When a man in the middle of some slight plank, thrown across a stream,
tests it with a stamp of his foot, and calls to his comrades, 'It is
quite firm,' there is reason for their venturing upon it too. That is
exactly what Paul is doing here. How does he know that it is 'a faithful
saying'? Because he has proved it in his own experience, and found that
in his case the salvation which Jesus Christ was said to effect has been
effected. Now there are many other grounds of certitude besides this,
but, after all, it is worth men's while to consider how many millions
there have been from the beginning who would be ready to join chorus
with the Apostle here, and to say, 'One thing I know, that whereas I
was blind, now I see.' My experience cannot be your certitude; but if
you and I are suffering from precisely the same disease, and I have
tested a cure, my experiences should have some weight with you. And so,
brethren, I point you to all the thousands who are ready to say, 'This
poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him.' Are there any
who give counter-evidence; that say, 'We have tried it. It is all a sham
and imagination. We have asked this Christ of yours to forgive us, and
He has not. We have asked Him to cleanse us, and He has not. We have
tried Him, and He is an impostor, and we will have no more to do with
Him.' There are people, alas! who have gone back to their wallowing in
the mire, but it was not because Christ had failed in His promises, but
because they did not care to have them fulfilled any more. Jesus Christ
does not promise that His salvation shall work against the will of men
who submit themselves to it.
But it is not only because of that consentient chorus of many
voices--the testimony of which wise men will not reject--that the word
is 'a faithful saying.' This is no place or time to enter upon anything
like a condensation of the Christian evidence; but, in lieu of
everything else, I point to one proof. There is no fact in the history
of the world better attested, and the unbelief of which is more
unreasonable, than the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. And if Christ rose
from the dead--and you cannot understand the history of the world unless
He did, nor the existence of the Church either--if Jesus Christ rose
from the dead, it seems to me that almost all the rest follows of
necessity: the influx of the supernatural, the unique character of His
career, the correspondence of the end with the beginning, the broad seal
of the divine confirmation stamped upon His claims to be the Son of God
and the Redeemer of the world. All these things seem to me to come
necessarily from that fact. And I say, given the consentient witness of
nineteen centuries, given the existence of the Church, given the effects
of Christianity in the world, given that upon which they repose--the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead--the conclusion is sound,
'This is a faithful saying . . . that He came into the world to save
sinners.'
Men talk, nowadays, very often as if the progress of science and new
views as to the evolution of creatures or of mankind had effected the
certitude of the Gospel. It does not seem to me that they have in the
smallest degree. 'The foundation of God standeth sure,' whatever may
become of some of the superstructures which men have built upon it. They
may very probably be blown away. So much the better if we get the rock
to build upon once more. A great deal is going, but not the Gospel. Do
not let us be afraid, or suppose that it will suffer. Do not let us
dread every new speculation as if it was going to finish Christianity,
but recognise this--that the fact of man's sin and, blessed be God! the
fact of man's redemption stands untouched by them all; and to-day, as of
old, Jesus Christ is, and is firmly manifested to be, the world's
Saviour. Whatsoever refuge may be swept away by any storms, 'Behold, I
lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried corner-stone, a sure
foundation: He that believeth shall not be confounded.'