Part 8

Of this kind, was the exhibition to the shepherds, and again, that to the wise men of the East—prefiguring, commencing the manifestation to the Gentiles; the declaration that He must be about His Father’s business, the baptism by John, the show of His power in converting water into wine, in cleansing the leper, in calming the troubled sea, in casting out devils; the unfolding of His wisdom in speaking parables, the preaching of judgment by the Son of Man—all of which are in turn commemorated at this season. Of this kind, again, were the teaching on the Mount, all the miracles, the Transfiguration, the appearances after the Resurrection, the Ascension, the wonders of Pentecost, the light that shone from heaven on Saul journeying to Damascus, and the voice that said “I am JESUS whom thou persecutest.” These were all pre-eminent manifestations, as being designedly full of significance, making special revelations to special persons; displaying, so to speak, the chief features of CHRIST, and teaching most important lessons. Nevertheless, they were rather preludes and signs of CHRIST’S truest manifestation, than that manifestation itself—faint glimmers of coming light, rustlings, warning movements, scarcely upliftings of the curtain that hung between things spiritual and the would-be spectators of them—parables, and prophecies. They left not those who saw them where they were, but they carried them not whither they would be or should be. They bade them look and listen; but they revealed not the sight, nor spake the word. Strange as it may seem, CHRIST was not truly manifested till the clouds of heaven hid Him, and, in the flesh, He ceased to appear and speak till judgment-time. The truth was, as yet, not taught, but only hinted at, and men were not yet ready for it, and could not receive it. It is not in what we call the Gospels, but in the Epistles, that the truth as it is in JESUS is revealed. It is not in the miracles of His earthly ministry, but in the spiritual wonders which, after Pentecost, the Apostles wrought in His name; that the real power of CHRIST, the power to bless, is seen and felt. All before was but a type, a shadow, a dream. The antitype, the reality, the waking vision, belong to apostolic days, and to the days after them. Then was the Gospel revealed, which before was only brought nigh. Then was the kingdom of Heaven opened. Then did JESUS, through the Spirit, begin to speak and show Himself openly and plainly to Jews and Gentiles, and to draw all men to Him. Then did spiritual wisdom begin to enlighten, and spiritual power begin to enable the hitherto blind and helpless. Then first, even to the Apostles, and then, by them, to the world, began to be displayed GOD manifest in the flesh. Up to that time, though He was in the world, the world knew Him not. He stood among them, but they did not see Him; He spoke, but they did not hear: yea, though He had come to His own, they did not receive Him, till the Pentecostal light made all clear, and the voice of the Spirit declared “This is the beloved Son of the Father,” and the power of Divine grace, enabled and constrained to believe on His name, to receive Him intelligently and heartily, and through Him, and in a measure like Him, to become sons of GOD.

Then and thus was CHRIST truly manifested, as it were in these last times.

But there is even yet a better manifestation, one more really worthy of the name—that, namely, which is made to the Disciples, but not to the world.

In a sense, all that has hitherto been described was an external manifestation—a manifestation to the world. The Gospel was preached openly, the credentials of its heralds were publicly exhibited, whosoever would might hear and see; and only when they refused, and judged themselves unworthy of eternal life, did the Apostles turn away from them, or pass on to another place, shaking the dust off their feet as a testimony against them. Even the inward grace, the power to see spiritually, to believe, and to accept CHRIST, was so far manifested to the world, that it was offered to all, and was within the reach of all. The Apostles, who taught men their need of salvation, and exhorted them to save themselves, both showed them the way and promised them the grace of salvation; and thus, therefore, was CHRIST openly, and with power, manifested to the world. But, in the chapter of the text, CHRIST makes it a special promise to those that love Him, that He will manifest Himself to them. Judas (not Iscariot) rightly concludes that this is a manifestation which shall be made to none but approved disciples; and, accepting the promise, he ventures to ask, respecting its fulfilment, “LORD, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?”

It must be borne in mind that the Jewish notion, a notion shared by the disciples, was that the MESSIAH would manifest Himself in all the pomp and power of a triumphant earthly prince, exhibiting Himself to the whole world, ruling all the nations of the earth, and demanding the homage and adoration of all men. They waited in expectation that the kingdom of Israel would be restored, that Jerusalem would become the capital of the world, that CHRIST would sit visibly on a splendid throne, in the midst of her, and that they would occupy the nearest places to Him of honour and power. This notion was still theirs, as we know, when CHRIST led them out to the Mount of the Ascension; and we can well understand, therefore, that Judas, and those with him, must at this time have been greatly perplexed by the intimation, which CHRIST’S promise conveyed, that He was only to be manifested to those that love Him. It is out of this perplexity—not, as I said before, questioning the fact of a partial manifestation, but unable to understand it, and seeking enlightenment—that Judas asks, “LORD, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?”

