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_The World's Great Sermons_
VOLUME IX
CUYLER TO VAN DYKE
THE
WORLD'S
GREAT
SERMONS
COMPILED BY
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Formerly of Yale Divinity School Faculty;
Author of "How to Speak
in Public," Etc.
With Assistance from Many of the Foremost
Living Preachers and Other Theologians
INTRODUCTION BY
LEWIS O. BRASTOW, D.D.
Professor Emeritus of Practical Theology
in Yale University
IN TEN VOLUMES
VOLUME IX--CUYLER TO VAN DYKE
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK and LONDON
COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
_Printed in the United States of America_
CONTENTS
VOLUME IX
CUYLER (Born in 1822). Page
The Value of Life 1
BROADUS (1827-1895).
Let us Have Peace With God 19
WILBERFORCE (Born in 1840).
The Mother Church 37
SPALDING (Born in 1840).
Education and the Future of Religion 49
MACARTHUR (Born in 1841).
Christ--The Question of the Centuries 73
CARPENTER (Born in 1841).
The Age of Progress 91
PARKHURST (Born in 1842).
Constructive Faith 111
PATTON (Born in 1843).
Glorification Through Death 129
SCOTT HOLLAND (Born in 1847).
The Story of a Disciple's Faith 145
STALKER (Born in 1848).
Temptation 165
BURRELL (Born in 1849).
How to Become a Christian 183
WATSON (1850-1907).
Optimism 199
NICOLL (Born in 1851).
Gethsemane, the Rose Garden of God 211
VAN DYKE (Born in 1852).
The Meaning of Manhood 231
CUYLER
THE VALUE OF LIFE
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Theodore Ledyard Cuyler, Presbyterian divine, was born at Aurora,
New York, in 1822. He took his degree at Princeton in 1841, and
studied theology in Princeton Seminary. He was ordained to the
ministry in 1848, but after discharging the duties of three pastoral
positions, took up the prosecution of more general activities,
including temperance and philanthropic work. He has been a
voluminous writer, having contributed some four thousand articles to
leading religious organs. He died February 26, 1909.
CUYLER
1822-1909
THE VALUE OF LIFE
_The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty
hath given me life._--Job xxxiii., 4.
There are two conflicting theories, nowadays, as to the origin
of man. One theory brings him upward from the brute, the other,
downward from God; one gives him an ascent from the ape, the other
a descent from the Almighty. I shall waste no time in refuting the
first theory. The most profound physicist of Europe, Professor
Virchow, of Berlin, has lately asserted that this theory of man's
evolution from the brute has no solid scientific foundation. Why
need you and I seek to disprove what no man has ever yet proved or
will prove? The other theory of man's origin comes down to us in the
oldest book in existence, the Book of Job, and tallies exactly with
the narrative in the next oldest books, those compiled by Moses:
"The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath
given me life." That is the Bible account of your ancestry and mine.
We make a great deal of ancestry. The son of a duke may become a
duke; the child of a king has royal blood in his veins; and a vast
deal of honor is supposed to descend with an honorable descent.
Grant this true, it proves a great deal; it proves more than some
of us imagine. It proves that there is something grander than for
man to have for his sire a king or an emperor, a statesman or
a conqueror, a poet or a philosopher. It looks to the grandest
genealogy in the universe, the ancestry of a whole race; not a few
favored individuals, but all humanity. My brethren, fellow sharers
of immortality, open this family record. Trace your ancestry back to
the most august parentage in the universe: One is our Father, God;
One our elder brother, Jesus. We all draw lineage from the King of
kings and the Lord of lords. Herein consists the value and dignity
of human life. I go back to the origin of the globe. I find that
for five days the creative hand of the Almighty is busy in fitting
up an abode of palatial splendor. He adorns it; He hollows the seas
for man's highway, rears the mountains for his observatories, stores
the mines for his magazines, pours the streams to give him drink,
and fertilizes the fields to give him daily bread. The mansion is
carpeted with verdure, illuminated with the greater light by day,
lesser lights by night. Then God comes up to the grandest work of
all. When the earth is to be fashioned and the ocean to be poured
into its bed, God simply says, "Let them be," and they are. When man
is to be created, the Godhead seems to make a solemn pause, retires
into the recesses of His own tranquillity, looks for a model, and
finds it in Himself. "And God said, let us make man in our image,
after our likeness.... So God created man in his own image, in the
image of God created he him; male and female created he them.... So
God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life and he became a
living soul." No longer a beautiful model, no longer a speechless
statue, but vivified. Life, that subtle, mysterious thing that no
physicist can define, whose lurking place in the body no medical eye
hath yet found out--life came into the clay structure. He began to
breathe, to walk, to think, to feel in the body the "nephesh": the
word in the Hebrew means, in the first place, the breath of life,
then, finally, by that immortal essence called the soul.
Now, it is not my intention to enter into any analysis of this
expression, "the spirit," but talk to you on life, its reach and
its revenue, its preciousness and its power, its rewards and its
retributions, life for this world and the far-reaching world beyond.
