Evening Bible Study Continued 1 John 3:2 What We Are and What We Shall Be Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is.—1Jn_3:2. The Apostle has just said that all Christians are children of God. Here he adds that they are now His children. “Now,” he says, in this life, with all our shortcomings, “we are children of God.” But the future of the believer is even more wonderful and glorious than his present. He is to be made “like” Christ, because he will “see him as he is.” If the vision of Christ, even though His glory be only reflected as from “a mirror,” transforms us now “into the same image” (2Co_3:18), what will be the effect of beholding the unveiled glory of the Lord? Here His Godhead is only partially revealed to His disciples; there the Godhead and the manhood—or rather the Godhead in the manhood—will be fully manifested, and, according to Christ’s own prayer for His disciples, they will behold His glory (Joh_17:24); and the result of this beatific vision will be their complete transformation into the likeness of the Lord. In every part of their being, in body and in soul and in spirit, they will be “like him.” As with a garden in winter, nothing we see in it tells us what it will be when the spring winds have loosened the frost, only we know that there is life beneath the snow, and that one day that life will show itself in leaves and blossoms and fruit. So with the believer. He will one day have a part in that glorious revealing of the sons of God for which creation is waiting. Meanwhile his spiritual life, like that of a plant safe all the winter in the root of it, is hid with Christ in God. More than this we cannot say of ourselves.1 [Note: C. Watson, First Epistle of John, 149.] I The Seeds of Destiny 1. We are children of God—His offspring, not His creatures merely. Ours is a Divine birthright, depraved, but not wholly obliterated; alienated, but not discrowned. Man still preserves his capability of regaining departed purity and felicity. What belongs to his character has been lost, what belongs to his constitution he retains. His character may change, but not the essence of his being. His enmity may die, his immortality never dies. His life is sacred, because he bears the image of God. Moral resemblance to God is the completion and crown of the filial relationship. It is the relation that gives the right; but where the relation has not been acknowledged and established, the right cannot be pleaded. The true child of God is born of God. He is a partaker of a Divine nature, and that nature quickens, brightens, perfects his own. He is “created anew in Christ Jesus.” “Ye are all the children of God, through faith in Christ Jesus.” “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” 2. All natural sons are not spiritual sons. The natural son becomes a spiritual son when the Father’s will and purpose are made his will and purpose. We find this beautifully illustrated in the story of the Prodigal Son. The youth chafes under parental restraint, he is now a dissatisfied son; he leaves home and makes his abode in a far country, he is now an absent son; he spends his time and money in riotous living, he is now a sinful son; sin is always sooner or later followed by punishment, he becomes, therefore, a suffering son; grief and remorse follow suffering, as the morning follows the sunrise, he is now a sad and sorry son; sorrow turns into self-condemnation, he is now a humble son; he says, “I will arise and go to my father,” he is now a penitent son; his father welcomes him home with outstretched arms, he is now a forgiven son; the fatted calf is killed, a ring is placed upon his finger, and a robe upon his shoulders, he is now a restored son; from henceforth he makes his father’s will his will, his father’s pleasure, his pleasure, and he does all, not from duty, but from love; he is now, therefore, a spiritual son. In dealing with a man of fine moral character we are dealing with the highest achievement of the organic kingdom, but in dealing with a spiritual man we are dealing with the lowest form of life in the spiritual world. To contrast the two, therefore, and marvel that the one is apparently so little better than the other, is unscientific and unjust. The spiritual man is a mere unformed embryo, hidden as yet in his chrysalis-case, while the natural man has the breeding and evolution of ages represented in his character. But what are the possibilities of this spiritual organism? What is yet to emerge from the chrysalis-case? The natural character finds its limits within the organic sphere, but who is to define the limits of the spiritual? Even now it is very beautiful. Even as an embryo it contains some prophecy of its future glory, but the point to mark is that “it doth not yet appear what we shall be.”1 [Note: Henry Drummond.] 3. Though children of God by faith in Christ Jesus we are still imperfect, but we have in us the seeds of a great destiny. When we find fault with the child’s lesson because he has not begun his sentence with a capital or ended his question with an interrogation mark, the mother excuses him by saying, “He is only a boy.” Yes, but it is a great thing to be a boy, it carries the promise that some day he will be a man. The child who can as yet only stammer brokenly through a sentence, if in an educated home, or who can only blunder as yet through a sum in long division, if in a good school, has promise of one day speaking correctly and calculating the distance of the stars. Only a child, but it is a great thing to be even a child in such a home and in such a school. I have stood on a projecting spur of a mountain range and looked backward on the road I have climbed and then far down into the valley below where I could see the farm-fields and the river. As I have rested there for a moment, I have felt something of the joy which comes with the heights; but as I have turned to continue the climb, I have found the way blocked with blinding mists and the higher ranges wrapped about with the dense folds of cloud and completely shut from view. I knew the heights were there before me, but I could not see them. They did not appear. And so I had to plunge into the thickening mist and continue the ascent without scenery. It is thus that John paints the second stage. The road winds through the mist. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be,” but the way is still upward and onward. We have not reached the summit, with adoption. Sonship is followed by development and growth. Here is the marvellous thing about the soul. It seems possessed of an infinite capacity. Man is ever becoming.1 [Note: J. I. Vance, Tendency, 214.] An acorn is an oak-tree now; but it is not made manifest what it will be. You may bring all your microscopes and all your chemic tests to the acorn, and you will not solve the question. Had you never seen aught but an acorn—and you have never seen aught but a child of God in this reference, and most of them very young children—had you never seen aught but an acorn, no imagination within your reach, or the reach of any poet God ever gave to earth, would have brought you anywhere near the truth. Again, go back, with the help of the scientist, in the long history of this physical world and universe, and he will tell you of some such thing they have seen as this: that this earth and all related to it was, in primeval times, a fire-mist. Before the stars, before the suns were here, was some such thing, as unlike this earth as a globe of fire-mist would be. It was the solar universe; but it was not made manifest what it would be. And great as is the difference between the primeval fire and the solar universe of to-day, unimaginable as is the progress from the protoplasm, undifferentiated, to the human form in its athletic beauty, indescribable as is the difference between the acorn and the oak-tree, those differences, peradventure, are small compared with the difference between what we now are and what we shall be. In the acorn is the oak-tree, in the protoplasm is the lily, in the fire-mist, so they say, was the earth; in you is the Christlikeness, folded more deeply, with more convolutions, than the finest folded bud. Deep within you is the Christlikeness that yet shall be part of the final manifestation of God’s purpose and will.2 [Note: F. W. Lewis, The Work of Christ, 139.] Lord, purge our eyes to see Within the seed a tree, Within the glowing egg a bird, Within the shroud a butterfly. Till taught by such, we see Beyond all creatures Thee, And hearken for Thy tender word, And hear it, “Fear not: it is I.”3 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti.] II The Transfiguration of Character 1. Much concerning our destiny yet remains unrevealed. The Gospel is a light shining on the dark shore of eternity, like the lighthouse that gleams on a dark and stormy coast, to reveal the haven to the ocean-tossed mariner. It shines afar over the swelling flood, but only penetrating a darkness it was never intended to expel. It reveals to us almost nothing of the land to which we go, but only the way to reach it. It does nothing to answer the thousand questions which we would ask about that world, but it tells us how we may see it with our own eyes. It tells the mariner there is a haven there, and how he may reach it, and no more. It does not tell us all about the past, about our own mysterious being, or where in the wide range of the Divine dominions will be the sinless paradise of the redeemed; but it would guide us to God’s holy hill and tabernacle, where in His light we may see light, and where what is now obscure may become as clear as noonday. There is a sublime reticence in Scripture. The man who was nearer than all others to the Source of eternal life is content to say, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be”! I think this is a typical silence—typical of the whole Bible. Men often say that the evidence of the Bible is the things it tells us. Doubtless that is one evidence. But I have often thought there is another—the things it does not tell us. The speech of the Bible may be golden, but its silence is at least silver. Many a book professing to bring tidings from God would have mistaken imaginings for realities, would have published the dreams of the heart as the very descriptions of heaven. The Bible commits no such mistake. Its reticence is sublime, as sublime as that of the starry sky. Enoch speaks not in his translation moment. Elijah speaks not in his chariot of fire. Lazarus speaks not in his hour of resurrection. The child of Jairus speaks not on her bed of revival. The youth of Nain speaks not from his arrested bier. Moses alone does speak from beyond the grave; but it is not of the things beyond; it is of the things “to be accomplished at Jerusalem.”1 [Note: G. Matheson, Leaves for Quiet Hours, 286.] I know not where that city lifts Its jasper walls in air, I know not where the glory beams, So marvellously fair. I cannot see the waving hands Upon that farther shore; I cannot hear the rapturous song Of dear ones gone before: But dimmed and blinded earthly eyes, Washed clear by contrite tears, Sometimes catch glimpses of the light From the eternal years. 2. This we know—we shall be like Him. Jesus Christ was transfigured before His disciples. That was a glorious manifestation, and when the three privileged disciples who beheld His glory on the Mount were permitted to do so, when the period of enjoined silence had passed, they testified to that glory in glowing words. And here we are told by one of their number that Jesus Christ’s disciples are to be transfigured, not now and here, but in the future life, at the termination of the present dispensation, at His appearing or coming. We are told that in that day they shall be like Him, like Him whose face when He was transfigured was like the sun, and whose raiment was white and glistering, and who will come forth in His second appearing in His own glory and in the glory of His Father and of the holy angels. In that day His disciples shall be glorified together with Him. Not all men, but His disciples, they who have received Him, who believe on His Name, and to whom He gives power to become the sons of God. Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, being killed in the battle of Lutzen, left only a daughter, Christina, six years of age. A general assembly, consisting of deputations from the nobles, the clergy, the burghers and the peasants of Sweden, was summoned to meet at Stockholm. Silence being proclaimed, the Chancellor rose. “We desire to know,” said he, “whether the people of Sweden will take the daughter of our dead King Gustavus Adolphus to be their queen.” “Who is this daughter of Gustavus?” asked an old peasant. “We do not know her. Let her be shown to us.” Then Christina was brought into the hall and placed before the old peasant. He took Christina up in his arms and gazed earnestly into her face. He had known the great Gustavus well, and his heart was touched when he saw the likeness which the little girl bore to that heroic monarch. “Yes,” cried he, with the tears gushing down his furrowed cheeks; “this is truly the daughter of our Gustavus! Here is her father’s brow! Here is his piercing eye! She is his very picture! This child shall be our queen!”1 [Note: Nathaniel Hawthorne, True Stories from History and Biography, 281.] I recall some years ago reading a sermon on this text by Dr. Lyman Abbott. All I can remember of that sermon now is a single thought in connexion with this passage. “Of all Scripture promises,” said Dr. Abbott, “the one that stretches my faith most is this: to think that poor, sinful, fallen man can become like Christ—that we who are unholy, impure, selfish, can become, like Him, holy, pure, unselfish, is beyond human comprehension. The how of it I cannot fathom, the fact of it I accept as one of the blessed promises connected with Christ’s coming.”2 [Note: A. Lewis, Sermons Preached in England, 176.] 