Sunday, November 02, 2008
Sermons and Lessons
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
James Orr, Professor of apologetics and theology at Theological College of United Free church, Glasgow, 1891-1901; born in Glasgow, April 11, 1844; educated at Glasgow University, Theological Hall of United Presbyterian church; minister of East Bank United Presbyterian Church, Hawick, 1874-91; professor of Church history at Theological College, Glasgow, of the United Presbyterian Church, 1891-1901; author of “The Christian View of God and the World,” “The Supernatural in Christianity,” “The Ritschlian Theology and the Evangelical Faith,” “Neglected Factors in the Study of the Early Progress of Christianity,” “ Early Church History and Literature,” “ Elliot Lectures on the Progress of Dogma,” “ Essays on Ritschlianism,” “The Image of God in Man and Its Defacement,” “The Problem of the Old Testament,” “The Bible Under Trial,” “The Virgin Birth of Christ,” one of the editors of the “Pulpit Commentary,” etc.
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” - Matt. 24:35.
A word seems a light and fragile thing put in comparison with this mighty and glorious fabric of heaven and earth. “Heaven and earth,” Jesus says, “shall pass away,” yet nothing in itself might seem more unlikely. The first impression which the great objects of nature make upon us is that of strength, solidity, enduringness. The earth we tread on, the hills girding us, the rocks frowning down upon us, the stars in their nightly watch above us, all give the idea of objects which are the opposite of transient - which may be depended on to outlast all human generations.
And this at first sight seems the verdict of history. “One generation cometh and another goeth; but the earth abideth forever.” The constellations which the Chaldean astronomer dim ages past noted in his book; the planets to which he gave their names; the Pleiades and Orion spoken of by Job; all meet the gaze of the student of the skies just as they used to do. The traveler, as he visits the spots famous in ancient history, marks the mounds where lie buried the ruins of once great cities, and views the wasteness and desolation around, has the same reflection forced on him - the shortness of human life, the transiency of human affairs, and, as contrasted with this the enduringness of nature.
Over against this lasting reality of heaven and earth how frail, how perishable a thing seems a word! Of the numberless myriads of words spoken every day, how few have the faintest chance of living in memory even for an hour. Words, speaking generally, are the lightest, most trivial, most evanescent, least substantial of all entities. Words written are hardly more enduring than words spoken. Look at the mass of old books which cumber the shelves of any of our libraries, and ask the question, Who ever reads them? Our own day has its thick crop of authors and of books, but how many of them will be remembered or heard of twenty or fifty or one hundred years hence?
Yet Jesus says in this passage of the text that heaven and earth shall pass away, but His words shall not pass away. He deliberately puts His words in contrast with this mighty material fabric of the physical universe, and declares that while it is not eternal, His words are; that His words shall last while it perishes; that they are more enduring than it. It was a calm, great utterance, and the wonder of it is only increased when we think of what Jesus was as He appeared to His con¬temporaries. In any ordinary man in Christ’s worldly position such words would have been the height of madness; and so probably they would have been regarded by the Herods and Pilates and Caiaphases of his time. Yet his¬tory has verified this saying of Christ; His words have taken deeper and deeper hold upon the minds of men as the centuries have advanced; and thereby we have been taught to see the difference between Christ‘s outward seeming and His real greatness.
We are to try now to see for ourselves that what Christ says in this wonderful saying of His is true. And we may begin by remind¬ing ourselves of the falsity of the conception into which we so easily glide in thinking the material world to be more enduring than the spiritual. Christ‘s saying teaches us to recast our first impressions. That is a thing we are constantly under the necessity of doing. We are constantly being deceived by the outward appearances and shows of things, and have to learn the art - a great part of the wisdom of life just consists in learning the art - of getting behind appearances, and judging reality by other than material standards. When we do this we learn that mind is greater than matter, truth more enduring than the material order, thoughts and the words that embody them more permanent than even heaven and earth.
