Hope Beyond in Christ
’ If in this life only we have hope IN Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” — i Cor. xv. 19. “In Christ shall all be made alive.” — i Cor. xv. 22.
WE have already remarked that Paul was no morbid Christian; but doubtless he had his experience of those times of depression to which God’s people, yes, all God’s servants, are more or less subject, from Elijah in his cave and the Baptist in his prison, to Luther in his forest-castle and Bunyan in his Bedford cell.
It may have been in one of these seasons he was led to pen the sentence in the first of our motto-verses. But, in truth, we need assign it to no special occasion. Such plaintive utterance sounds only natural in the lips of one whose habitual dwelling was in “the tents of Kedar; “who could tell, day by day, of a continuous” fight of afflictions.” It is with no irreverence that we may apply to him the name of the Great Master, in whose footsteps he so faithfully trod, — “a man of sorrows.” It would have been a traversing of truth therefore, — alien to his whole nature, — had he (regarding what may be called the outer accidents of existence) made the unnatural avowal, that life was with him full of gladness and joy. Such varied tribulations as fell to his lot take music and ripple out of the best and noblest hearts. Either he, or some other kindred spirit, elsewhere asserts the familiar saying — “Chastisement is not joyous but grievous “(Heb. xii. 11). We cannot indeed for a moment think that a mind like his could be insensible to the beauties and glories of the fair world around him. One who could so discourse, as we find him doing to the Lystrians (Acts xiv. 15-17), of “the living God, who made heaven, and earth, and the sea; “and to the Athenians (Acts xvii.), of Him” who made the world and all things therein,” yet dwelling in a greater than “Temple made with hands; “— could not be indifferent either to the grandeur of outer nature or the refinements of art. The Jewish Rabbis credit his great teacher Gamaliel with a love of the beautiful; which he could hardly fail to instil into the susceptible soul of his pupil. In the opening chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle confronts paganism with the great Volume of nature; and from the entries in her magnificent pages —” the invisible things of God “— he leaves those without excuse, who are blinded to the Eternal power and Godhead of the Almighty Framer (Rom. i. 19-21). In the finest chapter of that same epistle, while he mourns the present degradation, he anticipates with fond hope the ultimate restoration of this fair earth — a second Genesis: — when its present ashen robes of sorrow shall be exchanged for festive attire: — when “the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God “(Rom. viii. 2i). Yet it must be allowed, too, that the attraction and fascination which the outer world would otherwise have exercised over his emotional nature, must have been materially diminished by what an interesting writer calls “the great tragedy of the creation’s present existence of woe “—” subject to vanity “— “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” Though he could not fail to have many and cherished memories of the circlet of oleander and vine-clad hills with their lofty summits, which hemmed in his native Tarsus: though he had been witness more than once, as the travelling missionary, to the savage grandeur of the Pisidian mountains: though he had stood on the Athenian Areopagus, and gazed on the unrivalled panorama whose nearest summit man had crowned with the noblest effort of
See the -whole remarks in Besser in loco. The same adds the observation, pertinent to our theme — “He (Paul) heard heaven and earth tell of something else than do poets and natural philosophers when they listen to ‘the tales of the wood.’... The holy prophets led him to view nature, after their light had dawned on him in the person of Christ. He now understood the 8th Psalm, because ho knew man as the fallen, but, in Christ, restored Lord * over the works of God’s hands.*”
HOPE BEYOND IN CHRIST. Si
genius: though he had again and again threaded his way through the Archipelago, and watched those golden sunsets over the Great Sea which all who have seen them can never forget: though he had gazed on the cluster of stone pines which crowned the Acro-Corinthus, and made them, along with the groves of palm and olive, to be suggestive of nobler verities: though he had seen oftentimes Jerusalem in her waning splendour, with her coronal of everlasting hills; though the Valley of Shechem, the gorges of Hermon, the gardens of Damascus, the oaks of Bashan, “the cedars of God,” had one after another been unfolded to his eye; still the attractions of these, and a hundred other similar scenes, seemed to have been rendered invisible, if we may so express it, through the blurred and cobwebbed windows of a tried soul like his. With a very special emphasis could he write — “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen” (2 Cor. iv. 18). He could be expected to have little heart or inclination to linger over the sublime or beautiful, whose reiterated experiences are thus recorded in the pages of his chequered diary — “I die daily.”” Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all
F things unto this day” (i Cor. iv. 11-13). “In labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one, Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness” (3 Cor. xi. 23-27). We may well imagine him truly feeling and saying, ‘If this be “the be-all, and the end-all here,” is life worth living? ‘If only in this world he had hope in Christ; if in his case the Valley of Achor opened to no better land of promise, it would have been a mockery and abuse of language to arrogate for himself the title of ’ happy.’ “Miserable” would have been the honest verdict.