3. Now this likeness to Christ is graven upon the soul, not suddenly, but slowly through the years. This is not a photograph, taken in a moment by a flash of the sun. By the regeneration of the Holy Ghost the nature is renewed, and the man is started fairly upon his new and noble work; but the precision and detail of the likeness, like the finished picture of the artist, are the labour of thoughtful and toiling years. Through many failures, through hurricane blasts of passion, and frequent rain of tears, through baptisms fierce as of fire, and exhausting as of blood, through toil up new Calvaries, and the passing through strange agonies, which, in their measure and in far-off and reverent distance, may be called the soul’s Gethsemanes—through all these must the believer press into that “mind which was in Christ Jesus”; and even at the close of an existence during which he has never lost sight of the purpose which came to him at the time of his conversion, he may feel that he has exhibited but an imperfect copy of his glorious Pattern. Of Dr. Thomas H. Skinner, Professor Henry B. Smith said: “His personal power was also enhanced, year by year, with the increase of his spiritual life; he became more and more a living epistle, a gospel of God’s grace, known and read of all men. Vexed and perplexing questions were merged in a higher life. Revealed facts took the place of disputed propositions. The living Christ took the place of the doctors of the schools and with advantage. Thus he lived and grew day by day, in his serene and hallowed old age, toward the measure of the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus. He was called to be a saint and he was always fulfilling his calling, not counting himself to have attained, but ever pressing onward.”1 [Note: S. H. Virgin, Spiritual Sanity, 273.] III The Transforming Vision 1. The vision of Christ is to result in resemblance to Christ.—There are peculiar elements and conditions in this vision which account for its marvellous energy. The visible objects of a spiritual world must owe their existence to the spiritual things of which they are the expression. Light in heaven will be caused by the action of the spiritual enlightenment of God’s presence. The great white throne will be the effect of the manifestation to the inward sense of the commanding excellence of Divine righteousness. And so the vision of the glorious body of Christ will be the effect of the action upon the understanding and the spirit of His essential self-hood. Because He will exert His spiritual power upon us, and present Himself to the mind, therefore He will be visible in glorious form. If we may so express it, He will be outwardly seen, because He will be inwardly felt in the fulness of His glory. Material forces, as we call them, are all spiritual in origin. The causes of things are spiritual. Hidden behind all the wonderful mechanism of the world, and giving it being and activity, is the power of spirit. If we once grasp this doctrine, that spirit—itself necessarily and always invisible—creates and regulates outward things and forces, we shall be able to understand how the Coming of Jesus Christ, which will be pre-eminently a putting forth of spiritual power, will also exercise an influence on the bodily condition of those who are the ready subjects of His influence. St. Paul refers our bodily glorification to the Advent, when, writing to the Philippians, he says, “We wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able to subject all things unto himself.” There is one working which is able to subject all things; and the term St. Paul uses for it, possibly with reference to its spirituality, means literally “in-working.”1 [Note: R. Vaughan.] 2. Clear vision will ensure close likeness.—We know that truth already in its early manifestations. We grow like that which we habitually contemplate, and especially so when we contemplate lovingly and enthusiastically. The affectionate child takes on the characteristics of the parent whom he loves. And the man who contemplates God, who sets Him always before his face, who looks upon Him as the supreme object of love, grows into the likeness of God; and such is the testimony of Jesus Himself, as He addresses the Father in that wonderful prayer in the seventeenth chapter of John: “This is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.” A pleasant, sunny landscape has the power of transcribing its own joyous image into the heart of him who intelligently surveys it. The shadow of a cloud, it has been said, does not pass over the face of a field without making some change in it, and in the feelings of the observer. However this may be, it is certain that we cannot live without influencing others, and others influencing us. Human society is a vast network of reciprocal influences. Everybody acts and is acted upon in turn. Every man helps to mould and fashion the character and destiny of every other man within the sphere of his attraction. The thoughts of a man, spread over the pages of a book, have power to work an intellectual assimilation in the mind of him who carefully studies the pages. So must it be spiritually, only in a much higher degree.2 [Note: J. Davies, The Kingdom without Observation, 96.] Nathaniel Hawthorne has a story of a great stone face carved on the mountain side, which reproduced itself in the spectator. A young man who never wearied of gazing on that face had his life beautified by the vision, and one day as the people looked on his face, they said, “It is the same as on the mountain side.” Jenny Lind told me, with all her own vivid, emphatic brilliancy of gesture and look, of a scene which had evidently left on her an indelible impression of wonder and glory. She had gone to look on the face of her friend, Mrs. Nassau Senior, after death. The son of her friend had shown her the stairs, and pointed out the door of the room where the body lay, and put the candle in her hand, and left her. She pushed open the door and entered alone; and there, before her, lay the face, fine and clear-cut, encompassed about with a mass of white flowers. On it was peace, and a smile, with the lips parted; but that was not all. I must tell the rest in her own words. “It was not her own look that was in her face. It was the look of another, the face of another, that had passed into hers. It was the shadow of Christ that had come upon her. She had seen Christ. And I put down my candle, and I said,’ Let me see this thing. Let me stop here always. Let me sit and look. Where are my children? Let them come and see. Here is a woman who has seen Christ.’ ” I can never forget the dramatic intensity of her manner as she told me all this, and how she at last had to drag herself away, as from a vision, and to stumble down the stairs again.1 [Note: H. Scott Holland, Personal Studies, 26.] What we, when face to face we see The Father of our souls, shall be, John tells us, doth not yet appear; Ah, did he tell what we are here! A mind for thoughts to pass into, A heart for loves to travel through, Five senses to detect things near, Is this the whole that we are here? Rules baffle instincts—instincts rules, Wise men are bad—and good are fools, Facts evil—wishes vain appear, We cannot go, why are we here? O may we for assurance sake, Some arbitrary judgment take, And wilfully pronounce it clear, For this or that ’tis we are here? Or is it right, and will it do, To pace the sad confusion through, And say:—It doth not yet appear, What we shall be, what we are here. Ah yet, when all is thought and said, The heart still overrules the head; Still what we hope we must believe, And what is given us receive; Must still believe, for still we hope That in a world of larger scope, What here is faithfully begun Will be completed, not undone. My child, we still must think, when we That ampler life together see, Some true result will yet appear Of what we are, together, here.1 [Note: Clough, Poems, 63.] 