Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner.
Not ashamed of Christianity
It was natural and right that an old warrior whose armour was worn with use should charge the young soldier to bear himself bravely in the war. Cowardice is bad always, whether in the physical heroisms of the battle-field, or the moral heroisms of common duty. We are cautioned against being ashamed!And shame is the child of doubt as well as the child of fear!
I. We should not be ashamed of a testimony for Christ, because Christianity gives the true reading of our moral nature. What are we? Apart from Christ, the world is just as much divided in its philosophical schools on this question as ever it was. The Utilitarian moralists enthrone the selfish instinct, and make the foundation of morals mere utility, or the greatest happiness principle; they test the morality of actions by their consequences, as if it were possible to trace them through all their sequences to their ultimate results, as if a man could thus judge, unless all the future ages were before him. But in setting up this standard, with one sharp and almost contemptuous sweep, they cut away the entire moral nature of man. Conscience has no place in their creed. “My own belief,” says Mr. Mill, “is that the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired.” Surely a fearful reading of human nature! “Let us make man in our image” becomes only a morbid dream of some early dramatist of creation! How this theory of human nature would, if adopted, ultimately affect society may perhaps best be understood by another sentence of Stuart Mill--“The proper limit to self-indulgence is that one shall neither hurt himself nor hurt others.” Imagine this, a man is not to consult conscience, or the sense of right and wrong, he is neither to be cheered by conscience nor to be scourged by remorse, but is suffered to take his stand amongst his fellow-beings, as a mere conscience-less, calculating machine, weighing not the moral wrong, but the outward harmfulness of self-indulgence. If I turn from the school of Buckle and Mill to the modern scientific school, if captivated by the discoveries of modern science, I sit as a disciple at the feet of Huxley or Darwin, my power to realise any lofty conception even of this present life is gone! I feel like a man who has saved his purse and lost his gold, or who has kept safely the golden frame but lost the portrait it contained. Let us look at their position! We are declared to be the last and noblest form of a long series of developments; we trace these back to the elementary types of life. It may constitute a theory of physical nature, it cannot constitute a theory of human nature. It has no explanation whatever of the past of our race. Yes, the gospel makes us feel the grandeur of life as life; its rewards here are moral, its punishments the same. Instead of bidding us to think alone on consequences, it reminds us that God searcheth the heart. Its garland of victory is the well done of conscience, its scourge of woe is the agony of remorse.
II. We should not be ashamed of Christianity, because it gives the true reading of man’s religious nature. Man must worship. We all admit that. History proves it. A nation without its altars is as undiscoverable as a firmament without its stars! But what says Paul to Timothy?--“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” “This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy.” Yes! Yes!this was the message! Christ the Saviour of men! This it is that comes home to the heart and conscience of humanity everywhere. This is the great message we preach in the face of all modern endeavours to give the gospel only a place in the religions of the world. Yes! how that meets the soul-needs of man! Conscience is at rest beneath that cross where Christ the Lamb of God taketh away the sins of the world. Pardon, virtue, self-denial, sacrifice, peace, hope, joy, love, these are the growths of theChristian life--these blossom on no other tree but the Tree of Life.
III. We should not de ashamed of Christianity, because it gives the true reading of man’s human life. Whatever the old theologies may have said, human life is divine. I mean by that, that the world into which we are born finds place and play for all our varied human faculties. It is manifest that man’s nature is a mistake, and the world a mistake, if a man is to move on in a region of Asceticism, or a transcendental region of Mysticism. Take this life! I say this is a beautiful world to live in. It is a world of colour! It is a world of sound! It is a world of mystery! It is a world of enterprise! It is a world of motion! It is a world of taste! It is a world, in fact, full of manifestations of adaptation to the being to be placed upon it by God. Now, if it were worldliness to touch all these things, then we are tempted to worldliness every hour, every moment, and the world is a cruel enchantress, that meets us at every step. Surely you know well that this is not worldliness, that Christ did not teach us it was worldliness. Man’s nature toowould be a mistake. He has not only eyes to lift to heaven and knees to bend to earth, he has hands to toil with, a home to care for, a country to serve, and a whole round of earthly duties to discharge. Still it is a charge brought against Christianity that it is indifferent to human culture and affection. Now, I do admit this, that a man’s personal relation to God is the first question which the gospel of Christ deals with: he is to be brought nigh by the blood of Christ, to be a temple of the Holy Ghost, to rejoice in a spiritual sonship. But it is also true that all other duties and relationships are lifted into higher spheres, and ruled by higher motives. Christianity is not responsible for the perversion of ascetics, nor is it responsible for the abuse of worldlings. The Christians of Apostolic times must keep themselves unspotted from the world, not by avoiding the very possibility of its stains, but by a life in God which preserves them from the power of evil. And so must we: the difficulties of the case are the difficulties of moral life. Christianity consecrates the life of the family, the life of the city, the life of the state.
