Bearing Witness to the Truth. 1 Cor. i. 6-8. "Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you," &c. THERE are here three facts to which special attention must be called. I. THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS. When He was brought face to face with Pilate in the judgment hall, the interrogatory was, whether or not Jesus had any mission, and if so, what it was-what was its nature and extent. The unequivocal response of the Son of God was, that He had a kingdom, not of this world, and the consequence of necessity followed that He must be a King. His was the kingdom of truth; His throne was a throne of light and glory; and the weapons of His warfare were not carnal but spiritual. He came into the world, that He might bear witness to the truth. The Pharisees brought against Him the charge that He was witnessing for Himself. The response of Jesus was not a denial of the facts, but a reaffirmation of the same declaration with which He had first entered upon His great mission, that He should be the light of the world and bear witness to the truth. This, then, is the great mission of the Son of God, that He should be a witness. Salvation to a lost world was to come through His obedience and suffering. The demands of the law were to be fully met in this way, and He was to make salvation the free gift of God to the sinner. The revelation of God in the Divine. Word was the truth of God for the redemption of those who should believe upon His Son. All truth centered in Him; all else must give way before Him. The conflict was one between light and dark ness. Light was the emblem of truth; darkness the emblem of error. So inseparable is the connection between the witness of Jesus and other Divine truths that they stand or fall together. It is because of the Divine power which is in the truth, that we are ready to say that, if it were crushed down to the earth it must rise up again. The power of God is with it and so it cannot die. When John, in his exile, began to see the revelations of God as they passed in awful and silent grandeur before his vision, he declared that Jesus was the faithful witness; that He was the prince of the kings of the earth; that He had loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood. Whether, therefore, we view Him in the prophecy which was past or the wonderful transactions which swept around Him and over Him in such rapid succession while on this earth, or in the revelation which He made of Himself to His servants in the last book of the New Testament, still it is the same stirring and impressive light and force of a witness for the truth. II. Jesus having given His evidence for truth in words of wisdom, in works demonstrative of His Divine and superhuman power, in His obedience to the Divine will and His suffering even unto death, IT NOW REMAINS FOR EVERY BE- The world does not believe in the Son of God. The Pharisees told Him to His face that His witness was not true. He, on the other hand, when He had laid claim to being the witness for the truth, speaking as never man spake, working with the mighty power of God in signs and wonders and miracles, turns round upon His disciples and followers and says unto them: "Ye shall be my witnesses." The idea here evidently is that Jesus, having once deposed, they must stand forth to confirm Him before the world. He is, so to speak, as a witness in court, and the main wit ness. The world is against Him; the effort is to break Him down upon His word and when He claims to be the king of the truth. His word has been spoken, and now His people are standing as one great army of witnesses before the world, and both by word and deed they are rendering their evidence; it is passing silently to the jury and the verdict is rapidly being made up, either for or against the Son of God. In this way His battles are being fought, and all over the wide and varied field of action the victory is being either lost or won by the fidelity, stability and consistency of the witnesses, or their lack in any or all of these. The victory of truth is not coercive but persuasive. Men must receive Him. This they will do when they see His disciples working uprightly and corroborating in their lives the witness He made for the truth. This corroborating witness of the Church is borne in these ways: we do for God, or we bear for Him, or we suffer for Him. The child of God finds it a pleasant thing to do for God, and perhaps this is the easiest part of our Christian life. It is more difficult to stand still in the darkness of the mysterious providences by which God sometimes surrounds us and bear it all, and patiently wait, trusting Him for His grace, knowing that however dark the cloud may be He will certainly cause His face to shine upon us again, that we may be saved. But the most difficult thing by far is for us to suffer for God. The Christianity of this age is sadly behind that of the primitive ages in this respect. And yet it is a secret power of growth in grace which adds new lustre and beauty to the Church in every age in which she is called upon to develop it in her children. When John and Peter had been cast into prison because of their witnessing for Christ, and then brought out and scourged, and forbidden to preach any more in His name, they heartily rejoiced that God had considered them worthy to suffer for His name. Paul is a prisoner in Rome, the imperial capital of the world, and from there writes that second letter to Timothy, exhorting him not to be ashamed of the testimony of Christ, but rather to be a partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel, according to the power of God. Now, why all this? Why this necessity for the children of God to do and to suffer and to bear all these things? Simply because it is enjoined of God as a means to an end. The world pays a special tribute to Christian ethics when it says, Your creed is a good one, but your life is not up to it. Eloquence is a great gift and a mighty power, but the sermon will avail little if he who preaches it is not a man godly in his life. We may print religious literature and scatter it over the land till, falling like autumn leaves, it drops at every man's door. But the world will not read books-it is too busy, too restless, too eager; but, it will read you, and it will receive or reject the claims of the religion of Christ in proportion as it finds in everyday work, everydaylife, the record which believers are there making, the witness they are giving. III. JESUS WILL BE FAITHFUL TO HIS PEOPLE IN THE VICTORY, God is faithful. Here we have that inseparable connection between cause and effect. To him that holds out faithful to the end, this faithful witness, Jesus Christ, has promised a crown of life. The triumph of truth shall be for the children of truth. The King of Truth shall rule over them; all their enemies and His enemies shall be conquered and subdued. When evil passes away darkness shall pass away with it, and all things shall be lit up with the glory of God. The fact that Jesus shall make sure this confirmatory evidence in the hearts of His people is perfectly manifest from those promises and assurances which He gave to the Church, and through the Church to all believers, when He declared He would be with them to the end. The Church of God must move through the world bearing its glorious testimony and preserving its marked individuality, as the Gulf Stream moves in its majestic flow through the great ocean of waters. The light of this witness must rise upon the moral darkness and drive it away from the souls of men as the sun mounts in the eastern sky, throwing its bright beams over mountain tops to light up valley and plain. Spiritual light is the great disinfectant in the moral world, as natural light is in the physical world. The one is the light of the sun; the other is the more glorious light of the Son of God as He shines forth through His Church. And we are that Church, and our hearts are the great shining reflectors throwing that light along the track of the world which is walking in darkness. This would be a sad pilgrimage and a miserable life if we did not know that when Jesus comes He will confirm the faith we have in Him. This He has promised, that all who bear witness to His truth shall be blameless in the day of His coming. R. K. SMOOT, D.D. Themes for Meek-night Services. No Continuing City. HEBREWS xiii. 14. "Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come." 66 THE in-gathering of Harvest marks the close of the great year of Providence. While we cannot but feel most gratefully the undeserved kindness of the heavenly Father, and realize how rich and full the year has been of blessing, the reflection can hardly fail to be forced upon us that man never continueth in one stay!' 99 The changes of the seasons are not more inevitable than the changes which are continually passing upon ourselves. Mentally and spiritually we are always changing for better or for worse; growing riper in mind or purer in heart; or else more earthly, more insensible to truth and spiritual things; but, in the circumstances which affect most materially the peace and happiness of our lives, the past, to many of us, has brought its testimony to the truth that "we have here no continuing city." Riches! Some in the past seasons may have been gladdened by their unexpected presence; but many more have seen them pass from their hands with sad eyes and aching hearts. Friends never continue in one stay. They grow dearer to us with the passing on of years, or they fade into the distance of indifference or forgetfulness. On the ocean of life some are thrown together by momentary currents; they dance by each other pleasantly in the sunshine; and then they are swept apart by a rough wind or a sudden eddy, never to meet again, until in the other life, "there shall be no more sea." Even upon our homes, sometimes lighted with rich sunshine, the shadow too often comes, and the rooms grow dark, and the leafless vine rustles in the chill winds of winter. Life outside is sad enough through changes. But there is also brightness for the darkened home. God's way in the Sanctuary is one of rest, and peace, and hope for the wearied spirit. The Father never meant His children to be made gloomy and down-hearted by the fact that man never continueth in one stay.' There is something sobering about the reflection that we are getting on in years; even Christian faith does not pretend that it can always reproduce the miracle of Genesareth and say to the current of human events, 66 Peace, be still!" But it does something better than this it tells how the peace of the spirit can be secured amid the incessant changes of the world. It brings home to the heart the alternative "but we seek one to come. Change, ceaseless and inevitable, is our present portion, but there is changelessness for us in the future. How full of blessing that changelessness will be. With the idea of a city we associate the idea of substantial strength, unbounded wealth, a regular government by wise laws wisely administered, and material splendour. The metropolis