The Beginning
Hphere are certain points where the different kingdoms of Nature meet, and are, indeed, interwoven into each other. Each in turn passes the boundary line into the other’s domain, as the land and the sea do; here, in the headland that stands so boldly out among the boiling waves, there, in the beautiful bay that lies asleep, locked in the arms of the land.
In our conservatories, for instance, you may see flowers which present a strong, very curious, and surprising resemblance to some of the insect tribes. Leaves stand up above the body of the flower, in form, position, and brilliant colours, so like painted wings, that the flowers themselves appear to be gorgeous butterflies, suspended in the air, and hovering over the plant, just as you have often seen the insect on fluttering wing ere it alighted to drink the nectar from gold, or silver, or ruby cup. The animal world, too, is furnished with things as strange; presenting, if I may say so, a corresponding play and display of divine power. If there are flowers like insects, there are insects so like leaves, fresh and green, or sere and yellow, that the deception is complete; nor is the mistake discovered, till, on putting out your hand to pluck the leaf, you stand amazed to see it in an instant, as by magic, change into a living creature, and, taking wing, fly off. These objects are more than curious. A thought ful eye sees there not only the skill and power, but the goodness of him, who, in that strange livery, so masks a helpless creature, that its enemies are deceived, and it is protected from their attacks. When we see such exquisite devices and almighty power put forth to shield the meanest insect, what force does it give to our Lord’s exhortation, Fear ye not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.
But the kingdoms of nature touch at points still more real and palpable. They are so shaded off into each other, that some of the animals which occupy their borders present a combination of properties puzzling even to philosophers, and an inexplicable wonder to the ignorant multitude. The power of flying belongs to birds, and the power of walking to quadrupeds; yet there are birds that never fly, and four-footed animals that never walk. It is the characteristic of land animals ) breathe by lungs, and of fishes to breathe by gills; yet tL re are inhabitants of the sea which breathe like creati’ves of the shore, and, on the other hand, in dry and dusty walls, and beneath the stones of the moorland, there are creatures whose breathing organs are the san e as those of fishes. Sensibility characterises animals, insensibility plants; but there are plants with leaves so sensitive that they shrink from the slightest touch — shutting, like an eyelid, if they be rudely blown upon; while, on the other hand, there are animals which you may turn inside out, like the finger of a glove, and the rudeness seems to give them no pain, and certainly neither destroys their life, nor de ranges their functions. Deprived of light, plants pale and sicken, droop and die; and so dependent is animal life on a due supply of light, that Dr. Kane imputes the madness that seized his dogs to the darkness of that polar night which lasted for a hundred and forty days. Yet, so independent are some creatures of the blessed light, that in those vast caverns of the New World which the boldest travellers have not ventured fully to explore, amid a gloom deep as the grave, and on the banks of a river which, rushing through them, fills the ear with the roar of its cataract, and goes, like a being whose fate is lost in mystery, no man knows where, strange eyeless animals roam, and have their loves, and, not overlooked by God down there, enjoy a life that, faint emblem of the condition of the lost, is passed in utter and perpetual darkness. How marvellous are thy works, Lord God Aln’ghty!
In consequence of certain plants and animals being endowed with properties that characterise the classes next in order to themselves, there is a beautiful gradation in nature. There is no great wide gap, no abrupt and sudden change. The whole fabric of creation appears rising upwards, like a lofty pyramid, with its different courses dovetailed the one into the other; and so constructed, that by a series of steps you rise from the lowest forms of existence up to man, standing upon its apex, with his feet resting on earth, and his head, so to speak, touching the stars. And what combinations are so strange as those which meet in man? In some respects how noble, in others how mean he is; in his corporeal elements an animal, in his spiritual essence an angel; often the slave of passions that grovel in the dust, yet endowed with powers that hold converse with God; before the fall half an angel and half an animal, but now, exiled from Eden, his life a mystery, and himself, as an old writer says, half a devil and half a beast — a strange being at the best, symbolised, after a sort, by those cherubim which, to the countenance of a man and the wings of an angel, joined the form of a beast.
