The mystery of creations and of man ...

Front matter

iv.t ii.'ln

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ShelfZB.2f

Preface

ally from the risen Son of man, as that new creating energy by which all things are to be made new, both in the region of man's life and in that physical system to which he stands related. It is affirmed that all things must continue as they were, and that whatever renovation is effected in man, or in the system of things to which he belongs, must be wrought out by the well-known agencies of nature, and must proceed according to her fixed and unchanging laws.

And so the thoughts of men are turned away from Him " Who is and Who was and Who is to come."

This volume does not oppose these errors with sciejitific treatise nor yet with elaborate exegesis. It is made up of fervid pulpit utterances, which, while not disdaining the teachings of science, seek to carry some new light into her realms from Scripture, enabling us to look across her boundaries and to catch glimpses of the veiled face of our Father God.

And they project light, from the same source, upon the mystery of the Christ and behind the veil which now conceals Him, and show what meaning attaches to manhood in the light of this

PREFACE. 5 manifestation of God and of the glory which is yet to be revealed. And they show what harvest the Spirit is ripening on these fields of creation, of which His first fruits in our hearts and bodies are the earnest and the pledge.

They are now sent forth upon whatever mission of instruction, of comfort, or of warning the God of all grace and truth may have in store for them.

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CONTEISTTS.

PAGE

I. — The Father of Lights .... 9

II. — The Word made Flesh .... 26

III.— What is Man? 48

IV — Angels, Authorities, and Powers . 65

V. — Things Visible and Invisible , . 71

VI. — The Prince of this World ... 85

VII. — The Power of Darkness ... 94

VIII. — The Natural and the Spiritual . 106

IX. — The Old Man and the New . . .117

X — The Sacrifice of the Body . . . 133

XI. — Physical Salvation 147

XII. — What is Eternal Life? . . . 158 XIII.— The Everlasting Fire . . . .166 XIV. — Destruction Qui HoMt) : A New

Thought about Future Punishment 181

XV. — The Song of Moses and of the Lamb . 191

THE FATHER OF LIGHTS.

Do not err^ my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from, the Father of Lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of His own will begat He us with the word of His truth, that we should he a kind of first fruits of His creatures. — St. James i. 16-18.

The number of those who look upon it as a superstition to l)elieve in God or pray to Him seems to be everywhere increasing. Few indeed deny that there is a Supreme Power, or primal force, the origin of all things. But is this " Power" in any proper sense a person ? Is He a God and Father? What is His relation to this system of nature, all of whose forces move on fixed lines? And what is my relation to it?

Is my little barque of life, launched on to this tide of motion and of being, a stray waif running out to unknown seas, or shall it some day float me into the presence of God, where I shall see His face, and know that He is my Father, and that He has been guiding me by an unseen hand across all these seas to a home in His palace and His heart?

Scepticism about God in these days has taken this special form. If it concede His existence at all, it seeks to remove Him from any personal connection with the orderly operations of nature, and with the bounties which flow to us through them.

Now, as if in foresight of the paths of error by which so many are being led away from the knowledge of God, whom to know is life eternal, Scripture records this warning, "Do not err. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down to us from the Father of lights.^^ The assertion is that all nature's repositories of force were made and stored by Him, and that the whole system is freighted with ministries of mercy to man. And a ^reason for this is given : " Of His own will begat He us with the word of His truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures.'^

The title here given to God is significant. He is called "the Father of lights," or of "the lights," for the article occurs with the noun. This title is unique, and occurs nowhere else in Scripture. The 139th Psalm gives the clue to its

THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. H

meaning. We are there exhorted to give thanks unto the Lord, for His mercy endureth forever. And among the miglity works of Creation cited in proof of His goodness is this : " To Him that made great lights, for His mercy endureth forever." The apostle here is directing our minds to God as Creator, not merely in a general way, but as the Author of the innumerable lights that stud the heavens. The term "lights" includes with the sun the whole family of which he is a member, the fixed stars which bespangle the midnight sky. These are all suns, great lights. And they are called fixed stars, because the designation here given to their Creator may be applied to them. They have no variableness, neither shadow of turning. The original word here has become one of the technical words of astronomy. It is " parallax." These fixed stars have no parallax or sensible change of position in the ^kies. Science, indeed, claims to have discovered by its delicate instruments a slight parallax in two or tliree of the nearest of them. But with these few exceptions, and these as the result of a marvellous scrutiny, these innumerable lights have no parallax. That is, they are so far away that, by observations taken six months apart and with a baseline the whole diameter of the earth's orbit, they give no appreciable angle of deviation. Their place in the heavens is unchanged.

