Acts 15:12

Chapter 49

Prayer

Almighty God, today we bury the year on which we entered with Christian hope. The year has run its course. As coming from thee, and giving unto us opportunities of service and growth and sacrifice, we may say, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" The year was thine, thou didst give it unto us; we have written across its face pur daily record. To-night the year goes back again to thee a blighted thing. The judgment is thine; we would the year might, in many a day, be utterly forgotten, but thou dost claim the days; thou dost turn over the leaves of our time, and peruse the record, line by line, and thou dost write upon our work the judgment that is righteousness. We will not hold up the year to thee in a spirit of defiance; we will point to it with a trembling finger because of a misgiving heart; and over every page of the writing we will say so far as our tears will permit us "God, be merciful to us sinners!" We are a year nearer to thee; mayhap we are a year farther from thee. Thou dost make us old before we know it; thou dost silently scatter the snow of old age upon our head, and we awake to behold the winter's white. Thou art carrying out thy purposes throughout all the ages. Thou dost not live in days and moments, in years and centuries thou breathest eternity, thou dwellest in one perpetual now, thou stretchest thy hand from everlasting to everlasting, and our duration is but as a dying cloud in thy sight. We will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High. Through Christ Jesus our living Lord, we will ask to find rest in the pavilion of God's eternity. Spare us yet a little while, that we may recover strength to say some better prayer, and sing some sweeter hymn, before we are gathered to our fathers. Thou dost not take away the race of men as with a flood; but man by man, one by one here one, there one so that the individual taken does not seem to be so much; yet when the year's death tale is told, behold how many empty places there are, and how many answer not when the life, roll is called ov. Thus thou dost work silently in the night-time, and in unexpected hours, so that we know not when the Lord will come: at the cock-crowing, at the fuller dawn, in the shining midday, in the deep night. Thou dost keep us in this ignorance, that we may be also kept in keen watchfulness, so that when the Lord cometh we may be ready to enter with him into his house. As for the year, the Lord pity it. The work has been clumsily done; our prayers have not all gone to heaven, because they did not all come from the heart. Some deep graves have been dug, and the stone work and the cunning masonry cannot prevent the certain corruption of the flesh. Plant thou Gospel flowers upon human graves, and they will delight and soothe us in the time of impatience and passion. Thou hast made some widows and some fatherless, and some thou hast bereaved of all; so that the year shall never be mentioned but with it there will come the moan of a hollow wind. "Oh, dreary year, worst of all, blackest of all," some will say. Others bless thee for it; they never saw such flowers as it has grown. They never knew the mountains were so high before; they never saw the sea and the river throb with so many millions of silvery spangles; the whole year has been a breath from heaven business has been success, health has become consolidated strength, and sleep has been as a renewal of life. They will remember the year, and bless it. Now, Lord, if we may see the dawn of another year, may we this time try as we never tried before to know thy will, and to do it all. We would enter upon it in the name of Christ, Lord of all the years, Saviour of all the ages, Priest of all sinners, Alpha, Omega, first, last in him all things are gathered up in their infinite total. We lay our hand on him, by him we are saved, through him we pray, in him we live, for his sake we forgive as we would be forgiven. Amen.

Apostolic Testimony

Act 15:12

THAT is an unsatisfactory verse. When Paul speaks we want to know what Paul says. But some men must be their own reporters, for so unusual is their method and tone that it baffles every scribe to catch the one and reproduce the other. That Paul should have made a speech, and that it should be referred to in one brief sentence such as this, considering the gravity and dignity of the subject, cannot be satisfactory. Paul himself goes into the matter; we see, therefore, under Paul's own sign manual, what he said and what he did. So we turn for the moment from the Acts of the Apostles to the opening verses of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians. Where Luke contents himself with a summary, Paul passes into minute and instructive detail. Some verses are too condensed; some reports are simple variations of injustice. We do not care for our life to be huddled up in one sentence. By-and-by the master of criticism and detail will take our life to pieces by a just analysis, and will award to every one according to his deeds. We briefly said, "He called and prayed." It seems from that report as if the man did little or nothing. We do not say that he walked miles, and that when he prayed his heart wept. We deal too roughly with one another, and too summarily. We dismiss life too briefly. Thanks be unto, Heaven that judgment will be a criticism of detail, and not an off-hand pronouncement upon the tragedy of human life.