The words translated “How is it,” render possible a threefold interpretation of this question. 1st. LORD, what has happened—how is it come to pass that the original design (at least, what we suppose to be the original design) of an universal manifestation is altered, and now only a partial manifestation to be afforded? 2ndly. LORD, what has been done by us, what special merits have we, whence is it that we are to be so signally favoured, and others passed over? 3rdly. LORD, what kind of manifestation will that be which some eyes only shall perceive? In what way wilt Thou reveal Thy presence to us, so that the world, in the midst of which we dwell, into the midst of which, therefore, Thou must come to us, shall not partake with us of the vision. It is scarcely profitable, perhaps, to consider whether or no the first interpretation is admissible; nor need we attempt to decide between the second and the third. Let us rather combine them; and taking the question out of Judas’s mouth, and adopting it as our own, let us reverently and teachably ask, as we need, of Him who giveth wisdom liberally, “LORD, how is it, on what account, and in what way, that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?”

I. On what account is He partial? Why does He make us to differ? Not then, for any recommendation we had to His favour—for we were all concluded under sin, and all guilty before GOD. Not again, for any merits or deserts in His service, for at the best, if we have done all that He set us to do (and who has?) we are yet but unprofitable servants. No! there was nothing which should make GOD respect and choose us before others; and we have done no work for which we can claim reward. GOD is no respecter of persons. It is impossible, by any mere natural deeds or efforts to please Him. We have all sinned and come short of His glory. We all sin, and deserve wrath every day. But CHRIST, Who would have all men to be saved, Who has died for all, and risen again for all, and sent down His Holy Spirit ready to justify, to sanctify, to bless all, has nevertheless made the bestowal of His grace conditional. He requires a certain “receptivity” for it. It is not thrust upon all, willing or unwilling, proud or humble, GOD-fearing or GOD-despising. Men must feel their need of it; and, feeling their need, they must express it, at least to Him, and must go to Him in His appointed ways to obtain it. CHRIST in sufficiency, in desire, the Saviour of all men, is, in fact, specially only the Saviour of them that believe—believe with that impelling desire, and that active faith, which make them flee to Him to be saved, and earnestly ask of Him, “What must I do to be saved?” And next, having this fitness, this receptivity for grace, and so receiving it, CHRIST requires men to treasure up the grace with reverence and godly fear; to use it with diligence, with zealous effort, to improve it, to grow in it; to strengthen it constantly by all appointed means of sustenance and exercise; to accomplish with it all that He wills and directs to be done; to be heartily grateful to the Author, the Sustainer, the Finisher of Salvation. “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me, and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.” So then it is only to love that the manifestation is made; and love is proved by obedience, and obedience is the hearty faithful performance, in the spirit as well as the letter, of the expressed will of CHRIST.

And here, brethren, before we go further, let us see in the light of these conditions, why it is that religious influences affect so little the vast mass of mankind. There is a manifestation of CHRIST to the world. He is ever speaking in their ears and showing Himself to their eyes. His Church, with its Bible, its means of grace and ministry, its duration and extension, besides being a standing miracle, the infallible credential of His divine authority, the proof of His wisdom and His power, is a very exhibition of Himself, mighty and eager to save. The Spirit, which is with and in that Church, declares Himself to be able and ready to enlighten, and persuade, and strengthen all, without exception, without delay, if only they will come to Him. And yet how many, not only of the recklessly profane, the grossly carnal, the resolutely blind and deaf, but of the well-disposed, the moral, the albut exemplary, have no perception whatever of CHRIST! How many so-called Christians, not only in their business or their pleasure, when they turn away their eyes from the manifested GOD, but even when they come up to the sanctuary, when they read the Bible, when they kneel in prayer or stand to praise, when they look Zionwards, when they are all attent, eyes and ears, yet see no sight, and hear no sound of CHRIST! The world which they have left is remembered, and stands before them in a life-like picture. The sights they would not see, the sounds they would not hear, they cannot escape from; but CHRIST, the object of their worship, in some sense the desire of their eyes, they look for but cannot find; if He stands in the midst of them, they know it not!

