If I Had Not Come
TO see Christ is to see ourselves by startling contrast. The religious leaders of our Saviour’s day were sinners before they knew him, but their sin was not manifested. “If I had not come and spoken unto them they had not had sin,” said Jesus, “but now they have no cloak for their sin.” The Son of God is Christies Revelator before he is Christus Salvator. No truer testimony to the Messiahship was ever uttered than that of the Samaritan woman: “Come and see a man that told me all things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ?”
If Christ came to church it were a sacred privilege to entertain him; and evermore the aisles which he had trodden would be counted holy ground. But are we ready for the revelations which his coming is sure to bring? His glory would certainly manifest our guilt. Ah, yes! And his lowly garb would also rebuke our costly attire, and his deep humility would shame the diamonds on jeweled Christian fingers. Does the reader remember how, in the dream, I saw him looking first to the one side and then to the other, as he walked up the aisle on that Sunday morning, as though silently begging for a seat? Well, though there had been misgivings and questionings about our system of pew rentals, with the sittings so graded that one could read the relative financial standing of the worshipers by noting their position in the broad aisles, the matter had not come home to me as a really serious question till Christ came to church on that morning. Judging by his dress and bearing it was evident that were he to become a regular attendant, he could not afford the best pew in the house: and this was distressing to think of, since I knew from Scripture that he has long since been accorded the highest place in heaven, “angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.” And there were other things in our worship whose presence caused great searchings of heart, so soon as the Master of assemblies was recognized as being there.
To translate the dream into plain literal prose: When it became a realized and unquestionable fact that, in the person of the Holy Ghost, Jesus is just as truly in the midst of the church as he once stood in the company of his disciples and “showed them his hands and his feet,” then the whole house began to be searched as with a lifted candle. Yes! And he is among us no longer * ’ as one that serveth” but as “a Son over his own house, whose house are we if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” We who worship and we who conduct worship are simply his servants to do only what he bids us do, and to speak and act by the guidance of his Spirit.
And judgment began with the pulpit as that mysterious man in yonder pew looked toward it and listened, though he spoke not a word. The theme had been scriptural and evangelical, as we have already said: but with what spirit was it presented? We have” preached the gospel unto you in the Holy Ghost se?it forth from heaven” (i Peter i: 12, R. V.), is almost the only homiletical direction found in Scripture. And yet how deep and searching the words! We are not to use the Holy Spirit in preaching: he is to use us. As the wind pours through the organ pipes, causing their voice to be heard, albeit according to the distinctive tone and pitch of each, so the Spirit speaks through each minister of Christ according to his special gift, that the people may hear the word of the Lord. Is it not the most subtle temptation which comes to the preacher that he allow himself to be played upon by some other spirit than the Paraclete? the popular desire for eloquence, for humor, for entertainment, for wit, and originality, moving him before he is aware, to speak for the applause of men rather than for the approval of Christ? Not until the presence in the assembly of the Spirit of the Lord is recognized does this error come painfully home to the conscience. We must not enter into personal experience here, further than to tell the reader how repeatedly we have turned to the following paragraph in the Journal of John Woolman, the Quaker, and read and re-read it:
” One day, being under a strong exercise of spirit, I stood up and said some words in meeting, but not keeping close to the divine opening, I said more than was required of me. Being soon sensible of my error, I was afflicted in mind some weeks, without any light or comfort even to that degree that I could not take satisfaction in anything. I remembered God and was troubled, and in the depth of my distress he had pity on me, and sent the Comforter..., Being thus humbled and disciplined under the cross, my imderstandijig became more stre7igtheiied to distmginsk the pure Spirit which moves inwardly jipo?i the heart, and which taught me to wait in silence, sometimes many weeks together, until I felt that rise which prepares the creature to stand like a trumpet through which the Lord speaks to his flock.”
Here is a bit of heart biography so antique and strange to that spirit of unrestrained utterance which characterizes our time, that it almost needs an interpreter to make it intelligible; but if one has ever considered deeply the requirement to speak in the Spirit, its meaning will be very plain. Is it not as true of our spirits as of our bodies that the severest colds which we contract come to us from sitting in a draught? Perhaps a current of popular applause strikes us and before we know it our fervor has become chilled, and then we find ourselves preaching self instead of preaching Christ, giving more heed to rhetorical effect than to spiritual impression, till the Lord mercifully humbles us and shows us our sin. Well were it if we could sometimes impose on ourselves the penance of “silence many weeks together” till we should learn to “keep close to the divine opening.”
