Blogotional

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

William Theophilus Davison, Principal of Richmond College, England, 1909; born at Bath, England, 1846; educated at Kingswood School; graduated (M.A.) at the London University in 1871; has held various pastorates in the Wesleyan Methodist Church from 1868-81; was for ten years professor of Biblical literature in Richmond College and for thirteen years professor of theology in Handsworth; in 1905, he returned as theological professor to Richmond College; was a member of faculty of theology of London University, and in 1901 was president of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference; author of “The Christian Conscience,” “The Praises of Israel,” “Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament,” “The Lord ‘s Supper,” “Strength for the Way,” “Psalms” in “Century Bible.”


“And he said unto them, Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven is like a man that is a householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” - Matt. 13:52.

We can not be sure of the exact scope of the figure employed in our text. Is this householder providing food for the multitude, various provision for various needs, “all manner of precious fruits, new and old” (Song 7 : 13), new confections and old wine - that is far better than the crude must of yesterday? Or is he, as is common in the East, unfolding the resources of a rich wardrobe, so many changes of raiment, brand-new fabrics of latest style, old laces and gold-embroidered garments possessing dignity and historic interest? Or rather, jewels and furniture of diverse history and value, heirlooms from a distant past, bright new ornaments, carved chests from the stores of ancient kings? It matters not. We spoil the illustration by narrowing it down to detail; let it stand in its original breadth and generality - he bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old. The application to our own time, a period in which so much is said of the old faith and the new knowledge, may well prove to be fruitful and instructive.

Every teacher must be first a learner, every real learner ought to become in his own meas¬ure a teacher. This is true in all departments of life; we can not teach what we do not know, we can not know without learning by the methods proper to the subject. The learned man is called a scholar because he is content to acknowledge ignorance, to open his mind and sit at the feet of those who are wiser than he. In science we must observe, collect instances, experiment, verify. In metaphysics we analyze, discriminate, reason, confirm. In art students open their eyes and heart to receive lessons of beauty, patiently toil over technical processes, submitting to laws which it is painful to obey in order to communicate delight which it is a joy to impart. The successful manufacturer and the skilled artisan, the craftsman and the laborer of all types, are not exempt from laws which apply to all human acquisitions and achievements.

Not least is this the case in the sphere of religion. Those who carried God’s message of old time were men who had been taught of God. The prophet who would speak a word in season to him who is weary must be one who has learned divine lessons, who has been awakened morning by morning to be taught the highest love. The ready tongue can only be inspired by the willing and waiting heart. The priest who was to help in the work of revealing God to man and bringing man near to God needed long and careful training. The “wise man,” who taught in proverbs might be supposed to be educated in society, the possessor of a shrewd eye and a ready wit, but he, more, perhaps, than other teachers, had learned the lesson that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and that the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.

In later times another type of teacher had come to the front, and in the time of Christ he was known as the “scribe.” He spent his time in mastering the details of an ecclesiastical code, becoming familiar with traditional precedents and decisions, that he might hand them on and add to their numbers - a doctor, a lawyer, a rabbi, a teacher of the schools. He is not lovely in our eyes. But it must be remembered that he had conscientiously taken much trouble to master what was esteemed the highest knowledge attain¬able: he had studied, arranged, codified and made the subject his own; he built a hedge round the law and a hedge round that hedge, his whole object being to keep God’s commandments inviolate and the name of Him who had given them sacred, as in a very holy of holies.

Then had come One who taught “not as the scribes.” His words carried their own weight, were stamped with their own credentials, proclaimed their own authority. None could hear them unmoved and their main teaching was concerning God. The Father was made known by the Son as never before; the truth revealed concerning Him lived, palpitated and glowed in the very utterance; it was brought home with immediate directness to men’s business and bosoms; the kingdom of which others had had much to say took on new meaning and character, it was not to come with “observation” - the craning of the neck into the distance to watch for an un¬imaginable portent - it was in their very midst.

Christ proclaimed a new spiritual order, to attain which there was no need to climb the heaven or cross the sea; men had but to look within and search around them. No new God was declared, yet the new light shed on the nature of Him whom the fathers had known and worshiped gave an altogether new idea of His mind and will, and altogether new conceptions of what was meant by His tabernacling among men and the establishment of His dominion upon earth. The message came, Repent, change both mind and habit from the old hard, selfish, conventional ways; be born again, become as little children with simple, wondering, trustful and obedient hearts; be baptized, not only with water to cleanse from the evil of the past, but with the Holy Spirit and with fire to purify from within and inform with new celestial energy. Above all, love; love God with heart and mind and soul and strength, love man as man, whether friendly or hostile, generous or ungrateful; so shall new relations between God and men usher in a new heaven and a new earth, a new social organism of renovated spirits, a kingdom whose full coming shall mean that the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven.