Is not this, brethren, the experience of many of you? You do not, of course, ever expect open visions, perceptions with natural eyes and ears of a spiritually manifested Saviour; but do you not often fail to obtain what you think (and rightly) you ought to aim at obtaining, a real, though spiritual, a convincing, constraining, sanctifying, and cheering manifestation of CHRIST? Do you not often, do you not almost always find just that wanting, which should make religion real? “Oh!” you exclaim, “would that when I kneel down in church, to make solemn confessions, to utter supplications, to pray for pardon, for favour, for grace—oh! that such a vision of CHRIST were afforded me, that I were possessed with such feeling of His presence, as would prevent my turning away so readily from the solemnity, to see who is coming into church, to admire or criticise the dress or appearance of those beside me, to remember the worldliness of yesterday, to anticipate the worldliness of to-morrow. Oh! that when I sit with open Bible before me, and slight and slur over its difficult parts, and give little heed to the personal application of its histories, and treat albut with indifference its exhortations, its warnings, its promises, its threats—Oh! that some voice would recall me from my wandering, and dispel my irreverence, and concentrate my devout attention with its heard command, ‘Thus, saith the LORD, Hear what the Spirit saith.’ Oh! that when I go about the world, and neglect my religious duty here, and transgress it there, yielding readily to temptation, hankering after, following worldliness, led by the persuasions, awed by the frowns, constrained by the demands of the world, oh! that CHRIST would stand at least before my spiritual vision, and utter to the ears of my soul, ‘Forbear. Take up thy cross. Follow me.’ Oh, that He would do all this for others too: for those whom I love, who go farther out of the way, for the carnal, for the godless, for the souls that are carelessly, that are deliberately perishing! Oh! that for His own honour’s sake He would openly show Himself and dispute—with the Devil, with Mammon, with Pleasure, with Folly—the possession of the souls which He has purchased for Himself! Why does He not give some proof, why does He not exercise some persuasion which must be felt, which could not be disregarded? Oh! that He would rend the heavens and come down; that He would cheer the saint; that He would confound and convert the sinner by His manifested presence.”

It is thus, if I mistake not, that we sometimes think and wish. But, brethren, the words which prompted Judas to speak, reprove our thoughts. They show us that it is not by oversight, by defect, by mismanagement, by any failure to accomplish what was intended, but by deliberate design, by exact fulfilment of what GOD proposed, that the real, the strong influences of Christianity are not brought to bear upon men generally.

CHRIST manifests not Himself fully to the world. He never meant to do it. He never will do it, till he comes to judgment.

GOD, we are told, “will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth.” These awful words do not mean what some attempt to make out of them—that there is an arbitrary election to salvation, and so for all others an inevitable destruction. They mean rather that while His mercy is ready to flow, and is always flowing, if you desire it, you must go to the fountain for it. GOD is under no necessity to save all men. We do not confer a favour on Him by consenting to be saved. His glory will be manifested in destruction as in salvation. He desires to save us. He will save us, and rejoice in our salvation, if we seek to be saved: but if we are rebellious, or indifferent, if we will not comply with the conditions on which only He will manifest His best presence to us, then we must not complain, if He makes good His declaration, and proves it by withholding Himself from us, that whom He wills (and in what way He wills) on them He has mercy, and all others, though He long bears with them, and gives them much time and opportunity for conforming to His will, yet is He content, yea, determined to leave them in their hardness, to confirm them in their hardness, because they will not be softened in the way which He has chosen to prescribe.

Oh! my brethren, do not suppose that it is the weakness, the impotence of Christianity, the frustration of the will of GOD that is demonstrated in the world’s ungodliness, in the perdition of so many immortal souls. No! It is rather the power of Christianity to keep its own for its own: it is the glorious vindication of the sovereign will of Jehovah to save whom He will; it is the corroboration of CHRIST’S word, that none should come to the Father but by Him; it is the terrible, deliberately-inflicted punishment of those that will not come unto Him that they might have life; it is the manifestation, so to speak, of His non-manifestation: “If ye will not love me, holding my commandments and keeping them, then you cannot be loved of My Father, and so cannot be loved of Me, and I will not manifest myself to you.”

It is ourselves, brethren, and not GOD that must be changed. The seed is scattered over all the field, but it grows only in the good ground. If CHRIST is not manifest to us, it is because we have not complied with the conditions of manifestation. He is faithful to His promise, but we have not closed with the promise. Realising, then, that it is not binding on GOD to save us—excepting on the terms which He has Himself laid down—and presenting to ourselves the momentous interests at stake, let us comply with GOD’S terms, and let us strive to do so gratefully. Let us be at pains to ascertain CHRIST’S will; let us diligently and scrupulously keep it, endeavouring all the while to follow it, not as mere routine of morality, but as active direct service of CHRIST Himself, and proposing to ourselves, as the motive to its observance, gratitude for CHRIST’S salvation, and as the reward of observance, the manifestation of CHRIST. So doing, we shall soon find that there is a real, an unequalled power in Christianity to attract and constrain us; we shall soon know how it is that CHRIST will manifest Himself to His disciples, while He is hidden from the world.

II. I have left but little time for the consideration of the second form of our question, namely, in what way CHRIST will manifest Himself only to the chosen. There is no need of a lengthy discussion of this subject, because, with all our spiritual short-sightedness, we are not like the Jews, we can have no difficulty in understanding the possibility of CHRIST’S manifestation of Himself to whom He will, and at the same time His hiding of Himself from all others. We know that like as ghosts are sometimes said to appear to but one of a roomful, so if it pleased CHRIST—and in any other way which He pleased—He could stand visibly at this moment before any one of us, and utter to that favoured ear distinctly audible words, while the rest of us saw and heard nothing of Him.

