Romans 15

Romans 15:14-21

THE AND MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH Romans 15:14-21TO resume our studies in this Epistle to the Romans, we take up another remarkable passage. It presents in a succinct and yet deeply suggestive form the ministry and message of the church. I shall ask you to consider with me the Results of the Gospel Message, the Resources of the Gospel Ministry, and the Regions Round about and Beyond. THE RESULTS OF THE GOSPEL MESSAGEHe makes mention of three—The Accomplishment of Christian Character, The Increase in All Spiritual Knowledge, and The Accentuation of Personal Testimony.The accomplishment of Christian character! “And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness” (Romans 15:14 a). That is a high tribute! The expression means all the more when one remembers from what these Roman Christians had been saved. Naturally they had been filled with all badness. The story is told that a plain looking man, writing his name in the visitor’s book of Chester Cathedral, England, placed after it B. A. and M.

A. The old verger, who was very particular about titles, asked the visitor at what University he got his degrees, “Bachelor of Arts,” and “Master of Arts.” “Oh,” said the plain man, “I never was at any university. I do little more than read and write simple English.”“Pray, then, what do you mean by these letters after your name?”“Oh,” said the plain man, “B. A. means ‘Born Again’ according to John 3:3, and “M. A. means ‘Mightily Altered’ according to 1 Corinthians 6:11.”The Gospel that can so change a man’s nature as to take the heart that was deceitful beyond all things, and desperately wicked, and empty it of sin, filling the same with all goodness, is the message that mightily alters. And yet how many times have we seen that blessed result?

Paul, writing to the Corinthians, said,“Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, “Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of God. “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). The increase of all spiritual knowledge! “Filled with all knowledge”. It is doubtful if that can ever be said of any other man than a Gospel-instructed man. John Tattler, speaking of certain skeptical teachers in Paris who had spun their spider webs of infidelity, and thinking of the days when, as a student, he was compelled to listen to this, said with some disgust, “Those great masters at Paris do read vast books, and turn over the leaves with great diligence, which is a very good thing, but spiritually enlightened men read the true living Book, wherein all things live; they turn over the pages of the heavens and the earth and read therein the mighty and admirable wonders of God.”Paul wrote to the Corinthians,“I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ; “That in every thing ye are enriched by Him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge” (1 Corinthians 1:4-5). “Father of mercies, in Thy Word What endless glory shines! Forever be Thy Name adored For these celestial lines. “ ’Tis here the tree of knowledge grows And yields a free repast; Here purer sweets than nature knows Invites the longing taste. “O may these heavenly pages be My ever-dear delight; And still new beauties may I see And still increasing light.” The accentuation of personal testimony. “Able also to admonish one another.” If there is one thing for which we thank God it is the company of men and women who are willing to bear their testimony for Jesus. Everywhere we go this is the marked weakness of the church work. A compromised life seals the lips, and yet sometimes the cleanest and most wholesome life is through fear superinduced by Satan, or some misconception of the Christian’s ministry made dumb. I have seen a woman go her way through an audience in an after meeting, and by a few words bring two, three, four and five to decision. In the passing moments in which this was accomplished, others equally capable and, for aught I knew equally consecrated, sat as still as if their feet were cast in stocks, while all about them souls waited for an encouraging word, their destiny trembling in the balance, and, like the man at the pool of Bethesda, saw the season of salvation passing with no one to help them into the troubled waters.One night, in Waterloo, Iowa, a young woman came forward and said, “I want to be a Christian, and I would like to go into the church, but I don’t want to give up dancing.” I said, “Are you willing to do the will of God.” She said, “Yes, but I do not believe it is His will that I give it up.” I said, “Doesn’t the Bible say, ‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world,’ and is not dancing worldly?” She replied, “I do not believe that it is wicked. I have a brother that is two years older than I, and I am certain that he loves me, and if he believed that it was wrong and that I was tempted or endangered, he would tell me so.”I said, “Is your brother a Christian?” “No, he is not, but I know that he loves me and looks out for my interest.” It would seem that to love would prompt the testimony of warning when its special subject is endangered, and I confess frankly that I sometimes find it difficult to believe that those church members who never bear witness of salvation to their sin-tempted friends are Christians at all.Willis Pelleton once said, “A young man was being urged by a friend to give his life to Christ, ‘No,’ he answered, ‘I do not believe there is anything in it.

