TRUE REPENTANCE

Results of True Repentance

I want to call your attention to what true repentance leads to. I am not addressing the unconverted only, because I am one of those who believe that there is a good deal of repentance to be done by the Church before much good will be accomplished in the world. I firmly believe that the low standard of Christian living is keeping a good many in the world and in their sins. When the ungodly see that Christian people do not repent, you cannot expect them to repent and turn away from their sins. I have repented ten thousand times more since I knew Christ than ever before; and I think most Christians have some things to repent of.

So now I want to preach to Christians as well as to the unconverted; to myself as well as to one who has never accepted Christ as his Savior.

There are five things that flow out of true repentance:

1. Conviction

2. Contrition

3. Confession of sin

4. Conversion

5. Confession of Jesus Christ before the world

1. Conviction

When a man is not deeply convicted of sin, it is a pretty sure sign that he has not truly repented. Experience has taught me that men who have very slight conviction of sin, sooner or later lapse back into their old life. For the last few years I have been a good deal more anxious for a deep and true work in professing converts than I have for great numbers. If a man professes to be converted without realizing the heinousness of his sins, he is likely to be one of those stony ground hearers who don’t amount to anything. The first breath of opposition, the first wave of persecution or ridicule, will suck them back into the world again.

I believe we are making a woeful mistake in taking so many people into the Church who have never been truly convicted of sin. Sin is just as black in a man’s heart to-day as it ever was. I sometimes think it is blacker. For the more light a man has, the greater his responsibility, and therefore the greater need of deep conviction.

William Dawson once told this story to illustrate how humble the soul must be before it can find peace.

He said that at a revival meeting, a little lad who was used to Methodist ways, went home to his mother and said,

“Mother, John So-and-so is under conviction and seeking for peace, but he will not find it to-night, mother.”

“Why, William?” said she.

“Because he is only down on one knee, mother, and he will never get peace until he is down on both knees.”

Until conviction of sin brings us down on both knees, until we are completely humbled, until we have no hope in ourselves left, we cannot find the Savior.

There are three things that lead to conviction: (1) Conscience; (2) the Word of God; (3) the Holy Spirit. All three are used by God.

Long before we had any Word, God dealt with men through the conscience. That is what made Adam and Eve hide themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the Garden of Eden. That is what convicted Joseph’s brethren when they said: “We are verily guilty concerning our brother in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear. Therefore,” said they (and remember, over twenty years had passed away since they had sold him into captivity), “therefore is this distress come upon us.” That is what we must use with our children before they are old enough to understand about the Word and the Spirit of God. This is what accuses or excuses the heathen.

Conscience is “a divinely implanted faculty in man, telling him that he ought to do right.” Someone has said that it was born when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, when their eyes were opened and they “knew good and evil.” It passes judgment, without being invited, upon our thoughts, words, and actions, approving or condemning according as it judges them to be right or wrong. A man cannot violate his conscience without being self-condemned.

But conscience is not a safe guide, because very often it will not tell you a thing is wrong until you have done it. It needs illuminating by God because it partakes of our fallen nature. Many a person does things that are wrong without being condemned by conscience. Paul said: “I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.” Conscience itself needs to be educated.

Again, conscience is too often like an alarm clock, which awakens and arouses at first, but after a time the man becomes used to it, and it loses its effect. Conscience can be smothered. I think we make a mistake in not preaching more to the conscience.

Hence, in due time, conscience was superseded by the law of God, which in time was fulfilled in Christ.

In this Christian land, where men have Bibles, these are the agency by which God produces conviction. The old Book tells you what is right and wrong before you commit sin, and what you need is to learn and appropriate its teachings, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Conscience compared with the Bible is as a rushlight compared with the sun in the heavens.

See how the truth convicted those Jews on the day of Pentecost. Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, preached that“God hath made this same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” “Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?”

Then, thirdly, the Holy Ghost convicts. I once heard the late Dr. A. J. Gordon expound that passage—“And when He (the Comforter) is come, He will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; of sin because they believe not on Me,”—as follows:—

“Some commentators say there was no real conviction of sin in the world until the Holy Ghost came. I think that foreign missionaries will say that that is not true, that a heathen who never heard of Christ may have a tremendous conviction of sin. For notice that God gave conscience first, and gave the Comforter afterward. Conscience bears witness to the law, the Comforter bears witness to Christ. Conscience brings legal conviction, the Comforter brings evangelical conviction. Conscience brings conviction unto condemnation, and the Comforter brings conviction unto justification. ‘He shall convince the world of sin, because they believe not on Me.’ That is the sin about which He convinces. It does not say that He convinces men of sin, because they have stolen or lied or committed adultery; but the Holy Ghost is to convince men of sin because they have not believed on Jesus Christ. The coming of Jesus Christ into the world made a sin possible that was not possible before. Light reveals darkness; it takes whiteness to bring conviction concerning blackness. There are negroes in Central Africa who never dreamed that they were black until they saw the face of a white man; and there are a great many people in this world that never knew they were sinful until they saw the face of Jesus Christ in all its purity.

