there lies hidden the wisest practical
teaching for the Church of all ages._ We have warnings against the
folly which seeks to unravel the future and penetrate that veil of
darkness by which our God in mercy shrouds the unknown. We have
taught us the benefits which attend the uncertainties of our Lord's
return and of the end of this present dispensation. "It is not for you
to know times or seasons." Let us endeavour to work out this point,
together with the manifold illustrations of it which the history of
the Church affords.
(_a_) The wisdom of the Divine answer will best be seen if we take the
matter thus, and suppose our Lord to have responded to the apostolic
appeal fixing some definite date for the winding-up of man's probation
state, and for that manifestation of the sons of God which will take
place at His appearing and His kingdom. Our Lord, in fixing upon some
such definite date, must have chosen one that was either near at hand
or else one that was removed far off into the distant future. In
either of these cases He must have defeated the great object of the
Divine society which He was founding. That object was simply this, to
teach men how to lead the life of God amid the children of men. The
Christian religion has indeed sometimes been taunted with being an
unpractical religion, turning men's eyes and attention from the
pressing business and interests of daily life to a far-away spiritual
state with which man has nothing to do, at least for the present. But
is this the case? Has Christianity proved itself unpractical? If so,
what has placed Christendom at the head of civilization? The
tendencies of great principles are best shown in the actions of vast
masses. Individuals may be better or worse than their creeds, but if
we wish to see the average result of doctrines we must take their
adherents in the mass and enquire as to their effect on them. Here,
then, is where we may triumph. The religions of Greece and of Rome are
identical in principle, and even in their deities, with the paganism
of India, as the investigations of comparative historians have
abundantly shown.[23] Compare Christendom and India from the simply
practical point of view, and which can show the better record? The
paganism of India, Persia, and Western Asia was the parent of the
paganism of Greece and Rome. The child has passed away and given place
to a noble and spiritual religion, while the parent still remains. And
now what is the result? Can the boldest deny that while barbarism,
decay, and death reign over the realms of Asiatic paganism, though
starting with every advantage upon its side, concerning the religion
of the Cross, which is taunted with being an unpractical religion, and
concerning that religion alone, can it be said in the language of the
rapt Jewish seer, "Wheresoever the waters of that river have come,
behold there is life," and that the fair plains, and crowded cities,
and the massive material development and civilisation of Europe and of
America alike proclaim the truth, that Christianity has the promise of
the life which now is as well as of that which is to come?
[23] The most curious instance of the essential identity of the
nature deities of the West and East will be found in Mithraism.
The worship of Mithras was originally the worship of the sun. It
started from India, passed into Persia, thence found its way to
Asia Minor, and about 70 B.C. was introduced into Rome, where it
became, about A.D. 200, the great rival of Christianity, imitating
the sacraments of baptism and holy communion in rites of its own.
Mithraism easily combined with the worship of Apollo, or the
Sun-God. Apollo, Mithras, and Baal were fundamentally one and the
same. Tertullian, Justin Martyr, and Origen call Mithraism a
demoniacal imitation of Christianity. See more on this point in
the article on Mithras in the _Dictionary of Christian Biography_,
vol. iii., p. 925.
(_b_) Our Lord's answer to His Apostles was couched in words suited to
develop this practical aspect of His religion. It refused to minister
to mere human curiosity, and left men uncertain as to the time of His
return, that they might be fruitful workers in the great field of
life. And now behold what ill results would have followed had He acted
otherwise! The Master in fact says, It is not well for you to know the
times or seasons, because such knowledge would strike at the root of
practical Christianity. Uncertainty as to the time of the end is the
most healthful state for the followers of Christ. Christ holds out the
prospect of His own return for a twofold purpose: first, to comfort
His people under the daily troubles of life--"Rejoice in the Lord
alway: again I will say, Rejoice. Let your forbearance be known unto
all men. The Lord is at hand;" "Whatever our hope or joy or crown of
glorying, are not even ye, before our Lord Jesus Christ at His
coming;" "If we believe that Jesus Christ died and rose again, even so
them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with
Him,"--these and dozens of other passages, which will recur in a
moment to every student of St. Paul's writings, prove the power to
comfort and sustain exercised by the doctrine of Christ's second
coming. But there was another and still more powerful influence
exercised by this doctrine. It stirred men up to perpetual
watchfulness and untiring care. "Watch, therefore, for ye know neither
the day nor the hour;" "Therefore be ye also ready, for in an hour
that ye think not the Son of man cometh;" "The night is far spent, the
day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and
let us put on the armour of light,"--these and many a similar
exhortation of the Master and of his chosen Apostles alike, indicate
to us that another great object of this doctrine was to keep
Christians perpetually alive with an intense anxiety and a sleepless
watchfulness directed towards the person and appearing of Christ. The
construction of the gospel narrative shows this.