My mother and sister are members of the church but no one of them has ever spoken to me about Christ. I know they love me and if they really believed there was a future life where those who are not Christians would be eternally punished, they would have told me so’.” He was as logical in argument as we are inconsistent with our professions.We are told that when Christ was in the world He opened the eyes of the blind, unstopped the deaf ears, healed the lame, cleansed the lepers, raised the dead; that He often enjoined silence upon them, but their joy was such that silence was impossible and they blazed it the more abroad.

But there is not an instance in which Christ ever rebuked them for having disobeyed Him at that point, and when the Gadarene was dispossessed of devils, Christ commanded him to go home and tell his friends how great things God had done for him.The very purpose of the descent of the Spirit of God upon the Church was that its members might be witnesses unto Jesus. Would that the spirit of Charles Cuthbert Hall might be found in every church in the land. The minister who officiated at his funeral in Union Seminary chapel, read from Hall’s own hand the last words he had ever written, and they went after this manner, “I have dictated what shall be said and sung today because my one great longing is for the joy of witnessing in death as I have tried to witness in life, to my adoration and faith in Jesus Christ my Lord and my God. In Him I rest securely for salvation, pardon and peace.”Mr. Tennyson tells of having gone to a good Methodist house for entertainment. Upon entering he asked the wife after the news and she replied, “Why, Mr.

Tennyson, there is only one piece of news that I know, that is that Christ died for all men.” News it is indeed! Multitudes have never heard it, and to those who have heard it often, it is never old.“I love to tell the story Of unseen things above, Of Jesus and His glory, Of Jesus and His love. I love to tell the story, Because I know ’tis true; It satisfies my longings As nothing else can do. “I love to tell the story, ’Tis pleasant to repeat What seems, each time I tell it, More wonderfully sweet. I love to tell the story: For some have never heard The message of salvation From God’s own holy Word. “I love to tell the story; For those who know it best Seem hungering and thirsting To hear it like the rest. And when, in scenes of glory, I sing the new, new song, ’Twill be—the old, old story, That I have loved so long.” Let us “admonish one another.”THE OF THE GOSPEL “Nevertheless, brethren, I have written the more boldly unto you in some sort, as putting you in mind, because of the grace that is given me of God, “That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the Gospel of bod, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost” (Romans 15:15-16). The appointment to the ministry is from God.Every prophet of the Old Testament claimed the Divine appointment; the same is recorded to the credit of every New Testament Apostle. No man ever emphasized this idea more than Paul. Not an Epistle written by him but opens with the claim of appointment from God. Here again he reminds his brethren of the fact that he is found in the ministry because of the grace that was given him of God. Woe to the man who is otherwise commissioned!It is not always true that the skeptical man is cynical as well. Occasionally we have found a critic in intellect a Christian at heart. I knew just such a pastor in Chicago. To listen to his views was to dissent from them; but to come into contact with his spirit was to love him.

Speaking one night before our Baptist Social Union, he said, “It was the darkest hour of my life, and the saddest. Bewildered and stunned into almost hopeless infidelity as to anything real here or hereafter, I turned from my mother’s fresh-made grave, and said to my father, a trembling old man then, I cannot preach any more.’ ‘Oh, you will, you will’, he said, ‘for it was she who prayed you into the ministry. She kneeled one night about your cradle when you were not seven weeks old, and wrestled and wept, and made her own vows, nor ceased until at last rising, she said, It is done! It is done!” God had heard her and accepted her child, even as He had little Samuel, and his life plan was appointed.“And,” continued the speaker, “I have borne my burdens, staggered beneath my doubts, felt the throes of pain sharp as keenest steel, and know the dangers and difficulties of a ministry, radical, sometimes impulsive, yet never since that day defeated, conquered, or afraid, for I have felt that mother’s prayers, tears, tenderness and passion had made, by His own good will, God’s covenant to His child.” The ministry that has God back of its appointment can scarcely fail of power.The purpose of such a ministry is sanctification. “That the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost”. The instrument of sanctification is “the sword of the Spirit” which is “the Word of God”. The wielding of that sword is not the ministry of the professional only, but of all the people who love God.

To see the convert from sin sanctified by the truth must be the consuming desire of every true under-shepherd. Those who are to be “our joy and our crown” at His Coming are our care, our daily and deepest concern in the interim of His absence.

