THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT
(Autumn Sermons.)
Isaiah 40:6-8. All flesh is grass, &c. [1315]
[1315] The very affecting images of Scripture which compare the short-lived existence of man to the decay of the vegetable creation are scarcely understood in this country. The verlure is perpetual in England. It is difficult to discover a time when it can be said, “The grass withereth.” But let a traveller visit the beautiful plain of Smyrna, or any other part of the East, in the month of May, and revisit it toward the end of June, and he will perceive the force and beauty of these allusions. In May, an appearance of fresh verdure and of rich luxuriance everywhere meets the eye; the face of Nature is adorned with a carpet of flowers and herbage of the most elegant kind. But a month or six weeks subsequently, how changed is the entire scene! The beauty is gone, the grass is withered, the flower is faded; a brown and dusty desert has taken the place of a delicious garden. It is, doubtless, to this rapid transformation of Nature that the Scriptures compare the fate of man.—Hartley: Researches in Greece, p. 237.
We are witnessing one of the last phases of that wonderful life which Nature unfolds before us each year with ever-new beauty. To most men it is a sad phase. Why? Not because we are entering upon the rugged season of the year. They know that the discomforts of winter are transient; and winter brings its own pleasures. The feeling finds its source in that intuitive faculty in man which enables him to interpret the spiritual significance in Nature, and which tells him that in the withering and falling leaf, decomposing and resolving itself into its first elements,—in the dry and flowerless stalk and the harsh brown grass, he sees the type of his own mortality (P. D. 248, 2222).
The decay of autumn suggesting the thought of decay in human life, suggests also very forcibly the thought of immortality. Never does the longing to live for ever so take possession of my soul as when all about me is telling me that life is transitory. When life is fullest and most satisfying, death is most unwelcome; and when decay and death draw nigh, we long with quickened desire for life.
There are two elements in all things earthly—the transitory and the permanent. Nature has a real life which survives when she sheds what have been the visible tokens of her life. The things which seem most alive in Nature are the leaves, the flowers, and the fruits; but these are the things that perish soonest. The real life lies deeper—hidden from human eyes; and that endures. It is so with man. There is somewhat that is real and abiding; there is somewhat that is only temporary—the foliage in which the real expresses itself to-day, and which it will cast aside to-morrow. And so we find the sacred poet thinking upon the transitoriness of life, reassuring himself with the thought that there is nevertheless somewhat that is real and abiding. “All flesh is grass,” &c.
There are lives which all of us can live which will have more than a transitory significance; deeds within the power of us all which will be immortal; things which may be acquired by us which neither time nor accident can wrest from us.
I. Our good deeds will live for ever. Our acts of kindness, generosity, helpfulness are immortal because they are Divine. There is a threefold immortality—
1. Acts that lessen life’s burdensomeness and diminish the temptations to sin have far-reaching consequences to others. By these personal ministries, often humble and obscure, we are shaping immortal lives. Our good deeds will live in other souls (P. D. 1006, 2302, 2443, 3205).
2. You cannot do another good without doing yourself good in the deed; you are building your own character, and that will show your work upon it unto eternity (H. E. I. 720; P. D. 3609).
3. Our good deeds become immortal by their life in the thought of God (Hebrews 6:10; Acts 10:31; H. E. I. 451, 1726; P. D. 2012).
II. Our pure affections will live for ever (P. D. 749–2351).
The leaves fall and mingle with the sod, the flower droops and withers, and earth ere long will lie sepulchred beneath the snow; but in the providence of God the spring will come, and earth will wake to a fresh and radiant life. And so, also, when our earthly plans are broken, our accumulations scattered, and our bodies crumble into dust, the soul with all its fulness of love and all its trophies of service shall live on in the immortality of God.—George P. Gilman.
