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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

E. GRIFFITH JONES, president and professor of theology and homiletics at the Yorkshire United Independent College, Bradford, England, since 1907; born at Merthyr-Tydfil, South Wales, in 1860; educated at the Presbyterian College, Carmarthen, 1875-78; New College and University College, London, 1880-85; graduated from the London University, 1882; served in the Congregational ministry at St. John's Wood, London, 1885-87; Llanelly, South Wales, 1887-90; Mount View, Strand Green, London, 1890-98; Balhan, 1898.. 1907; author of "The Ascent Through Christ," "Types of Christian Life," "The Master and His Method," "The Economics of Jesus," "Faith and Verification," etc.


And behold, I send forth the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city, until ye be clothed with power from on high - Luke 24:49.

Perhaps there is no feature of the last hundred years which will be considered in future ages so remarkable as the release of the natural forces pent up in all forms of matter, and their utilization in the service of humanity which has been achieved during this time. Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, in his book on "The Wonderful Century," draws an instructive contrast between the beginning and the end of the period in this particular. In 1800 the human race, in respect to its control over the wild untutored forces of nature, was in much the same position as in the days of Hannibal; indeed, more advance has been made in the sovereignty over nature during this century than in the six or seven thousand years since the building of the pyramids. It is not merely that knowledge has advanced by leaps and bounds, that new sciences have been born and old ones perfected, that the lines of research have been pushed "many a furlong further into chaos," that a flood of light has been shed on the method of creation, on the origins of life, and on the development of the universe from its primal simplicity to the ordered complexities of its present state. It is all this, but it is more. It is that that kind of knowledge has vastly increased which means the unlocking of doors, the opening of secret places, the taming, as it were, of gigantic forces for the benefit of the race in all directions. The universe has been rediscovered from the human standpoint. We have found out that nature is not dead, but sleeping; that she hides behind her gentle, placid face a perfect whirlwind of pent-up force; that every particle of matter is a center of energy; that what we call solid substances are, really, but a system of interlocked but fiercely gyrating force-centers. The tremendous power of the new explosives is probably only a suggestion of the energies that slumber in every brick in our walls, in every flagstone beneath our feet, in every particle of food which we digest; and we have only to discover the secret of disturbing this equilibrium of matter to be able to blow the very globe into space. The puny body of man has always been the least im¬portant part of him; it is now of less account to him than ever, for the earth is being transformed into a kind of organism of which he is the nerve center; he is multiplying his limbs like a centipede, and forcing inanimate nature to supply him with organs of motion which enable him to put distance and time to defiance. Already he can burrow in the earth like a mole, skim the ocean like a gull, and soon he will be able to fly over the continents like an eagle. By means of his far-reaching electric antennae, he can speak and hear at a distance, see what takes place miles away, and draw pictures with the intangible pencil of light. In these days, when we can take a photograph through a brick wall, and carry on a conversation through miles of mountain or across vast stretches of ocean, there seems little else to expect by way of fresh wonders. And yet, we know that we have scarcely tapped the vast storage battery of natural force; and who shall tell what shall be in the end thereof?

All this is by way of preamble to a still more wonderful vision. Christianity was born of two great events. The first was the coming of Jesus in the flesh, which was the dawn of a new science - the revelation of God, which had been hidden in a mystery from the foundation of the world, a revelation which was also a redemption; the second was the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost, which brought into the world a new power. Jesus brought us the gospel, the "good news" of God, of His willingness to forgive, and save, and renew the spiritual forces of life; and at Pentecost the Holy Spirit of promise came as a spiritual force, which transformed the "knowledge of God" into the "power of God." Luke gives us the story of the revelation, a revelation in deed and in suffering, as well as in word, in his gospel; and he gives the story of how this was transformed into the spirit of power in the Acts.

At the time when this text was spoken, the disciples stood midway between these two critical events. The gospel of redemption had received its finishing touch in the resurrec¬tion of our Lord from the dead; the fair fabric of the perfect life was complete from base to pinnacle. But as yet the forces concentrated in that holy and beautiful gospel of truth and life and love were inoperative; the secret of turning the new knowledge of God into the power of God was not yet theirs. And Jesus, in His parting message, told them to wait. They must not hurry the process; they were not to be impatient; presently something would happen to them, if only they would prepare themselves quietly for it, which would bring the full fruits of His gospel within their reach. Meanwhile they were to "tarry in the city until" the hour when "the Spirit of power" would break forth from the unseen, and the Word would no longer be "with" them as an incarnate Presence, but "in" them as an immanent life. "And, behold, I send forth the promise of the Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city, until ye be clothed with power from on high."