Jesus Christ now stands between us and the law. He has fulfilled the law for us. He has settled all claims of the law, and now whatever claim it had upon us has been transferred to Him, so that it is no longer the sin question, but theSon question, that confronts us. And, therefore, you notice that the first thing Peter does when he begins to preach after the Holy Ghost has been sent down is about Christ:‘Him being delivered by the determinate counsel of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.’It doesn’t say a word about any other kind of sin. That is the sin that runs all through Peter’s teaching, and as he preached, the Holy Ghost came down and convicted them, and they cried out, ‘What shall we do to be saved?’

Well, but we had no part in crucifying Christ; therefore, what is our sin? It is the same sin in another form. They were convicted of crucifying Christ; we are convicted because we have not believed on Christ crucified. They were convicted because they had despised and rejected God’s Son. The Holy Ghost convicts us because we have not believed in the Despised and Rejected One. It is really the same sin in both cases—the sin of unbelief in Christ.”

Some of the most powerful meetings I have ever been in were those in which there came a sort of hush over the people, and it seemed as if an unseen power gripped their consciences. I remember a man coming to one meeting, and the moment he entered, he felt that God was there. There came an awe upon him, and that very hour he was convicted and converted.

2. Contrition

The next thing is contrition, deep Godly sorrow and humiliation of heart because of sin. If there is not true contrition, a man will turn right back into the old sin. That is the trouble with many Christians.

A man may get angry, and if there is not much contrition, the next day he will get angry again. A daughter may say mean, cutting things to her mother, and then her conscience troubles her, and she says:

“Mother, I am sorry: forgive me.”

But soon there is another outburst of temper, because the contrition is not deep and real. A husband speaks sharp words to his wife, and then to ease his conscience, he goes and buys her a bouquet of flowers. He will not go like a man and say he has done wrong.

What God wants is contrition, and if there is not contrition, there is not full repentance. “The Lord is nigh to the broken of heart, and saveth such as be contrite of spirit.” “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.” Many sinners are sorry for their sins, sorry that they cannot continue in sin; but they repent only with hearts that are not broken. I don’t think we know how to repent now-a-days. We need some John the Baptist, wandering through the land, crying: “Repent! repent!”

3. Confession of Sin

If we have true contrition, that will lead us to confess our sins. I believe that nine-tenths of the trouble in our Christian life comes from failing to do this. We try to hide and cover up our sins; there is very little confession of them. Someone has said: “Unconfessed sin in the soul is like a bullet in the body.”

If you have no power, it may be there is some sin that needs to be confessed, something in your life that needs straightening out. There is no amount of psalm-singing, no amount of attending religious meetings, no amount of praying or reading your Bible that is going to cover up anything of that kind. It must be confessed, and if I am too proud to confess, I need expect no mercy from God and no answers to my prayers. The Bible says: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper.”He may be a man in the pulpit, a priest behind the altar, a king on the throne; I don’t care who he is. Man has been trying it for six thousand years. Adam tried it, and failed. Moses tried it when he buried the Egyptian whom he killed, but he failed.“Be sure your sin will find you out.” You cannot bury your sin so deep but it will have a resurrection by and by, if it has not been blotted out by the Son of God. What man has failed to do for six thousand years, you and I had better give up trying to do.

There are three ways of confessing sin. All sin is against God, and must be confessed to Him. There are some sins I need never confess to anyone on earth. If the sin has been between myself and God, I may confess it alone in my closet: I need not whisper it in the ear of any mortal. “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before Thee.” “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.”

But if I have done some man a wrong, and he knows that I have wronged him, I must confess that sin not only to God but also to that man. If I have too much pride to confess it to him, I need not come to God. I may pray, and I may weep, but it will do no good. First confess to that man, and then go to God and see how quickly He will hear you, and send peace. “If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy ways. First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” That is the Scripture way.

Then there is another class of sins that must be confessed publicly. Suppose I have been known as a blasphemer, a drunkard, or a reprobate. If I repent of my sins, I owe the public a confession. The confession should be as public as the transgression. Many a person will say some mean thing about another in the presence of others, and then try to patch it up by going to that person alone. The confession should be made so that all who heard the transgression can hear it.

