The Christ of yesterday, to-day and forever

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

THE CHRIST OF YESTERDAY TO-DAY, AND FOREVER

Introduction

These sermons have done their work in the pulpit, and they are sent to the press in the hope that they may still be of service in a new form. It is often said that books of sermons are not read, but the fact that so many volumes of sermons are published from year to year is an indication that it is not too late for the printed sermon to be of some use in the world.

I confess that the desire to contribute something towards guiding the thought of our time to correct conclusions in respect to the methods of preaching, and in respect to its substance also, has been a leading motive in the publication of this book. The preaching of our day is different from that of the last generation, and yet the difference is not so much in the substance, as in the form. That body of truth which has come down from the Apostolic age, and which has been received by all branches of the Church, is still the bread of life for those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. But we have no use for some of the theories and speculations concerning the religion which Christ taught, which originated in the middle ages, or in the time of the

Vlii INTRODUCTION.

Reformation. The advancement of natural science, and the progress that has been made during this century towards the mastery of nature, with the practical spirit and tendencies of the age, require new methods of presenting religious truth in the pulpit.

In the first place, the preaching for the twentieth century will need to deepen the sense of personal freedom and responsibility. Religion assumes the freedom of the will. If free-will be denied, there can be no such thing as duty, or the sense of responsibility. The cross of Christ is foolishness to those who do not have a sense of sin, and no one feels that he is a sinner until he realizes that the evil deeds are his own acts. The psychological problem underlies the problems of theology. Our popular literature is saturated with the spirit of fatalism. The tendency is to explain the whole life of man as the result of heredity, and environment. " Man lives," says Professor Tyndall, " in a realm of physical and moral necessity." If this be true, it follows that he is not responsible for his actions. It has been said that the extreme Calvinism of the early Puritan divines cut up by the roots the sense of responsibility. It is singular that the same result should have been secured by the scientific Agnosticism of modern times. It is the most difficult problem for the preacher of to-day to counteract this tendency. It is not enough that the laws of the land and the laws of God assume that we are responsible for our actions. The wise

INTRODUCTION. IX

preacher will appeal to the consciousness of every sane man as the conclusive evidence of the fact of responsibility. He will find a rich field for study, and for use in his public ministrations, in the teachings of the Master, in the conversations, and parables, and discourses which show, in such simple and conclusive ways, that the life of man is a life of liberty ; that when he does evil it is because he loves the evil, and chooses to follow it ; and that when he does well it is because he chooses to obey the voice of God speaking in the secret places of his soul, and calling him to the better way. He will find that our Lord constantly assumed the fact of human freedom, as the ground of responsibility. He said, " if any man thirst let him come unto me and drink ; " and He also said, " ye will not come unto me that ye might have life." He will also find that the Master recognized the weakness and infirmity of the will, and that He was always reminding His disciples of the divine help that was within reach of their prayers, — the help of a Friend unseen, the Holy Comforter, who should abide with them forever.

At the same time, the preaching for this generation will need to set forth the gospel : the glad tidings of peace, and pardon, and eternal life. Never have the masses of men needed more than now the invitation of the Christ : " Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." It is of little real use to preach social theories, or ethical theories, or theories of religion. The multitudes that gather

X INTRODUCTION.

about Dwight L. Moody, wherever he goes, on either side of the sea, and that used to listen to Phillips Brooks, cannot be satisfied with mere naturalism. They crave a religion that is supernatural in its origin. They want a divine Person to give authority to the message : — one who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever ; — one who is able to save to the uttermost those that draw near unto God through Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them. People are not drawn to religious teachers now on account of their traditional beliefs. They come because they have tried the doctrines of men, and have found the need of a religion that is above nature. They want a Teacher who can speak as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

The preaching for our times must also be adapted to relieve the difficulties of those who are oppressed by honest doubt. The dogmatism of the older pulpit has been met by the dogmatism of the men of science, and the beliefs of a great many people have been unsettled. It was the purpose of Christ in His preaching to lead men to realize their spiritual wants, in order that they might come to Him for the water of life. He taught that the kingdom of God is not an outward thing. The kingdom of God is within you, and among you, — that is, it is spiritual. It has for its special work to bring us into sympathy with God. No one who is without this spiritual indwelling can know of the doctrine. Those who are feeling after God, in our time, need

INTRODUCTION. xi

to be guided with sympathy, and a broad intelligence, through the mists of unbelief, until they find Him who can satisfy their wants. They need to be taught the sweet reasonableness of the gospel, as well as its divine origin, that they may magnify the love and grace of God.