Great is the mystery of godliness! The most precious mysteries is the greatest of all mysteries. Neither in man, nor in angel, nor in any other creature, is there such a combination of what appear irreconcileable properties, such harmonizing of what seems discordant, such blending and bringing together of the peculiar characteristics of distinct and different orders, as in “the mystery of godliness.” In his person, and character, and work, our Lord Jesus Christ presents what is explicable, and, to my mind, credible, on no theory but one, that he was God manifest in the flesh, Emmanuel, God with us. Indeed, I should find it, I think, an easier thing to deny the divinity of the Bible, than, having admitted that, to reject the divinity of our Lord. To illustrate this extraordinary conjunction of apparently conflicting elements found in him,
1. Look at our Lord by the grave of Lazarus. How truly man, partaker of our common nature! The sight of the tomb wakens all his grief; the sufferings of these two sisters, clinging to each other, touch his loving heart; and there he stands, for ever sanc tioning sorrow, and even exalting it into a manly, most noble thing. His eyes swim in tears, groans rend his bosom; he is so deeply, so uncontrollably, so visibly affected, that the spectators say, See how he loved him! Jesus wept. So was it some moments ago. But now, what a change! The crowd retreat, surprise, wonder, terror seated on every face; the boldest recoiling from that awful form which comes shuffling out of the grave. This man of tears, so gentle, so tender, so easily moved that he often wept, endued with a sensibility so delicate that the strings of his heart vibrated to the slightest touch, has, by a word, rent the tomb. Struck with terror, the witch of Endor shrieked when she saw the form of Samuel emerging from the ground; what a contrast this scene to that! Not in the least surprised at the event, as if, in raising the buried dead, he had done nothing more remarkable than light a lamp or rekindle the embers of an extinguished fire, calm and tranquil, Jesus points to Lazarus, saying, Loose him, and let him go.
2. Look at Jesus by Jacob’s well. There a woman who has come to draw water about mid-day, finds a traveller seated. She looks at him. He is brown with the dust of a journey; he looks pale, and worn, and weary; the hot sun beats upon his head. He accosts her, saying, Give me to drink! And in granting it — for woman seldom refuses kindness to the needy — she fancies, no doubt, that this is some poor Jew, whose haughty pride bends to necessity in asking the meanest favour from a Samaritan. So he seemed, when, gratefully acknowledging her kindness, he bent his head, and drank deep draughts of the cool refreshing water. But, when he has raised his eyes to look, not into her face, but into her heart, and to read off, as from a book, its most secret thoughts, and, although they had never met before, to tell her all, to use her own words, that she had ever done, with what wonder does she regard him? She is amazed and awed. Well she might. The thirsty way-worn man has suddenly changed into the omniscient God.
Thus, the incommunicable attributes of Divinity, and the common properties of humanity stand out equally clear in our Lord’s life and person. And just such a conjunction of things apparently irreconcileable presents itself to our attention in the description given of Jesus Christ in this verse. In this clause, he is described by a term sacred to God; we pass on to the next, and step at once from the throne of the heavens down into a grave. In these words, “the beginning,” we behold him presiding at the creation of the universe; by those which follow, “the first-born from the dead,” we are carried in fancy to a lonely garden, where, all quiet within, Roman sentinels keep watch by a tomb, or where, as they fly in pale terror from the scene, we see him who had filled the eternal throne, and been clothed with light as with a garment, putting off a shroud, and leaving a tomb. What key is there to this mystery, what possible way of harmonising these things, but this, that Christ, while man, was more than man, one who has brought together properties so wide apart as dust and divinity, time and eternity, eternal Godhead and mortal manhood? What comfort to us, as well as glory to him, in this combination! Should it not dissipate every care and fear, to think that our Saviour, friend, and lover, has the heart of a brother and the hand of God?
