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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

George Currie Martin, Professor of New Testament language, etc., and patristics in the United College, Bradford, Yorks, and Lancashire Independent College, 1903 1909; born Portobello, Scotland, July 9, 1865; educated George Watson’s College, Edinburgh; Knox Institute, Haddington; Edinburgh and Marburg universities; New College, London; minister of Congregational churches, Nairn, N. B., 1890-95; Reigate, Surrey, 1895-1903; author of “Foreign Missions in Eras of Non-conformity,” “A Catechism on the Teaching of Jesus,” editor of “Ephesians, Proverbs,” etc., in “The Century Bible,” “New Guinea,” “How Best to Read the New Testament,” etc.

I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me. - Phil. 4:13.

These words constitute a great boast. Boasting is common enough, but justifiable boasting is not so common. It is true that humility is not the very highest quality in character, and that the greatest men have frequently astounded their contemporaries by the confidence of their utterances about their ability. Our Lord Himself found that one cause of the people‘s enmity lay in the statements He made about His own personality, and the claims He assumed as His own right. But here we find His great apostle Paul speaking in a note of absolute assurance that staggers us. The only justification of such a claim is that it should be verified in experience.

First, then, we want to look at the verification of this boast. At first sight, it is true, there does not seem very much justification for it. Paul writes this letter from prison. Now it would appear that the most obvious thing for him to do at the moment, if he were possessed of the power to which he lays claim, would be to escape from prison and go to the assistance of his various converts and churches. This very letter shows us that he had a longing so to do. To break prison only requires a certain amount of ingenuity. It is said that there are no bolts so strong, no fetters so heavy, no arrangement of a prison-house so ingenious that men cannot escape if they set themselves to accomplish the task. Paul never attempted it. If the most obvious and simple thing was not done, how are we to find a justification of the statement?

It will be remembered that a century or two ago one of our English poets was in prison, and in his cell he wrote a song that has floated down the years to our own day:


This was a wonderful accomplishment of the poet’s imagination. To him the constraint of the prison became the refuge of the solitary, and he found reasons for thankfulness in the very circumstances of compulsory solitude.

When, in the days of the Scottish Covenant, they exiled Samuel Rutherford from his lovely parish of Anworth to the cold, gray desolation of Aberdeen, he was wont to write letters of comfort and consolation to his parishioners. and sometimes he dated them, not, as we might expect, from the dreary prison-house at Aberdeen, but from “My Lord‘s Palace at Aberdeen.” This was what his faith taught Rutherford, and transformed the place of confinement to a room in which he held high converse with his Lord. But Paul‘s accomplishment is more wonderful than either of these. For him the prison becomes a pulpit. They had confined him in Rome, that they might silence what the Roman historian called “ the mischievous superstition” of Christianity, and, behold, he finds the prison a better place for extending his evangel than the free travel that had formerly been his lot. In this letter he tells us how the whole company of the imperial guard had heard the word of Christ, and those letters of his reached the utmost limits of the empire. Not only so, but they come down through all the centuries, until today we read in this word the same message of indomitable courage, and unconquerable confidence.

But, says someone, at any rate the apostle could not escape suffering and trial. No, he could not, but let us read that great autobiographical self-revelation - the Second Epistle to the Corinthians - and we find the way in which Paul dealt with such circumstances. Once on his missionary journeys the multitude stoned him. His attitude to every form of suffering is just as if he had been able to take the stones his persecutors threw at him, raise them in his hands, and as he did so the stones had turned to bright and flashing gems, which he set upon his forehead as a triumphal diadem. This was the manner in which he treated all the trials that befell him. He made them subjects of boasting. “If I must boast I will boast of my suffering, my weakness, and my trial,” he said. Here again, much more truly than had he escaped all, he overcomes in the power of his Lord.

Nor is death any terror to him. Again, in the pages of this letter we find him saying, “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” It is simply impossible to do anything with a man like this. There is no form of barrier known to human skill which will stop him, no form of terror the most demoniacal ingenuity can invent that will in the least degree dissuade him. Truly we find in Paul’s experience this great boast completely verified - “I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me.”

Secondly, there lies in the words a note of victory. Paul is a victorious man, and I beg you to think for a moment or two of the forces that were arrayed against him. I speak of the special forms of enmity with which the apostle in his peculiar work was conversant. In the main there were three: First, the power of the Jew was a mighty force. It was the force of his own countrymen, and we all know how intense a patriot Paul was, and how difficult it is for the patriot to resist the persuasion or the pressure of those he loves with such intense devotion. But not only were they his own countrymen - they were the people who possessed the finest and most spiritual religion of that day - in fact, the most spiritual religion of any day, except that which grew out of it - Christianity itself. It was a religion not only hoary with antiquity, but able to point to vast achievements, and to a large element of spiritual power. Secondly, there were the Greeks. Now the Greeks stood for two things - the religion of beauty, and the religion of pleasure. They taught the world such lessons of loveliness, as it has not been able to surpass in all the centuries since. Even to-day we have to go to the school of Greek sculpture and the Greek architects in order to know some of the secrets of purest beauty. And they were the pleasure-loving folk. They preached the doctrine of enjoyment of life to the full. All the world had listened to the message and thereby it increased its stock of joy. And, thirdly, there was the might of Rome. Rome stood for many things, but in this particular connection let us confine our attention to two - her sense of justice, and her might of civilization. Rome had evolved such a system of law that upon it is based the great legal systems of modern Europe. And the effectiveness of her civilization was such that probably never from that day to this has the world been so safe a place in which to travel.