God’s comparisons are striking, His contrasts sharp. Could the perishability of creation and the imperishability of its uncreated Author be put more vividly before our eyes than by likening the one to a worn-out garment, ready to drop apart, while the other stands out untouched by time, and with years that have no end? (Psalms 102:26-27). In this passage from ancient prophecy, how the fleeting is made a background on which to set the fixed! Over against Nature’s decaying growth are put Revelation’s verities that eternally abide. “The grass withereth,” &c.
I. We have symbolised a changing world. While the decay of vegetation which the season brings needs not be, and ought not to be, a ghastly or gloomy thing [1318] it is a symbol of change, a reminder of the evanescence of all material objects and concerns. Look around, and you will observe that all things are changing, most of them rapidly (H. E. I. 4975–4989; P. D. 408, 2536, 3336). Turn where you will, you note the restlessness of men. New partners, new parties, new experiments, new diversions. Why are all things around us thus full of change?
1. Partly because that capricious thing the human will underlies all finite activities, and will not let us remain quiet. Its fickleness it is that keeps public and private life disturbed [1321] A changing world! Can it be otherwise with such a vacillating element under it? Can you build a vessel that will not pitch or lurch, when beneath it there is that which pitches and lurches all the while? A changing world indeed. Changing in its loves and hates, in its wishes and its wills, in its hopes and fears, in its purposes and plans. Changing like withering grass and fading flower.
2. But this evanescence is not entirely an outgrowth of human weakness; part of it is the outworking of a Divine design. The fluctuations of earth are its heavenly discipline. God uses it to rid the world of evils, as He uses thunders and lightnings to shake out of the air deadly diseases hanging there. Even for the individual a quiet, undisturbed life is rarely God’s plan. The soul is apt to grow hard, and selfish, and narrow, unless over-turnings and ups and downs shake it loose from earthly good and gain (Psalms 55:19; Jeremiah 48:11; H. E. I. 3997–4014). To prevent this, changes keep us shaken up. God’s merciful hand is in the commotion (H. E. I. 110, 111).
[1318] There is a kind of autumn sermonising or moralising that is more vapoury than truthful, and more sentimental than pious. Much of the doleful talk about the blighting and blasting of the fair and the beautiful, in the field and forest and on the lawn, is foolishness. The blanched leaf fluttering from the tree is spoken of pityingly as though overtaken by some untimely fate, as though some destroying influence had cut short its life. But as a matter of fact, we know that the falling of the leaf was as natural as the unfolding of the leaf. Winter or no winter, frost or no frost, it would have faded or fallen, because that was the Creator’s plan concerning it. He meant from the beginning that it should last only so long. Study its structure, and you will see that its work was done. When, therefore, the landscape spreads around the emblems of a frail and dying world, instead of taking on a plaintive tone, it would be wiser cheerfully to say, “The summer has finished its appointed task, and when the set time comes, may my own be finished just as well!—Vassar.
[1321] I was running over again recently the career of that hapless Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. Who that has once read it can forget the tragic history? For a brief space she was the idol of her realm. Then her enthusiastic subjects offered to take the horses from the royal carriage and draw it with their own hands down the streets of her gay capital. How terrible the transition when, a little later, along those same avenues they dragged the widowed sovereign to execution, rending the air with curses that ceased only when the bloody head was held up in sight.—Vassar.
II. Note now the stability with which this inconstancy is contrasted. Turn from the changing world and consider the unchanging Word. “The Word of our God standeth for ever” (Matthew 24:35; 1 Peter 1:24-25).
1. There is this immutability about the facts which Scripture states. Every little while infidelity with blare of trumpets announces some fresh discovery of science hostile to revelation, and at each disclosure some timid believers are almost ready to concede that the Bible has gotten its deathblow. Children that we are to be scared by shadows! Why, Sir Charles Lyell tells us that in 1806 the French Institute numbered more than eighty geological theories that struck against the inspired record, and not one of those theories survives to-day (H. E. I. 539, 636, 642–645).