Of what kind of situation does this remind us? How shall I phrase the parallel I wish to draw more vividly?

I think of a tidal channel, and of a vessel ready for a long and adventurous voyage. The cargo is all on board, the steam is in the boilers, the fires are burning brightly in the furnaces. All the arrangements for the voyage have been completed; there is nothing wanted so far as preparedness is concerned. But there is no movement seaward. The captain and the crew are waiting for something; something that can neither be hurried nor controlled. That something is the rising of the tide. The vessel is made for the sea, not the land, and whatever her equipment, she will not move till that tide lifts her, and provides the channel deep enough for her displacement. But directly that tide does come, the engines will begin to throb, the vast bulk will begin to move, the helm will begin to direct her course, and so the voyage will be started.

Or, I think of something else, still nearer the heart of my subject. I think of the trees in winter, standing leafless and rugged against a pale sky, or fighting with rude and stormy winds; and of the brown fields, and of the gardens where no flowers grow. The world seems dead; life seems as though it had fled away to some younger planet. But we know better than that, for we have seen this before. Life is really busy, not, indeed, with the twigs and leaves and blossoms, but with the roots of life. Far below the surface they are storing up the moisture, and transforming the soil by that hidden process of vital chemistry which goes on all the winter, into "something new and strange." Yet nothing seems to happen at all for a long time. Week follows week, and month crawls after month, with no sign of life anywhere. The roots, indeed, can do no more; they are full of sap; but they are powerless to lift it through trunk and branch to the buds at their extremities. But wait a little longer, till the poor old earth that has lost the fires of her youth, and now depends on the kindly sun for her annual quickening, has turned herself toward the cherishing heat that pours down upon her; and one day you realize suddenly that the leaves are out, and that spring has come, clothing the world in garments of beauty and light.

Now, there are periods of recurring spiritual barrenness and inability that come upon the souls of men, alternating with periods of freshness and vitality. It is difficult to account for the law of periodicity which somehow rules the forces of religious progress, but that there is such a law is unquestionable. There are times of creative power in the career of nations, as well as individuals; when great thinkers, great poets, great preachers rise, and mighty movements are set going, and mighty things are done; and there are other periods when it would seem as tho heaven had retired to some distant part of the sky, and all things great and good were impossible. Am I wrong in thinking that just now we are rather in the trough than on the crest of the wave? Not only in matters of religion, but in matters of social and political progress, we are not having an easy or happy time. Immense efforts are being made to better the world. It is an age of reformers. Every one is a reformer nowadays; utopias are thick as blackberries in September; the State is split up into parties who are fiercely contending as to who shall be the first to put the world right. New theologies battle with old theologies, till the air is thick with dust, and the combatants can scarcely see or hear one another for the noise and clamor. And yet somehow nothing seems to he happening. The vessel of progress labors heavily as tho in a place where two (or many) seas meet, and men turn hither and thither, uncertain as to whom to listen to, and in what direction to trace their steps. There is much effort, but little progress; much turmoil, but little life; many voices, but no all-commanding message that carries conviction. Our churches are marking time, and many of them are living on their past; there is a sense of disillusionment and fear in the dumb, unthinking multitude that has largely lost faith in its religious leaders. We seem to be between two worlds, "one dead, the other powerless to be born." In theology, especially, we are in a distracted and troublous state; and when theology is distracted, religion is paralyzed, for if our ideas of God and the soul are in utter confusion, how shall we act confidently and live happily, or do anything noble and good? I do not wish to put the case too strongly, or to give forth a Cassandra message; and yet, who can deny that these things are so? And if these things are so, what are we to do or think? Let me ask you to come back to the text, and the situation it embodied. These men, who were about to part from their Master for the last time in visible form, were in just this situation that I have described. They were in a strait between two great epochs in their life, and in their relation with Him. The period of their earthly communion with Him was over. They were not quite ripe for the period of His spiritual presence within their hearts. They had received the gospel in all its fullness; they had seen and come to know the Father through the Son; but they had not come to that experience which would turn the knowledge they had into power. What was lacking in their experience before the power would come?

