03.14. CHAPTER XIV. THE POWER OF CHRIST'S TEACHING
CHAPTER XIV. THE POWER OF CHRIST’s TEACHING.
"Where the word of a King is, there is Power." Ecclesiastes 8:4.
DeQuincey has drawn a beautiful line of distinction between the "literature of knowledge and the literature of power." "What," he asks, "do you learn from Paradise Lost? Nothing at all. What do you learn from a cookery book? Something new, something you did not know before, in every paragraph! But would you therefore put the wretched cookery book on a higher level of estimation than the divine poem? What you owe to Milton is not any knowledge of which a million separate items are still but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly level; what you owe is power, that is, exercise and expansion to your own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and each separate influx is a step upward a step ascending as upon Jacob’s ladder, from earth to mysterious altitudes over the earth. All the steps of knowledge from the first to the last carry you farther on the same plane, but could never raise you one foot above your ancient level of earth; whereas the very first step in power is a flight, is an ascending into another element where earth is forgotten!"
Now in the teachings of Jesus, we have both the literature of knowledge and of power, and both of the highest order. There is such a thing as lustre without weight, even as there may be weight without lustre. Here we have both: the most glorious moral radiance with the weightiest moral dignity, worth, sublimity!
Christ’s teaching bears marks of Divine Inspiration. Here are "thoughts that breathe and words that burn." These are living words, there is about them a vital breath and a celestial brightness; compared with them all literature is dead.
How fragmentary are the works that survive the lapse of centuries! we have but a few relics, saved from the ruins of ancient letters. But Christ’s words, recorded by a few unlettered men, according to his own prophecy do "not pass away;" they are thus far immortal. Kingdoms perish, thrones crumble, nations drop out of history, but firmer than the eternal hills, Christ’s words live, and they live simply because they cannot die; there is in them the undying spirit of God. The Word of Christ proves itself to be the Word of God by its living energy, and its penetrating power. "It is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." This is the language in which the Bible itself expresses the power of God’s Word; and if Christ were the living word, his teaching must correspond. Mark the beauty of the figure. Here is a Damascus blade, skillfully shaped and sharpened, bright as a mirror, keen on both edges and burning at the point. Behold the Titanic warrior wield it, with a strength and skill so terrible that it pierces through the very body of the foe, burying itself to the hilt, dividing the joints and cleaving to the marrow, and laying bare the very vitals. In such hands the sword becomes a living thing the coat of mail can neither stay nor dull its edge; from the crest of the helmet to the skirt of the kilt, it is ripped asunder, and by the same blow the body of the victim is cleft in twain. Had the word of Christ any such power? Let the history of nearly two millenniums tell us. For eighteen centuries it has proved itself a living sword, cutting through all obstacles, piercing to the inmost soul, with convicting and converting power; cleaving through the hardest mail of bigotry, prejudice, superstition, self-righteousness; and revealing the secret thoughts. And all this the word of Christ is doing today.
I. That peculiar power in Christ’s words which we call "Penetration" is well expressed by the symbol of the sword, keen-edged, sharp-pointed. His teaching somehow pierces to the depths of consciousness and conscience, and reads and reveals the thoughts and the intents of the heart; so that there is no created being that is not searched by it. Christ’s words shew that he knew by divine insight, "what was in man." Have you never seen yourself revealed to yourself in the Word of God? the secret springs of your conduct exposed? What a revelation of human nature, of familiarity with the human heart! The sermon on the Mount dissects the very soul of man: it is both an exponent and an expositor of the secret life. The enigmas of human character and conduct find there a master solution. Note a few examples.
How moral philosophers have puzzled over the almsgiving of a selfish soul. Christ explains it by the love of applause. You marvel why the Pharisee parades his prayers, for you feel that secrecy and devoutness go together. Christ tells you it is prompted by the lust of notoriety; the prayers are to man not to God. You are perplexed because some, who are blind to their own faults see, with uncommon clearness, the faults of others. Christ tells you that the beam in the eye of one man makes him see a mote in his brother’s. Hence the Pharisee condemns ostentation, the bigot denounces intolerance, the hypocrite rebukes insincerity, and the backslider, inconsistency. Your simple soul is surprised because the faultfinder pecks at you in your very effort to please. Christ shews you that a heart, ill at ease with itself, vents its unrest in snapping and growling at others.
