Introductory

Hat did Jesus Christ do for men that men could
not have done for themselves?

This question, though so simple to all appearance, is really the summing up of nearly all the vital questions that the mind of man can ask. I am not sure that you will not be misled even by the word “men” as it stands in the inquiry; you will think of two men, three men, or of some other limited number of men; and if you do so, you will miss the point of Christ’s whole work. Christ may have done something for two men which the two men could not have done for themselves, and yet not have done anything which another third man might not have done as well; and may, indeed, not have been equal to the men for whom he did it. A child may open a door for a giant. So long as you think of numbers you will not see either what Christ did or why He did it. Suppose, then, we take the word “men” out of the inquiry, and put the word man in its place, the question will then stand thus: What did Christ do for Man that Man could not have done for himself? Mark what a change is made by this new word. It suggests or implies that Christ is in some sense outside of human nature, or apart from it; not wholly or exclusively in it, else His work would be something done not for human nature but by it, because if He were only and merely a man Himself, whatever He did man did. Yet Christ was a man; more, if you can prove it, but a man certainly; He looked like one; He acted like one; He was in fact a man: if it could be shown that He was not a man, all that is tender in sympathy and helpful in fellowship would be taken out of His life at once. But if He did something (anything) for Man which Man could not have done for himself, then He had the power of separating Himself, at some point and for some time, from the race of which He was a member; but to separate Himself from the race of which He was a member was impossible if He was only and merely a man; no other man has done so; no other man is doing so, or can do so, now. If, on the other hand, He was only and merely a man, He must have been greater than the sum total of men (z.¢., Humanity), or He could not have been equal to His task; but to be greater than the sum total of men, and yet to have been only and merely a man, is a contradiction in terms and a grotesque exaggeration. If Jesus Christ did something for Man which Man could have done for himself, He departed from the whole course of Providence, and did so for no sufficient reason. In what other instance has God done anything for us that He meant us to do for ourselves? It is often pointed out as characteristic of God’s method that He calls upon the ability of man to the farthest extent, and that it is only where man’s power ends that God’s power comes into operation; and hence we have the common saying that “man’s extremity is God’s opportunity:” it is when there ‘is no eye to pity and no arm to save, that God’s eye pities and God’s arm brings salvation. It will be strange, then, if in one case He has altered the whole scheme of His government; so strange, indeed, that we shall find it easier to believe in the continuity and oneness of His method than to force the mind to believe that He created a precedent which goes against the whole bent and stress of His own plan as shown in the Bible and in general history. It will be strange, too, and something more, if man wrought out the idea and scheme of his own salvation, and God denied him the credit of having done so. Put your hand upon one verse in the whole Bible that gives man the credit of having saved himself. If he did save himself, God will not be slow to give him the “well done” which is due to a deed go great. Again and again men are praised and blessed by God and His Son for having done this and that good thing, as for doubling the talents, giving money liberally and cheerfully, and for

all acts of Christian hospitality and service; the principle, therefore, is recognised and applied, so I am not asking you to create a principle, but to act upon one which God has sanctioned, when I call upon you to quote a single verse or line in which man is credited with having saved himself. But if Christ was only and merely a man, He could not have done anything above the reach of man; how sublime and wondrous soever the deeds which He did, they were but human power seen at its best, human power flowering and blooming in the height of perfect summer. So much so, that all men would be entitled to say, Do not look at us if you want to know really what Man is; we are withered and broken; we have marred and shattered our best selves; but look at that man called Christ, who has taken care of Himself and is a perfect specimen of our race. Or to change the illustration: Christ was only the strongest man amongst us, who by sheer hardness and perseverance found His way to the hill-top first, and was kindly pointing feeble followers to His footsteps, telling them, in a bland and cheerful voice, to rest here and take hold there, and that He would wait until they got as high as He was Himself. I want Man to have the credit of doing this. JI will not insist upon having an effusive and sensational approbation, but a calm, fair, honest recognition of keen insight and great executive ability. There ought to be at least one verse which plainly says, Man saved himself; Man saved himself by finding out a way to the enjoyment and assurance of God’s pardon, and herein is a proof of Man’s greatness and glory; he lost himself for a moment, but he recovered himself for ever. Find one such verse if you can. Having found such a verse, we shall have to cancel or invert many other passages. Wherever a hallelujah is given to the Almighty for having saved us, or praise is given to the Lamb of God as if He were other and more than human, we must amend the morality and withdraw the undeserved and misapplied ascription. And more than this must be done; so much more that most of the Bible will have to be re-written; especially all those passages in which we are expressly forbidden, with the poignant emphasis of infinite jealousy, to thank ourselves for our spiritual deliverance and safety. The Bible is written upon the principle that self-gratulation is sinful. As soon as man begins to praise himself, his self-approval is written against him as an additional and grievous charge. So, though man delivered himself, through the agency of his supreme specimen, he must say that he had nothing to do — with his own deliverance and sanctification!

