Gradual Revelations
The thought which our Saviour here expressed was in strict accordance with His whole method of life. He was always measuring what and how much His followers could bear, for He was that true wisdom which cometh down from above and is always gentle.
I. And here let us notice the blessedness of having the mind placed under God's own direct teaching. The great power of a teacher lies in being able to have sympathy with the mind of his scholar. God, who knows exactly the real state and power of everyone's heart, marvellously suits the lesson to the capacity, and leads on as we can bear it. The child has the child's milk, and the giant has the giant's meat.
II. But the subject opens to us another field of thought. We are all placed in this world as in a school; we have all to learn of God, His being, His word, His work, His love, His glory. All other knowledge springs out of that knowledge. The Cross itself, the whole life and death of Jesus Christ were, after all, a means to know God. Now, this knowledge lies in a long series, and the different parts range one above another in a continual scale, and by these ranges of knowledge we are all ascending. Now God's system is this: He gives knowledge as a certain reward and privilege to particular states of heart. The spiritual intellect will advance as the spiritual state improves. This principle is contained in that important verse: "If any man will do My will, he shall know of the doctrine." Consequently, the way to grow in Divine wisdom is continually to be attaining a more humble, affectionate, holy, pure, praying, active condition of life. And any man who would be wise, must be patient in the cultivation of his affections; otherwise he cannot receive truth, or if he received it, he could not bear it. If any man without an adequate spiritual preparation were to be admitted at once into the occupations of the blessed, they would be to that man either intensely dull or witheringly grand.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,5th series, p. 283.
The Changed Aspect of Christian Theology
I. As regards Christian theology, two things appear to be true. (1) That the Revelation of Christ was taught by the Church through forms, both of doctrine and practice, which were created by the spirit of the world, and that it could not have been received at all except it had been taught through these forms; that therefore the imperial and aristocratic elements in the Church were not created by the religious body acting alone, but by the whole spirit of the age. (2) That in spite of the forms in which the universal ideas of Christ were cast being evil, though not known as evil then, they entered into men's hearts, and in their slow growth is to be sought the real work of the Spirit of God in the development of Christianity. But that inner indirect influence in men's hearts worked against those forms and slowly undermined them, and we look to the ideas which the Spirit of God has evolved in history out of the seeds which Christ sowed for the truest form of His revelation, not to the forms into which the Church threw only a portion of the thoughts of Christ.
II. Now for the first time in history and after a sustained battle, we have nearly worked up to the level at which Christ wrote, we stand upon His platform; we know what He meant when He said: "I have yet many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now." There is a clear path of progress before us, and it will not be long before we may run along it with joy, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Those within the Church who see the position at which the world has arrived have a clear duty, a noble work to do. They have (1) to take away from theology, and especially from its idea of God and His relation to man, all exclusive and limited conceptions. They have to bring the outer teaching of Christ's revelation up to the level of that inner one which has now become outward in society and politics; to confess and accept this as the work of God. (2) Their teaching in the Church should heartily, but temperately, go with the ideas that are collected round the words, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, not serving the wild image which France made of them, but the image which an honest and just idealism presents to our hope. The Church should get nearer in spirit and in life to Him who was the intimate friend of the poor, whom the common people gladly heard, and who never hesitated one instant to proclaim ideas which He knew would overthrow the existing conditions of society.
S. A. Brooke, Sermons,2nd series, p. 1.
The Continuing Life of Christ on Earth
I. If the life of Christ were visibly to continue on earth and to influence the earth, that continued life and influence must of necessity bear a close resemblance to the life that Christ once lived among His countrymen, and to the influence that He for years exercised over them. Is that what we find? Christ's life was for many years an unobserved life, till His mighty words and loving deeds could be no longer hid. What of His life continued on and by the Holy Spirit, His life infused into His body, the Church, and into us, the individual members of that body. Are not the same marks visibly imprinted? The feature of quiet, unobserved growth marked both the common life of our Lord on earth and His supernaturally continued life on earth as well.
II. Wherever Christ went in Syria, the hearts of men acknowledged Him, some by opposition, some by submission. Where that continued life now goes, the same results follow, as the slow time unrolls itself towards the final judgment. Across a chasm of 1800 years, Christ makes a demand which of all others is most difficult to satisfy. He asks for that which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the human heart, and He will have it all to Himself. He demands it unconditionally, and forthwith the demand is granted. In defiance of time and space, the soul of man with all its powers and faculties, becomes an annexation to the empire of Christ. The continued power of the mighty drawing of the unseen love of Jesus Christ our Lord is at once one of the greatest tokens of the presence of His abiding love with us, and one of the most unanswerable proofs of the absolute truth of Christianity.
III. There are two points which we may briefly take here. The first is the message of warning which such a fact conveys to us. Think you not that the disciples took heed to their words, to their deeds, to their habits of life, when, in those forty days, they felt that, all unseen by them, the Lord might be so close to them, and might at any moment manifest Himself to them? We are as near to God as they were. Are we as careful? Secondly, there are both the strength and comfort that flow down to us from the fact of the nearness of Christ to us, near to us in His house, near to us in His church, near to us in His sacraments, in prayer, in our hearts. The life of our God is continued even now upon earth, and where that life is, there is the full, unending, irresistible power by which God will lead us from strength to strength, until at length we come to appear before our God in Sion.
B. Wilberforce, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 22.
References: John 16:12. Contemporary Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 308; Homiletic Magazine,vol. xiii., p. 270; Parker, Cavendish Pulpit,p. 70; A. K. H. B., Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson,3rd series, p. 71; H. Bonner, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 84; H. P. Liddon, Ibid.,vol. xxiii., p. 257; Easter Sermons,vol. ii., p. 294.