The Pure Intention of the Soul Consistent with the Life in the Great City
Paul never failed to insist that he had been called equally as the other apostles; he affirmed that he was a witness of the Resurrection as his fellow-apostles. For instance, in writing to the Corinthians, he said: “Last of all He was seen of me, as of one born out of due time.” And again: “Have not I seen Christ?” For Himself he had beheld that face above the brightness of the sun, the wounds in those hands,
the feet that burned like brass in a furnace, 173 and had heard that voice as the sound of many waters. To his ear had come from Christ the summons, “Saul, Saul,” with as much emphasis and directness as when He had addressed Simon Peter in the old days of His human life.
In the earliest stages of the Christian Church no one had a greater infiuence in formulating its doctrine, or initiating its activity, than he who, amid the glow of the Syrian noon, was stricken to the earth by the brilliance of a greater light. When we compare the teaching of the Epistles with the exquisite stories of the Gospels, we realise how much Christianity owed to the great Apostle of the Gentiles, who was the chosen organ of the Holy Spirit for His further revelations of truth.
It is interesting to notice how immediately the new disciple addressed our Lord with the appellation which indicated his desire to prostrate himself at His feet, and become His loyal subject and servant. From that moment Christ’s will was to be predominant and His commands imperative. It was therefore in keeping with the practical nature of the Apostle’s mind that he should at once ask for something definite to do. To him visions were of comparatively little importance unless they could be realised in practical deeds. ‘Lord,’ he said, “what wilt Thou have me to do?” And He said, “Rzse and enter into the city, and zt shall be told thee what thou must do” (Acts ix, 5)-0). 3
It was startling to be told, ““Go into the city.” For three days he had been approaching Damascus with murderous intent,
His purpose in visiting the city was to find out men and women who had believed in the Lord Jesus, that he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. In the execution of his project, he was prepared to enter home and meeting-place, to harry the infant Church. It might have been expected that Christ would have turned him back to Jerusalem for further instruction by the Apostles, or might have sent him to some secluded scene where he might meditate upon the great change which had suddenly altered the course of his life. What more natural than to send him to Tarsus, his home, where, amid the scenes of his early days, he could prepare for his life-work? But instead of these, he was bidden to go into the city. Those who are bearing some
intolerable weight of sorrow shrink from familiar and ordinary scenes, and long for an entire change, where their mind may be diverted from the associations of the past. The broken-hearted lover says, “Let me travel in foreign places”; the sorrowstricken mother cries for relief from the rooms which have rung with baby laughter and are linked with irremediable loss, But for Saul there was no intermission in his ordinary routine of life. He had had his vision, and was now summoned to carry it with him into the busy scenes and hubbub of a city with which, probably, he was almost as familiar as with Jerusalem, It was there, and from a humble disciple, Ananias, that he was to receive further instruction, A great law reveals itself here. The visions that God gives us are to prepare us
for practical service, and we are sent back M to familiar scenes to work out there the inspiration and stimulus that we have received. The Risen Christ appears to us, and immediately the summons rings out, “Go into the city.”
THE Brest THING FOR A MAN WHO HAS SEEN CHRIST IS TO GO INTO THE CITY. — Notice the sanity of Christ’s teaching. The Romanist says that when we have seen our vision we are to seclude ourselves from ordinary life, immuring ourselves behind monastic walls and closely-barred windows, straining our eyes for repetitions of the celestial beauty. Others bid us live in a limited circle of Christian duty, perpetually looking for the second advent as the one means by which the world is to be put right, and ignoring the claims of the city upon the Christian disciple, as though the carcase should be left without its salt, and the darkness without the glow of the lamp. More wholesome is our Lord’s prayer that His disciples should not be taken out of the world, but kept from its evil, that they should be the counteractive of the darkness, sin, and sorrow around, until His light shall break upon the eastern sky as the dawn of a new age.
The call of the city ts the corrective of the temptation which accosts us all to become dreamers. — When a man has beheld the Risen Christ he is strongly tempted to build an oratory on the spot, and to spend days and nights waiting for a repetition of the glory which dazzled him; but to do this is to miss the divine intention in having opened our eyes to see,
We are familiar with the distinction between ideas and their form, between inspiration and embodiment, between thoughts and acts. There is always a temptation in human life to divorce them. Some men will sit in their arm-chairs and dream dreams, see visions, and elaborate systems, who are absolutely useless in the progress of the race, or in the march of civilisation. They resemble artists who never translate their visions of beauty to canvas or marble. The temptation to this is very real to us all. We dream of victories, but never enter a battle; we imagine heroic action, but never attempt one; we represent ourselves as cheerfully enduring martyrdom, but take care never to come within a hundred miles of the scaffold or stake. So God bids us go into the city to save us from vaporising
our religion in dreams, illusions, and vain fancies. It is as though the voice of God came to us each morning after we had beheld the Risen Christ, each Sunday after we had knelt in the church, filled with high and holy intentions, and bade us go forth into the city, with its need and sorrow, its temptation and battle, that our character might be ennobled by putting into effect the fair and beautiful conceptions which had entranced us. Ah, we find ourselves of very
different stuff in the actual contact of the world to what we imagined ourselves to be!
