The Christian Promise of Immunity

Revelation iii. 10

The Christian promise of immunity is contained in these words: “Because thou hast kept the word of My patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world.” The phrase which startles us at the outset is the expression, “My patience.” What a strange attribute to be claimed for the Divine! We could have understood “My greatness,” “My power,” “My justice,” “My majesty.” But patience — that is surely a singular prerogative for a Divine ideal. It was directly in the face of all existing conceptions — Roman, Greek, Jewish. It was the lifting into the heavens of a virtue which had been always deemed too prosaic for the best of earth — a

virtue which was regarded as the property of poor creatures, of the down-trodden, of the slave. In a book which is saturated with a sense of the majesty of God, in a book which lavishes on the Christ every epithet of glory, it seems an anti-climax to claim as the chief jewel of His crown the homely grace of patience.

But is there anything which shows more strongly that St. John had in his view the Christ of history? Is not the distinctive attribute of the Christ of history His patience? The peculiar trial of the Son of Man was waiting j He was straitened until His baptism was accomplished. The world was not ready for Him, though He was ready for the world. The sorest cross He had to bear was the unpreparedness of men. His deepest struggle was the struggle to restrain Himself, to keep Himself from anticipating the slow course of events. It is this consciousness, I think, that breaks forth in the words “I am meek and lowly in heart.” He felt that He was capable of quicker things. He perceived within Himself the working of forces which, if He gave them

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vent, would lift the world in a moment miles along the way. “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels?” It is the expression of the belief that He was submitting to a reserve of power, that He was constraining Himself within the limits prescribed by natural law. The special gift of the earthly life of Jesus was the power of patience.

In one sense the force of all temptation springs from a want of patience. It is a familiar experience that if hunger is long protracted, the appetite goes. I believe, if we could suspend the obedience to any temptation for an adequate period, it would follow the law of hunger — would subside. What the drunkard wants is a power of resistance — an ability to hold out; if he could hold out long enough, the appetite for drink would fade and ultimately vanish. What the ill-tempered man wants is time to carry his anger without expressing it. I do not believe in the adage that nursing wrath keeps it warm, if it means that suspending its action keeps it warm. We all utter genuine threats on Monday which we could not possibly carry out on Saturday. We explain it by saying that we have cooled down j and it is true. But the cooling down is not the result of any change of circumstances; it comes simply from the attitude of waiting. The most potent of all powers against the influence of temptation is the power to wait.

But the stress of this passage is after all laid, not on the patience, but on the “word” of the patience. The “word,” as I take it, means the cause, the motive of the patience; the “word” is the prompting word. The expression “the wo,rd of my patience” is antithetical. It implies that patience may have many watchwords, many rallying-cries. The rallying-cry of a movement is its motive, its ground of stimulus. Now, there have been three rallying-cries or watchwords of patience in this world. There are three words which have been made the cause of patience, and not one of them is that of Christ. We shall look at each in turn.

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The first of these watchwords is the sense of life’s nothingness. Its motto for patience would be, “Not worth while to get hot.” No man can deny that such a rallying-cry, if it comes from the heart, and goes to the heart, has a certain amount of power. I believe that if a man could reach an attitude of absolute pessimism, if he could really come to feel that everything in this world was as bad as it could be, he would be free from all temptation. Everything would then be on a level; and temptation requires a mountain. But you will observe, what St. John speaks of is not freedom from temptation; it is keeping from the hour of temptation — resisting the hour for the sake of the eternity. So far from advocating the freedom from temptation, he says that temptation “shall come to all the world” — therefore to the Christian also. The difference, in his view, between the man of the world and the Christian, is not that the former shall be tempted and the latter not. On the contrary, temptation is often more blunted to the worldling than to the Christian.

I would say that it is more difficult for a follower of Christ to get free from temptation than it is for a man of the world, for the simple reason that to the follower of Christ life is a more rose-coloured thing. The worldling has great advantages for getting soured with life — in other words, for seeing the colours taken out of it; and that is itself the death of temptation. When a man’s tree of life is withered, it is withered all round for active evil as well as active good. His fate, from an opposite point of view, is some¬ thing like the fate of the three men in Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace — he passes

through and receives no hurt.

