The victory of faith

Introduction

The sermon is the stateliest and most noble form of human speech. It deals with the deepest questions and most vital subjects that can engage the attention of man. The preacher who has a real message from God, and can deliver it in such a way as to command the attention of the public, is a blessing to any age. He is a prophet of God, and his utterances cannot fail to profoundly impress the public mind. When such a preacher has power to clothe his message in winning .speech, and to breathe into it a passion which it has begotten in his own heart, his sermons have an added value and are entitled to a wider hearing than they can receive from the pulpit, no matter how large the audiences may be.

The author of these sermons combines, in a remarkable degree, these essential elements of a great preacher: clearness of thought, power of imagination and feeling, and the gift of vivid expression. He sees truth in its larger relations and has a clear grasp of the fundamental verities of religion. He sees too clearly the great and vital issues of Christianity to waste much time on doubtful disputations. The volume of sermons which is here offered to the public is scarcely less notable for the topics it discusses than for the vigor of style in which they are treated.

It is proper to say that many of these sermons were reported stenographically, and have been printed just as they were delivered. They possess, therefore, the spontaneity of

INTRODUCTION

extempore speech which is often more highly prized by the reader than mere Hterary elegance. It is, perhaps, as true of preachers as it is of poets, that they are born, rather than made, and there can be no doubt but that the author of these glowing sermons is a born preacher whose education and religious experience, added to a natural aptitude, have fitted him for a wide ministry. The publishers have done well to send forth this volume of sermons, and the writer can but bespeak for them an extensive and careful reading, not only because of a deep personal friendship for the author but because of a high appreciation of the religious value of the sermons themselves.

SUBJECTS.

Chapter. Page.

L— The Victory of Faith 11

II.— God^s Power 20

III.— The Natural Man and the Spiritual Man 31

IV.— A Soul Battle. 41

v.— Christ's Treatment of Doubt, or Faith Triumphant 48

VII. — Missions: The Crowning Glory of the Century 63

VIII.— The Cradle and Christmas 87

IX.— The Three Dimensions of Manhood 99

X.— Our Liberty in Christ 114

XI. — The vSpecific for Beauty 129

XII.— Your Own, or Another's— Which? 140

XIII.— The Minister in the Market Place 153

XIV.— An Outline Sermon 169

XV.— Is There a Hell? 174

XVI.— The All-Conquering Name 1S7

XVII.-The Castaway., 201

XVIII.— Is There a Heaven? 215

XIX.— Are Those We Call Dead Alive? 233

XX.— Was the Ideal of Our Fathers Practicable?... 249

SERMONS AND ADDRESSES

—BY—

E. L. POWELL.

For whatsoever is begotten of God, overcometh tne world: and this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith.— 1 John 5:4.

What is faith? What is the world which faith overcomes? How does faith overcome the world? — these are the three questions suggested by our text. I am authorized, both by- Scripture and human consciousness, in affirming that the soul of man is endowed with power to recognize and to be influenced by the invisible — the power to make actual, in thought and life, the unseen. The painting upon which we gaze, enraptured, is but the visible expression of the invisible beauty which has been seized and seen by the soul of the artist. The idealized statue is but the invisible thought which has haunted the sculptor's imagination until he has embodied it in stone. And so Christian character is but the outward and visible manifestation of unseen spiritual realities which the soul of the Christian has grasped and actualized. Now, faith is that active principle which brings into exercise this capacity of the soul to see and to be influenced by the invisible. It is this power of the soul at work — making real and actual the things which do not appear. This capacity to lay hold of the unseen is inlierent in the soul. It is as nuicli a part of the soul as conscience, or reason, or love. Its exercise — which is faith — is dependent upon the will of man. As another has said: ^ 'Jesus expected people to believe when he presented evidence, as you expect one to look if you show him a picture. Positive unbelief or absolute incapacity of faith, Jesus refused to pity or condone. It was not a misfortune; it \vas a wilful act.

It was atrophy through misuse or neglect, and was to his mind, sin.'' If one refuses to use his eyes, which God has given him to be used, he is to be censured; if one refuses to exercise his power to see the invisible — a power which is inherent in his nature — he is likewise to be condemned. It is in this sense that Jesus uses the word faith. It is the proper and normal exercise of a God-given power. Hence he censured men for permitting those influences which blunt the souPs susceptibility to unseen things to have sway, and thus to interfere with faith. ''How can ye believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor which Cometh from God only?" If this power to apprehend the unseen were not inherent, then surely these Jews were not to be blamed for not exercising that power by believing. The capacity to see spiritual things comes from God; the exercise of that capacity — or faith — belongs to man, and he is held responsible for permitting this capacity to suffer from misuse or neglect. It is thus that the word faith is used in the apostolic writings time and again, as when Paul says, "We walk by faith and not by sight." Faith moves in the realm of the invisible, just as sight moves in the realm of the visible. There can be, therefore, no conflict between faith and science. The one's world is invisible; the other's visible. Now, with this idea of faith, the nature of this world which faith overcomes is apparent. It is the realm of sight. It is the province of the rule and yard-stick, in which things are to be measured and weighed. Here the senses rule and reign. To overcome this world is to be delivered from the dominion of the senses. It matters not whether this world which we see and handle be good or bad — so long as we are unable to pierce beyond the visible — we are in bondage. In other words, life is materialistic. The man to whom the ocean is only a passageway for ships; to whom a sunset is only a meaningless combination of colors; to whom the flowers suggest nothing beyond the thing which he sees with his naked eye — such an one is dominated by the world of our text — the

'world of the senses — the world which shuts out faith from its borders. He is a worldly man, but not a man of faith. He has not so much as crossed the threshold of the only real world — the invisible world. Who of us has not felt this tyranny of the senses? It converts God's earth into acres, and gives us no horizon other than that which the eye can scan.

