The blind man's creed, and other sermons

Contents

I. The Blind Man's Creed, .... i

II. POSITIVENESS IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF, . .* 1 5

III. Why I Believe that the Bible is the Word

I. The Blind Man's Creed

" He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner, I know not ; one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." — JOHN ix. 25.

THE text and context formed our morning's Bible-lesson. We found much in the narrative which, I am sure, prepossessed us in the blind man's favor. St. John was evidently interested in him. He has devoted to him an entire chapter ; which is exceptional. Though a writer be inspired, we can, nevertheless, tell what he enjoys and admires by the tone and detail in which he writes. An Evangelist, as well as a Gibbon, betrays his interest and his sympathies. An author's feelings break through between the paragraphs, and peep out from between the lines. It is so when Abbot writes the life of Napoleon ; it is so when St. John writes the life of Christ, and this little sketch of the blind man.

In some unusual way the blind man appears to have been wrought into the plan of our Lord's ministry. He had been born blind, and had remained blind all those dark, weary, and lonesome years, in order that when Jesus passed along the way that morning he might be there ready by the roadside, and be healed by Him. There was something that made him a special candidate for divine mercy. He healed him without being asked to heal him. It was a fixed fact in the scheme of redemption that this man should have his eyes opened. All lives and events are wrought into that scheme ; only this man's more obviously so.

It gives an added interest to the event that the blind man was the first confessor in the new kingdom. He was that sort of person that we should suppose our Lord would have found it particularly pleasant to do something for. He was ready to do what he could for himself, if what he could not do for himself the Lord would do for him. And so when he was told to go and wash, he went without making any words about it. Unlike Naaman, Willingness was one characteristic of him. Sturdiness was another. He spoke his mind, even though it cost him the accusation of heresy and the verdict of excommunication. His thoughts were distinct, and, therefore, his utterances were so. " One thing I know : I was blind ; now I see." Crisp thinking makes crisp speaking.

The words of our text form a kind of confession of faith, a sort of creed. The man who uttered them was physically submitted to the power of Christ ; and l'

if we may judge from the issue, inwardly submitted to him also. This creed we shall, therefore, designate as a Christian creed. Some elements and peculiarities of it we shall spend a little time in considering.

It is a short creed. " Whether this man be a sinner, I know not ; one thing I know : whereas I was blind, now I see. " One thing I know." A creed with one article. His whole mind and interest are gathered upon one fact. I know nothing else but simply this one thing, — I was blind, now I see. " I can see ": — that is his creed ; that is his confession of faith ; that is his catechism. Shorter catechism. Pretty soon we find his creed enlarging, but it all developed out of this as its small and tense beginning. And. one reason why it could be so tense is that it was so small. We have very long creeds now, as compared with those that used to be spoken. It is no matter how long a creed is, indeed the longer the better, if only the man believes it — believes it, that is, as this man believed his. What is there that a Christian would not be capable of to-day if he believed the whole of the Apostles' creed or the whole of the Presbyterian confession of faith in exactly the same way that the man in our story believed his creed when he said, One thing I know ; I can see. This is no plea then against long creeds. If a creed is believed (and by " believed," I mean, — taken hold of and appropriated by the whole intellectual, emotional, and moral man), if a creed is believed, the longer it is the better; otherwise, the shorter the better. Creed is like stature, it has to be reached by the individual, by slow growth from a small beginning.

There is some one thing that we shall believe first. Every actual creed of the individual, as of the Church, commences with one article, — "one thing I know." And the intensity with which we believe that will determine a good deal as to our power of believing more. The vitality of the seed will determine how much will come out of it. Every fire begins with a spark. Combustion is a contagion. Combustion generates combustion. I am interested less then in knowing how many things a Christian believes, than in knowing how much he believes a few things. A man believes effectively only so much as he believes easily. The intensity of light varies inversely with the amount of territory over which it is diffused. The intensity of faith varies inversely with the area of doctrine over which it is distributed.

