“THE FULLNESS OF THE TIME”

Evening Star, Issue 20364, 21 December 1929, Page 2

“THE FULLNESS OF THE TIME”

Nature is constantly repeating itself. The seasons come and go, yet the latest spring is just like the earliest, tho midsummer pomps just the same on which our forefathers looked. And yet they are not the same. They are not the same because we who look at them are different. The change is not in them, but in us, and it is this change that determines the impression they make on us. So is it with human history. We say history repeats itself. And there is a sense in which that is true. At bottom the great fundamental verities of life remain the same. Tho only difference is how they are dealt with by the changing generations of men. We are within sight of the great Christian festival—Christmas. For nigh on twenty centuries the Western world has celebrated it. It may be questioned, however, whether tho greater number of those who join in its festivities really understand its significance. We do not propose to instruct them even if we could. Writers not a few have been telling us that the world of to-day is in many respects very similar to that into which Christ was born nineteen centuries ago. His greatest interpreter, St. Paul, says He came in the fullness of time. There is a fullness of time for everything. For history is a “ garment woven from the will of man on the loom of time by God.” But the Weaver takes His own method, and never is before nor ever-is behind His time. It may he worth while to set down two or three things in which the history of the first advent appears to bo repeating itself to-day.

When Christ was horn Home was the ruler of tho world. After hundreds of years of warfare she had won this preeminence. War is an unspeakable evil, but the Power that rules tho world is constantly taking the wickedness of men and bringing unexpected good out of it. Truly has it been said that “ all human events, tho course of history, tho life of nations, tho development of civilisation are linked by innumerable and subtle and divinely framed bonds with the great redemption made by tho Son of God.” To make war in ancient times much more than in modern roads were necessary. So all through the Roman Empire ran. tho roads. The excellence of them rpmnins to-day as a source of wonder to the modern traveller. But roads may bo used to destroy war as well as. to make it. And it was this vast network of roads that enabled the messengers of tho Prince of Peace to carry His gospel to every quarter of the globe. It was the strategic genius of the greatest exponent of early Christianity—St. Paul —that enabled him to seize tho opportunity offered by these roads to deliver the Gospel to the world. He never lingered much in the country. Ho made for tho centres of population, the great cities of tho Empire. And it was the roads that made this possible. Until the arrival of railways travel was never so so safe, so secure as at the advent of Christ. • * ». • But more than roads are necessary to transmit knowledge. There must be some similarity of language between tho traveller and the people whom ho visits. It is still more remarkable how this was provided ilpr. Lung before tho first stones of Romo were laid there was a mighty empire founded by Alexander tho Great. In some respects the world has never since seen so remarkable a civilisation as grew up “ where the light waves whisper Greece.” “ Her dramatists put into golden numbers all the secrets of the soul; her orators stirred the passion of tho citizens aqd exalted tho glory of the State; her philosophers explored the mysteries of existence; while her artists adorned her homes and public places with tho imperishable monuments of their skill. Within the limits of a single century more men of the foremost intellectual rank breathed in Attica than have sometimes since existed during the course of several centuries in the whole world.” The conquests of Alexander carried the intellectual riches of this civilisation across the East as far as the Indus, founding universities in Antioch, Alexandria, and elsewhere, disseminating light and learning throughout the then known world. And this was accomplished by means of a language “ the finest vehicle for the expression and communication of human thought which the mind of man has ever elaborated.” By a peculiar conjunction of events which wo have not space to describe this language became the speech of three-fourths of tho world. Roman roads and the Pax Romana gave facilities for travel; the Greek language enabled the early Christian missionaries to make their way from country to country with their great message. For the Greek language was the speech that everyone know. It was an admirablyprepared matrix for the Christian ideals, and not less admirable for tho expression of them in a language understood by-the common people. As Dean Church, in his great book, ‘ The Gifts of Civilisation,’ has pointed out, it was Greeks and people imbued with Greek ideas who first welcomed Christianity, who first took in the measure of its amazing possibilities, who first vibrated to its appeals, and who were earliest to illustrate its new lessons alike in suffering and in song. “ Had it not first gained over Greek mind and Greek belief it is hard to see how it would have made its further way.” «****} In all this we have a singular parallel to tho circumstance of our own time. To-day the means of communication have been developed beyond all imaginings of that ancient world. We aro still concerned in these ijewer countries about roads, about mam highways. But w© are no longer confined to the slow methods of locomotion to which Paul and the early Christian missionaries had to submit. And it is not merely trains and motors and swift steamers that distribute knowledge through the world to-day. We have aeroplanes soaring through tho air ’at a mile a minute or more; we have telephones and telegraphs; and, most wonderful of all, the wireless, which transmits thoughts ai-

