Acts 17:29-31

Chapter 63

Prayer

Almighty God, in Jesus Christ thy Son we thank thee for everything that hints at the great home-going. We love to think of going home; we are stirred by the happy reflection that we are even now on the road stony, uphill, often hard to climb, but still on the home-road, with many a tree on the wayside under whose shadow we can rest a while, and many a rill of pure water of which we may drink, and so become fitter for the next stage of the journey. We love to think that we are only on the road, and not yet quite home. This world could never be home, because it is so small, and in it there is such uncertainty and trouble, and behold men are digging pits under our feet which they call graves; and at home there must be no death. We bless thee that we are lifted up sometimes quite above all cloud and wind and high noise, and are brought into the stillness, the peace, the security of a very near sight of thy shining face. This enjoyment we have only in thy Son never out of him. It is in Christ that we see thee, through Christ that we come to thee, and through the Cross of Christ that we see Righteousness and Mercy embracing each other in infinite and eternal reconciliation. These are visions the prophets-did not see; these are the revelations which make our Sabbath-days and our rest-days; yea, it is no ox that rests, or beast of the field, or plough that stands still in the furrow; it is the troubled heart, the sin-riven spirit, the disobedient soul that is caught up into the movement of thine own righteousness and love, and in the harmony of the Godhead we find the harmony of humanity. We bless thee for great doors in heaven. Once it was a curtain without break or tear; we could not see through it; but now there are open doors and windows larger than the constellations, and we see the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. Our hearts need no telescope; they are far-sighted because much-loving. Blessed be the vision of love, the eyesight of the heart, for unto it shall be granted vision upon vision, until the whole sky shall be one flame of glory. We bless thee that as sinners saved we can say all this, and love thee for the larger life, the ever-increasing liberty, the perfect freedom of Divine sonship. What wait we for but to forget the earth, and to escape from time as from a cage that bounds our liberty? We want to be consciously swallowed up of love absorbed in God. We would have no feeling of foot or hand, of earth or air, but would live the ineffable life and breathe eternity itself. To this end withhold not the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of life, the Spirit of fire, the Spirit of God. May he dwell in us, and be with us, and lead our every thought, and lift up our every impulse, and move our whole being with the energy which is infinite and gracious. The week is behind us the spoiled, blurred week. It came from heaven, white as snow, and we have sent it back scarred and ill-treated, and into thy heaven it is taken only because thy grace is greater than our sin. Thou hast begun to send us another week, another bright chance, another gracious opportunity. May we make better use of this than of the last. We are sure to spoil it, for our snow is blackness, and our beauty is a blot; there is in us that is, in our flesh no good thing, no perfect power, no faculty that can please thee if thou dost judge by thy holiness and not by thy compassion. Write thy word for us everywhere, on every opening flower, on every dawning morning, on ever)' brightening, lengthening day. On all the events of our life may we see thy Gospel traced, thy meaning made clear, and thy purpose surely established. We thank thee that old friends are with us to day. In these reunions we have a pledge of a larger fellowship. For all travelling mercies, for all home enjoyments, for every element that makes life pure and glad, we bless thee with a full heart. We thank thee that the father is here, and the child, that the mother has come back again, that the old man has come to look upon young life, that young life has come to be blessed by paternal graciousness. For all these reunions and fellowships how temporary soever we bless thee, because they bring with them glowing love, and hints of longer, brighter days. As for those who are under the sod, they are not forgotten, they are still with us; they cannot die. We bless thee for all that was brave in their lives, and for all that was sacred in their death. We commend one another with tenderest love to thy great keeping, Father-Mother of us all. Spare us every one. Make the blackest the whitest; make the worst the best. Give the heathen for an inheritance to thy Christ, and this day, in this house, may he see of the travail of his soul. In our preaching touch us with the music of heaven; in our hearing bless us with the attention of earnestness; and when the day closes and the cold stars come out to replace the sunshine, may we feel as if we had touched the heavens and seen somewhat of the glory that is beyond. Amen.

Act 17:29-31

29. Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the God. head is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and device of man [this iconoclast spoke facing the Acropolis and Parthenon, in full view of Phidias' colossal Minerva].

