Christ the apocalypse

Front matter

Class ___i5i__d & 5

Book !.__

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Section I. THE FOUNDATION

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Historic Christ — The Divine Christ, - 7

II. Scripture, 11

III. Christ THE Apocalypse OF God's Existence AND 15

Character, 25

IV. Creation, 31

VI. Christ the Apocalypse of Providence,

Section XX*

GRACE

I. Christ the Apocalypse of Sin, - ... 47

II. Redemption, 52

III. Old Testament History, ----- 61

IV. Old Testament Prophecy, - - - . 64 V. Sacrifices, -------- 69

VI. The Holy Spirit, 81

VII. Faith, 85

VIII. The Soul's Renewal, 108

IX. The Christ-Life, 112

X. Christian Diversity, 120

XI. Prayer. - - - 128

Contents

Section III. PROBLEMS

CHAPTER PAGE

II. Labor and Capital, . . . . . 145

III. Wealth and its Uses, 150

IV. Law of Giving, - ..... 163 V. Patriotism, - - 173

VI. Modern Renaissance, 182

VII. Literature and the Press, - - - - 190

VIII. Education, - - 201

IX. Science and Religion, 220

X. Human Religion and Divin]'., - - - 222

XI. Sociability, 226

XII. Service, - 234

XIII. Self-Sacrifice, 240

XIV. Moral Reforai, 247

XVI. The Sabbath, 279

XVII. Woman, 285

Section XV.

THE FUTURE

I. The World's Outlook, 317

II. Judgment, 334

III. Sin's Last Evolution, 341

IV. Above, 344

Chapter I The Historic Christ—the Divine Christ

T T is an easy thing to believe that the historic ■*• Christ existed ; it is utterly impossible for any sane mind to believe that he never did. The monumental facts proving that Jesus Christ lived on the earth are as solid as the pyramids of Egypt and as numerous as the stars of heaven.

To believe that Christ never existed is to turn nineteen centuries of history into chaos. No infidel can write a letter to his friend but the first touch of his pen admits that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The chief relation that five hundred millions of civilized men hold to the other thousand millions of the race is based almost wholly on this great historic fact. In all the sweep of scientific and historic investigation no fact has ever been more fully and satisfactorily demonstrated, and few, if any, so much so as this. Nineteen hundred years of ever-gathering proof can no more be swept away than you can sweep the sun from the heaven by closing your eyeHds. The march of time has been set by the sentinelstar of Bethlehem's Babe, and the world's history must forever go on in cycles of the Christian era.

Theories, speculations, philosophies, are strewn in multitudes all along the shores of time, and many unborn ones will yet be wrecked upon its strand; but here is a fact towering like an Alpine mountain, which nothing can overturn or diminish or disturb, rooted in the very heart of earth, and whose top reaches unto heaven.

The real Divinity of Jesus Christ is as much a fact as that he ever existed on earth. It is as certain that Christ was Divine as that he could not lie. To believe that Jesus Christ was not Divine is to believe that he is an awful deceiver of men. His w^hole career on earth was one continued declaration of his Divine character and mission. He thought it no robbery to be equal with God. He spake with authority — the authority of God — and not as the scribes. This Divine claim is the most striking feature in all his teachings, miracles, prophecies, promises, threatenings,

Christ — Historic and Divine 9

sufferings. It was made and reiterated in the strongest and most unmistakable terms in every conceivable form and on all sorts of occasions.

Every attribute of the Godhead that we know of he professed to exercise over devils and men, earth and sky, sea and land, disease and death, past, present, and future, judgment and mercy, heaven and hell, time and eternity. He constantly accepted a worship due only to God and a language that could properly only be applied to God. It was this claim that enraged the Jews, "Thou, being a man, makest thyself God;" and for that they put him to death. If all the lofty pretensions of men in all ages of the world were gathered into one, it would be a small matter indeed compared with what Christ claimed for himself. The ambition of millions of earth's most ambitious sons were as nothing to the ambition of this Son of Mary. Christ's claims and plans and commands tower in absolutely infinite altitude beyond the wildest dreams of human fancy.

If Jesus was not a Divine Being, if he was not properly God, then all these tremendous claims are tremendous falsehoods; are, in fact, tremendous blasphemies too terrible and too lo Christ the Apocalypse

execrable for the human tongue to describe or the human mind adequately to conceive of. If Jesus be not God, then he was an impostor far beyond all the impostors this world has ever seen together. Whether Jesus Christ was truly Divine or a liar infinitely surpassing the father of lies himself— and there is really no standing ground between these alternatives — sixty generations of men have found no difficulty in deciding. The latter is too horrible, too impossible, for the humand mind to believe for a moment; the former is the only one left for it to believe at all.

