The God of Grace

“The Christian Religion alone has this peculiarity, that it fully satisfies the noblest faculties and affections of man, and brings with it a calm kind of fear, and confidence accompanying the fear, and love, hope, and joy.” — Bengel.

“Human nature was reduced to such a state of fetid decay by this rejection of God, that a few more years would have seen the world one gigantic dunghill of corruption and death. Then, the Great Sacrifice took place: God manifest in the flesh died upon the cross, an eternal Sacrifice to take away sin. A fresh, invigorating breeze swept through the putrifying mass of human life. Men faced, for the first time, the realities of existence with an unflinching faith in a divine life. The idea of Sacrifice, which every nation under heaven had conceived, and blindly striven to work out, was fulfilled in the Great Sacrifice.” — Sir Percival” p. 251.

“The miraculous Olive tree has withered away, since that Morning Sun brightened over Bethlehem.” — Syrian Shrines.

“Eighteen hundred years ago, Jove was discrowned, the pagan heaven emptied of its divinities, and Olympus left to the solitude of its snows.... The despairing voice was heard shriekicg in the -^gean ‘Pan is dead! Great Pan is dead! ‘” — Alexander Smith.

“‘Twas the hour when One in Zion
Hung for love’s sake on a Cross;
“When His brow was chill with dying,

And His soul was faint with loss;
When His priestly blood dropped downward,
And His kingly eyes looked throneward — Then, Pan was dead.”

—Mrs. Barrett Browning.

“Thy Kingdom, O Christ, is an Everlasting Kingdom.”

Inscription on the Great Mosque of Damascus.

The great Apostle reaches now the third topic in his Discourse to the men of Athens. He proceeds to unfold to his hearers things in heaven and earth that were undreamt of in their philosophy. He supplies a new name to their uninscribed Temple-pedestal, and places a Divine all-glorious Sacrifice on their empty altar. With the skill of a sacred Rhetorician, he employs the two preceding themes mainly to lead up to the Great Theme. He unfolds the Volume of Grace, on whose title-page is written ‘’Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’” Where he now stood, the Temple of Mars — the symbol of might — confronted the Temple of Minerva — the symbol of Wisdom. He was about to tell them of One in whom both attributes were united — “Cheist the Power of God and the Wisdom of God.”

And yet, — though this was unquestionably the design of the Speaker, — it is at first sight remarkable that the name of Christ does not once occur throughout the Mars’ Hill Sermon. He had indeed fully unfolded that Divine name immediately before in the Agora; — for it is distinctly noted in verse 18, — that the ground on which the Stoic philosophers had impeached him as a babbler, was ‘’ because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection.” The omission, or rather the shortcoming in this his chief purpose, we think can be very readily accounted for. Not only may we infer, as in a previous chapter fully adverted to, that the Discourse itself is epitomised, — but we can still more surely surmise, that any attempted allusion to a theme so distasteful as salvation through a crucified man, proclaimed by an unknown pilgrim from Asia Minor, would be met with pronounced opposition; and that his voice and pleading — as in the case of the protomartyr Stephen, would be drowned in the clamour and uproar. To the congenial theme of Nature they could listen with avidity: — to the theme of Providence they would at all events hearken with toleration: but to supplant their Parthenon and all the traditions of Olympus and the Acropolis — by the worship of a Jew who had suffered a felon’s death — one belonging to a nation they esteemed barbarian, — was in every sense to these proud Hellenes, “foolishness.” Accordingly, we find, at the very close of the address, when indistinct reference is made to “that Man whom He hath ordained,” in conjunction with the same theme which had been received with contemptuous scorn under the Stoa Poecile — “Whereof He hath given assurance unto all men in that He had raised him from the dead; “— there is no further hearing accorded, or exposition tolerated. With that disjointed and abrupt utterance the Discourse collapses. The “not Jesus” — shouted, years before, by the surging crowd before the Hall of Judgment in Jerusalem, and which drowned in its fierceness the claims of Incarnate Justice, Truth, and Love — was doubtless heard now. We long in vain to know how the great Apostle would have opened up to them, in more definite terms, the double theme here named. That twofold topic was “the Risen Many A “Man” — One who combined the alleged might and majesty of their Jove, with the tenderness of a Brother in their nature — the love and sympathy of a human friend! One, moreover, who was to be worshipped and reverenced, not as a mere abstract principle, but as a Risen and Living Person. Yes, the subsequent writer of the Epistle to the Ephesians and of the 8th chapter of Romans — he who loved that Christ of Nazareth more than all the world beside, — we might well desiderate to hear him, before such an audience, discourse on the glories and claims of his Heavenly-Master: mounting from step to step in his high argument: telling of the Risen One ascended: seated as a Great High-Priest at the Father’s right hand — a glorious King invested with highest honours, — holding the sceptre of universal empire: His people challenging tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword, — the heavens above, and the earth beneath, ever to separate them from His love!