30. The times of ignorance [ Act 17:23 ] therefore God overlooked; but now he commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent:

31. Inasmuch as he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance ["afforded faith"] unto all men, in that he hath raised him [the Lord Jesus, who is not named, but upon Whom the whole argument here concentrates itself. The orator's art here supplies the demand of the evangelist's zeal] from the dead.

Paul's Cumulative Argument

UP to the twenty-ninth verse Paul has made a general statement respecting God. In the twenty-ninth verse he lays down the ground-work of a true and abiding Christian philosophy. If the Church could fully understand the meaning of the first word in that verse, and would fearlessly apply it, there would be no infidelity worthy of a moment's notice. What the Church has not yet mastered, so as to be able to use it with perfect ease and fearlessness, is this word "Forasmuch." The armoury of the Church is in that word. The weapons of our warfare are all kept within the sacred custody of that most simple, but most inexhaustible, term. We have hurried over it as if it were an antiquated phrase a piece of very old, quaint English, whereas it is a theological armoury. It contains all that is necessary for the completest and sublimest revelations of God. That word throws man back upon himself, and says, "If you want to know what God is, know yourself." That is the mystery of reason. That is the transcendent rationalism the sublimest faith. Find your way to the Unknown through the known; to the Invisible through the visible; to the Infinite through the finite.

"Forasmuch then" as we ourselves are not" like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto them." We ourselves are limited expressions of God we are made in the image and likeness of the Creator. God has left his witness within ourselves, and if we would but fairly and honestly and continually study ourselves, we should have no difficulty about the Godhead. This is what the Church dare not say, except with great guarding and reservation and parenthetic subtraction from the essential meaning. The Apostle's words are sublime: "Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device." We are not so made; we are not carved images; we are not straight lines; we are not empty vessels. If we would study ourselves, we should know the mystery of the Trinity. Men have abandoned the self-study, and have taken to book-reading and word-fighting, instead of dwelling within themselves until the quietness was deeper than the stillness of death, and until the movement of the Ghost could be heard. They have gone out to fight one another with long words, and arguments long and cunning and mischievous as serpents. If you want to know what God is, enter into you closet, shut the door, sit down, and listen to your own heart-beat. You have all the mystery there. This is not an argument of my invention; it is the expansion of Paul's own statement. To the Athenians he said: "You do not know one God, you have openly called him Unknown; whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. He made us; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." Then judge the Father by the child; judge the Creator by the creature not by the creature of his hand, but by the creature made in his own image and likeness, and rise from the human to the Divine the ascent of reason and the way of faith. I see heaven opened; now I know of a surety that the Bible representation of God is true, because it is true of myself. My reasoning is now invincible, because it takes this turn, namely: Forasmuch, then, as we are not entirely comprehended, even by those who know us best and love us most, even so is God a mystery, even to those who linger longest at his altar and honour him with most zealous fidelity and the incense of sacrificial lives. How strong I feel when I rest upon that ground! Your child does not know you fully; there is always some other word you could say if so minded; there is always some deeper depth of being, some inner secret of mystery; the father is always in advance of the child. That is so amongst ourselves, and is so, not arbitrarily or whimsically, as if we had invented the process, but is so necessarily, essentially, unchangeably. Forasmuch, then, as this is the case between man and man, friend and friend, heart and heart, we ought not to think that it is otherwise with the Godhead. You must reason upwards, and your reason will soon take fire and go up as a burning sacrifice before the eternal throne.

Take it from another point, and the reason is equally valid, because equally Pauline and inspired. Forasmuch, then, as we have not been seen by our dearest admirers, we ought not to think that the Godhead can be seen by angel or archangel or seraph that first saw the light of his face. You have never seen your friend; you have never seen let me say again and again your own SELF. No man can see himself and live. What wonder I have not seen you when I have not seen myself? Forasmuch, then, as we have not seen ourselves, we ought not to think that God is a plain surface, which every eye may look upon in its entirety. The mystery is in ourselves. Any mystery that we find in God we find initially and typically in our own nature. We must first settle the mystery of man before we attempt to deal with the mystery of God.