“Heaven and earth,” Jesus says, “shall pass away.” Now this, notwithstanding the apparent enduringness, is, as we know to-day, a simple and literal scientific fact. Stable as this great material universe seems to be, it is really in constant process of change. Only slowly and by prolonged and gradual steps has the universe been built up to what it is now. It had its beginning and it will have its end. Science makes perfectly clear to us that the existing conditions of things is not a permanent one; that the world, to use an illustration of its own, is in the position of a clock running down, and that it is as impossible for the present system of things to go on forever, without renewed supply of energy, as it would be for a clock to go on forever without renewed winding up. And there is nearly as little hesitation in science as there is in Scripture in saying in general terms what the end shall be. The end, in the view of men of science, may be postponed to an indefinitely distant period, but they no less than the believer in revelation most surely look forward and hasten unto the coming of a day - he may not call it a day of the Lord - when the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. No truth is therefore more certain than this, testified long ago by the prophet Isaiah – “Lift up your eyes to the heavens and look upon the earth beneath; for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner “ - though the prophet is able gloriously to add - and it is but the Old Testament anticipation of this New Testament saying - ”But my salvation shall be forever and my righteousness shall not be abolished.”
Look now at words. It may be true that many words are mere breath and nothing else; true also that most books often are destined to a very brief term of existence. But this is not true of all words. There are words which the world reckons among its choicest treasures and which it will not willingly let die - words of wisdom so imperishable, of truth so rare, of thought so deep, of counsel so wise, that they can never pass away. The Bible is a book of very old words, and what freshness and vitality still belong to them. But even outside the Bible there are words in other literature, words great and wise and noble and beautiful, to which this same quality of permanence in their degree belongs. They are the words into which the race has distilled its choicest wisdom, and they are bound to live. And let us not undervalue the might of words. The thoughts they embody may be invisible; you may not be able to see or weigh or measure them, but the force which resides in them is for all that, incalculable. Words have power to kill and make alive. The ideas embodied in words are the forces which make and unmake societies. Masses of men are moved by the ideas which gain possession of their minds and these ideas are implanted in them and propagated through winged words. Mere physical force avails little in the end against the growth of ideas. It is ideas which govern the world. We come to see then, that it is not the material but the immaterial in which resides the greatest vitality and permanence. Heaven and earth shall pass away but it may very well be that there are some words which shall not pass away.
This quality of permanence we speak of belongs preeminently to the words of Christ. Jesus says it does and we are to try to see that what He says is true.
To show this, glance for a moment at what kind of words they are which do endure and what kind of words they are which do not endure. There are three kinds of words regarding which we may say with all confidence that they cannot endure. The first is false words. Falsehoods, indeed, have often a surprising vitality. They live long, are hard to kill, and in the interval do an infinite amount of mischief. Nay, so greedily do the minds of men sometimes receive error, so easily are they led away by sophistry and by appeals to their passions and prejudices, that we might be tempted to think that it is error, not truth, which rules the world, and that the still, small voice of truth is scarcely heard in the noise and confusion of unwisdom and falsehood. But only a little thought is necessary to dispel this illusion. We cannot doubt that under the government of a God of truth the ultimate fate of everything false in this world is to be found out, exposed, condemned. An error, a superstition, may have a reign of centuries, but by and by, as thought widens and discovery advances, it is sure to be exploded. Every year sees the interment of some old-world fallacy, and if it also sees the springing up of some new fallacy of its own, future generations in like manner will see that buried.
A second class of words which cannot endure is trivial words. How few of the words spoken every day have even the remotest right to continued existence. They relate to the mere trifles or accidents of life: what so and so thought; how he felt; what he did; our passing impression about this and about that; the news of the day; where we were; what we saw; whom we met - so a stream of irresponsible talk flows on. Words of this kind are not meant to live - you can compare them to nothing more appropriately than to those swarms of gnats which circle round your heads in the sunlight on a warm summer evening, to which nature allots but a brief hour or day of existence.