Loud, vehement, irresistible, that opposing clamour undoubtedly must have been; for in other similar recorded experiences in St. Paul’s life and work, he was only silenced when protest and resistance on his part had been rendered impossible. At this time, too, it must be remembered, that the better life of Athens had departed. The ancient altars survived, but a practical infidelity was predominant. No “great souls of the olden time” lingered among the present throng on the Areopagus; otherwise a fair hearing, to the last, for the earnest stranger would have been courteously conceded. If Socrates, and such as he, imbued with lofty principle and swayed by generous impulses, with minds open to conviction and recognising only the majesty of truth, had been Paul’s

THE GOD OF GRACE. 16i

present hearers, who knows but their souls would have opened like the sunflower to the Light of Life!

Doubtless our heroic pleader must have descended these stone steps with a heavy heart. It was one indeed of the few occasions when he felt compelled, not ignominiously to retreat, — but to retire for the time, apparently discomfited. Very possibly it is mainly to this day’s experience he makes that subsequent reference in his first letter to the Corinthians alre,ady noted, as to how his theme — a crucified Saviour — had by the Greeks been discarded and discredited. His memory of the Agora and Mars’ Hill may possibly have mingled with another similar utterance — ‘’ For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.” It was, at all events, to these proud Polytheists, no “faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.”

While, at present, it was with the cultured aesthetic descendants and representatives of Pericles and Pythagoras, Aristotle and Plato, Phidias and Parrhasius he came in contact, they by no means stood alone in their antipathies; — ‘the ofi’ence of” the Cross.’ The less accomplished but not less proud Roman was found subsequently to share the same unconquerable opposition to the foundation-truth of Christianity. How could he — the impersonation of martial force and universal dominion: whose eagles had winged their magnificent flight to the ends of the earth: whose Temple of Victory crowned one of the seven hills with its garnered spoils of vanquished nations — how could he stoop to the recognition of a new rival “Power:” — to the avowal that he owed his salvation to one who had undergone the death-sentence reserved for his menial slave? Is this crucified Jew — this dead God, to supersede and supplant his Jove of the Capitol? Are those dreams he shared with the Greek, of Olympus with its deified haunts, and which this day have their memories recalled in the Pantheon on the Tiber, to be denounced as myths and fantasies, giving way to the poor legend of a manger-born babe of Bethlehem — a carpenter of Nazareth — a Pilgrim of Galilee with twelve fishermen as His retainers, — a dying sufferer on Calvary] Is this Man with the marred visage to dispute with Apollo his throne of ideal beauty? Is the crown, alike of Zeus and of the Ca3sars, to be put on the head of one who wore a crown of thorns?

But it is not with Imperial Rome but with the

Greek and Athens that we have now to do. And it must be remembered that if there was one thought more terrible and abhorrent than another to the latter, it was that of Death and the world of shades of which it was the portal. With this recoil from the supreme hour and the grave, no wonder one of their favouiite Altars in the Temple of Minerva-Polias was erected to “Oblivion.’’ The present was with them everything. In the words of another — “This bright world was all. Its revels its dances — its theatrical exhibitions — its races — its baths — and academic groves, where literary labour luxuriated, — these were blessedness; and the Greeks’ hell was death. Their poets speak pathetically of the misery of the wrench from all that is dear and bright. The dreadfulness of death is one of the most remarkable things that meet us in those ancient writings.”^ Now observe it was this theme — “the dead” (yeKpwv) — which in the Apostle’s discourse fell on their ears. That was the torch which now fired the loaded mine — the gag which closed the mouth of the fearless Speaker. And though in one sense it was a reference to the grave in its less appalling aspect and association; the grave disarmed of its terrors by resurrection, — it was only to intensify their contempt

1 Robertson’s Sermons, vol. i., p. 190.

for the presumption of the prating babbler, that his crucified “Man” was to determine, — in another sense to reverse, the doom of millions.