You ask, how can the same man be lax in some things and severely rigid in others? Christ answers, that it is the effort of self-righteousness to make up for laxity one way, by severity another; as when one feasts six days and fasts the seventh, or compounds with his conscience for sensual sins by bodily penance; or cheats his neighbor all the week but would not black his boots on Sunday; or gives money away to atone for getting it unfairly!
You are again perplexed to find enthusiasm and apathy in the same character - this divine teacher accounts for the strange mixture by instability of character, a life of impulse instead of principle.
Marvelous indeed was Christ’s insight into human nature. With divine delicacy, yet with divine certainty, he lays his hand upon the heart of the moralist who, boastful of his prim propriety, triumphantly asks "what lack I yet?" and touches instantly the sensitive spot. "Go sell that thou hast and give to the poor." In that fair life there was a secret weakness - the greed of gain, and it corrupted all the rest. He, without hesitation, touched at once the hidden idol, and the fair life withered into deformity. The penetration of Christ’s words struck his most gifted foes dumb. Pharisees and Herodians forgot their hostility and conspired to catch him in his talk: "Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar or not?" "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s." Then the Sadducees sought to entangle him in a question on the resurrection: but again his wisdom put them to silence. Then the Pharisees returned to the assault and cunningly tried to entrap him into giving some one command of God undue prominence. And when again he read their hearts and so majestically eluded their snare, from that day they "dared ask him no more questions!"
Fouque has a fable of a magic mirror, so wonderful that he who looked in it might read his own character, history and destiny. Goth and Moor, Frank and Hun came from far to see their past and future unveiled.
Here is the true magic mirror this keenest sword is also a polished blade: it not only cuts deep, but it reflects character. Nothing is more plain, in Christ’s words, than an insight and a foresight, far beyond man. Here, as in the brook, is the inverted image, which shews how deep is our degradation but it tells of our possible elevation and salvation even as the stars are no deeper down in the reflection than they are high in the heaven.
Go look in this mirror, see your own thoughts revealed, your concealed chains of ambition, avarice, appetite. Self-deception is without excuse; he who tries himself by Christ’s standard of duty may learn himself what he is and what he may be.
Blessed indeed to the true man is a true in sight into himself. He can devoutly pray with Burns, "O wad some power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as others see us!" But what is it not worth to see ourselves as God sees us!
Ah, blessed mirror of the Word, Thine image is not dim nor blurred.
Looking in thee myself I see As God’s Omniscient Eye sees me!
II. The adaptation of Christ’s words to every want of every soul is, even more than their penetration, the secret of their power and the proof of their inspiration; indeed they pierce, not to wound, but to cure; not to hurt, but to heal. They are for all alike, the child, the man, the ignorant, the cultured, in all ages and climes, at all times of life. To the infant in the cradle, and to the aged, at the doors of the tomb, you whisper the same precious words: they guide the doubting, solace the troubled, assure the timid, and encourage the penitent. The very blade that pierces so deep, bears on its point the balm of Gilead, and it is to carry the balm that it thrusts so deeply. It is half the cure to know the disease. And the divine teacher helps us to the knowledge of ourselves that we may feel our need and find our cure. He does not apply the soothing ointment until he has first cut out the fatal cancer; and he shews his skill just as much in the use of the blade as in the use of the balm. The convicted sinner and the afflicted saint alike testify to the adaptation of Christ’s words. One keen-edged utterance strikes home to the heart, penetrates to the conscience, and makes it smart as though under the hot iron. Remorse so keen and cutting that it drives him to the verge of despair, fills the sinner with agony. His guilt seems beyond pardon. The sword has gone deep, the soul and spirit almost seem divided asunder. But had the truth been less penetrating, it would not have suited the sinner’s case; any milder thrust would not have pierced the joints of his harness of hard habit and indifference. And when the deep wound heals under the balm of gracious promise, and the anguish of penitence gives way to the peace of faith, the sinner sees the adaptation of Christ’s words. So too the sorrowing saint finds in them the very solace he needs. The sharp dart of affliction seems to part the very soul in twain, but the sorrow goes no deeper than the solace. It is because Christ’s words penetrate so deep that they make the words of man seem so hollow and shallow. Here only is the celestial branch which sweetens the bitter water of Marah. Christ’s teaching presents a perfect system of truth.
