The soul's atlas and other sermons

Contents

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I. The Soul's Atlas 9

II. The Unashamed Apostle 22

II

" For I am not ashamed of the Gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believe th." — Romans i. 16

WE are here face to face with an imperial personality. And what is personality? Personality is the most majestic thing in the universe. The worlds are the outflashings of personality. Behind all that is, is the Supreme Personality. Now, a great human personality is explained by conscious contact with the Eternal Person. And no human being comes into vital touch with God except through the mediating life of Christ Jesus. " No one cometh unto the Fatker but by Me." When a man finds the God revealed in Christ, he has found the secret of the universe. In time and eternity, his store of wisdom will, of course, increase. But all his learning will take its departure from this master truth: He has realized God in Christ. For when Christ comes into a man, and the man comes into Christ, you have the final fact of the universe of matter and of spirit. You have therein the purpose of God for humanity. You have therein, also, the goal of humanity in God.

Great human personality, then, is the creation of a Divine Person. It is this that explains Saint Paul and Saint John. It is this, also, that explains Augustine, Luther, Wesley, Schleiermacher, Robertson, and Brooks. The finest thing in the Epistle to the Romans is not its doctrine. And I think its doctrine about the sublimest idea that ever moved along the highways of human thought. Shakespeare was the myriad-minded man. Saint Paul was the God-minded man. There is a difference. Of course, God created Shakespeare's mind. None other could do that. But God created Saint Paul's mind, and then homed in it in a most extraordinary way. Still, behind the doctrine of Romans stands a man. And behind a man stands the God-Man. When the God-Man gets behind a man, you have the key which unlocks the house of life in which a Saint Paul lives.

Now, I want you to glimpse at three of the roses which grow upon the bush of this Christianized personality. First, the rose of thanksgiving: " I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world." Second, the rose of prayerful intercession: " For God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel of his Son, how unceasingly I make mention of you, always in my prayers making request, if by any means now at length I may be prospered by the will of God to come unto you." Third, the rose of Christian humanitarianism : " I am debtor both to Greeks and to Barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you also that are in Rome."

This brings us to our theme : " The Unashamed Apostle." There is in our text the plain statement of a fact, and the foundation of that fact.

The fact — what is it? "I am not ashamed of the Gospel." Now, back of this statement lies another : " I am ready to bring good tidings to you also that are in Rome." Rome, I think, is the secret spring which throws open a window in the apostle's unashamed soul. Rome — haughty, pagan, philosophic Rome! Rome — powerful, wealthy, magnificent Rome! Rome, with her bloody Coliseum! Rome, with her Neronian Golden House! Rome, with her Ciceronian Forum! Rome — godless, sinning, dying Rome ! "Iara not ashamed to preach the Gospel in Rome. Her philosophers may laugh it down. Her emperor may turn its converts into blazing torches. Her maddened populace may shout : ' Christians to the lions ! ' But I have just what Rome needs. I have just what Rome must have. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you also that are in Rome."

Oh, the daring of it ! Oh, the courage of it ! Oh, the faith of it! Oh, the love of it! Here is a lone Christian man challenging the mightiest empire in time. Here is a scholar with something more than scholasticism. Here is a philosopher who has mastered the philosophy of history. Here is a " good soldier " who outsoldiers great Caesar. Here is a destroyer of pagan empires and a builder of Christian kingdoms. Here is the hot heart of a Christian lover firing dead hearts with hope and peace and joy. Here is a man grasping after the flying fragments of a vanishing civilization, endeavouring to fuse those fragments through the power of Christian dynamics, bent on saving the scarlet empire for the Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

No; Paul was not ashamed of the Gospel. And why was Paul not ashamed of the Gospel? Because he was so big. He was re-cast in the Gospel mould. He was re- fashioned on the Gospel plan. The result is a colossal man, unafraid and unashamed to confront a colossal empire with his Gospel. It takes a big man not to be ashamed of the Gospel. A little fellow can blush to the roots of his hair every time the Gospel is mentioned.

Let me ask again: Why was Paul not ashamed of the Gospel? I answer: Because the Gospel melted him down and made him over. Paul had been cast in a false mould. It took him some thirty years to find it out. But I submit that it is better to take thirty years for such a discovery than to discover it never. Some otherwise smart people have walked clean across our world and never discovered that they needed to be re-made. Walter Savage Landor was such an one. This is the way he tells about it :

" I strove with none, for none was worth my strife. Nature I loved, and next to nature, Art. I warmed both hands at the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart."

