1 Corinthians 15:35

The Basis of Unity

1Co 15:35

The Apostle is discoursing upon the resurrection. He is not supposing that a man is objecting to the doctrine or the fact of resurrection, he is simply asking a question as to method or manner: "Some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?" It is vital to remember that the man is not disputing the doctrine or the fact of resurrection, he is not exciting himself in any controversial sense about that; he is puzzled as to method, way, scheme, process. I want, therefore, by adaptation of the text to show how possible it is to be right in certain great central convictions, and to be altogether in a muddle as to accidentals, exteriors, and mutable circumstances: in short, I want to find that there may be more union in the world than we suppose; that our differences are differences of opinion, and not differences of faith. "Some man will say, How?" He is not therefore to be regarded as a man who denies the fact of the resurrection. His imagination may have led him to think there may be twenty different ways by which the fact of resurrection may be realised; he is simply, therefore, on the outside, asking an outside question. If he came up and said, There is no resurrection; the Apostle is mistaken at the very centre and head of this question; there is no such thing as the anastasis on which he is elaborating his eloquence, the case would be altogether different. But the man, instead of denying the fact or resurrection, says, How is it to be brought about, in what particular way does this resurrection take place: is it in this way, or in that? There he is simply speculating, forming opinions and offering opinions; he is not therefore a disbeliever. He who accepts resurrection is a believer. He may agree with nobody on the face of the earth as to how that resurrection is to be consummated. Have not I a right to my opinion as much as any other man? Certainly; but your opinion amounts to nothing. Opinion works within a very limited range: if you confine it within that range, and utter it modestly, every man will be glad to hear it: light comes out of friction, discussion properly conducted is educative: but as to your having a right to your opinion, there may not be so much in the claim as one would infer from the emphasis and inclusiveness of your tone. Your opinion will change. Opinion was made to change. Opinion is but a weather sign; it was warm yesterday, it is frosty to-day, it will be thawing tomorrow: that is the way of opinion. But the thing to be remembered is this, there are certain things that are not open to opinion. Opinion has nothing to do with them; they live in a sanctuary that was never violated by so frivolous a trespasser as opinion. That is often forgotten, and therefore we live in continual excitement and tumult and controversy, and we have sectarianism and bigotry and internecine war on all sides of the Church; one little bigot trying to slay another, and to make out that he is the man who carries in his little head infinity, and houses in his suspicious heart eternity. Keep opinion in its proper place. Some man will say, How? and he has a right to say it: but if any man shall contradict certain things he is a lunatic, he is not to be tolerated at large: simply because those things do not come in for judgment at all, they come in for acceptance, and this we can prove.

Health is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact. It a man should arise, and say, "In my opinion, health is of little or no consequence, and no attention ought to be paid to its cultivation," you would not listen to him. He must start with this admission, that health is of supreme importance: now, let him deal out his nostrums as he will, let him say it ought to be cultivated in this way, rather than in that; in order to cultivate health a man ought to eat much meat, or to eat none at all; he ought to drink water, or he ought to take some little stimulant with his food; he ought to rise at such an hour, and retire at such a corresponding hour. There opinion plays and speculates and pronounces itself with more or less accurate emphasis. But opinion is not called upon to offer judgment upon the absolute necessity of health. If the Church would believe that, there would be a reconstruction of ecclesiastical Europe; men would shake hands, who before could not do so, because each hand had a sword in it.

Law is not a matter of opinion. A law, this law, that law, may be matters of opinion; but the thing we are agreed upon is that law is essential. You see, therefore, how there may be a central truth on which all men are agreed, and how there may be an infinite debatable land on which men may exercise their powers of controversy until the day of doom. The mischief is that men attach far too much importance to the things that are mere matters of opinion. They should now and then say to one another, Brethren, although men have many minds, and there are a million different opinions among us as to particular laws, let us stand together on this rock, that without law, society is insecure, progress is impossible. If the Church would apply that doctrine to all the affairs with which it concerns itself, we should have many men allied in kindliest fellowship, who are now living a life of religious, and therefore bitter, estrangement.