Life is God's gift; your trust and mine. We are the trustees of the
Giver, unto whom at last we shall render account for every thought,
word and deed in the body.
I. In the first place, life, in its origin, is infinitely important.
The birth of a babe is a mighty event. From the frequency of births,
as well as the frequency of deaths, we are prone to set a very
low estimate on the ushering into existence of an animate child,
unless the child be born in a palace or a presidential mansion, or
some other lofty station. Unless there be something extraordinary
in the circumstances, we do not attach the importance we ought to
the event itself. It is only noble birth, distinguished birth,
that is chronicled in the journals or announced with salvos of
artillery. I admit that the relations of a prince, of a president
and statesman, are more important to their fellow men and touch them
at more points than those of an obscure pauper; but when the events
are weighed in the scales of eternity, the difference is scarcely
perceptible. In the darkest hovel in Brooklyn, in the dingiest attic
or cellar, or in any place in which a human being sees the first
glimpse of light, the eye of the Omniscient beholds an occurrence
of prodigious moment. A life is begun, a life that shall never end.
A heart begins to throb that shall beat to the keenest delight or
the acutest anguish. More than this--a soul commences a career
that shall outlast the earth on which it moves. The soul enters
upon an existence that shall be untouched by time, when the sun is
extinguished like a taper in the sky, the moon blotted out, and the
heavens have been rolled together as a vesture and changed forever.
The Scandinavians have a very impressive allegory of human life.
They represent it as a tree, the "Igdrasil" or the tree of
existence, whose roots grow deep down in the soil of mystery; the
trunk reaches above the clouds; its branches spread out over the
globe. At the foot of it sit the Past, the Present, and the Future,
watering the roots. Its boughs, with their unleafing, spread
out through all lands and all time; every leaf of the tree is a
biography, every fiber a word, a thought or a deed; its boughs are
the histories of nations; the rustle of it is the noise of human
existence onward from of old; it grows amid the howling of the
hurricane, it is the great tree of humanity. Now in that conception
of the half savage Norsemen, we learn how they estimated the
grandeur of human life. It is a transcendent, momentous thing, this
living, bare living, thinking, feeling, deciding. It comes from God;
He is its Author; it should rise toward God, its Giver, who is alone
worthy of being served; that with God it may live forever.
II. In the next place, human life is transcendently precious from
the services it may render to God in the advancement of His glory.
Man was not created as a piece of guesswork, flung into existence as
a waif. There is a purpose in the creation of every human being.
God did not breathe the breath of life into you, my friend, that you
might be a sensuous or a splendid animal. That soul was given you
for a purpose worthy of yourself, still more of the Creator.
What is the purpose of life? Is it advancement? Is it promotion? Is
it merely the pursuit of happiness? Man was created to be happy, but
to be more--to be holy. The wisdom of those Westminster fathers that
gathered in the Jerusalem chamber, wrought it into the well-known
phrase, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever."
That is the double aim of life: duty first, then happiness as the
consequence; to bring in revenues of honor to God, to build up His
kingdom, spread His truth; to bring this whole world of His and lay
it subject at the feet of the Son of God. That is the highest end
and aim of existence, and every one here that has risen up to that
purpose of life lives. He does not merely vegetate, he does not
exist as a higher type of animal: he lives a man's life on earth,
and when he dies he takes a man's life up to mingle with the loftier
life of paradise. The highest style of manhood and womanhood is to
be attained by consecration to the Son of God. That is the only
right way, my friends, to employ these powers which you have brought
back to your homes from your sanctuary. That is the only idea of
life which you are to take to-morrow into the toils and temptations
of the week. That is the only idea of life that you are to carry
unto God in your confessions and thanksgivings in the closet. That
is the only idea of life on which you are to let the transcendent
light of eternity fall. These powers, these gifts, the wealth
earned, the influence imparted, all are to be laid at the feet of
Him who gave His life for you. Life is real, momentous, clothed with
an awful and an overwhelming responsibility to its possessor. Nay, I
believe that life is the richest of boons, or the most intolerable
of curses.
Setting before you the power of a well-spent life, I might of course
point first to the radiant pathway that extended from Bethlehem's
manger to the cross of Calvary. All along that path I read the
single purpose of love, all embracing and undying: "My meat is to do
the will of him that sent me.... I have glorified thee on earth, I
have finished the work thou gavest me to do." Next to that life we
place the life begun on the road to Damascus. In him Christ lived
again, with wondrous power, present in the utterances and footsteps
of the servant. "For me to live is Christ:" that is the master
passion of Paul. Whether he ate or drank, gained or lost, wrought or
suffered, Christ filled the eye and animated every step. The chief
end of Paul was to glorify his Savior; and of the winding-up of
that many-sided term of existence he could exclaim, not boastfully,
but gladly: "I have fought the good fight; I have finished my
course; I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a
crown of righteousness."