If the teacher will do her best to get her students ready for the supervisor’s visit, how great ought to be the concern of every true pastor to present to Christ a church sanctified by the Spirit.Scotland has produced some remarkable men— Sir James Simpson, Hugh Miller, the Duke of Argyle, and Henry Drummond—these are some of her scientists. John Knox, Thomas Chalmers, Thomas Guthrie, Norman McLeod, Alexander— these are among her great ministers. Samuel Rutherford, Edward Irving, Robert Haldane, Duncan Matheson—these are her calendar of saints. But, as somebody has said, “for large spiritual vision no one exceeded, if he equalled, Robert Murray M’Cheyne,” the man who died in his early youth, but who before he went hence had moved the whole world to admire him, and by his ministry had made the Son of God seem the more glorious. It is said that in a letter to his congregation during the severe sickness, he wrote, “I will never rest, nor give God rest, until He makes you a lamp that burneth—a city set on a hill that cannot be hid.”Christ said, “Ye are the light of the world”. Christ commented pathetically upon it, “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness”!

What is your life? Is it sanctified by the Spirit?

Is it fruitful in all good works? Between the barren life of some professors and the abundant life of others there is all the difference between the barren desert and the luxuriant oasis. Dr. A. B. Simpson employed verse to express this thought:“Once ’twas a painful trying, Now ’tis perfect trust; Once a half salvation, Now the uttermost. Once I hoped in Jesus, Now I know He’s mine; Once my lamps were dying, Now they brightly shine.” Oh, to be made acceptable, being “sanctified by the Holy Ghost.” Oh, to so minister to men as to lead them into the very floods of Divine favor! That was Paul’s yearning over the Roman Christians.The glorying of the ministry is in Christ Jesus only.“I have therefore whereof I may glory though Jesus Christ in those things which pertain to God. “For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought by me, to make the Gentiles obedient, by word and deed, “Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God” (Romans 15:17-19). We sing sometimes,“In the Cross of Christ I glory, Towering o’er the wrecks of time, All the light of sacred story, Gathers round its head sublime.”If we glory in the Cross, as the symbol of our crucifixion to the old life, let us glory in the Christ of the Cross as the One in whom we have our resurrection from the grave, and by whom we are made alive forevermore. The more surely self is buried, the more certainly will Christ be exalted. It is related that Gounod once said to a young poet, “As you grow in your art you will judge the great masters of the past as I long judged the great musicians of former times. At your age I used to say, ‘I’ At twenty-five I said, I and Mozart’ At forty, ‘Mozart and I’, and now I say, ‘Mozart.’ ”Somebody traces a similar change in the Apostle Paul’s conception. His first question after conversion was, “What must I do?” (Acts 16:30). Later he says, “That I may * * be found in Him” (Philippians 3:9).

A few years more of experience and he declares, “Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20). But as he ripened in experience and knowledge, he found out the truth, and boldly affirmed, Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11).I was in that great Congress, or Parliament of Religions, in Chicago, when a Buddhist priest spoke and exalted his leader to an easy level with the Man from Nazareth.

Dr. George C. Lorimer was to follow. Uneasily did he wait his turn, and when at last it came, he blazed with such eloquence as I never heard from his lips on any other occasion. As he talked about Jesus the great audience realized that it was listening to “the sweetest name on mortal tongue,” and that beside Him all notable names paled as the moon fails at the rising of the sun, and as he went on paying his eloquent tributes, somebody in the audience sprang up and cried, “Three cheers for Jesus Christ!” and the leader of the orchestra and a thousand voices struck up instantly, “All hail the power of Jesus’ Name!” The enthusiasm was resistless! Men wept, their arms about one another’s necks.

Women with up-lifted, radiant, and yet tear-stained faces, bore their tribute of love. And when the song was finished, the priest had disappeared. “There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved”.