Does this sound like a man who had really warmed both hands at the fire of life? Is there anything masculine and massive in such a song? How does it sound over against the apostle's swansong : " I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith ! " The one is a languid aesthete. The other is a Christian athlete. The Landors are once-born men. The Pauls are twice-born men. The Landors are phantomatic. The Pauls are gigantic. The Landors are worldly-wise only. That is why they were so microscopically small. That is why they scarcely shadow the microscope of history. They were clever enough. They were brilliant enough. They might have been telescopic. But they insisted on remaining microscopic. They cannot be found now with the X-rays. They have walked on among the impenetrable shadows. They were by choice too small to be made large by the Gospel. They were so little that they were ashamed of the

Gospel. Too often, alas! they have left only a shameless memory .

Now, let us face this fact: Any person is ashamed of the Gospel, until that person has been re-created by the Christ of the Gospel. We need not be surprised at this. I assure you that it is an altogether natural, human, psychological attitude. And why? Because the Gospel is the most ultra-radical, revolutionary power that humanity knows. Gilbert Chesterton is right when he says : " Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world." And what is the Gospel, the good tidings ? Just this : On the one side there is a holy, loving God. On the other, there is a lost, sinful humanity. The problem is to bring the holy God and the sinful humanity together. How shall it be done? The Gospel gives the answer: " For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eterral life." Here you have a holy God, a given Saviour, and a perishing humanity. " But is humanity really perishing?" some one asks. " That is the modern question." Oh, no, my friend, there is nothing modern about your question. It is so old as to be almost obsolete. For men have always said that they were not perishing. Men have always said that they were not sinners. Men have always said that they were quite respectable in God's sight.

Still, we are "being told to-day, as if it were something new, that God's obligations to humanity are very great, indeed. But does not the Gospel, the whole plan of Christian redemption, emphasize God's yearning over humanity from the moment His prodigal went astray ? " Adam, where art thou ? " is the wail of a broken heart. " Father, forgive them! " is the prayer of a bleeding heart. Therefore, what are all your man-made schemes in comparison with the Gospel? At best, they are only theologic, psychologic, socialistic fads. We talk about the new humanism. The Gospel talks about the new humanity. We talk about the new social ideal. The Gospel talks about the Kingdom of God. We talk about modern education. The Gospel talks about ancient, mediaeval, and modern regeneration. Let us accept all the sweet, new light that God is pouring in upon us. But let us remember that it comes from Our Father who art in Heaven, through Christ, humanity's King and Lord.

Yes; every man is ashamed of the Gospel until it has re-created him. He is more than ashamed of it. He fights it, he mocks it, he scorns it. The natural man is at least tremendously and consistently human. He talks sonorously of the battle between reason and revelation. But it is only a meagre makeshift. The battle is definitely " between two philosophies — the philosophy of God and the philosophy of the world." The man who is a victim of worldly philosophy is ashamed of the Gospel. He could not be otherwise, if he would. The man who is the child of the philosophy of God is not ashamed of the Gospel. He could not be, if he would. He says, in the words of this unashamed apostle : " By the grace of God, I am what I am."

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Paul defines the Gospel as the divine dynamite. He declares that it is nothing less than the power of God. He also says that he is not ashamed of it. And he submits a twofold reason for his holy pride in the Gospel.

First, because it is the power of God. For the Gospel is not the power of man. It is well to remember this fact. It is well to remember it because men are always tempted to forget it. Our age is not peculiar in that it offers many substitutes for the Gospel. We thereby simply prove ourselves true brothers to all past ages. One of the pathetic phases of human life is this: Every generation sincerely believes that its problems are altogether new. The fact is, for the most part, our problems are altogether old. Professor Eucken reminds us that since the Renaissance humanity has been striving to attain its majority. But why limit it to the

Renaissance? Why not be perfectly frank, and push it back to the Garden of Eden?

Now, it is no't unfortunate that each age thinks itself confronted by entirely new problems. On the contrary, it is an essential factor in the education of the race. It is one of God's wise ways of getting His work done by men. Every generation is like a child. That budding boy of yours is confident that he is a radically new feature on this planet. In a sense, it is quite true. His unflecked innocence, his fresh young face, his self-confidence, his high ideals, his brave hopes — all these stamp him as one of the perennially new glories flaming from the processional of divine life. Still, his seniors know that he is not fundamentally different from the dear boys of vanished generations. It is good that the boy should think himself thoroughly new. That is at once the mystery and safeguard of his individuality. It would not be so good, however, were the boy to go on into manhood foolishly imagining that he is in no sense linked up with his brother men.