The third class of words which cannot endure are those which relate to subjects of but temporary importance. They need not be trivial words; the subjects to which they relate may be of the very highest interest and importance for the immediate present, but their interest is not a permanent one. There comes a day when they are things of the past and live only in history. Of what interest to us, e. g., except for historical purposes, are the questions of life and law and government affecting the Middle Ages? We have our own questions of political and social reform which arc to us of great moment, but even these will become things of the past and will cease to interest our successors. Prophecies will fail, for they shall be fulfilled; tongues shall cease, for they shall no longer be spoken; knowledge shall pass away, for that to which our knowledge and ordered sciences relate shall have vanished from existence!
From these considerations we can gradually infer by contrast the character of the words which must and shall endure. They must be true words; they must be weighty words; and they must be words which refer to subjects of perpetual and eternal interest. Now what we say is that this is preeminently the character of the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is upon the fact that His words are true, that they are weighty, and that they relate to subjects of infinite and everlasting moment, that He bases His assertion that heaven and earth shall pass away, but His words shall not pass away. Can we refuse the claim?
Christ‘s words are true. He came forth from the bosom of the Father to proclaim the truth to a world which had in large measure lost the knowledge of the true God and of the way of life. He can say of His words what no other could say, “I am the truth.” Approach Christ even from the human side and this quality in Him is apparent. The light of true knowledge of the Father shone in His soul and as it shone in no other. He had the clearest insight into the facts and laws of the spiritual world. Every chord of His nature vibrated in harmony with holiness and responded in delicate sympathy to impulses from above. What says even a skeptic of Christ (Greg): “ In reading His words we feel that we are holding converse with the wisest, purest, noblest being that ever clothed thought in the poor language of humanity; in studying His life we are following in the footsteps of the highest ideal yet presented to us on earth.” Christ spake as never man spake; and in this way, by his words, as well as by all else about Him, He vindicated His claim to be not son of man alone, but Son of God Most High.
If Christ‘s words are true do they not also possess the other qualities of permanence? They are certainly weighty words. No light, trivial, shallow utterances are they. They embody deep enduring principles; set forth more than master truths; move in a region as high above the ordinary teachings of man as heaven is high above earth. When a man asked Jesus to bid his brother divide his inheritance with him, He said, “Man, who made me a judge and divider over you? “ It was not Christ’s mission to occupy Himself with these petty controversies. It is this which give His words weight. Each age, as it comes round, finds them fruitful in applications to itself. Christ commits Himself to no side in party politics; to no one denomination or party in the Church; to no one form of Church government or action; to no one mode of social organization; to no one solution of the questions of capital and labor, of rulers and subjects, of rich and poor. And the reason is that the solution of these questions proper to one age and stage of society, would not be the solution proper to another age and stage of society, and Christ is not the Teacher of one age only, else his words would, like those of other teachers, have long since become obsolete, but the Teacher of all times and of all ages. Hence lie contents Himself with enunciating great truths, unfolding great principles which underlie and are to guide us in all our studies of these subjects and ought to regulate us in our thought and legislation upon them.
I was much struck in reading the "Thoughts on Religion “by the late Mr. Bomanes, that eminent scientific man who, during the greater part of his life, was under an absolute eclipse of his faith, who lost his faith even in God and wrote against belief in God, but who the last year or two of his life came back to the full Christian confession, and he tells us in these “Thoughts on Religion “ that one thing that most profoundly influenced him was the discovery that Christ ‘s words did not become obsolete as the words of other great teachers did; that while the words of Plato and others had passed away so far as actual living influence was concerned, the words of Jesus endured, and it was just this truth, that His words did not and do not pass away, that produced so remarkable an effect upon his mind.