III. He set up no claim as a philosopher: yet where will any philosophy be found worthy to compare with his teachings?
Among all the systems which gave rules for the conduct of life, two stand in the front rank, viz: Epicureanism and Stoicism.
Epicurus sought to frame a scheme of morals with happiness as its end: and his conception of happiness was not a low one: it must be virtuous and enduring. Yet it was a mere passionless or impassive state after which he taught men to strive. The happiness of the gods, he said, is repose, they neither take nor give trouble, and have no care about our affairs. And so the chief end of the wise man is to get to this state of apathy.
Stoicism taught that the wise man must be self-contained, have all the elements of happiness within, and be indifferent to pleasure and pain, sickness or health, wealth or want; and as all actions are from within, he may commit deception, suicide, or even murder, at a proper time and in a virtuous character. The virtuous stoic was like cold marble, proudly superior to pain and pleasure, smothering his own sorrows and repressing pity for the sorrows of others.
Set beside these systems the pure teaching of Christ, which puts man’s happiness in holiness, union with God by faith, hope, love: puts in the place of self-indulgence for pleasure’s sake, self- denial for the sake of humanity. It makes men neither passionless nor impassive, but teaches us to rule all impulses by reason and right, and to open hand and heart to every sufferer. Man’s chief end is to love and serve God, and bless his fellow-man. The presiding law of all life is love. When philosophy has reference to God, it is theology. Can any system of human theology compare with the teaching of the Son of God? In most cases human systems are marred by grotesque absurdities and fanciful follies.
Mohammedanism boasts 150,000,000 of adherents. It says sublimely, "There is one God;" but if you take away what it has borrowed from Judaism and from Jesus, what have you left? An absurd fatalism, which denies all moral freedom; one-sided views of God, all power, no love; a sensual paradise whose black-eyed houris and voluptuous pleasures make heaven only one vast harem!
There is Hindooism, hoary with age, having 500,000,000 followers, offering the choice between all God and no God, pantheism or atheism; teaching transmigration of souls, and full of moral abominations. It is an insult to Christianity to talk of comparing the teaching of Jesus with Buddhism or Brahminism.
Pass all others by and stop a moment with that which leads all the rest by right of worth, viz: the system of Socrates and Plato. Here we find a Supreme God, Creator, Ruler, arranging and upholding the universe, fountain of all truth, beauty and goodness. First principles of morality are his laws, not to be broken with impunity; goodness and truth are the end of true living.
Socrates urged men, at risk of life, to be virtuous; lived himself in voluntary poverty, and died a martyr to his integrity. Yet even Socrates taught only doubtfully the immortality of souls, and with his last words ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Esculapius; yes, even he sanctioned "some kinds of the most horrible licentiousness; he was only a philosophical reformer."
Beyond Socrates and Plato we need not go; for men of purer doctrine and life the pagan world has not produced. Yet Plato owned that what he and the Greeks knew of the Gods they learned from the Israelites; so that Socratism is only a scion grafted on Judaism. Rousseau confessed that "if Socrates died like a philosopher, Jesus Christ died like a God!" And just this we may say of their life and teaching: If Socrates lived and taught like a philosopher, Jesus lived and taught like a God! From all human systems we turn to the teaching of Jesus, and even the pure but partial revelations of the Old Testament appear, as John saw in Apocalyptic vision, a waning moon beneath that New Testament gospel which, crowned with twelve stars, is clothed magnificently with the sun - that orb of glory before which stars fade and even the moon grows dim. From all the long search of centuries we come to end, at the cross of Christ, our pilgrim path. We have found him who is the way, the truth and the life. We are willing to sit at his feet and learn of God - the one God, a Spirit, infinite, unchangeable, eternal, almighty, holy, good; his dwelling, immensity, his life-time, eternity. Here we learn of man, sinful, responsible, immortal; of the hereafter, with its sure reward and retribution. Here only do we learn of a way of salvation both from the penalty and power of sin. By faith in the God-man, we become one with God and fit for heaven. Here we are taught true humility, a charity that reaches its arms around even one’s enemies, a self-sacrifice which is simply sublime; and to all this theory is added an example which, if possible, is grander than the theory. All this pure and perfect teaching is illustrated by one single and singular life; all these ideas of snow-white purity, magnanimous forgiveness and holy love, are made manifest in the flesh; the thought of the Divine Artist flashes forth in the colors of a living panorama, and we are challenged to make trial of the power of this teaching, whether it does not hide the life of man in God, and reveal the life of God in man. The teaching of Christ marks an era, an epoch in human history, which is like the flash of light upon the eternal night. Truths but faintly foreshadowed, if at all, in the best of human systems, are here taught clearly and fully. Christ is the Sun; all that move about him become luminous. But withdraw him, and even the light is darkness.