In looking farther into this matter, I must ask you to mark exactly what it is to do something for human nature which human nature could not have done for itself. You remember that Archimedes wanted a standing-place just outside the earth, room enough for a fulcrum and a lever, and then he could move the globe. Whether he could or not we shall never know, for the standing-place could not be secured; but it would be easy to find a footing a little way from the earth compared with the task which a man would assume if he undertook to separate himself from his race far enough to be able to do something for

Introductory. 7

human nature which human nature could not do for itself. An impossible task! Jor if he accomplished it, the credit would be due to human nature still: it was human nature that got away from itself; it was human nature that laid the fulcrum and worked the lever; and yet human nature is to have neither recognition nor credit in the matter! Of course you will say that there was Divine suggestion or inspiration, without which the deed could not have been done. But the answer is unequal to the occasion. Of course there was Divine suggestion, but just as certainly there was human execution; and if we are to spend our immortality in thanking God for the one, surely He might now and again praise us for having accomplished the other. ‘There is no reason why the architect should not praise the builder. Besides, God does recognise and admire and reward certain particular deeds, but never does He admit that we had any share in originating the life out of which they came. But we must have had some share in it if Christ was only and merely one of ourselves, however highly and perfectly He was inspired. Christ, indeed, is the Supreme Mystery, account for His personality and ministry as we may; a mystery if He came down from Godhead, but an infinitely greater mystery if, being only and merely a man, He so far escaped, or even appeared to escape, the limits of manhood as to give multitudes of sedate and highly-cultivated people the impression that He was making Himself equal with God. Why. this, I pray you to remember, was the very thing which led to the sin of man; he was told that if he took of the fruit of the tree that was in the midst of the garden he would be “as gods”! The second Adam is apparently going to repeat the fatal mistake. He is about to be as God! And He was guilty of the first Adam’s sin, with ageravations which made it unpardonable, if He did not, in terms which could not admit of two meanings, utterly repudiate and denounce every claim to be more than only and merely a man. He was more bound to do this than was any other person, because He had undoubtedly given occasion for the suspicion that He did claim to be more than human. He ought, as an act of religious duty, to have begun every day’s work with the distinct denial of superhuman claims; a herald should have gone before Him to call for silence that He might the more impressively have told the people that, with the warnful experience of the first Adam before Him, who wished to escape the limits of his own genius and be as a god, He Himself was a man only, one of the common people, having beginning of days and end of, life, and that to think of Him as other than man was to blaspheme against God. Whether He did thus release Himself from the openly-avowed suspicion of alleging superhuman claims, let any reader of His life declare. It is not enough to show that here and there He was weary, hungry, and faint, ike other men; nor that He called Himself the Son of Man; there is no difficulty upon that side of the question, nor is there the slightest doubt of His humanity; what He was bound to do, if only and merely a man, was to dissolve and for ever dissipate all mystery upon the other side of the question, so that we could, so to speak, see all around Him, and be able to declare that there was not so much as a threadlet more in His relationships to God than in our own. Now nowhere does Jesus Christ put Himself on a level with other men. Nowhere does He say, “I am as weak and as ignorant as you are, we must therefore help one another.” Nowhere does He say that His miracles were like other miracles not wrought by Himself; on the contrary, looking at His wonderful deeds, He says they are WORKS WHICH NONE OTHER MAN DID! Moses said that he stammered; Jeremiah said that he was a child;

John the Baptist said that he was only a voice; but not one word of self-depreciation did Christ utter; He said He was greater than Solomon, ereater than Jonah, greater than all that had ever gone before Him, and that He would judge the world!

I have elsewhere * attempted to outline an argument in favour of Jesus Christ’s proper Godhead, and I now refer to the subject thus briefly to point out that the following arouments all take for granted that He was “equal with God,” “God with us,’ One with the Father, and Heir of all things, our God and Saviour Jesus Christ. The only question I have to ask is, What did Christ do for men that men could not have done for themselves? A preliminary word will be useful here. It is common to suppose that whatever else a man does or does not know he certainly knows himself. In opposition to this doctrine I maintain that “himself” is exactly the thing which, man does not know. He knows some things about himself; he knows his symptoms and he knows his wishes, but “himself” in the inner and essential quality of his being he does not know. This is at all events presumptively true, viewed in relation to two facts about which there is no dispute. Take the fact of continual surprise in the matter of self-revelation. You often say that you are a wonder to yourself; new dangers awaken new powers; part of you seems to be at the front of the ship doing usual duty at usual times, and part of you is in the hinder part of the ship asleep on a pillow, and that other part you rouse from slumber when the wind heightens and the sea threatens your life: you say again and again that the thing you feared most you have been able to overcome; you wonder how you survived this or that trial, the keen sorrow, the agony extreme, the darkness that shut out not the stars only but the great firmament which you thought nothing but light could ever fill, and yet there you stand stunned