Then, add to this, if repellent to the Greek were the thoughts of dissolution, equally repellent to him were thoughts of sin. The Sermon on the Mount, with a few rare exceptions, had no place in his ethical system. The average code of morality, specially in these more degenerate days, may be described as a negation : — the gods and goddesses who shaped his creed, from their own examples readily condoned human infirmities. The heart “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” would have been branded as the exaggerated tenet of an obsolete, old-world belief They recognised no fall — no devil — no principle of evil — no corrupted nature. Where, then, was the necessity of such alleged * redemption ‘? — what the need of atonement and sacrifice?

We can thus well conceive and understand how formidable the opposition was, on that hill-summit, to the doctrines of Grace: to accept the One only divine method of acceptance with God. And yet, without that Gospel of Christ, the world has no satisfactory light thrown on the vast problem of its spiritual regeneration. Oratory, poetry, philosophy, intellect, reason, were all baffled and confounded: — professing themselves in this great mystery to be wise, they became fools. The solution of the enigma had been attempted for long generations: but every oracle was dumb on the great question * What must I do to be saved 1 ‘The Greek mythology, previously described, of mountains and groves and forests and rivers, was mournfully inadequate. The challenge might be given to their philosophers of every age and every school: — Pile, if you will, mountain on mountain; ransack all the glories of material Nature; bring every flower that blooms and every torrent that sweeps in wild music to the sea; summon old ocean from his deep caverns and the myriad stars that gem the firmament. They may, and do, silently and eloquently speak of God’s eternal power and Godhead. But there is one theme on which they have no speech nor language — their voice is not heard, and that is — How is God to deal with my sinful soul? With regard to this question, “you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.”

Is there, then, no answer elsewhere? Yes, where the Volume of Nature, and I may add, the Volume of Providence, fails, the Volume of Inspiration interposes. The world, as we have seen, had conceded to it long eras to work out, if it could, its own self-restoration. But after these centuries and ages of failure, — after God had given man his own time and means to attempt discovering what baffled human reason. He says — Now, listen to My own divine expedient, — By lifting up My Beloved Son on the cross I intend to draw all men unto Me.^

That “Plan of Salvation,” though objection is not unjustly taken to the phrase, is succinctly set forth in what Olshausen happily calls, — and his words have a special appropriateness in these pages — “the Acropolis of the Christian faith:” — “Whom God hath set forth, to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus “(Rom. iii. 25, 26). CChrist ‘the power of God unto salvation: ‘Christ who had, by His dying, disarmed death of its terrors and made it the portal of a higher life — the vestibule of a better than their best Elysian dream: lifting it far above the poor ‘XOLpe’ (the farewell) — touching but significant note of the sorrow of their bereaved: — Christ who had” delivered them who through fear of death

1 St. Paul in Rome, p. 112-116.

were all their lifetime subject to bondage “: — here is the fulcrum and lever in one, which is to elevate humanity: which is to overthrow time-honoured religions — subvert philosophies — silence oracles — demolish Pantheons — save immortal souls ! — the old old story of Redeeming Grace to dying men and a dying world. St. Paul felt the transforming power of that cross in his own heart. He might be vilified as a revolutionary fanatic, an impious antagonist to time-worn religions, a subverter of faiths which were hoary with age —” turning the world upside down: “— but he delighted to tell that experience to others — it mattered not to him whether in the slums of Corinth or in the halls of Caesar, or on the heights of Mars’ Hill — -^The chief of sinners, but I obtained mercy.” — “”

“See me! see me! once a rebel,
Vanquished at His cross I lie;
Cross! to tame earth’s proudest able.
Who was e’er so proud as I?
He convinced me; He subdued me;
He chastised me; He renewed me.
The nails that nailed — the spear that slew Him,
Transfixed my heart and bound it to Him.
See me! see me! — once a rebel,
Vanquished at His cross I lie.”

I may appropriately end this chapter and its theme with the remark, — how superlative the glory of Christianity is, compared with the most refined and captivating systems of heathenism. I shall not here enter on so wide a topic as the modern theory of development in the religions of the world: or how far they served, even in their very failures, to act as pioneers in the ushering in of the great secret hid from ages and generations. May we not even subscribe to the words of a true Poet, — that Beauty and the Beautiful in the glorious art of Greece, may have partially and unconsciously prepared the way for the only true and complete Incarnation of Divine Beauty, — the “Altogether Lovely One:” —

“By your beauty, wliicli confesses
Some chief Beauty conquering you, — By our grand heroic guesses
Through your falsehood at the True, — We will weep not! earth shall roll
Heir to each god’s aureole.”