IV. Power. The actual practical power of Christ’s teaching vindicates his claim to divine honors.
1. It has satisfactorily solved the problems of the soul. All through human history there has run a dark thread of religious doubt. There are certain absorbing questions over which the world has been working, like a school-boy over the puzzling mysteries of mathematics; and these problems every great system of philosophy or theology has tried to explain. These are no minor questions either; they touch life at vital points. What is God? What is man? whence came he? whither goes he? How did sin come to be, and how is it to be put away? How was the universe made? What is death, and what is after death?
What answers have been given by even the best and purest schools of human thought? How unsatisfying how absurd! Think of the shocking and monstrous errors into which mankind have been betrayed in seeking peace with one’s self and with God! Idolatry, with human sacrifice and consecrated sensuality; pantheism, atheism, materialism every form of error in doctrine and evil in practice have been linked with the name of religion.
Now turn to the Christ of God; has he thrown the light of heaven on these dark questions? Think of that cross which is the central and focal point of history, toward which all lines converge from creation; from which all diverge to redemption completed in heaven. Look at Calvary, and in the speechless anguish of the Lamb of God behold every problem forever solved. Do you ask, "What is God?" Here you learn He is love - too just to redeem the sinner without a ransom; too pure to admit him to heaven without holiness; too good to leave him to certain, ruin. Do you ask, "What is man?" Look again at Calvary. Man must have been sinful, else why should the sinless One suffer in his stead? Man must have been immortal, for there would be no such sacrifice simply to save him from temporal woe. Man must be free and responsible; otherwise, both guilt and faith would be impossible. Do you ask, "How came sin?" Read the answer in the shadow of that cross; for had not sin come through man, God would not have needed to become man in order to expiate it. The race, which in the first Adam died, in the second Adam may be made alive. Do you inquire, How is man to be reconciled to God? That cross answers: The God-man is both a sacrifice and example; if we appropriate by faith the merits of his death, and by obedience the merits of his life, both pardon and purity become ours. The divine Teacher brings the wisdom of God to solve the problems of the soul. Questions over which the brightest and best of men have vainly studied, one solemn hour of dying agony has fully and forever answered. Amid the darkness which might be felt, there is this one spot where light is to be found. The cry that rent in twain the temple’s vail opened to view the holy of holies, with its glory everlasting. The smile of peace which shone on his face when he said "It is finished," and gave up the ghost, cleft the darkness of a world’s despair with the ray of reconciliation, and to this day no soul needs walk in the gloom. To follow this gleam is to come into the light of life.
2. A still more severe and decisive test of the power of Christ’s teaching remains to be applied. How does it actually affect human conduct and character? Is it a reforming, transforming power in the soul and in society? Complete as a philosophy, it meets man’s cravings; complete as a revelation, it solves man’s problems; does it, complete as a vital force, regenerate human life? Does it prove itself the truth of God by being the power of God? Paul declared that for this reason he was "not ashamed of the gospel of Christ;" not ashamed to preach it as a chained prisoner at Rome, the center and focus of pagan culture, because it was "the power of God unto salvation." His chains clanked as he preached it, but the chains fell from souls as he preached.
Note his word, "power" - δυναμις; the gospel is the divine dynamic force in human history. Practical tests are far more severe than theoretical. Whatever may be said of Epicurus and his philosophy, his followers became, after a time, selfish and sensual; appetite became their idol. And the word "epicure" is a sad witness of the low level of gluttony, intemperance and debauchery to which Epicureanism sank. The adherents of Stoicism were known as cold, hard men - cold even to cruelty, hard even before want and woe. And the Platonist, purest of all, only dreamed of virtue, and, with a high ideal before him, was practically a cypher!