Nor is there another who can share with Him the praises of the redeemed. “I have therefore whereof I may glory through Jesus Christ”.REGIONS ABOUT AND BEYONDThe Apostle who tells us the result of the Gospel message, and who talks to us about the resources of the Gospel ministry, reveals his interest in the regions about and beyond, saying,“So that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the Gospel of Christ. “Yea, so have I strived to preach the Gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation: “But as it is written, To whom He was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand” (Romans 15:19-21). The vocation of the ministry is the Gospel of Christ. There is a company of brethren in this country who claim the distinction of preaching “a full Gospel.” Paul affirmed, “I have fully preached the Gospel of Christ”. I sometimes wonder if we know the meaning of the phrase “the Gospel of Christ.” We seem to think it is something about Christ. On the contrary, it is Christ Himself. He is the Gospel! The revelation of the Old Testament, and the teaching of the New was never intended to tell us about Christ, but rather, to bring us to Christ.

It was never meant to blaze a way, but to reveal Him who is “the Way.” It was never meant to furnish us with the truth, but to help us find Him who is “the Truth.” It was never meant to tell us how we might secure life, but rather, to manifest forth the life that is in Him.Carnegie Simpson, in his great volume, “The Fact of Christ”, says, “Jesus, who came to preach religion, deliberately and distinctly did so by making men think of Himself,” and quotes from a German author the statement, “He knew no more sacred task than to point men to His own person. He came not to elaborate a system of theology or ethics, but to introduce Himself to men’s minds and hearts, and lift men with the question, ‘What think ye of Christ’?” Keim was right, “The religion of Christ goes mysteriously back to His Person.”Paul, who here affirms, “I have fully preached the Gospel of Christ”, explains what he means when to the Corinthians he says, “We preach Christ crucified”, and at the same time confirms Philip’s conduct, who went down to the City of Samaria and proclaimed unto them “the Christ.” He is the Gospel!From my heart I profoundly pity the men who have taken to presenting less.

Their failures are easily accounted for. Dr. Rainsford, of New York, gives us an illustration of this by saying of the evangelical method adopted in his early life, “I preached the doctrine of Christ, appealing to men; there was a great deal of hell fire in it; it dwelt on the imperative need of being born again—people were the children of the devil and not the children of God until they turned back again to their Father.” “The incongruity of it all had not struck me then,” he says. But later, he adds, “I never, so far as I know, influenced more people for good than in those green, unripe days when I was simply praying and preaching the best I knew.”No man who quits the crucified Christ to proclaim else will ever reach or influence as many people for good by any ethical conception of his own mind, any philosophy received from another, or any theology he may design, whether he name it New or Old. Christ is the Gospel, and he that preacheth another is “accursed.”But where shall one preach Christ? Some people say, “At home!” “In his own local church, before the people who pay his salary!” It is more important to know what is said by the pen of inspiration.

And yet more important still to know what Christ’s commission is, and what the dictation of the Holy Spirit!These three agree in one; namely,The location of the ministry is at home and abroad. Christ’s great commission was, “Go ye into all the world”.

The Spirit’s enduement was to the end that they might be “witnesses * * in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Paul’s practice was “from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum”, and later in his ministry to more remote parts still. We appreciate the arguments in favor of the ministry, localized. There are advantages in forever pounding away on the same spot. The dropping of water in one place, if it be continuous, will wear the hardest rock. A little while ago I was trying candidly to estimate the results of the ministry of those American pastors who seemed to be accomplishing most for the cause of our God, and I said, “Almost every one of them divides his time between his home pulpit and the calls of the great wide world.

Was Gordon wrong in so dividing his time; and Chapman, while yet a pastor, wrong in so dividing his time; and Philpott and Norris, are they wrong in so dividing their time?” Upon close investigation, I am profoundly convinced that the work of each of these men, and many another I might mention, exceeds in its desirable results any stay-at-home. Evangelism away from home adds zeal to the sermonizing!I am not saying this by way of self-defense.

I do not need so to do. My people have never been critical of my repeated absences; their sympathy with my ministry to a larger locality has been one of the sweet assurances of personal affection, and of their loyalty to the call of Christ. I have regarded their prayers for a blessing upon the Gospel preached in the regions round about as one of the greatest factors in its effectiveness, and I believe today that our mutual ministry has accomplished more for the local church, more for the denomination at large, more for the world cause than ever could have been possible had we given to the local church all of our time, and to one city our entire energies.Finally, The aim of the ministry is light and knowledge.“Yea, so have I strived to preach the Gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation: “But as it is written, To whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand” (Romans 15:20-21). The same Christ who said, “I am the Light of the world”, declared, “Ye are the light of the world”. That is only true when the Gospel has taken hold upon our lives and finds expression at our lips. Other men had visited the Fiji Islands before John Geddi went there, but the lack of light in their own lives had left the people in darkness. But when once this man with a mission appeared in their midst the results, as some one puts it, “Were more like romance than fact.” The remarkable change was expressed in the words marked upon his tomb stone: “When he landed here in 1848 there were no Christians. When he left, in 1872, there were no heathen.” The reason is of easy explanation. He himself was a light-bearer, and he pointed them to the Light of the world.Dwight Bailey tells of a wheel ride he took between sunset and dark.