Paul says he went up to Jerusalem "by revelation." Then he went up in high temper he was greater than the Jerusalem to which he went If he had gone up to Jerusalem awed by its metropolitan position and fame, he would have hesitated in his speech, and would have picked out right dainty words that could offend no one, but, by subtle flattery, might win the ear of many. In reality Paul went from heaven to Jerusalem, and, descending upon it, it withered into contemptibleness under the majesty of the visions from which he had just turned his eyes. Paul lived in a large world. It was no mere handful of dust upon which he set his foot, and within which he performed the little miracles of his power. In Paul's view the worlds all belonged to one another. The Lord had not made a countless number of links; the Lord had made a chain of planets, a chain of worlds. Touching one link, he sent a thrill through all the band of the constellations. We have dropped the word "revelation" except on the Sabbath day, when we venture to say it sometimes. We have meaner words such as impression, conviction, feeling, unaccountable desire. These are inoffensive terms; an atheist might use such mock jewelry. The Apostle had no impression, conviction, transient feeling. He said: "I went up by revelation." God said to him, "Go." The angels said, "We will go with thee." It was a great day! "I went up with angel convoys, with banners unfurled by invisible hands, for I knew that the truth was with me, and I was anxious only that Christ's Cross should be lifted up above cloud and fog and dust, and be seen everywhere as the one way of salvation." Was Paul then afraid of Jerusalem, and "pillars," and "men of reputation," and who spoke ex cathedra ? He was twice anointed, yea, with a double unction of the Spirit, so that Jerusalem became but a village to him, and men of illustrious name became brethren and equals. Paul says he was anxious to state the Gospel he had been preaching, so that the leaders of the Church might know exactly what he had been doing. Paul preached privately to them that were of reputation. Could we have heard him then! Speaking to a sympathetic audience, to men who had seen the Lord! They must have thought they were almost looking upon Him again; they had never heard such a voice before. Paul was never so great in any other instance. Speaking from the shrine of revelations, even the mightiest men in the Church but " seemed to be pillars." Paul had no fear about his Gospel. He said, "I have been preaching to the Gentiles this and that, and I learned my lesson through the Spirit. My one object has been to represent and incarnate our common Master, and to show that he alone can justify the unjust. I have seen that the Gospel is greater than the law, that by superseding it the Gospel abrogates the law, that rites and ceremonies are no longer of any account, but the one thing needful is faith in Christ. I have been preaching salvation by Christ; now, brethren, what say you?"

Coming to the point which was in controversy, Paul's attitude is one which presents many aspects. In the first place he was not ashamed of his Gentile converts. He took Titus with him. The scene that comes before our imagination is that of a man with a bright eye, a glowing face, a tongue eloquent if not in fluency, yet in passion and pointing to a young man (Titus), Paul said, "This is a Gentile convert. He has begun in the Spirit; is he to be made perfect in the flesh?" What does he want with your cuttings and ablutions and ceremonies? Always vindicate your arguments by your converts. If you can produce converts, so that we can see them, they will do more for the Christian cause than can be done upon many minds by the most elaborate and cogent Christian reasoning. Some of us might have our unexpressed wonder, amounting almost to an inexpressible doubt, as to the needfulness and usefulness of Christian missions; but when the other evening I saw in this church and conversed with the gentlemen known as the Malagasy Envoys; when I saw them, considered their history, knew that their ancestry were a degraded and debased people; when I heard their gentle voices, and listened to one of them speaking purely and pathetically our mother tongue; when I heard them say in their own speech that they could follow the preacher whenever he mentioned the words Jesus Christ; when they knew nothing that I said but those two words, and when their hearts throbbed under that music, I wanted no man to argue with me about sending the Gospel to the Gentiles, to the uncircumcised, and to the heathen away out on the sea. The missionary cause said, in effect, "This is the kind of work I want to do the whole world over." The response to that appeal could only be of one kind instantaneous in its spontaneity, and generous in its self-sacrifice. Upon this rock we stand! We always have our Titus with us! There is he who has been converted. Behold the breadth! behold the length! behold, there is in his heart a spirit of confidence, forgiveness, and Christian hope! Does that man need to be circumcised, baptized; to have any Christian magic performed over him? No! Having begun in the Spirit, he is not to be made perfect in the flesh. Let him stand there not as a proof of the antiquity and necessity of circumcision, but as an illustration of the new creating and justifying power of Christian faith. There were men who wished to have Titus circumcised. Paul, in giving an account of the matter, becomes almost incoherent in his speech; the very ripest scholars are at a loss to put together, in a manner absolutely satisfactory, the almost broken sentences which Paul writes in the second chapter of the Galatians regarding this matter of Titus; in fact, there are not wanting men who have suggested that Titus was actually circumcised. I do not base my opinion upon the mere grammar of the text, which is so indistinct as to be disputed, but I base my conclusion upon Paul, what we have seen of his spirit, character, his whole tone of mind, and it would seem to me to contradict the man and the very purpose of his mission to acknowledge that Titus was circumcised. Who wanted to have the young man circumcised? Paul answers that they were false brethren. How did such men come to have any voice in the matter? Paul answers they crept in privily, unawares. What particular object could they have in insisting upon the young man's circumcision? Paul answers their object was to spy out our Christian liberty, and to shut us up within the cold iron of the letter. How were such men treated? Paul says, "To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour." He never paltered with the enemy; the spirit of compromise was not in him when such questions were under consideration. He could be pliant, accommodating, courteous; he could speak other people's language when they could not speak his. Such was the inspiration that fell upon his spirit that he could eat with the Jew as a Jew, and with the Gentile as a Gentile, plainly declaring that his object was a concession to their want of Christian education. But when this was the question, namely, Shall the Cross of Christ have anything added to it by man's hands? Shall anything follow the chrism of blood? his answer was the "NO" of all the thunders that ever shook the firmament. He did not refer this case. He did not say" Let the elders and superiors of the nation consider it, and decide for me." He said, "This is not a question of expediency, but of essential life; and if the Cross of Christ requires the cutting of a knife, or a drop of water, Christ is dead in vain!" Such a man had a Gospel to preach. No wonder that he preached it so as sometimes to be accounted mad.