2. There is the same permanence about the predictions of this Word [1324]
3. There is the same perpetuity about the principles or doctrines of this Word. At times the enemy comes in so like a flood that it seems as if all the old landmarks were swept away. But the old verities remain unchanged. Divine holiness, justice, and supreme dominion; human accountability to a righteous law; human sinfulness, and pardon through a crucified Saviour; the necessity of repentance and regeneration through the renewing and sanctifying Spirit; a reckoning day when right shall be crowned and wrong crushed, and the drama of history close amid praises—not one of these Bible truths has been abrogated or annulled by all men’s sneers or jeers. Providence is not a myth. Christ is not an amiable enthusiast. Heaven is not a dream, nor is hell a fiction.
4. This Word is permanent in its fruits. “The Word of our God” is first of all sometimes heard with the ear, then sometimes accepted by the understanding, then sometimes received into the soul, and then sometimes manifested in the life of the believer. Where so grasped and held, it is a principle of undecaying power. The work that begins with the saving entrance of the Word goes on for ever. Not only does the truth so embraced by the heart perpetually produce fruit in the individual, but in the community it keeps yielding fruit year after year.—Thomas E. Vassar.
[1324] Prophecy is only pre-written history Much of it has not yet come to pass, yet Christian trust no more doubts that what is pledged is coming than the man of the world doubts that winter is on its way. Why should we doubt it? Look back and see how predictions once made have turned into realisations on the right hand and the left. Hear the cry of the bittern as it sails amidst the flooded palaces of Babylon; listen to the song of the fisherman spreading his net where Tyre once sat a proud ocean-queen; catch the wail of the Jew downtrodden in the city of his fathers, and without a country anywhere that he can call his own, and then ask whether other promises or other threatenings of the Divine Word are not as likely to be fulfilled.—Vassar.
THE STORY AND MORAL OF A BLADE OF GRASS
Isaiah 40:6-8. All flesh is grass, &c.
I. THE STORY OF THE BLADE OF GRASS.
The tender beauty of these words is not confined to the fact that their leading thought—the transitoriness of human life—is full of pathos. There is a plaintive music in them; the refrain—“grass withers, flowers fade”—goes singing through the brain, quickening the tender grace of days that are dead. Imagination stirs and works; we see the broad pleasant field bathed in sunlight, and then the fierce hot blast sweep across it. Who does not feel at times that that is a true picture of human life? But these words take new force as we connect them with the circumstances in and for which they were spoken. The prophet’s main duty hitherto had been to denounce the judgments of God on the sins of Israel. He is now carried on to the distant time when the Jews will start on their return to their native land. He is to “speak comfortably” to them. As he broods over the vision—“Hark, a crier!” Another message of comfort (Isaiah 40:3-5). There is once more silence in the prophet’s heart. But, “Hark, a voice.” It is the Divine Voice saying “Cry!”—i.e., “Proclaim.” The herald turns and asks, “What shall I cry?” The Voice replies, “All flesh is grass,” &c. The great heathen world was transient.
“Comfortable words” for the Jews. But they must not forget that their life on earth is brief; that they can only endure as they fashion themselves on the Word of God: “This people” is grass.
II. THE MORAL OF THE STORY.
The blade of grass reminds us that human life soon withers, that human fortune often withers even before the man dies. James particularises the general lesson (James 1:10-11). He also reminds us that some men wither even while they retain the full vigour of life and their good fortune abides. “The rich man withers in his ways;” and therefore, argues the Apostle, he should rejoice when his riches use their wings and fly away. Why? Because trial is good for every man (James
1. Isaiah 40:2; Isaiah 40:4-12). Great reverses of fortune are among the severest tests of character. This truth is based on a true, on a Christian view of human life.