But even this is not the most essential part of Christ’s teaching. It is not the kingdom of earth but the kingdom of God concerning which He specially came to enlighten men, and it is to this higher and eternal region that most of His teachings belong. Here most of all we see the truth of the statement” Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”
What are the special themes to which Christ‘s words relate? He speaks to man above all of God His Father, and truth about God - if only it be truth - can in the nature of the case never pass away. Truth about other things may pass away; but truth about eternal God, His being, character, love, grace - this can never pass so long as God Himself endures.
Christ speaks to us again about man, but about man under what aspect and in what relations? Not from the point of view of man in any of his natural characteristics, as rank, age, sex, race, culture; but solely of man as a spiritual and immortal being, in his capacity of enduring existence, in his relation to God and eternity. Christ speaks of that which is universal in man, therefore His teaching endures and applies to all grades of civilization and all stages of culture. In Christ Jesus there is neither Greek, or Jew, or Barbarian, or Scythian, or bond, or free, or male or female, or any of those things; but Christ regards man as a spiritual and immortal being; in his enduring aspect; in his relations to God and to eternity. Christ looked at man always and altogether in that one light, set man before Him in that light as He went through the world, taught about man in that light, legislated for man in that light, never looked at man in any other light than that.. It might be the poorest beggar on the street; it might be the greatest sinner in, the city; Christ always looked on that man or that woman in the light of their relation to God and to eternity, and therefore Christ’s teaching about man endures. It cannot become obsolete; it goes down deeper than all these distinctions that divide us. Oceans divide nations, interest divides nations, but Christ’s teaching about man, about the soul, goes deeper than all these things. His teachings are fitted for every race - experience proves that - for every age, for every civilization. The little child begins to lisp” Our Father “and takes in these teachings of Jesus, and the sage in the heights of his loftiest speculations feels that he can never get beyond them, and so Christ ‘s words about man endure.
Christ speaks again of spiritual truth and duty, of the righteousness of the kingdom of God, and this is truth which in its nature is eternal. There is no inherent necessity, so far as we can see, for the laws of the material universe, of the heaven and the earth, being precisely what they are. The planets, had the Creator willed it, might have revolved in other orbits, might have moved in different directions, the properties, laws and relations of substances might have been different from what they are. The fabric of the world is thus contingent on the Creator‘s decree, and so is alterable and can be thought of as passing away. But it is not so with spiritual and moral truth. That is eternal as the nature of God Himself. No decree of heaven could ever make that which is essentially right wrong or that which is essentially wrong right; could ever make falsehood, deceit or treachery into virtues, or make love, affection, fidelity into vices. But it is in this region of eternal truth that throughout His gospel Christ specially legislates.
Finally, Christ speaks to man of salvation, and one of His favorite names for salvation is eternal life. It needs no proof that words of truth about eternal life are words that must and shall endure; that after all sums up the whole nature of Christ‘s mission to the world. He came to seek and to save the lost. He came that He might redeem and save us and bring us back to God, and what is Christ’s own great name, or one of His great names for this salvation He came to bring? Is it not just this eternal life: “I give unto my sheep eternal life,” he says. He came that we might have life, that we might have it more abundantly. In the very nature of the case truth about eternal life is truth that cannot pass away. Truth about earthly, temporal things may pass away; truth about eternal life cannot pass away. All that Christ came into this world to do had for its end the bestowing upon us of that life which is everlasting. His coming, His living, his dying, His rising again, the gift of His Spirit, everything else, all has this for its end, that we poor, perishing sinners may be lifted up into participation with that pure, holy, incorruptible, blessed life of God Himself, which is just the other name for eternal life; and truth about this eternal life, as I say, is truth that can never pass away.
Thus we have turned these words of Jesus round and round. The more closely we look at them the more clearly we see that from their very nature they cannot pass away. They remain to us the touchstone of eternal truth, in all spiritual things, the rock foundation on which alone if men build they shall stand secure in that dread day, which shall try every man ‘s work of what sort it is. May God grant that at long and last, when our persons and characters and life work are brought unto judgment, they may be found enduring because resting on this rock of the eternal words of Christ!
