THE LIFE OF FAITH
‘Whom having not seen, ye love; in Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.’
We often think, if we had only lived in the days when Christ walked on earth, it would have been so much easier to believe. Many good people think that, but I believe they are wrong. We are too ready to improve on God’s methods of revealing Himself. The Light He gives is enough to guide. Jesus Christ has answered such reasonings as this (see St. Luke 16:31).
I. Every revelation of God to man has, what I may call, a sacramental character: that is, it has an outward and sensible form which is as real as its inward and spiritual truth; and the passage from the outward to the inward is commonly ascribed to Faith. We Christians are met by two facts which seem hard to reconcile: the fact that Christ has come into the world, is in the world, in a sense in which He was not in the world in patriarchal times; the other fact, that some behold Him, and some behold Him not. These facts are to be reconciled by remembering the principles on which God has always revealed Himself. He never compels belief. He leads, but does not drive. He does not put before us certain truths which cannot be misunderstood, but He gives that which will lead us to Him, if we receive it rightly. The Christian life, then, is a life of Faith, for Faith is the passage from the outward and visible to the inward and spiritual, which it is meant to show. To none but those who were living the life of Faith could the Apostle have written the words of the text.
II. The lesson of our text is Faith, the seeing, that is, not with the bodily sight, but with the eye of Faith, Christ invisibly present with us; the power of passing through the dark veil of sacraments to the Living Christ, Who is present in them.
(a) Look at the first and most rudimentary revelation of God, the vision of Himself which He gives in external nature. Most argue at once from this to the existence of a God, and a good God too. Yet we know this blessed truth has been denied, and that men have studied nature without seeing God in it. What is the difference between these and the Psalmist who cried, ‘The Heavens declare the glory of God’? The difference between Faith and no Faith. Where Faith lived and wrought, the eye could pierce the veil. Even such an elementary truth as that God made the world is not to be grasped by reason without Faith.
(b) The Advent of Christ at the Incarnation, and His invisible Presence in His Church now, is to be recognised only by Faith. Go back to the time when Jesus Christ lived upon earth in a form visible to human eyes. What did men see? A man like in all points to men. We should have seen mighty works of healing wrought, loving words spoken to the heavy laden and despised; but should we have seen God? Surely not. The disciples knew not at once that He was the Saviour of the world. Yet these men—who lived in alternate hope and despair before—after the Resurrection went forth in a power not their own, to preach Christ, to speak of a living Present Lord, the Head of His Body, the Church. They were persecuted and martyred, and suffered joyfully, for the truth that they had learned by Faith—the truth, that He Who lived in human form was Christ the Incarnate Son of God. They had passed within the veil, and seen the invisible in the visible. It was to such converts, men who believed as they in the real abiding Presence of Him Who died and rose again, that the Apostle dared to write the words of the text.
III. There is a large number of Christians who believe in Christ’s Divine Nature, in His earthly life and finished work, who never really understand His Advent, and what it meant.—If Christ only came and lived in human form for thirty years, and then departed whence He came, how are we better for the memory of that fact than the old-world saints, who saw it afar off? Surely the Advent must be a fact of infinitely wider meaning. The taking of humanity into God—not the mere wearing for a time a human form, and then flinging it aside—is the very ground of that blessed promise, ‘Lo! I am with you alway.’ Rest on that Divine promise, when you are tempted to wish that you had seen Christ in the flesh—‘Abide in Me, and I in you.’ Before our fallen nature had been taken unto God, could that prayer have been uttered, ‘As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us’? Do we not lose half our glorious birthright because we will not believe that it is ours? or because, as when Christ revealed Himself in the Incarnation, we cannot pass through by Faith from the visible to the Invisible?
IV. Whether we will recognise Him or not, depends on the degree of our Faith.—He is with us in His Church, with its constitution and ordinances and divinely appointed ministry. To those who believe not in the Presence of Christ, these are mere human contrivances which may be exchanged for any other religious organisation which commends itself to our private judgment; while to those who understand what Christ’s Advent means, these are earthly vessels; but earthly vessels which, in God’s wisdom, are charged with a heavenly treasure. So it is pre-eminently in that means of grace, whereby the Presence of Christ is revealed to the eye of Faith—the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. Those who believe not in the Presence of the Lord see here but signs and memorials of One Who left the earth at the Ascension, only to come again to judge; while to others, the eternal Presence of the Son of God in His Body, the Church, is the starting point of their belief. They draw near to the Altar of God in the full assurance of Faith. Christ is revealed to them in power. They love Him Whom they cannot see, and they feel that He is present. Many, it is to be feared, draw near to Christ in the Sacrament of His love who never feel the virtue that goes out when the hand is stretched forth in Faith.
Rev. Canon Aubrey Moore.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
FAITH COMPELLING LOVE
Christ reigns over the hearts of men by love. A few years after death none will, none can, really care for us, but the love towards Jesus lasts on, undiminished by time.
I.— This love is illimitable in extent as well as in time.—It pervades, more or less, in some cases very intensely, three hundred millions of human souls. Churches east and west, Established and Nonconformist, are scattered and divided, but wherever the name of Jesus is known there Jesus is loved. For Him all sacrifices are made. The love towards Him is indeed as strong as death. Martyrs die in endless succession, not only an Ignatius or a Polycarp in the first ages, but year after year the mission field, with its supposed ignoble population, gives these martyrs to ideal truth.