Let us now consider that clause of this verse in which our Lord is called “the beginning.”
I. This term expresses his divine nature.
I have read a story of a blind man, who, determined to rise above his misfortune, and to pursue knowledge under the greatest difficulties, set himself to study the nature of light and colours. This much he had learned, that, while these differ in intensity, it is the red-coloured ray that glares strongest on the eye. He flattered himself that he had at length mastered a subject which must remain for ever more or less of a mystery to one, as he was, born blind; and so, when asked what he thought red was like, he replied — evident satisfaction at his acquirements lighting up his sightless face — that he fancied it like the sound of a trumpet.
Though we may smile at an answer so wide of the mark, his difficulty in describing colours is more or less ours in describing God. It were easier for these fingers to close upon the world, for this hand to hold the great globe within its grasp, than for any finite mind to comprehend the infinite fulness of God. “It is high, I cannot attain unto it.” “He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing. By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens, his hand hath formed the crooked serpent. Lo, these are part of his ways; but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand?”
Just as that blind man borrowed terms from sounds to express the objects of sight, and therefore did it very imperfectly, even so, familiar only with what is visible, palpable, finite, we have to borrow terms from these things to describe the invisible, the God who is encased in no body, and confined within no bounds. And as I have seen a father, to make a thing plain to his little child, take the boy on his knee, and, forgetting his own learning, dropping all correct and philosophical language, speak to the child after the manner of a child, so our heavenly Father condescends to speak of himself to us. Did he make the heavens and the earth? They are the work of his hands. Does he rule the storm? He holds the winds in his fist. Are those tremendous powers of nature, the earthquake and the volcano, obedient to his will? Like conscious guilt in presence of her judge, the earth trembles at his look, and at his touch the mountains smoke. Does he constantly watch over his people? As a kind mother’s eye, whatever be her task, follows the movements of her infant, so that if it fall she may raise it, or if it wander too near the fire, the cliff, or the brink of a stream, she may run to pluck it out of danger, God’s eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong to them whose hearts are perfect towards him. Does it thunder? It is the voice of the Lord; the lightning cloud that comes driving up the sky is his chariot, and when flash blazes upon flash, his arrows go abroad. His presence is now an eye, now a hand, now an arm, and now a shield. His love is a kiss, his anger is a frown. Are his mercies withdrawn? He repents. Are they restored? He returns. Does he interpose in any remarkable way? He plucks his hand from his bosom, and, like one who goes vigorously to work, the blacksmith who wields the hammer, or the woodman who plies the axe, he makes bare his arm. And when inspiration, attempting one of her loftiest flights, seeks to express the greatness of his majesty, she turns the heavens into a sapphire throne, spangled all with stars, and taking up this great globe, rolls it forward for God to set his feet on. “Thus saith the Lord, the heaven is my throne, arid the earth is my footstool.” Thus, by terms borrowed from our bodies, and properties, and circumstances, God describes himself, and among other instances of that kind, there is one where he employs the very term here applied to Jesus in my text. For the purpose of teaching us that he is before all, that he is the cause and the end of all, with such condescension as a father shows to his little children, he takes the Greek alphabet, and selecting the first and the last letters, as those within which all ebe are included, he says, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”
He must be God who is almighty. He must be God who is, and was, and is to come; and since “the beginning” is another title applied in that passage to the same august, and infinite, and adorable Being, by applying it to our Lord, Paul pronounces him divine, and around the head which was once pillowed on a woman’s bosom, and once bowed in death upon a cross, he throws a halo of uncreated glory. A man worshipped in heaven; a babe adored on earth; the infant’s advent sung by angels; sable night throwing off her gloom, and breaking into splendour above his manger-cradle; one whom many well remembered, as if it were but yesterday, carried in Mary’s arms or playing with the boys of Nazareth, now claiming to be older than Abraham; his step on the water lighter than a shadow’s, his voice on the waters mighty as God’s; the prompt obedience of unruly elements; the sullen submission of reluctant devils, as they retired back, and farther back before that single man, like a broken band retreating in the face of an overwhelming force; the hand that was nailed to the cross freely dispensing crowns of glory, and opening the gates of heaven to a dying thief; the earth trembling with horror, and the sun turned mourner because they were murdering their Lord; the adoring admiration of the great apostle, who, contemplating an infant cradled in a manger, a man hanging on a bloody tree, a tomb and its lonely tenant, found heaven too low, and hell too shallow, and space too short, to set forth the greatness of the love that gave the Saviour to die for us; these marvels, otherwise utterly inexplicable, have their key in “the mystery of godliness;” Jesus Christ was “God manifest in the flesh.” ,What a precious truth! The blood of Calvary being, as Paul calls it, the blood of God, may well have virtue in it to cleanse from all sin, so that though our sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