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James Orr, Professor of apologetics and theology at Theological College of United Free church, Glasgow, 1891-1901; born in Glasgow, April 11, 1844; educated at Glasgow University, Theological Hall of United Presbyterian church; minister of East Bank United Presbyterian Church, Hawick, 1874-91; professor of Church history at Theological College, Glasgow, of the United Presbyterian Church, 1891-1901; author of “The Christian View of God and the World,” “The Supernatural in Christianity,” “The Ritschlian Theology and the Evangelical Faith,” “Neglected Factors in the Study of the Early Progress of Christianity,” “ Early Church History and Literature,” “ Elliot Lectures on the Progress of Dogma,” “ Essays on Ritschlianism,” “The Image of God in Man and Its Defacement,” “The Problem of the Old Testament,” “The Bible Under Trial,” “The Virgin Birth of Christ,” one of the editors of the “Pulpit Commentary,” etc.
THE ABIDING WORD
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” - Matt. 24:35.
A word seems a light and fragile thing put in comparison with this mighty and glorious fabric of heaven and earth. “Heaven and earth,” Jesus says, “shall pass away,” yet nothing in itself might seem more unlikely. The first impression which the great objects of nature make upon us is that of strength, solidity, enduringness. The earth we tread on, the hills girding us, the rocks frowning down upon us, the stars in their nightly watch above us, all give the idea of objects which are the opposite of transient - which may be depended on to outlast all human generations.
And this at first sight seems the verdict of history. “One generation cometh and another goeth; but the earth abideth forever.” The constellations which the Chaldean astronomer dim ages past noted in his book; the planets to which he gave their names; the Pleiades and Orion spoken of by Job; all meet the gaze of the student of the skies just as they used to do. The traveler, as he visits the spots famous in ancient history, marks the mounds where lie buried the ruins of once great cities, and views the wasteness and desolation around, has the same reflection forced on him - the shortness of human life, the transiency of human affairs, and, as contrasted with this the enduringness of nature.
Over against this lasting reality of heaven and earth how frail, how perishable a thing seems a word! Of the numberless myriads of words spoken every day, how few have the faintest chance of living in memory even for an hour. Words, speaking generally, are the lightest, most trivial, most evanescent, least substantial of all entities. Words written are hardly more enduring than words spoken. Look at the mass of old books which cumber the shelves of any of our libraries, and ask the question, Who ever reads them? Our own day has its thick crop of authors and of books, but how many of them will be remembered or heard of twenty or fifty or one hundred years hence?
Yet Jesus says in this passage of the text that heaven and earth shall pass away, but His words shall not pass away. He deliberately puts His words in contrast with this mighty material fabric of the physical universe, and declares that while it is not eternal, His words are; that His words shall last while it perishes; that they are more enduring than it. It was a calm, great utterance, and the wonder of it is only increased when we think of what Jesus was as He appeared to His con¬temporaries. In any ordinary man in Christ’s worldly position such words would have been the height of madness; and so probably they would have been regarded by the Herods and Pilates and Caiaphases of his time. Yet his¬tory has verified this saying of Christ; His words have taken deeper and deeper hold upon the minds of men as the centuries have advanced; and thereby we have been taught to see the difference between Christ‘s outward seeming and His real greatness.
We are to try now to see for ourselves that what Christ says in this wonderful saying of His is true. And we may begin by remind¬ing ourselves of the falsity of the conception into which we so easily glide in thinking the material world to be more enduring than the spiritual. Christ‘s saying teaches us to recast our first impressions. That is a thing we are constantly under the necessity of doing. We are constantly being deceived by the outward appearances and shows of things, and have to learn the art - a great part of the wisdom of life just consists in learning the art - of getting behind appearances, and judging reality by other than material standards. When we do this we learn that mind is greater than matter, truth more enduring than the material order, thoughts and the words that embody them more permanent than even heaven and earth.
