Now, of course, I need not remind you that there is a special sense
in which the office of witness-bearing belonged only to those who
had seen Christ in the flesh, and could testify to the fact of His
Resurrection. I need not dwell upon that further than to remark that
the fact that the designation of the first preachers of the Gospels
was 'witnesses' is significant of a great deal. For witness implies
fact, and the nature of their message, as being the simple
attestation to the occurrence of things that truly happened in the
earth, is wrapped up in that name. They were not speculators,
philosophers, moralists, legislators. They had neither to argue nor
to dissertate, nor to lay down rules for conduct, nor to ventilate
their own fancies. They were witnesses, and their business was to
tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. All
doctrine and all morality will come second. The first form of the
Gospel is, 'How that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures, and that He was raised again the third day, according to
the Scriptures.' First, a history; then a religion; then a morality;
and morality and religion because it is a history of redemption.
These early Christians were witnesses in another sense. The very
existence of the Church at all was a testimony to that supernatural
fact without which it could not have been. We are often told in
recent years that the belief in the Resurrection grew slowly up
amongst the early Christians. What became of the Church whilst it
was growing? What held it together? How comes it that the fate of
Christ's followers was not the fate of the followers of Theudas and
other people that rose up, 'boasting themselves to be somebody,'
whose followers as a matter of course, 'came to nought' when the
leader was slain? There is only one answer. 'He rose again from the
dead.' Else there is no possibility of accounting for the fact that
the Church as a distinct organisation survived Calvary. The
Resurrection was no gradually evolved hardening of desire and fancy
into fact, but it was the foundation upon which the Church was
built. 'Ye'--by your words and by your existence as a community--'are
the witnesses of these things.'
But that is somewhat apart from the main purpose of my remarks now.
I desire rather to emphasise the thought that, with modifications in
form, the substance of the functions of these early believers
remains still the office and dignity of all Christian men. 'Ye are
the witnesses of these things.'
And what is the manner of testimony that devolves upon you and me,
Christian friends? Witness by your lives. Most men take their
notions of what Christianity is from the average of the Christians
round about them. And, if we profess to be Christ's followers, we
shall be taken as tests and specimen cases of the worth of the
religion that we profess. 'Ye are the Epistles of Christ,' and if
the writing be blurred and blotted and often half unintelligible,
the blame will be laid largely at His door. And men will say, and
say rightly, 'If that is all that Christianity can do, we are just
as well without it.' It is our task to 'adorn the doctrine of
Christ,' marvellous as it may seem that anything in our poor lives
can commend that fairest of all beautiful things--and to commend it
to some hearts. Just as some poor black-and-white engraving of a
masterpiece of the painter's brush may, to an eye untrained in the
harmony of colour, be a better interpretation of the artist's
meaning than his own proper work, so our feeble copies of the
transcendent splendour and beauty may suit some purblind and
untrained eyes better than the serener and loftier perfection which
we humbly copy. 'We are the witnesses of these things.' And depend
upon it, mightier than all direct effort, and more unusual than all
utterances of lip, is the witness of the life of all professing
Christians to the reality of the facts upon which they say they base
their faith.
But beyond that, there is yet another department of testimony which
belongs to each of us, and that is the attestation of personal
experience. That is a form of Christian service which any and every
Christian can put forth. You cannot all be preachers, in the
technical sense. You cannot all be thinkers and strong champions,
argumentative or otherwise, for God's truth. But I will tell you
what you all can be. You can all say, 'Come and hear all ye; and I
will declare what He hath done for my soul.' It does not take
eloquence, gifts, learning, intellectual grasp of the doctrinal side
of Christian truth for a man to say, as the first preacher of Christ
upon earth said, 'Brother! we have found the Messias.' That was all,
and that was enough. That you can say, if you _have_ found Him,
and after all, the witness of personal experience of what faith in
Jesus Christ can make of a man, and do for a man, is the strongest
and most universal weapon placed in the hands of Christian men and
women. There is nothing that goes so far as that, if it be backed up
by a life corresponding, which, like a sounding-board behind a man,
flings his words out into the world'; 'Whether this man be a sinner
or no I know not'; 'I leave all that talk about heights and depths
of argument and controversy to other people, but this one thing I
know'--not I _think,_ not I _believe,_ not I am disposed to come to
the conclusion that--but 'this one thing I _know_, that whereas I
was blind now I see.' There is no getting over that! 'Ye are the
witnesses of these things.' And do not be ashamed of your function,
nor slothful nor cowardly in its discharge.
