Christ in word and work

Foreword

IN the preparation of this modest book on ''Christ in Word and Work'' some thought has been had of the young Christian, and of the young preacher also, as they undertake their consecrated work for the Master. No claim is made for a complete portraiture of that wonderful life, which is still the inspiration and hope of the world. Some effort has been made to clear away misconceptions of the truth and to point out special relations that bear upon the Christian life of this age. If some heart is induced to study the Christ more deeply and to enter upon His work with more loyal devotion, the writer's aim will have been accomplished.

The Author.

Contents

I. Premonitions of the Advent.

II. The Covenant Bearer.

III. The Prime Revelation.

I

IT is doubtful if our age has the right estimate of the moral and intellectual darkness which beclouded the ancient world. From the cradle we have enjoyed the blessing of the Christian faith. Its glorious truths have been our meat and drink from our earliest recollection, so that we have been living in the consciousness of the divine protection and love, in an atmosphere charged with Gospel truth and honor, which has given a high standard for all human relationships ; and in a firm assurance of the immortal life, so that it is difficult for us to conceive that others have ever been denied these splendid privileges.

But whoever reads the chronicles and the dramatic and other literature which was current in the period of the Caesars, provided he has not read it with his eyes closed, will perceive that whatever religious trust might have existed previously, it was either dead or was about to expire. The gods of the fathers were discredited in every city, their priests were either lampooned openly or secretly derided, and their temples everywhere were falling into neglect. Far and wide the leaders of thought were becoming atheistical, denying outright that any god was ruling in the world, or else standing passively aloof from religious obligations. When they happened to participate in some religious ceremonial, it was in the pose of languid concession to popular tradition, or of compliance with a social usage which it would be impolitic to disregard ; although as a source of spiritual improvement they gave it no confidence whatever. That was a sad world indeed, the world of Athens, Alexandria, and Rome ; a world in which human passions ran riot and void of any competent restraint ; a world from which the trust of man in his brother had perished; a world which offered no real security, and nothing which could arouse a hearty desire for any hereafter.

Amid this universal darkness which prevailed throughout the pagan nations, the only light that appeared up to the coming of Jesus was presented in the religion of the Jews. The Hebrew race possessed a revelation of the True God, given through the patriarchs and prophets. Their temple crowned the slopes of Zion, standing there as a memorial of the one Living and True God, and of His watchful providence over His children.

But when we examine the religion of the Jew in this period, we find that it had suffered a serious lapse from the force and purity which it displayed in a former day. Its history proved that it had a sure foundation in the original divine revelation, and it still held in jealous veneration the Holy Books that had been passed on through the generations. But far from holding faithful to its past record, it had degenerated from a living faith to a careless conformity to custom; and its ceremonies were become^ less the expression of a conscious dependence on God, than the punctilious observance of an ornate ritual. Examples there still were of pious devotion, such as one observes in Mary, the bride of Joseph; in Zacharias and Elizabeth ; and in the holy Simeon who ministered at the altar: but taking the Jewish people as a whole, religiously speaking, they were on the worldly plane; worshipping like saints in synagogue and temple on the Holy Days, but conducting themselves for the rest of the week like ordinary sinners, so that their religion in effect was a pretentious sham. How deplorable their state we may learn from the reproof of Jesus, when He said, ''Ye hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honor eth me with their lips: hut their heart is far from me'' (Matt. 15 : 8) . And yet, because they possessed some remnant of religious feeling, and owned a history that was fragrant with real devotion, the Gospel was delivered first to Israel, and so through the Chosen People to the great world without. Peter addressed the first of his epistles to the strangers scattered abroad throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bythinia: that is, to the Jews of the Dispersion; and his second epistle was dedicated to the same hearers, some of whom, so he says, had already "attained like precious faith with us:" and it was these same Jews, now become Christians, whom he was seeking to confirm in the faith.

How was it possible to bring Jews in that first century, men full of pride in their ancient lineage and in the law which they had received through Moses, to acceptance of this new Gospel? All their training was opposed to the new teaching, all their prejudices inclined them to hold fast to the old worship, and besides that they knew well the hatred their chief priests and rabbis had nursed against Jesus, and how their mad rage had compassed His death upon the cross. But Peter supplied the bridge that connected the Law and the Gospel. It was the same which he presented to the Jews on the Day of Pentecost, when he declared to them that the Jesus whom they had crucified was the veritable Messiah, for whom every Jewish household had been so long in anxious expectation. In the first chapter of his second epistle he opens up for them a page from his personal experience. He recalls for their benefit that remarkable interview with Jesus on the mountain, when he in company with James and John had seen the Lord transfigured; when the countenance and even the raiment of the Master were all aglow from the outshining of His divinity; and when Moses and Elijah, who had come from the heavenly world, conversed with the liOrd familiarly concerning the things that shortly must come to pass.