“Heaven and earth,” Jesus says, “shall pass away.” Now this, notwithstanding the apparent enduringness, is, as we know to-day, a simple and literal scientific fact. Stable as this great material universe seems to be, it is really in constant process of change. Only slowly and by prolonged and gradual steps has the universe been built up to what it is now. It had its beginning and it will have its end. Science makes perfectly clear to us that the existing conditions of things is not a permanent one; that the world, to use an illustration of its own, is in the position of a clock running down, and that it is as impossible for the present system of things to go on forever, without renewed supply of energy, as it would be for a clock to go on forever without renewed winding up. And there is nearly as little hesitation in science as there is in Scripture in saying in general terms what the end shall be. The end, in the view of men of science, may be postponed to an indefinitely distant period, but they no less than the believer in revelation most surely look forward and hasten unto the coming of a day - he may not call it a day of the Lord - when the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. No truth is therefore more certain than this, testified long ago by the prophet Isaiah – “Lift up your eyes to the heavens and look upon the earth beneath; for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner “ - though the prophet is able gloriously to add - and it is but the Old Testament anticipation of this New Testament saying - ”But my salvation shall be forever and my righteousness shall not be abolished.”
Look now at words. It may be true that many words are mere breath and nothing else; true also that most books often are destined to a very brief term of existence. But this is not true of all words. There are words which the world reckons among its choicest treasures and which it will not willingly let die - words of wisdom so imperishable, of truth so rare, of thought so deep, of counsel so wise, that they can never pass away. The Bible is a book of very old words, and what freshness and vitality still belong to them. But even outside the Bible there are words in other literature, words great and wise and noble and beautiful, to which this same quality of permanence in their degree belongs. They are the words into which the race has distilled its choicest wisdom, and they are bound to live. And let us not undervalue the might of words. The thoughts they embody may be invisible; you may not be able to see or weigh or measure them, but the force which resides in them is for all that, incalculable. Words have power to kill and make alive. The ideas embodied in words are the forces which make and unmake societies. Masses of men are moved by the ideas which gain possession of their minds and these ideas are implanted in them and propagated through winged words. Mere physical force avails little in the end against the growth of ideas. It is ideas which govern the world. We come to see then, that it is not the material but the immaterial in which resides the greatest vitality and permanence. Heaven and earth shall pass away but it may very well be that there are some words which shall not pass away.
This quality of permanence we speak of belongs preeminently to the words of Christ. Jesus says it does and we are to try to see that what He says is true.
To show this, glance for a moment at what kind of words they are which do endure and what kind of words they are which do not endure. There are three kinds of words regarding which we may say with all confidence that they cannot endure. The first is false words. Falsehoods, indeed, have often a surprising vitality. They live long, are hard to kill, and in the interval do an infinite amount of mischief. Nay, so greedily do the minds of men sometimes receive error, so easily are they led away by sophistry and by appeals to their passions and prejudices, that we might be tempted to think that it is error, not truth, which rules the world, and that the still, small voice of truth is scarcely heard in the noise and confusion of unwisdom and falsehood. But only a little thought is necessary to dispel this illusion. We cannot doubt that under the government of a God of truth the ultimate fate of everything false in this world is to be found out, exposed, condemned. An error, a superstition, may have a reign of centuries, but by and by, as thought widens and discovery advances, it is sure to be exploded. Every year sees the interment of some old-world fallacy, and if it also sees the springing up of some new fallacy of its own, future generations in like manner will see that buried.
A second class of words which cannot endure is trivial words. How few of the words spoken every day have even the remotest right to continued existence. They relate to the mere trifles or accidents of life: what so and so thought; how he felt; what he did; our passing impression about this and about that; the news of the day; where we were; what we saw; whom we met - so a stream of irresponsible talk flows on. Words of this kind are not meant to live - you can compare them to nothing more appropriately than to those swarms of gnats which circle round your heads in the sunlight on a warm summer evening, to which nature allots but a brief hour or day of existence.