We may not fear riches for ourselves, but do we not fear them for our neighbour? Do we not fear poverty for ourselves and for our friends? A Christian teacher cannot bid us grieve over any reverse by which our character is tested, matured, perfected. In the Christian view of life, character is of supreme importance; circumstances are of value only as they serve to form and strengthen and purify it. The wealth and the poverty will soon pass, but the character will remain, and will decide our destiny. If you say, “Surely it is very hard to rejoice, to be honestly and sincerely glad when loss and pain come upon us!” what can any man reply but, “Yes, surely it is very hard, so hard that we shall never do it, except as we possess ourselves of Christ’s spirit. Heaven is very high; how are we to reach it save by climbing?” The rich man is often like a blade of grass, withering beneath the scorching sun, so that the flower falls off, and its graceful beauty perishes. The sun of prosperity shines upon him with a too-fervent heat; all the beauty and nobility of his character fades under it. He withers away in his “ways,” in the multitude of his schemes and pursuits. His fortune grows, but the man dies—dies before his time—dies before he ceases to breathe and traffic.
Is not that a true picture, and a sad one? We must all needs die; and, in some of its aspects, even that fact is sad enough. But it is sadder still that many should be as grass which wilfully exposes itself to a heat it might escape, and withers and dies while the field is still green and fragrant.
CONCLUSION.—The warning comes home to us in this age; for our whole life is so intense, that it is almost impossible to make leisure for thought, or for those religious exercises on which our spiritual health depends. We are literally “withering away in our ways.” We all need to take the warning which speaks to us as unto men—i.e., as to spiritual and immortal creatures, sons of God, and heirs of eternity. If we would not have the world crush us, we must resolutely set ourselves to be in the world as Christ was in the world.—Samuel Cox, D.D.: Biblical Exposition, pp. 432–441.
THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE
Isaiah 40:6. The voice said, Cry, &c.
One wonders that there should be so sublime and startling a machinery for the delivery to us of so common-place a truth. Here is a voice from the firmament. An invisible agency is brought to bear, as though for the announcement of something altogether new and unexpected (cf. Job 4:15-17). But truths which we never think of disputing may be practically those which we are most in the habit of forgetting. The voice, the apparition, is not needed to impart new truth, but it is needed to impress old truth; what we want is not an increase of knowledge, but the gaining influence for knowledge already possessed.
I. It is of the first moment that this commonplace announcement should be pressed by all possible means on our attention, because no other announcement could be better adapted for the promotion and growth of the graces of the Gospel. It is undoubtedly the presumed or the imagined distance of judgment which encourages men to persist in their sins (Ecclesiastes 8:11). There is a sort of unacknowledged idea that what is protracted and indefinite will never take effect; or it is imagined that life will yet afford numerous opportunities. To overthrow this sinner’s theory, and substitute for it the persuasion that “in the midst of life he is in death”—practically to overthrow it—would be to compel him to make provision for the coming eternity, on the threshold of which he may at any moment be standing, and concerning which he is apprised by daily spectacles of mortality. And the effect thus wrought on the unconverted would not be without its parallel in the righteous, on whom we cannot charge the habitual disregard of the dread things of the future. The feeling that the day of death is not near is at work in both. He would say, when inclined to loiter and be slothful in his great work as a candidate for eternity, “Dare I lose a day, when perhaps but few hours are left; when life is the alone season in which to gain a lofty place in the future kingdom of Christ, and life may be already contracted to a span, so that what I grasp not now may be for ever out of reach?” “What shall I say?” saith a voice from the firmament; the answer of the righteous man should be, “Oh! cry so as to make me feel that ‘all flesh is grass; and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field.’ ”
II. A supernatural authority is needed to gain any practical hold for a truth which is so readily and universally acknowledged. We do not require a voice from heaven to make us know that such and such substances are poisonous, when all experience testifies that they are. And are not our churchyards filled with the old and the young?
The Heavenly Voice bade a solemn proclamation to be made of the frailty of life; as though it were ascertained that observation and meditation would never bring it home to man; as though truth must be delivered with all the force and convincingness of a new revelation, ere there were likelihood of its gaining any practical hold.