* In Ecce Deus.

with wonder solemn enough to be religious, You tell how the thought came just in time; how endurance increased with the demand that was made upon it; how you began to triumph exceedingly at the very point where you expected to fall, and how it was given you in the hour of fear what you should say to men who had no conscience and no shame. Think of the meaning of all this. You see how you have been developed by circumstances; how when the darkness fell you learned how to pray; how when the sunlight smote your life in loving salute you began to sing for joy; and how when death stared you in the face you were made strong enough to despoil his cruel power: all this you did not foresee; it came upon you like a revelation; it showed you that in the deepest sense you did not know yourself. In addition to this, take the second undisputed fact, namely, that all judgment considered sound and reliable comes from without, from above! Who pronounces upon the merits of the picture, the artist or the critic? Who assigns the value of the book, the writer or the reader? Ido not mean any critic or any reader, but the zdeal critic and the ¢deal reader, or the nearest approximation to either; in a word, I mean that judgment or revelation must come from above. Jesus Christ often uses this wonderful word above as signifying other and more than mere height, as having, in fact, great spiritual meanings and suggestions. In this sense it is always from “above” that we receive the just judgment of ourselves. Angelo may be wrong when he says that this or that amateur will never excel in sculpture, still Angelo had a right to speak, and if he had been higher still his right would have been more complete: it was not because he was from above, but because he was not sufficiently from above, that he erred in his estimate of the aspirant. We cannot completely judge ourselves personally unless we have help from without; you can see your limbs, but can you see your eyes? you can see your feet, but can you see your head? Not without external help. We can see our actions, but can we see our motives? We can see our relationships to other people, but can we see our essential nature, those energies yet unexpressed, those qualities which will yet surprise us? If I say that you must be told what you are or you will never know, you may find it hard to admit this, because as a matter of fact you have already been told what you are, and you cannot now easily, if at all, distinguish between that which has been revealed to you and that which seems to be the product of your own consciousness, which is part and parcel of your very being; you think you always knew it, and that in fact you could not help knowing it. Now, unless we can get rid of this prejudice it is simply useless to go farther. If you like you can build up a theory, a philosophy, or a speculation, beyond Christian limits; you may call it neology, or secularism, what you please (for there is a large choice of fine words), but you must not be surprised if Christian examiners should question your right to the possession of some of the materials which you may be using; they may say this is Christ’s and so is that, and may insist upon reclaiming elements and principles which you have unconsciously stolen. On the other hand, if you wish to build a theory or philosophy of life within Christian limits, the very first thing you will have to do is to put off the sandals from off your feet, and sit down in childlike distrust and modesty to be told everything from the very beginning, — that is, everything that is essential and eternal: you know by the exercise of your senses something about appearances, relationships, distances, and colours, but things essential and eternal you do not know, and you must feed that you do not

know them. The heart must be brought to say, “I do not know myself exactly as Jam; I am a mystery to myself; now and then there is light, but it closes almost instantly in darkness; tell me what I am; show me to myself.” If you come in this spirit you will learn of Christ. Understand, however, what this spirit means. It is not implied that you are either wholly ignorant or wholly incapable of forming an opinion as to the truthfulness of any revelation that may be made to you. You are not wholly ignorant; you know a good deal about yourself and about your surroundings: nor are you incapable of forming an opinion as to the correctness of any revelation of yourself to yourself; you have a verifying faculty, something within which can never be awakened but by the true revelation; a stranger it will not hear, but the voice of the Good Shepherd it knows even in a whisper. I do not say you will believe it; I merely say that you will know it. Tell me that I am wholly sinless and indisposed to sin, and I know at once that this is not true, and even my vanity is offended by the supposition that I could ever accept so monstrous a flattery. Tell me, on the other hand, that I am wholly corrupt and depraved, and that, strive as I may, I cannot do any good thing; and I know at once that there are some facts which seem to prove the exact contrary, as, for example, that I give alms to the poor and teach the ignorant. No man can make me believe that these acts are not good, and if they are good, they overturn the theory of utter corruption and depravity. For a time this reasoning satisfies me. To all appearance it is complete and invincible. But by and by Christ asks me why I gave alms to the poor, and yet He does not wait for an answer. Further on He suggests that sometimes good actions (actions relatively good) are done from bad motives, He leaves that statement without application, yet it must abide with me and come up again and again in my thinkings. Later on still He holds a keen gleaming light over the action I thought so beautiful; the light pierces it, fills it, shows it just as it is, until I begin to question whether it is really so beautiful as I first thought it; then I modify my boasting, then I am not eager to claim the deed as mine, then I am ashamed that I ever mentioned it to Him, and last of all, I bow down myself and say, Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man! Every man must see that light for himself, for nothing that he can hear about it will give him an idea of its infinite lustre. So we come back to the fact that we must be told what we are, and told from above, and if we will not receive the light, we must walk in the uncertain and insufficient glimmering of a fire kindled by our own hand.