Two things were lacking: First, they lacked that insight into the meaning of the wonderful Life that had been lived in their presence, which enabled them to understand the gospel which it embodied. Though Jesus had been with them for several years in daily communion; though they had heard His message, and witnessed the great deeds He had wrought, and felt the perpetual play of His love around them; though they had seen Him die, and rise again from the dead, they were not possessed of the key to the mystery of their Master's person and purpose. In a sense, they were too near the events to realize their tremendous importance; too much under the spell of the physical presence of Christ to know Him for what and who He was. A period of quiet meditation over all that they had seen and felt and handled of the Word of Life was needed, during which the strange, harrowing, soul-stirring events through which they had passed, might have time and opportunity to range themselves in order and fall into their natural perspective. Great events do not unfold their significance to us at the moment; they need a certain distance in order to be seen in their majesty of meaning; they can be duly interpreted only when thrown up into relief against the background of time and circumstance. And so they were told to tarry a while in the city and spend their time in thought and prayer for light on the mystery and perplexity that filled their minds. And that light which they needed could only come from above. They were to wait in faith and hope, sure that their Master would not fail them in their need. The promise was given to them, "And behold! I send forth the promise of my Father upon you." The spirit of truth was to lead them into all the truth concerning Himself. Enlightenment must precede realization; the power could only come through illumination.

But even this was not enough. It would be a great mistake to imagine that the disciples entered at Pentecost into the fullness of either the light or the power of the Christian faith. In the first blaze of that sunrise, they were filled with enough light to give them great power?a power that swept multitudes into the fold of believers, and created the first church. But it is clear that it was long crc they realized the manifold meanings of the gospel which they preached with such acceptance; and the means by which they came into the fullness of light and power was self-forgetful service, the outpouring of their hearts in rove and solicitude over the souls of their fellow men. The gospel light and the gospel power were only slowly and gradually revealed as they "lived the life," and tested the truth in the stress and storm of their experience of its value. The New Testament literature is the record of successive stages in the expansion of the light of the knowledge of the love of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ, and in the deepening and spreading of the power that slumbered in it. By preaching and teaching in many lands; by meeting persecutions and distresses, and sorrows manifold, in the name and for the sake of their Master, with unflinching courage, and unwearied love, and unbroken patience, and undying hope; by working for the gospel, and by suffering for it, they lived their way into its innermost secret and power; and so Christianity became a "light to the Gentiles" and a power that "turned the world upside down."

We have been passing recently through a kind of résumé of the experience of the first Christians in our relation to the story and person of Jesus Christ. The cry of the last fifty years in theology has been "back to Christ," the idea being that it was our duty to come into fresh and living acquaintance with the human life of Jesus in its historical environment, and as lie lived and moved among men. To this end all the resources of scholarship, critical and historical, have been directed. Every foot of ground has been traversed, every line of literature has been ransacked that could enrich our materials for seeing Jesus; who and what manner of man He was. The result is now practically complete. We are not likely to know more about the man, Christ Jesus, than has been already ascertained. And we may as well be thankful for the wonderful freshening of the world's interest in the human Christ. It has brought home, as never before, the sense of His oneness with ourselves. It has opened out as never before the naturalness, as well as the unspeakable beauty and loftiness of the perfect life He lived. And this it has done to most of us without removing from the personality of Jesus that element of a divine mystery which in all ages has been the crowning attribute of his nature, as well as the deepest source of his fascination and ascendency over the human soul. Let us devoutly thank God for all that criticism?historical, textual, rational, spiritual, and whatnot - has done for the better realization of Jesus Christ as a man among men - and the man of all men.

And yet, can we really say that this closer knowledge has done very much so far for a clearer understanding of His divine message for our own clay and generation? Is the meaning of Christ as clear to us as to our forefathers, who had so distorted and unreal an idea of the earthly conditions of the incarnation of the Son of God? Is it not true that with less knowledge they had more light than we seem to have? Did not they live nearer than we do to Him who once appeared in the flesh, but who is evermore with His people by His Spirit? Have we not been burrowing too much in the far-off centuries for Him who was once dead, but who is alive for evermore? The Jesus who lived in the first century will be nothing better than a picturesque and beautiful figure in history unless we can realize that lie has been at work through all the centuries between, and that we can never understand Him nor receive the promise of the Father from Him till we say with Paul: "Yea, even though we have known him after the flesh, yet know we him so no more." There is nothing the Church needs just now more than a fresh grasp of the meaning of the gospel of the divine Person for our own day and generation. We need the light that we may realize the power.