The world’s luminary had just gone down the mesa, whose outline drew its dark, rugged silhouette boldly against the red sky beyond. At the railroad crossing he stopped, and dismounting, stood to watch the western glory. The rails stretched their parallel course east and west. Turning toward the east he noted that the rails soon disappeared in the rapidly approaching gloom. Turning to the west he saw that the rails became two paths of shining light, stretching away to the horizon. And he remarks, “As I stood there in the sweet closing of the day, I thought of the One who is the Light of the world, and I said, If men face away from Him the path grows darker and darker and ends in the deepest gloom.

But if they face toward Him, the way shall be light, shining more and more unto the perfect day.”To turn men to the Light of the world—that is our work. To get those who have no eyes to see Him, and those whose ears have been dulled to understand—that is my work and your work.With what better prayer could we conclude this chapter than that which was sung long ago at the opening of the great City Temple in London?“Light up this house with glory, Lord Enter and claim Thine own; Receive the homage of our souls, Erect Thy temple-throne.”

Romans 15:29

THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST Romans 15:29ONE of the themes now sometimes announced for public discussion in the pulpit, or as the head of an article appearing in print is, “Christianity according to Christ.” The very phraseology suggests that there is a Christianity which is not according to Christ, a religion which wears Christ’s Name without being the true exponent of Christ’s Spirit or Christ’s teaching. The present-day church is often misrepresenting her Lord. And, while the criticism is severe, and stirs resentment in the heart of the average church-member, it results in rousing good men and women to a personal investigation of past conduct and present motive. Such an investigation is well. The great question of this hour is not financial; it is not ecclesiastical; but it is a question of religion, and finds for itself an adequate expression in this question, “What is Christianity according to Christ?” If we could answer with our lips, and then proceed to answer it with our lives, the very answer would furnish an acceptable solution to all secular and religious questions. Daniel Webster said, sagely enough, “Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.” But, what is Christianity according to Christ?

Our theme is, “The Gospel of Christ”, and it will not be questioned perhaps that the one who searches out the fundamentals of the Gospel, discovers therein the basic principles that differentiate Christianity from all other so-called religions; yea, that divorces it from its own counterfeit. And so we call attention to those distinguishing features. “The Gospel of Christ” MAN’S The Scriptures are singularly clear touching this point.They recognize regeneration as the only means of introducing the Christ-life. We affirm that on the authority of Christ Himself, who said to Nicodemus, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God”. And again, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God”. Followers of Christ are deluged in these days with definitions of Christianity that utterly disregard this Gospel doctrine.Sir Henry Drummond says, (pg. 63 Natural Law in the Spiritual World) “A thousand modern pulpits every seventh day are preaching the doctrine of Spontaneous Generation”; by which he means, as he himself explains, “they are teaching that an unregenerate man may become gradually better and better until in the course of the process he reaches that quantity of religious nature known as spiritual life”. “The finest and best of recent poetry is colored with this same error. Spontaneous Generation is the leading theology of the religious or irreligious novel, and much of the most serious and cultured writing of the day devotes itself to the earnest teaching of this impossible Gospel”. Drummond argues that in the natural world, “so far as Science can settle anything, the attempt to get the living out of the dead has failed.

Spontaneous Generation has had to be given up.” Huxley and Tyndall, both of them preferring, for the sake of their evolutionary theories, to find Spontaneous Generation possible, were compelled to admit that not a shred of testimony existed to prove it so. And, Drummond concluded therefore that reasoning from analogies, “spiritual life is not a spontaneous generation but the gift of the Holy Spirit.” He says, “the Spiritual man is no mere development of the natural man.