We are good at confessing other people’s sins, but if it is true repentance, we shall have as much as we can do to look after our own. When a man or woman gets a good look into God’s looking glass, he is not finding fault with other people: he has as much as he can do at home.

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Thank God for the Gospel! Church member, if there is any sin in your life, make up your mind that you will confess it, and be forgiven. Do not have any cloud between you and God. Be able to read your title clear to the mansion Christ has gone to prepare for you.

4. Conversion

Confession leads to true conversion, and there is no conversion at all until these three steps have been taken.

Now the word “conversion” means two things. We say a man is “converted” when he is born again. But it also has a different meaning in the Bible. Peter said: “Repent, and be converted.” The Revised Version reads: “Repent, and turn.” Paul said that he was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision, but began to preach to Jews and Gentiles that they should repent and turn to God. Some old divine has said: “Every man is born with his back to God. Repentance is a change of one’s course. It is right about face.”

Sin is a turning away from God. As someone has said, it is aversion from God and conversion to the world: and true repentance means conversion to God and aversion from the world. When there is true contrition, the heart is broken for sin; when there is true conversion, the heart is broken from sin. We leave the old life, we are translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. Wonderful, isn’t it?

Unless our repentance includes this conversion, it is not worth much. If a man continues in sin, it is proof of an idle profession. It is like pumping away continually at the ship’s pumps, without stopping the leaks. Solomon said:—“If they pray, and confess thy name, and turn from their sin . . .” Prayer and confession would be of no avail while they continued in sin. Let us heed God’s call; let us forsake the old wicked way; let us return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon us; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.

If you have never turned to God, turn now. I have no sympathy with the idea that it takes six months, or six weeks, or six hours to be converted. It doesn’t take you very long to turn around, does it? If you know you are wrong, then turn right about.

5. Confession of Christ

If you are converted, the next step is confess it openly. Listen: “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus Christ, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

Confession of Christ is the culmination of the work of true repentance. We owe it to the world, to our fellow-Christians, to ourselves. He died to redeem us, and shall we be ashamed or afraid to confess Him? Religion as an abstraction, as a doctrine, has little interest for the world, but what people can say from personal experience always has weight.

I remember some meetings being held in a locality where the tide did not rise very quickly, and bitter and reproachful things were being said about the work. But one day, one of the most prominent men in the place rose and said:

“I want it to be known that I am a disciple of Jesus Christ; and if there is any odium to be cast on His cause, I am prepared to take my share of it.”

It went through the meeting like an electric current, and a blessing came at once to his own soul and to the souls of others.

Men come to me and say: “Do you mean to affirm, Mr. Moody, that I’ve got to make a public confession when I accept Christ; do you mean to say I’ve got to confess Him in my place of business, and in my family? Am I to let the whole world know that I am on His side?”

That is precisely what I mean. A great many are willing to accept Christ, but they are not willing to publish it, to confess it. A great many are looking at the lions and the bears in the way. Now, my friends, the devil’s mountains are only made of smoke. He can throw a straw into your path and make a mountain of it. He says to you: “You cannot confess and pray to your family; why, you’ll break down! You cannot tell it to your shopmate; he will laugh at you.” But when you accept Christ, you will have power to confess Him.

There was a young man in the West—it was the West in those days—who had been more or less interested about his soul’s salvation. One afternoon, in his office, he said:

“I will accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.”

He went home and told his wife (who was a nominal professor of religion) that he had made up his mind to serve Christ; and he added:

“After supper to-night I am going to take the company into the drawing-room, and erect the family altar.”

“Well,” said his wife, “you know some of the gentlemen who are coming to tea are sceptics, and they are older than you are, and don’t you think you had better wait until after they have gone, or else go out in the kitchen and have your first prayer with the servants?”

The young man thought for a few moments, and then he said:

“I have asked Jesus Christ into my house for the first time, and I shall take Him into the best room, not into the kitchen.”

So he called his friends into the drawing room. There was a little sneering, but he read and prayed. That man afterwards became Chief Justice of the United States Court. Never be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: it is the power of God unto salvation.

A young man enlisted, and was sent to his regiment. The first night he was in the barracks with about fifteen other young men who passed the time playing cards and gambling. Before retiring, he fell on his knees and prayed, and they began to curse him and jeer at him and throw boots at him.

So it went on the next night and the next, and finally the young man went and told the chaplain what had taken place, and asked what he should do.

“Well,” said the chaplain, “you are not at home now, and the other men have just as much right in the barracks as you have. It makes them mad to hear you pray, and the Lord will hear you just as well if you say your prayers in bed and don’t provoke them.”

For weeks after the chaplain did not see the young man again, but one day he met him, and asked—

“By the way, did you take my advice?”

“I did, for two or three nights.”

“How did it work?”