Now, these three mighty powers were arrayed against the apostle, and he had to contend with them, and, if the words of the text are true, he not only contended with them but felt he had the secret of their subjugation. This might only be an interesting historical fact, if it were not that these same forces are arrayed against the Church of Christ today, and the individual Christian has now a battle upon which to enter similar to that the apostle had to fight. We do not indeed call the forces by the same names, but the realities are there. Do we not all know of churches which pride themselves upon their past achievement, upon the correctness of their creed, or the antiquity of their ritual, or the splendor of their worldly power? Has Christendom ever been free from such conflict, and is it not one of the hardest tasks of the spiritual church today to resist and vanquish such enemies within her own ranks? Was it only the Greeks that preached the popular gospel of pleasure? Are there no echoes of it amongst ourselves? Have not young men and women ever in their ears the voices which bid them fill life with beauty, with gaiety, and with gladness? Take the cup of life, and fill up to the brim, and drain it, care for nothing but pleasure! say these voices. If ever an age listened to that message it is our own. And, finally, the gospel of the might of empire, and the greatness of civilization has never been so loudly proclaimed as to-day. Are there not many who suppose that the great glory of England lies in the extension of her imperial might? Are the English people not told to acquire by any means, but certainly to ac¬quire; and to hold what they have acquired, with an iron hand, if it must be, but certainly to hold? And, further, those who are most keenly interested in the spread of the gospel of Christ in foreign lands are often met with the argument that might well have come from an old Roman. “Go to China, or to India,” we are told, “and take there all that Western science has taught you, all that modern discovery has been able to find, share with these people all knowledge except the knowledge of the cross.” Often, when we are brought into relation with primitive peoples, men will tell us, “Yes, make them good citizens of the empire, teach them how to increase our commerce, how to be of advantage to our moneymaking endeavor, and once you have civilized them, perhaps one day, far off, you may speak the message of Christ.” To a very large number the order of events is, civilization first, Christianity afterwards. There are many even within the ranks of the Church who seem to hold that view. It is said that the religion of the Sikhs in northern India is sometimes phrased by its followers in one brief utterance - “Victory! Victory! That is the” good morning” and “good evening” of Sikhdom. Such is their phrase of confident assurance. I have sometimes wondered whether the modern Church of Christ dare say the same thing. Could we, in the face of the world, declare “Victory! Victory! That is the ‘good morning’ and ‘good evening’ of Christendom? “But if we cannot do so, ought we not to feel ashamed for Paul to do so? For have not we the intervening centuries to add their witness to the faith which he preached, and in the power of which he lived?

Thirdly, in these words we find the note of vision. “In him that strengtheneth me.” All Paul’s religion centered in the person of his Lord. Whenever you come into the secret places of Paul’s inner life you are made aware of one unforgetable event - the event which altered the whole current of his experience - the vision of his Lord on the way to Damascus. Not only before King Agrippa, but in face of all inquiries, Paul would have said” I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.” There is no great religion in the world that has not acquired its power, and so long as it had any vitality, preserved it through the strength of its vision. Buddha was able to reach his great achievements, because of the vision he bad seen of the world‘s need, and the means whereby he felt that it might be met. Mohammed found in his religion the light of the vision of the one God he had beheld in the solitudes of the trackless desert, and whatever might has attached to that great faith has been found where such a vision has been renewed. It is not the power of the sword, hut the power of its vision that has made Islam what it is, and Christianity is a religion of vision. The older faith of Judaism said that” To see God was to die,” the new religion says “To see God is to live.” “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” said its Founder. “No one knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him,” and he who knoweth God and Him whom God hath sent has the secret of eternal life.

From vision, then, comes power. Power, in the first instance, of pardon, in the second in¬stance, of peace, and, in the third instance, of achievement. But the vision must not be only for one occasion - it must be a vision that is perpetually renewed. For Paul there was nothing so certain as the presence of Christ, and the lives that are lived in that consciousness are the lives that know conquest. It is said that there was once a great musician visiting this country, and that his host took him to church with him on one occasion. A week later he extended the invitation again, but the musician replied, “No, I will not go with you unless you can take me to hear someone who will tempt me to do the impossible.”

Tempt us to do the impossible - that is what Christ is ever doing. Nothing can have seemed more hopeless than the quest upon which He sent Paul. Standing on the threshold of the Roman world, He beckoned to the apostle to follow Him in order that He might bring all that proud Roman empire to His feet. Nothing could have seemed more quixotic and unpractical than that, yet the apostle not only accepted the challenge, but here, after long years of experience, not any more a young man with untried enthusiasm and Untested zeal, he says, “I can do all things,” and, as we have seen, the boast was no vain one, but a reality that can be tested by his life.

These, then, are the tests of a true Chris¬tian experience. Are they to be found in our lives - these notes of verification, of victory and vision? If not, it must be ours to catch them, or to recall them, and the only secret of their acquirement or renewal is to come into close and intimate fellowship with Jesus Christ through His Spirit, whereby our hearts also will be assured in the day of conflict, strengthened in the hour of temptation, and made more than conqueror through Him that loveth us.

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