European Chaos
The unsettlement which exhibits itself throughout the Continental kingdoms, though not always making itself felt in revolutions and assassinations, is a much more serious phase of modern national life than most reckon it to be, and forms a very important element in our estimate of evangelical work in France.
This unrest lias now become chronic; troubling Christian men, alarming society, and perplexing statesmen. Passions govern and impel; extremes refuse to be reconciled; mutual distrust prevails; self-will is the motive-force; and, along with these, the love of money, the pursuit of pleasure, the mania for luxury, are all working together to increase the inquietude which prevails. Repose has become impossible, and, to most, undesirable.
Is this restlessness favourable or unfavourable to the religious movement which unquestionably is showing itself everywhere? For men are thinking about religion, discussing religious subjects, scrutinising the Bible, in the midst of this wide European whirl; and the most sacred questions are dragged into the ferment, sometimes reverentially, sometimes flippantly, and sometimes as a political element, to increase the confusion.
Not in France only are men thinking about religion, but in all nations, beginning with our own; southward in Spain, eastward in Russia. In some strange way, religious and irreligious things are mixed up, as if the various national minds, once set in motion, were resolved to discuss everything, for good or for evil.
The restlessness of thought at present is great; but the restlessness of will is greater and more alarming. It is this latter that so threatens Europe, and makes the prospect of tranquillity so hopeless. “Our lips are our own, who is lord over us?” is really the watchword (unconsciously a Bible one) of all classes.
Statesmen, in their blindness, have hitherto believed only in two remedies for all this, — the army and the priesthood. The latter has at last been “found out,” and the broken reed is thrown aside. On the former they are still obliged to rely; but they are conscious how unsafe it is to govern souls by bayonets. Some, we believe, are now favouring the present Parisian movement as the only possible cure, — perhaps the last; for if it fails, what but revolution and revenge lie in front?
Can a calm religious movement go on in the heat of universal fever? Must we not wait till at least the delirium be over?
In most cases we should say so. But the Gospel in which we trust does not wait for the sick man’s improvement. It takes him as he is. It meets his case at the very height of the fever, as well as after it is gone. It contains a sobering and tranquillising influence, such as makes it altogether suitable for the present state of France and of Europe.
Restlessness is, moreover, to be preferred to stagnation and sleep, in so far as mission-work is concerned. The former is more hopeful than the latter.
At the same time, let us admit that the restlessness we have described is of a very peculiar kind. It is not altogether that of aching hearts, yearning after better things, but that of disappointed men angry at everything around them, and bent on taking everything to pieces, and dissolving existing order. At its roots we find the two great forms of evil which are to mark the last days, — unbelief and laivlessness, — airLa-ria and avoia, the former bearing upon the religious character of the present times, the latter on the political; the one ripening into atheism, the other into liberalism; — the “man of sin” or “lawless one,” who “doeth according to his will” (Dan. xi. 36), being the completion or product of both.
But with all this unsettlement around us there ought to be no distrust of the power of the Book of God to meet the evil. That restlessness is, after all, but human; while to meet it we have that Gospel which is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Whatever may be the awful developments of this combined “unbelief” and “lawlessness,” foreannounced by the prophets, we have only to do with what lies immediately before us, and to measure the
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strength of the evil, whatever that may be, with the power of that Gospel which is more than able to cope with it. For the “pulling down of strongholds,” whether of wisdom or of strength, is the aim of the Gospel, and the end which it has so often accomplished in ages past. The ‘’ wisdom of the wise “has been” destroyed;” and “the understanding of the prudent brought to nought “by ‘’ the foolishness of preaching.”
Ours is a Gospel of Divine power; and not all the boiling ingredients or fierce explosives of the great European cauldron can resist it. The Book which we carry with us to confront all this religious and political unruliness, is a Book which has done great things for the world hitherto, and which has not lost ought of its strength in these last days. It is a Book which has calmed many storms, and quenched many volcanoes; which has “revolutionised “many nations, and given new constitutions to many kingdoms; which has, on the one hand, broken up the prisons of many a despotism, and on the other said to the lawless mob, ‘’ Fear God, honour the king, and meddle not with them that are given to change.” Its victories are not over; nay, its greatest are yet to come.
I say this in the full remembrance of that which is written, “In the last days perilous times shall come.” But I would not for a moment have it
Y supposed that the Bible has become impotent, or its truths effete. I would not have it thought that the greatness of the evil could affect, in the slightest degree, the force of that Omnipotent Word which is “mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds” (2 Cor. X. 4).