So, also, it is a mark of God's wisdom that every age should have the lustiness and vigour of youth. But it is clearly the mark of an age's folly to insist that its problems have never been paralleled, that its demands are absolutely unique, that there are no sure foundations upon which it may repose its rushing, restless, weary life. Now, it is just here that the Gospel holds out to humanity its exhaustless reservoirs of life and hope. When men begin to fail and falter, to stumble and stagger, to doubt and despair, the revitalizing Gospel of the Eternal Christ, like yonder sun shooting down the battalions of darkness over the whitening fields of dawn, rays forth once again with primeval puissance, proving that it is both the power and wisdom of God. The Gospel is absolutely and inalienably for man. Let us never obscure this truth. The Gospel is absolutely and inalienably independent of man. Let us, also, never obscure this truth. For the Gospel is the power of God.

The power of God? Yes! But that is not the whole of the apostle's statement. " The Gospel is the power of God — unto salvation! " I like to think of the power of God. I like to gaze into the meadows of space. And I like to think that every fire-tinted blossom blooming there is a demonstration of the power of God. I like to stand upon the ocean shore. I like to listen to the sobbing, moaning, majestic sea. And I like, most of all, to think that old ocean can never spill over the sides of the vast cup in which it rages and roars. For that cup nestles down in the hollow of a hand named the power of God. I like to come from the supra-worlds to the infra-worlds by the aid of the microscope. For there every atom, and even every electron, has its own central sun and system of globes and satellites. And I like the microscopic worlds because they, like the telescopic worlds, preach wonderful sermons upon the power of God. I like, also, to peer into the many-splendoured heart of an orchid. For that velvet heart is so beautifully coloured and so marvellously shaped, that it is worthy to be the floral urn for catching the scalding tears of a fallen angel. But I like the orchid, supremely, because it reminds me of the power of God in the realm of colour.

iYet the power of God in worlds, in oceans, in atoms, in electrons, in orchids, pales before " the power of God unto salvation." Here the power of God is raised to its highest. Here the power of God lays hold of His soiled children — " children of splendour and shame " — and washes them into a divine whiteness. Here the power of God blends life's discords into symphonies. Here the power of God softens sobs into psalms. Here the power of God knits fading hopes into tapestries of fadeless glory. Here the power of God extracts the sting of sin and inserts the shout of triumph. Here the power of God goes out from His own heart and brings back a wandering prodigal to that heart. " For the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." It undertakes to deliver every human being from doom, sin, and death. Oh, the glorious Gospel of the blessed God! Oh, the mighty power of God unto salvation!

Paul states his second reason for being unashamed of the Gospel in these words : " For therein is revealed a righteousness of God from faith to faith : as it is written, But the just shall live by faith." What does the apostle mean by " a righteousness of God " ? Is he speaking of righteousness as an attribute of God? Not here, I think. He does that in the third chapter and fifth verse. But here Paul is sounding the first note of the great doctrine of Romans — justification by faith. Does the phrase seem a trifle antiquated? Does it seem hard and dry? It should not, I am sure. For justification by faith is a spiritual garden wherein the valiant Christian knights have always loved to walk.

Briefly, let us try to grasp this sublime conception once again. Now, justification by faith has, as its background and foreground also, Christ crucified and risen again. On God's side there is grace — the pure, undeserved favour of God. On man's side there is faith — personal trust in a personal Saviour. Now, when the stream of grace pours through the conduit named faith, you have a justified soul, according to Paul. You have the righteousness which is bestowed on man by God. My faith in Christ as my Saviour is counted unto me for righteousness by God.

Can you improve that Gospel? You may try until doomsday, but you cannot work yourself up to it. Receive it on trust, as your child receives a gift from your hand, and you will never cease to work for God and humanity by reason of its enriching strength. I find this entry in Canon Liddon's diary for February 4, 1876: "Walked out with the Master of Balliol. He wished to

know how I thought the Bible could be made useful to people nowadays ? I could only say by their believing and reading it. The point of the question was, I suppose, that they did not believe it." Now, here are words worthy of consideration. Benjamin Jowett and Henry Parry Liddon, though wide apart theologically, were among the tallest giants of the nineteenth century. Jowett was not only Master of Balliol College, but he started Thomas Hill Green upon the study of Hegel. Liddon was not only the greatest preacher in England, but he was one of the staunchest defenders the Christian faith has ever had. And what is Jowett's question to Liddon? " How can the Bible be made useful to people nowadays ? " And what is Liddon's answer to Jowett ? "I could only say by their believing and reading it." That conversation occurred over thirty-three years ago. After the lapse of a generation, if you know any other method of making the Bible useful to people nowadays, except by their reading and believing the Bible, I should like to know what that method is.

