by Joseph Parker (1867)

“This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America. Within the U.S., you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.”
— books.google.com
___

Has the civilization of the 19th century rendered Christianity obsolete, or has Jesus Christ made any provision for the development of humanity? Was Christ’s merely a day’s work done in the usual order of things, or had he a reach over the ages, controlling and molding them to the very end of the world? Is the New Testament to be shelved with The Republic or The Nicomachean Ethics; or is it the life of the world that now is, with its ever-varying phases and attitudes, its storms of war and its revolutions of thought? We may be able to gather an answer from Christ’s own words.

Christ repeatedly spoke of his own “hereafter” and of the “hereafter” of the church. His criticisms and instructions were by no means confined to the past and the present; they were full of anticipation, overflowing the hour in which they were spoken and making for themselves a channel through all time. There were terms in his speech which denoted great purposes as to time, persons and moral victories—such as “unto the end of the world,” “for ever,” “every creature,” “all nations,” “east, west, north and south.” It seems to be necessary, therefore, to preserve the logical consistency of Christ’s method, that as it was “expedient” for the disciples that he should ”go away,” that some provision should be made for the expected development of human nature and the requirements of the attendant expansion and refinement of general civilization. The world would certainly become larger; could Christ occupy the extended space? The harvest would be great; was there root-room enough in Christ’s heart? Christ entirely reversed what we should have considered the proper order of things, and thus gave another check to anything like presumptuous criticism of his method of redeeming and educating the world. The common plan would probably have assumed some such shape as this—Christ must abide personally among men until the redemptive purpose be fully accomplished, not only on his part, but also on the part of the world; it will be best for him to make short work, and to break up the present economy as soon has he has made clear what is meant by his having been given to save men; or, if he could continue the present rude structure of society, his disciples will necessarily have many questions to ask and many difficulties to overcome, and he must be continually at hand, so that the reference may be instant and decisive: when the last man is safe in heaven, and every possible spoil has been recovered from the enemy, then let Christ himself abandon the earth and take the headship of the glorified church. Instead of this, which looks so feasible and tempting on paper, Christ was actually the first to leave the scene of trial; his disciples were consequently deprived of the inspiration and comfort of a visible Christ. The poor, simple men had been called to a most trying prominence, and the man who called them took the earliest opportunity of leaving them alone in the world! Under such circumstances, how could the future be other than gloomy and portentous? The disciples were committed to an idea; they bore a name which had a bad repute among all the ecclesiastical leaders and persons of social consequence; they were to carry the cross as their characteristic badge, and to be hated by all men for their Master’s sake; as sheep among wolves, they were to make their perilous way. Knowing all this, Christ left them. Would he abandon a half-built tower? Did he leave because his resources were exhausted, or because he could better move the ages from the altitude of the heavens?

We may pause a moment to say, that men can be trained to strength only by being thrown on their own resources in certain determining crises. The parent acts upon this doctrine when he sends his son to a distant school, that he may be thrown into contact with rivals, and strengthened by daily contest with eager competitors. There is an educational element in opposition, in suffering and in provocation, and it is for very love of his child that the parent withdraws the comforts of home and places him in circumstances which will test his nerve and rouse his soul. The lad carries with him all the mingled comfort and pain of home associations, upon which his heart will draw when the stress of events is heavy upon him; in their very absence his parents will be present to him with intenser reality than ever, and the hiding of their face will bring with it a deeper disclosure of their heart. In some such way, only with infinite expansions of meaning, shall we come to know what was meant by that blank dismay which the disciples must have felt when their Master said he intended to leave them.