Some of us, I am sure, are trying to believe too much ; not more than is true ; not more than we ought to be able to believe sometime, either in this world or perhaps not until the next, but more than we have present inward strength for, more than thought can respond to or experience guarantee. We sometimes extinguish a fire by putting on too much fuel. Possibly the Church has been loading down the piety of Christendom with too much fuel. Possibly some of the infidelity current to-day is only the effort which smouldering Christianity is making to relieve itself of excessive pressure, and that a more ardent piety will presently be the result of it. Perhaps you have seen the fires in a burning brushheap made brighter and hotter by having the top of the pile pushed over and the imprisoned and discouraged flames released.

However this may be with society and Christendom at large, it is certainly the case with many individual Christians. If a man has been strenuously indoctrinated from his childhood, the time will be very liable to come (especially if he is a chinking man and lives in a questioning age), the time will be very liable to come when he will say to himself, " Why, I don't believe all this." And then as he begins searchingly and sadly to explore himself, he finds that it is very little after all that he does believe — believe as our confessor did when he said, " I can see." It is a critical time with him. He begins throwing away his creed, one article of it after another. One stick of unkindled fuel after another is laid off, and he gets down very near to the bottom of the pile, very likely, before he finds an ember that is warm and a place that is bright. The spark is there ; that is what accounts for his earnestness. All depends on finding it, and cherishing it, and lifting off from it

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what smothers it, and tenderly and patiently overlaying it with the gentlenesses which so abound in the word of God. Everything depends on saving that last spark. The possibilities of immense heat are in some hearts in which the fire of faith has at some time burned very low. We must remember how much Jesus has to say in approbation of faith that is no more than a grain of mustard-seed. We must remember how Paul said, " Him that is weak in the faith receive ye "; and that the man who was the first confessor of Christ began with a creed of only one article.

Another peculiarity of this creed is that it was founded in experience. " One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." You notice how close the connection between the creed and the confessor. His creed was simply the statement in two words of a fact about himself, " I see." His creed was not separable from himself. It was wrought in him. His creed there would be no possibility of his forgetting. Whenever the sun shone or a star twinkled, he would feel his creed over again, " I can see." It is possible we might be perplexed, some of us, to tell what we believe, if we had not it in print to refer to ; experience can dispense with type. " One thing I know, I can see." We used to hear a good deal about men's experiencing religion. The expression is less common than formerly. Is the ex-

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pression going because the thing it stands for is going ? Perhaps there has been sometimes unwisdom and sometimes cant, even, in the way the words have been used. But, after all, " experiencing religion," as a phrase, is good. We can not afford to lose it. It is the statement of a basal fact. Christ works a work in me, and I feel it. That is " experiencing religion." Experience is not always nor often so marked as that of the jailer, or of Saul ; but if Christianity is a fact it is an experience ; and if Christ has wrought a work in me I feel it ; and if I am a Christian I know it ; " whereas I was blind, now I see." This experience was really the starting point of all his Christian life. This experience is the soil out of which creed all grows.

Even the truths of God, before they become my true creed, have got to be reproduced in the soil of my own thinking and feeling. A creed is like a tree that starts in a single stalk (one thing I know) and that goes on branching and dividing so long as it is fed at the root; fed by the Spirit and the Word. Men's faith is languid because their experience is languid. Men's creeds stand still because their experience stands still. The creed of our confessor began with one article, but did not end there. Pretty soon we hear him saying that he believed that Christ was the Son of God. We get tired sometimes of believing exactly the same old things in precisely the

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same old way. But our creeds will go on thickening and branching, just so long and so constantly as God's work in us goes on. Our creeds have got to come from out our experience of God, and not out of our prayer-book or our confession of faith. We shall be like the tree that has stood all the winter through, bare and waiting, and the spring comes and the airs are softened and the ground is loosened, and the sap flows, and pretty soon the tree feels that it is spring, inside as well as outside, and the buds start and the tree grows again. Creed is experience trying to put itself into forms of thought. Putting on leaves does not bring the spring, but the spring coming puts on the leaves. Creeds will be right enough so long as experience is right, and fresh and strong. Men's creeds will be well enough so long as their hearts are so alive that they keep outgrowing their creeds. That is a poor tree that looks and measures exactly as it did a year ago. He is a poor believer that believes exactly as he did a year ago.