EZRA HOYT BYINGTON.

November i, 1897.

Contents

Sermon Page

I. The Christ of Yesterday, To-Day, and Forever 3

"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." — Hebrews xiii. 8.

I. The Christ Of Yesterday, To-day, And Forever

I.

THE CHRIST OF YESTERDAY, TO-DAY, AND FOREVER.

jfesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.

Hebrews xiii. 8.

One impression which we get from the course of events in this world leads us to think that everything is changing. The fashion of this world passeth away. It has no yesterday, it is so new, no to-morrow, it is so unsubstantial. It is only the fashion of to-day, and to-morrow will bring a new fashion. But the world lasts, while its fashions change. The seasons change, but time endures. The springing grass, and the leaves, and the flowers pass away, but the fields, and the hills, and the mountains do not appear to change. One who goes back to the home of his childhood is impressed by the changes which a few years have wrought. The trees that he planted in his youth have grown beyond his recognition. The old houses have given place to new ones. The old neighbors have grown old, and many of them have passed on, and a new generation has come to fill their places. The old habits, the old ideas of life, have been greatly modified. But human nature, with its great wants and experiences, is still the same. And the general features of the country are the same. He will range through the same meadows, climb the same hillsides, follow the same streams, look up to the same mountains.

So we find the permanent over against the changing. If we find some things that are only for to-day, we find other things that are the same yesterday and to-day, and they are likely to be the same in the years and generations to come. History presents to us scenes that are constantly shifting, but it shows us principles that grow more familiar with the progress of time. The fashions of dress and of social life, the tools, and even the employments of men change with the advance of civilization, but the great facts of human life, and the staple wants of human beings do not change. Hunger and thirst are evermore the same ; love and hope, fear and pain, sickness and death are the same. We look up to the same constellations in the evening sky that Moses saw, and Abraham, and Noah ; our days and months and years are the same. Yet there is constant progress. Many of the arts that were important a few centuries ago are lost arts to us, because we have passed beyond the need of them. What could an old Greek of the age of Themistocles do in a modern city, which is without walls for its defence, which is lighted by gas or by electricity, which receives its news by telegraph and telephone, whose citizens travel on railways and in steamships? But, after all, he would find that the eager, bustling people of these later times need essentially the same things to make their lives comfortable and desirable that his Athenian neighbors needed so long ago ; that the old ideas of truth and justice, and of the rights of man, and the old laws of self-denial and economy and industry, and the old liabilities to disease and infirmity and death have not changed at all in twenty centuries.

The question is a fair one, How far is the religion of Christ permanent ', and how far is it subject to change ? It has had a long yesterday, eighteen hundred years and more. Is it the same to-day? Is it likely to be the same in the long to-morrow that it was in the beginning? Has it such elements of permanence that we may reasonably expect it to be the religion of the future? These are living questions for us at this time when things move so rapidly, and when the. theory of evolution is changing so many of the old beliefs and leading to so many new conclusions, and when the great religions of the East are studied so appreciatively. How far is the religion of Christ to be modified by a process of evolution? Does the progress which the world is making in our time touch the truths which are most surely believed among Christians?

I.

Let us begin with Christ Hints elf ^ who said : "I am the way, the truth, and the life." " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." * It is eighteen centuries since He lived on the earth,

1 St. John xii. 32.

and that is more than half the period covered by authentic history. Very little that belonged to that time influences the world now, and why should His words ? He was a peasant of Galilee, — a wandering preacher, who selected unlearned and ignorant men as His disciples, and who was despised and condemned by the scribes and doctors of the law. Herod and Pontius Pilate would have scorned to exchange places with this poor and homeless man. But what is Herod or Pilate to us? What is Jerusalem with its temple, — except as connected with this Teacher, who sometimes came there at the risk of His life to teach His doctrines to the people? What is Rome to us, with its imperial law and its civilization, the pride of its life, and its splendid worship ? What is Augustus, the foremost man in all the world when Jesus was born ; whom men adored as a god after he was dead ? What but the most brilliant representative of the fashion of the world which passeth away? It would not have seemed possible to one who stood in the Roman Forum in the first Christian century, in view of the magnificent temples and palaces of the eternal city, for that civilization to pass away, and another civilization so different and so superior to follow it. But the very languages of that old world are dead, and it lives chiefly in the dust of its tombs, and the ruins of its monuments, and in the ideas of those thinkers who were so far in advance of the popular notions of their time.

