MISSIONARY APPLICATION OF THE EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT— 1Jo
2:2
LET us now consider the universal and ineradicable wants of man. Such a consideration is substantially unaffected by speculation as
to
the theory of man’s origin. Whether the first men are to be looked
for by the banks of some icy river feebly shaping their arrowheads
of
flint, or in godlike and glorious progenitors beside the streams of
Eden; whether our ancestors were the result of an inconceivably
ancient evolution, or called into existence by a creative act, or
sprung from some lower creature elevated in the fulness of time by a
majestic inspiration, at least, as a matter of fact, man has other
and deeper wants than those of the back and stomach. Man as he is
has
five spiritual instincts. How they came to be there, let it be
repeated, is not the question. It is the fact of their existence,
not
the mode of their genesis, with which we are now concerned. (1) There is almost, if not quite, without exception the instinct
which may be generally described as the instinct of the Divine. In
the wonderful address where St. Paul so fully recognises the
influence of geographical circumstance and of climate, he speaks of
God "having made out of one blood every nation of men to seek after
their Lord, if haply at least" (as might be expected) "they would
feel for Him"—like men in darkness groping towards the light. (2) There is the instinct of prayer, the "testimony of the soul
naturally Christian." The little child at our knees meets us halfway
in the first touching lessons in the science of prayer. In danger,
when the vessel seems to be sinking in a storm, it is ever as it was
in the days of Jonah, when "the mariners cried every man unto his
God." (3) There is the instinct of immortality, the desire that our
conscious existence should continue beyond death. "Who would lose, Though full of pain, this
intellectual being, These thoughts that wander through
eternity, To perish rather swallow’d up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night?" (4) There is the instinct of morality, call it conscience or what
we will. The lowest, most sordid, most materialised languages are
never quite without witness to this nobler instinct. Though such
languages have lien among the poets, yet their wings are as the
wings
of a dove that is covered with silver wings and her feathers like
gold. The most impoverished vocabularies have words of moral
judgment, "good" or "bad"; of praise or blame, "truth and lie";
above all, those august words which recognise a law paramount to all
other laws, "I must," "I ought." (5) There is the instinct of sacrifice, which, if not absolutely
universal, is at least all but so—the sense of impurity and
unworthiness, which says by the very fact of bringing a victim, "I am not worthy to come alone; may my guilt be transferred
to the representative which I immolate." (1) Thus then man seeks after God. Philosophy unaided does not
succeed in finding Him. The theistic systems marshal their
syllogisms; they prove, but do not convince. The pantheistic systems
glitter before man’s eye; but when he grasps them in his feverish
hand, and brushes off the mystic gold dust from the moth’s wings, a
death’s head mocks him. St. John has found the essence of the whole
question, stripped from it all its plausible disguises, and
characterises Mahommedan and Judaistic Deism in a few words. Nay,
the
philosophical deism of Christian countries comes within the scope of
his terrible proposition. "Deo erexit Voltairius," was the
philosopher’s inscription over the porch of a church; but Voltaire
had not in any true sense a God to whom he could dedicate it. For
St.
John tells us—"whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the
Father." Other
words there are in his Second Epistle whose full import seems to
have
been generally overlooked, but which are of solemn significance to
those who go out from the camp of Christianity with the idea of
finding a more refined morality and a more ethereal spiritualism.
"Whosoever goeth forward and abideth not in the doctrine of
Christ"; whosoever writes progress on his standard, and goes forward
beyond the lines of Christ, loses natural as well as supernatural
religion—"he hath not God." (2) Man wants to pray. Poor disinherited child, what master of
requests shall he find? Who shall interpret his broken language to
God, God’s infinite language to him? (3) Man yearns for the assurance of immortal life. This can best
be given by one specimen of manhood risen from the grave, one
traveller come back
from the undiscovered bourne with the breath of eternity on His
cheek
and its light in His eye; one like Jonah, Himself the living sign
and
proof that He has been down in the great deeps. (4) Man needs a morality to instruct and elevate conscience. Such
a morality must possess these characteristics. It must be
authoritative, resting upon an absolute will; its teacher must say,
not "I think," or "I conclude," but—"verily, verily I say unto
you." It must be unmixed with baser and more questionable elements.
It must be pervasive, laying the strong grasp of its purity on the
whole domain of thought and feeling as well as of action. It must be
exemplified. It must present to us a series of pictures, of object
lessons in which we may see it illustrated. Finally, this morality
must be spiritual. It must come to man, not like the Jewish Talmud
with its seventy thousand precepts which few indeed can ever learn,
but with a compendious and condensed, yet all-embracing brevity—with
words that are spirit and life. (5) As man knows duty more thoroughly, the instinct of sacrifice
will speak with an ever-increasing intensity. "My heart is
overwhelmed by the infinite purity of this law. Lead me to the rock
that is higher than I; let me find God and be reconciled to Him."