Oh, there is no other way! If, as Jowett seems to have suggested, the people neither read nor believed the Bible, then the Bible has nothing for the people. But that is not the whole of it. The people— be assured of this — have all the misery, all the leanness of soul, all the doubt, all the despair, all the restless anxiety the Bible says they must have, when its God and Christ and Holy Spirit are neglected.

And that is why I want to repeat the statement made a moment ago: Justification by faith makes the soul to be as a watered garden. Why, just look at some of the spiritual plants which flourish there. The first is the consciousness of peace with God : " Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Alongside this fragrant bush of peace grows the sturdy plant of patience in present suffering: " And not only so, but we also rejoice in our tribulations." And then, near by, stands one of the most majestical, mystical plants of all. What shall I call it ? Well, it used to bristle with thorns. The thorns were ugly fears. And the thorns cut to the quick. For when thoughts of standing in the presence of a holy God enter a mind warped and scarred and seared by unpardoned sin, if the conscience is not entirely dead, then there is ever the smiting terror which accompanies " a certain fearful expectation of judgment." Ah! that is the name — the judgment plant! But now, thank God, it has been stripped of its thorns. It has been transformed into the plant of reconciliation. True, its leaves are dyed with deepest crimson. They are stained through and through with blood. But those leaves never fade. They wear their brilliant glories through all seasons. Hear the description of this vermilion shrub of reconciliation: "For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life; and not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation."

Do you wonder that Paul was not ashamed of the Gospel? It is the power of God raised to its highest power. It is the power of God unto salvation. Consequently, it is the highway to a deepening peace. It is the revelation of God's heart. It is the satisfaction of the unsatisfied longing of your own. Are you ashamed of such a Gospel ? Browning says, concerning this and all great matters, we judge ourselves :

"How the world is made for each of us!

How all we perceive and know in it Tends to some moment's product thus,

When a soul declares itself — to wit, By its fruit, the thing it does ! "

Will you not declare yours a redeemed soul, by receiving Christ as Saviour, Lord, and King ? Deliberate! v Hn sn 111 st nnw I

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erately do so just now!

Ill

"And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as one dead." — Rev- i. 17.

IT is the confession of a splendour-slain soul. A banished, lonely man stands on a solitary, seawashed isle. But he is true brother to all " in the tribulation and kingdom and patience which are in Jesus." Thus his physical loneliness is forgotten in the spacious, universal, social consciousness. Fellowship with the eternal — the eternal in man and the eternal in God; love for the Highest, which he has seen garbed in warm-blooded human flesh; in a word, brotherhood and vision have made the Patmos Seer exquisitely sensitive to the melodies and glories of another world. So, Patmos is now neither bleak nor lonely. It is an enchanted island — a splendid jewel set in an ethereal sea — and the whole universe seems intent on stopping at its golden shores.

Why, the white societies of the heavenlies have come to visit John on his sea-girt isle. The martyrs, having put off their blood-dyed garments for robes of pure white, are there. The redeemed, loosed from their sins by the blood of the Lamb, are there. The old, old harpers from before the dawn of time, are there. The snow-clad angels, with woven lightnings for wings and ocean-thundered waves for voices, are there. Heaven's rainbowed throne, flashing in emerald brilliance, and occupied by One " to look upon like a jasper stone and a sardius," is there. Streams of radiance pour down the sides of the universe and meet in one vast, limitless, molten sea of glory.

Now, John was able to endure the sight of all — save One. He beheld the redeemed, the harpers, the angels, the martyrs, with unblinded eyes. But when he saw the faithful Witness, the First-born of the dead, the Ruler of the kings of the earth, the Golden-girdled, the snow-white head, the fireflaming eyes, the brass-burnished feet, the manywatered voice, the seven-starred hand, the swordlike mouth, the sunflashing countenance of the Eternal Christ, John exclaims : " When I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead! "

My subject, then, is " The Splendour-Slain." Let us but have a true vision of our Lord. Then we, too, may be numbered among the royal company of those who fall dead at His feet, only to be lifted by His strong, tender, fearless hands to a height beyond all heights.