May I say a word here about the grounds on which this obligation to
witness rests for us? If Jesus Christ had never said, 'Go ye into
all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,' it would not
have made a bit of difference as to the imperative duty that is laid
upon all Christian men; for that arises, not from that command,
which only gives voice to a previous obligation, but it flows, from
the very nature of things, from the message that we receive from our
links with other men and from the constitution and make of our own
natures.
It flows directly from the gift that we have received. There are
plenty of truths which, _per se_, carry with them no obligation
to impart them. But any truth in which is wrapped up the possible
happiness of another man, any truth which bears upon moral or
spiritual subjects, carries with it the strongest obligation to
impart it. We have such large insights into God and His love as the
Gospel gives us, not that we may eat our morsel alone, or merely sun
ourselves in the light, and expatiate in the warmth of the beams
that come to us, but that we may share them with all around: 'God,
who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined into
our hearts,' that we may 'give the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.'
The obligation arises from the links that knit us all together. 'Am
I my brother's keeper?' Why, the question answers itself. If he is
_your_ 'brother,' you are certainly _his_ 'keeper.' And you cannot
shuffle off the obligation by any irrelevant pitting of one field of
Christian work against another; still less by any criticism, hostile
or friendly, as it may be, of the methods of Christian work, or of the
parity and elevation of the character and motives of the workers.
Humanity is one, linked by a mystic chain, and every link of it should
thrill by a common impulse; and through all the members there should
circulate a common life. That great thought is one of the gains that
the Gospel has brought us, and in the presence of it and our indebtedness
and obligation to every man, woman, and child that bears the form of
man, all geographical limits to Christian witnessing seem supremely
absurd and incongruous. You cannot get rid of your obligation by saying,
'I do not care about foreign missions, I go in for home ones.' And you
cannot get rid of it by chiming in an ignorant second to the talk
that has been going on lately, carping at or criticising methods of
work. It would be a very strange thing if we had hit all at once, in
the very beginning of an enterprise, upon the best of all possible
methods; and it would be a very strange thing if the mission-field
is the only one where there are no lazy workers and selfish motives
and unworthy occupants of high places. All that is true about home
as it is about other places. But grant it all, and back comes the
obligation based upon the nature of the truth that we have received,
upon our links with our brethren, and upon our loyalty to our
Master, and it peals into the ears of every Christian man and woman:
'Thou art a witness of these things'; and 'to this end wert thou
born again, that thou mightest bear witness to the truth.'
Ah, brethren! the issues of faithfulness to that high function are
sweet and blessed and wonderful. A witnessing Christian will be a
believing Christian; for there is no surer way to deepen my own
convictions about any moral or spiritual truth than to constitute
myself their humble servant to proclaim them. Whosoever is a
believer should be an apostle, and if he is an apostle he will be
tenfold a believer. There is nothing which will give a man a firmer
grasp of the Gospel for his own soul than when he finds that,
ministered by his humble efforts, it produces in other hearts the
same effects which he finds it working upon himself. There is no
page in the great book of the evidences of the truth of Christianity
more conclusive than that which in the last century has been written
by the experience of Christian missions. Let the objectors, Jannes
and Jambres, who withstood Moses, let them do the same with their
enchantments, and then we will discuss the questions of the truth of
the Gospel with them.
