The Myths and the Word

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. A.V.

For a season shall be when the healthful teaching they will not put up with, but, to gratify their own lusts, will for themselves, as itching in their ears, heap up teachers, and from the truth will turn their ears away, and towards the current myths will turn off.

THis is indeed a sternly candid argument for Timothy’s redoubled diligence in preaching. It is delightful when the worker finds himself animated to his work by the thought that ‘the fields are white,’ and that he is sure to find attention and response, and has a bright prospect of the joy of harvest before long. But such is not the appeal here. The Apostle implores Timothy to preach the Word because a time is hastening on for him when he will find it hard to get anyone to listen to him at all; a ‘night is coming’ as to opportunities and receptivity. He must be busy with his hearers while he can. There is present still around him, in fair measure, a willingness to listen, worship, and obey; he must use it to the uttermost for the message of Christ, the preaching of pardon, and holiness, and heaven. Not very long yet, and he will find his congregations dwindling, and will learn that

The Myths and the Word

many of the disciples are following one or another 2 Tim. iv.

of a band of uncommissioned propagandists whom 3, 4.

they have invited in to tell them something newer, An Alien

: 4: -. Wisdom.

something more mysterious, something more alluring

to curiosity, than the Gospel of the Crucified and

the dutiful path of holiness. They will be listening

to the ‘myths,’ nebulous stories and reveries of

‘ ions,’ of ‘Depths’ and of ‘Silences,’ things pretending to solve the riddle of existence and to emancipate the spirit from its material chain, but not at all tending to make sin hateful, holiness dear, or the

- Christ of Bethlehem and Calvary glorious. No,

that message will be neglected, if not actually

scouted. It will be put away as a thing belonging

to the lower levels of thought; cold, bare, angular;

the seekers of a wisdom worthy of elect human

spirits must turn another way than this! Yet all

the while that other way will be the ‘broad way,

which leadeth to destruction’; a ‘wisdom’ which will

stifle the conscience and harden the heart through its

flattery of the mind.

Well, Timothy must all the more ‘devote The Time himself, while yet he can find hearers, to the So divine, unfashionable, man-humbling, Christ-glorifying, ‘Word’ — remembering God, and Christ, and the Appearing, and the Kingdom. Through that message the eternal Spirit can and will yet work miracles in men. Aye, and even when it shall seem as if the whole world has gone after the pseudo-Gospel, and the days for winning a hearing may be thought to be over, still let him ‘devote himself’ to the delivery of his Master’s message,

2 Tim. iv. not only ‘in’ but ‘out of season.’ Some will

3, 4.
The
Apostles’
Trial of
Faith.

Fidelity to
the End.

still be listening; more will listen than he knows; and a brighter day will even yet dawn again.

We may well pause here, as we have done at many another point in our Epistle, and restate to ourselves the fact, so humbling on one side, so strangely encouraging on the other, of those tremendous disappointments which beset the last days of the Apostles. The trial to their faith and hope must have been altogether peculiar. For they had not, as we have, a long Christian history behind them, full of illustrations of the self-recovering power of the Gospel and of the immortal vitality of the living heart of the Church. They, or however some of them, were permitted indeed, in a guarded measure, to ‘dip into the future’ with a supernatural foresight, and to catch glimpses of triumphs further on. But this would never quite annul the dead pressure upon their perfectly human hearts inflicted by the awful ‘unfavourable events’ immediately around them. Ultimately, it would be by faith, and by faith alone, that they would overcome, and ‘rejoice in hope.’ They would have to fall back in the last resort not on their feelings but on their Lord, known, trusted, taken at His word, felt and followed in the dark.

Then let us in our day, remembering them, ‘gird up the loins of our mind’ (1 Pet. i. 13), ‘and hope to the end,’ and carry on to the end the torch of the Word. <A very great many people in our later Christendom will not ‘put up with the healthful teaching,’ ‘the word of the Cross,’ ‘the word of

The Myths and the Word

faith.’ Let us see to it that we present that Word 2 Tim. iv. with intelligence, with sympathy, with a wisdom 3, 4 caught from the Lord Himself. But let us still

present 7% And let the faith of a dying Paul re-animate our hope, our reliance, and our witness.

For that Word, and that Word alone, is still the one ‘healthful teaching,’ instinct with the eternal life.

The future of the miracles of grace lies not with ‘the

myths’ but altogether with ‘the Word.’

5, 6.

St. Paul’s
Impending
Removal.