BIBLE TALK.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8488, 20 May 1893, Page 2

BIBLE TALK.

SERIES No. 20.

Sermon.

fiabject—" Lift up your eyes, and iovk on the fields; for they »i-e white alreauy to hardest."'—John iv. 35.

STESOGBAPHIC KEPOET OF Ms WoRTH.IN«_ox's Bible Talk at the Temple of Tkcth, Suxbay, ArKiL 16th, 1893.

The world has always had two parties, the conservative party and the radical party, each of which has had its place and office, both of which have adjusted the balance of society, and conditioned healthy progress. The backward looking party, or that which is commonly called the conservative party, endeavours to gather and preserve that which the past has accepted mud believed to be the truest and the best, and to conserve the historic links or conditions of things which might prevent change or progress. These, wnen pursued to extremes, have accepted that which the past has presented as the best and truest, as perfection: these have said that theformand statement of truth presented by that past, was final, that it must not be interfered with, and that it must be left as the deterroining quality in all analysis regarding future movement or progress. On the other hand, the radicalism of society, or the radical party, have said that they were dissatisfied with the products of the past, they hare insisted that hi the future and in the present, there was a larger and better interpretation, that life must be freed from the narrow limitations of a stereotyped past, and released into that larger purpose, that larger aim, that was epitomized in the nobler ideas of the present. This, pushed to extremity in its realm, has produced certain discord's and confusions that have been the result of that extreme, a condition no better in quality or results than that of the conservative element.

In other words, it is the friction induced by the differences between these two Bchools of thought, from which is eliminated the best and the truest. From these two come that safe school of progressive determinism which has carried the ark of God's covenant through all the ages, and preserved the best •ad truest in every school of thought.

Eighteen centuries ago the statement that forms the basis of our present thought was made. Jesus of Nazareth had been at work almost side by side with John the Baptist, and the jealous eye of the Pharisee had begun to contrast and compare the results of his ministry with that of John. It was seen that more disciples flocked to Him, more people followed and listened to TrTrrrt than to John, and in order to save this contrast, to avoid this comparison, and the accompanying rivalries and jealousies that might result therefrom, He determined to leave Judea and go into Galilee, and pursue His ministry there. In pursuit of this object, He passes through Samaria, and, resting on His journey at Jacob's well, He has this historic conversation with the woman of Samaria.

In that conversation he breathes the essence of his mission, he gives utterance to statements that show that in his understanding of the great problem of life, the Fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of mac, are the two essential parts of the tree of Life which springs ( from the one, and manifests the other, that tree of life whose leaves shall heal the suffering of the nations. So He speaks to this woman, and he tells her that worship is dependent upon spirit, and not upon place; that the worship that God demands is not the cold spirit of sectarian preferment, but -the quality of love that burns at the centre of man's life ; that this was what determined the value of worship, and that God must be realised in that Fatherhood that made the common brotherhood of humanity, whether Jew or Gentile.

His disciples, returning from the city, found Him in converse with the woman,they were surprised, and talked with one another, but, listening to this man, they realised that his love had stricken down the division lines ; and that, beyond the conservatism of the Jew, and the radicalism of the zealous and ill-fledged disciple, there was the factor of an intelligent determinism that moved the motive of God into the centre of the lives of men, and made it a practical, tangible force. Beaching back into the root of the great plant of religion, he discovered that God and righteousness, as eliminated by the Jew, was the essential fact, through which all particular paths of religion must walk, accepting the Jew's statement of God and righteousness. The most conservative of the conservatists among the Scribes and Pharisees could find no fault with that; but he went farther, and said that through this God and righteousness, there must be an interpretation in the manhood which is the sonhood of Gedhood, which is the righteousness of God in manifestation.