I found myself lately studying with intense interest the biography
of Baxter. For half a century that man gave himself to the service
of Jesus with a perseverance and industry that shames such loiterers
as you and I. Just think of a man that twice on every Lord's day
proclaimed the gospel of his Master with most elaborate care and
unflinching diligence; on the first two days of the week spent
seven hours each day in instructing children of the parish, not
omitting a single one on account of poverty or obscurity; think of
him as devoting one whole day of each week to care for their bodily
welfare, devoting three days to study, during which he prepared one
hundred and sixty instructive volumes saturated with the spirit of
the word, among them that immortal "Saints' Everlasting Rest," that
has guided so many a believer up to glory. The influence of one such
life as that changed the whole aspect of the town of Kidderminster.
When he came to it, it swarmed with ignorance, profligacy,
Sabbath-breaking, vice; when he left it the whole community had
become sober and industrious, and a large portion converted and
godly. He says: "On the Lord's Day evening you may hear hundreds
of families, in their doors singing psalms or reading the Bible,
as you pass along the streets." Sixteen hundred sat down at one
time to his communion-table. Nearly every house became a house of
prayer. Such was one life, the life of a man much of the time an
invalid, crying out often unto God for deliverance from the most
excruciating bodily pains. Such was one life on which was a stamped
"Holiness to Jesus," and out of which flowed the continual efflux
of Christian power and beneficence. Such a man never dies. Good men
live forever. Old Augustine lives to-day in the rich discourses
inspired by his teachings. Lord Bacon lives in the ever-widening
circles of engines, telegraph and telephones which he taught men how
to invent. Elizabeth Fry lives in the prison reformers following
her radiant and beneficial footsteps. Bunyan lies in Bunhill
Fields, but his bright spirit walks on the earth in the "Pilgrim's
Progress." Calvin sleeps at Geneva, and no man knoweth his sepulcher
to this day, but his magnificent "Vindication of God's Sovereignty"
will live forever. We hail him as in one sense an ancestor of our
republic. Wesley slumbers beside the City Road Chapel; his dead hand
rings ten thousand Methodist church bells round the globe. Isaac
Watts is dead, but in the chariot of his hymns tens of thousands
of spirits ascend to-day in majestic devotion. Howard still keeps
prisons clean. Franklin protects our dwellings from lightnings. Dr.
Duncan guards the earnings of the poor in the savings-bank. For a
hundred years Robert Raikes has gathered his Sunday-schools all over
Christendom; and Abraham Lincoln's breath still breathes through
the life of the nation to which, under God, he gave a new birth of
freedom. The heart of a good man or a good woman never dies. Why, it
is infamy to die and not be missed. Live, immortal friend, live as
the brother of Jesus, live as a fellow workman with Christ in God's
work. Phillips Brooks once said to his people: "I exhort you to pray
for fulness of life--full red blood in the body, full and honest
truth in the mind, fulness of consecrated love to the dying Savior
in the heart."
III. In the next place, life is infinitely valuable, not only
from the dignity of its origin and the results and revenues it
may reach, but from the eternal consequences flowing from it. Ah,
this world, with its curtaining of light, its embroideries of the
heavens, and its carpeting of verdure, is a solemn vestibule to
eternity. My hearer, this world on which you exhibit your nature
this morning is the porch of heaven or the gateway of hell. Here
you may be laying up treasures through Christ and for Christ, to
make you a millionaire to all eternity. Here, by simply refusing
to hearken, by rejecting the cross, by grieving the Spirit, you
may kindle a flame that shall consume and give birth to a worm of
remorse that shall prey on your soul forever and ever. In this brief
twenty years, thirty, or forty, you must, without mistake, settle a
question, the decision of which shall lift you to the indescribable
heights of rapture or plunge you to the depths of darkness and
despair. I am a baby at the thought of the word "eternity"; I have
racked this brain of mine, in its poverty and its weakness, and
have not the faintest conception of it, any more than I have of the
omnipresence of Jehovah; yet one is as real as the other, and you
and I will go on in the continuation of an existence that outnumbers
the years as the Atlantic drops outnumber the drops of a brook; an
existence whose ages are more than the stars that twinkled last
night in the firmament--an existence interminable, yet all swinging
on the pivot of that life in that pew. It is overpowering.
How momentous, then, is life! How grand its possession! what
responsibility in its very breath! what a crime to waste it! what
a glory to consecrate it! what a magnificent outcome when it shall
shuffle off the coil, and break itself free from its entanglements,
and burst into the presence of its Giver, and rise into all the
transcendent glories of its life everlasting!