The question is a fair one, Why should we go back to that age, to the life and the words of Jesus for our religion?

CHRIST OF YESTERDAY, TO-DAY, AND FOREVER. J

We shall get the answer if we study the life and the teachings of Jesus, the Christ. Those who work with perishable materials must expect their works to perish. Those who make the fashion-plates, for example, have to do with that which " passeth away." If Jesus had been simply a man of his time, if He had been only a Jew, if He had given His life to the questions just then awakening attention, He would have been nothing to the world now. But see how large and free His life was. He was born a Jew, but He refused to limit Himself by any Jewish prejudices. He taught that men should worship, not in Jerusalem only, but wherever they could find a place for prayer; and He commanded His disciples to preach the gospel to every creature. If any one tried to limit Him by the narrow ideas of that time, He met them by an appeal to universal truths, to principles that are broad enough for all times and all men.

His ideas were not those of the men of his time. They depended on power; Jesus depended on love. They appealed to the past, — to its precedents and traditions ; He appealed to the truth, — to principles that are universal. They despised the masses of mankind ; Jesus preached to the common people, and sought to lead them to receive the best things God had to give. They condemned and despised the sinful ; Jesus invited the outcasts to a better life, and gave them the hope of a great redemption. Such ideas can never become obsolete. They are still in advance of the practice of mankind.

If the character of Jesus had been full of defects, He might possibly have won the favor of the people of Galilee and of Judea. They would have liked Him the better for His conformity to their standards. But other men, in times of higher ideals, would not have been deceived. If His character was a perfect one, it will commend itself more and more. For we all have the idea of the perfect. There is a perfection of form, which we call beautiful. There is a perfection of character, which we attribute to God Himself. Among the remains of Grecian art there are some forms so exquisitely moulded that they have been recognized by the ages as models of perfection; for the ideal standard is the same for cultivated men in all times. We have not improved upon Grecian art in respect to beauty of form. The masterpieces of ancient art are prized as highly now as they were twenty-two centuries ago, so that men are going from all lands to study those forms which were carved by Phidias and his brother artists. There has been no evolution in modern times in respect to the standard of the beautiful. But if those perfect forms appeal to the hearts of men in all ages, how much more must a perfect character, shown in the life of a perfect Man, who is our Friend and Brother. Progress can never carry us beyond perfect truth, and perfect justice, and perfect love, combined in the life of a perfect man.

What excellent quality of manhood is there that did not appear in His life? Is it courage? See Him meeting with the spirit of earnest conviction the spirit and tendencies of His age, — showing the hollowness of the lives of men, uncovering the hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders, at the risk of popularity, of influence, and of safety. Count Tolstoi is wrong when he tells us that Christ taught only the doctrine of non-resistance. He taught that we should turn the other cheek when we suffer a personal wrong ; but He also taught us to resist evil, when He drove the money-changers from the temple with a scourge of small cords, and when He denounced the false teachers of His time as a generation of vipers.

Is it fidelity to a high principle which marks the true man? In other reformers we find at some times a lowering of the standard, a compromising in view of unfavorable circumstances, but never in Christ. When all men were going after Him, He showed no elation. When His peaceful methods were failing to win the nation, and the popular voice demanded that He assume authority and employ force, — when the people desired to make Him a King, — He refused to follow their wishes. When threatened, He was never disturbed ; when persecuted He never complained. There is not a weak, unmanly word in all the records of His life. He wept indeed, but always for others, never for Himself. The nearer He came to the cross, the more serene His bearing became. " In all the world's annals," says Mr. Thomas Hughes, " there is nothing that approaches, in the sublimity of its courage, that last conversation between Christ and Pilate." * The prisoner, bleeding from the scourging, His head wounded by the crown of thorns, is yet calm, selfpossessed, assuming the sublimest claims, and filling even the Roman governor with an indescribable awe. That artist is quite right who has represented Christ before Pilate — in the dignity of conscious innocence,

1 The Manliness of Christ.

IO CHRIST OF YESTERDAY, TO-DAY, AND FOREVER.

waiting for the sentence to the cross, the appointed means of His victory — looking down, as a superior being, upon the man who was pronouncing His doom.

