CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
1 Peter 1:17. The Father.—Better, “a Father.” God apprehended as Father through our apprehension of the Sonship of Christ. Plumptre reminds us that “the sequel shows this attribute of Fatherhood is not thought of as excluding the idea of judgment, but gives assurance that the judgment will be one of perfect equity.” Sojourning.—(See 1 Peter 1:1). Fear.—Not dread, but seriousness and self-distrust. “This fear is not cowardice (nor superstition); it drowns all lower fears and begets true fortitude” (Leighton).
1 Peter 1:19. Precious blood.—Order of the Greek is, “with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot (even that) of Christ.”
1 Peter 1:20. Fore-ordained.—Lit. “foreknown,” which, however, implies “fore-ordination.” Last times.—“At the end of the times.”
1 Peter 1:21. Faith.—πίστις. Relates to things present which, though invisible, are realised by the eye of the mind. Hope.—ἔλπις. Relates to things in the distant future, which are objects of such loveliness that they fill the heart and engage the affections, as if they were near at hand (Webster and Wilkinson).
1 Peter 1:22. Good MSS. omit the word “pure.”
1 Peter 1:23. Born again.—Better, “having been begotten again.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Peter 1:17-25
The Fear of Son-like Sons.—The key-note of this passage is the sentence, “pass the time of your sojourning in fear.” There is a godly fear, and there is a slavish fear; the right fear of the child, and the wrong fear of the slave, or of the child in whom all right feeling is crushed. Such proper filial fear—
I. Is based on right thoughts of God.—The point of 1 Peter 1:17 is brought out in the Revised Version. “And if ye call on Him as Father.” But that is precisely what our Lord taught His disciples to do. “When ye pray, say, Abba, Father.” A Christian is marked off from all the world by the thought he has of God, and the name in which he embodies his thought. He must, of course, seek to gain true and worthy thoughts of the Father, and they will always be such as the Lord Jesus Christ had, which led Him to address God as “Holy Father,” “Righteous Father.” It is thought that if men call God “Father,” they will think of him after the patterns of human fatherhood; but surely that is fully guarded against by associating the thought of God with the thought of fatherhood. What is added to our thought of God, by calling Him Father, is His personal interest in each one of us; His personal affection for each one; and His personal service to each one. There is no more reverent name than father, and no more reverent relation than father and son. The fear men have for a “thundering Jove,” or for an autocratic king, is ignoble when compared with that which they have for their fathers; and the fear of son-like sons of the Father-God is an altogether refined, gracious, inspiring, and ennobling feeling; it is the secret of the beautiful life.
II. Is based on right thoughts of redemption.—“Knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, … but with precious blood.” The expression, “from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers,” makes precise application of the passage to the Jewish Christians, who had been brought over from formal Judaism into spiritual Christianity. The rest of the verses may be taken with a general application. They express the idea of redemption which will always nourish a true and worthy fear. Our redemption was a costly ransom: our liberty unto righteousness was obtained at a priceless price. In common life the cost of a thing puts a value on it, and we fear to lose it, or to damage it. And that is a right fear, the fear we should have for our spiritual life, because of the cost of its purchase. A cost only the more impressive that it is not weighted as silver and gold, but is spiritual value, life, even Divine life, figured for us as “precious blood.” “That blood, the life which it represented, poured out upon the cross, took its place among the things that were not corruptible.” The reference to the “lamb” is probably due to St. Peter’s thinking of John’s famous sentence, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Mason has a good note. “How Christ’s death freed them from their ‘vain conversation’ is not explained here; but we may give a twofold explanation. Historically, it did so, because, when they came to realise that their Messiah could only reach His glories through suffering, it gave them a new insight into the whole meaning of the system under which they had been brought up. It did also, however, doubtless, in a more mysterious way, such as we cannot imagine, procure in God’s sight their emancipation.” “The whiteness, the helplessness, the youth, the innocence, and the patience, of the lamb, make it a natural symbol of our Lord.”