It is to be noted that in all Christ’s teaching there are manifold references to the future. Many a statement was like a sealed letter, not to be broken but by time. The life which Christ sketched was often an ideal life—beginning in a grain of mustard seed, ending in a great tree. Again and again he hints at what shall be, and from the dim “hereafter” draws motives for immediate direction. Does not the parent help his child over today by talking of tomorrow? It is not upon a near future that Christ dwells, but upon the most distant ranges of terrestrial experience, as a father often tells his son what he shall have when he is a man. With much detail Christ outlined the final reckoning which he would hold upon “all nations,” and from the very evening of the world drew considerations for the government of its morning hours. He thus established a practical relation between the events of all time, uniting human history by stretching the cable of a common Judgment from shore to shore. This was enough, meanwhile. He could not, considering the moral infancy of the disciples, describe every line of latitude and longitude, though each was present to his own mind; but he fixed their eye upon a distant and most conspicuous object, nothing less than himself enthroned in his glory and encircled by his angels, and bade them strike their course over the unknown but not ungoverned waters, so that they might eventually reach it. The men who had been with Christ three years, and heard from his own lips a description of the Judgment day, could not go far wrong in any question that might arise in their experience. The spirit of philanthropy was to be the spirit of judgment. It is very remarkable that Christ should have enabled men to bring the remotest fact of time to bear upon the concerns of the passing moment. We can now make every day a day of judgment; we know the questions which will come up; we know the standard of appeal; we can anticipate our individual conversation with the Judge; we can hear his voice; we can “go away into everlasting punishment,” or into life eternal. This was a most practical provision which Christ made for the development of humanity: by giving us a Judgment-day, he enabled us to try our deeds by the very fire of the final conflagration. All nations were to come to the same judgment, and all were to be tried by one Spirit. It is then, to say the least of it, remarkable, considering how many questions Christ left unanswered, that he should have set before men the transactions of the final hour of human history. This he would not have done had he not contemplated an educational effect.

As yet, however, we have but two points, the very beginning and the very end—Christ’s personal ministry and Christ’s personal judgment: is there nothing between? Probably the strongest men might be able to traverse the distance between those points; but the strongest men are few in number; what is to become of the hosts who are to be watched and kept like children?—men of unsteady purpose and perverted faculty of self-judgment? Christ foresaw the difficulty, and provided for it. He had given a personal ministry, and sketched the great Judgment, but how could he cover the whole line of human history between? This inquiry he answered in a sentence: “When he the Spirit of Truth is come, whom will I send unto you from the Father, he will guide you into all truth.” It may be convenient to say in detail what that Spirit is, so far as we can gather from the Christian writings: he is, then (1) the Spirit of truth; (2) the Spirit of comfort; (3) the Spirit of liberty; (4) the Spirit of love; (5) the Spirit of holiness, because the Spirit of God. Now, assuming that these statements are true, it is easy to see how Christ has provided for the multiplying wants of an expanding civilization. This Spirit fills, overflows man’s capacity, and meets, with all God-like exuberance, every possible necessity of human nature. So to speak, he surrounds man as well as dwells in him, and according to the outward circumstance as well as the inward condition his ministry is regulated. Thus in the order of revelation we have had first that which is natural, afterwards that which is spiritual; first the sacred letter, then the Holy Spirit. The ancient church was fed with the Milk of the Word, the modern church needs strong meat; “strong meat belongs to them that are full of age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to to discern good and evil.” Instead of burdening the memory with technicalities, Christ provided for the quickening of the moral faculty in man, and thus, in spiritual things, acted in relation to the human soul as in temporal things God had done. God gives man power to get products out of the soil; but instead of saying this must be eaten and that must be refused, he gives the power, call it instinct or reason, which saves him who rightly uses it from noxious plants and animals. It is better to give the faculty of discrimination than to label all the products of the earth. A spirit is better than a catalogue. There are few things in the lower range of life more remarkable than man’s instinct by which he discovers what to eat. Every day he is called upon to choose, even so far as the body is concerned, between life and death. The life of the body is exposed to constant risk. In nearly every field there are roots or leaves which might injure or even destroy the health of the body, yet man continues to make a selection adapted to his nature. These poisonous roots are like so many temptations; they are to the body what vices are to the soul; yet, speaking generally—for the exceptions only prove the rule—man is superior to them, he refuses if not resists, and saves himself. How is this? Is there not a spirit in man, and doth not the inspiration of the Almighty give him understanding? “This also cometh forth from the Lord of Hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working.” It may be asked, how has God provided for material civilization? The answer is, by the spirit that is in man; so it may be asked, how has Christ provided for intellectual expansion, and the corresponding claims which the intellect would present? The answer is substantially the same. When Christ opened the eyes of the blind, he did not require to create another universe that the vision might have an object to rest upon; the universe was there, waiting to be looked at. So the universe of truth has existed from the beginning; as there are steep hills, perilous precipices, intricate winding ways and not a few tangled forest paths, he has promised the Spirit to guide men into all truth; emphatically to guide men, the very word implying difficulty, danger, and constantly new evolutions and combinations; not only to guide, but to guide into all truth, not into some departments but into all, not into external views of truth but into its very essence, so that men might know truth under heavy disguise, and be able to eliminate it from every sophism [deceptive argument] and every heresy. We know what it is to be so far in sympathy with the spirit of a companion as to be able to pronounce an opinion about any of his reputed actions; instantly we say such a charge or statement is true or false; so entire is our mutual accord that judgment of him is like judgment of our own heart. Our companion, if of a strong character, has put his spirit into us, and instinctively we have to come to know whether any report of him is likely to be true or untrue; we know so well his magnanimity that we resent the imputation of any ignoble deed which rumor may connect with his name, or accept with thankfulness any report which details his excellence—in this case our spirit witnesses with the spirit of the report that it is true. In a modified degree this represents the relation of Christians to Christ; that relation is so intimate, so vital indeed, nothing less than consubstantiality having been effected by eating his flesh and drinking his blood, that they can unhesitatingly determine the truth or untruth of any proposition concerning him, and infallibly distinguish between a legitimate expansion of his doctrines and a distortion of them.