“Well,” said the young man, “I felt like a whipped hound, and the third night I got out of bed, knelt down and prayed.”

“Well,” asked the chaplain, “how did that work?”

The young soldier answered: “We have a prayer-meeting there now every night, and three have been converted, and we are praying for the rest.”

Oh, friends, I am so tired of weak Christianity. Let us be out and out for Christ; let us give no uncertain sound. If the world wants to call us fools, let them do it. It is only a little while; the crowning day is coming. Thank God for the privilege we have of confessing Christ.

Judgment and Redemption

Isa 59:14 So people stop others from doing what is fair. They keep them from doing what is right. No one tells the truth in court anymore. No one is honest there.

Isa 59:15 In fact, truth can't be found anywhere. Those who refuse to do evil are attacked. The LORD sees that people aren't treating others fairly. That makes him unhappy.

Isa 59:16 He sees that there is no one who helps his people. He is shocked that no one stands up for them. So he will use his own powerful arm to save them. He has the strength to do it because he is holy.

Isa 59:17 He will put the armor of holiness on his chest. He'll put the helmet of salvation on his head. He'll pay people back for the wrong things they do. He'll wrap himself in anger as if it were a coat.

Isa 59:18 He will pay his enemies back for what they have done. He'll pour his anger out on them. He'll punish those who attack him. He'll give the people in the islands what they have coming to them.

Isa 59:19 People in the west will show respect for the LORD's name. People in the east will worship him because of his glory. The LORD will come like a rushing river that was held back. His breath will drive it along.

Isa 59:20 "I set my people free. I will come to Mount Zion. I will come to those in Jacob's family who turn away from their sins," announces the LORD.

Isa 59:21 "Here is the covenant I will make with them," says the LORD. "My Spirit is on you. I have put my words in your mouth. They will never leave your mouth. And they will never leave the mouths of your children or their children after them. That will be true for all time to come," says the LORD.

THE UNCHANGING CHRIST

Hebrews 13:8

The Unchanging Christ

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever.—Heb 13:8.

1. The author of this Epistle wrote some thirty-five years after the crucifixion, almost at the climax of a time of change, when his fellow-Hebrews were isolated and disheartened. They had cast off the exclusive religion of the Temple with its splendid ritual and its ties of family and race, and instead had what must often have seemed the disappointing insignificance of Christian ceremonial and the separation from many an association both of personal love and of national patriotism. Persecution was surrounding them: the gravest dangers, the most insistent terrors, seemed to be at hand. And the eschatological hope on which some may have built had not been fulfilled. Christ had not returned in glory; and there were no signs of His return or His triumph. The religious atmosphere of the Hebrew Christians was charged with doubt and disappointment and loneliness. It was at such a time that a teacher, a man of their own, with the love and inspiration of the Old Covenant behind him, had the courage not only to point out that the Law was in its essence transitory and the Gospel the fulfilment of the whole purpose of God’s creative act and man’s historic development, but also to declare that the crucified Nazarene, made a shame among men, was the same through whom in the beginning the worlds were made, and who through all His suffering life on earth, His rejection and death, and the absence from His people which now tried their faith—yes, He was the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. If it is bold to say those words now, it was almost incredibly bold to say them then, when Christianity had won no great visible triumphs, but was embodied only in a small, despised, lonely sect.

2. The words of the text are not the words of a bigoted opponent of salutary change. They are not the great formula which is to disguise the little policy of mere obscurantism. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews must have sustained among his brethren the difficult and suspected rôle of a religious innovator. He was the author and advocate of a new theology. All this adds immensely to the significance of his declaration. He lays hold of the fixed factor in Christianity, that which is the indispensable postulate of every sound theology, and the verifying element in all theologies; and he offers it as the justification of his novel teaching, and the palladium of Christian faith. The Temple, he tells his Jewish fellow-disciples, will perish; all that the Temple symbolizes and enables will pass away: Jerusalem will be desolate, and the religion of national privilege, which has found its centre there, will come to an end; but this demolition of sacred institutions and time-honoured traditions will not touch the core of their faith, nay, it will enable them to realize more truly what that core of their faith really is. They will find that the springs of spiritual life are in no system, but in the person of the Lord, in whom every system must find meaning, apart from whom all systems are nothing.

I.      A.    Changing World and an Unchanging Christ

1. We scarcely need an inspired book to remind us of those laws of change which are written alike upon the earth and upon the firmament that overarches it. No wonder that Oriental mystics have come to look upon the things that address our senses as shows and phantasms, for we are never permitted to forget their transiency. How the face of the world has changed, and will still change! 

Life is but a thin green strip that unites two unexplored deserts; that which lies behind is silence, and that which lies before is death. The solid stars are but shadows, and could we watch them long enough, they would vanish like the shadows which lie for a few brief hours across our streets. The suns in the vault of heaven are bubbles of gas on those mystic and unmeasured tides of force which flow through space, and were our life less ephemeral we should see them collapse and pass away. In comparison with the fleeting phenomena which environ us, Christ is the enduring substance, the reality which persists unchanged through all change. “They shall perish, but thou remainest.”

By the very law of contrast, and by the need of finding sufficient reason for the changes, we are driven from the contemplation of the fleeting to the vision of the permanent. Blessed are they who, in a world of passing phenomena, penetrate to the still centre of rest, and looking over all the vacillations of the things that can be shaken, can turn to the Christ and say, “Thou who movest all things art Thyself unmoved; Thou who changest all things, Thyself changest not.” As the moon rises slow and silvery, with its broad shield, out of the fluctuations of the oceans, so the one radiant Figure of the all-sufficient and immutable Lover and Friend of our souls should rise for us out of the billows of life’s tossing ocean, and come to us across the seas.

“The Same.” Among the mediæval mystics that term was in use as a title for the Eternal. They called Him “the Same.” They spoke of knowing “the Same,” of taking refuge in “the Same.” Amidst the restless drift and flux of phenomena they saw in God, and rightly saw, the anchorage they craved. And for us also, in the Son of God, eternal as the Father in His majesty and in His mercy, there is rest and refuge in the thought that He, this Lord Christ Jesus, now and for ever, is “the Same.”1 [Note: H. C. G. Moule, in The Record, Jan. 27, 1911, p. 88.]

2. But is not permanence opposed to progress? Our thinking to-day is denominated by the idea of evolution, by the belief in progress. Does not even the mention of a principle of permanence in the Christian Church provoke a suspicion of, and an antagonism to, stagnation of thought, fixity of doctrine, and bondage to the dead past? It may be pointed out that this principle of permanence is not a creed or code, a ritual or a polity, but a Person; and that personal identity does not exclude development in self-manifestation. 

Just because “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever,” is continuity of progress in Christian, thought and life possible. On the one hand, the living Christ may and does communicate Himself more fully in the spread of His gospel and the growth of His Kingdom upon earth; and on the other hand, our apprehension of the meaning of His Person, and our appreciation of the worth of His work, may and do develop. Within this principle of permanence there is this twofold possibility of progress.

So, if we have Christ for our very own, then we do not need to fear change, for change will be progress; nor loss, for loss will be gain; nor the storm of life, which will drive us to His breast; nor the solitude of death, for our Shepherd will be with us there. He will be “the same for ever”; though we shall know Him more deeply; even as we shall be the same, though “changed from glory into glory.” If we have Him, we may be sure, on earth, of a “to-morrow,” which “shall be as this day, and much more abundant.” If we have Him, we may be sure of a heaven in which the sunny hours of its unending day will be filled with fruition and ever-new glories from the old Christ who, for earth and heaven, is “the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever.”

Much in the popular conception and representation of Christianity is in the act of passing. Let it go; Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever. We need not fear change within the limits of His Church or of His world. For change there means progress, and the more the human creations and embodiments of Christian truth crumble and disintegrate, the more distinctly does the solemn, single, unique figure of Christ the Same, rise before us. There is nothing in the world’s history to compare with the phenomenon which is presented by the unworn freshness of Jesus Christ after all these centuries. All other men, however burning and shining their light, flicker and die out into extinction, and but for a season can the world rejoice in any of their beams; but this Jesus dominates the ages, and is as fresh to-day, in spite of all that men say, as He was at the beginning.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

One of the strongest pieces of objective evidence in favour of Christianity is not sufficiently enforced by apologists. Indeed, I am not aware that I have ever seen it mentioned. It is the absence from the biography of Christ of any doctrines which the subsequent growth of human knowledge—whether in natural science, ethics, political economy or elsewhere—has had to discount. This negative argument is really almost as strong as the positive one from what Christ did teach. For when we consider what a large number of sayings are recorded of—or at least attributed to—Him, it becomes most remarkable that in literal truth there is no reason why any of His words should ever pass away in the sense of becoming obsolete. Contrast Jesus Christ in this respect with other thinkers of like antiquity. Even Plato, who, though some four hundred years before Christ in point of time, was greatly in advance of Him in respect of philosophic thought, is nowhere in this respect as compared with Christ. Read the Dialogues, and see how enormous is the contrast with the Gospels in respect of errors of all kinds reaching even to absurdity in respect of reason, and to sayings shocking to the moral sense. Yet this is confessedly the highest level of human reason on the lines of spirituality, when unaided by alleged Revelation 1 [Note: G. J. Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 157.]

II         The Unchanging Christ is a Living Christ

1. The great glory of our Christian faith is that we have not to do with a dead Christ, but with a Christ who is living still, and who is to all disciples to-day just what He was to disciples who saw and heard Him twenty centuries ago. His biography is not the biography of one who sleeps now, and has slept for ages, in a Syrian tomb; it is the biography of an earthly life that is continued in the heavens, the life of a Divine Redeemer who is “alive for evermore,” the same in love and power as once He was, the unchanged and unchangeable One. The sinful to-day find Him the same Forgiver as of old; the ignorant find Him the same Teacher, the sorrowful the same Comforter, the despairing the same Deliverer, as He ever was. And what He is to-day the same He will be found to be when heaven comes. Every disciple, seeing Him as He is, will recognize at once the same Jesus who loved him, and whom he loved, long before.

Whatever may have been the original grounds of the faith of the great majority of Christian people, their faith has been verified in their own personal experience. They trusted in Christ for the remission of sins, and they have been liberated from the sense of guilt; for deliverance from sin, and the chains of evil habits have been broken or loosened, and the fires of evil passion have been quenched or subdued. They trusted in Christ for a firmer strength to resist temptation and to live righteously, and the strength has come. They have received from Him—they are sure of it—a new life, a life akin to the life of God. They have been drawn into a wonderful personal union with Christ Himself; “in Christ” they have found God, and have passed into that invisible and eternal order which is described as “the kingdom of God.” Whatever uncertainties there may be about the historical worth of the four narratives which profess to tell the story of Christ’s earthly ministry, their faith in Him is firm, because they know by their experience that the Living Christ is the Lord and Saviour of men.… For Christian faith it is enough to know the Living Christ; a knowledge of Christ “after the flesh”—in His place in the visible and earthly order—is not indispensable. But for the perfect strength and joy of the Christian life we must know both the Christ who lived and died in the Holy Land eighteen hundred years ago, and the Christ who, ever since His resurrection, has been saving and ruling men.1 [Note: R. W. Dale, The Living Christ and the Four Gospels.]

2. It is necessary in these days to lay some stress upon the fact that Jesus Christ is still a living force and available for human needs. There has been one evil result of recent historical criticism of the Gospels. Men have too often come to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is some Person buried away in the infinitely distant past, and that they have to go back and grope for Him there if they would discover Him at all. Now, that is not so. The real cry of the Christian Church is not “Back to Jesus Christ.” It is no question of going back. The real cry is, “We would see Jesus, and see Him now, and hear Him speak in the language of to-day.” And the real need of the Church and of the world to-day is to come into touch with what is called sometimes the living Christ. The Christ of to-day must be One who has become part and parcel of our human environment, who is still a force, the effect of which we can feel for ourselves—a Christ who is for us not merely a memory, not merely a sacred figure with a halo round it that we can bow down before in reverence, but a power that touches us, and that we can touch, and of which we can have real and experimental knowledge.

It seems to be specially necessary to-day to insist on what was so evident to the Apostolic Church—that the living, loving, mighty saving Presence of which believers were conscious was no other than the Jesus who had lived, taught, wrought, and died on earth. There are not a few on the one hand who hold firmly the trustworthiness of the gospel story, and find help, comfort, and hope in the facts there recorded, but to whom the living Christ is a vague abstraction. Let them but bring together the historical reality and the personal experience, let them realize that the grace of God that here and now saves them is the same Jesus whose words and works the Gospels record, and surely there will be a clearer vision of, and a closer communion with, and a richer communication from, the Saviour and the Lord. Some there are on the other hand who are conscious of the guidance, enlightenment, and inspiration of the Divine Presence, whom they call the living Christ; but they do not make their consciousness as distinct and attractive and compelling as it might be if the object of their faith appeared to them in the full and clear reality of the historical Jesus. The mystical and the historical, to use current terms, in the Christian apprehension must be blended if the Christian experience is to be as wide and deep as it may become. Thus the living Christ will make the historical Jesus a present reality, and the historical Jesus give to the living Christ a distinct content.

Let time bring with it what it may, we are assured of Christ’s fidelity. Let other hopes die out in disappointment, the hope of my spirit endures. Let me learn what painful lessons I may about my feeble purposes and uncertain heart; broken with penitence, sad and ashamed at so many resolutions unfulfilled, weary with wicked and fruitless wandering from His good care, I shall find Him ready as ever to pardon, gracious as ever to restore. In temptation we learn strange and humbling lessons about ourselves; the lusts we thought subdued “conceive and bring forth sin”; we fall; but He is the same, calm as ever to soothe, strong as ever to subdue. Our wisdom sometimes proves our folly; but Christ is wise as ever to teach us, ready again to guide our erring thoughts. “Yesterday” we found Him precious; when for the first time we stood by the graveside He comforted us, “the resurrection and the life.” He is the same “to-day,” solacing our newest grief. “Yesterday” we heard His voice; His name was on the lips of those who spoke to us the Word of God. The teachers have gone, or we have outgrown them. But He is still the same; if the teachers are gone, the Truth is with us. The living Word of God, who speaks from the lips of counsellors, is Himself our Counsellor. What changes need we now fear? We may be troubled, but we cannot be daunted; surprised, but not unmanned. The deep reality of life abides the same: Jesus Christ the same to-day as yesterday.1 [Note: A. Mackennal, Christ’s Healing Touch, 282.]

3. Thus, amid all the changing views and varying theories about Christ, our Lord, the living Person still remains the same. As the supreme Revelation of God, as the supreme Revelation of man, and as the Saviour, He stands unaltered through the vicissitudes of the ages. And it is just this permanence of the living, unchanging Christ that is the pledge and guarantee of the life of Christianity. Other religions have faded and passed away. Once, so the legend goes, along the winding shore of the blue Ægean Sea the mournful cry was heard, “Great Pan is dead.” And the deities of classic Greece departed from their thrones, and the oracles left the temples, and the sprites of mountain and woodland were seen no more for ever. A religion died. And later again, far away in the desolate North, there sounded another yet more bitter cry, “Baldur is dead—Baldur the Good, the Beautiful.” And amid the terrific conflict of the twilight of the gods the old Scandinavian deities perished in their turn, and another religion died. Yes, many religion have died. But Christianity does not die and cannot die. For the life of Christianity is the Living One—the abiding, the unchanging, the imperishable One—“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever.”

The Evangelic Jesus cannot be a mere ideal; for an ideal cannot enkindle love. He is a historic person, and He lived among men as the Evangelists have portrayed Him. But He is more than that. It is impossible to love one who is remote from us, and has never been in present and personal contact with us; and therefore Jesus is more than a historic person who dwelt in Palestine long ago. He is the Living Lord, the Eternal Saviour, who was manifested, according to the Scriptures, in the days of His flesh, and still, according to His promise, visits the souls that put their trust in Him and makes His abode with them. Here lies the supreme and incontrovertible evidence of the historicity of the Gospels. The final decision rests not with the critics but with the saints; and their verdict is unanimous and unfaltering. They know the Divine Original, and they attest the faithfulness of the portrait.2 [Note: D. Smith, The Historic Jesus, 117.]

The mysterious union of human souls with the Living Christ, which constitutes the strength of the Christian Church, has been proved by signs and wonders. It has been proved by the days in which the Church lost her sense of Divine fellowship and became cold and unbelieving; then the Church sank into an irreligious and worldly institution, helpless, hopeless, and corrupt. It has been proved by the days of revival, when the Church returned unto her first love and faith; then she arose in her might and conquered new provinces of the world, radiant, strong, triumphant. If the Church as a body, and her members as single disciples, declare that their weakness has arisen from the absence of Christ, driven away by unbelief, and their strength has alone come from Christ when He returned in the power of His Spirit, what can be said against such witness? and why should it not be accepted as true? There is such a thing as the mirage of the desert, which has mocked the dying traveller; and the history of religion affords fantastic notions which have been the craze of society for a day and have vanished away. No one with a serious face can make any comparison between these passing delusions and the faith of Christ. There is also the oasis where the grass is green and the palm trees stand erect in their beauty, and the reason thereof is the unfailing spring which rises from the heart of the earth and yields its living water to the traveller as he journeys across the desert from the land which he has left to the land which he has never seen. That spring is the Spirit of the living Christ, who “was dead,” and is “alive for evermore”; who remaineth from age to age the strength and hope of the race into which He was born and for which He died.1 [Note: J. Watson, The Life of the Master, 407.]