Or do you connect with the manly spirit tenderness and delicacy of feeling, a sensibility to the beauties of nature, deference to woman, love for little children, ready sympathy with suffering and bereavement, a thoughtful and sustained devotion to the relief of the wretched and the salvation of the lost? All these are the plain characteristics of the man Christ Jesus. And yet so admirably are they set over against each other that you cannot tell which predominates in the assemblage of excellences, — the courage of His convictions, fidelity to the truth and to God, or a delicate courtesy, a warm and tender sympathy. You cannot tell whether it was more characteristic for Christ to drive the money-changers from the temple ; or to claim equality with the Father when the mob were ready to stone Him for blasphemy ; or to take little children in His arms and bless them ; or to weep over the ruin of Jerusalem ; or to pray for the forgiveness of His murderers ; or to open the gates of paradise to the penitent thief, or to commend His mother with His dying words to the disciple whom He loved.

The completeness of the character of Jesus is altogether unique. You cannot say that He lacked any quality of excellence. The good men of the world have belonged to certain well-marked types. John the Baptist, for example, was compared with Him; but John represented a hard and legal piety. He came neither eating nor drinking, dwelling in the deserts, his food locusts and wild honey. But Jesus loved the cheerful ways of men. He was quite as much at home at the marriage in Cana of Galilee as at the tomb of Lazarus, weeping with the bereaved family. The Pharisees had their type of religious character, and the Sadducees had theirs ; but He could not be classed with either of them. In the later centuries Christian devotees retired to the wilderness, thinking to gain holiness by solitary vigils and penances ; and still later the monasteries gathered great companies of men who had renounced the world to escape its temptations. The Puritans of England and New England illustrated in their lives the virtue of fidelity to truth and duty. But our Lord was not a hermit, or a monk, or a Puritan. The various denominations of Protestant Christians represent different types of Christian character, — from the zeal and fervor of the Methodists, the conservative reverence of the Episcopalians, the freedom and faith of the Congregationalists and the Presbyterians, to the conscientious obedience of the Baptists. But no one ever thinks of Jesus as a Methodist, or a Baptist, or an Episcopalian, or a Congregationalist. His life was not moulded according to any fashion, or limited by any partial views of truth. He knew the truth from its central source. Every excellent quality which we find apart in others, we find combined in Him. There was " no fault at all in Him." He is the perfect Model, the Light of the World, and the Saviour of mankind, — the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.

II

If we pass from Christ as an historic Person, — the divine Founder of the Christian religion, to consider His teachings, we still meet the question whether the religion of Christ is entitled to a permanent place as the religion of the world. Other religions have been outgrown in the progress of mankind. Why should not men outgrow the Christian religion? Is there any reason why we should consider this as the absolute religion? We shall find in the history of our religion striking illustrations of the fact that whatever is narrow and limited and imperfect will pass away as men advance, while that which embodies truths that are universal will endure.

The forms of worship, for example, are liable to change. The primitive Christians, accustomed to the most simple services of prayer and praise, in private rooms, or in the catacombs, or in the deserts, would hardly recognize as fellow disciples those who in magnificent churches and cathedrals worship the same Lord. The organization of the Church has varied in different ages and countries. The tendency on the whole, in later times, is towards simplicity in worship and in organization. The vestments of the clergy, the style of church music, the form of church edifices, all these are among the variable elements in the Church. There has been progress in the knowledge and the statement of the doctrines of our religion. The first Christians had not by any means a complete system of religious truth. The Apostles'

Creed is far less complete than the Nicene or the Athanasian creeds; and these are very far behind the Creeds of the Reformers. The Westminster Confession was in advance of any of the earlier confessions, and yet there are very few well-informed Christians who are not now in advance of some parts of the Westminster Confession. The Reformers had learned more about justification by faith than the early Christians knew ; and modern Christians know more about the love of God, and the freeness of the gospel than the Puritans knew. More light has been breaking from the Word of God. The great movements in modern missions have enlarged the views of Christians in respect to the purpose of the Incarnation. The decay of systems of absolutism, and the progress of political and religious liberty have prepared men to understand the teachings of our Lord. The progress of Christian thought, or, in the phrase of the day, the evolution of religion, has given to the Church a more adequate conception of the Fatherhood of God, and of the extent of His redemptive purposes.