Chapter II Scripture

TXT" HAT the Divine Man Jesus Christ says ^ ^ must be true, for it is simply God speaking to men. Christ's attitude towards the Old Testament is the only right attitude we can take towards the Old Testament. What was Christ's attitude towards the Old Testament? It was one of fearless investigation. "Search the Scriptures," he said. That meant thorough exploration on all lines open to human intelligence, industry, and earnest quest of truth. Christ explored the Old Testament in that way himself. If Higher Criticism means the freest possible study of the Old Testament as to its authenticity, authority, subject matter, supreme purposes, ultimate end, then Christ was the highest of all Higher Critics. Certainly, let men search the Old Testament Scriptures down to the foundation, all the way up through every atom of its structure, to the very top-stone. It will be all the better for the Old Testament, and it will be all the better for the men who search these Holy Scriptures, for they will find throughout that "they are they that testify of Jesus."

Christ was no destructive critic. He came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill. Christ's criticism destroyed not a particle of Old Testament truth or Old Testament authority, but expanded and expounded and emphasized both to the glory of God and the good of mankind. Honest criticism will always do the same. And yet Christ was the most destructive of all Old Testament critics. He annihilated without mercy all merely human interpretations and additions and traditional falsities superimposed on the Old Testament — everything that was "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men," and of which there was much in his day.

Abundant examples of all kinds of human interference with the Scriptures of truth Christ has left us, and he has shown us how to deal with each and every one of them. Christ's loyalty to the Old Testament was supreme. It was to

Scripture 1 3

him the Word of God. To it he appealed as to the bar of God. On it he built the whole fabric of his Divine claims, his doctrinal system, and the certainties of all the hopes he held out to men. His references to it were continuous, comprehensive, profoundly reverent, and with a confidence that admitted of no manner of doubt. By it he w^as prepared to stand or fall, in the equal certainty that it was God's Word as that he was God's Son. This must be our attitude to the Old Testament too; for on any other terms we discredit Christ himself, and set up a standard of judgment other than that of the Infallible Judge of all.

Christ himself is the only authorization that the New Testament needs ; it is the only authorization that it really has. It has absolutely nothing in it but Christ and him crucified. He alone is the Alpha and Omega of it all. The widest sweep of its Divine philosophy, as in the Epistles of Paul, never tower higher than the personal Christ — never go deeper than his character, life, and work. If Christ be indeed God manifest in the flesh, it is all true, for it is he himself who speaks in it all, in his own voice or through his disciples. If Christ be not Divine, the entire New Testament is a fabrication of lies which, in gigantic grandeur and superdemoniac genius and boundless audacit)^ is utterly without parallel in all the annals of time.

Chapter III Christ Is The Apocalypse Of God's Existence And Character

"T^OES God exist? The best answer to that -■— ^ is the same as we give to the question, Does man exist? Facts are in both cases equally conclusive. Ten thousand arguments might be adduced to prove the existence of man on this earth ; but one living man is worth far more than them all. Ten thousand arguments may be adduced — and often have been — to prove the existence of God; but the Divine Christ, living on this earth for thirty years and more, is worth far more than them all. God in person trod this earth, and men beheld his glory — the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. God's answer to the atheist is himself — Christ Jesus, God manifest in the flesh. If he does not accept this proof, does he really want any ?

Christ is God seen of men. To see God is the 15 natural and supreme desire of the human soul. There is nothing strange or wrong in this any more than for a child to wish to look into his father's face. Out of the perversion of this lawful desire has sprung much of the idolatries of earth. Men can not see God as they wish ; therefore they make gods such as they can see. These are, for the most part, impersonations of things viciously human or diabolically bad. Doubtless Adam in innocence found his chief joy in seeing God ; that is, in beholding some visible manifestation of the Divine Presence ; for eyes of flesh could not endure the unclouded glory of God's face. *'I beseech thee, shew me thy glory," was not alone the fervent prayer of Moses, but of good men of all ages ; but the answer has always been, "No man hath seen God at any time." But just as true is it that "Christ Jesus, the Only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."

Christ is the Apocalypse of God. God, in him, comes forth in full sight of men. The incarnation of the Deity in a human being reveals a close view of God, shorn of many awful mysteries which pertain to the incomprehensible Jehovah.

Existence and Character 17

We talk to God as a man with his friend. We study the Divine attributes at work in a being who is one of ourselves. We are drawn to the very heart of the Eternal through the kinship of a brother.

