hundred years before St. Paul wrote this epistle, Lucius Mummius, the
Roman consul, had conquered all Achaia; had destroyed Corinth, Chalcus
and Thebes; and, by order of the senate, had been honored with a
splendid triumph and the surname of Achaicus. Over the same people the
apostle now has a triumph, but it is a triumph of very different
character--a triumph in Christ by the power of the gospel, the glory of
which he ascribes to God alone. As in a Roman triumph the smoke of
altars and the odor of incense filled the city with a pleasant perfume,
so the name and the doctrine of Christ preached by him and his
colleagues pervaded Corinth and all the surrounding country--wherever
those holy men had labored--with odors as of Eden; and the apostles
appeared as triumphing in Christ over idols, demons, devils--over
ignorance, prejudice, scepticism, superstition, false philosophy, and
all the powers of darkness; yet appropriating no praise to themselves,
but attributing all to the wisdom and the mercy of God. Indeed, it is
God's triumph, not theirs. He has first triumphed over them, and is now
making them the partners of his triumph. Better expressing the sense of
the Greek original, Trench and Alford read, "leadeth us in triumph;"
and other eminent critics give us substantially the same rendering;
while Conybeare and Howson, in their admirable work on the "Life and
Epistles of St. Paul," thus translate the language of the text: "But
thanks be to God, who leads me on from place to place in the train of
his triumph, to celebrate his victory over the enemies of Christ; and
by me sends forth the knowledge of himself, a stream of fragrant
incense, throughout the world." A pretty free translation, it is true;
but embodying, no doubt, the precise meaning of the writer. "St. Paul
regarded himself," says Fausett, "as a signal trophy of God's
victorious power in Christ; his Almighty Conqueror leading him about
through all the cities of the Greek and Roman world, as an illustrious
example of his power at once to subdue and to save." The foe of Christ
was now the servant of Christ. Grace divine had subdued and disarmed
him. The rebel, the persecutor, the conspirator with hell, was brought
into subjection, and rejoiced in his burden as a blessing. As to be led
in triumph by man is miserable degradation, so to be led in triumph by
the Lord of hosts is highest honor and blessedness. Our only true
triumphs are God's triumphs over us. His defeats of us are our only
true victories. Near the gate of Damascus the lion is smitten into a
lamb by the hand of the Crucified; and in a short time the lamb has
become his bravest champion. Brought into willing obedience, he falls
into Christ's triumphal train, ascends into Christ's triumphal chariot;
and, in full sympathy with Christ, becomes the partner of his triumph.
Bengal writes--"who shows us in triumph"--that is, not only as
conquered by Christ, but as conquering with him. Our victory is the
fruit of his victory over us; and the open showing of that, so far from
being our shame, is our greatest glory. Therefore saith the
apostle--and it is the most heroic utterance of the prince of heroes:
"God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ; by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."
And from this evangel of the crucifixion, which he lives to preach and
will die to defend, arises the fragrant odor with which he and his
companions are filling the world. As the approach of the triumphal
procession is made manifest by the sweet perfume scattered far and wide
by incense-bearers in the conqueror's train, so the heavenly Victor
makes use of his vanquished to herald the victories of his grace and
diffuse like fragrant odors the saving knowledge of his name. It is the
triumph of grace over sin, the triumph of truth over error, the triumph
of faith over unbelief, the triumph of divine love over human
selfishness. It is the right triumphing over the wrong, the pure
triumphing over the impure, the heavenly triumphing over the earthly,
the spiritual triumphing over the sensual, the eternal triumphing over
the temporal, the true religion triumphing over all superstition. It is
God by Christ triumphing in man, and man through Christ triumphing with
God; who leads us in triumph as his captives, shows us in triumph as
his trophies, and "maketh manifest by us the savor of his knowledge in
every place."