The intercommunion between the spirit of man and the Spirit of God, an intercommunion re-established and enlarged by Christ, is the guarantee of purity and progress on the part of the church. By Christ’s ministry we are now elevated to the highest plane, and the words of John have a deep meaning: “The anointing which ye have received of him abides in you, and ye need not that any man teach you.” The teaching of the church does not now come from the outside; Christians have in them a well of water springing up into eternal life. They judge the preacher and the author by the anointing which they have received of the Holy One, and by their own spirit are able to try all other spirits, whether they are of God. The witness of the Spirit changes the aspect and meaning of all outward things. The Christian writings themselves are valuable in proportion as the spirit of the reader is enlightened by the Spirit that dictated them. The dead man is heedless of the sumptuous banquet: the dead soul is as heedless of the richer banquet of revelation. There must be two witnessing spirits. The sun is nothing to the blind man: give him vision, and the sun becomes his day. Christ thus provides for details by providing for universals. He gives life, and he gives the Holy Ghost to guide life; and in these two, yet indivisible gifts, all things necessary for human cultivation are included. The world had no adequate notion of life until Christ came; in fact, so vast is the volume of life which he offers, that it may be almost literally said that Christ brought life and immorality to light, as things not known before; not only life and immorality as future blessings, but as present and immediately available realities.

The speculative life of the church is marked by an immense variety of results. Hardly any two thinkers have adopted precisely the same conclusions. How is this to be accounted for, if they have been illuminated and directed by the same Spirit? Easily and satisfactorily. Life is not to be judged by formal logic. Ask two travelers who have completed the same journey to describe the course they have taken, with all the incidents. They have traversed the same road, on the same day, under the same conditions; yet the statement of the one is meager, the statement of the other is minute. How so? They walked under the same light, and the great volume of the landscape lay open before them. The difference is in the mental habitudes of the observers. The eye of the one was trained; the eye of the other was uneducated. The same thing is illustrated in the reading of a book: one reader is instructed, another disappointed. And this diversity, when the spirit of censoriousness is excluded, is fruitful of good. It provokes to deeper and more continuous investigation; it saves the intellectual world from monotony, stagnation and death; it creates a generous interest in the gifts of fellow inquirers. There is even a higher benefit: it shows that no one man has all the truth; it breaks up monopoly, it destroys infallibility. There is a truth on every side of polemic theology; and just as men of every region and race are necessary to make up the entire of God’s idea of humanity, so every degree of truth and every aspect of truth must be brought together, if we would see the totality of God’s doctrine. One nation has caught its poetry, another its logic; one has condensed it into maxims, another has elaborated it into most complex philosophies; no two of them are agreed as to nomenclature; still the doctrine, like its author, is One, though now it is as steady as a star, and anon it heaves like the billows of the sea.