And there is no use in the discussion of the nature of CHRIST’S truest manifestation, because even if the preacher had realised it in all its perfect blessedness, his words would fail to describe what he had felt; yea, the best possible description would be wholly unintelligible to the natural man who perceives not, and cannot perceive, the things of GOD, while it would be wholly unnecessary, rather would be solemn trifling with those who have actually partaken of the blessedness. No, brethren, it cannot be spoken—and if it could, I believe, it might not be—how CHRIST shows Himself to those who love Him and keep His commandments. It is only in its realisation that you can understand what the promise means: “We will come unto Him and make our abode with Him.” Go, fulfil the conditions, and you shall receive the promise; and it shall disclose to you its own wonders, and its own transcendent bliss, and its own constraining power.

But though we may not describe the manifestation itself, we may observe and recount the effects it produces. The Israelites might not come up to GOD and see Him face to face in the Mount, but they were allowed, and it was good for them, to behold the shining of Moses’s face when he returned from the Divine presence. Doubtless, to many, it was an additional proof of the being of GOD; to not a few it may have been an incentive to seek the blessing of His favour. And so, brethren, it may be with us. Taking knowledge of those who have been with JESUS, we may see on them some reflection of His glorious self, some marks of a bliss which we shall covet to share, which may stimulate us both to believe better in its reality and to strive more earnestly for its fruition. Yes! and comparing ourselves with them very humbly, with unceasing prayer and watching against false confidence, we may even discern on ourselves the faint dawn, the first streaks of the Divine twilight, which tell (oh! how unspeakable the bliss!) that the dayspring is about to mount above our horizon; that the Sun of righteousness is about to shine into our hearts with all His glory.

Consider, then, such as Abraham, who, after He had seen CHRIST—for CHRIST was often manifest before the Incarnation—could himself resolutely destroy his best earthly hope if GOD required it; Job, who, after the vision of perfect holiness, abhorred himself and repented; Jacob, who felt (and felt throughout his life, we may be sure) how dreadful, how consecrated was the place where GOD was met; Joseph, who possessed a power to resist effectually the sin, which so many dare to say there is no resisting (“How can I do this great wickedness and sin against GOD?”); Daniel, who entered courageously into a den of lions; Simeon, who longed for death, and the enjoyment of the permanent vision, after he had once seen CHRIST; Stephen, who died, almost like his Master, “LORD JESUS receive my spirit;” and the many others, who endured and laboured, and resisted, and persevered, and rejoiced in tribulation, and hoped against hope, as seeing Him who is invisible. Yes, brethren, consider these. Think what they were, men of the same flesh and blood, of like infirmities, and like sin with yourselves. Think how they secured the favour of GOD, by the same simple means which are within the power of the least of you, yea, and more within your power than theirs, at least of most of them, because of the clearer light, and the better grace of Gospel times. Think what a reflection they showed of the visions of CHRIST which they enjoyed. Think how real must have been their religious life; how enviable their peace and bliss; what a glorious light they afforded for the example and encouragement of other men; and be no longer content that with all your faculties and opportunities, all your knowledge and invitations, all your proffers of Divine grace, all the perpetual revelations of CHRIST to those who desire Him, you yet should never see Him; but resolutely accepting His terms, hold and keep His commandments, and pray, and meditate, and labour to love Him.

Then plead and watch—you shall not plead in vain, nor watch very long—and the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit will surely come unto you and make their abode manifestly within you, cheering you with the light of the Divine countenance, strengthening you with the strength of Divine grace, moulding you more and more into the image of CHRIST (which must be yours in perfection before you can partake of His fullest manifestation), abiding with you here, and shining clearly even in the deepest darkness, and by and by transplanting you, perfected in grace and spiritual perception, to the place where CHRIST is always seen, with an eye that shall never be dim, with a delight which, however it grows in desire, shall be more than satisfied, as you behold His face in righteousness, and are filled to overflowing with the fulness of His presence.

SERMON X. BLESSING ACCORDING TO PRAYER.

ST. MATTHEW, VIII., 13.

_And_ JESUS _said unto the centurion_, _Go thy way_; _and as thou hast believed_, _so be it done unto thee_.

WE must compare the narrative contained in St. Matthew’s Gospel with its parallel in the 7th chapter of St. Luke, to obtain a clear and full idea of the circumstances which preceded the healing of the centurion’s servant. St. Matthew records just so much of the history as would illustrate the teaching that the Gentiles from afar should be received, and many of the children of the kingdom cast out: St. Luke sets forth in order all the particulars, small and great, which he had been able to obtain from those who were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word.