The way in which the Bible treats men is most instructive. Everywhere it treats me as a sufferer requiring vital remedies. J resent this, and allege in self-defence that I give alms to the poor and teach the ignorant. The Bible is not moved by my resentment; it proceeds calmly to tell me that “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,’ and that as a matter of fact I am “dead in trespasses and sins.” I am driven mad by such charges, for I give alms to the poor and teach the ignorant! Still, the Bible does not, will not, flatter me. It says that I am a child of wrath even as others, that I do my alms to be seen of men, and unless I be born again I cannot enter the kingdom of God. No other book treats me so. Other books praise me, and tell me not to let my heart go down, and point out trees here and there whose fruit will open my eyes and make me as a god. The Bible tells me that the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint, and that unless I repent I shall perish. The tone is rude; it does not conciliate; it 1s independent, firm, unchangeable. What authority the Bible has I do not know at this stage of the inquiry, but it speaks authoritatively. That is something. It may perhaps be trusting to time for its exposition and vindication! Certainly it tries no wheedling arts or flattering insinuations, but persistently affronts and humbles my pride. If it is an imposition or an exaggeration, there will be no need to employ a great array of destructive talent to argue it down, for it takes the best possible way of making enemies and preparing for itself an indignant and contemptuous rejection. It is as pitiless to our corruption as is a mirror to aleper. Yet so fascinating! We curse it, and return for one more look. We burn it, and pick the scorched pages from the fire to read the lines that are left, and those lines look up from the hot ashes and tell man that he is a brilliant criminal and a magnificent fool.

Honest critics will surely allow that the Bible was not made to flatter its readers, and its readers know to their joy that whilst no book speaks to them with a candour so cruel, no book speaks with a hope so clear and animating. It tells them plainly that they are dead, and it also tells them as plainly how they may be made to live. It does not modify their wickedness or in any sense put the best face upon it; it says that their sins are as scarlet, yet that they can be made “as white as snow.” When we urge that we have been told of other trees better than itself, it replies that we got that intelligence from the devil, who is a liar and was so from the beginning. But, say we, look at these good things which we have done; and it tells us that the very fact of our pointing them out shows that they are not so good as they seem to be. When we demand its authority for this rude, blunt talk, it asks us in return some question which makes us dizzy with bewilderment and causes us to stagger like drunken men. We can turn from the Book if we please, but turning away from it brings no comfort and settles no difficulties. There it is! If we turn our back on the sun, we only see our own shadow for our pains. The stand-point, then, is this: T want to be told what I really (not seemingly) am; I cannot find this out for myself, because I am such a contradiction that I pray one day and tell lies the next, and my settled selfishness actually breaks out now and then into bright sparks of generosity; I cannot therefore trust either of these points. I must be told what I am, and told from above. You cannot tell me, because you and I are the same. Even Isaiah can only tell me what he himself has been told, and John and Paul, the men whose keen eyes saw farthest, can do no more. More they do not profess to do. They all say that they received their message, and did not make it up. They are evidently anxious that this should be clearly understood, for who likes to condemn all men in his own poor name, and who would be allowed to go at large if he did so? Moses would not face Pharaoh without a Name that would sound well on being uttered, and look well on being figured, as if it had come out of the thunder or had been written by the lightning; Samuel wanted his credentials, as did David and Jeremiah and the mighty Ezekiel; and as each spoke he said, This word is not mine but His that sent me; the authority was above. Even Christ said so when He made Himself small enough to be taken for a man. The authority was above: always above: far away like the sun, behind the very firmament, in the caves of the wind, in the chambers of the light, in the tabernacles of the thunder; above, above! We wanted to know what we are; we asked to be told; and now we have the answer: we do not like it; we do not parade it as a prize or an honour, but we hide it in our hearts that we may think about it quietly and often — the answer is, that we are dead, dead in sin, and that the breath of our corruption hath gone up before God as a witness against us!

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