We speak that we do know
Divine certainties
I. Consider THE PLACE THE BIBLE HOLDS as an evidence of Christianity.
1. The Bible is the history of the Jewish people, and their existence to-day is a guarantee that the basis of the book is firm and undeniable.
2. Every contemporaneous and collateral witness adds to this assurance. The remains of Egypt and Assyria, the traditions of the Jews, allusions in Greek and Roman monuments and classic authors are grounds upon which we are assured of the historic character of the Scriptures.
3. The Bible is a whole literature.
4. It is the history of a religion. The fundamental ideas of the various books are the same--but there is a manifest progress. The earlier writers look forward to a greater revelation. The ideas become clearer and clearer. The advancing faith never contradicts the past, and at length the culmination appears in Jesus.
II. THE ADAPTATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE SPIRITUAL NEEDS OF MAN. Christ makes great assertions, but never attempts to prove them. Here He makes His heater’s hesitation the consequence, not of defect in the evidence, but of defect in the man. For such a truth as the new birth admitted of no other evidence than its own light. Salvation must be based on a voluntary self-surrender. No more proof must be given therefore than will leave room for doubt, if men desire to doubt. Mathematical truth admits of perfect demonstration, but if religious truth leaves no room for doubt, then faith ceases to be religious. Its evidence is a probation for man. The force of this evidence varies according to spiritual condition. If a man is debased by sin, he will not readily open his heart, but if he is convicted of sinfulness, he will respond to the gospel and perceive how exactly Divine revelation is adapted to his need. Then its certainty will be felt in proportion to what he has found of peace and gladness. Just as the correspondence between the eye and light makes it absolutely certain that the one was made for the other, so it is with Christianity. Water cannot rise above the level of its source, and that men should of their own accord produce the Bible, and infuse into it such a marvellous power of raising men near its standard, is incredible. We shall feel the force of this far more if we can bring our own experience forward as a testimony. In this way each Christian becomes a living proof. (P. W. Darnton, B. A.)
Christian faith a reality
It seems a moderate claim that the alleged truths of our religion should be respected as realities But this demand covers the whole ground. Admit
1. That God is a real Father and Sovereign.
2. That each soul is His child and subject.
3. That separation from Him is the most terrible of disasters, to be healed at any cost.
4. That Jesus is the Christ who achieves that reconciliation.
5. That a righteous life is the fulfilment of human destiny. Admit this, and you have granted the whole conclusion. The terms imply something more than intellectual assent. There is such a thing as an ineffectual creed. To realize a doctrine is to have it wrought into the roots of our life. This realization only takes place when the truth emerges from the nebulous haze of conjecture into clear, sharp light--when it takes hold of feeling and is taken hold of by faith. This is needed now for the true efficiency of religion. For our religion is not dogma, or theory, or dream, but a spiritual power. Let us examine a few facts, in the Christian faith which authenticate its claim as a religion of realities.
I. THE IDEA OF GOD. Christianity did not create this. It simply places itself on the basis of a natural reality affirmed by the consenting feelings and philosophies of the nations; and then proceeds to nourish and satisfy it.
1. It is a real authority that speaks (John 3:11).
2. There is reality in the very attitudes and occasions of its revelations.
3. Reality in its substance. “God is a Spirit,” and with that simple announcement old idolatries that materialized the gods, and mythologies that multiplied them, vanished.
4. Reality in its disclosures of God’s nearness and condescension. He is the God of houses, streets, schools--not distant or etherealized.
II. This opens the true doctrine of INTERCOURSE WITH GOD, or prayer. What is natural if not that a child should speak to his parents, that man should ask for what God only can give? Prayer is a reality--something yearned for, something satisfying. So speaks the world’s best experience. To pretend to ask things we do not really desire, or things we have heard others ask for, is not prayer, but speculation or traditional mummery. Christ brings prayer back to reality. “Ask, and ye shall receive.”
III. Co-ordinate with this is LOVE FOR MAN. Here again Christianity does not create the faculty, but out of it weaves the bond of spiritual brotherhood. In training this social instinct Christianity gives it the brightest tokens of reality.
1. It stimulates fellowship, and by the healthiest motive--disinterested mercy, of which its central and crucified Form is the incarnate example.
2. It regulates it by the wisest law--broad, far-seeing, equity, saving it from wronging one class by righting another, from destroying without constructing.
3. It directs it to the purest object--the personal relief, the universal liberation, the spiritual rectitude of each soul.
IV. Turning from the social to the private offices of Christianity, we encounter the only satisfactory interpretation of the natural YEARNING TOWARDS AN IDEAL MORAL PERFECTION. It is only in very inferior natures that this sensibility to exalted goodness is utterly depraved. Baseness secretly confesses the beauty of magnanimity. The story of incorruptible conscience is the perpetual charm of literature. With all select souls there is a tantalizing disparity between the aspiring aim and the lagging performance. How does the gospel justify this real passion for the best?
1. By blessing these native aspirations as the Divine seal set on humanity.
2. By encouraging them.
3. By furnishing them nutriment and discipline to ripen their vigour.
4. By holding up one in whom all their promises are realized.
5. By giving them a hereafter where they shall mature into open vision and into calm and balanced power.
V. Not less does the gospel fit the varieties of human consciousness in its great doctrine of A RULING CHOICE DETERMINING CHARACTER. It divides the world into two classes by the inexorable line of that voluntary consecration. There is one differencing point, the point of motive, where the world’s people and God’s divide.
VI. But there is one reality darker and more fearful. THE LAW AND GUIDE OF LIFE HAS BEEN BROKEN. I know I am frail, offending, and guilty. Who shall deliver me? Christ. He has come for that.