3. The clear vision is possible only to cleansed eyes.—The Jews had looked for Him through many centuries, and when He came they did not know Him. When Christ parts the veil once more, and with the fulness of His being, as St. Paul says, apart from sin, is manifested, shall we know Him? Will He find faith on earth, the faith to receive Him? He will not be like what we to-day imagine. He will be as unlike some of our imaginations as He was when first He came. If you are thinking of Him as He parted from His disciples, He was not even then what you have sometimes thought Him. He was still scarred, and His brow was still riven with Calvary; and this is the last truth of this great word of St. John. We shall never see Him till we are like Him, simply because we cannot. You do not know your friend, you do not know your enemy, except in so far as you are like him. From your life there must go, not only impurity, but all leanings towards it; and in its place there must be that burning repugnance that was in Him when He declared “he hath nothing in me,” when the advent of the Evil One was to Him unspeakable and unutterable pain because He was pure. And if we would learn the way of purity, it is the old way of sorrow and toil—the way He went. “I consecrate myself for their sakes, that they may be consecrated.” How can a man, without clear vision in his heart first of all, have any clear vision in the head? It is impossible!2 [Note: Carlyle, Past and Present, 83.] The Civil War did not originate in a conspiracy, but in a perverted state of mind, as other great conflicts have originated in a perverted state of mind. No one attributes the operations of the “Holy Office,” the Inquisition, to a conspiracy; or the seemingly endless wars of religious persecution, to a conspiracy; or the cruelties of the Spaniards in the New World, to a conspiracy. Conspiracy is too insignificant, too weak a word to cover the terrible meaning of such events. We must get nearer human nature than a conspiracy can bring us: we must get close to the undeveloped reason and the undeveloped conscience, and the incapacity to interpret the simple laws in the economy of nature. The blind are not only they who will not, but they who cannot see. And in the history of civilization it is they who cannot see that will not, rather than they who will not see because they cannot.1 [Note: The History of North America, xv. 226.] All shall see of Him just what they can see—what they are fit to find in that perfect, all-embracing, all-expressing face. Two men are charged with a crime, of which one is innocent, and knows that his innocence will be made plain, while the other is guilty, and has no hope of hiding his guilt. Think you they trace exactly the same expression on the face of their judge? The fears of one fix his eyes upon the firmness, the resolution, the searching sagacity of nostril and mouth and eye; and he trembles. The confidence of the other points him to the just, honourable, patient mien which gives him promise of a complete investigation; and he exults. Both watch the same face at the same moment, but what they find there is not the same.2 [Note: G. A. Chadwick, Pilate’s Gift, 187.] Life’s journey almost past, Tottering I stand at last Close to the door; Weary the way hath been, And often sad through sin, Now all is o’er. The friends I walk’d beside At noon and evening tide Went long ago, And evening’s travel, grown Ever more chill and lone, Seem’d to pass slow. Yet was it night, not day, Thus slowly waned away— Now dawn is nigh; The daystar’s warning bright Tells me the shades of night All Boon will fly. Beyond that welcome door I know—and oh, for more Why should I care? I shall my Saviour see As now He seeth me; Jesus is there! What We Are and What We Shall Be Literature Ainger (A.), Sermons in the Temple Church, 13. Ball (C. J.), Testimonies to Christ, 118. Binney (T.), Sermons in King’s Weigh-House Chapel, 2nd Ser., 316. Brooks (P.), The Law of Growth, 346. Burrell (D. J.), The Golden Passional, 243. Campbell (R. J.), The Keys of the Kingdom, 21. Chadwick (G. A.), Pilate’s Gift, 183. Davies (J.), The Kingdom without Observation, 84. Drummond (R. J.), Faith’s Certainties, 149. Eyton (R.), The True Life, 207. Fraser (J.), University Sermons, 167. Harris (S. S.), The Dignity of Man, 222. Haslam (W.), The Threefold Gift of God, i. 66. Holland (W. L.), The Beauty of Holiness, 68. Ker (J.), Sermons, i. 365. Lewis (A.), Sermons Preached in England, 162. Lewis (F. W.), The Work of Christ, 134. Mackenzie (R.), The Loom of Providence, 146. Maclaren (A.), A Year’s Ministry, ii. 255. Matheson (G.), Leaves for Quiet Hours, 286. Murray (A.), Like Christ, 241. Nicoll (W. R.), Ten-Minute Sermons, 313. Punshon (W. M.), Sermons, i. 66. Pusey (E. B.), Parochial and Cathedral Sermons, 479. Robertson (F. W.), The Human Race, 43. Selby (T. G.), The Lesson of a Dilemma, 243. Thew (J.), Broken Ideals, 186, 187. Vincent (M. R.), The Covenant of Peace, 174. Virgin (S. H.), Spiritual Sanity, 272. Webster (F. S.), The Beauties of the Saviour, 143. Wright (D.), The Power of an Endless Life, 217. 1 John 3:3 The Power of the Christian Hope And every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.—1Jn_3:3. 1. St. John has been urging upon his poor, obscure brethren the fact that now, even in this life, with its infirmities, and weaknesses, and limitations, and sins, men are the children of God; that the very fact that God calls us children reveals the greatness of His love for us; that sonship here is a promise of glory hereafter; that that hereafter is to be lived with Christ, and in a state of likeness to Christ; that though we cannot form a definite conception of the greatness, and glory, and dignity of sonship in the Father’s house, yet we may know that as He—the Christ—is, so shall we be: Soul and body Shall His glorious image bear. This hope is a light that burns above the darkness of this world’s troubled sea, and to it they may look as to the beacon light which directs them home. Beyond the sorrows, and persecutions, and wearinesses of life, they may look for their perfect consummation and bliss, of both body and soul, in the heavenly kingdom, in the Father’s House, towards which they are all hastening. And then from the unimaginable splendours of this Beatific Vision he passes to the plainest practical talk:—If you entertain this hope, you must remember that there are conditions connected with it; to be Jesus Christ’s there, you must be Jesus Christ’s here; to attain to the fulness of His likeness in heaven, you must have here and now the elements of His character; sonship in heaven means sonship on earth; seeing God there means purity here. “Every man that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” 2. So when in this chapter St. John has for an instant opened for us the door leading into the future home of the redeemed, he shuts it again, brings us back to earth once more, and says to us, as stated in the text, that the matter immediately before us is not what we are going to be there, but what we are going to be and do here, and that the only legitimate effect of the glimpse he has just given us into the celestial world will be to steady and encourage the steps that are to be taken by us in this world. “And every man that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” That preserves the continuity between the life there and the life here, but the use to which he puts that continuity is to enhance our interest in this world rather than to diminish that interest. This is the only time in John’s Epistle that he speaks about hope. The good man, living so near Christ, finds that the present, with its “abiding in him,” is enough for his heart. And though he was the Seer of the Apocalypse, he has scarcely a word to say about the future in this letter of his; and when he does, it is for a simple and intensely practical purpose, in order that he may enforce on us the teaching of labouring earnestly in purifying ourselves.