In view of that, what a solemn thing it is to preach God's word, and
to stand between the living and the dead! And in view of life, its
preciousness and power, its far-reaching rewards and punishments,
let me say here, in closing, that there are three or four practical
considerations that should be prest home upon us and carried out by
us:
1. The first practical thought is, how careful you and I ought to
be to husband it. The neglect of life is a sin; it is an insult to
God; it is tampering with the most precious trust He bestows. The
care of life is a religious duty. A great deal of your happiness
depends on it, and I can tell you, my Christian brother, a great
deal of your spiritual growth and capacity for usefulness depends
on the manner in which you treat this marvelous mechanism of the
body. Your religious life is affected by the condition of the body
in which the spirit tabernacles. It is not only lying lips, it is
"the wilful dyspeptic, that is an abomination to the Lord." Any one
that recklessly impairs, imperils and weakens bodily powers by bad
hours, unwholesome diet, poisonous stimulants or sensualities, is a
suicide; and there are some men, I am afraid, in this congregation
that yield themselves such unpitied bond-slaves to the claims of
business, that they are shortening life by years and impairing its
powers every day. Thousands of suicides are committed every year in
Brooklyn by a defiance of the simplest laws of self-preservation and
health. What shall we say of him who opens a haunt of temptation,
sets out his snares and deliberately deals out death by the dram? So
many pieces of silver for so many ounces of blood, and an immortal
soul tossed into the balance! If I could let one ray of eternity
shine into every dramshop, methinks I could frighten the poison
seller back from making his living at the mouth of the pit.
2. Again, in this view of the value of life, what a stupendous crime
wanton war becomes--offensive war, such war as multitudes have
dashed into from the lust of conquest or the greed of gold. When war
is to be welcomed, rather than a nation should commit suicide and
the hopes of men perish, then with prayers and self-consecration may
the patriot go out to the battle and the sacrifice; but offensive
war is a monster of hell. With all our admiration for Napoleon's
brilliant and unsurpassed genius, there are passages in his life
that make my blood sometimes tingle to the finger ends, and start
the involuntary hiss at the very thought of such a gigantic butcher
of his fellow creatures. If that man knew that a battery could be
carried only at the cost of a legion of men, he never hesitated to
order their sacrifice as lightly as he would the life of a gnat. I
read that, after what is called his splendid victory of Austerlitz
was over and the triumph was won and the iron crown of empire was
fixt on his brow, as he stood on the high ground he saw a portion
of the defeated Russians making a slow, painful retreat over a
frozen lake. They were in his power; he rode up to a battery, and
said, "Men you are losing time! fire on those masses; they must be
swallowed up! fire on that ice!" The order was executed. Shells
were thrown, and went crashing through the brittle bridge of ice,
and amid awful shrieks hundreds upon hundreds of poor wretches
were buried in the frozen waters of that lake. I believe the dying
shrieks of his fellow creatures will haunt the eternity of a man
who prostituted the most magnificent powers the Creator fashioned
in this our century of time to the awful work of shortening life,
tormenting his fellow creatures and sending a million unbidden
before God.
3. Once more I emphasize upon you, my beloved people, life, its
preciousness and power, its rewards and its retributions. And yet,
what a vapor, what a flight of an arrow, what a tale that is told!
Short, yet infinite in its reach and its retribution! When life is
represented as an arrow flight and a vapor, it is not that it may
be underrated in its infinite importance, but only that we may be
pushed up to the right sense of its brevity. Everything in God's
world ennobles humanity and exhibits life as earnest, solemn,
decisive, momentous. The highest ends are proposed to it while it
exists, the most magnificent rewards are held out at the termination
of its consecrated vitalities. At the end of it is the great white
throne, and the decisions of the judgment. Some of you, turning
from this discourse this morning, may say it was nothing but sacred
poetry because your life is only the steady, monotonous round of
a mill-horse--to-morrow across the ferry, home at night--through
its routine in the shop, in the counting-room, in the family, on
the Sabbath in church--and say, "I see nothing in my life that
thus sparkles or shines or has this sublime characteristic!" Ah,
my friend, grant that your life may be the mill-round of the
mill-horse; you turn a shaft that reaches through the wall into
eternity, and the humblest life in this house sets in motion
revolving wheels that shall at last grind out for God's garner the
precious grain, or else the worthless chaff of a wasted existence.
So again I say, life is the porch of eternity, the only one we
shall ever have; and you are to decide now whether it shall be the
uplift from strength to strength, from glory to glory, or the plunge
downward and still downward and deeper downward to darkness and
eternal death.
My friend, what sort of a life are you living? A really earnest,
humble consecration to God? Go on. Live, as I mean to do, as long as
God shall spare power and intellectual faculty to serve Him. Live
as long as you can, as largely as you can; and then carry all life's
accumulation and lay it down at the feet of Him whose heart broke
for you and me on the cross of Calvary, and say: "Master, here I am,
and the life Thou hast given me."
BROADUS
LET US HAVE PEACE WITH GOD
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
John A. Broadus was born in Virginia in 1827. His preeminence
as a preacher was attained while he was chiefly occupied as
professor of New Testament Interpretation and Homiletics in the
Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville, Kentucky. (Originally
established at Greenville, South Carolina.) For many years Dr.