III. Is based on right thoughts of present claims (1 Peter 1:22).—“Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from the heart, fervently.” It is the constant teaching of the apostles that Christianity makes two claims on men; first, the claim to love God; then the claim to love one another. And just as heart-love to God will guarantee the right service of God, so heart-love for the brethren will ensure and preserve right relations with them, and the due fulfilment of all brotherly duties. St. John puts the connection between the love of God and the love of the brethren in a very strong and impressive sentence: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen. And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.”
The present claim, then, is to “love the brethren,” and the claim involves every service that love can render to them. But the question may properly be asked, Is it possible to make ourselves love? The answer is twofold.
1. We can create an ideal which is lovable, and which we cannot help loving; and we can see that ideal in our brethren, when they are not lovable in themselves. Our ideal is Christ. We cannot help loving Him wherever we find Him.
2. Though we cannot make ourselves love, we can put ourselves in such relations as will help to inspire love. We often find that knowing persons in the intimacy of life, in common work, or common sorrow, brings round to us a love for them which we should not otherwise have felt. And the apostles are so anxious about keeping up the fellowship, because that is the secret of keeping up the love.
IV. Is based on right thoughts of fleeting time.—And the particular thought is, that all that belongs to the material, sensuous, earthly life is touched with this weakness—it is uncertain, transitory. Time stamps everything as frail. All time-conditioned things are below man, when man is seen to be a spiritual being. The regenerate man, begotten again of the incorruptible seed, is not time-conditioned, and nothing that he does is time-conditioned. Spiritual life belongs to the sphere of things permanent and abiding. By cherishing such thoughts as these we may dignify that new life with which we are quickened, and make altogether more important its culture, and its expression, in holy life and service, than the attainment of any earthly good, since on such attainment must always rest the frailty that belongs to the seen, the temporal, the transitory. Only the man who keeps in right relations with the spiritual and permanent can ever hope to be, or to keep, in right relations with the temporal and transitory.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1 Peter 1:21. Three Stages of Faith.—What is the point of this text? It sets forth who is the final object of faith. It is God. Herein the text may appear to differ from the usual run of texts in the gospels and epistles: e.g., “By faith which is in Me” (Christ). “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Can we find out the harmony of these apparently differing statements? This must certainly be the first and most absolute of truths: man’s glory and blessedness come of trusting God. Illustrate from Enoch, Abraham, Jacob, Davidic psalms, prophecies, etc. Such trust in God sets man right with God. Failing in such trust shows man to be wrong. Self-trust involves distrust of God. Still, it is the fact, that man has to be helped to trust by some agency—medium, mediator. Now, to St. Peter Christ seemed to be the highest, most efficient help to this faith in God. For the Jew, who has faith in God, Christ is the clearing, enlarging, and perfecting of faith. For the Gentile, Christ is the medium by which faith in God is reached. As Christianly-educated, we occupy in some degree the Jew-place. But, more truly, we follow on the line of the Gentile, and reach the full saving relation to God by three stages of faith.
I. First stage of faith.—Faith in Christ. See the prominent place of Christ in the New Testament; in preaching; in the early experience of Christians. And yet, when the gospels are carefully studied, we are impressed by the persistency with which Jesus always puts God the Father first. Observe how well fitted Christ was to win the trust of men. Notice His appeals
(1) to man’s understanding by His truth;
(2) to man’s reverence by His miracles;
(3) to man’s conscience by His appeals and by His life;
(4) to man’s affections by His Spirit;
(5) to man’s emotions by His cross. The whole man is swayed toward faith by the influence of Christ.
II. Second stage of faith.—God’s relation to Christ. There was more in Christ than even the apostles could at first see. The relation does not come out during our Lord’s life. Then God witnesses to Him. The relation comes to view in His resurrection, ascension, and glorification. Then He comes to be apprehended as God in Christ. Sometimes it is said that Christ raised Himself, usually it is said that God raised Him, from the dead. Resurrection, and Christ in heaven, bring God into prominence.