The question is a fair one, How far are these changes in religious opinion likely to extend ? Are the foundations of our faith in danger? Will the religion of the future be Christian?

The true answer to this question, which so many are asking, is this : these changes do not touch the essential truths of the Christian faith. The deepest wants of men are the same in every age, and these deepest wants are met by the religion of Jesus the Christ. There are certain facts in the life of man which are not changed at all by the progress of modern thought. Life is short. Death is certain. We are weak, and dependent, and prone to evil. As all men need food that they may live, so all men need the favor and love of God. As all must die, so all must render account to God for the deeds done in the body. The sense of resp®nsibility rests upon all men, — whether pagans or Christians, and this has always been the great burden of humanity. The Hindoo asks how to get rid of his burden of sin, just as all men in all ages have asked. The deepest truth in the Christian religion is this : that Christ came into the world to save sinners, to save those who were lost. He taught in the most impressive moment of His life that His blood was " shed for many for the remission of sins." 1 He brings " life and immortality to light," and holds out to men the offer of eternal life in the kingdom of God. He brings this infinite gift within reach of every man on this earth. These truths of the Christian faith were the sources of its power when Paul preached all the way from Antioch to Rome ; and they stand to-day, like the sun in the sky, the sources of light and of life to the world. So long as man is man, he will need just that which our Saviour offers in the gospel. The progress of mankind in the arts of life and in philosophy cannot possibly carry them beyond the need of peace with God, through the forgiveness of sins.

1 For myself, I believe that Paul's message to the Corinthians, — Jesus Christ and Him crucified, — is the highest that has ever come to man, and the personal form which the divine idea assumed in the apostolic announcement appears to me essential to the reality and permanence of the idea itself. — Dr. George A. Gordon, in The Christ of To-day, p. 256.

III

But there is yet higher ground for us to take. Religion is more than a theory or a system of doctrine. It is, first of all, a personal experience. It does not depend upon books of evidences. What the religion of Christ really is, is known to every one who knows the love of God and the "joy of salvation." If it were possible for the progress of modern criticism to destroy even the Bible, — the record of God's revelation, — religion would remain in the hearts of true disciples as a living experience ; just as an experience of love and sympathy and friendship would remain after the books that tell about them had perished. Religion does not depend upon a book. Father Taylor, the chaplain at the Seamen's Bethel, used to say : " I do not want anybody to prove to me that there is a God, for I have been well acquainted with Him for a great many years." That is the vital fact in regard to personal religion. Every Christian is in communion and fellowship with God, and knows him as truly as he knows his own kindred. 1

If, then, you meet an unbeliever, ask him to follow the history of a disciple of Christ. Begin at the time when the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, begins to fill his soul, — the moment when he makes his first real prayer, and the clouds which till then had separated him from God are scattered, and the first direct answer comes back, and he

1 See The Evidence of Christian Experience, Prof. L. F. Stearns, p. 138 ; also p. 423, note 19.

knows that heaven is opened, and that messages are going to God and returning from Him, as the angels went and came on the ladder that Jacob saw. He has the Spirit witnessing with his own spirit that he is born of God. He has the assurance of the forgiveness of sin, and of peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 This personal experience is the deepest fact in the Christian consciousness.

A few years pass, and that young disciple is drawing towards the end of his life. You will hardly recognize in the venerable old man the youth who so long ago became a disciple of the Christ. The fashion of the world has gone by with him. The fancies and dreams of his youth have departed. The friends of his youth have gone. All the old life has gone. But the great hope has become more precious as he has come nearer the land of Beulah and the celestial city. He has walked with God so long that he desires to depart, that he may be with Him. We have all seen such Christians die, and when all other interests and thoughts had been dropped, in their progress towards heaven, the love of Christ has drawn them forward more and more strongly, — a love more enduring than life, the same when flesh and heart were failing, and the glories of the spiritual world were lighting up the path of the departing saint.