And if it be a thing for revelation, and therefore for prayer, all meditations amongst the tombs will be practically of no worth, except as they bring men to their knees.
It is most important to remember that there is no inherent power in truth to work effectually on the soul. The power is in truth only as applied by the Spirit of God. We must not substitute the Gospel for the Saviour. A voice saith, “Cry!” Your anxiety must be that the thing cried—cried so as to come as a revelation from God—may be our own constant exposure to death (H. E. I. 1557–1566).
CONCLUSION.—Let this be part of your daily prayer to Almighty God (Psalms 39:4). What we need is the being brought to feel old truth, rather than the being brought to recognise new. Oh! cry, cry earnestly, that God will proclaim so as to make you practically and permanently feel this simple, well-known truth—“All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.”—Henry Melvill, B.D.: Golden Lectures, 1851, pp. 733–740.
I. ISAIAH’S MESSAGE. “All flesh is grass.” I also have the same message to publish to my hearers to-day. These words suggest—
1. Our earthly origin. The earth is the mother of us all. Every kind of grass has its roots in her, and the most beautiful flower is not ashamed to own its mother. But many conceited people, especially if they have risen in society, are ready to forget the lowliness of their origin. Their parents and the friends of their childhood they would gladly disown. What mean and ignoble vanity!
2. Our constant dependence upon the earth for our sustenance.
3. Our equality. Some flowers are fairer than others, yet they are made of the same matter. One may be in better soil than another, more sheltered by nature or man’s device from the blasting north wind, and more open to the sunlight, but it is the same in substance. When we look round on society, we see men widely different in appearance from each other. How varied have been the circumstances of their birth, education, employment, opportunities, &c.! Yet they are all brethren. A common lot awaits them all (H. E. I. 1536, 1537; P. D. 677).
4. Our frailty and the uncertainly of our life. “As the flower of the field.” Not the garden flower, defended from storms and intruders by the gardener’s devices, but “as the flower of the field!” It opens with beauty in the morning and drinks in the warm rays of the sun; but there is no certainty that a burning tempest will not beat upon it or a beast trample it down before noon. Thus it is with us all. Confidently as the young reckon on seeing many years of happiness, “there is but a step between us and death” (H. E. I. 1539–1546; P. D. 705, 2225).
II. THE MANNER IN WHICH THE PROPHET WAS TO DELIVER HIS MESSAGE. “Cry!” Be stirring, earnest, urgent. Not that he who can cry the loudest is the best preacher. But the command suggests—
1. That there is danger. A vehement call is an indication of peril. There is danger to the sinner—not to his property, nor even to his body, but to his soul!
2. That the people do not see their danger. How true this is! How many are like a man sleeping soundly on the beach while the tide is rapidly surrounding him! Such are some of you. Wonder not, then, that we “cry” to you.
3. That the people and their danger are coming nearer to each other each moment. Many, like men working in a hayfield when a thunderstorm is gathering, postpone their escape to the last moment, and often find that the danger was nearer to them than they thought.
4. That the danger to which the people are exposed is very great.
5. That the people are unwilling to hear.
Life and Works of the late Rev. David Rees, of Lanelly, pp. 87–94.
THE IMPERISHABLENESS OF THE GOSPEL
Isaiah 40:8. But the Word of our God shall stand for ever.
A word is a spoken thought. God has spoken His thoughts to man. The record of what He has said is contained in the volume of inspired Scripture. The text affirms that it shall stand for ever. It is appropriated and applied to the Gospel by Peter (1 Peter 1:24-25), who quotes this entire passage. The prophet’s general affirmation respecting God’s Word is applied to the Gospel in particular. It is imperishable. The grass withers. It is fresh and green when growing on the ground. In due time the mower cuts it down, and, lacking the supply of new life, it withers in the sun. The flower is beautiful in the garden. You cannot carry it away exactly as you plucked it. You have cut it off from the sources of its life; and, however carefully you keep it, in a few days it will begin to fade away. Man grows into health and vigour. He is cut down by an invisible hand in the midst of his life-work; or he accomplishes his life-work, and then sinks into decay and forgetfulness. “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.” But while the grass withers, and the flower fades, and man dies, the Word of our God stands for ever. Our theme, therefore, is the imperishableness of the Gospel.