This incident, which connected these ancient worthies with Jesus, their interest in Jesus, of Moses the Lawgiver and Elijah the chief of the older prophets, constituted a living tie between the past and the present; a confirmation of Christ's divine power and mission so definite and so circumstantial, that the more sincere a Jew might be, the more certainly he would be forced to accept the testimony.

But, beside the reference to this striking incident, Peter strengthens his position by calling attention to premonitions of the advent which appear in the Old Testament Scriptures. These he groups together under the expression, "a more sure word of prophecy/' Though a conscientious Jew might hesitate to accept Peter's personal witness, how could he object when he listens to his own prophets prophesying of Jesus, and the life and character of Jesus fulfil all the conditions of the prophecy? The concurrence of these ancient premonitions, of the long standing and well authenticated predictions, with the actual career of Christ was the highest evidence that could be presented to an intelligent mind, and because they had accepted that evidence, thousands of Jews had yielded to the truth and had enlisted with the followers of Jesus.

If the premonitions of the Advent, which occur in the Old Testament, were effective in winning disciples and so establishing them in the truth in that first century, they should be useful in our own day in fortifying our conceptions of God's workings with His people, and in enabling us to realize the rank and glory of our Redeemer.

For it is possible for one to study Christ in His historical character, as the babe, the boy, the teacher, the helper, and the martyr, and by confining thought to these external relations to lose much of the real Christ, and of the blessing which the completer faith will confer. It is only when we open the Scriptures and find that they carry this Christ story far back to "the beginning," and from that immeasurable distance that they open up page after page of allusion to the Coming One, that we begin to apprehend the breadth of the divine purpose in revelation ; or, as it has been so aptly called, "the scarlet thread" of the testimony of Jesus, which runs on through prophecy after prophecy, age after age, and establishes our trust in the divine message and the divine Messenger,

In all our speech of prophecy it is to be remembered, however, that the principal office of the prophet was that of preacher and teacher, and that the prophetical books in the main are devoted to religious instruction. Samuel was a prophet of the prophets, and the head of a great school of the prophets at Ramah. The names of his pupils are forgotten, but they bore a leading part in the religious instruction of Israel. When we trace the course of such teachers as Amos, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah, who stand in the forefront of the prophets, we remark that their special function was to warn the king and the nation in the hour of national peril, and admonish them to turn from their backslidings and call upon the name of the Lord. They reproved the people for their vanities and sins, and pleaded with them to observe the Law and the duty of worship. As we peruse these prophetical books we are led to admire the unflinching courage of these old-time preachers, who would not hold their peace, and who risked their all while they exhorted their hearers to hearken unto God.

A secondary office of the prophet, but incidental to that of preaching and teaching, was the prediction of future events. Scattered here and there all through the Old Testament, embedded sometimes in some historical narrative, or introduced into the body of a fervent appeal, there occur special promises of protection for the Chosen People, or declarations of disaster to their enemies, or predictions of a Savior whom God was to send forth in the fulness of the times, or of the final triumph of righteousness ; so that the whole world should become subject to the gentle rule of the Prince Immanuel.

It was this class of premonitions, of predictive prophecy, to which Peter cites the attention of his readers, and which he terms "a more sure word of prophecy,'' and which in the Church was to be like ''a light that shineth in a dark plaxeJ'

Such premonitions, such predictive prophecy, served in part as an assurance of the abiding and never failing providence of God in the care of his people. Promises of this kind were given to Abraham, and were repeated to Isaac and Jacob, who were told that they were to occupy and hold the Land of Promise from generation to generation. In all their wanderings from the Far East to Palestine, and from Palestine to Egypt and back again, they had the sustaining comfort of that pledge, and the fair prospect of a settled habitation in their home land, where they could dwell securely under their own vine and fig tree.

Later, when the nation was facing the peril of Egypt and Babylon, and later still when they were bemoaning their captivity in a strange land, they v/ere supported in their affliction by the pledge that the Lord would turn the captivity of Zion.