III. Third stage of faith.—In God. This is reached actually, as a result of Christian experience; but not always consciously. So, through Christ, the perfect restoration is effected, and man’s faith and hope are set on God. See in this faith in God
(1) our perfect communion with Old Testament saints,
(2) the true mediatorial work of Christ; He is bringing many sons unto the glory of this higher faith in God.
The Father’s Part in the Work of Redemption.
I. The part that the Father bore in the work of redemption.—
1. He ordained His Son to the mediatorial office.
2. He manifested Him to the world.
3. After suffering Him to be put to death, He raised Him up from the dead.
4. He exalted Him to heaven, and invested Him with all heaven’s glory.
II. The effect that the consideration of this is intended to produce upon us. It should—
(1) Confirm our faith;
(2) enliven our hope. Address
(1) those who are in unbelief;
(2) those who yield to doubts and fears.—C. Simeon, M.A.
The Agent and Cause of Faith.—The redeemed are also described here by their faith and hope, the cause of which is Jesus Christ. “You do by Him believe in God”—by Him as the author, encourager, support, and finisher, of your faith; your faith and hope may now be in God, as reconciled to you by Christ the Mediator. God in Christ is the ultimate object of a Christian’s faith, which is strongly supported by the resurrection of Christ, and the glory that did follow.—Matthew Henry.
The Final Object of Saving Faith.—Already we are getting our springtime remindings of resurrection. Nature has begun her teachings. At times we feel the pleasant sunshine and the warmth of the air. Already the drooping snowdrops, the pale primrose, and the brilliant yellow daffodil have begun to whisper to us that winter is gathering up her skirts, and preparing to hasten away. Nature keeps her own times, and even now the “time of the singing of birds is come,” and the “flowers appear on the earth.” At this time we naturally cherish resurrection thoughts, and dwell on His being raised from the dead who has “brought life and immortality to light by His gospel.” The resurrection, of which all else seems to be but the shadow, and the symbol, and the suggestion, is the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. But that should never be regarded as standing alone; it includes and involves our resurrection in Him, first from sin, and then from the grave. “Because He lives, we shall live also.” Three visions rise before us. We see Christ rising from the grave, “leading captivity captive, and receiving gifts for men.” We see the human soul rising from the death of sin unto the life of righteousness, in response to the awakening call of Him who “liveth for ever and ever.” And we see that day of days, for which all other days were made, when “all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth.” In the text the reference to the resurrection is necessary, but it is subordinate to the purpose of the apostle. It stands in relation to another point which is more directly occupying the writer’s attention. He is really meeting a question which was then anxiously asked; which has always been anxiously asked; and which is anxiously asked to-day. Who is the final object of our faith? The apostle at first surprises us—upsets our cherished ideas. He says, God is the final object of our faith. God who was in Christ. God as He who raised up Christ from the dead. “Who, by Him, do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead, … that your faith and hope may be in God.” In this way of putting the truth, there is at least a seeming variation from many familiar passages in the Acts and in the Epistles. “The Son of Man must be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” The eunuch said, “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God.” The jailor at Philippi was required to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, that he might be saved.” The apostle John declares, “He that hath the Son hath life.” It is perfectly certain that Peter could have had no intention of setting aside, or in any way dishonouring, Christ, when he put the truth in the particular way in which we find it presented in our text. How, then, can we set out the harmony of these two differing kinds of statement. Our faith is to be in Christ. And yet our faith is, through Christ, to be in God. This much is quite clear: the first, and the most absolutely universal of all truths is, that man’s blessedness comes, and can only come, out of trusting God. Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all lived before the Mosaic period, and they believed God, and it was counted to them for righteousness. The foundation law of Mosaism is, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart.” But love implies a foregoing faith, on which alone the love can rest. The psalms are full of expressions of trust, but they are all trustings in God. The prophets unite to bid us “Trust in the Lord for ever”; and they assure us that the “just by faith shall live.” But this is also evidently true; man has always needed to be helped to trust in God by some medium, or agency. Vision and promise helped Abraham to his trust. Moses was the medium or mediator who helped the people of Israel to their trust. That trust alone sets man the creature in right relations with God the Creator and Father. He requires it, and we ought to give it. This must be clearly seen to stand as the absolute first and universal truth: man’s salvation—man’s realisation of his fullest and best possibility—comes out of trusting God. To the mind of Peter, Jesus Christ seemed to be the highest, the most perfect, the most gracious help to saving faith in God. Jesus Christ was to him God’s own way of helping His people to the trust in Him which saves. Peter wrote his epistle for Gentile Christians, as distinguished from Jewish Christians. It was he who opened the door to the Gentiles in recognising the Christian faith and standing of Cornelius the centurion. His epistle is addressed to the “strangers scattered abroad,” and we may properly look for some precise adaptations of the Christian truths to their circumstances and points of view. For the Jew, who knows God, the one living God, the truth could be put in this form by the great, the Divine Teacher: “Ye believe in God; believe also in Me.” “This is life eternal, to know Thee the only true God.” For the Gentile, who only comes upon the right knowledge of God through the revelation which centres in the “Man Christ Jesus,” the truth can best be put in this form by the disciples of the great Teacher: “Who by Him do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead.” Gentiles must be set looking to Christ as the sole medium through which the right, the worthy knowledge of God can come. There is a sense in which, being Christianly educated, we occupy the place of the Jew. We come into personal relations with Christianity through a previous suitable apprehension of God; and yet we may more truly be said to follow along the line of the Gentile; for it is only through our Lord’s humanity that we can ever gain the right impression of His Divinity. It must be man first, then the God-man. The partaker of flesh and blood seen at last to be “God manifest in the flesh.” Personal religion of trustful love and devotion to Christ, leading us into saving and sanctifying relations with God—the One, the Triune God. More or less distinctly there can be traced three stages in the growth of Christian experience. There are three steps in Christian faith. By faith we come, in a regular advance, to apprehend three things.
1. Christ.
2. God’s relation to Christ.
3. God. Christian experience arrives at its perfection when God is “all in all.” On the Mount of Transfiguration, when the cloud had passed, the disciples saw “Jesus only.” On the Mount of Beatification, when all the cloud shadows of earth shall have passed, the disciples of Jesus will see “God only.” “Then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.”
I. The first stage of faith is faith in Jesus Christ.—You cannot want me either to show, or to prove, or to vindicate the fact that the Lord Jesus has the most prominent place in the New Testament, in preaching, in teaching, in thinking, in writing, or in early religious experience. If there is anything self-evident, that is. Fully, heartily, rejoicingly acknowledging that fact, there is, nevertheless, something very remarkable that comes into view when we come to study it carefully. Christ always puts the Father before Himself. He never proposes to absorb the faith and love of His disciples. He receives them only that thus He might help the disciples into the love and trust of the Father. He says, “My Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.” “My Father is greater than I.” “Your heavenly Father knoweth what things ye have need of.” “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh to the Father but by Me.” “I do always the things that please Him.” At first Christ is presented to the seeking soul, and He fills all his vision. And we could dwell long and lovingly on the ways in which Jesus Christ is fitted for winning the love and trust of men. He appeals to man’s understanding by the truths which He reveals and teaches—momentous truths concerning God and man, and sin, and salvation, and righteousness, and the future. He appeals to the reverence of men by the miracles, which declare that in Him is the great power of God. He appeals to men’s consciences by presenting the standard of the perfect human life. He appeals to men’s affections by His Divine tenderness, and pitying gentleness, and love. He sways the deepest emotions of men by the persuasions of His cross. Jesus Christ, in His human manifestation, in His earthly life of sympathy and of suffering, has a strange power on us. He seems at first to fill the whole foreground, and sways our whole manhood toward faith. Peter speaks the truth for us when He speaks of Jesus Christ in this way. “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.”