I. IT IS IMPREGNABLE IN ITS EVIDENCE.
The assaults of infidelity have been unable to overthrow it. Its historical records receive confirmation from advancing knowledge. Its prophecies have been historically fulfilled in the most remarkable way. Its miracles are abiding evidence of Divine power brought to bear on the confirmation of its truth. Its moral teaching is exactly adapted to man’s moral nature, and presents the loftiest ideal of possible humanity. Its conception of the great central figure, the Lord Jesus Christ, can only be accounted for by its truth. Its distinguishing doctrines are characterised by their clear perception of man’s ruined condition, and their provision of what is necessary to his spiritual interest. Its continuance and gradual advancement in the world is a fulfilment of its own prediction, and a perpetual proof that God is with it. The grass has withered season by season; the flowers have faded one by one; the generations of men have followed each other to the land of forgetfulness; but it remains. The attacks upon it, made with fresh vigour and from new points of view, have left it—a fortress often attempted, but never captured. As the sea flows up and threatens to overwhelm the land day after day, but retires again to its place, so the periodical assaults of infidelity retire like their predecessors, and leave the Gospel as it was (H. E. I. 2418–2427, 2451, 1165–1168).
II. IT IS UNCHANGEABLE IN ITS NATURE.
Notwithstanding the dangers around it, the Gospel continues the same. Human history flows on, like a stream with many variations and windings. Empires rise and fall. Cities grow to magnificence, and decline. Customs and habits change. Opinions become popular or drop into disuse. Physical science as taught in one age is entirely different from physical science as taught in another. Manufacturing processes give way to invention and improvement. New facts are discovered; new truths deduced from them. Human thought is in continual flux. Yet the facts remain. The crust of the earth and the substances it contains are the same. Change is not in the objects studied, but in the knowledge of the student. The same sun shines, the same atmosphere floats around the earth from the beginning; only both are better known. And God is the same, and the Gospel is the same. Different views may be held of some critical questions; more may be known now than formerly of the localities, the history, the customs referred to in Scripture. But Scripture remains. No criticism has expunged any important doctrine. Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.” The same way of salvation, the same invitation to the sinful and weary. The Gospel of Paul and Peter and John is the Gospel still. The “faithful saying” is still true and “worthy of all acceptation.” The justification by faith which Luther sounded over Europe is the way in which sinners are justified to-day. The need of regeneration with which Whitefield and Wesley awoke the slumbers of England still exists. Men may throw off or modify their opinions of many things, but the essential nature of the Gospel cannot be changed. It is God’s final word respecting men’s salvation. It must stand for ever.
III. IT IS IMMORTAL IN ITS INFLUENCE.
It stands for ever, not only in the written book, but in the living soul. When believed, it enters the soul as a living force. It completely changes the currents of life. Its influence pervades everything. It touches and turns into gold everything in the man’s nature. It removes fear, brings consolation, sanctifies the heart and life. “Being born again.”
And when they pass to the better land, it does not cease to live in them. They carry it with them into heaven. It was Christ in them “the hope of glory.” They are now glorified together with Him. Christ will never be effaced from their memories. The love of Christ which was felt below is perfected above. The praise of Christ, which was expressed in many a thankful strain, is the celestial song which embodies their living recollections of the Gospel (Revelation 5:9). The Word of God will stand for ever in the thoughts and affections of ransomed souls.
Nor can it, as a vital power in human breasts, pass from the earth. “One generation passeth away and another cometh.” The spiritual succession will be maintained to the end of time. Flowers drop their seed before they die, so that from them other flowers may spring. Every Christian desires to leave representatives behind him. Every Christian is an agent; parents, friends, Sabbath-school teachers, ministers. Thus the Gospel lives.
