Sunday Morning at the Birmingham Christadelphian Ecclesia, No. 155
“Exhort one another daily.”—Paul.
p. 153No one who believes in God, can reasonably deny Him the right to the exclusive adoration of mankind. All forms of life and power are the results of a certain inscrutable energy of which He is the source. The plant does not owe its development to the fortuitous addition of layer upon layer to its exterior, but is perfected by means of a mysterious principle of appropriation within it which we are accustomed to call its life; and that life is part of the primitive force which is fundamental to all being, and to which insanity alone would deny the attribute of intelligence. We read of it in the Scriptures as “the Spirit of God.” It is in every living diatom, and in every living man. We cannot go from its presence. It is even in Sheol, energising the worm that feeds upon the dead. There can be no exercise of thought or perception without it. The organism from which it has been withdrawn are mere inert accumulations of matter, which soon lose shape, and comingle with the dust. Out of God are all things. Science is really declarative of this revealed truth, in its ascription of universal phenomena to one source of power which, however, it hesitates or refuses to name.
It follows that every human manifestation of power or skill, is but the exercise, in a limited way, of what proceeds from him. The creature is, at the most, but the vehicle or instrument (voluntary or otherwise) of a something that is independent of itself—something that antedated, and will survive it.
There has ever been a tendency in human nature to extol the man who may have displayed exceptional qualities of brain or muscle. We learn from Romans i. 25, that even the house of Israel lapsed into this form of idolatry. They “worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.” It is the commonest and most general of current tendencies among both Jews and Gentiles. A word has been coined from the Greek to express it. The apotheosis of any great public character means that he has been exalted from what he previously was, and deified. The Gentile press uses the term to describe the adorations which are often recorded to illustrious men—living or dead—by the generation which is smitten by a sense of their greatness.
The Scriptures are quite peculiar and unique in this respect. They never extol men for their mental adroitness, or as having played a conspicuous part in some popular movement. Those characters whom they mention with approval, receive such mention because of the excellence of those spiritual qualities by which they were distinguished. The faith of Abraham—the meekness of Moses—the patience of Job—the courage and fidelity of Joshua, in executing the divine commands—the holy zeal of the prophets—any feature, indeed, which had a spiritual complexion, receives due recognition; but no praise to man as a natural creature, however endowed, ever appears under the seal of the divine approbation. This is most remarkable, and no one need be at a loss for an argument to prove the inspiration of these documents who duly considers the fact.
It is noteworthy, too, that while the civilised world is full of monuments erected to the memory of men of genius in science, warfare, music, statesmanship, and art, it has no marble nor bronze for p. 154such men as Moses, Samuel, David, or Paul—men whom God has in honour! Those who have feared Him, and trembled at His word, and upheld the honour of His name, have never won the applause and engaged the sympathy of those whose tastes have all run in mere natural grooves. The impressions produced on their brains are due to the common humdrum circumstances in which their ephemeral existence is passed. They are inappreciative of higher sensations. These form the gaping crowds who offer the incense of their adulation to the hero of the day.
The right estimates of society are those which are formed according to the divine standard. With mankind as we know them it is notoriously no reason for congratulation that they know and understand God. The place He occupies in their thought and affection must be microscopically small, judging from the kind of inspiration which shapes their lives. If the element of personal glorification were withdrawn from many a public career, its chief incitement would be gone. The doctrine that “virtue is its own reward” is false in fact as well as theory. Its exponents would not care for its exemplification in circumstances of comparative isolation and obscurity. God, however, can be glorified in a desert, where only the moods of silence and solitude prevail.
The good opinion of mortal men does not arrest the process of putrifaction, nor import a single ray of light into eyes that have been closed and fixed in death. The applause which once ravished the ear, is heard no longer in the grave. Where’s the benefit of a recognition you are not conscious of? What’s the great use of a torch-light procession, after the march to the charnel-house is past?
