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XVI.
ASSURANCE

“I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” – 2 Timothy i. 12.

These are among the last words the apostle wrote. He is now at Rome, in prison, and within a few days of the tragic end. He is worn down by age; still more so by a constant, toilsome, suffering ministry of some thirty years, a ministry which has obtained for him, at the hands of men, stones and stripes, and now a dungeon, with the immediate prospect of a violent death. He is bound with chains, and compelled to be silent just where and when he has so long been anxious to speak, in the metropolis of the world! He is, moreover, forsaken by his friends, who, though they love him, have not courage to go and visit him now! Outwardly, no sadder condition could well be imagined. Yet Paul is filled with a deep and holy peace. How is this? The answer is that he feels within himself the approval of his God. He is in prison, but that is because of his obedience to His Saviour. He has worn himself down in a Divine service. Behind him he sees a long train of woes and sufferings, but he also sees many churches which he has founded, and many unknown regions open to the gospel. Before him he sees an unrighteous judge and a painful martyrdom, but he also sees heaven, Christ, and the unfading crown. If he says, “All have forsaken me,” he can also say, as his Master did, that he is not left alone. All this is enough to account for the calmness and hopefulness of this his last epistle, and especially of the words before us to-day.

I will not trouble you with the critical difficulties of the text. On only one preliminary question I would say a word. What does Paul mean by the expression, “that which I have committed unto Him”? Some urge that it was the Church which he was about to leave; others, that it was the result of his labours; and others, that it was his final salvation. I prefer to combine all these into one general whole, and to say: “All his Christian interests, the hopes on which his spirit rested for his personal salvation, and every other interest that was dear to his heart.” He had “committed” to Christ himself, the church he had loved and served, the results of his labour, and the final reward to which he was looking forward. If, within the vast scope of his desires, there had been one thing which he could not commit to Christ, his rest would have been incomplete, and his joy would have been marred. But for everything he was able to say: “Saviour, I have committed this to Thee.”

Observe how Paul puts this great matter. He was the greatest doctrinal writer of the New Testament; but he does not say that he believes in doctrines, but that he believes in a Person. “I know whom I have believed.” All doctrinal belief follows, and is comprised in, that. Faith everywhere in Scripture is confidence in Christ. He who believes in Christ must come sooner or later to believe in the doctrines which cluster around Him. But our experience grows beyond these into the realisation of Him as being so actual, so near, and so sufficient, as to be our true rest. Who among us can tell all the reasons why he believes in Christ? Many of them cannot be put into words. They belong to our most secret thoughts, to the emotions of our happiest hours, to a hidden, silent history, which, if the world heard, it could not understand. Yet these proofs multiply in proportion as the Christian advances in life. How many times have we found the words of Christ adapted to our wants! How many unexpected deliverances has He wrought on our behalf! How many answers to prayer have we received at His hands! How much peace has He breathed into our hearts! “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”

What a grand confirmation have we here of the faith Paul preached! Had his trust been misplaced, surely he had suffered enough to disabuse him of it, and that most completely. But his faith grows the more he suffers. No mere party zeal could stand a test like this; no, nor any delusion either. And so we say that such a man as Paul was, under the circumstances in which he maintained his trust, could not be deceived. Thus Paul’s faith becomes a confirmation of our own, and, with him on our side, we may face a world of doubt.

But I wish to use the text chiefly for the elucidation of a single subject. Paul’s words express the assurance of his faith. How does this subject strike us? Does not the very mention of it give rise to sad reflections in many hearts? “The assurance of faith.” “Ah, I knew it once,” we say; “it was the experience of earlier days, and has been the experience of some special days since then, still more so of some specially holy moments. But it is not my normal state. Would it were!”

We are living in a period in which there seems to be a general disinclination towards whatever is firm and precise in religious creed, feeling, and life. This may not be an altogether unhopeful state of things. Respect for truth may keep some minds silent concerning their beliefs, or at least may prevent them from avowing those beliefs too dogmatically. Anxiety and doubt may even in some cases be a sign of spiritual earnestness. Yet the tendency we speak of is on the whole to be deeply deplored. The truth is that the world has invaded us. Men shrink from great precision of conviction because they shrink from great consecration of life. How few the lives that are pre-eminently Christian, as Paul’s was! On the other hand, our day is remarkable for its craving for mere religious excitement. In many cases, it is not so much the desire for truth, as the desire to be excited and pleased, that prevails. Neither of these tendencies can build up the faith which finds its grand avowal in the words: “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”

The remedy for the state of things upon which I have touched cannot now be pointed out, because it would lead me away from my purpose. But I want to show the effect of it upon ourselves, and upon those who are without. There are certain aims common to the Christian life of all of us, and these cannot be reached so long as our faith lacks steadiness and stability.

