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The kingdom of heaven, says our Saviour, is as
a grain of mustard seed, the least of all seeds, but when it is grown it
is one of the greatest of plants, tree-like, in which the birds of the air
may rest themselves and build nests for their young.
At the right time the seed of the kingdom is ripened
and dropped into the earth, along the banks of the river of the waters of
Life. And the sown-seed knows the spring-time, and snuffs the sunshine and
showers: bursting its prison shell, it sends down its roots for moisture
and strength, and sends up its stem for light and air; and comes out in spring
freshness and beauty. It has also its summer time when it ripens is fruits,
and its autumn for filling the garners.
This is true of every child of God — of every
church of Christ upon earth, and of the whole church militant collectively
taken. Revivals may have been a novelty in the days of Enos, when men first
began socially to call on the name of the Lord; but from that day to this
they have been the law of the Kingdom. Times of refreshing from the presence
of the Lord may have taken Abel by surprise, at that first altar of God at
the east gate of Eden, as they evidently did take Cain by surprise, making
him gnash his teeth upon Abel as the murderer, of all martyrs have done.
But they were understood to be the order of God’s economy in the days
of the apostles, and indeed in every age of the world.
Great periods have been marked by great revivals,
and great revivals have been characterized by the developments, each one
of some one great truth made prominent and powerful, in its application to
the experience and life of the church.
The great truths which now have their unchangeable
position in the faith and formulas of the church, have been born into the
world one by one, and one by one have taken their positions in orderly array
in the great family of truths. Like children they have come crying into the
world, and like warriors in battle, each has had its own way to fight. Like
Damascus blades, each has been tried and tempered in the fire and under the
hammer of controversy, and like the martyr throng above, they have all come
up to their permanent place in the bright galaxy of truth through much
tribulation, with their robes made white in the blood of the
slain.
The great foundation truth — the unity of
God the alpha of all theological science and of all saving knowledge, had
its battle of ages with polytheistic idolatry; but has finally driven its
enemy into the dark corners of the world, and if appearances may be trusted,
will soon drive it out of the world altogether. And the great top-stone of
truth, the head of the corner, the trinity of God, is yet in its conflict,
and is yet to be more clearly understood — though already it has battled
its way to its place in the faith and holds it in triumph against the assaults
of every enemy, while shoutings of Grace! Grace! unto it go up from all true
believers.
It would be a work to enlarge the largest heart,
and expand the most liberal mind, if it were done as it deserves, to sketch
truthfully and graphically the biography of each one of the great evangelical
truths comprising the faith. Each one has a life and times of its own, and
in comparison the lives and times of men — even the greatest of men
—would dwindle into insignificance. Indeed the historical prominence
of the great men of the church from Abel and Enoch down to Whitefield and
Wesley and Edwards, comes from the fact of their being each one the
representative — the embodiment — the incarnation, of some one
great truth of revealed religion, in some stage of its development, just
as Newton and Copernicus were the representatives of astronomical
principles.
Revelation had its stages — two great ones
— the old and the new, with many minor ones marking them both; though
in the new the various stages were crowded into the time of a single generation,
whilst in the old many generations sometimes intervened.
Then when revelation was completed, and given
complete to the world, no more to be added, nor anything subtracted, upon
pain of God’s curse, even then, since that, the development and
application of the several truths revealed, has been also by stages.
Each in its own time and each in its own way.
The question may have arisen already — and
if not there is no reason to shrink from raising it now — why —
if it is true that the experimental apprehension of the principle of
sanctification by faith is the privilege of all — why has the fact not
had greater prominence in the past? Why have eighteen centuries been allowed
to roll away before it is brought distinctly and prominently before the mind
of the church?
The answer is, that until now the time has never
come for it. Now is the time. That it is no new thing, practically,
is clear. Abel doubtless understood it practically, at least, and was made
strong for martyrdom by it. Enoch lived in it, and was translated, taken
bodily to heaven without death by it. Noah built his ark, in the faith of
it, and out-rode the flood by it; and Abraham in the power of it forsook
the home of his birth and dwelt amongst strangers, and waited patiently for
the fulfilment of God’s promise — and then himself, at the command
of God, was in act to put the knife to the throat of Isaac, the son of promise,
counting God able to raise him again from the dead. Prophets, and apostles,
and reformers, and the great and good of every age have exemplified it. It
is nothing new. And yet, until now, the time has never fully come to give
it the prominence which now it is destined to take and to hold in
the future history and progress of the Kingdom of God in the
world.
It is now only three hundred years since the Bible itself
was exhumed from its burial places in convent cells and library alcoves,
and freed from its cerements of the dead languages, torn from it by the hand
of the reformers, and put in its dress of living speech, and sent forth upon
its great mission to the world.
And it is only one hundred years since
the great truth of the new birth, as a distinct experience, the privilege
of all, began to receive its full power of application to the heart and life
of the church. And yet both were just at the opportune
moment.
It is beautiful to mark the times and occasions of truth in its
connection with the orderly march of events, as in single file, with solemn
tread, they come forward at the command of the Lord.
The translation of
Enoch
was just at the time when the heavens had become over-cast with dark clouds
of unbelief, and a window in heaven was needed that man might see it, and
not forget that there is a heaven above.
The
flood came just when the fear of God had died out,
and violence had run riot filling the earth; just in time to let all after
generations know that there is a God of justice and judgment ruling over
all, who does not shrink from wrapping a world in its own winding-sheet,
regardless of its agonizing shrieks of despair, if the cry of its guilt and
the call of justice demand it.