In this instance Paul illustrates by anticipation a phrase which has become a commonplace to us. We insist upon what we describe as the right of private judgment. That was exactly the doctrine which Paul asserted on this occasion. He speaks of men "who were of reputation"; he also speaks of men "who seemed to be pillars"; he mentions by name men who were in Christ whilst he himself was a persecutor and a blasphemer; he refers to persons in the Church who "seemed to be somewhat" Was he awed by their authority? Did he say, "Hear the Church"? Did he wait for some other man, or number of men, to give him the doctrine of Christ? Speaking to the false brethren, he says, "To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour." And speaking of those" who seemed to be somewhat," he said, "Whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me: God accepteth no man's person." They "added nothing to me." That was a brusque way of adding up and estimating the value of men! Paul said, "You have taught me nothing; you have given me no new light; I see no unfamiliar aspect of the truth in your speech; I do not know that you are more than others!" Where, then, was obedience? Where was submission to the papal authority? Where was the rebuke of individual conscience; and where was the setting aside of private judgment? Here is one man who stands up in the Church, and says, "This is the Gospel which I have received, which I will preach, for which I will live, for which, and in which, I will die," "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." That was the true assertion of private judgment: not the expression of an individual will, but the expression of a personal loyalty to a living Christ.

Paul showed the true nature of real and enduring unity. In effect, he said: We may be one without seeming to be united. Union is a question of sympathy, and not of form. I will tell you what can be done. There are in the world two distinct classes of men, Jews and Gentiles, called the circumcision and the uncircumcision. There are men to whom circumcision is a king of hereditary rite and observance. There are others to whom it would be an intolerable yoke. Now, let us go, the one to the circumcision, and the other to the uncircumcision; for I know that as this Gospel spreads it will be seen at the last that neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision. Do not let a man boast of his uncircumcision any more than the Jew should boast of his circumcision. Do not boast that you have not been baptized, no more than any man should boast that he has been plunged into the stream. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, neither baptism nor non-baptism, availeth anything, but a new creature. In that sublime faith the Apostles went to their death. So would I say, If your fathers are men who have been baptized, or unbaptized, or who have been accustomed to attend to this ceremony or to that, you may go on with your ministry to the circumcision only be true to the spirit of Christ; and if I have been called to the people of many languages, to odd men, eccentric thinkers, independent personalities, men who repudiate circumcision, and look upon rite and ceremony with contempt, I will also carry out my ministry. The truth will prosper in the long run in proportion as we are faithful to its statement and exposition.

But the counsel could not break up so. We must have something to do that is visible, and that can be assumed by all minds. "Well, then," said the council unanimously, "one thing shall unite us that we remember the poor." The poor have ye always with you. So they all the circumcision remembered the poor, and they of the uncircumcision also remembered the poor, and in philanthropy they showed their union in the Lord, who live to redeem the human race! This has been my doctrine, for which I have suffered not a little. I have said to contending theologians and controversialists: "Gentlemen, you will never speculatively agree the more talk the more division. But I will tell you what you can do. You can unite in practical service; you can remember the poor; you can join in carrying out moral and social reformation amongst the people." Speculative theology divides men; practical philanthropy unites them. Let us unite where we can. A union upon these matters may prepare the way for a better understanding, for ultimate conciliation, and for enduring fellowship. Never inquire into the creed of a needy man. The man is hungry; the creed must be bread. When he has eaten his bread you may ask him questions. Again and again I would say to Christian teachers and workers: Begin where you can; do not stand upon technicalities, or insist upon pedantic concessions; but wherever the heart-door is ajar, go in; wherever opportunity is offered, speak the living word or do the helpful deed. Always seek for the centre of union, and always avoid the cause of division or distrust. You would like theological or doctrinal union, and so should I; but where that is simply impossible, we must go in other directions for an initial union; and that we may find in being a tongue for the dumb, eyes for the blind, and a tower of refuge for those who have no friend. When the Church is animated by this spirit, she will be surprised to find how many hitherto unknown friends she has, and how many there are who will respond to her philanthropy who cannot pronounce her Shibboleth. Let us be wise in our times, and set high above all party flags bearing mean names the blood-red banner of Calvary, the symbol of reconciliation and security.