Broadus was regarded as the foremost preacher of the South, and
was in demand on many important public occasions for sermons and
addresses. It has been said that "the thought and the language
of his sermons lingered in the mind like strains of melodious
and inspiring music." The sermon here given is characteristic of
the earnest simplicity of his style, and of the theological and
philosophical bent of his homiletic methods. He died in 1895.
BROADUS
1827-1895
LET US HAVE PEACE WITH GOD[1]
[1] Reprinted by permission of A. C. Armstrong & Son, from "Sermons
and Addresses" by John A. Broadus. Copyright, 1886.
_Therefore being justified by faith, let us have peace with God,
through our Lord Jesus Christ._--Romans v., 1. (R. V.)
It is nearly four centuries ago now, that a young professor from
the north of Germany went to Rome. He was a man of considerable
learning and of versatile mind. Yet he did not go to Rome to survey
the remains of antiquity or the treasures of modern art. He went
to Rome because he was in trouble about his sins and could find no
peace. Having been educated to regard Rome as the center of the
Christian world, he thought he would go to the heart of things and
see what he could there find. He had reflected somewhat at home, and
had talked with other men more advanced than himself, on the thought
that the just shall live by faith; but still that thought had never
taken hold of him. We read--some of you remember the story quite
well--how one day, according to the strange ideas that prevailed and
still prevail at Rome, he went climbing up a stairway on his knees,
pausing to pray on every step, to see if that would not help him
about his sins. Then, as he climbed slowly up, he seemed to hear a
voice echoing down the stairway, "The just shall live by faith; the
just shall live by faith." And so he left alone his dead works, he
arose from his knees and went down the stairway to his home to think
about that great saying, "The just shall live by faith."
It is no wonder that with such an experience, and such a nature,
Martin Luther should have lived to shake the Christian world with
the thought that justification by faith is the great doctrine of
Christianity, "the article of a standing or a falling church." It
is no wonder that John Wesley, rising up with living earnestness
when England was covered with a pall of spiritual death, should have
revived the same thought--justification by faith.
Yet it is not true that the doctrine of justification by faith is
all of the gospel. It is true that the doctrine of justification
by faith is simply one of the several ways by which the gospel
takes hold of men. You do not hear anything of that doctrine in
the Epistles of John. He has another way of presenting the gospel
salvation, namely, that we must love Christ, and be like Him, and
obey Him. I think sometimes that Martin Luther made the world
somewhat one-sided by his doctrine of justification by faith; that
the great mass of the Protestant world are inclined to suppose there
is no other way of looking on the gospel. There are very likely some
here to-day who would be more imprest by John's way of presenting
the matter; but probably the majority would be more imprest by
Paul's way, and it is our business to present now this and now
that, to present first one side and then the other. So we have here
before us to-day Paul's great doctrine of justification by faith,
in perhaps one of his most striking statements. "Therefore, being
justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ."
My friends, we talk and hear about these gospel truths, and repeat
these Scripture words, and never stop to ask ourselves whether
we have a clear idea of what is meant. What does Paul mean when
he talks about being justified? There has been a great deal of
misapprehension as to his meaning. Martin Luther was all wrong in
his early life, because he had been reared up in the idea that a
justified man means simply a just man, a good man, and that he could
not account himself justified or hope for salvation until he was a
thoroughly good man. Now, the Latin word from which we borrow our
word "justified" does not mean to make just, and as the Romanists
use the Latin, their error is natural. But Paul's Greek word means
not to make just, but to regard as just, to treat as just. That is
a very important difference--not to make just, but to regard and
treat as just. How would God treat you, if you were a righteous
man; if you had, through all your life, faithfully performed all
your duties, conforming to all your relations to your fellow
beings--how would He regard and treat you? He would look upon you
with complacency. He would smile on you as one that was in His sight
pleasing. He would bless you as long as you lived in this world,
and, when you were done with this world, He would delight to take
you home to His bosom, in another world, because you would deserve
it.
And now as God would treat a man who was just because he deserved
it, so the gospel proposes to treat men who are not just and who
do not deserve it, if they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He
will treat them as just, tho they are not just, if they believe in
Christ; that is to say, he will look upon them with His favor; He
will smile upon them in His love; He will bless them with every good
as long as they live, and when they die He will delight to take them
home to His own bosom, tho they never deserved it, through His Son,
Jesus Christ. That is what Paul means by justification. And when
Martin Luther found that out he found peace. This Epistle to the
Romans had always stopt his progress when reading the New Testament.
He would read, in the Latin version, "For therein is revealed the
justice of God," and he felt in his heart that God's justice must
condemn him. But now he came to see what was really meant by the
righteousness of God, the righteousness which God provides and
bestows on the believer in Jesus. A sinful man, an undeserving
man, may get God Almighty's forgiveness and favor and love, may be
regarded with complacency and delight, tho he does not deserve it,
if he believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is justification by
faith.
It is one thing to take hold of this matter in the way of doctrinal
conception and expression, and of course, God be thanked! it is
another thing to receive it in the heart. There are many people who
get hold of it all in the heart with trust and peace that never
have a correct conception of it as a doctrine. Yet I suppose it is
worth while that we should endeavor to see these things clearly.