II. The second stage of faith is faith in God’s relation to Christ.—Once setting our heart on Christ, our faith wants to know better Him on whom it rests. Evidently there are more and deeper things in Jesus Christ than the soul can see in its first apprehensions of Him; than even the apostles could find out while they were with their Master in the limited fellowship of the flesh. Many of their fuller and deeper apprehensions come out to view in their epistles, which are precisely this: soul-readings of the mystery of Christ, in the illumination of the Holy Ghost. Only to one point of this can our attention now be given. In Christian life there is a strong, masterful instinct, which makes us linger, with chief interest and concern, about the records of our Lord’s resurrection. It is not peculiar to us in these days. The evangelists did; the apostles did. Paul writes, “It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again.” “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” Now, what is it comes to view when we let the apostles guide us into the mysteries of the resurrection? This: God was in the closest relation to the Redeemer’s work. Sometimes it is indicated that Christ raised Himself, by His own inherent power; but usually it is intimated, as in our text, that God raised Him. The salvation was God’s, but it was wrought out by Christ, and in Him. The suggestions of resurrection and ascension are full of God, and they open to us the larger, richer meanings of familiar texts, such as these: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.” “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” In the second stage faith embraces both God and Christ, as working together in the accomplishment of human salvation.
III. The third stage of faith is faith in God, which swallows up, absorbs, the faith in Jesus.—But this stage of faith is usually reached unconsciously. Many an advanced, experienced Christian stands high up on this level to-day, but does not know it, and would be half frightened if any one were to tell him that it was so with him. When I was a youth, and in the early periods of religious experience, I used to attend regularly the prayer-meetings, and found them specially helpful. I remember being struck with something which has given a key-note to the Christian thinking of my whole life. I observed that the young Christians prayed to Jesus, and the old Christians prayed to God. And I knew they both meant the same thing. In the young Christians’ prayers God was hardly mentioned. In the old Christians’ prayers Jesus was hardly mentioned. There is the sign of the growth of the Christian knowledge and experience. We begin, and we see Jesus, and God is in Jesus. We grow, and more and more we see God, until at last we see God only, and Jesus is in God. It remains still true that all the forms of thought are taken from Christ. The Christ-help to right thought, and view, and feeling, never passes away; but really the soul’s resting has come to be in God. And thus, in the most spiritual fashion, Christ’s work of restoration is fully accomplished for the individual. We apprehend God in Christ, we trust God, and so Christ is the means by which all Christ’s brothers are brought to His own son-like obedience to God, and trust in Him. Our faith and hope at last are fully set on God, and the law of life is fulfilled—God is become “all in all.” There are things suggested by this setting of truth, on which I invite you to dwell, meditatively, in the quiet hours of this day.
1. See the perfectness of our communion with all the Old Testament saints. A fellowship, not in the means by which they and we are helped to God, but a fellowship in the end. For, whether by angel-manifestation, symbolical ceremony, prophetic declaration, or the human life and teachings of the Son of God, we are all moving to one goal; for us all there is but one soul-rest—it is the rest that comes from the full trust, which carries our whole selves, and lays them on the everlasting arms of God. Enoch lay there. Abraham lay there. Moses lay there. Jesus Himself lay there. The whole round world is bound about with this golden chain of trust in God. One way or another, this way and every way, the souls of men are being caught, turned, helped to trust in God.
2. Dwell lovingly on the preciousness of that particular agency by which we have been thus caught, and drawn into our full trusting in God. I only heard Mr. Spurgeon preach a few times, but on one occasion he seemed to me to surpass himself, and thrilled us all with the holy passion of his utterance, childlike as the sermon was in its simplicity. He had taken as his text the words, “This is my beloved; this is my friend.” And the sermon was just a series of boastings and gloryings over Jesus, each section closing with the appeal, “ ‘This is my Beloved,’ will you make Him yours?” I should like to have my time open still, so that I might thus boast over Jesus my Saviour before you now. He is “worthy of more glory than Moses.” Poets did but sing out the deepest feeling of all loving souls, when they called Him—
“Thou highest, sweetest, fairest One
That eyes have seen, or angels known.”