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.] I The Character of Christian Hope 1. The Christian has a hope peculiar to himself.—It is the hope of being like Jesus Christ. “We shall be like him for we shall see him as he is.” Now some would not put it in that way: they would say that their hope as Christians is to tread the golden streets, pass within the pearly gates, listen to the harpers harping with their harps, and, standing upon the sea of glass, be for ever free from toil and pain. But those are only the lower joys of heaven, except so far as they indicate spiritual bliss. The real truth, the truth that is contained in these metaphors and figures, and underlies them all, is that heaven is being like our Lord. While it will consist in our sharing in the Redeemer’s power, the Redeemer’s joy and the Redeemer’s honour, yet, it will consist mainly in our being spiritually and morally like Him—being purified as He is pure. And if we may become like Jesus Christ as to His character—pure and perfect—how can any other joy be denied us? If we shall have that, surely we shall have everything. This, then, is our hope—that we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. One of the greatest fallacies under which men live is hoping for heaven when they themselves are out of sympathy with heaven. Heaven is not infrequently regarded as a place to which admission is gained by some lenient act of Divine amnesty, or by some special pleading of a mediator—human or Divine—or by some clever piece of juggling at the last moment. Instead of this the Bible tells us—if it tells us anything at all about that other life—that heaven is not a place into which we are admitted, but a life into which we must grow. Heaven is not location, or circumstantial environment: Heaven is character. What we are here determines whether we shall have heaven or hell in the life to come. Life, like a dome of many coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity.1 [Note: W. J. Hocking.] 2. This hope goes beyond the present life.—It is far above man: it is set on God. In climbing towards it, he must leave all meaner things behind and beneath him. The hope of the Christian is the one worthy, enduring hope that is capable of lifting man above the earth and leading him to heaven. For all earthly and human ideals are too near the man to last him more than a little while. No sooner does he propose one such to himself, and begin to mount towards it, than it begins to lose its excellence as he draws nigh to it, and soon it has no power to hold his affections. There is no imaginable state that he cannot so disenchant except heaven, and no model that he cannot unidealize except the Son of God. Therefore every mere earthly hope is unworthy to rule a man and, if he have no higher, will at last degrade him; because man is greater than any earthly honour he can aspire to, and greater than the world that he lives in, and greater than all its achievements and glories—yes, greater than anything except God. Sic itur ad astra: This is the way to the stars. And Jesus, our elder brother, has gone before, and opened the way for aspiring man to follow. Behold they go to Him, out of every nation and every land, the leal, the loving, the true-hearted, even those who believe on His name. One by one they shake off all meaner desires, and lay all meaner purposes down, and as they climb towards Him along the various paths of suffering and of duty, their hearts are filled with a common hope—to be like Him, and see Him as He is. In a letter to Bishop King, Dr. Bright wrote: “Blessed are they that hope,” is not formally among the Beatitudes; but it is, as you have made us feel, a summary of very much of the New Testament teaching.1 [Note: Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, 78.] 3. This hope, being unworldly, does not appeal to mercenary instincts.—It does not centre itself on surroundings like Mohammed’s Paradise or the Elysian fields. Lower motives inevitably appeal more strongly to self-interest. People are often struck by seeing the indifference of Mohammedans in the face of death; soldiers have often testified how bravely they will go to death, and have argued that their religion must be more of a reality to them than ours. No doubt the lower, more mercenary conceptions of reward hereafter would make men more careless of their lives than the Christian one of being with Christ. The certainty that he was to pass into a sensual paradise would cause a sensual man, perhaps, even to put an end to himself. But one has yet to learn that there is really anything great in absolute indifference to death. Whatever the relative value of this life and the next, this is certain, that this life has a value, that in it man has a work to do, that it is wrong to try to shorten it, and that, therefore, indifference to its sudden close is no real sign of greatness. That is one thing; another is that, even granting that lower conceptions do produce greater indifference and consequent carelessness in the face of death than the higher ones, at any rate with the mass of mankind, yet we can never say, with the memory of Gordon and Havelock and a host of others before us, that the Christian conception, when realized, does not help men to die quite as bravely as any other conception, when there is any real and adequate reason. The hope of reward is a powerful agent, in fact the only effective one. Our Lord said so when He was among men. But neither Jesus nor the beloved disciple would have held out heaven as the object of men’s desire without first revealing heaven to them. Jesus brought heaven down to men, in His own person. He said, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” He said, “I and the Father are one,” and “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” He showed to them in His daily companionship that every lovely deed and word He enforced was but an expression of His own nature. He told them He should leave them and go to the Father. He said that in that Father’s house were many mansions; that He should go to prepare a place for them, and that where He was there they should be. Was there any fear, when He had taught these lessons, and inspired this spirit, that the disciples, who looked up to Him with adoring love, would think of heaven as a place of selfish luxury? According to their view of Him would be their view of heaven.1 [Note: A. Ainger, Sermons Preached in the Temple Church, 16.] I do not love thee, Lord, my part and lot, For that bright heaven thou hast promised me; I am not moved by fear because I see A yawning hell for those who love thee not; ’Tis thou thyself dost move me; salt and hot The tears flow down my cheeks to think on thee Nailed to the cross and mocked, that men might be Freed by thy death on that accursed spot. Thy love hath moved me; and I see it clear That, even robbed of heaven, I should love; And freed of hell and torment, I should fear. For, giving nothing, thou wert still as dear, And had I naught to hope one day above, No less to thee, O Lord, my soul must move.2 [Note: Roy Temple House, in S.S. Times, Aug. 17, 1912.] 