think Munkacsy, by the appearance of his wondrous picture now, has
made it evident that there is also something in it specially adapted
to these modern days. It is with artists in the choice of their
subjects as it is with ministers in the selection of their themes.
Both alike, consciously and unconsciously, and most frequently
perhaps unconsciously, are affected by the spirit of their age.
The atmosphere--literary, moral, political, and religious--which
is round about them, and which they are daily breathing, does,
insensibly to themselves, so influence them that their thoughts
are turned by it into a channel different from that in which those
of a former generation flowed. Hence, whether the painter would
admit it or not, I see in this picture, at this juncture, at once a
mirror of the times and a lesson for them. The question of Pilate,
"What shall I do, then, with Jesus which is called the Christ?"
is preeminently the question of the present age. No doubt we may
say with truth that it has been the question of all the Christian
centuries, and each one of them has faced it and solved it after its
own fashion. It has tested the centuries even as it tested Pilate,
and those in which Christ was rejected have been the darkest in
the world's history; while those in which He has been hailed as
the incarnate God have been the brightest which the earth has ever
seen, because irradiated with truth, and justice, and benevolence
and purity. But tho we are always prone to exaggerate that in the
midst of which we are ourselves, it seems to me that in no one age
since that of the primitive Church has this jesting question been so
prominent as in our own. All the controversies of our times, social,
philosophical, and theological, lead up to and find their ultimate
hinge in the answer to this inquiry, "Who is this Jesus Christ?"
If He be a mere man, then there is for us nothing but uncertainty
on any subject, outside of the domain of the exact sciences; and
we must all become agnostics, holding this one negative article
of belief, that nothing can be known about anything save that of
which we can take cognizance with the bodily sense. But if He be
incarnate God, then He brings with Him from heaven the final word on
all subjects concerning which He has spoken; and tho in His person
He is the mystery of mysteries, yet, at once received, He becomes
forthwith the solution of all mysteries, and faith in Him is at once
the satisfaction of the intellect and the repose of the heart. It
is perfectly natural, therefore, that all the controversies of the
day should turn on Him. The lives of Christ which have been written
during the last thirty or forty years would make in themselves a
very respectable library; and the cry even of the sceptic is, "I
could get on very well with unbelief, if I only knew what to make
of Christ." Yes, that is just the difficulty. Christ is here in
the Scriptures a character portrayed in literature; He was in the
world for thirty-three years, and lived a life exceptional in every
respect, but most of all in the moral and spiritual departments, so
that of Him alone perfection can be predicated; He has been ever
since a most potent factor in history, for through His influence
all that is pure, and noble, and exalted, and lovely and of good
report, has come into our civilization. Now, these things have to
be accounted for. If He was only a man, how shall we explain them?
And if He was more than a man shall we not take His own testimony
as to His dignity and mission? If we are to be unbelievers, we must
account for Christ on natural principles; but if we cannot do that,
then we must conceive Him as He claims to be conceived. There is no
alternative. Those in the age who have the spirit and disposition of
Pilate will anew reject Him! but those who are sincere and earnest
in their inquiries will come ultimately out into the light, for "if
any man be willing to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine
whether it be of God."
And what is true of the age, as a whole, is true also of every
individual to whom the gospel is proclaimed. For each of us, my
hearers, this is the question of questions, "What shall I do with
Jesus which is called Christ?" Shall I reject Him and live precisely
as if I had never heard His name? or shall I accept Him as the Lord
from heaven in human nature, trust in Him as my Savior, and obey Him
as my King? I must do the one or the other; and yet how many are
seeking, like Pilate, to evade the question? They try to escape the
responsibility of dealing with it as a direct alternative of yes
or no. But as one has well said, "necessity is laid upon us. The
adversaries of Christ press upon us to give our verdict against Him.
We are troubled and perplexed, for we have long heard about Him,
and have had each of us his own convictions. We would still remain
neutral. We try--and try in vain--to escape from the spirit, the
conversation, the literature, the question of the times. Again and
again we wash our hands. But neither our silence nor our actions are
of any avail; and so we are found sitting, conscious of the presence
and the claims of our Savior, and, like Pilate, not daring to look
at Him, as we puzzle over the answer which we must give to the
question that is being forced upon us--Who is this Jesus Christ?"
Perhaps this description accurately portrays some one here this
morning.