Other things being equal, they will be the holiest and most useful
Christians who have the clearest perception of the great facts
and truths of the gospel. So I recommend to you that whenever any
one tries to explain to you one of these great doctrinal truths,
you shall listen with fixt attention and see if you can not get a
clearer view of the gospel teachings on that subject, for it will
do you good.
Now let us come to the second thought here, viz., being justified
by faith. A man might say, if God proposes to deal with those
who are not just, as if they were, why does He condition it upon
believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ? Why can not God proclaim
a universal amnesty at once, and be done with it, to all His
sinful, weak children, and treat them all as if they were just,
without their believing? I don't think this is hard to see. God
does not merely propose to deal with us for the time being as if
we were just, but He proposes in the end to make us actually just.
It would be an unsatisfactory salvation to a right-minded man if
God proposed merely to exempt us from the consequences of our sins
and not to deliver us from our sins. You do not want merely to
escape punishment for sin without ever becoming good; you want to
be righteous and holy, you want to be delivered from sin itself as
well as from the consequences of sin. And this gospel, which begins
by its proclamation that God is willing to treat men as just, altho
they are not just, does not stop there. It proposes to be the means
by which God will take hold of men's characters and make them just,
make them holy. You may, for the moment, conceive of such a thing as
that God should make a proclamation of universal amnesty, and treat
all men as if they were just; but that would not make them any
better. The gospel is not merely to deliver us from the consequence
of sin, but to deliver us from the power of sin. You can conceive
of an amnesty as to the consequence of sin, which should extend to
persons that will not even believe there is such an amnesty; but
you can not see how the gospel is to have any power in delivering
us from the dominion of sin, unless we believe the gospel. It can
do so only through belief. Therefore it is not possible that a man
should be justified without belief. I think it is useful that we
should thus try to see that this is not a matter of mere arbitrary
appointment on the part of the sovereign Power of the universe,
but that the condition is necessary--that it can not be otherwise.
"Being justified by faith," it reads; and we can not be justified
without faith, because the same gospel is also to take hold of us
and make us just.
And now, some one who feels a little freshened interest in this
subject, some man who has never got hold of the gospel faith, says
to himself: "I wonder if the preacher is going to explain to me
what believing is, what faith is. I never heard any one succeed in
explaining faith." Well, if you will pardon me, the best explanation
of faith I ever heard was given by a negro preacher in Virginia. As
the story was told me, one Sunday afternoon, a few years ago, some
negroes were lying on the ground together, and one of them spoke
and said, "Uncle Reuben, can you explain this: Faith in de Lord,
and faith in de debbil?" "To be sure I can. There is two things:
in de fust place, faith in de Lord, and then faith in de debbil.
Now, in the fust place, fustly, there is faith. What is faith? Why,
faith is jes faith. Faith ain't nothing less than faith. Faith ain't
nothing more than faith. Faith is jest faith--now I done splain it."
Really, that man was right, there is nothing to explain. Faith is
as simple a conception as the human mind can have. How, then, can
you explain faith? You are neither able to analyze it into parts,
nor can you find anything simpler with which to compare it. So also
as to some other things, that are perfectly easy and natural in
practical exercise, and can not be explained. What is love? Well,
I won't go into an elaborate metaphysical definition of love, but
if I wanted a child to love me, I should try to exhibit myself in
such a character to him and act in such ways that the little child
would see in me something to love, and would feel like loving.
There would then be no need of an explanation of what love is. Did
you ever hear a satisfactory definition of laughter? If you wanted
to make a man laugh, would you attempt to define laughter to him?
You might possibly succeed in making a laughable definition; but
otherwise definitions won't make a man laugh. You would simply say
or do something ludicrous, and he would laugh readily enough if he
was so disposed; and if the man be not in a mood for laughing, all
your explanations are utterly useless. And so what is faith? There
is nothing to explain. Everybody knows what faith is. If you want to
induce a man to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you must hold up
the Lord to him in His true character, and then, if he is in a mood
to believe, he will believe, and if he is disinclined to belief, all
your explanations will be fruitless. The practical result may even
be obstructed by attempts to explain. What is faith? You know what
faith is. Every one knows.
Well, then, a man might say, "If you mean by faith in the Lord the
simple idea of believing what the Scripture says concerning Him,
the idea of believing its teachings about the Lord Jesus Christ to
be true, if that is what faith means, then all of us are believers,
all have faith." I am afraid not. I am afraid there are some here
who have not faith. Has a man faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who
simply does not disbelieve in him? I may not deny that what the
gospel says is true, but is that believing? Yonder sits a gentleman;
suppose some one should come hastily up the aisle, calling his
name, and say, "Your house is afire." The gentleman sits perfectly
quiet and looks unconcerned, as people so often do when listening
to preaching. The man repeats it: "I say your house is afire."