And if this be true of these heavenly orbs, how much more can we assert of the Father of them that with Him there is no variableness. These multitudinous stars are all in motion and passing through vast changes, although they seem not so to us. " They shall perish, but Thou remainest : yea, all of them shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed. But Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.'^

This title, then, presents God to us as the Maker of these countless stars which shine by their own light through the infinite depths of space, and all the mighty forces of which they are the centres as ministers of His, that do His pleasure.

And what a large idea does this give us of our God! These heights and depths around us are strewn with stars like the sands on the sea-shore for multitude. Science has multiplied our powers of vision a thousand-fold. And as far out as she is able to peer she finds the near and the remoter shores of space crowded with their constellations, and these lighting the way to myriads more beyond. And the spectroscope has told us that the very same minerals and gases we find here on the earth compose the substance of our sun, and blaze in the photospheres of these countless suns. They are all made out of the same materials. One mind must have contrived and one hand have formed them all. And of all these lights He is the Father who is also said to be the Former of our bodies and the Father of our spirits.

But still we have to ask, Why is this title employed in this connection? It would seem as if it anticipates the very objections we hear in these days against the doctrine of an overruling God, the Almighty Maker and Provider of all things.

Men argue that if there be a Creator of so vast a system, He surely cannot concern Himself with the minute care of all the tiny creatures who inhabit this speck in His domains. Astronomy, it is said, sinks this earth the Bible makes so much of quite out of sight. And then again, it is asserted, if tliere be a God, He has made the universe to be a system of fixed and unalterable laws. Its potent forces know no change and no defeat. Wise men tell us that this system is just as stolid and unyielding to the voice of prayer as is the moon to the baying of a dog.

This title, then, opposes itself to all these atheistic or naturalistic conceptions. It asserts that behind this vast and rigid system there is enthroned a Father. That it should be an orderly system is only a proof of the perfect wisdom with which it was at first adjusted. There is no need of rectification or amendment. But it is also a beneficent system. Behind these huge batteries 2 of natural forces there is a benevolent director of them all.

Even science teaches that these lights in the heavens are the repositories of those mighty forces which pervade all space and sustain us and all things in daily being. Here on the earth, the little nook of creation with which we are most familiar, it was these all-pervasive forces that rounded its nebulous mass into a world and diversified it with continents and seas, and smoothed its wrinkled surface into the lovely hills and dales among which man was placed. They have tempered its climate into this happy equilibrium between heat and cold, and stored it with mineral wealth and clothed it with verdure and mantled it with beauty as a fit abode for the intelligent creature who was to be placed upon it. And they now ripen its growing crops and fill it with fertility and abundant food for man and beast. Even human science confesses this, and traces back these beneficent effects to the sun, primal source of light to the earth, and to the universal forces that flash from all suns. It bids us behold in these the source of every good and perfect gift.

But Revelation takes us one step further. It not only takes us to the threshold of this temple of the skies, but bids us enter and behold therein the face of our Father. It teaches us not only that He framed and now manages this wide and complex system of forces, but that He specially has made them to be the bearers of His bounty and love to us. They are the jewelled fingers on His hand by which He reaches down to us every good and perfect gift. The long fingers of light and of electric energy that reach down from sun and stars, that search out the seed buried in the* ground and warm it in<^o life and fruitfulness to give us food, are the fingers of His loving hand. These hidden forces that paint for us the landscape and tint the clouds with gold and crimson in the evening sky are part of His thoughtful, tender ministry to us. And equally all our social blessings are rivulets from the same stream of bounty. These invisible forces of nature, how little we know of their influence upon us and over us. They are potent in all the influences that mould society and nations. They control the development of every individual life. They have power to bless and to curse, to smite and to heal. They fill the mountains around about us with horses and chariots of fire.