4. If the future is not a hope it will be a fear.—If we resolve to forego the hope, we shall still be haunted by the fear that in that sleep of death there will come dreams, and that these dreams may be of darkness rather than of light. The love of God and of His righteousness is the key to the appreciation of heaven. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived it, because it is spiritually discerned. We may speculate fancifully on its nature; we may cultivate curiosity till we bring ourselves, when on the brink of death, to say with the famous Frenchman, “Now for the great secret”; but we have not been raised by such speculations any nearer to the height to which God is ever calling us. For He is calling us to hope, and to hope for Him. It would not, perhaps, be true to say that fearlessness is always the product of hope; it is true to say that, where hope is, fear cannot be. Hope, in the deepest, truest sense of the word, “casteth out fear, because fear hath torment.” Bunyan, in his great classic, makes this clear to us, in his delineation of the man whom he names Hopeful. In the dungeon of Giant Despair, with his companion, Christian, it is the younger pilgrim who consoles and enheartens the older. And when the two enter together the last river, and Christian cries out, “I sink in deep waters; the billows go over my head,” Hopeful calmly replies, “Be of good cheer, my brother; I feel the bottom, and it is good.”1 [Note: J. Flew, Studies in Browning, 126.] II The Operation of Christian Hope 1. The Christian hope has a purifying power.—There are very few religions which have not made purifying of some kind a part of their duty. The very savage, when he enters (as he fancies) the presence of his God, will wash and adorn himself that he may be fit, poor creature, for meeting the paltry God which he has invented out of his own brain; and he is right as far as he goes. The Englishman, when he dresses himself in his best to go to church, obeys the same reasonable instinct. Whatsoever we respect and admire we shall also try to copy, if it be only for a time. If we are going into the presence of a wiser man than ourselves, we shall surely recollect and summon up what little wisdom or knowledge we may have; if into the presence of a holier person, we shall try to call up in ourselves those better and more serious thoughts which we so often forget, that we may be, even for a few minutes, fit for that good company. And if we go into the presence of a purer person than ourselves, we shall surely (unless we be base and brutal) call up our purest and noblest thoughts, and try to purify ourselves, even as they are pure. It is true what poets have said again and again, that there are women whose mere presence, whose mere look, drives all bad thoughts away—women before whom men dare no more speak, or act, or even think, basely, than they would dare before the angels of God. It has been truly said that children cannot be brought up among beautiful pictures, even among any beautiful sights and sounds, without the very expression of their faces becoming more beautiful, purer, gentler, nobler; so that in them are fulfilled the words of the great and holy Poet concerning the maiden brought up according to God, and the laws of God— And she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face. But if mere human beings can have this “personal influence,” as it is called, over each others’ characters, if even inanimate things, if they be beautiful, can have it—what must be the personal influence of our Lord Jesus Christ?1 [Note: C. Kingsley, All Saints’ Day, 24.] From Bethel “Jacob went on his journey” (Gen_29:1). He “lifted up his feet,” as the livelier Hebrew has it. He went forward with a new buoyancy in his step and a higher courage in his heart. He was animated by the hope which always thrills the soul when it is fresh from real communion with God. There are spiritual experiences after which “we become physically nimble and lightsome; we tread on air; life is no longer irksome, and we think it will never be so.” It is a rapture to face the unknown future, if God has promised to be with us and guide us. As the Hebrew prophet says: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.”2 [Note: J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, ii. 49.] 2. This hope will materially weaken our hold on this world.—What is wealth, when we have illimitable riches laid up in heaven? What are pleasures, when we have before us endless joys—the most pure and intelligent that the wisdom and resources of God can create? What are earthly attachments, when compared with the society of saints and angels, and, above all, the Lord Himself, which awaits the child of God? What is knowledge—even the profoundest that earth’s sages can fathom—compared with that ocean of all that is knowable in the near future? While it is certainly a gain to have a cupful of knowledge instead of a thimbleful, yet, in either case, it is a mere nothing in comparison with knowing fully, even as we have been known fully. Clearly, then, just in proportion to our having such bright hopes lighting up the gloomy recesses of our earthly lives shall we be able to sit loosely to the things of only passing interest, and set our affections on heavenly things. We shall use earth’s mammon only as a handmaid to add lustre to the “everlasting habitations.” We cling too much to this world’s affairs. Many of us are like the little boy of whom Mr. McNeill tells, who was one day playing with a vase, and who put his hand into it and could not withdraw it. The father failed to free his boy’s hand, and was talking of breaking the vase. But he suggested another trial first. He told his boy to open his hand and hold his fingers straight out and then to pull his hand away. To his astonishment the little fellow said that he could not put his fingers out as his father had shown him, for if he did he would have to drop his penny. He had been holding on to a penny all the time.1 [Note: J. Dinwoodie.] 3. This hope will supply courage and patience.