But these are speculative differences merely; it still remains to inquire how moral aberrations are to be accounted for. The answer is, that they are to be accounted for on moral grounds. Paul admonishes men not to grieve the Spirit, and not to quench the Spirit. The Spirit is a “guide,” not a tyrant. The Spirit remains with any man only so long as that man is a consenting party. The Spirit may have taught the right way, yet the heart may have rejected the teaching. “Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.” Christ said unto the Pharisees, “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remains.” The same principle is asserted by an apostle, who lays down the doctrine: “To him that knows to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin.” So long as man is man, he must have the power of resisting God; and so long as God is God, he must wait until the heart-door be opened from the inside. Omnipotence itself cannot force hearts.

By laying down a few universal principles, sketching a kind of river map and giving the Spirit of Truth to be a constant indwelling guest of the soul, Christ is as truly, as potentially, present with this age as he was with his immediate followers in Judea. This, indeed, is not the whole of the fact. Of every great man it may be justly said that he is more influentially present after his death than during his life. Shakespeare exerts a wider influence today than in the days of his flesh; so does Milton; so does Luther; but not so Hannibal, or Caesar in his military aspect: for destroyers must decrease, but creators must increase. Men’s names are kept up with men’s sayings. It is remarkable, as an eminent observer of human nature has said, that the question is not only what is said, but who said it? So that the saying is associated with a person; and if the saying be strong enough to keep pace with the march of the generations, its author may be said to be with men “even unto the end of the world.” What is true in degree of thinkers is true, in an absolute sense, of the man in whom dealt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

Notwithstanding the fierce iconoclasm of the age, a hard statement bearing the name of Milton will secure a more respectful hearing than if it were pronounced anonymously. This is right. In the heat and prejudice of controverted times it is well to withhold the name, but whoever speaks a word that goes to the world’s heart will quicken an eager desire on the part of those whom he has benefited to have his personality identified. Christ will never be dissociated from Christ’s sayings, and in this way he will be with his people unto the end of the world, but in a still deeper way—deeper because the words will receive continually broadening interpretations by the Holy Ghost, and be more urgently and powerfully applied to human experience. The first reading cannot bring out all the meaning of the words. It flows like the oil which the prophet blessed. The few words of Christ have expanded into libraries; the poet has sung them, the painter has painted them; and today unnumbered thousands are eating the bread which he distributed by his hand. Seminally, at least, everything in morals can be found in Christ. No man has spoken truth so deep, so far-reaching, and with this remarkable circumstance in addition—he was the first speaker upon the themes which he discussed; he borrowed nothing, he created all. He outlined the most comprehensive theories; sketched plots which poets might work out; gave rebukes which showed the distance which lay between him and all hypocrites, oppressors, and self-seekers; and uttered promises which have sunk into the sorrowing hearts of all subsequent generations. He is thus, and not thus only, with men unto the end of the world.