As we look at the Divine Jesus we need not ask, "Is God a Person?" We see that without asking. All the deep speculations of the human mind respecting God in the abstract are forgotten as we walk and talk with the personal Jesus of Nazareth. Christ speaks of his Father as the glorious God, living, acting, speaking, commanding, witnessing, enduring in all the plenitude of the Divine attributes. If this does not mean that the Divine Father is a Person, it would be hard to understand how there can be such a thing as a personality at all.

Christ's allusions to the Holy Spirit — and they are many — are always in reference to one by whom he himself was inspired, by whom he cast out devils, and blasphemy against whom he pronounced an unpardonable sin. If the Holy Spirit is not indeed God in person, what honest meaning or what meaning at all can there be in Christ's words? Nowhere did Christ ever hint that there are three Gods. He emphatically indorsed the ancient inspired declaration, "Hear, O Israel ; the Lord thy God is one Lord !" The entire New Testament is one continued enunciation of the positive unity of the Godhead ; that is, it teaches Christ's doctrine on that point throughout. But is there not a flat contradiction here? Yes, if Christ could contradict himself or set forth doctrines which he knew were false or utterly irreconcilable. If Christ knew that these doctrines were level to the full comprehension of the human mind in its present state, would he not have made the whole matter clear to men? And if he has not attempted to do that, must he not have had good reasons for not making the attempt ?

What is the true character of God? What God is, is best determined by what he does. Christ in action is the Apocalypse of God's character. As Christ stilled the tempestuous sea, or walked on its waves, multiplied the loaves and fishes at his will, cast out demons from the souls of men, touched into health all manner of diseased men and women, called back the dead to life again, raised his own dead body from the tomb, — it is

Existence and Character 19

nothing less than the omnipotent power of God these facts proclaim. But it is only samples, or indeed mere hints, of that Omnipotence that we see. There are infinite reserves of power behind all this. What Christ did is as nothing to what he could do. His miracles of power are the most impressive exhibitions of God's almightiness the world ever saw; but it is what they suggest far more than anything else in which lies their most majestic revelations.

It is the same with Christ's utterances. The great truths Christ taught are but the rich nuggets of gold disclosing the fact that in him lay hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Christ sweeps the circle of Divine knowledge as far as w^e can know or need it on earth; but it is gloriously incomplete, as it is but the threshold of truth; its mighty temple lies outlined in the infinite beyond. All things earthly and heavenly, human and superhuman, felt the touch of Christ — often of the faintest kind — but it is enough to show that he is there, that his omnipresent supremacy is everywhere. Christ measured the height of his love of purity by the depth of his hatred of all impurity ; and both by the infinitude of his own sacrifice. For ''once in the end of the world he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." This is the holiness of God.

Christ is the Apocalypse of the Divine Majesty. His transfiguration on the Mount was but something that marked his whole career. The rays of his Divine Majesty were continually flashing forth through the thin veil of his flesh, from his birth in Bethlehem, amid the songs of angels, the beams of his attendant star, and the worship of the Orient kings, to his exit from earth as he ascended to the skies, while a cloud received him from the sight of men.

God's infinite fearlessness, or courage, as we might call it, has its highest expression in Christ. The chivalry of Jesus was that of a solitary warrior facing unmoved the whole universe of evil. He entered the lists with all the forces of sin combined. "Of the people there was none with him." Alone he trod the wine-press of the righteous wrath of God. Neither the "fox Herod" nor the fierce wolves of the Sanhedrin, nor the bloody soldiers of Rome, nor the strong "bulls of Bashan" around his cross, nor the shameful

Exislence and Character 21

agonies of his crucifixion, nor the base treachery of his disciple, nor the grim joy of hell as it emptied its fury upon him as the belching of a mighty volcano, moved one jot his intrepid soul. Through it all he is ever the immovable "Rock of Ages, the strong Lord, mighty in battle."

Christ is the Apocalypse of God's infinite self-respect and dignity. His consciousness of moral perfection was as absolute as that perfection itself, and both were maintained untarnished and untouclied. "Which of you convicteth me of sin?'* was his broad challenge to those subtle critics whose eyes were ever fixed on microscopic transgressions of the law. Christ did not run after the high priest and the rulers of the Jews, nor did he run away from one of them, Nicodemus, when he came to discuss the great concerns of religion.