II. This is no abstract subject.—It brings us to the very centre and home of Christian life. No ear of ours has ever heard that voice with the majestic and magnetic sweetness of its attraction: ‘Draw me and I will run after Thee.’ No authentic likeness of the face of Him Who was crowned with thorns, with the pale and dying lips, has been preserved. There are those who love to look upon the crucifix, but remember this: in the catacombs, on mosaics, from pictures in galleries or on panes, from crucifixes—which, doubtless, as they are sculptured, did not exist in Christendom for, I suppose, six centuries—no face ever imaged or ever painted by sculptor or artist is the very likeness of the Son of Mary and the Son of God, ‘Whom yet, not having seen, we love.’
III. We have not seen Him, and yet we love Him. Why so?—He received us in infancy when we were baptized with the baptism of the uplifted brow, and grafted into His body. When we had erred and strayed from His ways, He called us back to the fold. When we returned He gave us pardon and peace—aye! it may be the fulness of pardon and the abundance of peace. He feeds us with His own body and blood. As we grow older He is able to make even the October of life a sort of Indian summer. He inspires not the academic, half-affected melancholy of a Milander or an Amiel, but the sweet hope that heals all the wounded places of each human life of ours, and He brings us, as it were, gently to that place where each one of us must lie until the daybreak and the shadows flee away.
IV. Here is the strange fact of the spiritual world—this intense personal love towards One Whom we have not seen. As St. Bernard says: ‘When I name Jesus I name a Man, strong, gentle, pure, holy, sympathising, Who is also the true and the Eternal God.’ And the image of the beauty is the best proof to the heart of the reality of the object which it represents, something in the same way as when we are walking along in meditation by a clear river that runs into the sea the reflection of the white seabird in the stream, even when we are not able to look up, is a proof to us that the bird is really sailing overhead. There is no fear of disappointment in that love toward Christ. As spiritual sight is given to us, as we start up in the light of the Resurrection morning, there will be no disappointment; when we wake up after His likeness we shall be satisfied with Him, with the likeness of Him, Whom, not having seen, we love.
—Archbishop Alexander.
Illustrations
(1) ‘There was a wife once who was all in all to a husband who had been blind from very early childhood, and when the question came about an operation being performed, she was troubled. She confessed she was troubled lest when sight was restored to her husband, whom she had loved and tended, he should be disappointed in the features of which he had thought so tenderly.’
(2) ‘A Chinese convert was asked by a missionary when he was dying whether he was sorry, and his answer was: “Sorry! I am not sorry, I am glad. I am sorry at least only for one thing, and that is that I have not done more for Jesus, Who has done all for me.” And that is the sacrifice of self-devotion in hospitals; of those who are working in the East End of London whose lives seem to be so dull, as they are.’
(THIRD OUTLINE)
A TEST OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE
Two classes are here spoken of: those who had seen, and those who had not seen, Jesus Christ. St. Peter belonged to the first. The ‘strangers scattered abroad’ to the second. Here was a great difference. There was a time when Jesus was in the world. That passed. He ascended, and the heavens received Him. Still many remained who had seen Christ. Gradually their number diminished. At last but St. John left. With what mingled feelings of wonder and awe would it be said of him, ‘Behold a man who saw the Lord.’ Then, when he was taken, Christians everywhere would be placed on the same level.
I. Doubtless it was a high privilege to have seen Christ.—There is a power in the living voice. There is a subtle force in the glance of the eye, in the touch of the hand, and in the actual visible presence, which all must have felt. Sight individualises, and helps to intensify and sustain our feelings. We can sympathise with those who desired to see Jesus. Who but has felt this yearning? But we must take heed. We may err and deceive ourselves, as to the effects of seeing Jesus. Remember the Jews (John 15:24). If we do not believe on Jesus, with the evidence and motives we have, there can be little doubt, but though we had seen Him with our bodily eyes, we should have continued in unbelief. Besides, our Lord, Who knew what was in man, has declared that it is better for us as things are. ‘It is expedient,’ etc. Let us have patience. ‘Yet a little while,’ etc. (John 16:7; Isaiah 33:17).
II. The love of Jesus Christ is—
(a) The true test of Christianity (1 Corinthians 16:22).
(b) The best inspiration for Christian work (2 Corinthians 5:14; John 21:25).
(c) The dearest bond of fellowship and the Divinest proof of the power and ultimate triumph of the Gospel (Ephesians 6:24; 2 Timothy 4:8; Php_2:9-10).
Illustration
‘Napoleon is reported to have said, at St. Helena, of Jesus Christ: “All who sincerely believe on Him taste this wonderful, supernatural, exalted Love. The more I think of this I admire it the more, and it convinces me absolutely of the Divinity of Christ. I have inspired many with such affection for me, that they would die for me. But afterwards my presence was necessary.… Now that I am alone, chained to this rock, who fights and wins empires for me?… What a wide abyss between my deep misery, and the eternal Kingdom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, and adored, and which is extended over all the earth.” ’