He is a new creation, born from above.” And what science argues, the Scriptures affirm, namely, that “God who is rich in mercy, for His great love, wherewith He loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4-5). “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).This new creation is the only source of spiritual development. Paul has graphically declared that fact, as illustrated in his own experience. In the seventh chapter of Romans he relates fully the fierce conflict experienced in that the lusts of his own flesh were being overcome and conquered by the growing spirit of Christ in him. You remember his cry of wretchedness and his shout of victory in the closing words of that chapter, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus had made him free from the law of sin and death.

The law of the spirit of life is always the law of growth. But growth is impossible until the beginning is made.

There can be no evolution of a Christian life until, by the Spirit’s regeneration, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).This new creation is also the secret of Christian power. None than a genuinely regenerated person can become an effective winner of souls.Years since a young lady student in an Illinois normal school was converted and united with the church. Her regeneration was of that radical sort which made all things new. She braved the cynicisms of the social circle which she had long queened. She faced the oppositions of her own unbelieving house. She withstood the. threats of an infidel grandfather, and without counting the cost, as too dear, openly confessed Christ as her Saviour and Lord.

From the day of her surrender she was a soul-winner. We saw; some of her classmates who had withstood a hundred appeals from the pulpit and seemed indifferent to the prayerful concern of friends, fall easy captives to the Christ she offered them.

True, she had natural charms, but others, equally winsome in face and manner, knew no such success. True, she had courage, but others similarly brave had failed in this endeavor, and many of those of us who watched her work believed that the true secret of her conquests for Christ was one of Scripture teaching. Paul, who regarded himself weak, dared to say, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me”. And, on one occasion the Master Himself affirmed, “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself, but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works”. Christ within, formed there by the regeneration of the Holy Ghost, is the sine qua non of Christianity.“The Gospel of Christ” insists uponTHE OF THE SACRED Our modern critics in their attack upon the Old Testament have called in question the Book that was Jesus Christ’s Bible.Christ rested all His claims upon the Divine inspiration of that Book. In explanation of His own origin, He appealed to it; in defense of His strange conduct, He pointed to its prophetic promises of what He should be.

In evidence of His Divine appointment, He cited some of its passages. In explication of His cruel death, He quoted from Isaiah 53, and in illustration of His resurrection, from the now-questioned Jonah.

If He was mistaken in these things then the most that can be claimed for His ministry is that it was the ministry of a deluded man. But if He was right in His opinions, then every critic who seeks to bring the Old Testament into disrepute defies God to His face.The strange sight of men seeking to tear down a fabric, the glory of which their best building cannot approach, may seem to the semi-cultured of the earth a piece of boldness worthy to be admired. But to the truly intelligent it appears as vain as irreverent. There are men retaining evangelical pulpits and professorships in evangelical colleges who are mouthing over what one critic voiced years since in the following speech: “To believe the Bible is not to believe or disbelieve that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, or that David wrote the Psalter, or that Solomon wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes, or that the son of Amos wrote the whole of Isaiah, or that Daniel wrote the Book which bears his name, or that the Book of Jonah is history.” In other words, it did not seem to that pronounced critic a matter of much concern whether men believe that the very books touching the authority of which Jesus Christ Himself testified, shall be received as authoritative and inspired. There are not a few people in the world, and sad to say, some of them in the Church of God, who think it serious business for a younger man to take issue with an honored senior, but they do not seem to feel that it is folly and wickedness for any man to take issue with the Son of God. Apparently they cannot understand Paul who pled with the Corinthians that “your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, (since God hath made foolish the wisdom of this world) but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:5).

And yet if faith stands at all, an inspired volume is its only fit foundation. The opinions of men have no stability in them, for “whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away”, but the perpetuity of the Word of God is more and more confirmed by the passing centuries.

The founder of Christianity laid this promise beneath the faith He inspired in His followers, “think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the Prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till Heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matthew 5:17-18). The Gospel of Jesus Christ then is no more infallible than was the Book on which He founded it.But Christianity according to Christ uses this Book as a factor in character building, and not as a fetish for the affections. A great Bible on a center table, seldom touched save by the dust-cloth, is an impotent institution, and gives no light on the subject of “Christianity according to Christ”, and no help toward holiness.You remember the circumstance of Mr. Boardman’s finding in one of the Karen villages a book of Common Prayer and Psalms. The natives had received this volume twelve years before from a Mussulman who had said it was sacred.