Nothing could ruffle or disturb or disconcert his equanimity and self-possession. When charged with collusion with the prince of demons, his indignant soul at once placed that sin at the summit of all crimes that men could commit. To the flippant Herod, who wished to see him work a sample miracle, as he would have wished a mountebank perform a clever trick, he stood in absolute silence. To Pilate's garrulous questions he answered him not a word. At the bar of Caiaphas, when all other evidence against him had broken down, he calmly supplied all the evidence they wanted for his condemnation by declaring that he was the Son of God.

Christ's freedom had but one law, ''the will of his Father in heaven." All things were in absolute subjection to this — the sublime Apocalypse of the independence of God. Not a complacent and self-contained repose is the lesson Christ teaches us of God, but that God delights in work. Christ's was the busiest life on record. Yet what we have is only a sketch. The full history of that life would justify St. John's hyperbole: "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." The life of God — how long? "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." "From everlasting to everlasting thou art God." "Unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is

Existence and Character 23

for ever and ever." Eternity is the lifetime of Christ; the Hfetime of Christ is the Apocalypse of eternity.

Could the Almighty Jehovah ever become the gentle and sympathizing friend of man? Christ answers that as he takes up the little children in his arms, puts his hands upon them, and blesses them ; as he treats woman with the greatest deference, respect, and tenderness; as he sits at the table and eats with publicans and sinners; as he weeps over the bereaved and sorrowing; as he permits and invites the nearest approach of the fallen, the unclean, the diseased, the helpless, that he may chase away all their maladies and supply all their need; as he takes to his closest companionship the fishermen of Galilee, and links himself in his sublimest work with men and women representing the humblest walks of life, — He thus opens to us an inside view of God's heart as it beats in friendship for man.

God is love. Christ is the supreme Apocalypse of this. God's love is written everywhere, if we could only read it. It resounds throughout all his works, if we could only hear it. Its warmth breathes throughout the universe, if we could only feel it. But Christ's sacrifice is something we can read and hear and feel. It is love in its most impressive form — sacrifice and suffering for our sakes. Christ is God's love personified, concentrated, enthroned, and focused on the human heart, burning its way into the depths of the soul, and Hghting us up with the most vivid conceptions of this supreme attribute of God.

CHAPTER III CREATION

A X rHAT is the Origin of all things? Christ ^ ^ ought to know; "for by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers : all things were created by him and for him." If the Creator of all things does not know whether matter is eternal or originated itself, then who does know ? And if he knew that matter in some form or other was from all eternity or sprang into existence of its own accord, then truth can not be one of the attributes of the Creator. Either matter never did or could originate itself, but came into existence purely by the volition of God, or Jesus Christ has lied. If it is impossible for the Son of God to lie, then the first chapter of Genesis is true. There could be no greater falsehood and fraud than to allow that chapter to pass unchallenged if it were not true. Christ never challenged the truth of that chapter, but confirmed its truth by declaring that he himself is that Creator, the record of whose work it is. Christ himself is the Apocalypse of that chapter. What he has said and done, and what he did not say and do, is its best, its only exposition.

If evolution means that matter, or mind either, has a self -inherent and absolutely independent power of production and construction and development, or any other power except what has been conferred by the Creator and exercised under his control, then evolution may be true if Christ is not God at all, but a base and powerless impostor. But if it be true that he is the Maker of all things and by him all things consist, then both matter and mind are not his masters, but his servants. If evolution means that development by degrees has marked the construction and organization of the universe, however occult and prolonged these processes may have been, then evolution is a fact of which Christ himself is the most illustrious exponent. So far as Christ has revealed himself, this is everywhere his law. It

Creation 27

is his natural law working in his spiritual kingdom. It is his spiritual law working in his kingdom of nature.

Christ's spiritual kingdom has been a series of slow developments — an evolution of a great primitive essential fact, *'that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head." Ages and ages may yet be needed to evolve fully all that this intends. Primitive matter has been running the same course. From the "chaos" of Genesis to the "new heavens and the new earth" of Revelation, vast cycles of time may be included. We stand midway between the two. Christ reveals this much. And if men, by the scientific study of the Word and works of God, can penetrate further into the mysteries of the mighty past, or the still mightier future, by all means let them do it. Christ has revealed nothing that men are quite competent to discover by themselves.

His positive command is "Search" — that is, explore — "the Scriptures," and means search, explore, anywhere, everywhere that it can be really and legitimately done.

New worlds may yet be discovered in God's

Word and God's work by the patient industry of man. Christ will no more make these discoveries for men than he discovered America for Columbus. But no new world will ever be discovered that will falsify his testimony or set his Word and works at variance with each other.