And this suggests the inquiry by what right science, which traces back the phenomena of motion and of being to these forces, assumes that they are simply material and unintelligent. The only system of forces in nature or in history which the Bible recognizes is an intelligent system. The executive forces of "the Father of lights" in creation bear such names as these, — "Angels, Principalities, and Powers." These names imply intelligence. They transcend the sphere of the material. They are spiritual powers. It is a false and fatal mistake to assume that these forces, of which science can take some cognizance, but of whose real nature she is ignorant, are blind, unthinking agents. Scripture does not so regard them. If it does not positively identify these spiritual forces called " angels'' with the great forces of nature which we call light, heat, gravitation, and so on, it implies that the connection between them is most intimate.* And this gives a new force and beauty to the statement we are considering, that operating through all these forces, compelling them to be the messengers of His care and bounty to us, is their Father and ours, from whom cometh down to us, through their ministry, every good and perfect gift.

And here we turn aside to enforce a special lesson from this passage. The apostle had been speaking in this connection about the transient fickle good which men pursue when they are drawn aside after their own lust and enticed. He urges them not to be thus decoyed. For all true and substantial blessings every perfect and well-

* Heb. i. 7, revised version ; Ps. xviii. 10 ; civ. 3, 4, etc. ; Rev. XIV. 18.

rounded gift will come to them from Him who made all things, if we do not err from His ways. And whatever sliort-lived good a sinful course secures, we shall find ourselves running abreast of that eternal tide of blessing which God set in motion when He made the worlds.

But we pass now to consider the statement annexed to the declaration we have been considering, that all good gifts come down to us from the primal source of creation's lights. "Of His own will begat He us with the word of His truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures." Here we are introduced to the reason why God so constructed this system of the universe as to make it a store-house of blessings for us. Here also we get a glimpse into this mystery of creation which science cannot give us, whicJi the wisdom of this world never dreamed of. It is here intimated that this universe of worlds is a great field which God is tilling for a harvest. He has a certain kind of fruit He wants to produce upon it. Mere boundless wastes of fiery suns are not what He is seeking in this system of creation. He wants it peopled with living intelligent creatures. Here on the earth He has ploughed and tilled and raised successive forms of animal life, each series higher than the last, until, last and highest of all. He has produced man, made in His own image. Even evolution teaches this. b 2*

ISTow, in an important sense, this human race are the first fruits of His creatures. The one perfect member of this race was the Archetype toward which the whole system converges. (Coloss. i. 15.) He is the Ideal Man, the First-Born of every creature. And although this Perfect Type or Image of God was not attained in Him and cannot be in us, except through death and new creation, yet in this transition stage of being, while yet we bear the image of the earthy manhood, this race, in virtue of its present likeness to God and its future possibilities, is the noblest harvest yet ripened on this soil. It is not said of angels, however near they may be to Him, that they are God's embodied image. Man, so far as we know, alone sustains this dignity. And science, so far as it speaks at all upon this point, seems to confirm the supposition that nowhere in the universe is there a creature so linked to God in origin and destiny as man. It asserts that the nearest of all the heavenly bodies, the moon, cannot be inhabited. It fails to find the proper conditions of cosmical order and chemical equilibrium suitable for the abode of such a creature upon any of our sister planets in the solar system. They all seem to be in some one of those formative stages through which the earth, in its previous geologic history, has passed. You could never find a home for such a creature as man amid the hot and vaporous masses with which Jupiter is belted, nor among the incandescent vapors of the sun. And all the other visible bodies of the universe are similar suns.

There is nothing, then, in science which contradicts the Bible statement that man, made in God's image, is the first fruits of His creatures. On the other hand, modern astronomy, which has advanced far beyond the speculations of Thomas Dick and other glowing writers, who wrote splendid lectures about other inhabited worlds, now dispels this fanciful imagery with the stern and somewhat modest statement that, so far as she can see, she does not find anywhere else the same favorable conditions for created life as exist here on the earth. Such conditions may exist indeed in other solar systems. All that can be affirmed is that science has revealed nothing which contravenes this statement of Scripture, that the first fruits of God's creatures, the most advanced and ripened harvest that has yet blossomed out upon these sparkling fields, is this race of men. And therefore we can better understand why they are stored with blessing for us. The purpose He had in mind when He framed these worlds was to crown this system of His works with an embodied image of Himself. The fiery nebulous vapors that first filled all space were created as they were, because they were to contain the substances and the formative energies out of which man was to be evolved. These rounded the earth into shape because she contained within lier womb this anointed race. The 139th Psalm implies this when it sings, "I w411 praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest par'ts of the earth.