(_c_) There are in the New Testament, taken as a whole, two contrasted
lines of prophecy concerning the Second Coming of Christ. If in one
place the Lord Jesus speaks as if the date of His coming were fixed
for His own generation and age, "Verily, I say unto you, this
generation shall not pass away till all these things shall be
fulfilled," in the very same context He indicates that it is only
_after a long time_ that the Lord of the servants will return, to take
account of their dealings with the property entrusted to them. If St.
Paul in one place seems to indicate to the Thessalonians the speedy
appearing of Christ and the end of the dispensation, in another
epistle he corrects such a misapprehension of his meaning. If the
Revelation of St. John in one place represents the awful Figure who
moves amid the Churches, watching their works and spying out their
secret sins, as saying, "Behold, I come quickly," the same book
pictures a long panorama of events, extending over vast spaces of
time, destined yet to elapse before the revelation of the city of God
and the final triumph of the saints. The doctrine of Christ's second
appearing is like many another doctrine in the New Testament. Like the
doctrine of God's election, which is undoubtedly there, and yet side
by side with election appears as really and truly the doctrine of
man's free will; like the doctrine of God's eternal and almighty love,
side by side with which appears the existence of a personal devil, and
of an abounding iniquity and sorrow which seems to contradict this
doctrine; like the doctrine of the Godhead itself, where the Unity of
the Divine Nature is most clearly taught, yet side by side therewith
appears the manifold personality of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as
existing in that Nature;--so too is it in the case of the doctrine of
Christ's Second Coming. We have a twofold antinomy. In one line of
prophecy we have depicted the nearness and suddenness of Christ's
appearing; in another line we behold that tremendous event thrown into
the dim and distant future. And what is the result upon the human mind
of such opposite views? It is a healthy, useful, practical result. We
are taught the certainty of the event, and the uncertainty of the time
of that event; so that hope is stirred, comfort ministered, and
watchfulness evoked. We can see this more clearly by imagining the
opposite. Suppose Christ had responded to the spirit of the apostolic
query, "Dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" and
fixed the precise date of His coming? He would in that case have
altogether defeated the great end of His own work and labour. Suppose
He had fixed it a thousand years from the time of His Ascension. Then
indeed the doctrine of Christ's Second Coming would have lost all
personal and practical power over the lives of the generation of
Christians then living, or who should live during the hundreds of
years which were to elapse till the date appointed. The day of their
death, the uncertainty of life, these would be the inspiring motives
to activity and devotion felt by the early Christians; while, as a
matter of fact, St. Paul never appeals to either of them, but ever
appeals to the coming of Christ and His appearing to judgment as the
motives to Christian zeal and diligence. But a more serious danger in
any such prediction lurks behind. What would have been the result of
any such precise prophecy upon the minds of the Christians who lived
close to the time of its fulfilment? It would have at once defeated
the great end of the Christian religion, as we have already defined
it. The near approach of the great final catastrophe would have
completely paralysed all exertion, and turned the members of Christ's
Church into idle, useless, unpractical religionists. We all know how
the near approach of any great event, how the presence of any great
excitement, hinders life's daily work. A great joy or a great sorrow,
either of them is utterly inconsistent with tranquil thought, with
steady labour, with persistent and profitable exertions. The
expectation of some tremendous change, whether it be for happiness or
misery, creates such a flutter in the spirit that steady application
is simply out of the question. So would it have been in our supposed
case. As the time fixed for the appearance of our Lord drew nigh, all
work, business, labour, the manifold engagements of life, the rearing
of families, the culture of the ground, the development of trade and
commerce, would be considered a grand impertinence, and man's powers
and man's life would be prostrated in view of the approaching
catastrophe.