The third class of words which cannot endure are those which relate to subjects of but temporary importance. They need not be trivial words; the subjects to which they relate may be of the very highest interest and importance for the immediate present, but their interest is not a permanent one. There comes a day when they are things of the past and live only in history. Of what interest to us, e. g., except for historical purposes, are the questions of life and law and government affecting the Middle Ages? We have our own questions of political and social reform which arc to us of great moment, but even these will become things of the past and will cease to interest our successors. Prophecies will fail, for they shall be fulfilled; tongues shall cease, for they shall no longer be spoken; knowledge shall pass away, for that to which our knowledge and ordered sciences relate shall have vanished from existence!
From these considerations we can gradually infer by contrast the character of the words which must and shall endure. They must be true words; they must be weighty words; and they must be words which refer to subjects of perpetual and eternal interest. Now what we say is that this is preeminently the character of the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is upon the fact that His words are true, that they are weighty, and that they relate to subjects of infinite and everlasting moment, that He bases His assertion that heaven and earth shall pass away, but His words shall not pass away. Can we refuse the claim?
Christ‘s words are true. He came forth from the bosom of the Father to proclaim the truth to a world which had in large measure lost the knowledge of the true God and of the way of life. He can say of His words what no other could say, “I am the truth.” Approach Christ even from the human side and this quality in Him is apparent. The light of true knowledge of the Father shone in His soul and as it shone in no other. He had the clearest insight into the facts and laws of the spiritual world. Every chord of His nature vibrated in harmony with holiness and responded in delicate sympathy to impulses from above. What says even a skeptic of Christ (Greg): “ In reading His words we feel that we are holding converse with the wisest, purest, noblest being that ever clothed thought in the poor language of humanity; in studying His life we are following in the footsteps of the highest ideal yet presented to us on earth.” Christ spake as never man spake; and in this way, by his words, as well as by all else about Him, He vindicated His claim to be not son of man alone, but Son of God Most High.
If Christ‘s words are true do they not also possess the other qualities of permanence? They are certainly weighty words. No light, trivial, shallow utterances are they. They embody deep enduring principles; set forth more than master truths; move in a region as high above the ordinary teachings of man as heaven is high above earth. When a man asked Jesus to bid his brother divide his inheritance with him, He said, “Man, who made me a judge and divider over you? “ It was not Christ’s mission to occupy Himself with these petty controversies. It is this which give His words weight. Each age, as it comes round, finds them fruitful in applications to itself. Christ commits Himself to no side in party politics; to no one denomination or party in the Church; to no one form of Church government or action; to no one mode of social organization; to no one solution of the questions of capital and labor, of rulers and subjects, of rich and poor. And the reason is that the solution of these questions proper to one age and stage of society, would not be the solution proper to another age and stage of society, and Christ is not the Teacher of one age only, else his words would, like those of other teachers, have long since become obsolete, but the Teacher of all times and of all ages. Hence lie contents Himself with enunciating great truths, unfolding great principles which underlie and are to guide us in all our studies of these subjects and ought to regulate us in our thought and legislation upon them.
I was much struck in reading the "Thoughts on Religion “by the late Mr. Bomanes, that eminent scientific man who, during the greater part of his life, was under an absolute eclipse of his faith, who lost his faith even in God and wrote against belief in God, but who the last year or two of his life came back to the full Christian confession, and he tells us in these “Thoughts on Religion “ that one thing that most profoundly influenced him was the discovery that Christ ‘s words did not become obsolete as the words of other great teachers did; that while the words of Plato and others had passed away so far as actual living influence was concerned, the words of Jesus endured, and it was just this truth, that His words did not and do not pass away, that produced so remarkable an effect upon his mind.