The sacredness of life is not a matter of opinion. No man would arise and say, Let us discuss whether life is sacred. Discussion is inadmissible: opinion has no standing ground here; it must take its chatter otherwhere. Give up the sacredness of life, and you give up society, progress, education, civilisation; you give up everything that gives value, dignity, and divinity to being. Once admit that it is of no consequence how you treat a little child, you may set your foot upon it and crush it if you like, once admit principles of that kind, and your commonwealth is wrecked. All society must be the father of every child within it, and the poorer the child, the fatherlier should be the social instinct and the social homage and care. Here again as to varieties of methods of training life, some man will say, How is the child to be schooled? at what age is schooling to begin? at what age is schooling to end? what is to be the educational process through which the child shall pass? There you have matters of opinion, and reference must be made to the court of experience, to the arbitrator called history. But distinguish between the indisputable, called the sacredness of life, and the mutable and the opinionable, called method, process, and way of doing things. For want of knowing this the Church is a beargarden. It would be amazing, if we were not familiar with it, into what fumes little men can throw themselves about matters of opinion, and how the less the man the bolder he will say, Have I not as much right to my opinion as any other man? Certainly: but neither your opinion nor any other man's opinion amounts to anything in this discussion. We are pledged to the sacredness of life; now, after that, let us exchange views, let us discuss the matter, dispassionately, wisely, and hopefully. Discussion shows that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in any man's philosophy; the conflict of opinion shows that the question is larger than was at first supposed. When a man lives by himself and keeps his opinions as so many curiosities, pins them down and unpins them, and takes them up and puts them back again, and closes the case and locks them up, he is apt to think that he has seen all that God has to show: if he would come out into society, if he would debate with other men, if he would measure swords with stronger hands, if he would get into the whirl and harmony and action of things, he would find that no one man is all men, and that no one opinion is all wisdom.

Take the question of honesty. Honesty is not a matter of opinion. If we can say, Is it worth while being honest? society is gone. Society must have its rocky foundations. What would you say to a man who raised the question to you, whether honesty, after all, is a thing worth caring about? Would you appoint that man as a clerk in your office? I do not ask whether you would appoint him as a clerk in somebody else's office; I am at this moment talking about your office. The man says, Well, on the whole, as to honesty, what does it amount to? There are some things let us repeat again and again till we get the thought well driven into our heads that are not subject to opinion, they do not belong to the region of opinion: they are central essences, eternal verities, and when we exercise what is called judgment or form what is called opinion, we must have reference to that which is changeable, and not to that which is immutable.

For want of knowing this, Christians fall upon one another's throats, and never was so much blood shed in all the world as over the neglect of such discrimination as we are now endeavouring to point out. A man is not an infidel because he has difficulties about questions, methods, and ways; a man is not an infidel who has renounced ecclesiastical forms and ecclesiastical orthodoxies: a man may have cut away all the outside and environment of his life, and still he may be a son of God, a brother and apostle of truth, a child of music, a citizen of the new Jerusalem.

Let us see whether we can apply these thoughts to matters more distinctively religious. The fool hath said in his heart, "There is no God." Then we have no discussion with him at all; he is outside: but if all the world could say in one personality, "I believe in God," then any differences that may arise after that are matters of opinion, and are matters comparatively frivolous and trivial. To believe in God call him by what name you please God, Father, Force, Secret, Jove, to believe in God is the vital faith. That begets reverence, awe, noblest veneration, sense of infinity and majesty; that sets up the standard by which all other rights and claims are measured and assessed. Some man will say, How? He must not, therefore, be called an atheist. If a man shall say, I cannot follow pulpit reasoning or Church teaching, or what is generally regarded as popular theology; but as a man of science, and devoted to patient investigation of what I consider facts, I am bound to say that there is an inscrutable Power, a Force, a Secret, do not call that man an atheist. He has seized the reality. He is one of the men who will say, How? But if he asks that question modestly, tremblingly, and in the true spirit of science, which is a spirit of serenity and of hopefulness and divine imagination, he is not to be blasted as a leper and looked upon as a foe and a pestilence in society. Having got into the presence of a Force, a Secret, an Inscrutability, he may, by-and-by get farther. He will not get farther if you discourage him, if you take away his reputation, or make an assault upon his character; but if he says, There is above all things, and within them, a Secret Life or Force that explains all things, he is at God's door, the next knock, and he may be inside. There are those who take a very hostile relation to essential truths, and they are to be regarded and stigmatised and avoided accordingly. I could have no communication with a man who blatantly, immodestly, and vulgarly said, "There is no God." I do not live in his universe, I do not speak his language, I have simply nothing at all to do with him. He is not an agnostic, he is an atheist a denier. I draw, therefore, broad lines between a man who says, "I do not know, I wish I knew!" and the man who denies and repudiates the whole conception of God. With such persons I have no connection; I do not know them; and when they appear to be anxious to disestablish the Church, I say, Never! I prefer the Church, the Pope, to such atheism as yours.

Let us therefore carefully distinguish between a man who denies resurrection, and a man who says, "How are the dead raised up? and with what body shall they come?" between a man who says, "There is a Force, a Secret, there is what you call God," and the man who says, "There is no God, for the only god we can worship is the sum-total of humanity."