3. But shall we be content to stay with the human manifestation of Christ, with His life and with His death? Or shall we be willing to let Him lead us on to the holier mysteries of His resurrection, and show us that, trusting Him, we are really trusting God, who “raised Him from the dead.” Are you willingly staying down on the low-levels of spiritual apprehension? or are you climbing the heights where the air is pure and clear, and the soul can see the eternal realities, and even the Christ-garment of God has fallen off Him, and the sky is pure blue from rim to rim—not one cloud sails across to throw a shadow, and you think, you feel, you know, that Christ has “delivered up the kingdom to the Father”? You see God only, and God is all in all. It is heaven all about you on those heights of spiritual experience. At last, helped by Christ—so sweetly helped by Christ—you have come to this, and this has gained the forever stamp—
“Your faith and hope are in God.”
1 Peter 1:22. Fervent Love of the Brethren.—Selfishness, or the exaggerated love of self, was the source and seal of the fall of man. Love of God in Christ, through the power of the Spirit; and love of mankind, but most of all, love of those with whom God’s children shall dwell through all eternity—this is peculiarly and pre-eminently the work of the Holy Spirit. St. Peter is admonishing the brethren to abide in Christian kindness and affection; and he bids them consider the very purpose that God has wrought.
I. The work accomplished.—“Seeing ye have purified your souls.” The grand point is having the heart good. The heart is impure. What vain thoughts, evil inclinations, presumptuous actions, vain fancies, are continually gushing forth, as from a deep stream! To be pure in heart is to be pure in life. Man is not a passive subject, but an active agent. There must be co-operation, on our part, with the influence of the mighty Spirit of God, otherwise there can be no purifying of the soul.
II. The instrument of its accomplishment.—“Ye obey the truth.” It is a law of almost universal obtaining that, as we can do nothing without God, so, generally He will do nothing without us. He acts on the heart in order to achieve what He would have done; and so, in all the business of life, we have certain means to employ; and if we neglect them, or try to substitute our own, we have our toil in vain. The Divinely constituted means to the purifying of men’s souls is the truth. When men are disposed to find fault with God’s Word, and to discover imperfections in it, His people should honour it, cling to it, maintain it, exalt it, cherish it. To be immortal, great, and good, let a man study God’s Word. The grand point is to look beyond the instrument to the omnipotent power of the Holy Spirit.
III. One special result of this work.—“Unfeigned love of the brethren.” It is not merely love and charity to all men, but specially and specifically love of those united to us in a new birth, in new relationship to God, many members in one body. This yearning affection is one of the most blessed signs that a man has purified his soul, by obeying the truth.
IV. The beautiful exhortation.—“See that ye love one another with a pure heart, fervently.” Do not mistake the injunction. We must not confound the precious jewel with the metal in which the jewel is placed, “Fervently.” With a pure, unselfish love, with no sinister motive. “Without dissimulation.” There must be no appearance, no pretence, but the reality. “Fervent,” not cold. How fervent in heaven, where all tin and dross are purged away, the soul will be, swallowed up in the love of God!
1. If you desire to be holy and happy, set about it in the name of the Lord Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, and in obedience.—You may judge materially how far the work is progressing, if you feel a glowing love to the Father for Jesus’ sake, and desire as you have opportunity to do good unto all men.”
2. We must not attempt to do this in our own strength and resolution.—Philanthropy, intellectual culture, moral training, are beautiful, but there must be the power of the Spirit of God.