When the old Latin spoke of propitiation he thought of something
which brought near (prope); his inner thought was—"let God come
near to me, that I may be near to God." These five ultimate
spiritual wants, these five ineradicable spiritual instincts, He
must
meet, of whom a master of spiritual truth like St. John can say with
his plenitude of insight—"He is the propitiation for our sins, and
not for ours only, but also for the whole world." We shall better understand the fulness of St. John’s thought if we
proceed to consider that this fitness in Christ for meeting the
spiritual wants of humanity is exclusive. Three great religions of the world are more or less Missionary.
Hinduism, which embraces at least a hundred and ninety millions of
souls, is certainly not in any sense missionary. For Hinduism
transplanted from its ancient shrines and local superstitions dies
like a flower without roots. But Judaism at times has strung itself
to a kind of exertion almost inconsistent with its leading idea. The
very word "proselyte" attests the unnatural fervour to which it had
worked itself up in our Lord’s time. The Pharisee was a missionary
sent out by pride and consecrated by self-will. "Ye compass sea and
land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him tenfold
more the child of hell than yourselves." Buddhism has had enormous
missionary success from one point of view. Not long ago it was said
that it outnumbered Christendom. But it is to be observed that it
finds adherents among people of only one type of thought and
character. Outside these races it is and must ever be, non-existent.
We may except the fanciful perversion of a few idle people in
London,
Calcutta, or Ceylon, captivated for a season or two by "the light of
Asia." We may except also a very few more remarkable cases where the
esoteric principle of Buddhism commends itself to certain profound
thinkers stricken with the dreary disease of modern sentiment.
Mohammedanism has also, in a limited degree, proved itself a
missionary religion, not only by the sword. In British India it
counts millions of adherents, and it is still making some progress
in
India. In other ages whole Christian populations (but belonging to
heretical and debased forms of Christianity) have gone over to
Mohammedanism. Let us be just to it. It once elevated the pagan
Arabs. Even now it elevates the Negro above his fetich. But it must
ever remain a religion for stationary races, with its sterile God
and
its poor literality, the dead book pressing upon it with a weight of
lead. Its merits are these—it inculcates a lofty, if sterile,
Theism; it fulfils the pledge conveyed in the word Moslem, by
inspiring a calm, if frigid, resignation to destiny; it teaches the
duty of prayer with a strange impressiveness. But whole realms of
thought and feeling are crushed out by its bloody and lustful grasp.
It is without purity, without tenderness, and without humility. Thus, then, we come back again with a truer insight to the exclusive
fitness of Christ to meet the wants of mankind. Others besides the Incarnate Lord have obtained from a portion of
their fellow men some measure of passionate enthusiasm. Each people
has a hero during this life, call him demigod, or what we will. But
such men are idolised by one race alone. The very qualities which
procure them an apotheosis are precisely those which prove how
narrow
the type is which they represent; how far they are from speaking to
all humanity. A national type is a narrow and exclusive type. No European, unless effeminated and enfeebled, could really love an
Asiatic Messiah. But Christ is loved everywhere. No race or kindred
is exempt from the sweet contagion produced by the universal appeal
of the universal Saviour. From all languages spoken by the lips of
man, hymns of adoration are offered to Him. We read in England the
"Confessions" of St. Augustine. Those words still quiver with the
emotions of penitence and praise; still breathe the breath of life.
Those ardent affections, those yearnings of personal love to Christ,
which filled the heart of Augustine fifteen centuries ago, under the
blue sky of Africa, touch us even now under this grey heaven in the
fierce hurry of our modern life. But they have in them equally the
possibility of touching the Shanar of Tinnevelly, the Negro—even the
Bushman, or the native of Tierra del Fuego. By a homage of such
diversity and such extent we recognise a universal Saviour for the
universal wants of universal man, the fitting propitiation for the
whole world. Towards the close of this Epistle St. John oracularly utters three
great canons of universal Christian consciousness—"we know," "we
know," "we know." Of these three canons the second is—"we know
that we are from God, and the world lieth wholly in the wicked one."
"A characteristic Johannic exaggeration!" some critic has
exclaimed; yet surely even in Christian lands where men lie outside
the influences of the Divine society, we have only to read the
Police
reports to justify the Apostle. In columes of travels, again, in the
pages of Darwin and Baker, from missionary records in places where
the earth is full of darkness and cruel habitations, we are told of
deeds of lust and blood which almost make us blush to bear the same
form with creatures so degraded. Yet the very same missionary
records
bear witness that in every race which the Gospel proclamation has
reached, however low it may be placed in the scale of the
ethnologist; deep under the ruins of the fall are the spiritual
instincts, the affections which have for their object the infinite
God, and for their career the illimitable ages. The shadow of sin is
broad indeed. But in the evening light of God’s love the shadow of
the cross is projected further still into the infinite beyond.
Missionary success is therefore sure, if it be slow. The reason is
given by St. John. "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for
ours only, but for the whole world."
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