'He was glad.' It was a triumph of Christian principle to recognise the
grace of God under new forms, and in so strange a place. It was a still
greater triumph to hail it with rejoicing. One need not have wondered
if the acknowledgment of a fact, dead in the teeth of all his
prejudices, and seemingly destructive of some profound convictions, had
been somewhat grudging. Even a good, true man might have been
bewildered and reluctant to let go so much as was destroyed by the
admission--'Then hath God granted to the Gentiles also repentance unto
life,'--and might have been pardoned if he had not been able to do more
than acquiesce and hold his peace. We are scarcely just to these early
Jewish Christians when we wonder at their hesitation on this matter,
and are apt to forget the enormous strength of the prejudices and
sacred conviction which they had to overcome. Hence the context seems
to consider that the quick recognition of Christian character on the
part of Barnabas, and his gladness at the discovery, need explanation,
and so it adds, with special reference to these, as it would seem, 'for
he was a good man, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith,' as if nothing
short of such characteristics could have sufficiently emancipated him
from the narrowness that would have refused to discern the good, or the
bitterness that would have been offended at it.
So, dear brethren, we may well test ourselves with this question: Does
the discovery of the working of the grace of God outside the limits of
our own Churches and communions excite a quick, spontaneous emotion of
gladness in _our_ hearts? It may upset some of our theories; it may
teach us that things which we thought very important, 'distinctive
principles' and the like, are not altogether as precious as we thought
them; it may require us to give up some pleasant ideas of our
superiority, and of the necessary conformity of all good people to our
type. Are we willing to let them all go, and without a twinge of envy
or a hanging back from prejudice, to welcome the discovery that 'God
fulfils Himself in many ways'? Have we schooled ourselves to say
honestly, 'Therein I do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice'?
There is much to overcome if we would know this Christlike gladness.
The good and the bad in us may both oppose it. The natural deeper
interest in the well-being of the Churches of our own faith and order,
the legitimate ties which unite us with these, our conscientious
convictions, our friendships, the _esprit de corps_ born of fighting
shoulder to shoulder, will, of course, make our sympathies flow most
quickly and deeply in denominational channels. And then come in
abundance of less worthy motives, some altogether bad and some the
exaggeration of what is good, and we get swallowed up in our own
individual work, or in that of our 'denomination,' and have but a very
tepid joy in anybody else's prosperity.
In almost every town of England, your Churches, and those to which I
belong, with Presbyterians and Wesleyans, stand side by side. The
conditions of our work make some rivalry inevitable, and none of us, I
suppose, object to that. It helps to keep us all diligent: a sturdy
adherence to our several 'distinctive principles' and an occasional
hard blow in fair fight on their behalf we shall all insist upon. Our
brotherhood is all the more real for frank speech, and 'the animated
No!' is an essential in all intercourse which is not stagnant or
mawkish. There is much true fellowship and much good feeling among all
these. But we want far more of an honest rejoicing in each other's
success, a quicker and truer manly sympathy with each other's work, a
fuller consciousness of our solidarity in Christ, and a clearer
exhibition of it before the world.
And on a wider view, as our eyes travel over the wide field of
Christendom, and our memories go back over the long ages of the story
of the Church, let gladness, and not wonder or reluctance, be the
temper with which we see the graces of Christian character lifting
their meek blossoms in corners strange to us, and breathing their
fragrance over the pastures of the wilderness. In many a cloister, in
many a hermit's cell, from amidst the smoke of incense, through the
dust of controversies, we should see, and be glad to see, faces bright
with the radiance caught from Christ. Let us set a jealous watch over
our hearts that self-absorption, or denominationalism, or envy do not
make the sight a pain instead of a joy; and let us remember that the
eye-salve which will purge our dim sight to behold the grace of God in
all its forms is that grace itself, which ever recognises its own
kindred, and lives in the gladness of charity, and the joy of beholding
a brother's good. If we are to have eyes to know the grace of God when
we see it, and a heart to rejoice when we know it, we must get them as
Barnabas got his, and be good men, because we are full of the Holy
Ghost, and full of the Holy Ghost because we are full of faith.