Take another fundamental doctrine that God only can destroy sin, or obliterate it, if that be more in harmony with scientific findings, or can neutralise it if destruction be an impossibility. Let any man assent to that, and he is evangelical. There may be different theories, even of the work of the blessed Christ; wise and learned men have differed in their interpretations of Christian doctrine, and yet they have been at one on the basis of this truth, that sin can only be neutralised by Divine agency. That is to say, it lies not within the scope of the sinner to undo his work or recreate his soul. This also admits of the proof of illustration. Man cannot undo his own work in all instances, if he can do so in any, which is questionable. Destroy a flower: now let any man undo his work, and put that flower as it was. He cannot. Let him tear one little leaf from a flower, now let him put it back again; let him undo his work. He cannot. Let a man take up the crystal vase and dash it into a thousand pieces, and put it together again as it was. He cannot. He can perform a kind of small miracle to which he may justly call the attention of his friends as exhibiting a piece of rare handiwork, but the crystal is not what it was before. There is plenty of riveting, and cementing, and covering up of defects and flaws done with great skill, but the crystal is wounded at the heart, it cannot be undone. Recall a sound. You have uttered a word bring it back. You cannot. It must go on long as eternity endures. Science has its mysteries as well as theology. Now the reasoning may stand thus: if a man cannot undo the work of his hand, how can he undo the work of his heart? If he cannot put together a crystal which he has broken, how can he put together a character which he has shattered? If a man cannot recall a sound uttered by his own voice, how can he recall some act of treason, some deed of felony against the throne of God?

Here we find the basis of true union. Do not go up and down amongst a man's opinions asking which of them you can adopt: inquire into the man's central purpose and thought and life; how does the man stand fundamentally, in relation to vital and essential truths? and having discovered that, join him in fellowship, and say, regarding opinions, Do not exaggerate their importance, do not look upon them as final; it is the delight of life to grow in judgment, to vary in opinion; this is a sign of vitality, and educative progress and civilisation, but we are agreed in this, are we not? that we believe in God. Things are not under the rule of what is called fortuitousness or chance, or the misrule of mere accident; there is above all things and within them a shaping Hand, a directing Mind, a sovereign Power: on that let us hold sweet fellowship; let us weep together, it need be, before this great mystery that we may be strengthened by the very expression of our emotions. We do believe in this, do we not? that man cannot undo his own sin; that if it is to be undone or neutralised it must be done by Divine agency. Are we agreed there? Then let us hold fellowship, communion; and let us never forget that we have seen that the forgiveness of sin is nothing short of a Divine miracle: as to theories, opinions, speculations, theological dreamings, and imaginings, we have nothing to do with these; we are at one on a greater central fact.

Recur to the question: if a man were to say to you, "There is no such thing as honesty," what would you think of him? Suppose a man should say to you, "There is no such thing as truth," what judgment would you form about that man's character? how far would you trust him? in what estimation would you hold every word he utters? Suppose a man should say to you, "Virtue is an impossibility: there is no virtue: it is a mere name," would you admit him to your household confidence, would you open the door to him, and bid him heartily welcome to your hospitality? Has he not a right to his opinion as much as any other man may have? He says, "There is no honesty I have come to see you: there is no truth I have come to spend an evening at your fireside: there is no virtue I have come to make my home in your house." How would that suit? We are not now talking theology: we are talking the kind of common-sense without which society cannot co-exist one moment. Here you insist upon unity, faith in essential verities: yet when a man says, "There is no God," we are prone to represent him as a very vigorous and independent thinker. I say no. He was right who called him "fool." But how we contradict ourselves; in what a mesh of inconsistency we live! If a man should say to us, "There is no truth, there is no honesty, there is no virtue, there is no right, there is no wrong," we should avoid that man as we should avoid a pest: but if a man shall deny all these things, which he really does, though not apparently, by denying the existence of God, we call him an advanced thinker, a progressive and independent mind. I do not. I say that any man who denies the existence of God is the most dangerous character that lives. I will refer you to the consummation of his life. I have never known a man give up what we call religion, that is, in its essentials and fundamentals, and grow; he never grew in tenderness, in sympathy, in beneficence, in love of art, in love of music, in love of children. He cannot grow. The economy of the universe is dead against him. Many a man I have known who was not distinguished for greatness and energy of mind, but who has been distinguished by simplicity and earnestness of religious faith, whose life has been a continual and beneficent progress; he has mellowed, softened, chastened, and become more generous, more charitable, more helpful to his neighbour. To accept God is to grow up into light and liberty and manhood. This is the testimony we bear, and the flying years do not diminish they intensify our emphasis.