It will follow from this, in the next place, that there will be something very personal, individual, and peculiar about each marts creed. Two living Christians can not believe alike any more than two trees can grow alike. It is an evidence of life when men differ doctrinally. Two posts made alike continue alike. Two trees beginning alike become increasingly different. I love to see well-marked characteristics of faith

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in the members of the same Church. It betokens life. Two Christians never think alike, except as they neither of them think at all, but leave it to a third party to do in their stead. Excessive doctrinal quietness, either in the Christian or in the communion, implies lethargy. It is only dead men that never turn over. If there is anything in which a man needs to be true to himself, and loyal to his individuality, it is in his religion. I wish we had in all things greater latitude allowed us for our personal idiosyncrasies. I wish there was less that was conventional in life. I wish that men and women could be themselves more largely than usage allows. I think society would be less monotonous and more luxuriant. But in religion, at all hazards, each man must have all the latitude that his individuality demands. A man must be himself in his faiths.

This is one thing that makes our Bible so rich and varied. The writers received the influences of the Spirit, but did not throw away their personal peculiarities. Each book has its distinct style. The rays of divine light all become humanly tinged before they reached the page. Paul does not write like Peter, nor Peter like James. Mark tells his story differently from John, and John differently from Luke. The Holy Ghost is no enemy to personal peculiarities. Each man's experience will be characteristic, and so then must his creed be, that grows

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out of his experience. Men, as a rule, are constitutionally one-sided, and this will make their experience and their creed one-sided. Paul's theology is Pauline, Peter's Petrine. A man's proper creed is the name we give to his individuality, when inspired by the Holy Ghost. The majority of most men's character is lodged in one particular bent. When such men become Christians, their experience localizes itself in that bent, and their creed derives itself from it. The root of a man's ism is in his constitution. We can hardly dispute about isms then, more than about complexions. Men bring their ism with them when they come into the kingdom, and will retain it, we presume, when they go up yonder. It makes the Church rich, and will make heaven various.

And now, by the way, is it not a splendid tribute to Jesus Christ, that we can each of us come to Him with our special peculiarity, and find exactly that in Him which will meet that peculiarity and satisfy it? Christ is like a mirror into which all mankind may look, and each man find his own face given back to him. There is only one Christ, but He is in this respect like the one sun which shines upon all objects, and gives to each what satisfies it and helps it to be at its best. No two alike, the sea not like the forest, the pebble not like the snow-flake, but each finding in the sun what helps it to be itself more excellently and perfectly. The poor man ob-

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tains from Him what he needs, and the rich man. He satisfies the ignorant man and the scholar. He has made glad the old generations and the new. He answers the demands of the Fiji, and the Greek. There is nothing sectional about Christ, and Christ never gets to be old.

Only one thing more that we notice about this creed is, that it does not embarrass itself with matter that is foreign to the main point. Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not ; one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see. The point with him was that he could see, not how he could see, — vision, not the explanation of vision. The two things were very distinct to him because he had such a thrilling sense of sight. Seeing was the one only thing with him. He was filled with light and wrapped in light. It left no chance for hows and whys. Not till after sundown that night did experience of that splendid fact of vision fall down into philosophizings about the fact of vision. Philosophizing very often comes from the cooling down of experience. It is when the eye begins to grow dim that we commence studying the structure of the eye. It is the disordered functions of the body that drive us to our physiology- Sight does not consist in knowing how we see. Health does not consist in understanding the organs of the body, and salvation does not consist in knowing how we are saved, i?

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The anatomy of salvation is not our Christian concern. The physician can cure an ignorant man as readily as he can a scholar, because his medicine does not depend for its efficacy upon the intelligence of the patient. In the same way it is possible for Christ to be the physician of the ignorant man as well as of the scholar, because salvation consists just simply in being saved. A child does not need to be an obstetrician in order to be born, nor does acquaintance with the scheme of redemption help a man to be reborn. One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see. I can not tell why it is that Christ can do so much for me. I do not understand what this being born of God is. I have very little idea how Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are related to each other. But I know that something has come into history which' has wrought magnificent results there. I know that something has come into the hearts of individual men that has wrought magnificent results there. Sometimes I call it God, and sometimes Christ, and sometimes Holy Ghost. Sometimes one name brings it and sometimes another. But the great Being knows what is desired when it is invoked, and it comes and helps and leaves its power upon me, and fills me with strange strength. I do not know how Christ on the cross wrought the redemption of the generations that were to come, any more than I know how He threw a great backward light over the genera-