This light can only come as it came to the first disciples: first, by waiting upon God in humble dependence on his holy spirit, which can only come from Himself; and then by a courageous application of the light we have to the needs and problems, individual and social, of the day. The secret of Christ can only be learned by those who are prepared to receive His influence into their heart of hearts, and then to obey His word with a willing mind and a single eye. It is because there is so little of this among us that our religion has fallen into temporary disrepute among those who need it most, the toiling masses for whom the great heart of Jesus agonized and yearned so deeply, and for whom He died, and for whom lie now lives and works in the unseen world, which we think of as so far, but which is so terribly beautifully near to us all. "The word is still nigh thee, even at the doors." And when that power once more comes - as come it will - what then?

Ah, then once more we shall see signs and wonders. Right through the ages we can see that power at work, now silently gathering force in secret channels, anon swelling into a flood, inundating multitudes, filling the Church with energy, and overflowing into the wide world with its healing, uplifting, enabling influence. I believe that through these lean and barren years this power has been gathering force for a fresh advance, and that we are on the eve of a great outpouring of spiritual blessing throughout the world. It may not come along the old paths - indeed, it has never come as men expected it to come; it always cuts its own channels and shapes its own instruments of expression; there is always a great unexpectedness about a spiritual revival, both in its methods and in its results. Our wisdom will be to be open-minded as well as open-hearted, and to welcome the light as it breaks into power, however unfamiliar the way in which it will come. "The wind [spirit] bloweth where it liketh; thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth."

But if we do not know in what manner God will express His will and send forth his spirit into our midst, we do know what its outcome will be. Now as ever, it will issue in a renewed sense of the forgiving love of God in Christ; now, as ever, it will cleanse guilty consciences from their sorrow and their despair through faith in the eternal cross; now, as ever, it will move the hopeless and help¬less to turn to the Lord with the immemorial cry, "What must I do to be saved?" with a sense of victory over the sin that doth so easily beset them. Old things will pass away; behold, all things shall become new.

And the evangel to the individual will not be the only note of the coming revival. The times are ripe for a great social evangel; and it will come, if we only wait and work in faith. Not by hard mechanical schemes and artificial man-made utopias will this good thing for which we are all waiting and praying come; but by filling all parties in Church and State with a new enthusiasm for humanity; by breaking down the suspicions and the antago¬nisms of class against class; by filling men with a passion for righteousness and a love for what is just and fair between those who think and those who work, those who lead and those who can only follow. Grant this new temper - and a new temper always follows a new revival of spiritual life, whether in the individual or the community - and all our insoluble enigmas will become easy to deal with; the impossibilities of today will become the commonplaces of tomorrow. I venture to call you away from the poor polemics of the hour to the larger duty that presses at our door and demands our undivided attention. We may well forget the clashings of new theologies and old, with all their unworthy suspicions and recriminations and personalities, and to set ourselves to the real task of the hour, which is to wait on God, and join hands in doing His work. The world is athirst for the living God, and the living God is athirst for the world. Shall we, then, divide into parties, and schools, and coteries of thought "I Shall we say again?, 'I am of Paul,' and 'I am of Apollos,' and 'I am of Christ?' Is Christ, then, divided?" Rather let us lift up our eyes, and see the fields, how they are already ripe unto harvest, and verily the laborers are few. Let us pray that the Lord of harvest may send His servants into the harvest; let us pray that He may make us ready to toil and to suffer and to bleed in the sacred holy task of winning the world to Him who is its Lord and their Savior. The more I study the conditions and temper of our age, the more is the impression borne in on my mind that great social and religious forces are moving in uneasy slumber, and that they will break forth presently into activity. The question is, Who shall stand at the side of the reawakened Demos and say: "Loose him, and let him go?" Shall it be the spirit of Christ or the spirit of secularism? Is religion to be degraded into a department of economies, or is it to hold its place at the source and head of things - the great moving, inspiring force for social progress and for personal salvation? The result will depend on the attitude taken by the Church of Christ in this hour of crisis and trial. Our opportunity, I believe, is almost unparalleled in the history of our faith, to carry the gospel of the blessed God to a weary and hungry world; and in doing this we shall be as one heart and one mind, as were the disciples when the spirit fell on their wondering hearts, kindling tongues of flame and setting loose torrents of renewing power.

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