You see, my brethren, that the apostolic work was missionary work--that
the Church, as constituted by these heroic and holy men under the
leadership of their divine Lord, was a missionary society--the
primitive propaganda of the Christian faith. They were sent forth by
the Captain of their salvation to conquer the nations for Christ, and
gather captives from all countries into his triumphal procession. For
this work St. Paul was added to the original number, and from his
peculiar fitness by education and spiritual endowment became the most
successful of them all. And the constitution of the Church is still
unchanged; and our high calling in Christ Jesus has never been revoked;
and your bishops and clergy to-day are but heralds and incense-bearers
in the train of Immanuel's triumph; and every faithful communicant, and
every baptized believer, and every humble neophyte, are triumphing with
the heavenly Conqueror. Surely here is a demand for all our faith, for
all our zeal, for all our moral heroism; and for an embassy like ours,
"more than twelve legions of angels" might have been commissioned from
the skies. Alas! where sleep our energies? where slumber the holy fires
within our hearts? Calm and secure, here we sit in our Christian
assemblies. With something of the Spirit we pray, with something of the
Spirit we sing, and with much of the understanding we do both. With
reverent delight we hear the word of grace, and with unspeakable
gladness welcome its revelations of the unseen and the eternal. With
our best faculties we inquire into its meaning, seek elucidations of it
in ancient literature and modern criticism, and rejoice in its
accumulating confirmations from history and from science. We worship
with a comely ritual derived from the fathers, and celebrate the
sacramental mysteries of our redemption in words that have warmed the
hearts of martyrs. But while thus occupied, how little think we of the
millions around us who for the same mercies are constantly invoking
Heaven with the voice of all their sins and sorrows! For us, Christ
"hath abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light by his
gospel;" they follow their friends to the burial, and mourn for them
without hope, no star gleaming over the grave, nor seraph beckoning out
of the darkness beyond; they lie down to die, but above the pallid day
no halo gathers, no seraph wings are hovering, no sweet familiar voices
inviting to an eternal fellowship of joy. Have we no loving compassions
for them, no desire to rescue and save their souls alive? Oh! look at
the heathen world, where Satan holds undisputed empire, and man has
never felt the power of Christian civilization. Look at the dark places
of the earth, full of the habitations of cruelty; where Belial reigns
supreme, and Moloch revels in fire and blood. Look at the countries
that languish under the curse of the Crescent, where sense misnamed
faith triumphs over reason, and strong delusion has quenched the last
beam of divine knowledge, and obscured every ray of intellectual truth.
Look at Jacob's heritage of milk, and honey, "destroyed by the
wickedness of them that dwell therein"--the most beautiful of lands,
the very garden of God, by ignorance and barbarism turned into a
sterile waste and delivered up to the tenantry of noisome and noxious
creatures. Look at the exiled children of Abraham, a vagabond race,
roaming everywhere, and nowhere finding rest; the curse of their
rejection branded on every brow, and reprobation written in every
feature of an unmistakable physiognomy; their synagogues little better
than Mohammedan mosques and pagan temples, their worship an empty and
abrogated ceremonial, and Mammon substituted for the Messiah. Look at
the villanous impostures of the Vatican, and the notorious corruptions
of faith and worship wherever the Roman mystagogue holds sway; the
habitual invocation of saints and martyrs; the adoration of images,
pictures, and relics; the monstrous abuses and manifold abominations of
the confessional; the doctrines of indulgence, purgatory, and human
merit; the blasphemous dogmas of papal supremacy and infallibility, and
the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin; with the legitimate
and lamentable fruits--an abject and atheistic priesthood, and a
thriftless and degraded people. Look at your own country, Christian
though it is called--your own city, highly as it is favored of heaven;
and see how far the masses lie from the living God; how his name is
profaned, his altars abandoned, while every place of amusement is
thronged with merry votaries of pleasure, and drunken men reel athwart
the path of church-going people, and the house of her whose steps take
hold on hell stands in the very shadow of the sanctuary, and libidinous
songs and blasphemous oaths form the horrible counterpart to your