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tions that were gone before. I know a few facts about Christianity, but it is pretty much all summed up in this, that I feel a good deal as did the man whose eyes had been opened ; whether he be a sinner or no I know not ; one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see. I have thought about all these things some, but I do not know as all this thinking has really helped me very much to be a better Christian. The mind falls back wearied, and then the heart cries out plaintively —

" My faith looks up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary, Saviour divine ";

and there is quietness and strength.

An American poet* has well rendered the story of our chapter in the following graceful stanzas :

" He stood before the Sanhedrim : The scowling rabbis gazed at him.

He recked not of their praise or blame ; There was no fear, there was no shame For one upon whose dazzled eyes The whole world poured its vast surprise. The open heaven was far too near, His first day's light too sweet and clear, To let him waste his new-gained ken On the hate-clouded face of men.

" But still they questioned,— Who art thou ? What hast thou been ? What art thou now ?

* John Hay.

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Thou art not he who yesterday

Sat here and begged beside the way ;

For he was blind.

" — And I am he ; For I was blind, but now I see.

" He told the story o'er and o'er ; It was his full heart's only lore. A prophet on the Sabbath-day Had touched his sightless eyes with clay, And made him see who had been blind. Their words passed by him like the wind Which raves and howls, but can not shock The hundred-fathom-rooted rock.

" Their threats and fury all went wide ; They could not touch his Hebrew pride. Their sneers at Jesus and his band, Nameless and harmless in the land ; Their boasts of Moses and his Lord, All could not change him by one word.

" I know not what this man may be, Sinner or Saint : but as for me, One thing I know, that I am he Who once was blind, and now I see.

" They were all doctors of renown, The great men of a famous town, With deep brows, wrinkled, broad and wise, Beneath their wide phylacteries ; The wisdom of the East was theirs ; And honor crowned their silver hairs.

" The man they jeered and laughed to scorn Was unlearned, poor, and humbly born ; But he knew better far than they, What came to him that Sabbath-day ; And what the Christ had clone for him He knew, and not the Sanhedrim."

II. Positiveness In Religious Belief

" This I say then, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh" — Galatians v. 1 6.

THERE are three moral facts readily to be derived from this verse. The first is the fact of man's natural fleshliness. This idea of the flesh is a favorite one in Paul's mind, and therefore plays a large part in the letters he writes and in the sermons he preaches.

Paul was like other preachers in this respect, that he had a few favorite ideas — hobbies, if only you will associate with the word nothing derogatory ; and these pet notions of his are continually working to the surface, and pushing themselves into notice, and his epistles are to a considerable extent merely kaleidoscopic re-arrangements under which these few notions variously group themselves.

Important among these is his doctrine of man's natural fleshliness. And by flesh he means considerable more than body physically considered. Flesh with him is more than man's physical anatomy — an aggregate of bone, muscle, and blood ; more than man's physiology — an organism of bone, muscle, and blood. The flesh with Paul was the body in its connection with the unclean moral nature occupying the body ; flesh with Paul means the natural man — man in the condition in which he comes into the world and in the character into which he continues more and more to harden after coming into the world, up to the time when by conversion his natural tendencies toward evil have been confronted and overpowered by a new and divinely implanted set of tendencies toward what is good.

This prepares the way for an allusion to the second moral fact of our text. The first fact is man's natural fleshliness, the second is man's acquired spiritualness. "Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh," — fleshliness, spiritualness. The first natural, in the sense of coming along in the ordinary and uniform process of events ; the second supernatural, in the sense of an interference with this ordinary and uniform process of events ; just as it is natural, lies in the nature of things, that your garden should be overspread with weeds. Remove from the surface of your garden this autumn everything in the shape of vegetation, and by next midsummer it will be clothed with a vestment of weeds of a hundred distinct genera and a thousand different species. It

is natural, lies in the nature of things that it should be so.