1. Our great mission is to convert souls. We are avowedly the instruments of the Spirit of God in this momentous work. But what is the conversion of a soul? It is a radical change in its affections and its life. But this change never takes place apart from the influence of deep convictions. Men will not exchange the known for the unknown: actual life with its passions and its pleasures for the weak and cold abstractions of a faith with no precision in its principles, or for the worship of a God who is vague and problematical. How are we to succeed in winning souls to the truth we profess unless we can produce something which ought to convince them that we have the right of it? An unstable faith will be of little use to us here. There must be no hesitation in our avowal that our transition from the world to God is a blessed one. In other matters, a man of strong beliefs has half won us to his side. In religion, it is notoriously so. Paul’s grand words have been a source of strength to us. Let us make them our own – the expression of our own faith – and they will become, through us, a source of strength to others. Let us have this same Christianity in its fulness and its power; and having it, let us avow it without timidity and without reserve.

2. Our personal obligation, as Christians, is to be holy; and we want the assurance of faith for that. We may be deceived about our conversion. At the outset of our Christian life we may be the subjects of many illusions. But men are not mistaken when, day by day, they are fighting their passions, bringing the will into subjection, conquering the flesh, and submitting the whole life to the long, slow, toilsome discipline of obedience. This kind of work is never accomplished by a vague and undecided religion. Men do not deny themselves without an equivalent. You cannot persuade them to give up their illusions, their pleasures, their passions, nor even their vices, unless you show them something else which may, must, and ought to take their place. If you empty the heart of one set of elements, you must fill it with another. So it is that we want a living God, a living Christ, close to us; loving us, forgiving us, helping us, comforting us, and opening before us the prospect of glory and of happiness for eternity. Let us know and feel ourselves able to say, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day,” and the struggle with inward evil will be simplified, and will become comparatively easy.

3. We stand in daily need of strength and consolation, and for that nothing but a firm and settled faith will suffice. There are great sorrows and great anxieties to which we are all exposed, in the face of which nothing will do for us but sovereign words of life and of hope in which we can implicitly trust. There are great wrongs under which we cannot be comforted except by the constant conviction of a righteousness which will one day vindicate the right, and redress the wrong. There are great losses in which we want the promise and the certainty of an immense and restoring love. Souls will seek this strength, this consolation, here, there, everywhere; but they will never find it until they can say, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”

4. The assurance of faith is necessary to all earnestness of effort in the spread of the gospel. A church or a Christian, subsiding into uncertainty of religious belief, has no motive for zeal in the propagation of religion. We preach because we believe. Let the idea, that the Christianity of Christ or of Paul or of the New Testament needs modification, become prevalent in the professing church, and the secret of every true impulse in missionary work, whether abroad or at home, will be gone. It is the men who share Paul’s stable, grand faith who can take their stand as the preachers of Christ. It is only they who can rise to the sacrifices necessary for the promotion of His truth in the world.

Have we such a faith as this? If not how can we obtain it? This latter question will be best answered by a close adherence to the text. We must say a few words respecting the faith itself, and also respecting Christ, who is the object of it.

What is faith? A common answer is that faith is an act of intellectual submission to the teachings of another – that it is in matters of the mind what blind and unquestioning obedience is in matters of practice. This account of faith was early imposed by the Papal Church, and it is not repudiated even now by some evangelical churches. The root of all doctrines of sacramental efficacy is the renunciation of private judgment in matters of faith. No wonder that with such a definition of faith Christianity should be held in derision, and regarded as the special privilege of the young, the immature, the aged, and all whose weaknesses and disappointments leave them no other consolation and no other resource! This is not the teaching of Scripture. Of course in faith there is submission, for there are many things to be believed which we cannot understand. Nevertheless, faith is much more than submission, and there is not a case of faith in the whole Word of God which presents to us the believing life as a thing of mere blind credulity. Was it so with Abraham, with Job, with David, with Paul, or with any of the others? Even in relation to the dark things, faith rests upon convictions which make submission the only rational, the only possible attitude of the mind. According to Scripture, faith is the soul laying hold of the invisible God – laying hold of Christ as His Son and our Saviour. There is no abdication of any one of the powers of the soul. In believing, the soul is entire with its reason, its thought, its love, and all its spiritual energies. Nor is there any weakness. When a man is hesitating between surrender to the voice of conscience, and surrender to the voice of passion, he performs an act of faith if he yields to the voice of conscience, for he is ruled by the invisible; yet the last thing we dare say of such a man would be that he is weak. Rightly considered, every such act is a triumph of the soul. The conscientious man is the representative of the greatest moral strength we know. Imagine a soul with all its life under the constant thought of God and of Christ. Surely such an order of life as his affords scope enough for intellectual strength and for moral heroism.