Or take it thus, and see how the Pauline reasoning clears its way through all difficulties: As we express our thought and feeling through body and form, so does God. We proceed by incarnation. We have supposed that incarnation was a theological term, and belonged wholly to the Church; we must now learn that incarnation is the necessity of love. Indifference need not incarnate itself; but love that thinks about us by day and dreams about us by night love that would give its very heart for our salvation must come in visible form, must be borne in some Bethlehem in inn or manger somewhere, and must show its radiant self simply because it is love. Forasmuch, then, as our love must incarnate, enflesh, and embody itself, so as to touch us, we ought not to think that the Godhead is independent of the method which amongst ourselves he has made essential to union and happiness. If we have come upon the doctrine of incarnation through some long and weary process merely intellectual and verbal, I do not wonder that men should stumble at it and endeavour to argue it down; but if we have come upon it through the deep study of our own nature and ways of self-revelation, when we come to the historical Bethlehem of Judaea we feel we have only come home. That Bethlehem has been in our hearts; that Bethlehem is the inner circle of our sacred home; that Bethlehem is the secret of our union and fellowship and hope.

Take it from another point. Forasmuch, then, as we forgive our children who repent of their sins with broken-heartedness and honest confession, we ought not to think that the Godhead is unwilling to forgive. How is it with you when the child comes home and says, "Father, I have sinned, and am no more worthy to be called thy son"? Did you fall upon his neck and clothe him and jewel his fingers and kiss him back into sonship? Forasmuch, then, as that man did so to that sinning son, we ought not to think that the Godhead is made of iron or is a carved statue in the sky. This is the Biblical reasoning leading up to the Biblical faith. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." "If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him!" You note the reasoning, the mysterious, gracious balance of the sentences "As so," "If ye how much more! He." The lines are the same, they only grow in height and width and burn into purer splendour; but you must find in yourselves the root-thought of God.

Now the speaker rises to a higher moral tone in Acts 17:30 . "And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent." God saw as if he did not see. The Gracious One made allowances which would not enter into a narrow calculation. God gave the world wide chances for a long space; but now we date from Christ; all our epistles, and bookkeepings, and commercial transactions, all our nativities and festivities, and bonds and covenants, must be dated at Bethlehem that is where you sign! That little Child, with eyes that see not, divides the old from the new, and you dip your pen in the inkhorn of his revelation when you date your commonest letter or sign your meanest bond of merchandise. But now a new bell has rung, a new day has dawned; from this time forth there is a "command to repent." We have now the responsibility of ignoring the revelation. That is a tremendous responsibility. You have to stand up and say to Moses and the prophets, to the minstrels of Israel and the evangelists of the Church, to Christ in Bethlehem and Christ on Calvary "We do not believe!" We thus come into a great inheritance of responsibility. No man is the same at the end of a religious service that he was at the beginning; if he has not gone up, he has gone down. We cannot take up the position of uninstructed inquirers and sit down with ancient Greeks and say, "We know no more than they did." That opportunity has been destroyed. We do not go up from ancient Greece, but from modern Christendom, and acccording to the line along which we have walked to the judgment seat will the judgment itself be conducted in every case. You who were born in Christian houses you who were sung to sleep with snatches of Christian hymns when you were irresponsible infants, you who were carried to Christ's house and nurtured in the fear and love of God, cannot go up to the judgment seat as if you had been born in some barbarous country and had never heard of the name of Christ. Thus our responsibilities are increased apart from our own control. No man can draw the line and say, "My responsibility begins here and ends there." Civilization every day adds some new weight to the obligation which rests upon every human soul. Our responsibilities are oftentimes created for us, as well as created in us. Now that the sun shines we must not be striking lights of our own. No man will be held to be irresponsible if he has not availed himself of the light which lay within his use. Believe me, you cannot act as if you had never heard of the Bible. You have now to thrust your way past the Bible and to say, "I will not believe one word you utter; I resent and denounce every appeal you make." Are you prepared to make that violent reply? O, answer, No!