And this nature of things will continue in force till it is supernaturally interfered with — until you go into your garden and revolutionize it, and adopt measures and set in operation forces looking to the repression of nature and the extermination of the weeds. Whether it is man in a garden or God in a soul, every energy is a supernatural energy that is able to interfere with the ongoings of nature or interrupt nature's continuity. It is the nature of your garden to be weedy, and a power above nature — yourself or your gardener — has got to enter into your garden and operate there before it can be anything but weedy. So it is the nature of a man to be fleshly, full of evil appetites criminally indulged, and a power above nature has got to enter into a man before he can be anything but fleshly ; and the only such power we know anything of from Scripture or experience as fitted to do this work is what the apostle here calls the Spirit : " Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh."

And this in turn paves the way for a statement of the third moral fact of our text. The first fact is man's natural fleshliness, the second his acquired spiritualness wrought by the Holy Ghost, and the third, and the point upon which we wish to dwell more at length, is that we do not cease to be fleshly by any direct attempt to be unfleshly, but only by our success in becoming spiritual. "Ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh, if ye walk in the Spirit "; that we get out from under the dominion of the evil not by holding ourselves in a negative attitude toward the evil, but by holding ourselves in a positive attitude toward that which is the opposite of the evil.

Now, this idea, so characteristic of the apostle, and so everywhere operative wherever progress is being made, either by the individual or by society at large, is an idea we shall spend some time in illustrating and applying — the idea, namely, that the most direct means of destroying one tendency is by strengthening the tendency that is its opposite; the idea that the readiest method of crowding out what is bad is to crowd in what is good ; to labor for positive results, and to widen out and build up positive results into a splendid monopoly.

A very simple and homely illustration of this doctrine would be the following : A little plot of ground two rods square was once put in my hands to clear of weeds. The prevailing weed was a tenacious one, and prolific — as weeds are. There was not an inch of that plot to which I did not devote special and interested attention. Nor was my labor superficial. It took notice not only of the surface, but of the subsoil, and, when I hung up my hoe and rake, the upper six inches of the entire plot were as innocent of all vegetation as a sand lot. This piece of ground lay quite near the house, had been a good deal of an offence to the eye, and I naturally congratulated my self, therefore, on the thoroughness of the work ; and the brown earth lay there the remainder of the fall a barren memorial of my fidelity. In the opening spring, that was the first spot in the neighborhood that gave indications of vitality; and throughout the spring there was no other four rods on any side of the house that showed such a tropical profusion of verdure, and the verdure was composed almost exclusively of those same old weeds or their lineal descendants.

Now notice what I had done. My labor had been simply a labor of destruction. My ambition had been not to put something there that should be an ornament, but to get rid of something that was a nuisance. I was working destructively, not constructively ; and laboring for negative rather than positive results. The next season, some one who understood such matters better than I, cleared the surface of the ground, partially loosened up the soil, enriched it, threw in grass seed, and let matters work. And now that plot is as free of plantains and as rich in velvety turf as any plot need be. He worked constructively, labored for positive results, addressed all his energies to the work of establishing and encouraging there a growth of grass, knowing that if once he succeeded in crowding grass in, the grass would succeed better than he with his sickle or hoe could do in the work of crowding weeds out.

This, I say, illustrates familiarly the general truth of our text, that we get out from under the dominion of the evil, not by holding ourselves in a negative attitude toward the evil, but by holding ourselves in a positive attitude toward that which is the opposite of the evil. You have seen a leaf sometimes in the winter clinging, brown and lone, to the bleak branch of an oak, and the sun plays with it, and the storm pulls at it and bruises it, and the winds scold at it ; but it defies their concerted assault and lingers into the spring, memorial of the summer that is gone, linking the two years into a kind of twinship, till as the mellow months begin again to recur, the sun and the storm and the wind leave pelting the seared leaf, and begin to wake up the life that had been slumbering in the tree ; and they moisten the roots, and warm the fibre, and stir the sap, and the buds begin to swell, and that one particular bud begins to swell, and the tired lone leaf flutters and falls.