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them." Observe here how the Word of God reverses and puts to shame the speculations of men. Men would look upon the human frame as the proficient product of a tentative struggle in nature up through lower forms of life until this hio-her has been reached. As if she had been blindly struggling after more perfect organism under no higher impulse than a general tendency toward improvement. The law of *^ the survival of the fittest" is put forth as adequate to account for this result. Whereas the Bible represents the creation of man as definitely in the mind of God at the beginning of the series, and all its lower links as preparatory thereto. So that man derives his importance, not in that he is the highest product of a long series of previous lower organisms, but these lower forms derive all their importance from the fact that they prefigure man. They are rude draughts of the more perfect model which was to be hereafter fashioned, and all of whose members were shaped and wrought out in the thought of God from the foundation of the world. We go back, then, in order to find the purposes of our creation, to the point where the Bible conducts us, " before the worlds were made.'' And so we find a good reason why He made these worlds of light to be store-houses to us of every good and perfect gift. We were to be the first fruits of His creatures.

But while all this is true, in a general way, of the human race, truth compels us to state further that only a select class of this favored race is reaching toward the end of its creation.

While humanity, as such, is a first fruits of creation. Scripture speaks about a first fruits company from this race of mankind. Indeed, this designation is specially limited and applied by St. James to Christians, those who have been begotten " by the word of His truth." Scripture is replete with references to this anointed race.* Of them Jesus is the First-Born and the Head. He is presented in the New Testament as a newlycreated man. He was first on earth as an earthly man, in the likeness of sinful flesh. But, passing through death. He arose on the other side of

* Rom. viii. 29 ; Coloss. i. 18 ; Eev. xiv. 4.

it in a higher order of manhood, a glorified and immortal man. Hence He is styled "the Beginning of the Creation of God," " the First-Born from the dead." The grand archetypal Image of God, the pattern of manhood, which He had in mind when He made the worlds, was at last produced. And so when He rose from the dead He took His rightful place, as the Son and Heir of God, on the summit of this system of creation. All its principalities and powers were put beneath His feet.* He was truly the first fruits man, first begotten from the dead, the Image of the Invisible God, the appointed Heir of all things.f But Scripture also teaches that He is the First- Born among many brethren. There is a church of the first-born, whose names are enrolled in heaven, who are predestinated to be conformed to His image, and who are therefore joint heirs with Him. This is the royal race of whom these words are strictly true : " A kind of first fruits of His creatures." They are to stand in the front rank and to wear the crown of this vast empire. They are to be set over all the works of His hands.J Babes and sucklings they may be now, as the 8th Psalm teaches, of this dying race. But out of their mouth has God ordained the strength that shall still the enemy and the avenger; that shall rescue the earth and all these blighted fields from the destroyer^s reign. The God of peace shall bruise Satan under their feet. And through them, after their resurrection from the dead, shall the lustre of God's grace and bounty be diffused not only over the earth, now mantled with the curse of sin and death, but over wider and wider circuits of creation, until all its waste and fiery fields shall blossom out into life and beauty, and become vocal with His praise.

All this, and more than we can express or conceive, is implied in this and kindred passages of Scripture, which teach that we, who have believed on Jesus, and have been made partakers of His life, are now a kind of first fruits of His creatures.

And so again we see a new force and beauty in the previous statement that God has stored all creation's lights with blessing for us. This was His most cherished thought in their formation. To this end He hung them in the firmament. To this end He first marshalled and nov/ directs all the forces that traverse these boundless plains. "Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation ?" On the silent wings of these forces, which men call by such names as Light, Electricity, Gravitation, but concerning whose true nature they know but little, on their darting pinions flashing from star to star, across inconceivable chasms, leaping down abysmal depths, searching out the buried seed and raising it up into an hundred-fold as food for us, stealing into our chambers on the wings of the morning, folding their wings around us in the darkness of the night, shielding us from the pestilence that walketh in darkness and the destruction that wasteth at noonday, bearing us up in their hands lest at any time we dash our foot against a stone, these invisible messengers are our loving guardians, our bounteous almoners, bringing down from their Father above and our Father every good and perfect gift to us, whom He has designated to this high honor, to be a kind of first fruits of His creatures.

Yea, more, St. Paul, in the epistle to the Romans, warrants us in going further. He represents the whole creation, not only as charged with this ministry of mercy to us; it awaits with longing desire, as a mother waits for her unborn child, the redemption of our bodies and the time of our manifestation as the sons of God.* Their outbirth into the glory of the new creation shall be her rest and joy. So closely has God bound up this mystery of redemption with this mystery of creation.

And if our eyes are anointed with the eye-salve of His word, if we truly prize these great lights kindled on its pages to guide us through the darkness of this present time, no false lights of human wisdom or science can ever obscure in our souls the light of this bright and Morning Star.

Nothing shall close our eyes to the fact of God's presence all around us, of His loving ministry of mercy and of chastisement, too, through all this system of laws and forces to which we are now subject. Beyond Sirius, beyond those vast fields of light across which Orion leads his bands, we shall discern the shining of this greater light, — "The Lord God is our Sun and our Shield.'^ All nature will seem to us alive with God, and we shall see His hand and feel the warm beating of His heart in all, and all its agencies of good or ill will seem but fingers on the hand by which He is leading us up along our pilgrim path on to the heights of eternal life and glory. There no veil of created things shall any longer hide from us the full vision of our Father. The veil will be lifted, and we shall see Him face to face and know Him heart to heart.

II. The Word Made Flesh

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. — St. John i. 14.

No Scripture phrase is more deeply significant than this, " The Word of God." Christ is the complete revelation to us of the Father. Hence He is denominated " The Word." Of Him are predicated the titles, the acts, the names, and attributes of God. ^'Without Him," St. John affirms, "was not anything made that was made."

It was the special mission of this beloved apostle to present this mystery. The Word, of whom he writes, is not an attribute but a person, who, from everlasting, has been the outgoing of the Father in the works of creation and redemption. This divine Person, he tells us, was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Such is the great mystery of godliness. Jesus Christ, who we know was man, was truly God. The Christian confession concerning Him is that of St. Peter, ^' We believe and are sure that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." On 26 tins Rock the church is built. And he that so confesses is born of God.

As this is the foundation-truth in the Christian scheme, by which it stands or falls, it is not surprising that the chief assaults of unbelief have been from the first aimed against it. Perhaps from no quarter has it been more plausibly assailed than from the teachings of science, falsely so called. Since the time St. John wrote, "All things were made by Him," science has revolutionized the common conception of the universe. Then men thought the earth the greatest thing in creation. Now we know it to be but a speck in the mighty volume of star-dust the breath of God has rolled through boundless space. A drop to the ocean, a grain of sand to its wide stretch of shore, is all that the earth is to the universe. And yet we are confronted with the amazing announcement that the Maker of all these worlds was born a babe in Bethlehem. "He was made flesh and dwelt among us.'^ "The world might have believed that,'' says the sceptic, " eighteen hundred years ago, but the advanced science of our day pities its credulity."

But let us see whether this cavil, so boastingly put forth, has any ground even in reason or science to rest upon. It is a sufficient reply to it to say that there is something grander in creation than all this material glory. The mind that is able to investigate these subjects, that can reach over these vast spaces and measure these huge orbs, that can range on wings of light through these trackless depths and pay its intelligent tribute of praise to the Maker of these countless worlds, is greater than the worlds themselves. Jesus taught men that the whole world was not of equal value with one human soul. And this mass of worlds, considered as agglomerations of matter, are not worth so much. Moreover, the element of size provides no standard by which to measure the thoughts and ways of God. Before Him, the Infinite, all finite things are equally great or small. If the earth were millions of times larger than it is, and man proportionately enlarged in person and in faculties, the disproportion between him and his Maker would not be one whit the less.