VII. Infer, then, THE REALITY OF CHRISTIANITY.
1. In its ministry to the cravings of simple, honest hearts.
2. In its marvellous adaptation to the pain and gladness, fear and hope of our humanity.
3. In its unpretending address to our common habits, speaking the language of life.
4. In its boundless relief for a boundless difficulty.
5. In its expanding and exhaustless fulness for all glowing souls.
VIII. THE EARLY CHRISTIANS PREACHED, LIVED, DIED, FOR THIS REALITY, AND CONQUERED THE WORLD. (Bp. Huntington.)
The positiveness of Christianity as a truth and a practice
Whatever exists, exists positively, has existence and also energy. Positiveness is the very soul of growth.
I. CHRISTIANITY IS POSITIVE.
1. God is a positive Being.
2. Man is a positive being.
3. Sin is a positive condition.
4. Holiness is a positive state,
II. CHRISTIANITY MUST BE POSITIVELY APPLIED.
1. It is to honour God.
2. It is to be serviceable to man.
3. It is to prove victorious over sin.
4. It is to be potential unto holiness.
III. THE POSITIVENESS OF CHRISTIANITY IS NEUTRALIZED
1. When it is interpreted as a system of polite moral and aesthetic education. There is a class of writers and preachers who blot out of the Scriptures everything that is positive, who drop every word that bristles with damnatory energy, theorize the birth of Jesus, reduce the atonement to heroism, treat human depravity as a misfortune, speak patronizingly of hell as an exploded idea, and allude pleasantly to heaven as a benevolent myth. Many people are frightened by this “modern thought.” They need not be, for this is a positive age, and a negative religion can make no headway.
2. When it is over-organized. Christ did not organize it because He saw that truth was over.organized, and therefore cramped. Christianity is a power only when it is organized in human hearts. (W. H. H. Murray.)
The positiveness of Christianity
You may judge of this
I. BY ITS WORDS. Its “shalls” and “shall nots” are like so many bugle notes put into print. They sound with the energy of the Apocalyptic trumpets. Its commandments fall upon the conscience as a hammer of steel falls upon the anvil. Its warnings sound like the solemn protest of an indignant universe. Its threatenings roll over the guilty soul like the dreadful reverberations of ponderous thunder. Even its invitations suggest the tension of anxiety, and its entreaties come to our ears impelled by the urgency of anxious and infinite affection. Its very words are charged with significance almost to the limit of explosion. Heaven and hell, sin and holiness, faith and unbelief, life and death, salvation and damnation--these are glorious or dreadful words, mighty affirmations, expressions which challenge the attention of the most sceptical, and fill the thoughtful mind with solemn awe. No other religion has ever weighted the pages of its sacred books with such dreadful emphasis; no other religion has ever brought its believers face to face with such stupendous positiveness of assertion and conception. But if the verbal expression of Christianity is thus positive, what language is adequate to describe the positiveness of
II. ITS SPIRIT? If its body is so tense and vibrant with energies, who may pourtray the vigour of its animating spirit? If the unlighted orb, as it hangs rayless overhead, can draw every eye to its dark circle, and compel human attention, what would be its power if its inherent fires should break through the shell of sombre surface, and the mighty sphere should suddenly be ablaze with beams? Tell me, you who know the words of Scripture, and have also felt the movings of its matchless and irresistible spirit, which is the stronger? Tell me, you who once heard in the word heaven the sound of sweet but far-off music, but who now have the resonance of the Divine harmonies sounding in you, did you know aught of that melodious word until the chime of it made music in your soul? No. Not till the spirit of Christianity is received into his heart can man know or dream how positive are its operations. Nor can man know what hell is until he lies enfolded within the coils of some serpentine remorse, and the dreadful stricture tightens on his conscience until he screams and moans in the agony of a tormented spirit. Do not say “exaggeration,” for you know that what I say is true, when I declare that men and women there have been who have committed crimes so dark, dreadful, and damning, so obnoxious even to their blurred moral vision, that the memory of their deed has haunted them--yea, haunted them so that they could not eat, nor sleep, nor forget: thefires of remorse were within their bosom, and they could not quench them; the “damned spot” was on their hands, and all the seas could not wash the awful stain away, and at last they died: died screaming in agony, as if the torment of hell had already got hold of them; and it had. (W. H. H. Murray.)
God’s message is but carelessly listened to
Massilon, in the first sermon he ever preached, found the whole audience, upon his getting into the pulpit, in a disposition no way favourable to his intentions. Their nods, whispers, or drowsy behaviour showed him that there was no great profit to be expected from his sowing in a soil so improper. However, he soon changed the disposition of his audience by his manner of beginning. “If,” says he, “a cause, the most important that could be conceived, were to be tried at the bar before qualified judges; if this cause interested ourselves in particular; if the eyes of the whole kingdom were fixed upon the events; if the most eminent counsel were employed on both sides; and if we had heard from our infancy of this yet undetermined trial--would you not all sit with due attention and warm expectation to the pleadings on each side? Would not all your hopes and fears be hinged on the final decision? And yet, let me tell you, you have this moment a cause where not one nation, but all the world, are spectators; tried not before a fallible tribunal, but the awful throne of heaven, where not your temporal and transitory interests are the subject of debate, but your eternal happiness or misery; where the cause is still undetermined, but, perhaps, the very moment I am speaking may fix the irrevocable decree that shall last for ever; and yet, notwithstanding all this, you can hardly sit with patience to hear the tidings of your own salvation. I plead the cause of heaven, and yet I am scarcely attended to.”