If so, let me give him one parting word. It is this: You can not
evade the decision, but be sure that you look at the Christ before
you give Him up. Nothing is so remarkable in the picture to which
I have so often this day referred as the evident persistency with
which Pilate keeps his eyes from Christ; and few things are so
saddening as to meet with men who profess to have, and really have,
difficulties about Christ, but who have never read the gospels or
the New Testament with any attention.
Let me urge you earnestly, therefore, to study these gospels and
epistles before you give your voice against the Lord, and I am
very sure that if you ponder them thoroughly you will soon accept
Him. Give over trying to solve all the difficulties and so-called
discrepancies in the Scriptures which form the stock-in-trade of
the infidel lecturer--all these are but as dust which he raises
that he may blind your eyes to the really important question, "Who
is Christ?" Settle that, and if you do, all other difficulties
will vanish. Turn your face to the light, and the shadow will fall
behind you. Look at the Christ before you give Him up. And remember,
if you do reject Christ, you have still to account for Him. It
is unreasonable for you, if you believe only in the natural and
material, to leave such a phenomenon as Christ unexplained.
Yes, and I must add here that if you reject Him you must yet
account to Him. Go, then, and ponder this text; yea, may it continue
sounding in your inmost heart until you have determined to receive
and rest upon Him as your only Savior, and say to Him, like Thomas,
"My Lord and my God."
JOHN HALL
LIBERTY ONLY IN TRUTH
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
John Hall was born at Market Hill, County Armagh, Ireland, in 1829.
For many years he was pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian
Church, New York, where he had a large and devoted following. He was
of fine physique, and there was a power in face and voice that at
once commanded his audience. He spoke without manuscript, and his
style was marked by great sincerity, directness and earnestness. He
died in 1899.
JOHN HALL
1829-1899
LIBERTY ONLY IN TRUTH
_And I will walk at liberty, for I seek thy precepts._--Psalms
cxix., 45.
God is the Governor of this world. Some one may say, that is a
very elementary truth. Even so; there have been long ages in the
history of our race when that truth was not accepted and when the
most intelligent of our race believed something directly opposed.
There have been multitudes of men, for example, who believed, like
Aristotle, that matter is eternal. There are multitudes still who
believe that in some way or other nature governs itself. There is a
large class of thinkers who, without taking the name to themselves,
are practically pantheists, and, like Spinoza and Fichte and Hegel,
persuade themselves that all is God, as they express it, and that
God is all. You do not need to be told that the earlier portion of
the Old Testament Scriptures God has given to us that we might have
these illusions banished, and that we might be made to know that God
is the Creator and the Ruler of all things, that He is not nature,
and nature is not God; that He is not to be confounded with the
works of His hands; that He is a distinct, personal and holy Being,
who has created all, and who has a right, on the ground of creation,
even if there were no other, to be the Ruler of all. It took long to
make men understand this truth, simple and elementary as it seems to
you and to me.
When we say that God governs the globe, we do not mean the mere
earthly, solid structure on which we dwell. We mean that He governs
the inhabitants of it, the communities and the individuals. "The
Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice." "The Lord reigneth, let the
nations tremble." "He raiseth up kings and he putteth them down."
He calls into being Pharaohs that He may show His power and His
glory in relation to them. His providence is most holy and wise and
powerful, and it is not general merely, it is particular, extending
to all the creatures and to all their actions. These things we have
to keep in mind in relation to Jehovah.
Now it would seem, surely, that if a man believed this his common
sense would dictate to him that, living in a world that God had
made and God rules in every detail, if he wishes to be happy in
it, he must have respect to the law of Him who has made and who
rules. Common sense indicates that if we live in a house it is
desirable to be on good terms with the head of the house if we
wish to be comfortable. Common sense dictates that if a man is
in the employment of others, it is wise for him to have a right
understanding, to stand well with the head of the department in
which he is engaged. Common sense teaches us that if we are subjects
in a kingdom and wish to be safe and happy, we must respect the
laws by which the kingdom is ruled. And we have only to extend this
principle, and we get to the point that was before the Psalmist's
mind when he says: "I will walk at liberty, for I seek (or, as it
is in the revision, without changing the meaning, 'I have sought')
thy statutes." I am living in Thy world, I am dependent upon Thee,
I have taken pains to know what Thy will is, that I may do it; and
so I walk at liberty. That is the idea that is brought to us in the
text, and it is easy for you to see how good and practical that idea
is.