But still he sits in his place. Some one near him says, "You hear
what that man says. Do you believe it?" "Yes, I believe it," he
carelessly replies, and does not stir. You would all say, "The man
is insane, or certainly he does not believe it; for if he did, he
would not sit perfectly still and remain perfectly unconcerned."
Even so when the preacher speaks of sin and guilt and ruin, of God's
wrath and the fire that is not quenched; or when he stands with
joyful face and proclaims to his hearers that for their sin and ruin
there is a Savior; and they say they believe, and yet look as if it
were of no concern to them at all; then I say they do not believe
it--the thing is not possible. They may not disbelieve it; they may
not care to make an attempt to overturn it; they may be in a sort of
negative mood; but they do not believe it.
With that statement I suppose there are a great many of us who
concur and who will at once say, "Often I fear that I do not really
believe it. If I did believe it, the gospel would have more power
over my heart and more power over my life than it does have. And
what, oh, what shall I do?" The preacher has to remind you of that
father to whom the Savior came when the disciples had tried in
vain to heal his suffering child. Jesus said to him: "All things
are possible to him that believeth;" and he replied: "I believe;
help thou my unbelief." That should be your cry: "I believe; help
thou my unbelief." The man would not deny that he believed, and yet
felt bound to add that he knew he did not believe as he ought to.
Now the comfort is, that He who sees all hearts accepted that man's
confessedly imperfect faith, and granted his request. That has often
been the preacher's comfort as he uttered the same cry, "I believe;
help thou my unbelief"; and God give it as a comfort to you! But
do not content yourself with such a state of things, with any such
feeble, half-way believing. Nay, let us cherish all that tends to
strengthen our faith in the gospel; let us read the Word of God,
praying that we may be able to believe; let us say from day to day,
as the disciples said: "Lord, increase our faith."
The text proceeds: "Therefore, being justified by faith, let us have
peace with God." Instead of the declaration, "We have peace with
God," the best authorities for the text make it an exhortation, "Let
us have peace with God"; and so the revised version reads. Some
critics admit that the documents require us so to read, but say that
they can see no propriety in an exhortation at this point--that it
seems much more appropriate to understand the apostle as asserting
a fact. Yet I think we can see meaning and fitness in the text as
corrected: "Being justified by faith, let us have peace with God."
Let us have peace with God, notwithstanding our unworthiness. My
friends, we can not have peace with God so long as we cling to
the notion that we are going to deserve it. Just there is the
difficulty with many of those who are trying to be at peace with
God. They have been clinging to the thought that they must first
become worthy, and then become reconciled to God; and they will have
to see more clearly that they must come to Christ in order that,
being reconciled, they may be made good, may become worthy. We may
say there are two conceivable ways to have peace with God. It is
conceivable to have peace with God through our worthiness, and it is
conceivable and also practicable to have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ, tho we be unworthy. Then let us have peace with
Him, altho so unworthy, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Again, let us have peace with God, tho we are still sinful and
unholy, tho we know we come far short in character and in life of
what God's children ought to be. We must be, ought to be, intensely
dissatisfied with ourselves; but let us be satisfied with our
Savior, and have peace with God through Him; not content with the
idea of remaining such as we are, but, seeing that the same gospel
which offers us forgiveness and acceptance offers us also a genuine
renewal through our Lord Jesus Christ, and promises that finally we
shall be made holy, as God is holy, shall indeed be perfect, as our
Father in heaven is perfect. Let us rejoice in the gracious promise
of that perfect life, and, while seeking to be what we ought to
be, let us have peace with God. Our sanctification is still sadly
imperfect--the best of us well know that, and probably the best of
us feel it most deeply; but if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
our justification is perfect. We can never be more justified than
we are now justified, tho we shall be more and more made holy as
long as we live, and at last made perfectly holy as we pass into the
perfect world. My brethren, do think more and talk more of that. It
is an intensely practical matter, not only for your comfort but for
the strength of your life. If we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
altho we are painfully conscious that we are far from being in
character and life what we ought to be, yet, through the perfect
justification which we have at once, we shall in the end by His
grace be made perfectly holy.
Let us have peace with God, tho we have perpetual conflict with
sin. What a singular idea! Peace with God, and yet conflict, yes,
perpetual conflict, with a thousand forms of temptation to sin,
temptations springing from spiritual tempters--perpetual conflict,
and yet peace with God. Is not that conceivable? Is not that
possible? In this conflict we are on the Lord's side; in this
conflict the Lord is on our side; and so, tho the battle must be
waged against every form of sin, we may have peace with God.