Now, whatever be the word of Christs patience, it is not this word. His attitude towards life is not that of pessimism-even less so than that of His apostle, St. Paul. Indeed, looking at the matter from the purely human side, I know of no teacher so optimistic as that Son of Man who had the deepest sense of human sin. He regarded the world as beautiful to look upon. He had a sense

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of that impartial mercy which blesses the creature because he is a creature — makes its sun to rise on the evil and the good. He was impressed with the infinite influence of the most finite things, of the most seemingly insignificant things. He emphasised the ineradicable effect of giving a cup of cold water to a thirsty man. He perilled the fortunes of His kingdom in a moment of danger on the influence of a look cast upon a deserting disciple, whom He had placed at the head of His band. The word of Christ’s patience was certainly not a sense of life’s nothingness.

The second word which may describe a source of patience is “exhaustion” — the decline of the vital functions. The rallying-cry for the abandonment of life and its temptations may be the patience which says, “I am tired.” The exhaustion of vital energy may come from many things. It may be the fruit of old age; it may spring from what is called fastness — the over-yielding to temptation it¬ self. A dissipated man literally means a man who has ceased to be tempted — ceased to taste the joy of sins which once allured him. He is one who has been made old before his time, in whom the process of vital exhaustion has been accelerated. A state like this involves the death of temptation. It does so even though the old habits may remain. A man frequents his former haunts from custom long after he has become blind to their beauty. So is it with false beauty as well as true. The dissipated man is the man who has lost the charm of things that once were joys. The objects remain uninjured; the habit remains unbroken; but the energy is exhausted, the temptation is away.

Is this the word of Christ’s patience? No. Whatever His prompting word may be, it is not “exhaustion.” There is a remarkable passage in St. John’s own Gospel which strongly bears upon this point. Christ says to the Samaritan, “The water which I will give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” “Springing up to everlasting life” means, springing up for ever. The idea is that of a perpetual flow, of a power

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ever recuperative, ever renewing itself. And the charm of the saying is that it is a delightful little bit of autobiography. It is a record of Christ’s own experience about Himself. How did He know that His followers were to have a sense of perpetual youth? Because He felt it in Himself. No man could have pictured life as the springing water who had not essentially a young soul. It is the cry of youth, of youth irrepressible and full of glory. It is the voice of a heart that, amid all its sorrows, has never been wasted, worn, wearied — of a spirit which has been conscious of fresh strength at every moment of exhaustion. We must seek elsewhere than in fading vigour for the word of Christ’s patience.

There is a third word which may be the source of patience. It may come from blood¬ lessness, or anaemia; its rallying-cry may be, “I cannot be troubled with the heat of passion.” For it must be confessed that there are minds in this world which are too shallow to be violently stirred, either by good or ill. They dwell in a recess of the bay. The storms of life sweep overhead and leave them quite untouched. I do not say, unharmed. Their incapacity to be moved springs from their want of depth, and it prevents them as much from becoming very good as from becoming very bad. None the less, the position of these men in the world is what the world calls blameless. They are blameless because they are bloodless. They are sheltered by their own inlandness. They are protected by the passiveness of their nature. They fail to take fire because they have not the combustible element. They are incapable of great desire, of strong emotion, ot ardent longing, of much laughter or of many tears. They cannot be said to possess their souls in patience. Their patience is, strictly speaking, not a possession; they do not hold it; it holds them. It imprisons them. It encloses them from the breath of every current. It girds them round and round with an atmosphere of deadly calm which excludes all contact with the forces and forms of passion

Is this the word of Christ’s patience?

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Assuredly not. This is the cleansing through bloodlessness; but it is the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses from all sin. Christ’s conquest of temptation is not the conquest by impassiveness; it is the conquest by passion — the Lord’s passion. Not by bloodlessness, but by the transfusion of new blood, is the victory of the Christian won. If temptation is subdued, it is not by a calming down of the life-forces. It is by the impartation of a fresh force. The old temptation is conquered by getting a new one, a higher one. The things which once were gain are counted loss, not because a part of our nature is dormant, but because there has appeared a more excellent glory, beneath whose sunlight the candle ceases to shine.