3. You must cultivate that spirit always and ever.—Canon Hugh Stowell, M.A.
1 Peter 1:24-25. The Transitory and the Permanent.—This passage is brought before our minds every early summer time, by the sight and smell of the fields. The “fashion of this world passeth away.” “The Word of the Lord endureth for ever.” Away from changing, passing, transitory earth we may look upward to God, saying, “He liveth; and blessed be my Rock.” St. Peter evidently had in mind the poetical passage in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah. The figure of the grass is sufficiently impressive to us who see the swathes lying in the path of the mower; but it is more effective in the East, where the sudden blasts of scorching wind burn up the vegetation in an hour, and change freshness and flowers for barrenness and death. The Word of God endures for ever. It cannot be likened to anything on which rests the earthly stamp. It is not even like the giant trees, which grow on while the grass and the flowers of a hundred summers flourish and fade beneath them; for at last even the trees fail to respond to the wakening spring-breath, and the great trunks and branches crumble down to dust, and pass away. It is not even like the mighty hills, which, towering high above us, seem to have their foundations in the very centre of the earth. They also are weathering down, and shall one day change and pass. It is not even like the vast firmament, which keeps, through summer and through winter, its broad expanse of blue, though clouds all blackness, or clouds silver-tinged, sweep in ever-varying shapes across it; for at last “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise.” The Word of God is His revelation—His entire revelation. Not the Bible only, but every testimony that He is pleased to make to men of His will. Every utterance of God is permanent; it endures up to the very uttermost limit of necessity for it.
I. The transient character of all earthly things.—Everything has a body and a soul; a form that can be apprehended by our senses, that we may see and touch, and a mysterious and invisible substance, which is its real self, and of which the form is only the expression. George Macdonald’s saying may be applied to things as well as to persons. “We are accustomed to say that we are bodies, and have souls; whereas we should rather say, we are souls and have bodies.” Within everything there is a soul that abides—that is its real self—however its form may change. The grass of each springtime falls before the mower, but the spirit of the grass abides through all the generations. The million flowers of gay and pleasant summer-time fade and drop away, but the work of the flowers, in the toned and scented air, and in the pleasure they give, abides long after they have passed.
“The lily dies not, when both flower and leaf
Fade, and are strewed upon the chill, sad ground;
Gone down for shelter to its mother-earth,
’Twill rise, re-bloom, and shed its fragrance round.”
All nature seems to echo the message of the grass. The winter snow falls lightly, and lies in its white purity—mystic, wonderful—over all the land. But so soon it soils, and browns, and sinks, and passes all away! The spring flowers that come, responsive to the low sunshine and the gentle wind, are so fragile, they stay with us only such a little while, and then they pass away! The summer blossoms multiply, and stand thick over the ground, and they seem so strong in their rich, deep colours; yet they, too, wither and droop, and pass away. The autumn fruits cluster on the branches, and grow big in their ripening, but they, too, are plucked in due season, and pass away. The gay dress of varied leafage is soon stripped off by the wild winds and passes away. Down every channel of the hillside is borne the crumblings wasted from the “everlasting hills” that really are passing away. The hard trap rocks that hold in the wintry sea are yet worn down with its ceaseless chafing, and are passing away. And man!—does he differ from the things in the midst of which he is set? Nay, what a little thing is human life, even at the longest! We can scarcely reach to do anything great, or to get within sight of a life’s great purpose, before the call comes, bidding us away. It is not only true of us, it is true of our work. All the glory—all the goodliness—of man’s genius and enterprise and effort—it is all “as the flower of the field.” Man’s strength, and wisdom, and riches, and learning, and honour, and beauty, and science, and art—all are subject to change and decay. The moth and rust eat into them, and the thief steals them away. This is—
1. Impressively seen in the changes of our Church life. In a few years a congregation entirely passes away.
2. It is true of the very forms and modes in which one man strives to help and bless another. Some men’s ways of presenting God’s truth to us do help us more than the ways of others. But even our spiritual helpers do not stay with us long.