An important function of these Biblical premonitions, of these predictive prophecies, was their witness to the truth of divine revelation. We have a strong appeal to the truth of the divine

Word, an appeal to which we assign a high valuation, in the moral excellence of the message which came to the world through the patriarchs and the prophets. In this respect the Bible stands alone and unparalleled. In other Sacred Books, so-called, we find frequently recurring examples of weakness and triviality, but the Bible maintains a consistent sublimity of tone ; and while the others frequently descend to palliations and justifications for immorality and sin, the Bible from cover to cover upholds the highest standard of truth and goodness. Blessed be that Holy Book, whose precepts we revere, and whose winsome invitations inspire us to noblest effort.

"How precious is the Book divine, By inspiration given.

Bright as a lamp its doctrines shine To guide our souls to Heaven."

But the exalted moral appeal of the Bible has the limitation that its most effective appeal reaches only those who are already in sympathy with an exalted morality, and whose souls respond quickly to spiritual influences. To reach the many who are weak in moral cultivation the approach nust be made from a different angle. Here enters che advantage of predictive prophecy in that it makes its approach to the intellect, and so can the better reach and convince the average man. Make it clear to him that the Bible offers definite statements as to men and events that are to have their day in some far off future, and then show him that such persons have lived, and such events have occurred in strict fulfilment of the prediction, and he cannot escape the conviction that premonitions of that class are of divine origin, and that they constitute a part of the divine revelation. In fact, if he has the logical mind, that will follow sound reason to its conclusions, he will see that such premonitions support and confirm the claim for the divine origin of the entire revelation; of the predictions themselves, and the historical writings, and the prophetical writings of which they form a substantial and an essential part.

But some have made the claim that prophetical predictions — those of the Old Testament, and all others that make similar pretense — are not to be trusted, since in the word of Scripture, ''Many false prophets are gone out into the world." And it is lamentably true that there have been many deceivers, and many pretenders to foretelling future events. Some such are mentioned in the Old Testament history. And among the heathen such pretenders were numerous, some of whom had a great vogue among the people. Their oracles were enshrined in vast temples, whose corridors w^ere crowded with the votive offerings of their deluded believers. Such came to consult the oracle as to the possible recovery of the sick, as to the outcome of their commercial ventures, and as to whether their military expeditions would be crowned with victory, or be shamed by defeat. It was the common practice with their priests to put forth their oracular utterances in such ambiguous phrase as would fit either event, life or death, success or failure, victory or disaster; so that whatever the outcome the honor and veracity of the shrine would be sustained.

Because of such fraudulent pretensions there is good reason for applying an adequate test to all professed prophetical utterances, whether of the Scripture or other, and any such which really proceed from a divine source should respond to three crucial conditions:

1. They will concern persons, matters, or events that are of vital moment.

2. They will be definite and circumstantial.

3. They will be of a nature such as to be beyond the reach of human capacity to make accurate forecast.

It has been said that real prophetical predictions will concern persons, matters, or events that are of vital moment. It is not to be imagined that Divinity will occupy itself with inanities and trivialities. There was occasion for the prophet to predict the rise of a Cyrus, who was to make possible the rebuilding of the Temple; or to predict the overthrow of hostile cities, or the dispersion of Israel in the Gentile nations.

And divine predictions may be expected to be definite and circumstantial, so that when they were fulfilled the fact could be verified beyond contradiction. Divinity has no need for veiling its utterances in obscurity. The prophet himself at the time of his announcement might not realize the full import of his message, but when the fulfilment arrived the matching of fact with forecast would be so complete as to make assurance doubly sure.

And divine predictions are expected to be of a nature quite past the range of the conjectures of human judgment.

While Louis XVI. was still on the French throne Edmund Burke in the British House of Commons declared that there was prospect of a revolution across the Channel. His judgment was justified when the mob tore down the Bastile and sent the king to the guillotine. And so before our American Civil War Arthur Helps wrote his book, '*The Impending Crisis/' in which he advised that a struggle was impending between the advocates of human slavery on the one side and the friend of freedom on the other. And in 1911 Lord Roberts predicted that Germany was plotting a war against England and English interests, for which he was ridiculed by men high in authority right and left. In all these notable instances, however, though the events predicted were still, in the future, they were of the kind that follow in the natural course of affairs under causes, which might slip the average mind, but which statesmen who are accustomed to weigh causes and effects would notice to their inevitable conclusion. A really divine prediction would not rely upon possibilities so evident as these, but would forecast results which would lie outside the realm of human reasoning or conjecture.