You must lift your eyes from the cold ceremonial, from the dead formula, from the priestly caste, from the ostracism of the tribal preferment that you have taught, you must lift your eyes from these to the world that presents a field white with the harvest for God. This was his message, this was his statement. In the place of retaliation it was good news to the human soul to hear the breath of that rich command to return Kod for evil; in the place of strict Sabtarian rules it was good news to mankind to learn that he travelled and healed upon the Sabbath, and said that God made the day for man; it was good news for the Jew, and for the ripened fields of the world's harvest, to listen as he made the statement that the law, with its breathing of flame and smoke, its vengeance and hatred, had been fulfilled by the flower of love. Oh !it was good news to hear that cruelty and hatred must give place to liberty aud love. And so he confronted conservatism in all its panoply of caste and class and ecclesiastical surrounding; it was good news as he stood there, and made these sublime utterances. Mankind, said he, is the manifestation of Godhood in an universal brotherhood ; the fields are ripe and ready for this statement; come out of your vengeance and hate, come out of your jealous ostracism, come out of your preferred class, your conservatism, and stand in the realisation that wide as life, and destiny, and eternity, full and round as the perfected character of God in manifestation, man must be the centre of religion, humanity must be its basis. This was the declaration of a new theology, this was the declaration of a democracy in government, and an aristocracy in character, based upon tha life and soul of humanity. Now this declaration made a noise; he was pronounced a disturber of the peace, a revolutionist; he was cast out of the public presence, and finally, his utterances cost him his life.

But I want you now to look for a moment upon the field which he saw, and with the same God-glance that he lifted over the world, to see it, not rooted in a conservative past, nor immersed in a jealous, selfish present, nor divorced to an impossible future, but gathering that past and future into the glory of the eternal xow, finding its root in the present moment, made glorious with ideals that hunaauity must grasp. Four hundred years before he made this statement, Alexander had carried the civilisation of Asia into Europe, and founded an ! empire which was the largest in the world. It survived his death but a little time, before its disintegrated fragments were gathered into tho rapacious maw of Rome, which had carried its arms into Africa, India, and China. At the period of which we are speaking, the whole of the country east of the Rhine was a desert of forest, inhabited by barbarous tribes. The sites of cities like London, Oxford and Cambridge were wastes, the playground of savage men. It was fourteen hundred years before the discovery of the continent of America. This time was, perhaps, the darkest and most discouraging in all human history. The republics of Greece had gone out in the night of oblivion; the republic of Rome had been strangled at the birth-couch of the empire. TheAugustinian period, that had gathered the wit and scholarship of the empire a. the court of its power, had been succeeded by the gloomy hours of the -Sberian period, inaugurated by Tiberius, who separated himself from his "people, and from the solitude of hi_ lonely island in the Mediterranean issued his edicts to the World.

The range of the Nazarene's vision took Ja all this, and ib took in also succeeding centuries, when Caligula reigned over that -raft empire, and was followed by Claudius ;

Sermon

and inhuman Nero, who succeeded him, put both to the blush with his cruel pracvicea; when ancient Christian scholarship was compelled by these- cruel tyrants to -'.ami in the Coliseum; and Ggat to the death with gtadiators ; when innocent girls were fed tv the wild beasts by the same rapacious cruelty; whea whole families were wrapped in pilch, place-in the Romau gardens a» night, and sat oa tire to light tneir debauched revelries. Five hundred yeais alter ha spoke these words, the great ricaiau empire useU fell to pieces, and Isiamism swept over tue worid with its armies, conquered the Holy Land itself, and pushed its preseuce into the heart of continental Europe. i-'uis was iiits page of history that he looked upon, and sUuduig in the midst of its darkness, looking into this gulf of hopelessuessand disasier, he epitomised in himself tiie Godhcod or mauhood; he, standing in this awful presence, made the declaration that these rie.ds were while aud npe lor t.ie "harvest of the thought that snouid declare itself. In the midst of tno graves of liberty and independence, when philosophy had drifted inco scepticism, when stoicism had seemed to take possession of the human soul, he uttered the statement that; tue truta should make men free. It is a mighty statement, a sublime statement, -s one' listens to him, he arises as the majestic optimist of ail time ; with a faitu that understands the motive of the awful machinery of human life, he grasps these centuries with the mind chat penetrates the purpose that is wielding the iaw to manifest the best.