Much must be taken for granted, we said. Reason has its sphere, and to it a truly noble task is assigned. The visible world belongs to it, and it is subjecting that world to itself more and more every day. But how powerless it is when man asks of it a response to the aspirations of his conscience and his heart. What can it say to a soul weighed down by a sense of guilt? What to the heart that is torn by calamity? What to any man when death draws nigh? Oh, no! Unless we are to abandon ourselves to despair, there must be faith – some truth in which, or some Being in whom, the whole soul can repose. And mark, this was just the light in which the apostle looked at the matter. He was near the end. Eternity was close before him. He knew that endless issues were at stake. He was nerved to confront it all by faith. What faith? What was he trusting in?

Paul believed in Christ. On what grounds? Can we believe in Christ? If so, again I ask on what grounds?

1. Christ stands before us in our darkness in a position which is exclusively His own. Of all men, He alone knew whence He came and whither He went. Without hesitation, and with tones of sovereign authority, He points out to us the way to God. He speaks of heaven as one who has come from thence. Everywhere He calls Himself the Sent of the Father, His only-begotten Son, the Lord of souls. His word was with power; sweet with intensest human tenderness, influential with Divine authority. What was it that gave Him this power? Not human reasoning, not eloquence. It was the light of Truth reaching the conscience, and penetrating the heart. We see in Him God as He is, and we also see in Him man as he ought to be. We do not reason about this influence. Apprehending Him, we instinctively accept it. It is thus that millions have said: “To whom can we go but unto Thee? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

2. This influence of Christ has been exerted on every variety of human soul. His followers, in ever-increasing numbers, come from all conditions on earth – rich and poor, learned and ignorant, young and old, hardened sinners and men blushing with their first sins: all find from Him peace and light and hope. Especially is this so with those who suffer and weep; those who have felt the poverty of mere words, and who are now beyond the reach of any illusion. For the first time they have been comforted, and the comfort has satisfied them.

3. Still we want further to know by what authority He wields this influence. We ask, “Does He come from God?” The reply is that He does before our eyes the works of God. Not miracles merely, for though these constitute a powerful testimony, there is yet something more. He has revealed God in His own person, and the proof of His Divine mission has been given in His life. In Him, holiness has been at once realised and exhibited. Eighteen hundred years ago His enemies could find no fault in Him. Since then humanity has progressed, but Christ still leaves the noblest sons of men amazingly far behind Him. A hostile criticism has been indefatigable in its attempt to discover flaws in His character, and yet that character still stands before us as the ideal of the good and the true. His is a holiness before which the conscience of the world is accused and judged. Irresistibly the answer of the heart comes: “He who is so holy must be worthy of all our faith.”

4. Moreover, there is the sense of sin and of the need of pardon and salvation. Here after all, and more than anywhere else, is the secret of confidence in Christ. We seek salvation in works – anywhere out of Him – but we cannot find it. He who is holy and true tells us that He came into the world to save us, that He is our sacrifice and our peace, and that the love and the righteousness of God are manifest in Him and in the redeeming work He has undertaken on our behalf. This exactly meets our case. We say: “This is what we want, but what we have elsewhere sought in vain. At His hands we accept it with implicit trust and with fervent thankfulness.”

Are not these reasons enough? Is not the response of every heart, “Yes, they are.” Can it be less than the utmost folly and guilt for men to resist the voice of a conscience which tells them that it is only in Christ that the soul can find its rest? Is all this concurrent testimony to be set aside?

This assurance of faith, however, can only be the result of intense earnestness. We do not forget the necessity of the agency of the Spirit of God; let us never forget it; but let us also remember how constantly and how fatally that agency can be contravened. Paul held the great truths he preached with so tenacious and so unquestioning a faith, because he had begun by consecrating his heart to them under the intuitive perception that they were the truths which his nature as a man and his condition as a sinner so imperatively needed, and because all his experience of them did but confirm their sufficiency. “If any man will do the will of God, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God,” or whether it be of men. “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”

For the unbeliever there are grounds enough for faith, both within and without. And if, even with the desire, faith be still found to be beset with difficulties, there is one unfailing prayer which will make it easy – the prayer, “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.”