(_d_) Again and again has history verified and amply justified the
wisdom of the Master's reply, "It is not for you to know times or
seasons." It was justified in apostolic experience. The Second Epistle
to the Thessalonians is a commentary on our Lord's teaching in this
passage. The Christians of Thessalonica imbibed the notion from St.
Paul's words that Christ's appearance to judgment was at hand. Perhaps
St. Paul's words in his first Epistle led them into the mistake. The
Apostle was not infallible on all questions. He was richly inspired,
but he knew nothing of the future save what was expressly revealed,
and beyond such express revelations he could only surmise and guess
like other men.[24] The Thessalonians, however, were led by him to
expect the immediate appearance of Christ, and the result was just
what I have depicted. The transcendent event, which they thought
impending, paralyzed exertion, destroyed honest and useful labour,
scandalized the gospel cause, and compelled St. Paul to use the
sternest, sharpest words of censure and rebuke. The language of St.
Paul completely justifies our line of argument. He tells us that the
spirits of the Thessalonians had been upset, the natural result of a
great expectation had been experienced as we might humanly have
predicted. The beginning of the second chapter of his Second Epistle
proves this: "Now we beseech you, brethren, touching the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto Him; to the end
that ye be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled,
either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as from us, as that the
day of the Lord is present." See here how he dwells on mental
perturbation as the result of high-strung expectation; and that is
bad, for mental peace, not mental disturbance, is the portion of
Christ's people. Then again he indicates another result of which we
have spoken as natural under such circumstances. Idleness and its long
train of vices had followed hard upon the mental strain which found
place for a time at Thessalonica, and so in the third chapter of the
Epistle he writes, "Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that
walketh disorderly;" and then he defines the disorderliness of which
he complains, "For we hear of some that walk among you disorderly,
that work not at all, but are busybodies." Or, to put the matter in a
concise shape, and interpret St. Paul into modern language, the
expectation of the near approach of the judgment and the personal
appearing of Christ had upset the spirits of the Thessalonians; it had
so fluttered them they could not attend to ordinary business. Human
nature then asserted itself. Idleness resulted from the mental
disturbance. Idleness begot gossip, disorder, and scandals. The idlers
indeed professed that they ceased from labour in order to give their
whole attention to devotion. But St. Paul knew that there was no
incompatibility between work and prayer, while he was convinced there
was the closest union between idleness and sin. Idleness put on an
appearance of great spirituality, but St. Paul effectually met the
difficulty. He knew that an idler, no matter how spiritual he
pretended to be, must eat, and so he strikes at the root of such mock
religion by laying down, "If any will not work, neither let him
eat,"--a good healthy practical rule, which soon restored the moral
and spiritual tone of the Macedonian Church to its normal condition.
[24] The miraculous gifts of the Spirit possessed by the Apostles
did not guard them against mistakes as to the future, nor override
the exercise of private judgment and common sense, nor enable them
to work miracles or cure sicknesses for their own purposes. St.
Paul, for instance, was obliged to depend upon the assistance of
St. Luke when he was ill. The miraculous powers were restrained,
as in our Lord's example, to cases where God's glory was specially
advanced by their exercise.
(_e_) The experiences of Thessalonica have been often repeated down
through the ages till we come to our own day. I remember a curious
instance that I once read of exactly the same spirit, and exactly the
same method of cure, as St. Paul used, in the case of an Egyptian
monastery in the fifth century. The monks were then divided into two
classes. There were monks who laboured diligently and usefully in
communities, and there were others who lived idle lives as solitaries,
pretending to a spirituality too great to permit them to engage in
secular pursuits. A solitary one day entered a monastery presided over
by a wise abbot. He found the monks all diligently employed, and,
addressing them from his superior standpoint, said, "Labour not for
the meat that perisheth." "That is very good, brother," said the
abbot. "Take our brother away to his cell," he said to one of his
attendants, who left him there to meditate. Nature, after a time,
began to assert its sway, and the solitary became hungry. He heard the
signal for the midday meal, and wondered that no man came to summon
him. Time passed, and the evening meal was announced, and yet no
invitation came. At last the solitary left his cell and proceeded in
search of food, when the wise abbot impressed on him the Pauline rule
that it was quite possible to unite work and worship, labouring for
the bread that perisheth while feeding on the bread that is eternal.