Hence arose a new world, of which Christ Himself is the center. “My disciple” is a more frequent phrase with Him than “disciple of the kingdom,” but the two mean the same thing. A new sort of scribism, this. You shall learn, He says, not necessarily from books and manuscripts. Not that there is any need to despise a good book, “the precious life-blood of a master-spirit embalmed and treasured up to a life beyond life.” You shall learn, not necessarily dogmas of the schools. Not that men should decry healthy doctrine, the best thoughts on the most sacred subjects framed in the best words attainable. You shall learn, not necessarily from carefully compiled ethical codes. Not that any wise man will slight or disregard these precepts of highest sanction and most sacred obligation, the behests of a duty which may be the “stern daughter of the voice of God,” but which also means “the Godhead’s most benignant grace.”

Doctrines, traditions, laws, principles are inculcated - but alive, not dead; no fossils, but instinct with vital energy. The school of this kingdom is one of spiritual experience; its training is not one of poring over musty tomes, or repeating parrot-like phrases which are only half-understood and wholly uncared for. A man can not enter the kingdom, can not even see it, without a new nature; wise men may miss it, while babes enjoy it. Learn of me, says the Teacher, in simplicity and meekness, throwing aside prejudice, selfishness and hardness of heart, opening wide the doors of affection and trustfulness, gaining fuller insight into the will of God by unfailing obedience to His voice when heard – “if any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.” For all is embodied in Him who is the way, the truth and the life. Whoever seeks to embody living truths in abstract propositions - and no true teacher ever does - Jesus Christ does not make disciples thus. He came to be the truth, not simply to declare it. Only the Son can reveal the Father, the nature of the kingdom can only be seen in its King. His are words which are spirit and life, indeed, and in Him is a fountain of redeeming energy enabling men to realize their meaning in action. Learn of me, says the lowliest of all masters; drink not from the pool, not from the cistern, not from the reservoir, but from the fountain of life indeed.

So the first disciples found it and generations of Christ’s followers since. Those who have learned of Him have’ had placed in their hands a talisman, with its secret watchword, opening up mountain-caves close by their side, rich in treasure, a key to the knowledge of nature, man and God. Jesus said nothing about nature in the modern sense of the word, but the whole world was His; as all our science can not make it ours. He knew man perfectly, the best as well as the worst of human nature: none exposed more sternly than lie the evil of hardness and hypocrisy, none more tenderly pitied man’s weakness and waywardness, yearning after the lost and giving Himself to the uttermost in order to reclaim them. Christ understood man and nature because He knew God. Others guess and wonder and dream, He knows. Where other religious teachers scatter a few clouds from the lower firmament of the spiritual sky He shoots up a straight shaft of access into the farthest azure, and a vision. of glory appears, indeed, such as can never be forgotten or lost. When a “scribe” is made a disciple of this kingdom and knows God and man and nature as Christ makes him, he has found a new world such as eye sees not, ear hears not, and which can not otherwise enter into the heart of man.

Read the seven parables of this chapter or other chapters. Read the Beatitudes, learn the Lord’s Prayer, sit. at Jesus’ feet to hear His words. Draw still nearer, that you may understand Himself and that kingdom which, because it is His, it must be our first aim to seek and to make our own in his way. Look to Him as Savior, as well as Revealer. Trust Him as He offers on the cross one sacrifice for sins forever, and as lie is declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. Receive His holy Spirit into the heart and let Him do His work of cleansing, renewing and purifying to the uttermost. Jesus says still to His disciples, “Abide in me and I in you; and then, Ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you. If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples; ‘and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

“Have ye understood all these things?” It is a searching question. Religiously educated, professing and calling ourselves Christians, taught the catechism as children, having known the Bible all our lives, accepting an orthodox creed and perhaps attending the holy communion - it may still be that in the inner springs of our nature we have not yet been made disciples to the kingdom of heaven. The promise of the parable is only to such. But all may become disciples if they will; the way is open and the grace is free. The blind from birth may have eyesight given him; the half-cured who see men as trees walking, by an added touch may be enabled clearly to scan the horizon far and near. Those whose eyes have thus been opened will easily follow on to explore.