I should like to remove the feeling of hoplessness with which some Christian men regard the nations of the Continent; as if their doom were sealed, and their populations given over by God to fill up the measure of their wickedness; as if the Gospel and the Bible had come too late; and as if the liberty which is now breaking up the civil bondage of the kingdoms were only the precursor of Nihilism and Socialism; and that to speak of it in connection with, or as opening the way for a nobler liberty, is to misname and to mislead.
The Word of God is not bound; nor has it become feeble like the words of man. Men may become disheartened, and lose their confidence in the Divine Record; but there it stands in its old strength; ready to do battle with all the phases of modern scepticism, as with those of ancient superstition: equally able to cope with the sophistries of European infidelity, as with the subtleties of Asiatic pantheism; still, as it has always been, the fire that melts the flint, the hammer that breaks the rock in pieces, the sword that pierces to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.
Let us do justice to the Book of God, and to the Gospel of Christ, in dealing with the European chaos, far or near. With such weapons we may face the evil hopefully. Nil Desperandmn. “The word of the Lord is quick and powerful.” We may trust it thoroughly.
Nor has the breath of the Spirit lost ought of its searching keenness or Divine vitality. He is still, as at Pentecost, the Spirit of power, breaking down and upbuilding, dissolving and restoring, smiting and healing, overthrowing error, and giving truth the victory. That same mighty breath that swept through Antioch and Philippi and Colosse, destroying the idols and setting up the true God, can permeate Paris and Berlin and Vienna and Rome, with like irresistible potency as of old.
It may be that this last battle of the world is to prove the most terrible of all. Satan is evidently bringing up his reserves, and arming his hosts for the heaviest onset the Church has yet seen. Ancient Paganism fell before the Gospel; mediaeval superstition gave way before it. But will not these new organisations of evil, in which the human heart is displaying its deadliest antipathies to God, prove too strong for it?
Will it not have to retire discomfited before those “armies of the aliens?”
No. If this be the last battle, there must, out of it, come a last victory for the Book of God. Whether that victory may result in a wide acceptance of the truth over Europe is a question I do not undertake to answer; but that there will be victory of some kind for the Bible I believe, — victory which will show that there is no amount of antagonism to God which it cannot face, and no strength of human evil with which it cannot cope successfully, as “the power of God unto salvation.”
The time may be short, the Divine judgments may be imminent; but the Bible and the Gospel it contains will be displayed, in their power to contend with the last form of earth’s wickedness as successfully as with the first.
Shall I say that in France we have at present some signs of a coming harvest? Is it too much to affirm that its fields are whitening for the sickle? Am I ascribing too much importance to the present day of small things to call this Parisian work the first-fruits?
I do not think so. The work is so singular, so out of the common beat, both in its origin and progress; there is so little of the human element, so much of the Divine; the openings are so providential, the agencies are so unostentatious, and the success is so unexpected, that we become more and more satisfied we are not running unsent, nor likely to labour unblest.
All the more do we feel this because of the present state of Europe, and the despair among statesmen of being able to cope with the force that is generating and accumulating everywhere, by either gold or steel; nay, even by education or culture.
That which is to arrest the perilous fermentation, — which is to bring order out of chaos, — must be something more powerful, yet more ethereal, than anything that has yet been attempted. Man has tried his schemes of empiricism, and failed in every one. God is now pointing us to something which is no experiment or desperate remedy, but a cure, tried and infallible, which has done great things in past ages when allowed full play, and which is capable of doing even greater things than in the past, — “the foolish things confounding the wise; the weak things confounding the things that are mighty.”
Of all known things light is the most subtle and silent, yet also the most powerful. It is light, — more silent and subtle, yet also more powerful than anything on earth, that is now going forth, — the light of no material sun, — the light of Him who is light itself, and in whom is no darkness at all. It remains to be seen what this light is to do for Europe, and to what extent the darkness of the last days is to be affected by its shining.
It is this light that is now beginning to shine over the fields of ‘’ fair France,” and to whiten them for the harvest. It is this that is now giving that great people a better alternative than what has hitherto been offered them, — Popery or Infidelity, — and making many of them feel that in quitting the former they do not need to embrace the latter; and that there is a sure faith, resting on an infallible Book, which no Pope of Home can give, and which no philosopher of the Academy can take away.