They had wrapped it in muslin, encased it in a reed box and worshipped it. The keeper of it became a high priest, venerated by all the people for his possession.

And yet the Scriptures thus encased were profitable in nothing to the soul of this priest, and shed no light on the surrounding darkness. Paul taught Timothy the better way. “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth”. And whenever you find a man who follows the Apostle’s injunction and makes the Scriptures his meat and drink, you will find one whose high character attests at once their eternal truthfulness, and their power in character-building. When years since, a dear great brother of my church was passing away, his children wishing to know what passages in God’s Word had been peculiarly sweet to him, brought out the Bible which he had used for only five years, thinking to trace the thumb marks, and thereby discover his favorite Scriptures. And, while it was true that the Book of the Psalms was more worn than other parts, every page from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 was well worn. And, as I looked upon that Bible, used for five years only, and followed the unmistakable evidences of its reading and re-reading, I thought of what Dr.

A. C.

Dixon said, “A traveller took from the table of a wayside inn in Scotland an old worm-eaten Bible, and holding it up to the light, he noticed that one worm had gone from Genesis to Revelation. There was light clear through”, and Dixon added, “I want to be such a book-worm as that. It will not turn into an earth-worm, it will have wings by-and-by.”Finally, Christianity according to Christ, AS ITS THE CROSSThat may seem a trite statement, but it is so only because we do not understand its full meaning. If ever Christianity is to recover its pristine power, it will be when the Cross is given its old place.The Christianity of Christ presents the Cross as the only hope of infidel and heathen. This is an age in which many religious nostrums are being prescribed for sin-sick and dying souls. Men are telling their fellows that “sincerity is a Saviour”, or that “morality is redemption’s method”, or that “the light of nature leads to life”, or that “to imitate Jesus Christ is the end of the Divine requirement”.

But, as students of the Book, we have not so learned Christ. To us the way of salvation appears in that He “bare our sins in His own body on the tree”.I know, as a brother minister once said, “Such preaching stirs the opposition of all the enemies of God.

The devil hates the blood, for he knows it is the only power that can deliver men from his control. Free thinkers hate the blood because it sets at naught their proud reasonings. Pharisees hate the blood because it strikes at the root of their conceit. Moralists hate the blood because it will not recognize their morality as a ground of salvation. Ritualists hate the blood because it is a protest against the saving virtue of ceremonials. Rationalists hate the blood because it goes beyond the reach of their little reason in its power to save from the guilt and pollution of sin.

Philosophy hates the blood because it pours contempt upon its pride. Ecclesiasticism hates the blood because through its life-giving power is imparted the new nature which recognizes only the authority of Christ and always obeys God rather than man.

Legalism hates the blood because it frees men from the slavery of law and brings them under the reign of Grace. Asceticism hates the blood because it goes against the grain of its soft sentimentalism in asserting that sin can be removed only through the suffering of the Son of God, and such suffering is revolting to its sensitive nerves.”And yet it is written into the Word, “without shedding of blood is no remission”. And, if that Word be true, the Cross remains as the only hope of human-kind. To offer men anything else is to mock them with a stone, when they are dying for bread. To fail in pointing them to this, is to condemn our own professions, and leave them in a darkness peopled with demons. Dr.

Lorimer, in “Isms Old and New”, relates the Old Chronicler’s story of a Jew, who, in the sixth century, fled for refuge from night and storm to an abandoned temple of Apollo. But at midnight the building was filled with ghostly, gigantic shapes.

They moved to and fro in the sombre darkness, taking counsel of each other, and relating their achievements against the Christians. These were the shadows of the pagan deities whose altars had been forsaken. The poor Jew trembled as he beheld them, and in his despair, hardly knowing what he did, made the sign of the Cross. Before its sacred and mysterious power the demons shuddered, whirled about in maddened fear, and hastily vanished in the gloom. “This, of course is but a fable”, said Lorimer, “and yet it has its spiritual counterpart.” Every Christless soul is such a temple! In the ruins of its God-abandonment, and the darkness of its spiritual night, the demons of lust hold high carnival until some one makes there the sign of the Cross; and by that sacred symbol of Christ’s love brings deliverance. There are a billion of such dark lives, living in awful sin and terror today, waiting for us—the children of light—to come with the Cross and convert them into glorious temples of the Holy Ghost.