The case is widely different with him whose sole aim in life has been to glorify God, and who has been content to pursue a path of obloquy in obedience to His commands. There is hope in the death of such an one, hope that the God whom he has served will raise him up even from the dead, and promote him to endless life, and lift him high with such honour as never fell to the lot of mortal man—honour that will last “when gems, and monuments, and crowns have mouldered into dust.” To share that honour with God’s immortal Son, we may well be content to disdain the homage of the present evil world, and accept for a while a portion of shame. We can afford to pity even the Princes of the Gentiles, and to lavish our commiseration on all the great men of the earth.
The grounds on which the world confers its recognitions are never akin to those on which God is prepared to put honour upon men. It apotheosizes success, and does not care to inquire scrupulously into the measures by which that success has been attained. A smart rogue may move unabashed in society. He may morally and intellectually be beneath contempt, but if by grinding the faces of the poor, and half-paying the labour of those in his employ, he manages to amass a fortune, people will bow down before him and move off the causeway to let him pass. The gilded rascality of mankind is one of the most depressing facts of the present time. The Lord of heaven and earth has other rules by which He estimates a man’s fitness for the glory He has purposed to bestow.
“The Lord of hosts hath purposed to stain the pride of all glory, and to bring into contempt all the honourable of the earth” (Isa. xxiii. 9.) This means the overthrow of the civilisation of the period contemporary with the fulfilment of the prediction. We can, by a vigorous effort of the imagination, picture the change that would be produced everywhere, if it could be said that the Lord alone were exalted. No scope for personal ambition—for pride of place and birth and talent, and lust of power. Down to the ground comes every piece of masonry or bronze which stands in commemoration of human p. 155greatness anywhere under the sun. Not a volume remains to be prized as a testimony to the genius of mortal man! Not a “pleasant picture” hangs upon the wall for the purpose of displaying the skill of the artist whose work it was! Not a chord in music is struck to the praise and glory of the performer. Not a discovery in natural science is made the occasion of boasting by the man who finds it out. Not a speech is delivered by human lips which brings to the orator himself one single ripple of applause! How few there are who would in their present state of sympathy be able to endure such a condition of things! And what need there is, in all cases, of the purifying discipline which true enlightenment supplies!
It has been charged upon the Israelitish nation that they have never given much encouragement to “the fine arts”—sculpture, painting, and the like. The blame of this is laid to that part of the Decalogue which says:—“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (It is, by the way, a curious circumstance that these words should be found upon the walls of churches, and read out to the people as part of their moral obligation, when at the same time graven images are to be seen up and down the building, both inside and out.) But why did God prohibit this species of art in the case of the Israelitish nation? Why did He require that they should never lift up a tool upon a block of stone or marble or wood, for the purpose of forming it into a resemblance of any living thing? Why not allow them to make a statute of Moses, or Joshua, or any of their illustrious men? Because this would have completely contravened the principle by which He Himself demands the sole attention of mankind, and refuses to give His glory to another.
The large cities of the nations would surely present a very altered appearance were He alone exalted everywhere. Men would step about with less haughtiness of carriage, and not comport themselves as though the universe belonged to them, and ought to be much obliged to them for allowing it to bear their avoirdupois. Society would then be truly interesting, and all the grave problems which now perplex and harrass the nations would be disposed of for evermore. Blessed be His glorious name, that He should have purposed an interference by the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ, the result of which will be that true religion will become a universal and matter-of-course thing in the earth, and God be distinctly and inseparably associated with all the processes by which mankind embellish and occupy their minds; and with all the pursuits whereby they fill their leisure and gratify their heart’s desire.—R. ASHCROFT.
It is impossible to spend time more profitably than in the contemplation of the subject so well discoursed of by brother Ashcroft in the foregoing. It is of all the themes of the truth the most repugnant to the merely natural mind, of which Paul testifies truly that “it is enmity against God.” To the mind of a believer, who is truly a son and not a bastard, it is the most glorious of all the glorious themes associated with the truth. It is to the whole system of the truth, what the sun is to the system of sublunary nature. Take it away, and you take away the source of all light, and warmth, and comfort, and vigour, and well-being. How a man feels towards it is almost a test of where a man is in spiritual attainment. A strong drawing to God in friendship is the sign of spiritual circumcision. A man irresponsive in this direction,—interested it may be in other phases of the truth,—is outside the temple; on the steps outside,—wanting to come in, perhaps, but still outside.