But the question may arise, can we know the precepts and the
statutes that God has given to us? You do not need to be told that
that is within our reach. God has spoken to us in this revelation,
as He did speak less articulately in the works of His hands, and
in the instincts and convictions that He produced in our spirit.
We have His revelation in our hands. We can seek the knowledge of
it. In many instances well-meaning and right-minded boys, under
great difficulties, have sought education that they may get on in
this world. In many other cases boys have had education at their
very doors, and have never sought it, and consequently have been
of little account in the world. Now the difference is not great,
in this aspect of it, between ordinary secular education and the
spiritual education of which the text gives us an illustration. Here
are God's statutes and precepts put within our reach. We can search
them, seek them, know them and do them, by the grace that God is
willing to give, or we can push them aside, ignore and disregard
them, and take our own way, and the result will be absolute and
everlasting failure in our lives. We can not have this too solemnly
fixt in our thoughts. God has spoken to us. What shall we do with
His word? Shall we neglect it and pass it by, or shall we take it,
study it, seek it, as the verse expresses it, and make it the rule
of our lives? Jesus Christ has come down from heaven to live among
us, and has said to our race, "Come unto me and learn of me"; and
there are millions to whom this message has come and they disregard
and ignore it; they do not come to Him, they do not learn of Him.
Can we wonder if the Judge should say to them when they appear at
His seat, "I never knew you"? If you read the First Epistle to the
Thessalonians, you will see pictures of an angry God, as an avenging
fire, in the apostle's description. On whom does the fire fall? On
whom does the Judge show his indignation? Is it upon the misers and
the miscreants and the murderers of the race merely? Oh, no. It is
upon them that "know not God and obey not the gospel of his Son."
Is it any wonder that the sacred writer should say, "Remember thy
Creator in the days of thy youth"; not merely remember that there
is a God--remember thy Creator, who made thee and in whose hand thy
fortunes are. Remember in the days of thy youth, the formative days,
the days when character is being shaped. What is well begun is half
ended. The life that is well begun, in this way has a guaranty of
usefulness and success. The life that is not begun in this way has
a dark and gloomy prospect before it. Remember thy Creator. We all
know well what is meant when some one says to us, on going away from
our homes, "Don't forget your home, don't forget your mother." We
know what that means. And God's messenger speaks to us in the same
tone when he makes this appeal: Remember thy Creator; remember His
power, remember His will, remember His statutes, seek His precepts,
and by doing this thou wilt be able to walk at liberty.
You may have mere liberty, and not light and not the liberty of
God. You may combine liberty with means, with power, and with a
certain degree of prosperity; you may combine it with equality and
with fraternity, and yet not have the true enlightenment. True
enlightenment comes in the way, indicated in the text, by the
seeking of God's precepts, the knowing of God's statutes, and this
you and I need to keep in mind. "What is liberty?" once asked Burke.
"What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? Such liberty
is the greatest of all possible evils, for it is vice and folly
and madness, without tuition and without restraint." Mere liberty
without other forces working in the sphere that it opens up, is
only another name for license. "Give me liberty or give me death,"
said Patrick Henry--not because he felt the need of enlightenment.
He had been enlightened by the teaching of an intelligent Scottish
father, by the preaching of the splendid sermons of Samuel Davies,
and especially by the daily study, which he kept up to his dying
day, of his Bible. He had been enlightened by these things. What
he craved for himself and for his fellow men was open space in
which, unhindered, other and mighty influences might tell upon his
fellow men and make the country what, in the blessing of God, it has
become. Settle this in your minds: Liberty is simply the freedom
for other forces to act, and it is for you and me who are free, to
see what these forces are, and we never can have any so good as
those which the Psalmist speaks of when he says that he sought God's
precepts, he studied God's statutes, that he might do them, and so
walk at liberty. We want to walk at liberty. How can we do it? If
we do not thus walk at liberty, there is only one alternative--stay
in bondage and walk in bondage, moving about indeed, and apparently
free, but with moral chains binding our natures and our whole
being in bondage to the powers that will rejoice in our misery and
ultimate ruin. It is to make men understand this that we have such
institutions as we enjoy to-day. For this end church edifices are
reared. For this end people are invited to come and be regularly in
them and under their influence. For this end God has been pleased
to give us the day of holy rest. For this purpose the ministry has
been instituted. Our business is to make men seek and know God's
precepts and statutes, that they may do them and that they may walk
at liberty. "We ministers are for you; our business is to seek
your moral and spiritual good, your full and complete liberation.