Has it done so? For a thousand years after he made that statement, the military empire that held the world in its grasp was conserving the forces that, in the next thousand years, should present a (spiritual empire that should focus itself ia a statement of the infallibility of one man. Was it lost then ? No, by no means ; for back of all this, and energising all these, was that progressive determinism that is God workiu" in the silence of the conscience of mankind. What did it bring t How were his words proven ? Looking at these places that I have named, in the first qentury, and looking at them to-day, we read the answer to that question. That portion of Europe which then was in the dutch of the iron grasp of Rome is to-day broken into constitutional monarchies and republics. The savage wilds of Germany, the wastes of London, Oxford, and Cambridge, are to-day the centre of a mighty civilisation, and the Continent of America stands the proud apex of AngloSaxou accomplishment, and God's purpose. The last four hundred years have furnished larger results than all of recorded time preceding them. Truly the harvest was ripe, truly the Genius of God has been gathering that harvest into those larger results that make up the history of to-day. What is it ? What is this history of today ? It is the impassioned Christ pushing himself into every avenue of thought. Millions are to-day invested in public schools for opening childhood's mind; millions are to-day expended in public benefactions that witness to the altruism of the race, man loving man; millions to-day are predicated, banked, covenanted, promised, to the evolvement and the preservation of the best in man. No one can look upon the great forces at work in the world to-day, without understanding that the mighty harvest is beginning to be reaped, that the great granary of God is beginning to open its doors, is being prepared to receive this output of the ages. Whenlrealise that old Spain is opening her doors to the statement of man's divinity, that old Rome herself can no longer claim an exclusive right, can no longer shut out the thought of man's divinity and God's immanency, that her tottering ruins no longer afford shelter alone for her muttering monks, but that the power of ministering agencies is there, proclaiming God's love, and man's ascendency, then I realise that the harvest is beginning to be reaped. If we lift our eyes to-day over the world, and call to mind the statement of the Christ, we will realise that the whitened fields of to-day are but the promise of a larger fulfilment of that larger vision with which he looked at them.

In our own souls, our own consciousnesses, we lift up our eyes, and behold the fields of thought white with the harvest that shall prove the redemption of the race. There is not one in this presence that does not feel the lifting power of a larger impulse as he listens to those words; there is not one but feels the stirring of a nobler and larger impulse to accomplish more for God and man; there is not one v/ho, reading that statement in the light of his vision, and the sense of his understanding, does not see that this harvest time is but the operation of the gathering hands of Love, busy every day and hour in culling the beautiful and good, in rearing and nurturing the flowers of love, and peace, and goodwill towards mankind. l)o you not feel that, as the sun breaks through the covering clouds, so the sun of righteousness is breaking into the cold, stony, entombed darkness in man's thought, and drawing forth the noblest and best in all mankind ?

Know, that behind your will is the motive that is God; that behind what seems to you the blind evolvement of undefined purpose, there is the mighty machinery of eternity, eliminating the largest and best for mankind everywhere and forever. If so, what boots it that some brother, out of his imperfect understanding, is pushed to use unkind words against you; what boots it that some scholar or preacher is thrust from his place for heretical thought ? These are but the fringe of the larger garment of truth that is being made to cover the darkness of the past. Out of that past, out of that darkness, out of that conservatism that would anchor us to a dead past, there arises the glory of the living present, the majesty of the divine Christ, gathering the sheaves of the mighty harvest that shall bring us all face to face with the noblest truths that God can reveal to man, with the fullest and largest scope for the employment of man's diviner powers for the incoming of that kingdom which shall marshal tbe universal harvest.

Lift up your eyes over the horizon of your own thought, and see there the whitened fields waiting your garnering ; lift up your eyes towards your brethren in the whole world, see there this magnificent harvest, and know that you are the husbandmen entrusted with your share of the work of garnering this godly crop.— [Advt.]