But even this is not the most essential part of Christ’s teaching. It is not the kingdom of earth but the kingdom of God concerning which He specially came to enlighten men, and it is to this higher and eternal region that most of His teachings belong. Here most of all we see the truth of the statement” Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”
What are the special themes to which Christ‘s words relate? He speaks to man above all of God His Father, and truth about God - if only it be truth - can in the nature of the case never pass away. Truth about other things may pass away; but truth about eternal God, His being, character, love, grace - this can never pass so long as God Himself endures.
Christ speaks to us again about man, but about man under what aspect and in what relations? Not from the point of view of man in any of his natural characteristics, as rank, age, sex, race, culture; but solely of man as a spiritual and immortal being, in his capacity of enduring existence, in his relation to God and eternity. Christ speaks of that which is universal in man, therefore His teaching endures and applies to all grades of civilization and all stages of culture. In Christ Jesus there is neither Greek, or Jew, or Barbarian, or Scythian, or bond, or free, or male or female, or any of those things; but Christ regards man as a spiritual and immortal being; in his enduring aspect; in his relations to God and to eternity. Christ looked at man always and altogether in that one light, set man before Him in that light as He went through the world, taught about man in that light, legislated for man in that light, never looked at man in any other light than that.. It might be the poorest beggar on the street; it might be the greatest sinner in, the city; Christ always looked on that man or that woman in the light of their relation to God and to eternity, and therefore Christ’s teaching about man endures. It cannot become obsolete; it goes down deeper than all these distinctions that divide us. Oceans divide nations, interest divides nations, but Christ’s teaching about man, about the soul, goes deeper than all these things. His teachings are fitted for every race - experience proves that - for every age, for every civilization. The little child begins to lisp” Our Father “and takes in these teachings of Jesus, and the sage in the heights of his loftiest speculations feels that he can never get beyond them, and so Christ ‘s words about man endure.
Christ speaks again of spiritual truth and duty, of the righteousness of the kingdom of God, and this is truth which in its nature is eternal. There is no inherent necessity, so far as we can see, for the laws of the material universe, of the heaven and the earth, being precisely what they are. The planets, had the Creator willed it, might have revolved in other orbits, might have moved in different directions, the properties, laws and relations of substances might have been different from what they are. The fabric of the world is thus contingent on the Creator‘s decree, and so is alterable and can be thought of as passing away. But it is not so with spiritual and moral truth. That is eternal as the nature of God Himself. No decree of heaven could ever make that which is essentially right wrong or that which is essentially wrong right; could ever make falsehood, deceit or treachery into virtues, or make love, affection, fidelity into vices. But it is in this region of eternal truth that throughout His gospel Christ specially legislates.
Finally, Christ speaks to man of salvation, and one of His favorite names for salvation is eternal life. It needs no proof that words of truth about eternal life are words that must and shall endure; that after all sums up the whole nature of Christ‘s mission to the world. He came to seek and to save the lost. He came that He might redeem and save us and bring us back to God, and what is Christ’s own great name, or one of His great names for this salvation He came to bring? Is it not just this eternal life: “I give unto my sheep eternal life,” he says. He came that we might have life, that we might have it more abundantly. In the very nature of the case truth about eternal life is truth that cannot pass away. Truth about earthly, temporal things may pass away; truth about eternal life cannot pass away. All that Christ came into this world to do had for its end the bestowing upon us of that life which is everlasting. His coming, His living, his dying, His rising again, the gift of His Spirit, everything else, all has this for its end, that we poor, perishing sinners may be lifted up into participation with that pure, holy, incorruptible, blessed life of God Himself, which is just the other name for eternal life; and truth about this eternal life, as I say, is truth that can never pass away.
Thus we have turned these words of Jesus round and round. The more closely we look at them the more clearly we see that from their very nature they cannot pass away. They remain to us the touchstone of eternal truth, in all spiritual things, the rock foundation on which alone if men build they shall stand secure in that dread day, which shall try every man ‘s work of what sort it is. May God grant that at long and last, when our persons and characters and life work are brought unto judgment, they may be found enduring because resting on this rock of the eternal words of Christ!
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