There are two kinds of interest in it—one of which is the mere case that holds p. 156the jewel, and a man may have an empty case in his possession. There is an interest in the names of God and the purpose of God; the interest of the mere philologist (or word-lover) or the interest of the mere politician, whose interests do not soar above mankind, and who, consequently, feels drawn to anything affecting their state—past or future. Christ was no philologist or politician; and Christ is the model of true saintship. It is the thing that we want; not the mere name of the thing: God Himself—not merely His name and intentions with this part of His handiwork. We want THE FATHER Himself enshrined in our hearts as He was in Christ. Names and meanings are useful in the process of getting at Him; but they are only avenues, and they are useless if they do not guide us to Him. We must not stay at the doors of the house; we must go in; we are invited. A blind man in a dungeon where there is no light might talk about the sun, and be fluent of its names in all languages—(chammah, soleil, helios, sol, &c.); but the glorious fact itself would have no existence for him. His talk would be so much vain jargon. So a man who can speak with all the tongues of men and angels, and understands all mysteries (lingual or otherwise,) and who has not attained to the friendship of God in the abiding love of Him and the ever-present recognition of His glorious existence, presence and care, is a “sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.”
The great difficulty in the way of the common run of men rightly reading the ways of God in human life as it now is upon the earth, arises from a state of mind with two sides that are almost the corollaries of one another. On the one side, they have a high sense of their own importance: on the other, there is no practical recognition of the importance of God. The lower down you go in the scale of intelligent being, the more distinctly do you find this state of things developed—a state of mind entirely opposed to reason.
It is almost an elementary instinct of reason to feel (because perceiving), that man is but a form of God’s own power, and, therefore, inherently, is of no importance except in so far as God’s own appointment may allow him to be so. If the rights and importances of man are derivable only from God’s permissions and appointments, where are they in view of of the fact that man is a sinner, and that God’s appointment for sin is deprivation and death? Manifestly, in this state of things, the rights and importances of man exist only in his own imagination. Enlightened as to the actual facts of his situation, a sane man feels abased to the dust, and dares not so much as lift his head in the presence of the rights of the Most High. It is only an ignorant man, or a man under the power of mere animal sensationalism, in some form or other, that revolts against the evil of present experience as if they were unjust. He is like a dog from whom you take away a stolen bone. He feels deprived of what he likes, and he resents. His resentments take a higher form than a snap of the jaws: but they are the same in origin. He talks of human rights and divine cruelties. Examine his feelings to their roots, and his sense of “right” is due to the feeling of deprivation, and his impeachment of God due to his non-understanding of the ways of God, which results from his non-recognition of the rights of God.
Let reason ponder the rights of God, and there can be but one verdict. Philosophy itself, rightly applied, would teach men to humble themselves, and to exalt God exceedingly. God is from eternity. He has made all things for Himself, they are all His own. He manages them for His own ends, and there is not a creature in heaven or earth who can dictate to Him what those ends ought to be, or how He ought to accomplish them. How could there be? How can a made creature dictate or even suggest to his Maker what his Maker’s ends and methods ought to be? p. 157Man himself is the property of God, and cannot hold his life, or his circumstances, or his conditions, independently of God. He is nothing apart from God. God only is important. He only has inherent rights. If any creatures have rights, it is He who confers them. Is it not, therefore, the jibbering of insanity for men to say of God that He should do this or that, or that man’s sufferings in a state of evil brought upon the earth because of rebellion against Him, are a wrong done to man, or an evidence that God is indifferent or cruel, or that He does not exist? This is the kind of insanity that makes itself heard in all the earth, but the sound of which will presently be silenced in the judgments that will come with His Righteous Messenger from the heavens.
EDITOR.