II. This term, “the beginning,” expresses Christ’s relation to his church and people.
The beginning of a tree is the seed it springs from. The giant oak had its origin in the acorn. From that dry, hard shell, sprung the noble growth that laughed at the storm, in the course of time covered broad acres with its ample shade, and built the ship that, with wings spread to the wind, flies under a Bethel flag, to bear the gospel to heathen lands, or, opening her ports, rushes on the bloody slave-ship, and fights the battle of humanity on the rolling deep. Now, as a seed, Jesus Christ was one apparently of little promise. According to the prophet, he was, in the eyes of men, a root out of a dry ground. He was all his lifetime despised and rejected; yet out of him has grown that church which shall bear the blessings of salvation to the ends of the earth, and pursue her bloodless, victorious course, till continents and islands have knelt at his feet. All the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Christ.
A house, again, begins at the foundation. The first stone laid is the foundation stone. That may be sunk in a deep dark hole; yet though it lies there, unseen and forgotten by the thoughtless, it is the stability and support of all the superincumbent structure. And when the nails were drawn, and the mangled body of our Lord was lowered from the cross, and received into women’s arms, and borne without any funeral pomp by a few sincere mourners to the lonesome tomb, and, amid sobs, and groans, and tears, and bitter griefs, laid in that dark sepulchre, then did God in heaven say, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation. Yes, it was a tried stone. He had been tried by men and devils, and by his Father too; hunger, and thirst, and suffering, and death, had tried him. Since then the foundation has often been tried, in great temptations, and sore afflictions, and fierce assaults of the Evil One; winds have blown, and rains have fallen, and rivers have swelled, and heavy floods have rolled, but the man who has believed in Christ, and the hopes that have rested on his finished work, have stood firm and unmoved. Saints triumphing over temptation, martyrs singing in prison, believers dying in peace, devils baffled, hell defeated, have made good Christ’s words, Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
The author of our faith, the founder of his church, Christ began it ere the world began, or sun or stars shone in heaven. He provided for the fall before the event happened. He had the life-boat on the beach before the bark was stranded, or launched, or even built. Not eighteen hundred years ago, when the cross rose with its bleeding victim high above the heads of a crowd on Calvary, not the hour of the Fall, when God descended into the garden to comfort our parents, and crush, if not then the head, the hopes of the serpent, but eternal ages before these events saw the beginning of the church of Christ. He began it in the councils of eternity, when, standing up before his Father to say, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, 0 God, he offered himself a substitute and a sacrifice for men. He was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