sacred psalmody; on all sides temples of Bacchus and Beelzebub, with
scenes of revelry and riot, debauchery and blood, where dissipation
discards all disguise, impurity all shame, and impiety all fear. Look
at your Western States and Territories--fields demanding a hundred
missionaries where you have one; a numerous and constantly increasing
population scattered over a vast extent of country, with only here and
there a church and a school, like solitary torches a thousand miles
apart struggling to dispel the deeper than Egyptian darkness of half a
world; while Rome is rearing her temples and convents everywhere,
everywhere establishing her brotherhoods and sisterhoods, founding
orphan-asylums and educational institutes, exercising a powerful
influence over the development of the youthful mind, and poisoning the
wells whence the people are to draw the water of their salvation; and
heresy and schism are setting up their tabernacles, and agnostic
infidelity is travelling _pari passu_ with population, and myriads
of redeemed immortals are perishing for lack of knowledge. Look at your
fair and sunny South-land, lately devastated by contending armies;
churches in ashes, cities in ruins, fenceless plantations growing up to
forests; bishops and clergymen wofully impoverished, and forced to
resort to secular occupations for subsistence; earnest and anxious
spirits, shipwrecked in the collision of sectarian crafts, struggling
desperately in the dark waters of doubt, and longing to see the
life-boats of the Church upon the billows; four million slaves in a
state of semi-barbarism suddenly set at liberty like so many unfledged
cagelings turned out to the wintry tempest, amidst hawks, and owls, and
eagles, and every beast of prey; many of them already relapsing into
their ancestral superstitions, suspecting one another as wizards and
witches, practising hideous rites and abominable incantations,
worshipping some exceptionally ugly old hag as a new incarnation of the
Divinity, and dancing with demoniac noises over the graves of their
dead. No fancy pictures are these which I present, nor overwrought
descriptions of realities. Impossible were it to find language or
figures to exaggerate the wretchedness of humanity unrelieved by the
gracious revelations of God. In comparison of the moral ruin around us,
what was the late catastrophe of a hundred South-American cities,
whelming in a common destruction men, women and children to the number
of forty or fifty thousand? Should some pilgrim from a distant sphere,
traversing the ethereal space with wings of light, chance to cross the
orbit of our fallen planet, and cast a momentary glance down at our
condition, might he not hurry past with a shudder, suspecting that hell
had emptied itself upon earth, and the unhappy race had been given over
unredeemed to the dominion of the Devil?
But why dwell on this dismal theme? Oh! I could tell you of victories
demanding another David to sing them or another Isaiah to record them,
till every loving heart should leap for joy and exult in hope of
millennial triumph. But I would fain stir your compassion. I am feeling
for your purse-strings among your heart-strings. I want to play a tune
upon your spirits which shall echo in Colorado, and make music in New
Mexico, and reverberate from the heights of the Himalaya, and gladden
the hills round about Jerusalem. Can we survey the valley of vision,
and not prophesy to all the winds of God? Can we see millions of
immortal beings crushed by the dominion of Satan, and not cry amain to
the Prince of peace to come and unseat the great usurper, and establish
his own universal and everlasting empire? And how shall we pray
successfully, if we answer not our own prayers by pouring our offerings
into the Lord's treasury? How shall we arrest the long carnival of
crime, and error, and delusion, and infidelity, if we bestir not all
our Christian energies, occupying every available position, evoking
every beneficent agency of the Church, barricading with Bibles and
Prayer-Books the teeming way to ruin, and bridging with the blessed
cross the mouth of the flaming pit? Thus, my brethren! may we save
souls from death, and give new joy to benevolence in other worlds, and
gladden the heart that eighteen hundred years ago quivered for us upon
the point of the Roman spear, and fill the reverberant universe with
the shout of the apostle--"Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth
us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge
by us in every place!"
[1] Preached at a missionary meeting in New York, 1868.
XVI.
FRATERNAL FORGIVENESS.[1]
So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your
hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.--Matt.
xviii. 35.
When John Wesley was in Georgia, he was dining one day with Gov.