For let us now ask, What is that word of Christ’s patience which has enabled man to wait? It is a shorter word than any of the three foregoing — nothingness, exhaustion, anaemia; it is love. Love is distinctively the one power in all the universe that makes for patience. It is a remarkable fact that when St. Paul is counting the different jewels of its crown he lingers longest over its waiting power. One would have thought that in that magnificent hymn which he dedicates to its glory he would have dwelt upon its flights and raptures. Not so. His eye rests upon its patience. He is so attracted by that gem that he can hardly let it go. Nearly every note of this hymn is a note in praise of love’s waiting. To him its paramount beauty is that it “never faileth.” It “suffereth long”; it “is not easily provoked”; it is greater in its abidingness than even faith or hope; it “beareth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things”; these are the chords that dominate the triumphant anthem, and constitute the charm of its music. It is the same note which appears again in the twelfth chapter of Romans, where he is speaking of the gifts of love. To him there is ever one cry: “Wait, wait, wait!” All love’s more brilliant manifestations are passed by on the other side. He calls on the ministering to wait on their ministry, the teachers on their teaching, the exhorters on their exhortation. He bids the prophets “prophesy according to

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the proportion of faith” — their waiting-power for the coming good of humanity. He tells the rulers to rule “with diligence with that prosaic painstaking whose name is patience. From first to last he has no other song but the patience of love.

And is it not true that love is the most staying power in the universe? Is there anything which so helps a man to endure the hour? We see a youth of burning passions and of loose morals; a pure love comes, and thenceforth he walks above the mire. We feel within our breast the glow of a just anger. A man is seen living in defiance of all goodness. Every voice of the hour cries for vengeance, and every instinct of daily justice exclaims, “Cut him down; why cumbereth he the ground?” Yet, even in our hearts, we do not cut him down. Why? Because there is a voice beyond the hour, an instinct beyond the day; it is love. The hour cries, “Cut him down,” because it sees the man of the present; love says, “Spare him,” because it sees the man of the future. There is a temptation which once at least in a lifetime comes to all the world; it is uncharity — the cry of the hour for the sword of retribution. From that temptation which comes to all the world there is provided for all the world a refuge. There is a power which is quite universal, and its name is love. It has the attribute of waiting, because it has the gift of foresight. It sees in advance, and therefore it evades the moment. It does not conquer the sense of wrong, does not wish to conquer it; but it suspends the act, it postpones the stroke, it arrests the descending blow. It craves time for the barren fig-tree, it makes time. It puts into the heart a word of patience; it keeps us from the temptation of the hour.

And now, running through all these details, there is one vast principle which comprehends and yet transcends them. For what does this utterance of St. John amount to? Is it not simply this: that in the life of the new regime morality shall have its motive in immortality? The waiting on the future is to conquer the temptation of the hour. Many would call this

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a decline in religion — a regress to the Egyptian and the Parsee. Robertson of Brighton, in a famous passage, quoted with enthusiasm by many professed agnostics, tells us that, even if there be no future, it is better to be good than to be evil. No ethical creed would ever deny it. But it is not a question of betterness; it is a question of helpfulness. What St. John maintains, what Christianity maintains, is that the sense of an object’s value helps us to be good to it. Analyse your moments of benevolence; I think you will find that they are strongest in proportion to the possibilities of to-morrow. Pity is independent of the sense of futurity; it gives because it sees pain. But when it gives it runs away; it is itself a pain. But benevolence is a hope, and it demands hope. If it is not to run away, it must get a glimpse of to-morrow. It must see thiough the rags the possibility of the seamless robe, through the marred visage the lineaments of a face divine. We do not crown the creature for death, but for life here or elsewhere. If we knew that a child would not pass its seventh year, we should not begin its education. It is vain to say that humanitarianism is a substitute for immortality. It is immortality that makes humanitarianism. Consciously or unconsciously, with or against the will, it is the far look-out towards the Father’s house that prompts us to lift the prodigal from the swine. It is the sounding of the bells across the snow that impels the arms to clear the snow away. The word of Christ’s patience is the word of immortality, and the word of immortality helps us to resist the hour.