Our business is to enlighten you with the truth as God has been
pleased to reveal it unto us. You do not come to these churches for
our sakes, to hear us. You do not give your money that we may be
sustained and upheld. I tell you I would rather sweep the streets,
I would rather carry bricks on my shoulder to the builder, than be
a mere official person maintained because he can teach so much and
get so many people to hear him. Brethren, it is that you may be
enlightened and saved with the light of life, that God has brought
us into the position in which we are now together. Keep this in your
thoughts; and that you may be enlightened and free, look upward and
not downward, nor around you. In that statue in our harbor, the
light that will shine is light that comes, I suppose, from the heart
of the earth; but the light that is to enlighten the world is the
light of the sun, the Sun of Righteousness. See that you have that
shining into your souls, that you may walk at liberty.
Having looked at the former part of this text, namely, what the
Psalmist did with a view to the end, we look at the end at which he
was aiming. He studied God's Word, not simply that he might have so
much intellectual knowledge. He studied it for practical uses. He
studied God's precepts that he might obey them. I do not need to
remind you that you and I have advantages greater than he had, in
some important respects. He had the revelation in part; we have it
in its completeness. He had the preparatory dispensation; we have
the dispensation that fulfils the promises of the preparatory. He
had the beginning; we have the complement. We know more than he
did. He wrote these words, "I have sought thy precepts." He knew of
the Paschal Lamb and of its typical significance; we know the Lamb
of God that taketh away the sin of the world. He knew the Hebrew
priest and the general character of his functions. We know a High
Priest who has passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. He
knew of the altar and the victim, and the blood that made typical
atonement; we know of the great sacrifice on the cross, bringing in
a redemption that is complete and eternal. He knew of a Messiah that
was to come. You, even children in the Sunday-school to-day, know of
that Messiah risen, risen triumphant, risen a conqueror, risen for
you, risen because He has finished the work God gave Him to do. If
the Psalmist studied God's will that he might walk at liberty, how
much greater is the obligation upon us to do the same, and how much
greater our facilities and our encouragement. Let us try, then, to
travel in the Psalmist's steps, and let us see some, not all, of
the forms of liberty that we can have by compliance with the divine
precepts.
There is liberty, in the first place, from the world. I use the word
now in the sense in which it is used so frequently in the Bible--not
merely this round globe or the hundreds of millions that are upon
it--not merely these millions in that capacity. The world lieth in
the wicked one; the mass of men, that is, do not know God. They
constitute the world of the New Testament; we can be in bondage
to this world. Natural men are in bondage to it. They are not at
liberty in relation to that natural world. It is without God; it
does not ask what His will is. It enquires as to its own will, and
it tries to enforce it. You sometimes see cliques and coteries and
collections of men insisting at any cost upon carrying out their own
will. This is only the spirit of the greater world of which they
constitute a section. Sometimes men are in bondage to the world
in this sense, and the mainspring of their life is to stand well
with it, to do what their set, their society, the world round about
them, wishes them to do. Sometimes the bondage is aggravated by
another feature, viz., the effort to rise higher, to get upon a more
elevated plane, to get into another set; and, oh, how aggravated is
the bondage under which many thus live and labor! Freedom from that
is obtained when we walk according to God's statutes. Believers,
the world is not your master. One is your Master, even Christ, and
we are brethren in Him, and He is reasonable and kind and just and
brotherly, and you can walk with Him. His favor is enough for you,
His smile satisfies you. Fellowship with Him is the best society.
Let society stigmatize you, let it stamp its enmity upon you, but
seek God's precepts. If you only have Christ walking with you,
then you walk at liberty. But as to the life-work in which many
are busy, or trying to get up a little higher socially, take this
precept of the Word, "Godliness with contentment is great gain";
and these things, the godliness with the contentment, will break
these clanking chains of insane and stupid ambition and will prepare
you to walk at liberty. "I am in the place where God puts me. I am
trying to do the work that God gives to me. I am responsible to Him.
I belong to Him. He is my Father, Christ is my Brother, heaven is my
home. This I believe on the authority of His word. I will walk at
liberty." Let me commend that form of true freedom to you.