The author then, and, when he died on Calvary, the finisher of our faith,
III. Jesus is “the beginning” of salvation in every individual believer.
He is “all our salvation.” We owe everything to Christ. Whatever was the instrument employed in our
Y conversion, whether a silent book, or a solemn providence, or a living preacher, it was his grace that began what had a beginning, but, thanks be to God, never shall have an end; the health that never sickens, the life that never dies, the glory that never fades. By his Spirit convincing us of sin, and revealing himself to us as a willing and all-sufficient Saviour, he began it at conversion; he carries it on through sanctification; and he crowns it in glory. The preacher was a man but drawing a bow at a venture. Jesus! it was thine eye that aimed the shaft, and thy strength which bent the bow that day the arrow stuck quivering in our heart. When our sins were carrying us out to our burial, it was thou that didst stop the bier, and with thy touch impartedst life. Brought by the prayers of others to the grave, where we lay corrupting in our sins, it was thy voice that pierced the ear of death, and brought us alive from the dead. Having none in heaven or on earth but thee, thou hast been all in all to us. In thy birth our hopes were born, in thy death our fears expired, in thy sepulchre our guilt was buried, the sufferings of thy cross were natal pangs, and to us and millions more thy grave has been the pregnant womb of life.
The “beginning,” and therefore “the author,” Jesus is the finisher of our faith. He does no half work, half saving or half sanctifying a man. Trust him, that where he has begun a good work, he will carry it on to the end. What would become of us if he did not? Blessed Lord! but that thy hand sustained me, how often had hell received me? but that thy faithfulness did not fail with my faith, but that thy goodness did not ebb with my gratitude, but that thy love of me did not wane with my love of thee, how often had I perished? How often have I been as nearly damned as Simon was nearly drowned in the deep waters and stormy waves of Galilee? How great, 0 Lord, has been thy mercy towards me; thou hast brought up my soul from the lowest hell!
We know that men have turned this doctrine to a bad purpose, just as to a bad purpose many turn the best gifts of providence. But it is no reason why the children should be starved that dogs sometimes steal their meat. The man who presumes on this doctrine to continue in sin because grace abounds, affords in his very presumption the plainest, strongest evidence that he never has been converted — just as the falling star by falling proves that it never was a true star, never was a thing of heaven, though it seemed to shoot through the stellar regions, and by a train of light illumined its dusky path, never was other than an atmospheric meteor, “of the earth, earthy.” The best, indeed, in a sense, will fall, and do often fall; but he who rises from his falls, whose sins are the occasions of bitter sorrow, whose peace is the child, and whose faith is the parent of love, can, I believe, no more drop out of Christ, than a true, God-made star, can drop out of heaven. He will keep that which God has committed to him. He will perfect that which concerneth them.
How can it be otherwise? He is ever near to them that call upon him, and that never can happen to them which befell a child who had heedlessly wandered from its mother’s side. She sought her darling all round her cottage, and wherever he had been wont to play. Alarmed, she rushed into the gloomy forest that grew by her moorland home; she called; in frantic terror, she shrieked his name. No answer; he was a lost child. A child lost! the tidings spread like wild-fire through the hamlet; and some leaving business, others pleasure, the country-side rose for the search; and through that weary night, glen and mountain, moor and den, rung with the shouts, and gleamed with the lights of anxious searchers. The coming morn ushered in the Sabbath, but brought no rest. Believing that mercy was better than sacrifice, and that had He who came to seek and save the lost been there, He would have led the way, they resumed the search; and for the first time the feet of piety turned from the house of God. But all in vain. Now hope was burning low even in the mother’s breast, and the stoutest hearts were sinking, when a woman, guided doubtless by God to the spot, heard a feeble cry, a low moaning sound. One thrill of joy, one bounding spring, and there, with its dying face to heaven, lay the poor lost child before her on the cold ground, its young life ebbing fast, as it faintly cried, “Mother, mother!” It was saved, yet how nearly lost; and nearly lost because it had wandered far from a mother’s ear and a mother’s eye. Its danger is never ours. From Christ no darkness hides, no distance parts us; and through whatever dangers his people have to pass, though they but turn the brink of the pit, the very edge of hell, though their escapes are so narrow that the righteous scarcely are saved, he will make good his words, I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish.