The Breath of Eternity
“For the time past of our life may sufSce us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: who shall give account to Him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead. For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.” — i Peter iv. 3-7.
^^pY^/HERE is a great contrast between the believers of ly the Apostohc age and ourselves. And this contrast is shown, not so much in the truths held and JO i believed, or in devotion towards the Lord Jesus, as
in the different attitude taken up and maintained
towards the great future. With them eternity had already begun. It dated from the moment in which they received Christ into their hearts. The fact of their being in the body did not obscure their perception of the union subsisting between them and their risen Lord, so close and intimate that where He was ^/lere they also were. His death had cut them also off from the world which had crucified Him. His grave lay as an impassable barrier between them and the course of human society, which had refused and rejected Him. In his resurrection and ascension they had participated. Where their treasure was, there their hearts were also. In Him they had already become denizens and citizens of the world where He was King, sitting in the Heavenlies. True, they had their dwelling in the world to do their necessary business according to the will of God, to learn lessons that could only be learnt under the conditions of our present mortal life, and to act as an antiseptic to the evil around. But this was compatible with their dwelling in spirit in their true home and rest, confessing that they were -;trangers and pilgrims on the earth.
The voyager detects the near proximity of land by the fresh land-breeze which breathes in his face, wafting the sounds and scents of forest, or prairie, or heather-covered hill. So, through these Epistles, we inhale another atmosphere than that with which we are so familiar in modern Christian societies. We live in the world and pay occasional visits into the unseen and eternal; those early Christians lived in the unseen and eternal, and paid periodic necessary visits into the world. We conform to the world; they were transformed by the daily renewing of their minds. We read the society papers, discuss society gossip; send our children into society, and strive to hold our own in dress and appointments with the cream of society around us; they, on the other hand, were thought strange and ridiculous, because they lived amongst men as “the children of the resurrection.” Surely the contrast is not to our credit, although we vaunt our fancied superiority.
There are many symptoms of this state of mind in the passage before us. The limited time or duration of our life as contrasted with the infinite stretch of future existence; the reference to Him who is ready to judge, as if the great white throne were already erected in mid-heaven, and men were being arraigned before it, preparatory to the solemn session of the Judge; the piercing cry as of the last herald angel, that the end of all things is at hand — all these indicate the mood of the Apostle’s soul. He stood in the light of eternity. Its breath was upon his face. Its spirit was in his heart. And it was under the deep impression of these momentous realities that he exhorted those whom he addressed, as pilgrims and strangers, to abstain from fleshly lusts. And what stronger motive could he have employed?
I. A Black Enumeration. — “Lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries.” It is a dark picture, reminding us of i Cor. vi. g-ii. But it is a faithful delineation of the state of the world, in spite of the iS6 Cite ireatlj oi (Bttxnit.
loftiest teachings of philosophy and morals. Ordinary readers can form but a very inadequate conception of the grois evils before which the ancient world was simply rotting away at the time of the Advent. The extent of the evil is veiled by the dead languages which contain the record for all time. Suffice it to say that the dialogues of Plato, containing some of the noblest speculations of heathendom, are disgraced by the unblushing discussion and approval of sins which are condemned by the police-courts of every nation in Christendom. There is, therefore, abundant corroboration of this inspired picture of the state of the society of that day. And perhaps its very vileness had a salutary effect upon the Christians of that age, in compelling them to come out and be separate. The curse of our time is that Satan has counterfeited so much of Christianity, and has sought to hide a Godless civilization under the veneer of Christian terms.
We need not dwell on the various evils enumerated, except to note how closely excess of wine is connected with abominable idolatries; and to ask whether any use of wine is not excessive, unless it be taken for some very distinct purpose of health, prescribed by medical authority — and, even then, often mistakenly. We desire rather to call attention to the strong phraseology employed to describe these sins, when the Apostle calls them, as the Greek word indicates, “stagnant pools of havoc-making sin.”
Men are tormented by thirst. That thirst was meant to bring them to the river of water of life, which flows from the throne of God. But as they refuse to follow it thither, they are given up to follow it to the brackish stagnant pools of the desert, at which the very beasts would refuse to drink. The music-hall, the gambling den, the casino, the public-house, the abode of shame, are so many foetid pools, at which men seek to quench a thirst which can be slaked with nothing short of the living God. Oh, when will they learn their fatal error! How shall they be warned! Can we not get one draught of throne-water into their tortured throats, to give them an abhorrence of all other beverage beside! “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.”
And as to havoc! What a tale is being told by every newspaper of the havoc being wrought in the votaries of sin. Havoc in estate, fortune, health, happiness, reputation, and usefulness. Wretched bodies, beneath whose weig»ht of corruption the spirit seems almost to have expired. Wretched lives, like the frigate which so gaily leaves the harbour to-day, but is torn by the jagged fang of the rock to-morrow, and goes down in deep water. Wretched souls, without God, or hope, or love, or any trace of their high origin and Divine equipment. Well may the Lamb of God still wear the guise of the Sufferer, in the midst of the throne of God, while sin still works such havoc among a race which He loves more than Himself.
Men of the world think it strange that we do not run with them to the same excess of riot. They know what we renounce, but not what we receive. They see us flinging away the rank water from the stinking bottle-skins, but they do not see us drinking down long draughts of everlasting life. They cannot understand that what we have in Christ makes all things else taste insipid and forbidding. If they only knew, they would see that THEY are acting strangely, and not we. For, as we see what they miss, and how hard their service is, and how many bitters mingle with their sweets, we often think it strange that they prefer husks to bread, paste diamonds to jewels, and Marah to Elim.
Any time spent in the lusts of the flesh is too long. The time past may well suffice. Oh the bitter regrets which the memory of past sins breeds in the saved soul! What would it not give to be able to obliterate the record, and to look back on an unsullied page! But this may not be. Our only comfort is that He who says that the time for watching is over, also says that there is yet opportunity to retrieve the past, and promises to restore the years which the cankerworm and caterpillar have eaten.
II. An Arresting Consideration, — “Who shall give account to Him that is ready to judge the quick {i.e., the living) and the dead.” It is related of Latimer that, when summoned to take his last trial before vindiotive foes, he was somewhat loose and careless in his replies, till, in a pause, he caught the sound of a pen behind the arras, transcribing every word he spoke; and immediately he began to weigh his words with minute and exacting care. Thus we are urged to withdraw ourselves from the ways of those who speak evil of us and blaspheme God, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present evil world, because the Judge standeth at the door.
There is a sense, in which, of course, the judgment awaits men on the other side of death — the judgment seat of Christ for his servants, to adjust their rewards, and the final judgment for the unsaved and ungodly, into which we who are one with Him can never come; but it is also true that we are now in the presence of our Judge. He is ready; He is at the door. The time is come that judgment must begin; and it begins at the house of God.
“Soldiers,” said Napoleon to his army, as it passed under the shadow of the pyramids, “forty centuries look down upon you.” But if there be an inspiration to valour in the thought of the venerable past, surely there must be a stimulus to holy living in the thought that all our life is naked and opened to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do, whose decisions are even now beginning to register themselves in our history.
From the living the Apostle turns to the dead, to those who had died lately as sufferers and martyrs in the persecutions, which were already beginning to thin the ranks of the Church. He grants, without hesitation, that they had been adjudged to suffer as much as human nature could, and as if they had been the greatest sinners among their fellows. But after all, it was only “according to men,” and “in the flesh”; and from their sufferings he passes to their great reward, and sums it up in saying, they “live according to God in the spirit.” Against the» agonies and tears and adverse judgment of their age, through which the martyr host wa.s called to pass, we must ever set the glories of their reward, as they live in the front ranks of the redeemed, and sun themselves in the light of God’s face. And if we are called to share their fate “according to the flesh,” let us cheer our hearts by remembering that we shall also share their life “according to God in the spirit,” in that world where human judgments are passed under the scrutiny of eternity, and human verdicts are liable to be reversed, with no option of appeal.
How tender the thought of eternity makes us of other men! Would that it were graven on our hearts, as on the pavement before Robert Annan’s door, that we might bear their rebuffs, and testify against their sins, as those who are already treading the streets of the Holy City, and are carrying in their hearts the music of the everlasting song.
III. A Clarion Call. — “The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.” The end of the Jewish State was impending. The throes of dissolution were already being felt. Soon the venerated system in the heart of which the Church had beeji nurtured was to split, as the shell of the acorn bursts before the opening of life.
The end of the age of prophets and kings; of a material city of God; of the rites and ceremonies of a typical religion — had come. There was anguish and foreboding in pious hearts as they saw the destruction of a system in which they had been wont to shelter. The birds are scared when they see the tree where many generations have had their nests, swaying to its fall beneath the woodman’s axe. The air is full of dust and pother as the scaffolding is taken down, which has come by long usage to be considered part of the true temple, though in reality it obscures its proportions and beauty. But the Apostles were able to look on without dismay, knowing that the things which were being shaken and removed were only the things which were made, and that they were being put out of the way of those things which cannot be shaken and shall remain.
The {ime in which we are living is remarkably similar. This also is the end of the age. “The old order changeth, giving place to new.” God is beginning to wrap it together as a worn-out vesture. Institutions, expressions, long-cherished methods — are being put into the crucible; with the sure result that only the transient and material shall be dissolved, and there shall emerge the new heavens and earth in which dwelleth righteousness.
16o fijc grcalKr oi ^tcrttitg.
Otir duty in this crisis is twofold: {) Be sober. — Let there be a noble self-restraint in respect to even lawful appetite, and in the use of all the acquisitions and possessions of life. Let the flowing habits, the vestments of the soul, be girt up around the loins. Let there be no entanglement on the part of Christ’s soldiers in the affairs of this life, that we may please Him who has chosen us to be his soldiers, and that we may be ready to be up and away whenever the trumpet shall ring out the summons for the exodus, or the voice shall be heard proclaiming the Bridegroom’s advent.
(2) Watch unto prayer. — The Lord depicts the faithful servant on the watch for his master’s coming, though the long hours of the night have begun to yield to the summons of the dawn, and all around him his fellow- servants are wrapped in slumber.
“Oh, happy servant he
In such a posture found!”
Be that posture ours, standing at the oriel window which looks out towards the eastern sky, filling the hours with prayer for his speedy advent, so that before ever He comes and knocks, we may be down to greet Him on the doorstep, and receive his salutation of peace, his word of “Well done 1”