We can speak with greater confidence of her “harbinger philosophers.” Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others already spoken of, were at least the heralds of a diviner faith. The deeper instincts of St. Augustine’s nature, he himself tells us, were first aroused by reading accidentally a passage in the Hortentius of Cicero. Its topic was the dignity and grandeur of philosophy. There followed, indeed, a barren and ineffectual conflict of eleven

1 Mrs. Barrett Browning.

years terminating with acceptance of the principles and speculations of Manichseism. And though it was the teachings of Ambrose at Milan which came like sunlight in his darkness, yet we have it recorded in his Confessions, that the writings of Plato “enkindled in his mind an incredible ardour,” and stimulated him to profounder study of the diviner philosophy taught on the Mount of Beatitudes and by the shores of the Lake of Galilee. For a time there was an attempt to incorporate the two principles. He sought to be a disciple of a hybrid system — a Platonic Christianity. But, ere long, the victory of the Judean faith was complete, and he cordially accepted — what was incompatible with the tenets of the Athenian sage — the doctrine of a Personal God and a Living Saviour. We willingly allow — say in the three ancient religions of the East, Brahminism, Buddhism, and Parsism — that there were scattered and fragmentary rays of a better sun — lights shining in a dark place, amid monstrous fables, gross as well as puerile forms of error. Nay, farther, the question seriously discussed in the present writer’s youth — under the repellent phraseology — “Salvability of the heathen” — now happily in the judgment of Christian charity, as well as of Scripture, remains no longer an open lyo ST. PAUL IN ATHENS.

question. Though with certain qualifications, the words of an earnest thinker and writer may be accepted and endorsed: — “We are constrained to the conviction that there is a church on earth larger than the limits of the church visible; larger than Jew, or Christian, or the Apostle Peter dreamed; larger than our narrow hearts dare to hope even now. They whose soarings to the First Good, First Perfect, and first Fair, entranced us in our boyhood, and whose healthier aspirations are acknowledged yet as our instructors in the reverential qualities of our riper manhood — will our hearts allow us to believe that they have perished? Nay. Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven.... These, with an innumerable multitude whom no man can number, out of every kingdom and tongue and people, with Rahab and the Syro-Phoenician woman, have entered into that church which has passed through the centuries, absorbing silently into itself all that the world ever had of great and good and noble. They were those who fought the battle of good against evil in their day, penetrated into the invisible from the thick shadows of darkness which environed them, and saw the open vision which is manifested to all in every nation, who fear God and work righteousness. To all, in other words, who live devoutly towards God, and by love towards men. And they shall hereafter * walk in white, for they are worthy.’”

At present, however, we are concerned alone with the nation which, of all others of the past, led the van in the struggles and aspirations of unassisted Reason, and which even in her Incarnations had been the Precursor in the great outstanding fact of the Gospel — “the mystery of godliness — manifest in. the flesh.” The Greek ritual has been well described, with all its external fascinations, as at best a feeble yearning after the good and the true, with much that was meretri-

1 Robertson of Brighton and his Contemporaries, p. 317.

“I do not doubt that, according to the teaching of our Lord and St. Paul, many of those who never heard of Christ will yet be saved by the mighty power of His Incarnation and atonement and resurrection.” — Dr. Harold Brown, Bishop of Winchester.

“It is with peculiar thankfulness that I mark your Lordship’s expression of opinion as to the extension of the Merits of the Incarnation and Atonement to the Mahomedan and the Buddhist who in this life never heard of Christ.” — Canon Wilberforce. See both quotations: Times, January 27th, 1887.

We may well add words of tolerance more authoritative still than those of any modern ecclesiastical dignitaries, however eminent. The Leader of the Apostolic band — St. Peter himself, places upon record the following judgment. From the language employed, it is evident that at his own avowal he was startled. It was in contravention of his life-long tenets and prejudices. But, “being of God he cannot deny it.” Mark his expression of undissembled astonishment yet of ready acceptance: “Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him” (Acts x. 34, 35).

cious and corrupting — base and seductive. Dean Plumptre in his suggestive Commentary, after speaking of it as “the inarticulate wailing of childhood,” happily applies the familiar words of the Laureate —

“An infant crying in the night.
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.”