The overthrow of Babel and the confusion of
tongues,
was just at that moment when the pride of man and his desire to cast off
fear and restrain ·prayer had concentrated and culminated in the great
city and tower, which were to be at once both the glory and the safety, and
the bond of union of the whole human race. The plan of the mighty hunter
and hero and builder, Nimrod, was laid and almost completed. With every
successive course of bricks upon the tower, the pride of the people and their
feeling of security rose, and the bond of their union was strengthened, and
the fear of God weakened. Dependence upon God had ceased. They were now no
more afraid to give loose reins to idolatry, and when at the same time through
them, in their humility, God could teach the world through His servants in
the court, and their influence upon the king, the worship of Jehovah as the
one only true God, just in time for the second greatest battle and victory
of the true God over idols.
The coming of Christ is happily marked
by the apostle as just then when the fulness of time had come. When
the Jewish dispensation was waxing old and ready to pass away, and when the
Greek was the written language of the world, and the Roman power the governing
power of the world, and when the world was all connected in the one empire
of Rome, and all open to the apostles and primitive Christians to go with
the gospel to every creature, and when idolatry in all the civilized world
was in its dotage, the bye-word and laughing stock of the learned. When,
in short, there was an open field for a fair contest, such as there never
had been before.
The advent of the Holy Spirit, when Pentecost
had fully come, was just when the time for it had fully come,
also.
Just when the great work of atonement had been
finished, the resurrection accomplished, and the risen Saviour had ascended
to the right hand of power. Just when a demonstration of his power as the
living and almighty Saviour was needed to revive the drooping disciples and
convince a gainsaying world. And just when the disciples themselves needed
that very baptism of light and love, and peace and power to inspire them
with wisdom and boldness and strength for their great commission of giving
the gospel to the world.
The breaking down of the Jewish walls of
prejudice
by Peter’s vision and Paul’s commission, together with the conversion
first of Cornelius and his friends, and afterwards of the Gentiles at Antioch,
and the proceedings of the apostles and elders in consequence, was just in
time to open the way and set the gospel free to fly abroad, run and conquer,
and win the day.
The
Reformation, passing by the events of fourteen hundred
years — each as timely as any before or after — the Reformation
came again just when all things were ready. The corruptions of Rome had gone
so far that all good men everywhere longed for reform. And the darkness had
become so great as to be felt, and felt, too, in all its oppressive power,
so as to create a deep and earnest desire for the light of God’s word.
The church was in the condition of one in a cavern, or in the catacombs,
in whose hand the light has gradually sunk, until at last it has flickered
and flared, and expired. When, then, he has wandered on, blundering and stumbling
in the dark, until at last he has become afraid to take another step without
a light. Just as such an one would hail the light with unspeakable joy, just
so the people of that day were prepared to hail the light of the Bible. 0,
what joy it gave them, when it came forth; now no longer speaking in an unknown
tongue, but in every man’s own language, wherein he was born. Germans
and Brittons; Hollanders and French; Italians and Spaniards; Hungarians and
Bavarians; Normans, Danes, Swedes, and all.
Then, too, it should not be forgotten that this
was just at the time when the newly discovered art of printing had prepared
the way to give wings to the word of God, like the angel of the Apocalypse
flying, mid-heaven for its mission, to the nations of the world, as never
could have been done before.
The Great Awakening, two hundred years later,
now one hundred years ago, was just in time to arrest the lapsing church
in its downward course, and give it a great impulse upward and onward in
preparation for what has come since, and what is now coming, and what is
yet to come in the future. To the great central doctrine of justification
by faith revived before in the Reformation, the fact of the new birth, as
an experience for all, was now added to the faith of the church in the great
awakening. And this just at the moment when the churches of America were
in the plastic state, ready to take the Whitefieldian and Wesleyan and Edwardean
type, as older churches in older lands were slow to do. And at the moment,
too, when India fell under British rule, to be opened to Christianity in
due time.
And now in the intervening hundred years, 0 how
great events have thickened. The old slow march seems to have hastened into
double quick time, and the single file to have formed up into the order of
platoons. The Missionary Era, commencing fifty years ago, just when
simultaneously Bibles began to multiply through the multiplying power of
Bible societies, and missionaries began to rise up, to go out into all the
world, and the church began to combine to send them, and the nations began
to throw open their doors to receive them, and commerce began to spread its
wings anew to take them, and steam power began to develop the superiority
of Christian nations in all the arts of life, and stimulate commerce to carry
Christian fabrics into all heathen nations. Just then a new life began in
the church, wider the unfolding power of the great commission, which for
ages had been allowed to sleep, but now was proclaimed from every pulpit
and by every Christian press of Christendom.
As years roll on the natural sciences unfold and
lead even skeptical minds to abandon atheism and pantheism and come upon
the platform of revelation. All machinery is improved. Railroads are invented.
Ships are enlarged, and steam is harnessed in to be our servant of all works
on sea and land. Electricity is drilled also into service, and a network
of veins and arteries is created, producing a grand system of thought
circulation, fast binding the nations together into one, or at least bringing
them face to face within speaking distance of each other. The printing press
is increased by a thousand-fold in its productive power, and the gold fields
of California, Australia, and the north open up their treasures, and pour
a golden current into the commercial arteries of the world. And just now,
in the midst of all this, God comes down in the power of His spirit and arouses
the young men and the business men, the laymen and the laywomen, as well
as office bearers in the church, to meet and pray and work for the Master,
and such a revival begins as the world has never witnessed before. Hope rises
up and begins to stretch forward to the great battle and final triumph. And
what now is needed? What now would be the timely work? and what now the timely
truth? There is now more than ever needed two things. First, the millenial
type of Christian character and life.
Second, the spiritual strength and endurance to
carry the church onward and upward unswervingly to and through the conflict
and triumph before us. And these two are one, and this one is the experience
of full salvation through full trust in the Lord Jesus
Christ.
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