These three several tests are met completely in the prophecies of the Old Testament. Consider the predictions respecting the family of Abraham, to which reference has been made. That family was to possess the land of Palestine, and it was to increase till its numbers became like the leaves of the forest for multitude, or like the waves of the sea. Now Abraham had but the two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Isaac had but two sons, Jacob and

-^ Esau. Jacob had twelve sons, and when he traveled to Egypt there were altogether seventy souls in his caravan, counting the children, servants, and herdsmen. What natural expectation could there have been that this particular seventy, facing the vicissitudes of famine, of the desert journey, of attack by robbers on the way, and of sojourn in a strange land, could live and expand to become a great multitude? Why should they not have been lost, as the brook is lost that flows into the thirsty sand of the wilderness? And yet Israel has survived, and still survives ; though ten of its twelve tribes were lost so that no man knoweth of them to this day ; and the Jew continues on, scattered all over the globe, and hisi race is possibly the most numerous of any that traces its origin to a single head. In this instance the predictions of the Scripture have been fulfilled definitely and circumstantially.

Then we have the prophecies concerning Babylon. At the time when Jeremiah raised his lament over Babylon that proud city was the capital of the mightiest of the world empires. Her armies were marching from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, and even to the borders of Egypt. Her commerce covered the whole East. Her walls were lofty, some three hundred feet in height, and within them she could assemble her armies and withstand a siege of years. And yet while Babylon stood thus as the queen city of the Euphrates, and when to all human appearance she would probably hold her dominion to the end of time, Jeremiah declared that her glory must fade, that an assembly of nations should come out of the north.

(50 : 9) , that her defenders should become as cowardly as women, (50: 30), that the river which was her defence should be dried up, (51 : 36) , that their drunkenness and revellings should cause them to sleep a perpetual sleep, (51:39), that armed men should throng her streets like caterpillars, (51:14), and that as a result Babylon should become as heaps, a dwelling place for dragons. (51:37).

All that circumstantial fate befel the doomed city exactly as it was foretold. Cyrus came down from the Persian mountains with his host drawn from many tribes. His armies surrounded the city. He cut a canal for the Euphrates outside the city wall. One night while Belshazzar and his great lords were besotted in drunken carousal, he turned aside the river into its new channel, and marched his soldiers in the old bed of the stream under the massive gates of bronze, till in a few hours he was master of the impregnable capital. Belshazzar was slain and his empire passed to the Medes and Persians. Later still Alexander the Great defeated Darius the Persian, and presently Babylon passed altogether. Her trade was diverted to other routes. The sun-dried bricks of her walls and palaces were dissolved by the elements, and walls, hanging gardens, and palaces became heaps in the desert, till in the Middle Age there was not a remnant of all her proud edifices remaining above ground, so that doubts were current as to any such city ever having been in existence. Only within our own time has the spade of the archeologist unearthed the ruins and established the certainty of Jeremiah's prophetic forecast. And that prediction was made two hundred years before Cyrus was born.

The instance of Egypt parallels that of Babylon. Once Egypt was omnipotent in the ancient world, the richest empire, the mightiest, and boasted the most advanced civilization. The ruins of her magnificent palaces and temples, and her vast pyramids which still stand among the world wonders, testify with eloquent voice of the reality of her greatness. While she was still in the height of her glory the prophet Ezekiel prophesied against her that, ''Egypt shall he the basest of the kingdoms, neither shall it exalt itself any more among the nations.'' (29:15). And Egypt fell from her high estate. Her prosperity was broken. Greek, Roman, and Saracen in succession seized upon her dominion, and to this hour through more than twenty-four centuries, not a native prince of Egyptian lineage has held her sceptre. So this moment she is in the enjoyment of her most prosperous season for centuries, and she has this blessing as a dependency of the British Empire.

Then, too, we may remember Tyre. Tyre was a city of Phoenicia, and was great when Israel crossed the Jordan to enter the Promised Land. One of her kings was an intimate friend of Solomon. She manufactured the finest of cloths, made the richest dyes, and wrought fine metal work, and glass and other products, which she sent in her ships all through the Mediterranean, and even to Britain. But in the midst of her prosperity Ezekiel lifted up his voice against her and prophesied that she should become like the top of a rock, a place for the spreading of nets. (26:14). And precisely that has become the fate of Tyre. She suffered repeated attacks from other nations. Again and again her homes and palaces were destroyed by seize and fire. At last her industrial skill was forgotten. Her shipping rotted at her wharves. All her storied prosperity faded like a feverish dream. Such a fate was deemed impossible by the generation that heard the prophet's word, and they scoffed at him as if he were demented, but time has fulfilled his prediction to the letter.