most as rapidly as we. can think them. The whole world has become one as far as distance is concerned. In science, in business, in commerce we have to take account of universal conditions. And so it must bo with religion. These new discoveries that have made nations one are its opportunity. What is needed is men and women with the vision and sacrifice of the early apostles to seize the opportunity ere they be robbed of it by lower forces. We must moralise the inevitable or it will destroy us. There is some evidence that the church is awake to this. Thus in New York the Roman Catholics have set up a radio station, at a cost of £20,000, which can be made audible to 100,000 people within a radius of ten odd miles. That is suggestive of the possibilities that science has put in the hands of religion. But more is needed. As we have seen in the Eastern world, a language was ready in which the message of Christianity could be from race to race. And have we not something indicative of the same in our time? Nothing is more surprising than the rapid spread of the English language, lb bids fair to become universal. Already lexicons combining English with every language have bceai published. Fifty nations contributed to make our language. Thus it may he said to be eclectic in the fullest sense. And just as the Greek language became the matrix for the ideas and truths of Christianity, so the English literature is saturated with it. It derives its inspiration from the two great religions that have been the formative influences in moulding our Western civilisation— Judaism and Christianity. Certain great arteries of the best life of nations are drained into it. As Wordsworth sang:

We must be tree or die who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold That Milton held.

It is a democratic literature. It was hammered and fashioned on the anvil of free institutions. More than any other it is adapted to the common people. It is also incomparable in the breadth and height of its vision and imagination. In all this again one finds a “ fullness of time ” akin to that which marked the epoch of the first century of our era. Only one other parallelism will space alloy/ us to mention. When Christ was born the world (speaking generally) was dissolving in its vices. Judaism that had kept aloft the standard of a righteous God, and high morality had degenerated into the Sadducee who believed in nothing, and the scribe ami Pharisee, who had made religion either a burden or a laughing stock. Home’s great days were over. Its once high morality depended on its theology. Hut its gods were dead; and with them went their morality, such as it was. Substitutes were tried. The emperor took the place of the gods. Lucretius developed the atomic theory, and bade men bo content with the idea of a mechanical universe and extinction in death. Stoicism tried to stem the current of sensuality that threatened to .submerge society. Hut it was a creed for the few only, and the world drifted towards tjio rocks. St. .Paul’s terrible, picture of it in the first chapter of his letter to the Homans is historically correct. W© all know Matthew Arnold's description of it in 1 Obcnnau.’ A lesser known poet speaks of earth as “waiting, spent, and restless, with a mingled hope and fear.” Long before Plato had pathetically sighed “(J! for some sure word of God upon which as upon a secure ship we might cross tin sea.” Hut the long years wont by, and' the longing in multitudes deepened to despair. Then the spirit of the Highest On a virgin meek came down; And He burdened her with blcssilig, And Ho pained her with renown; For she boro the Lord’s anointed For His cross and lor His crown. Earth for Him had groaned and travailed Since the ages first began, For in Him was hid the secret That through all the ages ran— Sou of Mary,.Son of David, Sou of God, and Son of man. * * * • Space will nob allow us to elaborate the parallelism between the state ot the world when Christ was horn in Bethlehem and the condition of things in our time. There is a remarkable, and in one sense a dismaying, similarity between them. Wo arc in the midst of a dissolution of old customs and creeds. Everywhere we hear ot the lust for pleasure, of the decay ot the sense of duty, of emptying churches, and the failure of religion to influence the pagan masses of our great cities or the equally pagan crowds of fashionable society. Many are repeating to their scared hearts the doubting question of the ancient Israelites: “Behold He smote the rock that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed. Can he give bread also? Can He give flesh for His people?” That is to say, in modern- terms, God in Christ met this and that difficulty and disaster in the past, but is Ho equal to the' present? He won the ancient world and transformed it, but can He meet the subtler scepticisms and the seething sins of this modern time? These are questions that go deep and far, and perplex and worry multitudes. Many, who can find no answer, are just content to wait and sec. Achilles ponders in his tent, The kings of modern thought are dumb, Silent they are, though not content, And wait to sc© the future come. This much, at any rate, is clear, that if Christ is not equal to the new demands of our age, no other can ho found. He has no Competitor on the stage of the world’s needs and greeds But a study of history helps to steady a bewilder faith. It is of little concern to the Christianity of Christ what we may think of it, but of infinite concern to us, “ Steadily through tho centuries it moves on all the same, oyer us, trampled in vain resistance, or through us trophies at once, and partners of its triumph. It abandoned to its fate the hostile Roman Empire of the West. It added a thousand years to the friendly Roman Empire of the East. It carried medieval Europe through such centuries of migration and violence as would have wrecked any civilisation save that of

the Galilean peasant. It stands today the only solid bulwark of liberty and order against. license and chaos.’’ Whether it can use us for its purposes or must find others remains to be seen.