Lt ts necessary also to go into the city, because we shall meet there influences which will promote our highest welfare — Had He chosen, our Lord could have said everything that needed to be said to His new disciple; but that is not His way. He is ever economical
of the supernatural. He appeared to Saul because nothing else would have arrested him, or changed his career; but having done this once He left Ananias to do the rest. He did what He must do, and left Ananias the remainder. Only by entering the city could Saul be brought in contact with the simple-minded disciple who could complete the Master’s commencement.
It is in the city that we meet the Ananiases of our lives — the simple, humble, obscure people prepared to influence us, as did the servants of Naaman, who persuaded him to pacify his rage and test the waters of Israel. Society is bound together by strong human ties; the city cannot exist without the country; the upper classes are more dependent than others upon the ministry of the lower; Peters are brought to
Christ by Andrews, the miracles of Christ are supplemented by the co-operation of the apostles, and Saul is brought into the clear light by Ananias laying his hand upon him, and saying, “Brother Saul.” We are all learning more than we know from contact with the men and women whom we meet in the city. Men that carry water-pots conduct us to the rooms in which our Pentecosts take place.
Also, the city needs us — The world will not come to our Churches, or read our Bible, or look into the dazzling face of Christ. Its children seem to think that Christianity means our withdrawal from what is healthy and homelike, into some dim and mystic region where life is robbed of half its significance. They speak of religion as “becoming serious”; they think that a “religious
life” must be spent apart from store and street in communities of celibates. How necessary it is, therefore, that the disciples of Christ should go “through dusky lane and wrangling mart” with Heaven’s light upon their faces, and repeating a holy strain in their hearts, to teach men that religion is warm, natural, and human.
For all these reasons we must go into the city. There we shall learn more than ever the cloister can teach; there we shall receive influences which are necessary for the development of the highest type of character; there we shall become the world’s Bible, its light, inspiration, and conscience. No sooner has the vision faded than we have to gird up our loins and arise, telling what has been told, bearing witness of what we have seen, and lighting the murky gloom with the reflected glory of the celestial and divine.
IT Is BEST OF ALL FOR THE CITY TO BE VISITED BY MEN WHO HAVE HAD THE VISION OF CHRIST. — Many amongst us lay too much stress On machinery. They think to lift men by careful organisation, by councils and committees, by social reform and legislative action. But men need more. “Where there is no vision the people perish.” “Man cannot live by bread alone”: he demands the words that come from the mouth of God. It is not enough to have elaborate edifices with five porches for wounded and suffering humanity; there must be an angel to trouble the waters. The heart cries out for brotherhood, peace, faith, hope, love, righteousness, and liberty, and only those who have beheld these incarnated in the Risen Lord can meet the deepest needs of their fellows.
Run your thought over the page of history, and say who has done most for his race — the men of ideas or the masters of organisation? We must not undervalue the latter, but after all they follow, not lead; they make good the roads whilst the others have explored the country, and led the march of humanity. The idealists of our race, those who have seen visions and dreamed dreams, the Cavours, Mazzinis, men who have stood on Pisgah, and beheld a country which they were not destined to enter, the men who have coined the key-words, and sung the marching music of the centuries, the prophets and seers of the race — these are they who have left the most indelible mark.
It is most important in a symmetrical life to combine vision and city. — lt is inexpressibly sad for a man to toil and moil in the city without having, from time to time, his vision.
It is equally injurious, as we have seen, for a man to have his vision apart from the city. To the denizen of the city we would say, Go forth beyond its gates, and open your eyes to see and your ears to hear, and come back with the light of eternity in your soul; to him who has seen the vision we would say, Get as quickly as possible into the city, there to realise the possibilities of life. What is your vision? It must be of the Man, Christ Jesus, the ideal Man, the perfect realisation of God in man. It must be of Jesus suffering for the sins and sorrows of men, and for yours. “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.” It must be of Jesus, the Saviour, whose Blood cleanses from all sin. Never rest until by the grace of the Holy Ghost this vision has been yielded,
not to mortal eyes, but to those of the soul.
What is your city? It is the place where God calls you to suffer or toil, to bear the burden and heat of the day, to wrestle with various forms of injustice and wrong. Are you humble in the presence of Christ? Be equally humble in the midst of city life. Is your faith strong when you kneel beneath the open sky? Let it not fail you when you can only see a scrap of the vault of blue between the high houses. Does immortal hope spring in your breast, here where Jesus speaks of the great future? Let it be dominant in tone and gesture, speech and act. Bathe yourself in the eternal, which seems so near when you are alone, and then go forth to believe that it underlies the throb and stir of the world of men, as ether interpenetrates all substance and existence lying as a mighty ocean between our shores and the Jasper Throne.