It was a groping in the dark — the blind man’s feeling after Him — spoken of in verse 27th. The three words Mystery — Ambiguity — Uncertainty — describe its best teaching and attainment. There was the conspicuous absence of clear and decisive tone and utterance on the great problems of Life, Death, Immortality. “All the systems of ancient mythology and of modern superstition,” says an eloquent preacher, “have their reserve and their mysteriousness. Alike at Delphi and Dodona, at Mecca and at Rome, there are secrets for the initiated — responses sounding through a hollow cave, or from behind a curtaining veil — all opinions regulated by a supreme will, all knowledge kept by a custodian priest, and doled out at his pleasure to the submissive people of his charge. The appeal is to the senses rather than to the conscience — veiled prophets, and Pythian madness, and flashing scimitars.... Christianity has no lack of inherent grandeur, and therefore needs not borrow. She has no muttering wizards that peep in the pauses of their necromancy from out the holy shrine. She deals not in *deceivableness of unrighteousness, nor lying wonders.’ She seeks not, by ceremonies of terror, to cause the timid to crouch before her altars, nor by idle pageants to dazzle the sensuous into devotees. She announces in simple language, the sublimest truth.... Standing in the majesty of her Truth, she says to all men, * Come and see.’... Toil not so wearily, ye hapless ones — here is Rest. Jesus stands in the way of all hearts that inquire, turns to meet any eager footstep which follows Him; and whether the inquirer be a king in his purple, or a beggar in his rags, a sage of manywintered years, or childhood with its * prayerclasped hands,’ He greets them with the welcome of His grace.”

While we concede then, as we may, whatever ig bright and beautiful in the myths and mysteries of ancient Greece as compared to the cults of other peoples, such as Egypt or Phoenicia — Osiris and Baal: — while, in the words of so safe a guide as the late excellent and scholarly Dean Howson —” Plato and Aiistotle have had a great

1 Morley Punshon’s Sermons, p. 11.

work appointed to them, not only as the heathen pioneers of the Truth before it was revealed, but as the educators of Christian minds in every age,” let it only serve to bring out, in bolder and more accentuated contrast — “the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ ’ (2 Cor. iv. 6). Greece, in the Homeric phrase, had her boasted” Shepherds of the people; “some of these beautiful in outward form — ideal incarnations. But what were they compared to “the Beautiful Shepherd” {lit. John X. 14) who gave His own life for the sheep: not haunting the groves or environed with the clouds of Olympus, but an ever present — ever living — ever loving Redeemer. These yearnings after the true summum honum of the Platonic Philosophy, doubtless had their nearest fulfilment — the highest eminence to which human reason could reach — in the case of him whose name has so often occurred to us in these pages — the noble Socrates: who in the words of Cicero “brought down philosophy from heaven to earth.” How Christ-like are many of his aphorisms! “The only road to happiness is to do right.”” Follow wisdom and virtue: for the

1 Dean Stanley, in speaking of the Eastern Churches of the present century, remarks, that “along the church porticoes, both in Greece and Russia, are to be seen portrayed on the walls, the figures of Homer, Theucidides, Pythagoras, and ‘Plsito.” — Uaster7i Churches, p. 41.

reward is noble, and the life is great.” “Cultivate, in preference to honours and advancement, the pleasures arising from the performance of duty.” “O beloved Pan and all ye other Gods of this city,” was one of his sayings when confronting death as recorded in the same Phsedo of Plato, “grant me to become beautiful in the inner man, — that so, whatever I may possess outwardly, I may be at peace with those within.” ‘’ His soul,” says Tholuck in a striking passage quoted by Howson and Conybeare, — “was certainly in some alliance with the Holy God; he certainly felt in his daemon or guardian spirit, the inexplicable nearness of his Father in heaven; but he was destitute of a view of the divine nature in the humble form of a servant, the Redeemer with the crown of thorns; he had no ideal conception of that true holiness, which manifests itself in the most humble love and the most affectionate humility. Hence, also, he was unable to become fully acquainted with his own heart, though he so greatly desired it. Hence, too, he was destitute of any deep humiliation and grief on account of his sinful wretchedness, of that true humility which no longer allows itself a biting, sarcastic tone of instruction; and destitute, likewise, of any filial devoted love. These perfections can be shared only by the Christian, who beholds the Redeemer, as a wanderer upon earth in the form of a servant; and who receives in his own soul the sanctifying power of that Redeemer by intercourse with Him.” Yes, it is at the foot of the cross and there alone, — pondering and accepting the story of Grace, that the long cry of aching humanity has been answered: a remedy for its ills provided: rest secured for the weary and heavy-laden: life sanctified and transfigured with the beauties of holiness: Death, the Greek’s enemy, despoiled of its sting and the grave of its victory. Universal Christendom can well echo through the ages, her lofty Benedicite —

“Thou art the King of glory, 0 Christ: Thou art the Everlasting Son op the Father: When Thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man, Thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb: When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness op

DEATH,

Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to
all believers!”