Nor need I do more than remind you of the highest of all blessed
issues which is yet to come. 'Be thou faithful unto death and I will
give thee a crown of life.' Alas! alas! how many of us professing
Christians will have to stand at last without that 'crown of
rejoicing' which they wear who, by their poor work and witness, have
won some souls to the Master. Do you, Christian men, contemplate
entering heaven alone, or bringing your sheaves with you? It will be
sad to stand with hands empty then, because they were idle in the
days of the seed-basket and the reaping-hook, whilst those that
sowed and those that reaped shall rejoice together. 'Ye are the
witnesses of these things': see to it that you do your work.
II. And now, secondly, and briefly, note the equipment of the
witnesses for their task.
Our Lord here distinguishes two stages in the endowment. Then and
there they receive the gift of the Divine Spirit, as is more fully
recorded in John's account of these last days, but that gift, rich
and precious as it was, was not yet the full bestowment which they
needed for their task. That came on the day of Pentecost. Mark the
vivid and picturesque word which our Lord here employs: 'Until ye be
_clothed_ with power from on high.' That divine gift coming
down as a vesture, wraps and covers and hides their own weakness,
their own naked and poor personality.
I can only say a word or two about this matter. The same collocation
of ideas--a witnessing Spirit by whose indwelling energy the
Christian community becomes witnesses, is found (and has been
explained at length by me in former discourses) in the farewell
words of our Lord in the upper chamber. 'The Spirit of Truth which
proceedeth from the Father, He shall bear witness of Me, and ye also
shall bear witness because ye have been with Me from the beginning.'
I need only remark here that the only power by which Christians can
discharge their work of witnessing in the world is the power which
clothes them from above. The new life which Jesus Christ brings and
gives to us is the only life which will avail for discharging this
office. Our self-will, the old life of nature, with all its
dependence upon ourselves, is nought in reference to this task. But
when that divine spark enters into men's hearts, then natural
endowments are heightened into supernatural gifts, and new forces
are developed, and new powers are bestowed and the earthen vessel is
filled with new treasure. Without it--and there is a great deal of
so-called Christian witnessing to-day without it--noise,
advertising, skill in getting up externals, and all the other
unworthy methods which Christian churches sometimes stoop to adopt,
are powerless, as they ought to be. You may accomplish a great deal
by fussy activity which calls itself Christian earnestness, and has
not God's Spirit in it. But it is no more growth than are what the
children call 'devil's puff-balls' which they find in the fields in
these autumn mornings; and it will go up in poisonous, brown dust
like these when it is pricked.
The one condition of Christian churches doing their Christian work
is that they shall be clothed and filled with God's Spirit. Do not
let us rely on machinery; do not let us rely on externals; do not
let us rely on advertising tricks which might do very well for a
cheap shop, but are all out of harmony with the work that we have to
do; but let us rely on this, and on this alone. Holding converse
with God and Christ, we shall come out of the secret place of the
Most High with our faces glowing with the communion, and our lips on
fire to proclaim the sweetnesses that lie within the shrine.
One word more and I have done. This clothing with the Spirit, which
is the only fitness of the Church for its witnessing work, is only
to be won by much solitary waiting. 'Tarry ye,' or as in the
original it stands even more vividly, _'Sit ye still_ in the
city ... till ye be clothed.' It is because so many Christian
workers are so seldom alone with Christ that so much of their work
is nought, and comes to nought. To draw apart from outward activity
into the solitary place, and sit with Him, is the only means by
which we can keep up the freshness of our own spirits, and be fit
for His service. Mary was being trained for Martha's work when she
sat at Christ's feet; but Martha could not do hers without being
'troubled and careful,' because she was more accustomed to the work
than to the communion that would have made it light.
So, Christian friends, behold your task and your equipment. I
beseech you, who call yourselves Christ's servants, to lay to heart
your plain and unavoidable obligations. If you have found Jesus, you
are as truly and as individually bound to proclaim Him as if a
definite and direct divine command sounded in your ears. Your
possession of the Gospel as the food of your own souls binds you to
impart it to all the famished. The call to witness comes as straight
to you as it did to the young Pharisee on the road to Damascus when
he heard 'Saul! Saul!' called from the sky.
May you and I answer as he did, 'Lord! what wilt Thou have _me_
to do!'