Christians! how great the privilege of an interest in the everlasting Gospel! It nourishes your faith. It rests your soul. It brings daily comfort and strength. It sustains your dearest hopes when all earthly things fade.
See that you discharge your duties to the Gospel.
1. Obey it as the practical expression of your faith.
2. Disseminate it.
3. Believe in its perpetuity and triumph. Away with the drivel about the decay of its influence.
O sinner, consider the bearing of this on you. You are perishable. So is all around. The imperishable you neglect. Once more it invites. It will survive when you, as to this world, have perished. It is the winning side. At present you are on the losing side. It is preached that it may win you.—J. Rawlinson.
THE CHURCH’S MISSION
Isaiah 40:9. O Zion, that bringest good tidings! &c.
It is freely asserted that the influence of the Church of Christ is now extremely small. We have been made familiar with statements like these: “The pulpit has lost its power; the Church has lost its hold upon the people; multitudes are hopelessly alienated from the public services of religion.” Consider—
I. The Church’s place and function in the world. What have men a right to expect from her? The text represents the Church as a bearer of good tidings to men.
1. She is exhorted to get up on a high mountain where she will be conspicuous to all, and from which her voice shall reach over Judah’s hills, along her vales, and to all her villages and towns.
2. To be courageous and energetic, full of faith, and action, and earnestness in fulfilling her work.
3. She is told what her message ought to be: “Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!”
II. So long as the Church is faithful to her mission as the bearer of glad tidings about God, she will be prosperous and powerful. She is in the world not only to hold fast the truth, but also to hold it forth. She is to echo God’s message in human language and with human tenderness. Do not many churches fail in this respect? Some churches are turned into concert-halls, some into homes of priestcraft, some into theological arenas or intellectual gymnasia, and others into places where feeble platitudes about sin and grace, and faith and future happiness abound (H. E. I. 1184–1186).
III. How much the world needs to hear the good tidings which have been intrusted to the Church of Christ.
1. One great and growing evil, threatening us with infinite peril, is the cleaving of society into two great classes—the rich and the poor. While forces like these drive different classes apart, what is there to draw them together? Higher secular education does not do it. Politics will not do it. Communism or Socialism has tried to do it, but has failed, and must ever fail. It fights against inevitable inequalities. Men, divided from one another in various ways, must be brought under one roof before God (Proverbs 22:2).
2. What a terrible fact sin is in human life! Where it does not transgress the decencies of society, what a disturbing, depressing, enfeebling fact it is in our existence! The Church has here a noble field of influence. She ought to have glad tidings for hearts burdened with transgression, or gnawed by remorse, or wearied in the conflict with impurity, or depressed by the sense of helplessness.
3. What terrible facts suffering and sorrow are in human life! The Church’s message to the suffering and sorrowful is an infinitely tender and precious one. These should go forth from her courts relieved and comforted. Her Lord and Master was a great sufferer—was made perfect through suffering. “Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!”
4. What a terrible fact death is in human life! Where, how, when, shall we die? From whom can we learn anything of death? Science can explain the chemistry of our decay, can talk wisely about the conservation of energy; but we want something more. Philosophy has loved to speak of death; the Epicurean saying, “Let us eat,” &c.; the Stoic, “Death is universal and inevitable; let us meet it bravely and with dignity.” But we are only shocked and chilled. Poetry has sought to throw a charm around death; but even poetry cannot satisfy our yearning. It is reserved for the Church to justify her title as “the bringer of good tidings” by unfolding to men her God-given revelations concerning death. To her it has been given to take the sting from death, the triumph from the grave. She provides a Guide who never fails in the valley of the shadow of death. Pointing to One who hung upon the cross, lay in the grave, and rose through the clouds to heaven, she can say to all, “Behold your God!” (Isaiah 43:2-3).—William Young, B.A.: Christian World Pulpit, xx. pp. 330–332.