Christ commands men to investigate. That is what he has endowed us with mental power for. We may — nay, we must — investigate the first chapter of Genesis and the last chapter of Revelation, and all between, as exhaustively as we can. We may — nay, Ave must — investigate the creation — sink to its depths, rise to its heights, sweep its whole breadth, test to its last analysis, as far and as fast as we can. What is possible, learn; and what is impossible, be content to wait and let Christ take his own time to make all things plain.

Why was there a creation at all ? Christ is the sublime Apocalypse of this. ''Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou has created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." It is God's pleasure to do nothing without an adequate end in view. His works and his purposes always run

Creation 29

parallel. The salvation of a lost race was the aim of Jesus Christ. No other aim would have been adequate to his stupendous task. The moral sublimity of that work sheds light on the whole creative work of God. The light of the Cross is quite sufficient to illuminate the universe. The supreme motive in redemption is love, and that discovers God's supreme motive in all his works — love. God made all things because he loved them, and he loves all things because he made them. From God's love sprang the creation of man and of man's home, this world, and of all worlds. Redemption's aim is to lift man to the highest altitude of perfection, bliss, and usefulness. Redemption has the power and adaptation to do the same thing for the whole created universe.

Can there be no more creation? Christ supplies all the answer we can have or need. In him we see the limitless power of God swayed by the limitless love of God. Whatever Divine love may suggest, Divine power can do. If more worlds are being required now, God is making them. If more will yet be needed, more will yet be made. If a new heaven and a new earth will be necessary — and they will be — there shall be a new heaven and a new earth. If suns or systems need reconstructing and refurnishing, and if Christ meant that when he said, ^'I go to prepare a place for you," then Christ is reconstructing and refurnishing suns and systems for the reception of his saints.

Chapter V Mam

^X THO and what is man? Christ himself is ^ ^ the only complete answer. The Apocalypse of Adam the innocent and Adam the restored are equally found in Christ. Christ is the image of God in the Edenic man, and the image of God in the restored and glorified man. Neither paradisaic glory nor heavenly glory is explicable without him. If we want to know what Adam was before he fell, we must study the Man Jesus Christ. If we want to know what Adam's race is to be in full restoration, we must study the Man Jesus Christ.

The Divinity of Christ is as certain as his humanity, and his humanity is as certain as his Divinity. Christ was a real man. He was like us in all things, our sin only excepted. He loved to call himself "the Son of man." Christ was the "express image of God's person." His body refleeted that image. Jesus was neither ugly, nor deformed, nor imperfect. Had he been so, he could not have been the antitype of the perfect Jewish sacrifice. He was without spot before God, physically as well as every other way. That is, his body was physical perfection. That meant perfection of stature, and form, and proportion, and beauty, and health, and vigor, and all other physical elements of manhood.

If Christ's body was ''more marred than any man," it was not God w^ho marred it in making it, but the cruel tortures of his enemies. If "there was no beauty in him that we might desire him," is was because unbelief had blinded the eyes of men, both of body and soul.

Christ was Divinely beautiful in person — the "chief est among ten thousand, the One altogether lovely;" so beautiful that the little children loved him; and the instinct of a child is no bad test of a lovable person. His personal magnetism, as well as his miracles, had much to do with drawing the multitudes after him. There was majesty in, his mien. His every look and motion and gesture bespoke the King. The human form Divine becomes in Christ no longer a poetic fiction, but a

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palpable fact. No other form of organized life or unorganized, nothing material, can compare for a moment with the consummate beauty of Christ's face and form; that is, of the human face and form. It is an embodiment of God's beauty and majesty as far as an earthly thing can be ennobled and transmuted into a Divine resemblance.

Christ's body was the fitting temple of his soul. His human intellect was a spark from the Eternal Mind — a bright ray from the Sun' and Source of all intelligence. So was Adam's in the garden; so is the intellect of every man. Christ shows us the royal supremacy of human intelligence over all things earthly. His mastery over all physical forces, beings, and things, not only exhibited the energy of the Divine nature, but symbolized the indisputable supremacy of his human intellect as well; that is, of all human intellect. His whole life is the brightest Apocalypse of that kingly dominion conferred on Adam and his race: "Subdue the earth, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

Christ's mind was the exponent of nature. 3

His close familiarity with natural phenomena breaks out continually in all his utterances. His intellect was constantly probing the higher philosophy hidden in all natural phenomena — constantly linking the spiritual with the material, and eliciting from both the lessons of wisdom for all men and all time. That is the true sphere of all scientific study and an exercise of mind worthy of its nobility of nature as the image of God; namely, to get nearer to God through the study of his works.