XVII.
IMMORTALITY

“What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?” – Psalm viii. 4.

One or two remarks on the meaning of certain expressions in this Psalm are necessary before we proceed. The second verse is pictorial, and has a martial character. Two hosts are seen facing each other. A beautiful world and a wonderful universe are in view of both. Children, in their conscious or unconscious admiration of what they see, and in the early and universal instinct by which they attribute it to the hand of a great God, effectually rebuke the unbelief of scoffers and all haters of God, who persistently refuse to recognise Him in His works. So, even to-day, the simple and pious intuitions of the race face, fight, and conquer all materialism. The beautiful and significant application of these words found in the account of our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem points for all time to the duty of giving Christian teaching to the young. In our Christian homes and our Sunday-schools lies the great bulwark against the spread of infidelity. Such teaching acts on the future. “Instead of the fathers shall be the children,” a generation to serve God. These will become fathers in their turn. “Take care of the children, and the adults will take care of themselves.”

“What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?” At first sight, it would seem as though the Psalmist were contrasting the littleness of man with the greatness of the universe. And, indeed, he does use a word to denote man which points to his weakness. But this is only David’s starting-point in his aim to correct the impression. The Psalm reveals, not the littleness, but the greatness of man. “When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained; what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?” How little he looks! Yet how great he must be! “For Thou makest him to want little of a Divine standing; Thou crownest him with honour and glory; Thou makest him to have dominion over the work of Thy hands; Thou puttest all under his feet – all sheep and oxen, and also beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea – whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea.”

One of the subtlest, and, to a certain degree, one of the most plausible of the objections of unbelief has been the attempt to instil into men’s minds the idea that it is presumptuous on their part to put confidence in the apparently sublime, but really fallacious, prospects which Christianity offers to them with regard to their destiny beyond this world. God is too great, it is said, and man is too little for us to admit the thought that God takes such an interest in man, both for this world and for the next, as the Bible affirms. The tendency of modern thought is largely in the direction of this view.

It would be easy to overtax our attention by going into too wide a field. I will speak only of the Christian idea of an immortal and heavenly life hereafter. It is this which is imperilled; it is this which is called in question. I have nothing to do now with the debated question of future punishment. Let me re-state the form of scepticism with which I have to deal. It is said to be presumptuous to suppose that we, the creatures of a day, are to be hereafter lifted up to a state of perfect blessedness, which is to last for ever, in the presence of God; and we are recommended to leave this dream aside, and to be content with the position we occupy here and now. “You have much to be thankful for, even as things are. Let it not be thought a hardship, if death should prove to be the end of man.”

The lines of thought as they start from this point are numerous, and one is tempted to follow them out. But we must forbear, for the sake of attending simply to our one purpose. I may, however, point out to you how partial and unreal is the view which is thus taken of man’s position and of his aspirations. Given the utmost of outward and present satisfaction, man universally is not content with this. But how many millions of human beings there are in the world at this moment to whom the present life can scarcely be said to have been any boon at all! How many more millions of such beings have lived in the past. The very ground we tread everywhere cowers beneath human sorrow. Is it not a cruel mockery to say to the suffering, the enslaved, the down-trodden: “Be grateful for what you have; it is vain, foolish, wrong for you to expect or to wish for more”? Some such advice as this may be given if our Christian hopes are tenable; but if they are not, we do but insult the suffering if we speak to them in this fashion.

The kind of unbelief we are anxious to check is spreading. Among the masses, in many directions, the desire to apprehend spiritual realities, and to be ruled by them, is increasingly small; the battles of life and thought are on behalf of the interests of a day; and even among well-disposed persons the hold of fundamental truth is seriously relaxed. Hence the necessity for our seeking to strengthen our cherished convictions, and to discern clearly and grasp firmly “the faith once delivered to the saints.”

If the views we animadvert upon were entertained merely by the ignorant and the uncultured, we should not so much wonder; but we are perplexed when we find them so prevalent amongst the wise of this world, and even by not a few who are reputed to be masters of human science. It is true that their advancing knowledge gives them vaster conceptions of the universe which they so unweariedly explore; but is it not strange that that vaster knowledge does not enhance their estimate of man, since he can explore so widely and can comprehend so much? Why should religious faith decrease in proportion as human knowledge is accumulated?