Prophecies of this class partake of the nature of the miracle. They are voices from the unseen world. They demonstrate the providential care of God and His omniscient power, whereby He sees the end from the beginning.

But the prophecies to which Peter especially refers, and which are ''like the light that shineth in a dark place/' are those which proclaim the coming of Messiah, the Christ. All the way from Genesis to Malachi there are found premonitions of His coming, and they were so definite and circumstantial that in the time of Augustus the entire race of the Jews was in the attitude of eager expectation of their deliverer.

As we read these Messianic predictions which foretell His race, the time of the Advent, the town Bethlehem in which He was to be born, the service He was to render to the world, the rejection He should suffer from His own people, the price for which He was to be sold, the lots that were to be cast for His vesture, the making His grave with the rich. His resurrection from the dead, and the ingathering of the Gentiles, we are impelled to the conviction that the prophecy reads like the history, and that the history matches the prophecy.

We are not to wonder then, when Jesus after the resurrection went walking toward Emmaus and consorted with Luke and Cleopas, who failed to recognize Him, that ''beginning at Moses, and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.'' (Luke 24:27).

Nor need we feel surprise that Stephen, the eloquent deacon, made excellent use of the prophecies with the men in the Asiatic synagogues, so that ''they were -not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake/' (Acts 6: 10).

And there was that African treasurer, who was riding in his chariot on his way to far distant home, and lightened the tediousness of the journey by reading out of the Book of Isaiah that passage of the suffering Savior, and who asked Philip to explain to him the Scripture. Of this we are told that "Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same Scripture, and preached unto him Jesu^." (Acts 8:35).

Time and again in recent years these prophecies have been helpful in refuting the objections of the unbeliever and bringing converts to the Savior. In our modern church we may be( thankful to God for giving us the New Testament, with its beautiful gospel stories of Jesus and His mission, and with them the rest of the Book, which serves to elaborate and explain the main story.

But if we are to be really wise in the faith we shall not confine our reading to the later Scriptures alone. For in the Old Testament we shall find broad fields awaiting investigation, which will enlarge our understanding of God's dealing with His people; and among the richest of our finds, which will give us the clearer vision of our Lord, we will place the ''more sure word of prophecy, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, a^ unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day daivn and the day star arise in your hearts.'^ (2 Peter 1:19).

II

JESUS is the problem of the ages, of our own age no less than of those that have gone before, and He will be the problem of the ages that follow us. This is so primarily because finiteness cannot comprehend infinity, and also because the most of men fix their minds upon single traits of His nature and so miss the breadth of His being. The Jewish nation failed conspicuously in this respect. He was their long-expected messenger, but when He came, message in hand, they turned Him aside, because they saw Him as the Nazarene, that and no more. And so they scouted and derided Him. They were all astray as respects His origin. His person, and His mission, and so they flouted the one person of their race who has given it its highest glory.

Pilate, the Roman governor, before whom Jesus w^as haled, estimated Him as a prisoner whom malice was accusing. As a magistrate he w^as inclined to befriend Him up to the point where His own political aspirations were involved, and then he sacrificed his prisoner without a scruple. Pilate's wife was wiser than her husband, and warned him to have nothing to do with ^'that just man." She recognized the saintliness of Jesus, but past that her vision halted. And it will be the same with any one who surveys Jesus in any one of His numerous offices and confines thought to that. So some acknowledge Him as Master. That He was, for He was teacher to His disciples all through His ministry on earth. But while He was the Master then, he was also much more. Let Him be applauded as the Reformer. And He was that also, but to regard Him merely as the Reformer is to miss consciousness of the real Christ. Suppose Him to be viewed as the Miracle Worker, or a chief of the Martyrs. But the whole Christ is not to be reckoned as summed up in any one of these characters. It is only as we study Him as He is revealed in the Scripture, in the prophecies, in the history, and in the combination of all these representations, that we can begin to realize anything of His actual power and majesty or anything of His unrivalled glory as the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

One aspect of the Savior, which requires early attention, is His office of Covenant Bearer, which is mentioned in Malachi, who was the last of the Old Testament preachers. Of this the prophet speaks, Chapter 3, verse 1, saying, ''Behold I will send my messenger , and he shall prepare the way before me; and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in; behold he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts.'' This language suggests the lapse of the Old Covenant and the substitution of one that is new and an improvement on the other that has fallen out by the way.