Think, first, of the splendour of Christ's white thought. " And His head and His hair were white as white wool, white as snow." Thought, like the rainbow, has many colours. There is philosophic thought, scientific thought, psychologic thought, religious thought, economic thought, socialistic thought, biographic thought. The great minds have been able to gather one, two, sometimes three, rarely, indeed, four of these thought-colours, making them serviceable to mankind. But as the white reflects all the rays of the spectrum combined, so the splendour of Christ's thought gathers all scattered, mental rays into one pearl luster. Then, with a consciousness deeper than the sea, higher than the stars, wider than the world, longer than the ages, He says calmly, but irresistibly : " I am the truth."

Christ is the truth about life's ultimate, final things. One word of His empties a tide of meaning upon all life — " as mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem." Great, indeed, is our debt to the imperial thinkers. Plato waved his thought-wand, and ideal republics arose in its magic wake. Aristotle was called nature's private secretary. For two centuries his works lay buried amid the rubbish of an old cellar. But thought refuses to be entombed, and at last — a kind of third day in the intellectual kingdom — the immortal Greek rose again from the dark and the damp. What a mind Moses must have had to have recorded the Ten Words of the old law! Inspired by God Moses unquestionably was. But is it not something regal, something unique, to have possessed a brain capable of catching the thought- waves, engraving the breath of the Almighty upon its delicate tablets? Michael Angelo carried Saint Peter's tucked away in his brain-cells long, long before the magnificent cathedral soared up to the sky in its clothing of stone and marble, its interior studded with gold and precious gems. Voltaire is responsible for the story that the apple, in falling, struck Newton's head. This ancient object of Eve's undoing hit Newton so hard and made him so angry that he forthwith determined to find out what made that apple fall. Oh, precious, luscious, golden fruit ! It must have fallen from the Tree of Life which blooms in the Garden of God! For, in questing his way through the realms of thought, Newton discovered the law of gravity and taught men that —

" The world was built in order, And the atoms march in tune."

So, we give thanks for these, and all true, great thinkers, living and dead. They have done their best, they have done well, they have done all that men could do. And they are nothing less than beams raying forth the Light of Life. Yonder sun shoots out myriad millions of rays. No insect, no leaf, no flower, no sprig of grass, no buried root, no trilling bird, no beast, no human, but may claim its beam. Yet is it not good to know that back of countless silver beams there is one central sun; that behind every ounce of energy, every blush of beauty, every throb of life, in our world and all the worlds of our solar system, stands that unifying, exhaustless fountain of heat and fire named the sun? So the Sun of Righteousness shines in the realm of pure thought. His is the sun-mind, and all other thinkers are thought-beams. True, the beams have too often forgotten their source. In their brief, winged brilliance they have scandalously denied their parent sun. But the Sun still floods their minds with light as He keeps on His untroubled way through the heavens of thought. " There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world."

" Light is light which radiates, Blood is blood which circulates, (Thought is thought which permeates), Life is life which generates, And many-seeming life is one."

He, and He alone, hath worn God's spotless thought-splendour through these aching human years. Once, and once only, in the history of our kind, have thought's many-coloured beams melted into " the supersolar blaze." Once, and once only, has a snow-white head domed a brain that passed its thinking into the crystal radiance of perfect truth. Life, death, character, joy, sorrow, sin, salvation, destiny, heaven — in all this higher mental pioneering, Christ is solitary, unapproachable, absolutely supreme! Therefore, not to Plato, nor Aristotle, nor Moses, nor Angelo, nor Newton, nor to any of their kingly brethren, though the highest, holiest thinkers of the race, do we bow as we kiss the hem of thought's seamless garment. No ! We look upon Him who was pierced, the enthroned thinker of the universe. We behold His head and His hair, white as white wool, white as snow. Then do we fall at His feet as one dead, stilled in the depth of His fathomless thought, grateful, loving brothers in the goodly company of the splendour-slain !

ii

Think, also, of the splendour of Christ's burning vision. " And His eyes were as a flame of fire." Heaven's measure of a man is vision power. When intellect reaches its highest, it invariably breaks into the flame of vision. There are atmospheres of being so warm that in them the cold feet of intellect melt like wax in the July sun. Then doth the seraph of vision catch up the fainting soul and guide it on through the pilgrim realms of spirit. In vision hour, we see " the truths that never can be proved." Thus, it is no mere paradox to say that the intellectually unproved may be the spiritually ascertained. Of course, no visionless mind has ever been, or can be, a harmonious mind — a mind in which all the powers act concertedly and completely. Now, it is because of the perfectly harmonious working of Christ's mental faculties, unclogged by the dirt of sin, unstained by the red of guilt, unchilled by the blasts of impurity, that the light of clear-splendoured vision shone so luminously in " His eyes which were as a flame of fire."