—There is nothing that makes a man so downhearted in his work of self-improvement as the constant and bitter experience that it seems to be all of no use; that he is making so little progress; that with immense pains, like a snail creeping up a wall, he gets up, perhaps an inch or two, and then all at once he drops down, and farther down than he was before he started. Slowly we manage some little, patient self-improvement; gradually, inch by inch and bit by bit, we may be growing better, and then there comes some gust and outburst of temptation; and the whole painfully reclaimed soil gets covered up by an avalanche of mud and stones, which we have to remove slowly, barrow-load by barrow-load. And then we feel that it is all of no use to strive, and we let circumstances shape us, and give up all thoughts of reformation. To such moods, then, there comes, like an angel from Heaven, that holy, blessed message, “We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” Every inch that we make now will tell then, and it is not all of no use. Set your heart to the work, it is a work that will be blessed and will prosper. I think this was the first year that I took a leading part in opposing the Adjournment for the Derby (which Tom Hughes had previously engineered) and was beaten by about three to one. This was one of the many “Forlorn Hopes” which I have lived to see successful—for I think the Derby adjournment is now virtually killed. In those days everyone laughed at the idea of stopping the scandal. Surely the words of Charles Greville (himself a Turfite) in his Journal indicate the true nature of racing—“Then the degrading nature of the occupation; mixing with the lowest of mankind and absorbed in the business for the sole purpose of getting money, the consciousness of a sort of degradation of intellect, the conviction of the deteriorating effect upon both the feelings and the understanding—all these things torment me, and often turn my pleasure to pain.” How often in looking back on these forlorn hopes do I think of the lines— Though beaten back in many a fray, Yet freshening strength we borrow: And where the vanguard halts to-day The rear shall camp to-morrow.1 [Note: Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 107.] Two serious defeats had within the week been inflicted upon the British forces in South Africa. Cronje, lurking behind his trenches and his barbed wire entanglements, barred Methuen’s road to Kimberley, while in the northern part of Cape Colony Gatacre’s wearied troops had been defeated and driven by a force which consisted largely of British subjects. But the public at home steeled their hearts and fixed their eyes steadily upon Natal. There was their senior General, and there the main body of their troops. As brigade after brigade and battery after battery touched at Cape Town, and were sent on instantly to Durban, it was evident that it was in this quarter that the supreme effort was to be made, and that there the light might at last break. In club, and dining-room, and railway car—wherever men met and talked—the same words might be heard: “Wait until Buller moves.” The hopes of a great empire lay in the phrase.2 [Note: A. Conan Doyle, The Great Boer War, 175.] It is neither blood nor rain that has made England, but hope—the thing all those dead men have desired. France was not France because she was made to be by the skulls of the Celts or by the sun of Gaul. France was France because she chose.3 [Note: G. K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw.] Westcott gave us hope, in an age which needed, above all things, to be saved from hopelessness. “We can keep hope fresh,” so he cried to us of the Christian Social Union. Hope, the paramount duty which Heaven lays, For its own honour, on man’s suffering heart. This is the debt that we owe to him—to cling to the high hopes with which he was inspired—even though we “see not our token, and there is no prophet more; no, not one among us who under-standeth any more.”1 [Note: H. Scott Holland, Personal Studies, 138.] We are of those who tremble at Thy word; Who faltering walk in darkness toward our close Of mortal life, by terrors curbed and spurred: We are of those. We journey to that land which no man knows Who any more can make his voice be heard Above the clamour of our wants and woes. Not ours the hearts Thy loftiest love hath stirred, Not such as we Thy lily and Thy rose:— Yet, Hope of those who hope with hope deferred, We are of those.2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Poems, 196.] III The Pattern of Purity 1. Christ is the Pattern—“as he is pure.”—He exhibits perfection in the inner and outer life. The inner life consists in oneness with Christ, the outer life in intercourse with our fellow-men. The two are well combined in those words of St. Peter: “What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?” This holiness of character has its root in its close companionship with Christ, and is exhibited in all manner of Christian conversation. Look at the Pattern. His holiness was pre-eminently practical. Look at His submission to His mother when He was “subject unto her,” His care for her in His dying hour, His compassion for the multitude, His love for His chosen flock, His faithfulness to those whom He loved, His meekness and gentleness, His sinless purity, His forgiveness of wrong, His delight in the Father’s will, His absolute submission to the Father’s purpose, His marvellous self-sacrifice, giving Himself “a ransom for many.” In the Standard Office of the British Government there is a bronze bar, a yard long, the unit of measurement throughout the British Empire. Everything is measured by reference to that bit of metal. It is the final court of appeal in the matter of measurement. The interesting thing about it is that it is reputed to be the same length as the arm of the king in whose reign it was made. So that we really measure by reference to a royal arm. It is in the realm of heart and soul as in the realm of the market-place: our unit of measurement is something about a King—not the sweep of His arm, but the heart and the life of Him. In white all the colours are blended. A perfectly white substance combines all the colours of the rainbow merged in true proportion; but green or indigo, or red are only the reflections of a part of the solar rays. So John, Peter, Paul—these are parts of the light of heaven; these are differing colours, and there is a beauty in each one of them. But if you want to get the whole you must get to Christ the perfect Lord, for all the light is in Him. In Him is not the red or the blue, but in Him is light, the true light, the whole of it. You are sure to get a lop-sided character if any man shall be the copy after which you write. If we copy Christ we shall attain a perfect manhood through the power of His Spirit.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon, Grace Triumphant, 215.] 2. The Pattern is an everlasting challenge to us.