There is liberty, in the second place, from bad ways. Do I need
to describe these bad ways to you? You can not live in the city,
you can not read the newspapers, you can not hear the gossip, you
can not know what is going on in the circles in which you mingle,
without knowing some of these bad ways. There is the lover of this
world's possessions, so strongly denounced in Isaiah's prophecies:
beginning, perhaps, with necessary saving, but coming slowly but
steadily to a sordid love of the thing that is saved, till the whole
spirit is mercenary, and gold is the deity that is practically
worshiped. There is the drunkard, sipping a little innocently, as he
thinks, at the beginning, then going a little farther, and secretly,
until shame is lost and the victim is under the power of the
drink--degraded, wretched, irresponsible, not ashamed of himself,
for shame is gone, but an object for which all are ashamed that are
connected with him. There is the gambler, beginning perhaps with
what he deemed innocent recreation, and catching the spirit of the
thing till it masters him, until he flings away all that he has, and
all that he hopes to have, in the chance of recovering something
already lost, till life is a burden and fortune is gone, and suicide
is perhaps the tragical termination. These are specimens of the
bad ways--marked specimens, I grant, but still simple specimens.
There is freedom from this when we seek and do God's statutes--real
freedom. We learn to walk circumspectly; we learn to keep the heart
with all diligence; we learn to hate evil and to do good; we learn
to flee from the snares that Satan sets for the feet of men. We walk
securely, for we have been taught of the Spirit to walk with God.
Make sure, dear hearers, that you have this liberty.
There is liberty from bad memories--bad, putrid memories. When the
corrupt imagination contemplates indulgences in sin, it often dwells
upon these long before the actual execution of them, and as they
linger in the mind they photograph themselves upon its surface, and
they stay there. There may be compunction for the sin, there may be
shame over it, there may be vows against it, there may be honest
purposes to resist and overcome it, and these purposes to a good
degree carried out; but the horrid, poisonous memories remain in the
soul. You know what it is to be in a house where animal matter is
decaying and poisoning fumes are being scattered up and down. Oh!
the misery of the human mind that is haunted with the ghosts of bad
deeds that have been done in the past. It is bondage of the keenest
and sorest kind. There is liberty from these to those who walk in
God's statutes, liberty that can be had nowhere else. "A new heart
will I give you, and a right spirit will I put within you. I will
take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a
heart of flesh." Happy are they to whom this word was fulfilled in
their early youth, and who in consequence were kept from the sins,
the very recollection of which is sometimes like the beginning of
hell.
There is bondage to bad associates and bad associations. In how many
instances, in thoughtlessness, inexperience, under the impulses of
mere feeling, do men become entangled in connections that mar their
lives and spoil all their happiness--make happiness practically
impossible! I speak what I know, when I say that there are too
many cases in which boys are practically ruined where they go as
pupils to schools away from their parents' supervision, thrown into
dependence, in some degree, upon those whom they call friends, and
these friends bad, initiating them into ways and habits and modes of
thinking and doing, for which they only want the liberty of later
years that they may put them into practise, with disgrace, misery
and ruin. Relief from this bondage, escape from it, these can be had
when we seek God's statutes, when we walk according to His precepts.
Wisdom's ways are pleasantness, and her paths are peace. There are
no bad habits in them; there are no entangling associations in them;
there are no corrupting and degrading influences in them. There is
nothing in them that plays upon passion, till passion, once our idol
and our sport, becomes our ruler and our cruel tyrant. To escape all
these, this is the way: seek God's statutes, that you may know and
do them, and you shall walk at liberty.
BACON
GOD INDWELLING
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON, Congregational divine, born in New Haven,
Conn., 1830. He was educated at Yale, from which university he
graduated in 1850. He has filled the position of pastor in many
important churches and has done much theological and literary work.
Among other things he edited Luther's "Deutsche Geistliche Lieder"
(New York, 1883), and wrote "History of American Christianity" (New
York, 1897).
BACON
BORN IN 1830
GOD INDWELLING[6]
[6] From "The Simplicity That Is in Christ," published by Funk &
Wagnalls Company.
_Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose
name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also
that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of
the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones._--Isaiah
lvii., 15.
Inhabiting eternity; yet making His abode within a broken heart! It
seems as if we might apprehend either of these things singly; but
both together--how can it be? The distresses, the wants, the fears,
of life, make us long that indeed it were so. Our soul crieth out
for God, for the living God.