The abundance of the householder’s store is exprest by a notable phrase, ‘‘things, new and old.” Why is it used? Why does not Jesus say things great and small, things useful and beautiful, things suitable for rich and poor, old and young, wise and simple? The form may be proverbial, or it may be considered generally suitable in describing a storehouse. But it probably contains a deeper significance. Jesus as a teacher had often to face this question of old and new in the realm of truth and to declare what was his attitude to both in a time of transition. The Jews were particularly tenacious of tradition, and in all ages religious people have been naturally conservative. They are usually disturbed, if not alarmed, by the cry, “Thou bringest certain strange things to our ears.” It is, therefore, the relation between past and future that is in the mind of the Master when He uses this phrase; the relative claims of venerable, mature experience, on the one hand, and the fresh, vigorous, earnest thought of the moment; on the other tile relation of successive generations to one another, the perennial contest between the laudator termporis acti, the tenacious upholder of the customary ideas of the past and tile eager young life full of hope and clamorous for the satisfaction of the pressing needs of today. Hence our Lord describes the resources of a true disciple of the kingdom as sufficient for all emergencies. The supply in his treasure-house is adequate and abundant, both of things new and old.

How does the doctrine of the kingdom preserve the unity of these two? The arguments of those who plead the claims of either old or new taken separately arc well known. Apart from that shallowest and laziest of pleas which obstructs all progress because “what was good enough for our fathers is good enough for us,” the better part of human nature is rightly enlisted in defense of truth already assimilated and positions already attained. In religion especially the value of existing grounds of trust causes men rightly to cling to revelations already made and to contend earnestly for the forms in which they have been delivered. Further protection for the sacred truth is afforded by ethical precepts or religious ceremonies; these in turn become sacrosanct, and further doctrine is formulated to secure them in their place. Thus the process of overlaying the original deposit of truth is continued till the very significance of the original is lost and the Jewish scribes, who most honor the law, make it void through their tradition.

On the other hand, the intellectually restless and eager are represented by the vivacious and versatile Athenians, who “spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.” Novelty may become in itself an excellence, and accepted truth be discarded merely because it is familiar. The paradoxical is considered in itself admirable because it stimulates the intellectually jaded palate. The world of ideas changes for some thinkers like the book of fashions in dress; last season’s garb is considered ugly simply because it is no longer worn. For them the stigma of dullness attaches to all that is based on precedent and authority; prejudice is raised against the old, since by its very definition it has had its day, and is fit only to make way for something else.

In true religion each of these tendencies is wrong if it be taken alone. There must be a reasoned relation between the abiding and the transient; no religion can meet the needs of man which does not on the one hand preserve unchanged the eternal principles of right and wrong, both human and divine, and on the other take full account of new conditions, new knowledge, and new requirements, as the generations succeed one another in unending procession. In Christianity the unity between these conflicting elements may always be preserved by men who are made disciples to the kingdom that can not be moved. There may be a removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made; but the things which can not be shaken will remain. These householders bring forth from their treasure things new and old, both equally valuable and easily and harmoniously blended.

Christ Himself furnishes the supreme example of this. We know how, early in His ministry, the objection was raised: “What is this - a new teaching?” How, in the Sermon on the Mount, lie said that He came not to destroy but to fulfill; that no jot or tittle of the law should fail till it had been fulfilled. In the brief parable of Luke 5: 39, Christ laid stress on the value of the old, as such, and more than once He upheld the judgments of those who spoke from Moses’ seat because of the place from which the words were spoken. Yet He protested against pouring new wine into old wine-skins. He superseded that which had been said “to them of old time” by His authoritative word, “I say unto you,” for a greater than Jonah, a greater than Solomon, a greater than Moses, is here. Without breaking with the past, He vindicated the rights and the duties of the present; without proclaiming a revolution, He accomplished one; while upholding the law and the prophets, He showed how the gospel realized and surpassed both. If ever there was a teacher who brought forth for His treasure things new and old, it was He who spoke this parable.

The servant was to be even as his lord. Christ declares here that those who followed Him would be like Him in their blending of old faith and new knowledge. The best-known example is that of the apostle Paul. Who, more completely than he, realized this combination? Brought up as a Pharisee, he never lost his zeal for righteousness. When he preached Christ crucified, it was only that that end should be attained for which the law had striven but had not been strong enough to secure. He pleads continually, “It is written,” yet is so convinced of the paramount importance of the message entrusted to him that if an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel than this, he must be anathema. So with the other apostles; from Pentecost onward, they followed their Lord faithfully and closely, but not slavishly. They did not put forth a replica of the Sermon on the Mount, though echoes of it are found in the epistles of Peter and James. But they were enlightened by the promised Spirit to understand the supreme importance of the person and the work of Christ on earth and its consummation in heaven; and they rightly put this in the forefront of their message. There were various types of apostolic teaching. The writers of the New Testament do not mechanically copy or imitate one another. The early sermons in the Acts are, in some respects, unlike the teaching that went be¬fore and that which followed afterward. Peter, James, John, Stephen, Paul, the writer of Hebrews and of the Apocalypse - how various are these, yet how true, every one of them, to the great central principles of Christ and His kingdom! We need not go beyond the New Testament to find striking illustration of how possible it is for the Christian householder to bring out of the same rich gospel treasure-house things new and old.