IV. We should not be ashamed of a testimony for Christ, for Christianity gives a true reading of life, in Christ Himself. Christ is not only a Teacher; Christ is not only a Saviour; though He is both these. Christ is Christian life! He is His own religion alive and in action! When we study Christianity, we not only study the Evangels and the Epistles; we study Christ, Christ’s life is the ideal of all Christian life!As such I ask you to mark itspractical side; its human side; its relation to all the interests, physical, social, and divine of the world Christ came to ransom and to save. Christ’s hours of prayer occupied much of His earthly life, but He was not one-sided in His life. How active He was--“He went about doing good.” How reasonable He was--He reasoned with the Jews out of their Scriptures. How home-loving He was--He abode at the house of Martha, and her sister Mary. How life’s cheerful pleasures found Him a sharer in them--His first miracle was wrought at the marriage feast of Cana in Galilee. How social He was--He dined at the house of the Pharisee. How actively compassionate He was--“He healed all their sick.” How wonderfully He carried the golden thread of the heavenly through the warp and woof of the earthly life. Oh! it is something beautiful indeed to possess that life. In all your experiences of emotion, awe, reverence, tenderness, it is not enough to feel the thrill of mere sensation. As Christ was consecrated to His Father, so must we be to Him!
V. We should not be ashamed of the testimony of Christ, for Christianity neglected wrongs our nature. All truth neglected wrongs our nature!I mean scientific truth, as well as religious truth. If I believe the world goes round, and if to propitiate priests, or to’ provide for some supposed protection of the Church’s creed, I say the world does not go round, I wrong my mind. If I reject religious truth, I wrong my mind in the worst sense; I wrong my conscience and my heart. That man is to be pitied who bears about with him the murdered body of truth! There are such men, they know the gospel, they need no further commendations of it to the conscience and the heart. I say Divine demonstration has been made to the faculty of judgment, and to the faculty of feeling. And yet as the apostle says, “They know not the truth.” They perpetuate that hideous immorality of bartering their souls for ease, pleasure, and sin! “Verily he that knew his Lord’s will and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.”
VI. We should not be ashamed of a testimony for Christ, because Christianity in all these scenes stands alone. Its position is unique!This one thing we know, that a Saviour such as I have been speaking of, is none other but Christ. If there is, and we are to be confronted with some new Saviour, it is time that the criticisms of the day gave us a new Christ. We exhaust other subjects, but we never exhaust Christi With admiring and adoring homage we take our stand behind the Cross, and say to a world that wants a Saviour--“Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world.” “Produce your cause,” says the Most High to all who would now declare His Anointed One! “Beside Me, there is no Saviour!”(W. M. Statham, M. A.)
Power of personal testimony
Mr. Blackwood was the means of my conversion twenty-four years ago. And what was it that laid hold of me? I was then as worldly a young man as any in London, but I went to hear him speak at Streatham, having given a promise to do so to the young lady who was afterwards my wife, and is now in heaven. The sermon did not produce much impression upon me, but afterwards Mr. Blackwood walked up to me, and put his hand on my shoulder, and in his own loving way said: “Dear friend, I do not think that I have seen you at this meeting before. Are you a Christian? I know Christ; I have proved Him; do you know Him?” I had to say, “No, I do not.” What the sermon did not do that testimony did, and I had no peace until I found the Saviour two days afterwards. Twenty-four years have passed since then; eighteen of them I have spent amongst the poor of the East of London, and I am more persuaded than ever that what the Church of Jesus Christ needs is not mere oratory, mere eloquence, mere wealth, but men who not only bear Christ’s name, but come right out for Him, so that no one in their senses can doubt their being children of God. (A. G. Brown.)
Cowardice rebuked
Thirty years ago, more or less, there was a boy in Scotland who would go to sea. His name was James, and his father was a respected citizen of a good town six miles from the sea. On James’s first voyage to Calcutta he kept up the habit of praying in the forecastle before turning in to his hammock, for he had been accustomed to do so regularly at home. Nobody said anything to him on the matter, but Bob Shearer, an able seamen, watched him. In Calcutta some of the seamen left the ship, and others were engaged in their place to work the ship home. One of these was a “rough,” whose name was Robert. Hence he was called English Bob, and Shearer was called Scotch Bob. One night, soon after the homeward voyage began, James was on his knees, when the eye of English Bob happened to fall on him. “I declare,” he cried, with an oath, “here’s a younker praying. Did you ever?” And thereupon he flung a heavy shoe at his head with excellent aim. Before James had time to rise Scotch Bob had the coward by the throat and told him to come upstairs and settle with him at once. The result was that English Bob got soundly and wholesomely thrashed. That night James went into his hammock without praying. But he had not time to fall asleep before Scotch Bob came and pitched him out. “What do you mean, you young coward? Say your prayers like a man! Do you think I’m going to fight for you and be disgraced in this way?” And so James never again failed to kneel before he slept, and feels to this day that his being ashamed of his Father in heaven and of the Saviour who died for him was well rebuked by the friendly courage of Bob Shearer. Long after, when his name had a title before it, and he was at the head of his profession, James had pleasure in finding Bob Sbearer’s mother, and bringing her to visit the mother who had taught him to pray. This story is related by James himself.
True friendship
Let me ask you a question. “What would you take for the greatest proof of downright friendship a man could show you?” “That is too hard a question to answer all at once.” “Well, I may be wrong, but the deepest outcome of friendship seems to me, on the part of the superior at least, the permission, or better still, the call, to share in his sufferings.” (Geo. Macdonald.)
Definition of a friend
What is a friend but one whom I can trust; one who, in sorrow’s hour, will mingle his tears with mine; one on whose support I can reckon when my back is at the wall! (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
According to the power of God.
What power of God? has been asked. Not according to the power we get from God, but according to the power which God has displayed towards us in our calling and in our marvellous salvation. In other words, God with great power has succoured us; surely we may be confident that He will never leave us, never desert us; but in the hours of our sorest trouble incurred for Him will keep us and will bring us safely through it. (H. D. M. Spence, M. A.)