Christ said that he came to give men life, and to give it “more abundantly.” In this latter expression he hinted his relation to the great question of human development—showed that man would never outgrow him, and, in fact, that there was no growth apart from his own vitalizing energy. A generous sophism lurks in the supposition that one man is as good as another, or even that one man is as much a man as another. Manhood varies—varies in volume and purity. Man grows from his original condition—by imperceptible increments, indeed—yet still he grows, if the true life be in him, so that two become four, and five ten; and as certain as he grows he becomes liberated from the obscurity and humiliation which marked his starting point. Human nature is, of course, primordially the same, but its possible degrees of development are infinite; it cannot but be a fact of immense importance in this argument, that in those countries where most about Christ is known, every science and every art is most liberally patronized. The light which Christ sheds upon the world has never been proved to be unfavorable to the highest intellectual cultivation, but has been proved—and, in fact, is being proved every day—to be in the highest degree favorable to all that can be legitimately classified under the term progress. As a simple matter of fact, Christ is today increasing the life of the world. Take a common case: An English Arab is taken off the streets by a Christian philanthropist and placed under religious instruction; he is taught, for the time, something of his nature and something of his destiny; according to his capacity the instruction is continued to him; by and by he comes to feel that in some little degree he is human, that he has wonderful powers, that he may be good and do good: so far the philanthropist has given him “life”—still the culture proceeds, ideas take a wider range; the philanthropist conducts him from point to point in the circumference of knowledge, hoping to find the point most adapted to the youth’s capability. At length it is found, and the former Arab becomes an explorer, or scientific student, or a man of letters, and so has not only “life” but “life more abundantly” as Christ promised. Who called him from the dead, and made him a revealer of life to others? Can the scantiest justice hesitate as to an answer?

There are, however, we may probably be reminded, many men illustrious in science who are not, in the generally accepted sense of the term, or perhaps in any sense of the term, “followers of Christ”—in what relations do they stand to the Life-giver? They may come under Christ’s own classification, “They that are not against us are for us.” But what if they are “against” Christ? Then they certainly should not require to be reminded that the whole atmosphere is, so to speak, Christian. All the forces of modern civilization have taken effect under decidedly Christianized conditions, and the more truly scientific mind will be the last to doubt the remote, subtle, and most penetrating influence of what may be termed moral climate. The whole air in which the intellect moves is charged with Christian elements; and no scientific man would be speaking secundum artem [according to the art] if he denied, at least, their probable influence on the whole current of opinion and practice. There may be a difficulty in some minds in tracing the connection between Christian thought and purely scientific pursuit; even Aristotle confesses that it is “difficult to say how a weaver or carpenter would be benefited with reference to his own art, by knowing the self-good;” yet reflection may be able to trace even this apparently remote relationship. Whatever liberates the mind from law and self-seeking purposes, or brings it into more intensely conscious contact with the absolute, gives the whole man a wider and firmer mastery over all that is below and around him. The idea is illustrated partially by the admitted effect of high classical culture upon the discussion of general questions of political and literary life. The man who has been thoroughly drilled in ancient literature will, other things being equal, be better able to discuss subjects of common interest, to trace their bearings and forecast their consequences, than the unlettered man; not that there may be any very patent connection between philology and politics but because of the severe intellectual discipline and consequent self-mastery which such drill necessitates. Even allowing that Aristotle is right in suggesting the difficulty of seeing how a weaver or carpenter could be benefited in his own art by knowing the “self-good,” it is obvious that the more any man knows of any great subject, the less likelihood is there of his continuing in the position of a weaver or carpenter. Intellectual vitality signifies social elevation; and though some may be disposed to raise the grave question, “How could society dispense with its weavers or carpenters?” Yet our business relates primarily to the higher considerations, for as much as the man is of more importance than the weaver. When manhood rises, the industrial arts will feel the effect of the elevation.

The inquiry is, “how did Christ propose to make himself not only the contemporary, but the king of all ages?” To this inquiry our answer has been, (1) by a personal ministry; (2) by a fully delineated Judgment; (3) by the gift of the Spirit of Truth, whose peculiar function is to take of the things of Christ, and show them unto the church. It has been admitted by the latest writer on the life of Christ, that Christ could, even after his personal withdrawment, visit his people “in refreshing inspirations and great acts of of providential justice”: this admission really covers the whole question of Christ’s contemporaneousness with all ages; for if he can visit his people at all in “refreshing inspirations and great acts of providential justice,” he is necessarily (if faithful to himself) the chief factor in human development on the Christian side.