One may be a materialist even though the part of the world with which he has to do is refining. He is a materialist when he refuses to exercise the souPs power to see the invisible — when he lives as though the only real things are those which can be seen, touched and handled. One need not turn prodigal in order to have the charge of worldliness brought with truth against him. He is worldly — is overcome by the world — when he is of the ^ 'earth, earthy,'' when he sees only matter in this mighty and glorious habitation in which we dwell — when nature brings to the soul only that which the eye of sense has scanned, and does not reveal herself to him, like the King's daughter, 'lovely within."

Let us turn now to consider the last question. How does faith overcome the world? How shall a man be delivered from the bondage of the visible — the bondage of the senses?

I. First by discovering the invisible beauty — the hidden meaning — which lies concealed beneath the visible and outward. This is the office of faith. The soul has the power to see this invisible beauty that is inherent. Faith is the cultivation and exercise of this power. It is cultivated by right thinking — '^Think on those things that are pure," etc. And the more you think about them, the more real will they become — the more the soul's power to be influenced by them will be developed. It is cultivated by right living. '*The saint sees farther on his knees than the philosopher on tiptoe." Right living sharpens the souPs vision. One may so brutalize his nature as to be unable to see spiritual things at all.

But when we have once seen the invisible beauty, our souls are freed from the bondage of the visible. The visible becomes only the form; the invisible the soul. We have found the kernel; we care not for the shell. The outward and external is of value only because it holds the unseen and real. Take an illustration from the Apostle Paul. If we view the outward forms in which affliction robes itself, we are crushed. We see only tears and wreck. But we ^^faint not," says the apostle, ^Svhile we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen." Faith sees that which the eye of sense cannot see — an * ^eternal weight of glory." And seeing that it gains the victory over the affliction. It conquers the visible by going beneath the visible and plucking out the heart of its loveliness. And so it is that faith gains the victory over all the visible by which our life is dominated and controlled.

2. Faith overcomes the world by discovering the true character of its manifestations. Faith not only recognizes the invisible, but recognizes the invisible as real and enduring. ^^Forthe things that are seen are temporal; but the things which are unseen are eternal." Let the soul once discover — as a matter of profound conviction — that the world is only a * fashion," a fleeting show — a moving, shifting panorama — and that the only eternal thing is the invisible life which is back of it all — and at once the chains of its bondage are broken. We overcome the world by detecting what it is — its real nature. Thus Christianity has given to faith the victory over death. The appearance frightened men, until it was shown to be only the shadow which life casts. Faith goes beneath the surface; pierces the outward and visible and there finds life. Faith cannot be satisfied with seeming. It must have reality, and when it finds the reality which death holds, lo, it is immortality! Thus faith gets the victory over the world, over death, over all the visible forms and shapes which flit before the eye of sense, and deceive the timid souls that have not given faith her glorious opportunity and privilege. Faith lays hold of the invisible as the eternal, and so escapes from the dominion of the visible.

3. Finally, faith overcomes the world by appropriating the divine life of Jesus. '^And who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" This faith in Jesus, of which the text speaks, is an overcoming faith — a conquering faith — and hence an active, working, energizing principle. What sort of faith in Jesus is it that overcomes the world, that subdues the visible and temporal and brings us under the dominion of the invisible and the eternal? What sort of faith in Jesus is it that thus converts the material into the spiritual? Is it the mental assent to the truthfulness of the proposition that Jesus is the Son of God? One may believe that proposition to be true forevermore and yet have a faith with no overcoming power. Hundreds thus do believe over whom the tyranny of the world has never abated. They are still the bond-slaves of the visible. The world is still their master — the world of the senses. They live, move and have their being in a materialistic atmosphere. Their faith has not carried them out of the realm of the seen, and is therefore no faith at all in the sense in which we are using the term to-day. (2) 17

What sort of faith in Jesus is it, then, that overcomes the world — that gives us power to rise above the sensuous and to find our true life in the realm of the immaterial and eternal? Is it faith in the fleshly Christ — faith in Jesus as a bodily presence in the world? Paul will not have it so. He will not know even Jesus * 'after the flesh. ' ' To accept in our thinking and feeling the fleshly, bodily presence of our Lord is to be in the realm of the material. It is simply an intellectual exercise. We do accept it as a matter of fact and history, but that of itself has no overcoming and conquering power. That does not help us to rise superior to the visible and thus to overcome it — to shake off the bondage of the sensuous and visible. Again, we ask, what sort of faith in Jesus is it that overcomes the world? Sight will reveal to us only a Jewish peasant; faith enables us to recognize the spiritual and unseen presence of divine beauty and goodness, manifesting itself for a while in the flesh, and then, through that temporary manifestation, seeking eternal manifestation in our lives — in the men and women of this day.

The faith, therefore, in Jesus which overcomes the world, which has conquering power, is that which appropriates him as an unseen, but inspiring presence in the human heart — which makes him a dominating and controlling energy in all our thinking and feeling. And so it is added in this Scripture, — ^^He that hath the Son" — as a spiritual possession — '^hath life."

To appropriate this life is to overcome the world as Jesus overcame it — to overcome it by sharing his mind about it, as for instance that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth; to overcome it by sharing his spirit in the treatment of it- — the spirit which ever recognized the invisible good beneath the outward and visible evil, and sought to set it free; to overcome it by sharing his faith in the final victory of righteousness — catching enthusiasm from that which does not as yet appear — and to share his faith that out of suffering joy shall come — ^'looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of the faith" — who recognized joy in the cross — who pierced the visible and saw the invisible heaven of happiness beneath it.

To believe in Jesus in this way — appropriating and making our own his mind, his spirit, his faith — is to overcome the world through

faith in him.