I take the psalm before us as furnishing a triumphant and lasting reply to the kind of unbelief in question. In Nature, first, God shows us His estimate of man. The ascent is easy from Nature to Grace, in which the Divine estimate is raised to its highest point.

We are invited to look around. Can there be any doubt that this beautiful world, with its immense treasures known and unknown, its bountiful harvests of every order on land and sea, and its marvellous variety of life, animate and inanimate, was formed for our sakes? Was not everything the earth contains made for our use and enjoyment, in measure increasing with every new discovery? The fruits of the ground, with each returning season, are prepared for our wants, and in that preparation, every season, with its sunshine and its shade, its dryness and its rain, its dews and its storms, is incessantly engaged. All nature is occupied in the successful attempt to answer the initial question, “What shall we eat? what shall we drink? and wherewithal shall we be clothed?” The dress we wear brings innumerable animals under tribute. “We have dominion over all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beast of the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea.” Everything tells us that, in this world, we are kings – “a little,” only a little, “lower than the angels” – the gods. Between man and the inferior animals there is as great a distance as between the master and his slave; – nay more, as between the artizan and his instruments. The irrational animal is much nearer to the inanimate creation than to man since the end and purpose of both is to minister to man. This world, therefore, was manifestly made for us. Who ventures to doubt it? Least of all can it be doubted by the discoverers of earth’s profounder secrets.

We are invited to look still further afield. This world, which is made for us, is not independent or alone. It is in no sense self-sustained. It is part of a wonderful and incomprehensible whole. Other great creations concur in its maintenance. The sun enlightens, warms, and fertilizes it. The moon and the stars exert manifold influences upon it. The whole host of heaven has been brought into co-ordinate and helpful relation to it – yes, it: the world which exists for us! “When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained;” when I consider the manifold bearings of Thy universe upon man – what is man! What must he be! In certain aspects, indeed, apparently small; but, by all these tokens, how great! We do not say that we are the only moral and spiritual beings in the midst of so many worlds. We do not know, but we may accept the probability that God has created beings capable of adoring and loving Him everywhere. But we do say – and science combines with Scripture to compel us to say – that these worlds have been in part created for us, just as our world has been in part created for them. This is clear. The most sceptical of men cannot venture to doubt it; nor do they. It is only needful that we should carefully observe in order to become convinced of this marvellous fact.

So much, then, for what nature teaches. The psalmist sought to learn the lesson, and it is right that we should seek to learn it too.

This first step being taken, another follows. Man is an object of the manifold agencies of myriads of worlds. He is so as man; and the relative position he holds, intellectually, morally, or socially, to his fellow men, has nothing to do with the fact. Nature ministers to the Caffre and the Hottentot as truly as to the man of most advanced civilization; the only difference being in the use which the two opposite classes can make of nature. Why, then, should man refuse to believe that he is an object of solicitous love to that God who created him, who made him what he is, and who thus crowned him with glory and honour? Why should he refuse to believe that God loves him enough to send His Son to die for him, and thus to save him from the wreck of his being through sin? Especially, why should he refuse to believe this when he is assured of it by Him who testified that He was that Son of God – by Jesus, the man par excellence, the God-man? Why should it be doubted that man is an object of interest to angels, who are said to rejoice over every sinner that repenteth? Why should it be doubted that God has provided for him a fairer home than this, that immortality and heaven are the things which God has in reserve for him? Why should it be doubted that an everlasting salvation has been provided for him through such a sacrifice as that of Christ? If sun, moon, and stars have been made for the service of man, why should it be hard to believe that God, who counts the stars, and calls them all by their names, should also heal the broken in heart, and bind up their wounds?

The prospect of human destiny as opened up by Christianity is grand; but not too grand to be ascribed to Him who created the universe, and so arranged it that it should constitute one vast system of ministration to us. When we see God thus working for man, we cannot be surprised that angels should be glad to serve him too. Neither can we wonder that the Son of God should come to save him. The wonder begins with man’s primary relation to the “all things,” for our knowledge of which we are not dependent upon revelation at all. Science teaches us that; and revelation only endorses it. That is wonderful enough; but accepting it as a fact, all that revelation teaches, but which science could not have discovered, follows naturally enough. The facts of revelation concerning man may be accepted the more implicitly because they really have their basis in the facts of science. The whole is in perfect harmony. The one and the other are both represented – and consistently so – as concurring in the great cause of human happiness.