The tenth century again verified the wisdom of the Divine denial to
reveal the future, or fix a date for Christ's second coming. The year
1000 was regarded in the century immediately preceding it as the limit
of the world's existence and the date of Christ's appearing. The
belief in this view spread all over Europe, and the result was just
the same as at Thessalonica. Men abandoned all work, they left their
families to starve, and thought the one great object worth living for
was devotion and preparation for their impending change. And the
result was widespread misery, famine, disease, and death, while,
instead of working any beneficial change upon society at large, the
terror through which men had passed brought about, when the dreaded
time had gone by, a reaction towards carelessness and vice, all the
greater from the self-denial which they had practised for a time. And
as it was in the earlier ages so has it been in later times. The
people of London were, in the middle of the last century, deluded into
a belief that on a certain day the Lord would appear to judgment, with
the result that the business of London was suspended for the time. The
lives of John Wesley and his fellow-evangelists tell us how diligently
they seized the opportunity of preaching repentance and preparation
for the coming of Christ, though they shared not the belief in the
prediction which gained them their audience. While again in the
present century there was a widespread opinion about the year 1830
that the coming of Christ was at hand. It was the time when the
Irvingite and Darbyite bodies sprang into existence, in which systems
the near approach of the Second Coming forms an important element. Men
then thought that it was a mere matter of days or weeks, and in
consequence they acted just like the Thessalonians. In their ardour
their minds were upset, their business and families neglected, and, as
far as in them lay, the work of life and of civilisation was utterly
destroyed. While when again we come to later times experience has
taught that no men have been more profitless and unpractical
Christians than the numbers, by no means inconsiderable, who have
spent their lives in vain attempts to fix now for this year, and again
for that day, the exact time when the Son of Man should appear. The
wisest Christians have acted otherwise. It is told of a foreign
bishop, eminent for his sanctity and for the wise guidance which he
could give in the spiritual life, that he was once engaged in playing
a game of bowls. One of the bystanders was of a critical disposition,
and was scandalized at the frivolity of the bishop's occupation, so
much beneath the dignity, as it was thought, of his character. "If
Christ was to appear the next moment, what would you do?" he asked the
bishop. "I would make the next stroke the best possible one," was the
wise man's reply. And the reply involved the true principle which the
Lord Himself by His refusal to gratify the Apostles' curiosity desired
to impress on His people. The uncertainty of the time of Christ's
coming, combined with the certainty of the event itself, should stir
us up to intensity of purpose, to earnestness of life, to a hallowed
enthusiasm to do thoroughly every lawful deed, to think thoroughly
every lawful thought, conscious that in so doing we are fulfilling the
will and work of the great Judge Himself. Blessed indeed shall be
those servants whom the Lord when He cometh shall find so doing.
III. Christ, after He had reproved the spirit of vain curiosity which
strikes at the root of all practical effort, then indicates the source
of their strength and the sphere of its activity. "Ye shall receive
power after the Holy Ghost is come upon you." They were wanting then,
as yet, in power, and the Holy Ghost was to supply the want.
Intellect, talent, eloquence, wit, all these things are God's gifts,
but they are not the source of spiritual power. A man may possess them
one and all, and yet be lacking in that spiritual power which came
upon the Apostles through the descent of the Spirit. And the sphere of
their appointed activity is designated for them. Just as in the
earliest days of Christ's public ministry He spake words indicative
of the universal spirit of the gospel, and prophesied of a time when
men from the east and west should come and sit down in the kingdom of
God, while the children of the kingdom should be cast out, so, too,
one of His few recorded resurrection sayings now indicates the same:
"Ye shall be My witnesses, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa, and
Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." Jerusalem,
Judæa,--the Apostles were to begin their great practical life of
witnessing at home, but they were not to stay there. Samaria was next
to have its opportunity, and so we shall find it to have been the
case; and then, working from home as centre, the uttermost parts of
the earth, a distant Spain from Paul, and a distant India from Thomas,
and a barbarous Scythia from Andrew, and a frigid, ocean-girt Britain
from a Joseph of Arimathæa,[25] were to learn tidings of the new life
in Christ.[26]
[25] See my _Ireland and the Celtic Church_ for the traditions
about St. Joseph of England.
[26] The line of argument followed in this chapter was originally
suggested to me by a sermon for the First Sunday in Advent,
printed in a volume of _Sermons at the Octagon Chapel, Bath_, by
the Rev. W. C. Magee, B.D., now Archbishop of York. London,
Hatchards, 1858.