From another standpoint, however, this wail of our motto-verse may be regarded as exceptional in the case of Paul. ‘Hope in Christ’ even if it were possible to take a restricted view of it, as bounded by this world, has an accompanying and peerless blessedness. The Christian has been described as having the monopoly of true pleasure. In one sense it is so:” Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that
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their corn and their wine increased “(Ps. iv. 7). The possessor of a good conscience: emancipated from the misery of evil-doing — the hell of a heart seething with foul corruption — a life at enmity with God, at variance with goodness and purity and peace. Accordingly, even allowing for a moment the monstrous supposition that Christianity is a fable, * a baseless fabric of a vision;’ — heaven, a myth; — death, an eternal sleep; — the whole * life in Christ ’ we have been speaking of, a lie and a delusion; — nevertheless, those who are loving and self-denying; — souls ruled and regulated by lofty principle and noble aims, cannot fail to be envied and happy. True religion, consisting in loyal allegiance to God and the dictates of conscience, confers the bliss of a present foretasted heaven, altogether independent of * the life to come.’ So that, with no great straining of experience, the Apostle’s language may be reversed, —” Even if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are NOT of all men the most miserable.” Although, we allow, it is a poor, hypothetical argument at the best, yet, hear the testimony from lips too sadly qualified to give it: — “Indisputably,” is the tribute paid by one of the most illustrious children of genius in a letter which has recently seen the light, — “Indisputably, the firm believers in the gospel have a great advantage over all others, for this simple reason, that, if true, they have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can be but with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance of an exalted hope through life, without subsequent disappointment.” “^
Such considerations, however, we repeat, are only unworthy negative views to take. But passing to the affirmative: How is all that present ’ peace and joy in believing ’ augmented and intensified, when linked with the assured blessedness in reversion? according to the beautiful saying of Coleridge, “Death only supplying the oil for the inextinguishable lamp of life; “— “the hope full of immortality: “—” the hope laid up for us in heaven: “—” absent from the body, present with the Lord “: — “Christ in you” (and you in Christ),” the hope of glory”? — “For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ “(Rom. v. 1 7). Not the ’ peradventure ’ of some blissful future; — not what may after all turn out only to be the desert mirage, with the mimic gleaming of waters and waving of phantom-trees, — a beautiful illusion. But a glorious, unmistakable, transcendent verity: the pure river of the celestial city, * clear as crystal,’ and the assured confidence of banqueting for ever on the fruit of the perennial Tree in the midst of the Paradise of God! A union for the affianced Bride of Christ, not like the unions of earth which death sooner or later severs; but * everlasting espousals *: —” With gladness and rejoicing she shall be
* Lord Byron, 182] brought; she shall enter into the King’s Palace “and the King’s presence, wearing on her person her costly jewels, the Royal dowry of “glory, honour, and immortality, eternal life!”
We are let into the secret and explanation of Paul’s “Paradise” even in this lower world (and which made him though “sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing “), by what he says to his Philippian converts, and which will afterwards demand special consideration, “Rejoice IN THE Lord alway; and again I say. Rejoice... The Lord is at hand” (Phil. iv. 4, 5). Or, better still, by listening to the words of his Divine Master in His great Valedictory: “And ye now therefore have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you” (John xvi. 22). He, the Forerunner, has already entered to take possession of the kingdom, in the name and in behalf of His redeemed people — “Where I am, there shall also My servants be.” As the first sheaf was taken into the Temple, and waved before the Lord as a pledge of the harvest to follow; so has the Risen Jesus been presented to the Father in the heavenly sanctuary, the pledge and earnest of a multitude which no man can number; “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept.... Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming” (i Cor. xv. 20, 23).
No wonder that the believers of these early ages, having “access by faith into this grace” wherein they stood, rejoiced “in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. V. 2). Nay, that this gladness of hope was imported by them into ‘the region and shadow of death’ — made conspicuous in the very emblems and devices selected in their Catacombs. “In contemplating the subjects,” says a recent writer, “with which the Christians of Rome decorated their sepulchres, the first thing that strikes us is a certain tone of joyousness... There is, in the Christian tombs, nothing of the sadness which often strikes us in the Etruscan. Here the vine with rich clusters spreads over the ceiling; laughing boys hold bunches of grapes; birds seem to flit to and fro. Spring sows the seed; Summer gathers the grape; Autumn the olive; Winter sits beside his fire; Cupid and Psyche .... fill baskets with flowers; the Phoenix sits in the palm-tree. There are banquets, probably of mystic meaning; or the departed, richly clad, walk among the bowers of Paradise.”
0 Great Apostle of the Gentiles! As we follow thee with unequal steps in thy struggle-race, we will catch up the torch of hope thou hast left behind thee; — that “HOPE IN Christ,” and in the great Beyond, which renders it impossible to be * miserable,’ however great the fight of afflictions may be. We shall accept, in thine own noble words, the panacea for all life’s miseries — taking the sting out of its trials, and arching its future with the bow of ’ strong consolation ’ —” We
“Contemporary Review,” March 1880.
are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal body... Knowing that He which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. Tor which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. Tor our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory “(2 Cor. iv. 8-10; 14, 16, 17). It may not be inappropriate to close with the prayer of the Apostle in another epistle: “Kow our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolatiofb and good HOPE through grace, comfort your hearts, an&stallish you in every good word and work” (2 Thess. ii. 16, 1 7).