II. The permanent character of all Divine things.—Especially of all Divine revelations and declarations, for these are properly gathered into the term, the “Word of God.” Everything that speaks to our souls of God is a revelation to us. It may be a touch of nature. It may be only a pure white flower. It may be the pale gold and green of a late sunset. It may be the snowy crest of an Alpine mountain, lying still and pure against the summer’s deep blue sky. It may be the weird mist of the gloaming, creeping over the landscape. It may be the glimpse down some woodland vale of the “many twinkling sea.” It may be the solemn shadows of the secluded mountain tarn. It may be the great thunder-noise of God, echoing through the valleys. It may be the voice of some fellow man, translating into human words for us the great thoughts of God. Howsoever the Word of God may come into our souls, it is true for ever. All things that our souls hear, and feel, and know, are Divine, and permanent, and eternal things. When the very soul of nature speaks to our souls, its message is Divine and eternal. Have you forgotten when you first heard the voice of the flowers? They lived, and spoke to you of God. Have you forgotten the quiet lying on the country hill-side, when lost strength was slowly returning, and in the stillness, the very music of the earth seemed to be heard, creation hymning its chorus, “Praise God, praise God!” When God speaks to us by Divine providence, the message is permanent; our souls get it, and keep it for ever. The spiritual influences of our life-experiences are eternal. That revelation of redemption—if it is really made to our souls—is a permanent revelation. Everything that pleads in us for duty is eternal, because all such things bear on character, and character endures; its flower never withers nor falls; God puts upon it the immortal stamp, and crowns it with the eternal righteousness. Every voice that brings truth home to the soul is permanent. Every uplifting of the mystery of being that gives us a glimpse of reality, and a new hold on God, is permanent. All God’s comfortings abide with us. The troubles pass, but the “everlasting arms” stay underneath us. God’s comforts suit the moment, but they last for ever. And when God kindles hope, it is hope that cannot disappoint, that will never make ashamed. In the “Life of Dr. Horace Bushnell,” it is stated that the following words of his were found dimly pencilled on a stray sheet of paper. Referring to the time of his infancy, when he “came out in this rough battle with winds, winters, and wickedness,” he says, “My God, and my good mother, both heard the cry, and went to the task of strengthening me and comforting me together, and were able ere long to get a smile upon my face.… Long years ago she vanished; but God stays by me still, embraces me in my gray hairs as tenderly and carefully as she did in my infancy, and gives to me, as my joy, and the principal glory of my life, that He lets me know Him, and helps me with real confidence to call Him my Father.” It is true, but we need not trouble over it—“the fashion of this world passeth away.” It is true, and we will join in saying it with an exceeding great joy—“The Word of our God shall stand for ever.”
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1
1 Peter 1:19. The Precious Blood.—One evening two soldiers were placed as sentries at the opposite ends of a sallyport or long passage, leading from the rock of Gibraltar to the Spanish territory. One of them, from the reading of the sacred Scriptures, was rejoicing in God his Saviour; while the other, from the same cause, was in a state of deep mental anxiety, being under strong convictions of sin, and earnestly seeking deliverance from the load of guilt that was pressing upon his conscience. On the evening alluded to, one of the officers, who had been out dining, was returning to the garrison at a late hour, and coming up to the sentry on the outside of the sallyport, and who was the soldier recently converted, he asked, as usual, for the watchword. The man, absorbed in meditation on the glorious things that had recently been unfolded to him, and filled with devout gratitude and love, on being roused from his midnight reverie, replied to the officer’s challenge with the words, “The precious blood of Christ.” He soon, however, recovered his self-possession, and gave the correct watch-word. But his comrade, who was anxiously seeking the Lord, and who was stationed as sentry at the other or inner end of the sallyport, a passage specially adapted for the conveyance of sound, heard the words, “the precious blood of Christ” mysteriously borne upon the breeze at the solemn hour of midnight. The words came home to his heart as a voice from heaven; the lord of guilt was removed, and the precious blood of Christ spoke peace to the soul of the sin-burdened soldier. He was afterwards, with others of his regiment, drafted for service in India, and proceeded to the island of Ceylon, where a long career of usefulness opened up before him, and where he became the honoured instrument, in the hands of the Lord, for the completion of a great and important work. Soon after arriving in Ceylon, his discharge was procured from his regiment, that he might fill the office of master of the principal school in Colombo, for which he was well qualified by a good education in early life. He soon acquired an intimate knowledge of the Cingalese language, and as a translation of the Bible into that tongue was lying in an unfinished state, owing to the death of the individual who commenced the work, he set himself to the task, and completed the Cingalese version of the Scriptures, which was afterwards printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society in four quarto volumes.
CHAPTER 2