III     The Unchanging Christ is a Christ of Infinite Variety

When we look upon Christ in Himself, as the Person, the living Reality that has been operating through the ages, nothing indeed appears more permanent and certain. But again when we look upon Christ as reflected in the thoughts of men—when we consider men’s notions about Him, their feelings about Him, their ideas about His Person—the sameness breaks up into something infinitely variable. The Christ who here confronts us is a changing Christ. He is never quite alike for any two intelligences. He varies from man to man, and from age to age. What a difference there is, for example, between the Christ of John Chrysostom and the Christ of John Calvin! What a difference between the Christ of mediæval Scholasticism and the Christ of twentieth-century Modernism! What a difference between the Christ of the Russian peasant, and of the German theologian, and of the average business man of London or New York! The note that most forcibly strikes us, at any rate at first, is this note of difference. The outline of that gracious Figure seems continually to waver. It is never the same—no, never quite the same. We see in Jesus something other than our fathers saw; and those who come after us will probably find much in Him that we, sharp-sighted though we think ourselves, have not discovered. And yet, behind all superficial differences and divergences, the Lord who claims us is indeed the same. The clouds take many shapes about the summit of the mountain, are here to-day and gone to-morrow, but the mountain for ever stands. And so, behind the glimmering mists of human fancy, behind our uncertain wisdom and our fluctuating formulas, behind our notions of Christ and our notions of other people’s notions of Christ, the great Reality eternally abides. The living Person does not change. That Jesus whose life has been the inspiration, whose truth the illumination, whose death the salvation of uncounted millions; that Jesus whose marvellous attractiveness has cast its sweet spell alike upon an ancient and upon a modern world; that Jesus whom Peter preached and Francis followed, whom mystics saw in visions and whom saints have loved—He alters not. He is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the Ending, “the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever.”

When I introduce my little one to the Saviour I am introducing her to a lifelong friend. Marvellous, and ever-growingly marvellous to me, is my Lord’s adaptability, or should I rather say, our Lord’s susceptibility, to a little child. How He can accommodate Himself to the little span of their comprehension, and weave Himself into their desires and enthusiasms and hopes! But more beautiful still is it to watch how His stride enlarges with their years, and how He shares with them the pilgrim’s sandals and the pilgrim’s staff when life becomes a grave crusade. He is “the same yesterday and to-day,” when we begin to shoulder responsibility, and to take up the burden of our prime. And when we reach the summit of our years, and the decline begins, and we march down through the afternoon towards the west where the clouds are homing for the night—when old age comes, with all its regret and fears, He will be as finely susceptible and responsive to our need as in those playful, careless hours of the dawning, when first He called our names.1 [Note: 1 J. H. Jowett.]

Whate’er may change, in Him no change is seen,

A glorious sun, that wanes not, nor declines;

Above the clouds and storms He walks serene,

And on His people’s inward darkness shines.

All may depart—I fret not nor repine,

While I my Saviour’s am, while He is mine.

He stays me falling; lifts me up when down;

Reclaims me wandering; guards from every foe;

Plants on my worthless brow the victor’s crown,

Which in return before His feet I throw,

Grieved that I cannot better grace His shrine

Who deigns to own me His, as He is mine.

LWhile here, alas! I know but half His love,

But half discern Him, and but half adore;

But when I meet Him in the realms above,

I hope to love Him better, praise Him more,

And feel, and tell, amid the choir divine,

How fully I am His, and He is mine!2 [Note: H. F. Lyte, Poems Chiefly Religious, 76.]

The Unchanging Christ!

Your Word is a Light to my way ahead!

THE DEVOTIONAL USE OF SCRIPTURE

"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." — Psa 119:105.

IN EACH verse of Ps. 119, the Psalmist mentions the Scriptures, with one exception, and the constant quotation of the Old Testament by our Lord and His Apostles yields abundant evidence of loving and reverent fellowship with the holy men of past ages, who wrote and spoke as moved by the Holy Spirit. It is specially remarkable that the Lord Jesus in His Temptation, in all His teaching, and in the agony of the Cross bore constant witness to the unique authority of the Word of God spoken through the Old Testament saints.

We may know God, says the Psalmist, through a threefold revelation. Though they have no audible voice or language, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament of space, studded with myriads of stars, shows His handiwork. Though speechless, their words witness for Him to the uttermost parts of the earth.

The closing stanza of this great Psalm unfolds God's handiwork in the construction and direction of our moral nature. Between these golden clasps the Psalmist extols the Scriptures under ten striking similitudes, and that disposition must be indeed extraordinary that does not come within the scope of one of them. The soul that needs restoring; the simple who would become wise; the sad heart who would rejoice; the eyes that would be enlightened; the soul that longs for the gold of truth; the desire for sincerity and reality; the search for understanding and righteousness—all such needs and many more are met from a devout reading of Holy Scripture.

All great ministries which have remained fresh and fragrant through long courses of years have proved the wealth of inexhaustible teaching and inspiration which lies hidden in the Bible. Let us each one resolve to soak ourselves in the Scripture before turning to prayer, as water poured in to moisten the sucker will help to draw water up.

PRAYER

Teach us, O Blessed Spirit of Inspiration, so to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest Thy words, that we may be thoroughly furnished unto all good works, and be enabled to lead others into a true understanding of and love for its hidden treasures. AMEN.