is always the symbol of concentrated power. Its capacity to meet the varied wants of humanity; its ceaseless energies; its great moral influences; its wealth and grandeur are universally accepted as a true exponent of national greatness. If this be true of such cities as man builds, only to see them perish at the touch of time, what shall we say of that City which the believer seeks for, "whose Builder and Maker is God"? What ideas of stability and grandeur, of marvellous activity, of complete and perfect satisfaction, are awakened by the thought of that eternal the Metropolis of Redeemer's Kingdom, which holds the throne of the Creator, and of which the Lamb is the light and glory? Men build cities for themselves But not so with that City which we seek for in the near hereafter. That is a city of which the apostle says, in another place, that it 66 hath foundations"; its glory can be dimmed by no breath of passing years; secure and strong, its homes shall stand through the age of ages; the only change, advance from glory to glory. Is not this a hope too precious to be true? Can it be possible that God's hand shall still this everrevolving wheel of human instability? Is there, indeed, somewhere in the misty future, a safe and happy haven where the stormvexed ship shall furl its sail and rest in quiet upon waveless waters ? He, whose present will has placed us amid incessant change, has determined that this change shall not follow us into eternity. The same hand which has spread heaven's mighty dome as the roof, and laid the broad earth for the floor, of man's dwelling-house of to-day, and on the shifting clouds of heaven and the bosom of the earth written the inevitable law of decay and change, 66 this too shall pass away"-that same Almighty hand hath built up the golden battlements of the Celestial City -the home of the indestructible and unchangeable-and they bear the glorious promise, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. 66 In that Heavenly City, all that can give the most restless spirit a divine repose has been laid up for the believer. Hunger and thirst, and disease, and bitter tears find no entrance within the gates of pearl; no night brings a shadow upon the changeless sunshine which flows out from the presence of the Lamb; no disappointments harass the mind, and farewell is a word forgotten. Only a growing peace, a more rapturous delight, a closer drawing to the Father and Redeemer, a dearer love for precious friends and brethren. This is God's lesson to us in the `rolling on of seasons, the failure of present hopes, the sad and dreadful changes which most must meet in the pilgrimage of life. The emptying of the earthly home is but the better furnishing of the heavenly; the loss of this world's wealth a divine pledge of eternal riches stored up for us in eternity. In all this there is opened to the tired spirit a fountain of such rest and peace as anticipates the calmness of the eternal rest in the bosom of God. The No strong faith, no unsullied purity of character, no God-likeness comes from contentment with the things of the present. world's sunlight cannot keep out always the shadow from the heart. Harvest Home may be associated with laugh and song, but reflection sometimes comes to the most thoughtless spirit, and we know that so much of life as it has measured has slipped away. To seek a coming City, with real, intense desire, is the secret of a saintly spirit! Earth's joys grow dim; but, after enduring the burden of infirmities, and sorrow, and pain, and the whole discipline of existence here, the golden gates at last open, and the soul finds a changeless peace! Have we sought the City to come? Have we made eternal things the supreme object of our desire, and by that been chastened in prosperous days and kept cheerful through darker ones, and in all close to the presence of Almighty God? If so, there is nothing really sad in the serious thoughts to which the hour would call us; the dying of one year can be only the birth of another, glowing with a happier light than the past, because nearer to the eternal sun. But, if not; if the backward look of the soul should only bring more vividly before the conscience the real truth that we have been heedless of the city yet to come, let me urge you by the mercies and the terrors of the Lord, by the uncertainty of life and the nearness of Christ's Judgment, to begin at once to "make the calling and election sure." Resolve, God helping you, that your search hereafter shall be for no such rest and joy as sin, or even human things at their best, can offer you, but such a life of faithful Christian service as shall lead you to the gates of the Celestial City. Through the eager gaze of the spirit after the heavenly Jerusalem, even now a strange peace comes over us for our endless comfort. Perfect repose is the gift of the Father to His children as they come home to His arms of love in the upper City; but, even here, "great is the peace of His children! The best and greatest blessing which can be brought to you here is this peace which is born of faith in the gracious purposes of the Almighty Love. And when the last great change shall transform heaven and earth into the eternal home of the redeemed, may we find the gates of pearl open for our entrance; our eyes look upon the glory of the Great White Throne; our ears be filled with the perfect melody of the celestial choirs; our whole being be perfectly satisfied with the changeless glories of that "City whose Builder and Maker is God." F. E. LAWRENCE, D.D. |