—The promise of likeness to God does not mean perfect freedom from sin now, far from it; but it does mean progressive growth, gradual conquest, ever, in some small way, coming to know God and His purposes better, and so growing, even if it be in ways almost undiscernible, to a likeness of something in Him. Every man that hath this hope in Christ, every one, that is, who realizes the blessing of His Baptism, the dignity of his being God’s child, this manner of love whereby he, all unworthy, is called the son of God, and sees that this is but the beginning; that God means to lead him onwards to the full knowledge of Himself, till, at last, he is counted worthy to see His face—every man to whom these thoughts and hopes are real will long to use every means given of God for his cleansing, will suffer no lower ideal to overshadow and obscure his hope. In the beautiful legends which tell us of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, one knight is described as the bright and consummate flower of chivalry, the brave and spotless Sir Galahad—whose good blade carved the casques of men, whose tough lance thrusted sure, whose strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart was pure. It was no fond tale, no idle fancy; for many Sir Galahads have lived since Christ came to show men how to be great; and such are the men who have done all the fairest and gentlest deeds of human history. And sordid and commonplace as the world seems to have grown, the only real leaders of men are the men who, like Sir Galahad, are high-minded and pure-hearted. The time was when such rode forth in armour to resist the spoilers, and keep the far frontiers of Christendom against the heathen invader. Now, however, they do the less conspicuous but not less glorious part. In every Christian community there are pure-hearted Christian men who are the real champions of right, the warders of all that men cherish and hold dear—men who are kept stainless and pure by the high hope of their Christian calling; men whose high-mindedness gives tone to our society, who are the real defenders of public safety and domestic peace. These are the true defenders of our country, the unconscious champions of its homes—men to whose star-eyed vision the Christian’s hope has risen, and whom by God’s grace it has purified and is keeping pure.1 [Note: S. S. Harris, The Dignity of Man, 229.] 3. How then is our purification to be effected?—The answer is, and must be, that it is the work of the Spirit. But as, on the one hand, there would be nothing so vain as to try to do the Spirit’s work for ourselves, so, on the other hand, there is nothing so useless as to expect the Spirit to do our work. There is a purification which God alone can effect for us. There is another purification which God cannot and will not do. Sin is forgiven, sinfulness is removed, grace is bestowed by God. None of these things can be obtained by man. But grace must be used by man like all other gifts of God. He must learn to be obedient, he must learn to avoid sin, he must learn to be active in goodness, by the use of grace; not by merely standing still as if he were asleep or dead. Whatever may be the source of his activity, he must, so far as he knows, choose, determine, plan, persevere in the way of holiness, as much as in the way of learning, in the way of working, counselling, or pursuing any other energy which God has set before men. And it is plain that unless it were so we should not enjoy the human freedom, the human faculties in that thing which most belongs to humanity—the knowledge and love of God. See how he does not take away freewill in that he saith, “purify himself.” Who purifieth us but God? Yea; but God doth not purify thee if thou be unwilling. Therefore, in that thou joinest thy will to God, in that thou purifiest thyself, thou purifiest thyself not by thyself, but by Him who cometh to inhabit thee.1 [Note: Augustine.] To have communion with Jesus Christ is like bringing an atmosphere round about us in which all evil will die. If you take a fish out of water and bring it up into the upper air, it writhes and gasps, and is dead presently; and our evil tendencies and sins, drawn up out of the muddy depths in which they live, and brought up into that pure atmosphere of communion with Jesus Christ, are sure to shrivel and to die, and to disappear. We kill all evil by fellowship with the Master. His presence in our lives, by our communion with Him, is like the watchfire that the traveller lights at night—it keeps all the wild beasts of prey away from the fold.2 [Note: A. Maclaren.] I saw a smith the other day cleaning his grimy workshop. Through one high and narrow window streamed a golden ray of sunshine, and where the beam fell the broom swept. But under benches and dark corners one caught a suggestion of cobwebs and long-gathered dust on them. The smith took a piece of burnished tin, and catching on its face the ray of sunshine, he flashed it into the hiding-places of ancient dirt and disorder, and straightway followed the cleansing. It is a homely parable. Every man with “this hope set on him purifieth himself”; will send its flashlight into the dark places of the heart where hidden foulness still lurks, and by its revealing straightway set about self-cleansing. The vision splendid is greatly practical. You can do so many things by it. You can harness a stubborn temper with it, bridle an ill tongue, cauterize with the fire of it a hidden plague spot, yoke it to a sluggard self so slow to seek another’s good at any cost of comfort. “Every man that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself.”3 [Note: T. Yates.] Then life is—to wake, not sleep, Rise and not rest, but press From earth’s level, where blindly creep Things perfected, more or less, To the heaven’s height, far and steep, Where, amid what strifes and storms May wait the adventurous quest, Power is Love—transports, transforms Who aspired from worst to best, Sought the soul’s world, spurned the worms! I have faith such end shall be: From the first, Power was—I knew. Life has made clear to me That, strive but for closer view, Love were as plain to see. When see? When there dawns a day, If not on the homely earth, Then yonder, worlds away, Where the strange and new have birth, And Power comes full in play.1 [Note: Browning.] The Power of the Christian Hope Literature Ainger (A.), Sermons in the Temple Church, 13. Bushnell (H.), The New Life, 176. Campbell (R. J.), A Faith for To-day, 107. Cooper (T. J.), Love’s Unveiling, 144. Dale (R. W.), Christian Doctrine, 198. Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, v. 162. Davies (J.), The Kingdom without Observation, 84. Eadie (J.), The Divine Love, 104. Eyton (R.), The True Life, 207. Farrar (F. W.), Truths to Live By, 61, 197. Glazebrook (M. G.), The End of the Law, 71. Harris (S. S.), The Dignity of Man, 222. Hoare (E.), Great Principles of Divine Truth, 256. Holland (W. L.), The Beauty of Holiness, 68. Hopkins (E. H.), The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life, 1. McGarvey (J. W.), Sermons (1894), 16. Maclagan (P. J.), The Gospel View of Things, 57, 130 Maclaren (A.), A Year’s Ministry, i. 3. Murray (A.), Like Christ, 241. Parkhurst (C. H.), A Little Lower than the Angels, 91. Punshon (W. M.), Sermons, i. 66. Pusey (E. B.), Parochial and Cathedral Sermons, 479. Robertson (F. W.), The Human Race, 43. Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 65. Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xliii. (1897) 133. Spurgeon (C. H.), Grace Triumphant, 199. Talbot (E. S.), Some Titles and Aspects of the Eucharist, 19. Vincent (M. R.), The Covenant of Peace, 174. Westcott (B. F.), Village Sermons, 82.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 03:35:02 +0000