The history of Christendom is a running commentary on the same text. What a manifold and complex development has been that of the Christian religion; how difficult it is at this moment to define its essential character, so as to include its almost infinitely various forms and manifestations! There have been periods in its history when a clinging to old and stereotyped forms has endangered the very life of its spirit, as well as periods during which a readiness to change the form of faith has well-nigh caused the substance to disappear. But, on the whole, it has preserved its continuity while spreading into all regions of the world and translating its message into alien climes and other tongues.

The curve described by the development of Christianity may be determined by two foci: belief in Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of man, and the historical revelation given in Him; the gift of the Holy Spirit whose work it is to glorify Christ, to take of the things that are His, bring them to remembrance, and so to teach them to the Church that it may assimilate, adapt and apply to new needs the truth, “as truth is in Jesus.” The process has not been without its dangers. Serious mistakes have been made, as all must acknowledge except those who consider the Church, as such, to be infallible. But, taking a broad view of Christianity through the centuries, it is remarkable how the two extremes have been avoided. On the one hand, the danger of restricting its development as Islam is fossilized by the dead hand of the Koran; on the other, the snapping of those sacred links of continuity which bind together all who call themselves Christians in loyal allegiance to Him whose name they bear.

Doctrines have changed their form while preserving their substance. It took three centuries to frame the creed of Nicea, and some important articles of faith, on sin and grace, atonement and justification, were still more gradually wrought out. Some of these, perhaps, need reminting if they are to be made current coin for the circulation of today. The ethical principles laid down in the New Testament are continually receiving new illustration and new applications which may sometimes seem to make the old obsolete. But as Jesus drew from the old law the two great commandments on which He sought to base the conduct of His followers, so the great moral principles of the New Testament, tenaciously held by the Church as beyond change and repeal, are brought freshly to bear upon a perpetually changing civilization. New problems affecting the family, slavery, the position of woman, or international wars, are continually arising, and fresh appeal is continually being made to the disciples of the kingdom for their solution. These do not profess to be able to answer all questions, to remove all difficulties; but it is part of their work in the world to show how those who have learned in Christ’s school, can bring the old truth which they assuredly believe, to bear upon hitherto unanticipated problems and practically revolutionized conditions of society.

It is in this way that the kingdom itself is to come among men. For the kingdom is coming, not come; the Church is making, not made. Christendom is, in a sense, a word of the past; its history may be traced out and written down. In a sense, it is a word of the present, representing a mighty living force today. Still more is it a word of the future, for as yet we have not been able to see what “Christianity” fully means. He was right who, in answer to the question, Is the Christian religion “played out”? replied, It has not yet been tried. The disciples of the kingdom are, as yet, far from having exhausted the resources of the treasure-house entrusted to their care.

Ours is an age of transition. Every age forms a bridge between that which precedes and that which follows it, but to our own seems to be entrusted a specially difficult task of assimilating new knowledge, meeting new conditions, abandoning old forms and revivifying old truths. Those on whom such work is specially incumbent need not be discouraged; those who see the process going on around them need not despair. The Christ of the New Testament is for us the Way, the Truth and the Life; not the Christ of the Sermon on the Mount, still less the shadowy personage who is all that remains when certain critics of the Gospels have eliminated from the text whatever does not please them. The Christ of the New Testament, as the Redeemer of men, is the treasure-house, and the Holy Spirit whom He promised enables us to make its contents our own. He is the way-guide into all the truth, new and old, that we need for the journey of life. Forms of dogma which have commended themselves to the Church in past centuries may change, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. The gospel of salvation in Him is sufficient for the individual, the nation and the race; it need not be changed, and it can not be given up without darkening the hope of the world. But the task of bringing it to bear with new power upon new generations and new intellectual and social conditions is continually laid upon Christ’s Church; it is one of which she must not complain and must not grow weary. In accomplishing it, Christ’s disciples fulfill the design of their Master and work out at the same time their own salvation and that of the world whom He came to save.


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