JSL-06-Chapter Six:

Chapter Six:
Bearing Witness

If I dwell upon the preaching of the gospel with its concomitants as presented in the commission, before proceeding to the consideration of other elementary principles, it is because of my high appreciation of its transcendent importance. Having in previous chapters discussed the subject matter of the gospel, the wisdom of God in obtaining that this gospel shold be preached, and having considered the necessity for the presence and power of the Divine Spirit to qualify for this preaching, we come at length and in fine to the witnessing of the gospel. When the Saviour says to the apostles at the close of Luke’s version of the commission, "And ye are witnesses of these things," he refers to their testimony to the objective facts of the gospel of which they were personally cognizant. They were to bear witness to what they themselves with their natural senses have seen and heard. It goes without saying that, in this precise and definite meaning, the application of the passage is confined to the apostles. No one can now bear such testimony as they were competent, and therefore required, to furnish. But it occurs to me that, underlying this special and necessarily restricted application of the test, there is a broad principle of universal application, and of very great value. Before proceeding, however, to the consideration of this principle, I deem it necessary to call attention to an abuse of the word “testimony” and its cognates, which has been introduced into the pulpit and elsewhere, and which I think is not friendly to the cause of truth. I refer to the practice, which is quite common in some places, of narrating certain emotional or other personal experiences, and calling it a “testimony for Christ.” Frequently it is made a leading object, with professional and entusiastic evangelists to induce men to arise in the congregaiton and “testify for Christ.” Now the objection to this is not that what is said is false or even doubtful. It may every word be true. The man thus “testifying” may have experienced all the peace and joy and comfort which he reports; and if the questions appertained simply to the fact of such experiences, he would be a competent “witness,” and his “testimony” might be regarded as conclusive. But the question upon which he is assuming to testify is not the fact of his experience, but the cause, the meaning, the explanation of it. And while he may give us his honest judgment upon this point — his opinion, his belief, his conviction — it is in no proper sense testimony, and would not be regarded as evidence before any competent tribunal. And now if this practice of so-called “testifying” bases itself, as I suppose it must, upon those scriptures requiring the apostles to bear witness to what they had seen and known, the misapplication and abuse of such scriptures are manifest, and nothing more need be said.

We come now to consider the meaning for us, and for all men, and for all time, of the Saviour’s commission to bear testimony; of the fact that he raised up and qualified chosen men who were to “be withnesses unto him in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). I think that no one whose attention is called to it can read this passage and the numerous others of similar import, without perceiving that our Saviour evidently contemplated that the production of faith and the propagation of religion were not to be by the inworking of a direct and supernatural agency, but on the contrary, were to be strictly in harmony with the natural constitution and established laws of the human mind. Men were not to be made to believe, but were to be furnished grounds and reasons for believing. There intelligence was to be addressed; facts were to be submitted; evidences in proof of those facts adduced; and these, if duly weighed and considered, would satisfy the mind and result in belief. Faith comes by hearing — by hearing that naturally which is designed and fitted to produce faith.

It is also to be noted that, in harmony with this same intelligent design and most reasonable contemplation, the Saviour provided, not only that the apostles should bear witness to the facts which han come within their personal knowledge, but that their testimony shuld be confirmed by evidences drawn from the sacred Scriptures. Hence, primarily by his instruction, and subsequently by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, they were made competent to show that “thus it is written that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day.”

Finally, it is implied in the commission, and is elsewhere expressly taught, that the Spirit for whose coming they were to wait was to come as a witness — bearing testimony concurrent with their own. We read, for instance, in John 15:26-27 : “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me; and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.” Afterwards, therefore, Peter and the other apostles might well say: “We are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Spirit, whom God hath given to them that obey him” (Acts 5:32).

It must now, I think, be sufficiently manifest that the design and expectation of the Saviour were not to constrain men to accept him; their minds, their wills, their self-hood were to be left intact; and they were to be led to him by the presentation of proofs — evidences to convince them that he was the Christ; and all the agencies were engaged in this enterprise, both natural and supernatural, concurred in this design, and co-operated to this end. As to the practical lesson which we may learn from the facts above stated, it is not far to seek. It is a lesson of principle rather than of detail. We are not able, as were the apostles, to bear orignal testimony to the facts of the gospel; the Holy Spirit no longer witnesses with signs and wonders, and divers miracles and gifts; but it by no means follows that testimony has ceased to be necessary, or that in anything which may be properly called preaching it can be dispensed with. It is just as true in this age as it was in the first, that faith is the “belief of the truth”; and it is generated in precisely the same way that it as in the beginning. Hence it may be noticed, doubtless many of my readers have noticed, that the most successful preachers of our times — those who are doing most to promote the honor and glory of Christ, by leading men to trust and love and serve him — are those whose preaching is full of evidences. I do not refer to the formal and systematized “evidences of Christianity”; nor yet to evidences in support of the inspiration and authority of the Bible. The occasions when these are necessary in the pulpit, if ever, are rare and special. But what I mean is the presentation of the testimonies concerning Christ — the testimonies as we have them treasured up for us in the written word. Surely if Christ enjoined the use of this evidence, and if the apostles and the Holy Spirit availed themselves of it — quoting, applying and urging it, as proof of the Christ-hood and Divinity of Jesus — it is still valid for all the purposes that it then subserved; and, with the addition of the New Testament, it gives us a full and inexhaustible store of divine and most effective testimony. “Preach the word” “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.” “He was bured and rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” “The things which God foreshowed by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ should suffer, he thus fulfilled.” This, then, is the God-appointed road to faith. It is not by talking about it, nor by insisting upon its importance, nor by explaining its nature, its place in the Christian system, or its effect upon the conduct and relations of him who believes — all of which has its interest and its subidiary importance; but to produce it — to generate it in the heart — we must rely upon “the testimony of Jesus” which is “the spirit of prophecy,” and upon those suppletory evidences with which the New Testament everywhere abounds. “Faith cometh” — cometh into existence — “by hearing the word of God.” This chapter, and with it the general subject of the gospel, of which it forms a part, may properly close with a word of encouragement. There is no higher office nor honor than that of bearing witness to Christ. Apostles and prophets, angels from heaven, the Spirit of God, and God himself, bear witness to him. And although our testimony be, as it must be, only secondary and subordinate, it is still of high consequence to give life and warmth and force to that which else would be quiescent and inoperative. Whoever, therefore, is able, by study and meditation, and by daily communion with God, to bring forth his testimony from the fullness of his own soul and as the heartburst of his own love; nay, to bring it forth with the tenderness, the grace and the power of the Divine Spirit with which he is filled, may well feel that he is in fellowship with all highest intelligences, and that he is engaged in the most sacred and most important of vocations.