Oglethorpe. A negro waiter at the table committing a careless blunder,
the governor said to his guest: "See this good-for-nothing servant; he
is always doing wrong, though he knows that I never forgive." "Does
your Excellency never forgive?" replied Mr. Wesley; "then it is to be
hoped that your Excellency never does wrong." A beautiful reproof; and
the more effectual, no doubt, from its gentleness. Those who need
forgiveness for their own faults, certainly ought to forgive the faults
of others. "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven;" but "he shall have
judgment without mercy, who hath showed no mercy." This is the lesson
taught us in the gospel for the day,[2] which I shall endeavor to
unfold and apply. For moral elevation, the passage is very remarkable.
Found in some old Greek or Roman volume--in some parchment dug up from
Herculaneum or Pompeii--on some tablet or cylinder discovered amidst
the _debris_ of Nineveh or Babylon--it would have awakened the
wonder of the world, and men would never have been weary of praising
its transcendent charity.
The Jewish rabbis taught that a man might forgive an injury a second or
even a third time, but never a fourth. When St. Peter asked--"How oft
shall my brother trespass against me, and I forgive him? until seven
times?" he doubled the rabbinical measure of mercy, doubtless imagining
that he had reached the ultimate limit, and that his Divine Master even
could require no more. How must he and his brethren have been
astonished when Jesus answered: "I say not unto thee, Until seven
times; but, until seventy times seven!" What! four hundred and ninety
times? But Jesus puts a definite number for an indefinite. "Count not
your acts of clemency," he seems to say; "be your forgiveness of a
brother as free as the air you breathe or the light you enjoy--your
love as unlimited as the illimitable heaven above you." Then he puts
the matter strongly before them in a parable:
A certain king calls his servants--the collectors of his taxes and
revenues--to account. One of them is found frightfully in
arrears--owing his lord ten thousand talents--a debt which he can never
pay. The king orders the sale of the delinquent, with his family and
all his effects. Falling at the royal feet, he implores patience, and
promises the impossible. Touched with pity, the king forgives the debt.
But the forgiven goes to a fellow-servant who owes him the small sum of
a hundred pence, seizes him by the throat, and demands immediate
payment. The helpless debtor falls before him, and pleads with him as
he himself had lately pleaded with the king. The creditor, however, is
inexorable; and into prison the poor man must go till the debt is paid.
The sad matter is reported to the king, who recalls the subject of his
clemency, rebukes his cruelty, revokes his own act of forgiveness, and
delivers the unmerciful over to the tormentors till the last farthing
shall be paid. Finally, in application of the parable, the Divine
Teacher adds: "So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you,
if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their
trespasses."
God's mercy to man, and man's unmercifulness to his fellow, are the two
principal things set forth in the parable. Let us look at them both,
and see how the former enhances the latter, and enforces the duty of
fraternal forgiveness.
To have any right appreciation of the master's mercy, we must know
something of the amount of the servant's debt. Ten thousand talents was
an enormous sum. The delinquent was a viceroy, and the amount he owed
was the revenue of a province. In those days large debts were not
uncommon. Julius Caesar owed, beyond his assets, $1,425,000; Mark
Antony, $2,250,000; Curio, $3,375,000; Milo, $4,125,000. An Attic
talent was about $1,080; which, multiplied by 10,000, would make the
debt $10,800,000. But if the Jewish talent of silver is meant, it would
amount to $16,600,000; if the Jewish talent of gold, to $569,000,000.
Now let each talent stand for a sin--10,000 sins! Reduce the talents to
dollars, and take every dollar for a sin--569,000,000 sins! Reduce the
dollars to dimes, and let every dime represent a sin--5,690,000,000
sins! Reduce the dimes to cents, and let every cent be considered a
sin--56,900,000,000 sins! Perhaps, however, our dear Lord never
intended by the number of talents to intimate the number of our sins,
any more than by the seventy times seven he meant to say how often we
should forgive an offending brother. In each case the idea is that of
indefinite number, unlimited extent. But if the seventy times seven
means mercy without measure, what can the ten thousand talents denote
but guilt beyond all human calculation or imagination? Think you any
estimate of the number and enormity of our sins can be an exaggeration?