Now, go back eighteen hundred years and start with Christ’s gospel, as it enters on its historic path. It enthrones and enshrines itself in a few humble, unlearned men, and their lives burn with its beauty and end with voluntary martyrdom. Follow the gospel of Christ as it marches down the centuries, and what do you see? Hard hearts, cruel with crime, that no human love could soften, no human power impress, are broken into contrition and love. Weak women, timid and trembling, are fortified by it to dare the scourge, the rack, the stake, the cross, or face without fear the fierce Numidian lion in the arena. Millions of martyrs, under no compulsion but the sweet constraint of love, welcome the agonies of torture, and from all the grades of society come up to the coliseum and soak its sands with their blood, rather than utter one word to disown or dishonor Him whom, not having seen, they love. The world can furnish no parallel to this! Men have died for a principle, and that principle an error; for a religious faith, and that faith a falsehood; but self-sacrifice so perfect, so pure and so repeated, is peculiar to the followers of Christ, and it has challenged the wonder and applause even of the enemies of Christ! The teaching of Christ has been for eighteen centuries the leaven and the lever of society - the leaven to pervade, the lever to uplift. At first a handful of disciples in the humble homes of Palestine; then that handful flung by persecution broadcast over the surrounding countries, till from Jerusalem the gospel spread to Antioch and Rome and Alexandria and Constantinople. The cross of a crucified criminal at Calvary is the nucleus of a world’s illumination and reformation! The fame of gospel triumphs spread beyond the fields of conflict, and as the lines of influence lengthened, and their circles reached round new centers of power and wickedness, in fear men cried out, "It is turning the world upside down!" The little army of Jesus, with no badges or banners, no weapon but truth and no force but persuasion, in the face of fearful persecutions, grew mightier year by year. The blood of the martyrs was the seed of new churches; it fell like fertilizing dew on a barren soil. Met with violence, the followers of Christ used no violence; though they kept silence with respect to social sins and vices which had taken the form of institutions, yet they did not tolerate evils with which they forbore. The gospel overcame evil with good. First making the man anew, through each follower it reached out to grapple with corrupt society. Gathering strength, like volcanic fires beneath the surface, it heaved social life like an earthquake, bringing to the dust its palaces of iniquity in high places, and its thrones of regal wrong. Without a loud denunciation of pagan usages, it has gone nowhere except to march over ruins of those nine social evils, polygamy, infanticide, legalized prostitution, capricious divorce, bloody and brutal games, death and punishment by torture, unjust wars, caste and slavery. The pure heart and true conscience of believers were the channels through which Christ undertook to overturn existing wrong. And yet mark the results. Some of these evils ceased to be common practices and became secret sins; some disappeared entirely; some were borne with, as doomed and decaying; and to this day, wherever Christ, the divine Teacher, goes by his gospel, in proportion as that prevails, these corrupt social usages shrink like owls of the night before the growing glory of the day-dawn.
M. Guizot says that he himself was a rationalist in religion until he undertook the preparation for the press of an edition of Gibbon. The investigation necessary to prepare notes for the edition led him to accept Christianity as a system that could not be explained by purely human forces.
Look at English history! About fifty years before Christ’s birth, Julius Caesar landed at Deal only to meet a brood of barbarians living in huts, and half hiding in skins their painted bodies. About 600 years afterward Christianity’s golden prow touched the sands of Britain’s island beach. And after twelve centuries of conflict and conquest, we see a grand Christian nation, with scarce a remnant of pagan social sins, empress of the seas, mistress of the world, with a band of empire reaching round the globe, Christianizing India and civilizing the inexpressible Turk; in the wake of her vessels and the very path of her armies carrying a blessing to the nations!
Four hundred years have not passed since this continent was thrown open to civilization; yet today sixty millions of freemen are here gathered; from hill and vale Christian churches lift their spires. The gospel of Christ set foot on New England shores and took up its march across the continent, and where in its track do you find these nine social evils? Polygamy hides in a corner, farthest removed from the New England that cradled our American Protestantism; infanticide everywhere a concealed crime; legalized prostitution almost unknown; capricious divorce encouraged, for the most part, only in irreligious communities; bloody and brutal games to be seen only in subterranean holes; death and punishment by torture a relic of antiquity only we never saw a rack, a cross, a hurdle; cruel wars, all wars, giving place to peaceful arbitration; caste unrecognized, and even slavery now no more existing among us. For nearly a century the State and the Church seemed half asleep to the fact that human bondage cursed our land; but God, in the late civil conflict, which was the fruit of slavery, marshaled the forces of our nation against this the last of our great national wrongs - this relic of a barbarous and pagan past!