What was it then that Jesus in the Spirit seemed to demand as he appeared in church that morning? What but the freedom of the place accorded to him who builded the house and therefore “hath more honor than the house “? Is it not written that” where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty ’ ‘? Not liberty for us to do as we will surely, but liberty for him to do as he will. And where is the Spirit now but in the church, his only sanctuary in this dispensation? Let there be no restrictions on his house then, lest — if in his revelation the Spirit shall.
Show us that loving man
That rules the courts of bliss,
coming into our assembly to-day “poor and in vile raiment” — he shall hear the word: “Stand thou there or sit here under my footstool;” while to the” man with a gold ring and goodly apparel the invitation is given: “Sit thou here in a good place.”
And the Spirit must have equal liberty in the pulpit, so that if he choose to come into the sermon in the garb of plain and homely speech, he may not be refused a hearing. Indeed, it was just this accusation that came to one unveiled heart as Christ showed himself in yonder pew — the conviction that he might have been fenced out of the sermon many times when he had desired to be heard therein, because the discourse had been so elaborately pre-arranged and so exactly written out that after-thoughts were excluded though they should come direct from him.
Ah, yes; and that was not the deepest revelation. If Christ is present in the pulpit he must think his thoughts through us as well as speak his words by our lips. And what if these thoughts, like their Master, should be to some hearers like “a root out of a dry ground,” having no beauty that they should desire them? Art thou ready, oh preacher, to take all the consequences of letting the Lord speak through thee as he will? This may sometimes lead thee out of the beaten path of accepted opinion and into ways that seem devious to sacred tradition. And this in turn, though done in humility, may bring upon thee the accusation of pride of opinion as though thou wert saying: “I have more understanding than all my teachers.” Does the reader know the story of John Tauler, the mystic, and of that anointing and illumination of the Spirit which came to him after he had been for several years an eloquent preacher? He represents some former teacher as chiding him for departing from his instructions; to which he replies: “But if the highest Teacher of all truth come to a man he must be empty and quit of all else and hear his voice only. Know ye that when this same Master cometh to me he teaches me more in one hour than you and all the doctors from Adam down.” Bold words! Let us reverence our teachers and seek to know how much the Lord hath taught us through them; let the words of commentators, who have prayed and pored over God’s holy word to search out precious ore for us, be honored for all the wealth that they have brought to us, knowing that only “with all saints,’” can we “comprehend what is the breadth and length and depth and height” of the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. Nevertheless, it is good sometimes with Tauler “to be empty and quit of all else and hear his voice only.” And that it might be so is perhaps the reason why Christ came to church that day. The world is full of books which demand our study if we would know the mysteries of God; criticism has set up its “scientific method,” declaring that what in the Bible cannot stand the test must be discarded. But while the vendors of learning are crying “Lo here,” and “Lo there,” the Good Shepherd speaks, saying: “My sheep hear my voice “; and he is still in the fold to care for his own, to lead them into green pastures where the freshest and sweetest truth is found; to make them lie down by still waters in which they may see his own blessed face reflected. Only let not the sheep hear the voice of strangers who know not the truth: let them hear only Christ. He is not present in the church by his Spirit as critic and censor of the preacher, but as his gracious helper and counselor. Then give him liberty of utterance in your sermon, oh, man of God! All our acquirements in knowledge of the world, all our mastery of style and expression he will use, if it is surrendered to him. But this is not enough. There must be such a line of Scripture exposition in the sermon that the Spirit shall have free course to” ride triumphantly through it in his own chariot,” the inspired word; and there must be in it such windows looking toward “the divine opening” that he may find entrance at every point with suggestions, illuminations, inspirations. Let those who know bear witness whether, when preaching in such a frame, thoughts have not come in, far better than any which we had premeditated, lessons, illustrations, and admonitions fitted to the occasion and to the hearer as we could never have fitted them of ourselves. “So after many mortifications and failures when going to this warfare at mine own charges,” writes one,” I found that on this day I had been at ease and had had liberty in prophesying, and withal had spoken better than I knew, and I said: ‘Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not.’
Give me to see thee and to feel
The mutual vision clear;
The things unseen reveal, reveal,
And let me know them near.