"Who can tell how oft he offendeth?" "My sins are more than the hairs
of my head, therefore my heart faileth me." "My sins are increased over
my head so that I am not able to look up." Far better and holier than
the best of us, my brethren, was the man who wrote these statements,
and left them for an everlasting testimony against those who are pure
in their own eyes. If David had such consciousness of sin, what must
our consciousness be if we knew ourselves as well? They are the
self-blinded, self-hardened, self-deceived, who fancy themselves
innocent and glory in their virtue. Even the great apostle called
himself "the chief of sinners," and declared that in himself dwelt "no
good thing." There is no danger, then, of extravagance in any estimate
of our sins of which our arithmetic is capable. So let us proceed a
little farther. Take our Lord's summary of the first table of the law:
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." Here is
required the surrender of the whole man as a living sacrifice to his
Divine Creator and Sovereign Proprietor. This is his unquestionable
claim upon every moment of our existence throughout its immortal
duration. A duty this which we cannot omit for a single second without
robbing God; and every minute that we neglect it, comprising sixty
seconds, we may be said to repeat the sacrilege sixty times; every
hour, 3,600 times; every day, 86,400 times; every year, 31,536,000
times; in twenty years, 630,720,000 times; and in forty years,
1,261,440,000 times. But these are sins of omission only, and that in
relation to a single phase of duty; add all the other instances, and we
must multiply the sum by multiplied millions. Then we must take our
positive sins--our violations of the divine law by thought, word and
deed--open sins and secret, public and private, personal and
social--sins defying all enumeration, and difficult even of
classification; and, adding all together, we must multiply the sum by
all our faculties, facilities and gracious incentives for doing God's
blessed will, and aggravate all by the innumerable mercies and
inestimable blessings which he has diffused over our lives as his
sunbeams over the earth. And its any thing short of infinite mercy
adequate to the forgiveness of such a debt?
For all this, however unwilling, we must give account to God; and how
terrible the array, when conscience shall summon forth from the secret
chambers of memory every sin of which we have been guilty, and every
evil act and every neglect of duty shall stand out distinct and clear
in the light of eternal judgment! How shall we meet the reckoning? In
all the eternity to come, what satisfaction can we offer for our
faults? Can we alter the facts, undo the deeds, repair the wrongs,
recall the time, or efface the record? Nay, the account remains
uncancelled, and the debt can never be paid. Soul and body, with all
the capabilities of both, the creature belongs to the Creator; and by
an original and perpetual obligation, perfect love and blameless
obedience are his constant duty. Beyond this he can never go. Even
though he commit no sin, neglect no duty, he can offer to the Creator
no service whatever that is not justly required of him as a creature.
By his utmost efforts forever, he simply renders to God what is his
indisputable due. How, then, can the transgressor hope to pay the new
and additional debt which he has incurred by innumerable crimes? Before
he can do a single meritorious act, even his original obligation to God
as his creature must be cancelled; but to cancel that is more than the
Creator himself can do, the obligation being inseparable from the
relation. As to human merit, therefore, the case is hopeless. What,
then, is to be done? Sell the debtor, with his wife and children? Such
procedure on the part of the creditor was allowed by ancient law. But
in what slave-mart of the universe shall God sell the sinner? Who will
want him but Satan? and Satan has him already, self-sold, and bound by
indefeasible indenture. Nay, by this part of the parable our Lord
presents justice as ministering to mercy. The menace of punishment
opens the way for pardon, and the hopeless condition of the debtor
enhances the clemency of the king. See the poor wretch, prostrate at
the royal feet, imploring a little indulgence, and promising what is
utterly beyond his power. So, on a bed of sickness, stung by conscience
and confronted by doom, often has the most incorrigible transgressor
vowed reparation for a vicious life, only to augment his guilt by
disregarding the vow on the return of health and strength. But if the
sinner cannot pay, God can forgive. If neither saints nor angels can
wrest the culprit from the grasp of justice, yet Heaven has found a
ransom to save his soul from the pit. Jesus interposes with "a price
all price beyond;" the debt is overpaid in the blood of the cross;
through the compassion of the King the debtor is released from his
bonds; and the angels tune their harps to sing "the blessedness of the
man whose unrighteousness is forgiven and whose sin is covered!"