And finally, let us have peace with God tho He leaves us to suffer
a thousand forms of distress and trial. "Let us have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have had access by
faith into this grace wherein we stand; and let us rejoice in hope
of the glory of God. And not only so, but let us also rejoice in
our tribulations; knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and
patience, proving; and proving, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed,
because the love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through
the Holy Ghost which was given unto us." Surely man may have peace
with God, tho he be left to suffer. For none of these things can
separate us from God's love. Who shall separate us from Christ's
love? "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, neither
angels nor principalities nor powers, neither things present nor
things to come, neither height nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord." When we are in trouble, let us take fast hold upon
that great thought, that trouble does not divide us from the love
of God. Yea, God's peace can conquer trouble, and guard us, as in
a fortress, against its assaults. "In nothing be anxious; but in
everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your
requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth
all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in
Christ Jesus."
WILBERFORCE
THE MOTHER CHURCH
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Ernest Roland Wilberforce, son of Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of
Winchester, was born in 1840, and educated at Harrow and Oxford. He
was appointed bishop of Newcastle in 1882, and thence translated to
Chichester in 1895.
WILBERFORCE
Born in 1840
THE MOTHER CHURCH[2]
[2] From "The Anglican Pulpit." Reprinted by permission of the
publishers, Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton.
_Take up thy son._--2 Kings iv., 36.
There is a metallic sound about most missionary sermons which
seems, at least to some, instinctively to harden the hearts and to
invalidate the sympathies of the listeners. The jingle of the coming
collection appears to be inextricably mixed up with the solemn
truths and heartfelt appeals that flow so often from the preacher's
lips, and we feel that at least we would rather separate the two by
as wide a chasm of intervening time as may be possible consistently
with the well-known cooling tendencies of all human emotions. I have
no reason to think that this sermon will prove itself to be in any
real sense an exception to this general rule, and yet, my brethren,
I seek, as God may now enable me, to remind you very briefly of
some of the deeper principles that underlie all missionary success,
believing as I do that these are possest of a peculiar power of
eliciting enduring support, since they flow from the bosom of the
Godhead itself.
"Take up thy son." God alone, it has been said, who Himself created
it, can fully understand the infinite pathos of human nature.
Certain it is that beneath the inspired record the histories of
men and women of old begin to sparkle and to burn as, endowed with
life and personality, they act anew their histories before us as we
sympathize with their mistakes, wonder at their endurance, admire
them for the traits of humanity they display, and feel drawn toward
them by the attractive power of their love; we feel that we can be
no longer really solitary here below, that, however tiresome may be
our lot, we have friends who speak from those old records, friends
who link yet living hands the closer round our hearts as we see much
of our own life-history faithfully anticipated in theirs, and learn
to read the solution of many of the struggles of the present in the
difficulties of the past. "Take up thy son." From that old chamber,
built originally to form a sanctuary for the honored servant of his
God, where now the corpse of the only child of the household is
lying, there seems to me to speak a voice of prophecy with regard to
God's dealings with humanity at large.
It was a time of overshadowing and of darkness in that Eastern
household. The death of her son, marvelously given in her husband's
old age, had left the mother's heart a thousand times more aching,
crusht, and weary than before. Instinctively that heart reaches
out toward the man of God. The mother's feet are turned to Carmel.
She will accept no substitute; no wand of office, no symbol of
authority will satisfy the eager cravings of her love. Drawn by
the cords of that great, all-constraining power, at length the
prophet stands within the darkened room, and through the personal
contact of the prophet with the dead, the power of God revives
the corpse. So both in the distance and within the darkened room,
while anxious, expectant hearts keep watch below, do Elisha's
actions typify the deeds of One Who within a thousand years will
walk the streets and lanes of Eastern towns, and will be known by
loving hearts throughout the countryside. Humanity had died by sin
throughout all the bygone ages; the symbols of authority from the
Carmel of God's presence had been reached down to men upon the
Fall. On human nature, wrapt in the fell sleep of sin, the wand of
office had been used, but there had been no bringing back to life.
Messenger after messenger had come, men who had communed with their
God, as undoubtedly as Gehazi had left the presence of Elisha to
go that day to Shunem; but there was neither voice nor hearing,
and sorrowfully still each servant witnessed in succession to his
mission: "The child is not awaked." Ah, who, my brethren, should
venture to guess, still less to dogmatize, how prayer might be said
to quicken the accomplishment of the counsels of the triune God? Yet
had prayer no part in the plan of the Incarnation? If the love of
the Shunammite mother compelled the presence of the prophet, could
then one of the greatest moral forces known within the universe
be purposely excluded from the great work of man's redemption by
the God Who has caused it to be recorded of Himself, "Thou nearest
prayer?" Could fervent prayer and mighty intercession that rolled
upward from the breasts of so long a line of kings, and patriarchs,
and prophets, and so many a lonely and unnoticed spot amid the hills
and valleys of Judah, where Baal found seven thousand knees that
were recalcitrant to his false and bloody worship, even when the
great Elijah believed himself to be alone in the one worship of the
true God of Israel; could the longings of the hearts that desired
to behold the things that after-generations saw, could the cry of
the souls from under the altar, "Oh, Lord, how long?" could, I ask,
all these be fruitless and in vain? Or had each its own due place
at least in hastening the coming of the kingdom, and in determining
when the fulness of time had arrived?