Christ’s words are not only vital but vitalizing. We are prone to think there is little power in words without a voice, the magnetism of the man behind the speech. We think the world must be roused as Luther woke Germany, by the trumpet tongue. But the tongue that taught on Judean hills has been silent now for fifty generations, and still the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. You read these words, and there is life in them - a soul in them speaks to your soul. You read the words of men, and you feel in rare cases that you are communing with master minds - you read Christ’s, and you feel the thrill of the life of God.
Account for this inspiration if you can on any human theory! Who was it solved these problems of the race, brought life and immortality to light, taught man his origin, nature, interest and destiny! Who was he who reformed the soul and transformed society - who by his simple gospel still marches through the centuries with the tread and trophies of a conscious conqueror! Whose words are these that break hard hearts and yet heal broken hearts, that subdue the strong but nerve the weak, and today are turning the world upside down! Yes, mere words, with no magnetic voice to lend them power, no personal presence, yet before them vice and wrong, error in doctrine and evil in practice, tremble and totter and fall as before an earthquake.
Once again, what think you of Christ? Consider the teaching of Him who spake as never man spake. Surely the author of the Cosmos and of the Logos must be one and the same: for in both the Works of Creation and the Written Word we find the same inherent symmetry and beauty, grandeur and glory: the same marks of the infinite mind!
Full weight has never been given to the experimental proof, the witness of those who have subjected the gospel of Christ to that most decisive and conclusive of all tests, a personal trial. Somehow the teachings of Christ have found their way into the actual life of the world, to an extent wholly unequalled by those of any other person. The whole fabric of society is interwoven with them: they give shape to our laws and lives, our habits and customs, our ideas and ideals, our feelings and our faith. Our literature is so affected by Christ’s teachings that one-half of it revolves about the cross, and two-thirds of it is permeated or modified by the influence of Christianity.
Henry Rogers supposed that suddenly and miraculously, on some given night, every verse and line of Holy Scripture should be blotted or bleached out of human literature, so that every copy of the word of God should become a blank book, and every quotation from it or paraphrase of it, wherever found, should disappear - and it was astonishing to find how vast the number of books that would be rendered worthless! Our poetry, history, oratory, philosophy, science, are all inseparably linked with the truths which Christ taught. This supposition of Mr. Rogers suggests the kindred question which stirred Sir David Dalrymple to a strange task. At a Scotch dinner where he was present, the inquiry was raised whether if all copies of the New Testament had been burned before the end of the third century their contents could have been recovered from the writings of the first three centuries. Dalrymple’s antiquarian mind naturally took up such a task, and in course of two months he found and indexed in the writings of the first three hundred years nearly every verse of the New Testament; and he was satisfied that a new search would discover the rest.
Julian the apostate, and other foes of our faith who tried to burn out from human history all marks of Christianity, tried in vain. God had wrapped the very language of this divine teacher about the thoughts and hearts of men, as the delicate nerves wrap round our veins and arteries; and human literature must be destroyed in order to destroy the Bible - yes, human society must fall into ruins, and human history be blotted out, before Christ and Christianity could be withdrawn from this world. To this grand fact it behooves us to give heed. There must be some divine essence, where you find divine attributes. Here is a gospel first taught by a Nazarene, of thirty years; and it has proved itself practically omniscient, revealing even the thoughts of the heart, practically omnipresent, manifesting its presence everywhere, and practically omnipotent, turning the world upside down. For every effect science and philosophy unite to demand a cause, an efficient and sufficient cause. And for this effect there is but one cause that is sufficient, viz: a divine force must be hidden in this gospel: the secret of its energy is both mysterious and miraculous, and God is in it. Volcanic heavings must be explained by volcanic fires, mountain waves must be traced to those mighty winds that sweep across great seas; the lightning’s bolt that shivers and shatters the very pyramids, tells of electric batteries so vast that they can be formed only by masses of cloud that cover the whole sky. And when you see a gospel like this of Jesus, heaving the very world, moving the great souls of society, shattering the giant monuments of superstition and ancient error, you must look for the deep fires, the mighty breathings, the celestial energies of God. Some of us know that in the teaching of Jesus all these are to be found and felt, for we have found and felt them. To the proud, self- righteous Pharisee it may still be a stumbling block; to the wise and self-sufficient scientist it may still be foolishness; but in the face of a scorn like that of the Jew and a sneer like that of the Greek, we are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation.