The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.— Rev. xxii., 21.
This is the last verse of the book upon which I have been speaking to you for some months; the last verse of the Bible. If we think of it, we may find that the very message of the Apocalypse, and of the Bible, is gathered up in it.
I. When you hear the word Grace pronounced in a pulpit, you conclude at once that it has a technical signification; you cast aside, or try to cast aside, the associations which you have with it at ordinary times. Do not make this effort, my friends; it is not a wise one; it defeats itself; it robs us of the deep and peculiar virtue which belongs to the expression in the Scriptural use of it. Allow yourselves to think freely of whatever has presented itself to you as most graceful in the intercourse of life, in the study of art. Do not exclude from your reflections that which was most exquisite in the outward form and its movements; do not forget what you have described as grace in the animals or in any inanimate object. You will feel—you cannot help feeling—that whatever you admired without is determined by something within. There may be grace in stone, but only because it testifies of life. You speak of grace lingering on the countenance of a corpse; you mean that it still bears the impress of the living being whom you knew and loved. You are therefore always recalled from looks and acts to something which they denote. You are sure that the grace which appears in them is in that which you cannot see; in the person who looks and who acts.
Reflect on these simple observations, and they will help you, better than many accurate definitions, to apprehend how outward visible signs may betoken an inward spiritual grace. And will they not lead you a step further? At first the grace which you delight in strikes you as something inherent in the person to whom you ascribe it. You observe on the contrast between the grace of one fellow-creature and the ungracefulness of another. You are inclined to call the latter common or vulgar, the former peculiar or exceptional. There is great excuse for that judgment; to reverse it seems like the most flagrant paradox. And yet ask yourselves if you are not doing injustice to those persons whom you most commend when you seek to separate them from their kind. Is it not a human grace which you recognise in them? If you could not give it that name, would it not lose half its charm and sweetness? So far as it is a departure from a human standard—so far as it is merely individual—is it not imperfect? is it not less gracious? When you speak or think of grace as rare or uncommon, do you not intend to say that few are free from those little affectations and wilfulnesses which mar their human symmetry, which create a certain irregularity and disturbance?
There is, indeed, a flat, dreary uniformity, an absence of all distinctive qualities, of everything strong and marked, which most of us think more disagreeable than even excesses and distortions. But you do not call that uniformity grace; it is the opposite of grace, for it is an approach to death. You want the fulness of life; you would like to see every energy in its perfect play; you long for a harmony which results from the co-operation of all energies. Anything short of this you feel is so far a defect. Yet you do not expect it—you do not even wish for it—in any one of your fellowmen. You feel that each one has some qualities which another wants; some powers in predominance which in his neighbours are subordinate, and are meant to be subordinate. The best are not those who try to be everything, and to accomplish everything; there is an evident awkwardness, presumption, disappointment, in such experiments. Those commend themselves to you most who seem to understand most clearly what their work is; who devote themselves to that; who best appreciate other men’s capacities and callings, and most gladly profit by their help and service.
We see, then, how inevitably the thought of grace in shape and movement associates itself with the thought of moral grace, grace of character. But there is another use of the word, at least as common and obvious. We speak of grace as bestowed by a superior on an inferior; we connect it with royal condescension. We are conscious that these two senses cannot really be separated. A favour, we say, is painful, not pleasant, if it is bestowed ungraciously; that is to say, if it is done from constraint; if it is not an expression of the mind and purpose of him from whom it proceeds. Suppose it to be merely a favour to some special person—to be given out of liking to one rather than to another—we condemn it as immoral—we disconnect it with grace. An unrighteous king, we are sure, cannot be a gracious king. His pardons and his rewards are alike determined by accident, or by some external influence; both are equally mischievous to those who are the objects of them, and to society at large.
If you try to conceive of a perfectly gracious government, you would set before yourselves one which had the effect of producing the very quality in the subjects which existed first in the ruler. You would think he had not effected his ends if he scattered ever so many blessings abroad, unless those blessings somehow tended to elevate the minds and characters of those who received them. You seek a power which shall be always addressing itself to the man in you, and in every person who has the form and countenance of a man; you seek a power which shall keep down and overcome that which is contrary to this. Now see whether the Scriptural idea of a kingdom of grace does not reconcile and fulfil what you have been trying to express in different broken phrases and forms. See whether, instead of being hard and technical, it is not more comprehensive and more practical than our common speech. When we are told that we are brought under a reign or law of grace, what is meant? Are we not taught that an actual Ruler, in whom all grace dwells, has taken us under His dominion, that He may act upon us to make us gracious? Are we not taught that He has dominion, not only over the outside of our existence, but over our thoughts, desires, hopes; over the springs of our life? Are we not taught that He is seeking to mould these into conformity with His character and will? that our outward acts, words, looks, may express what is gracious, and not what is uncomely and base? Are we not taught that His operations are upon our wills, to make them obedient, to make them free? When St. Paul says that we are translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, is it not an empire of this kind that he indicates? Does he not command us to believe that it is under this we are living?
But he speaks, you will say, also of a kingdom of darkness. Did he describe merely that kingdom in which heathens are dwelling? May we not be dwelling in it? My friends, do not we know that we may? Have we not dwelt in it continually? Are we not apt, at every moment, to fall into it? For what is this kingdom of darkness but the kingdom of our own selfish solitary natures? What is it but a world in which we see nothing but ourselves, and images of ourselves, in the heaven above and in the earth beneath? We call it sometimes the state of the natural man; that is to say, of the man wrapt in himself, apart from his fellows, apart from God. Scripture calls it oftener still the state of death, because all life consists in going out of ourselves, in receiving influences from earth and from heaven, in having fellowship with earth and heaven. That state of nature or of death is always about us. Each man ought to know that if he were left to himself for an instant, he should plunge into it and be lost. But each man ought also to know that he is not left to himself for an instant, that a gracious kingdom is compassing him round, that gracious powers are acting upon him from his birth onwards, that there is about him an unutterable Gentleness, Goodness, Forgiveness; that it is striving to make him gentle, forgiving, good; that he may yield to it and be controlled and reconciled by it, just as he may revolt from it and live at a distance from it. Oh, never think, I conjure you, that what is called the regenerate or gracious state in Scripture is a strange, irregular state which is meant for a few, and from which mankind is excluded! The gracious state is the human state, the selfish deathly state is the inhuman state. It is the state which we choose for ourselves when we throw off the easy yoke, the light burden. It is the state into which we descend because we will not assert our human rights, because we prefer chains to liberty.
II. And so we come to the next words of the text, those which contain the necessary explanation of the first, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We are very apt to resolve this name into some poor equivalent. We say that we live under a Christian dispensation, that we are brought within the range of Christian influences, and so forth. All which language is good if we render it back into the honest and simple language of Scripture, if we interpret it by that; very bad if we reduce the Scriptural language into it. The Christian dispensation is the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, or it is nothing. Christian influences, or the means of grace, are the gracious powers which proceed from Him, or they are nothing. And as we are fond of reducing a person into an abstraction, so we are apt, even when we speak of Him as a person, to take only some portion of His name, not the whole of it; to divide or to confuse what the Scripture presents to us as distinct and as one.
First, the Bible bids us think of Our Lord. We are to remember that we are under One who has manifested Himself as in the highest, fullest sense, the Lord of Man; the Lord not merely of the outward economy of our lives, but of our own selves, of our hearts and reins. We are to recollect that He knows us as we are, knows our individual characters, temperaments, constitutions; knows our outward circumstances; knows our relations to each other. We are to recollect that all these have been ordered and disposed by Him; that we and they have not been created once, and then turned adrift to work as well as might be without Him, but are under His eye and superintendence every hour and moment. We are to remember, that if each man has a right to say and ought to say, “He is my Lord,” yet, that “our Lord” is the better, the inspired expression; that it contains the other in itself, that it reminds each man that he is not alone in the world, and that the care which is exercised over him does not interfere with the care over any one of his fellow-men. It would not be universal care if it were not individual, it would not be individual if it were not universal. Does that word our seem to imply a tenderness which is inconsistent with judgment and scrutiny? Brethren, no real tenderness can be apart from judgment and scrutiny. We need to have the precious and the vile separated in each of us. All society demands that same separation. He who is our Lord must be our Judge. But,
Secondly, He is our Lord Jesus. That name recalls His life and work upon earth. It brings before us the Child at Bethlehem, the Boy in the Temple, Him who went about doing good, the Deliverer of the bodies of men from their plagues. It reminds us of Him who spoke on the Mount, of Him who taught by parables, of Him who sat with the disciples at the Paschal Feast, of the agony in the garden, of the death on the Cross. In all these acts, and words, and sufferings, Jesus, the Saviour, the Son of Man, was manifesting Himself. In all these He was showing forth that perfect grace which can only appear in humiliation and sacrifice. In all these He was giving up Himself, He was contesting with the Spirit of selfishness, He was redeeming our nature from its tyranny. Oftentimes, in the contemplation of His perfect human grace, men have been disposed to forget whence it came; to think of the Son as separate from the Father; to forget that the glory of His life and work was this, that He refused ever to separate Himself from the Father, that He did nothing without the Father.
Thirdly, the Apostles always speak of Him as the Lord Jesus Christ. They compel us to remember that he was anointed of the Father; that the voice from Heaven proclaimed Him the only-begotten Son; that the Spirit of the Father descended upon Him; that in the might of that Spirit He wrestled with the evil spirit; that in the might of that Spirit He preached the Gospel to the poor, and broke the bonds of those whom the evil spirit had bound, and delivered the victims of death, and gave up Himself to death, and rose from the dead, and ascended on high. They describe the Christ as coming into the world to baptize with the Holy Spirit. They connect the Christ in Heaven with the promise of the Father which was fulfilled to the children upon earth. They speak of His triumph as accomplished, when He could send forth His disciples to preach to all nations, that God in Christ had reconciled the world to Himself, that He had given His Spirit to dwell with men, to rule their hearts and tongues, that they might be sealed with the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, the one God blessed for ever.
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” comprehends all that is contained in this Divine revelation. It supposes the discovery to men of a Father who has sent His own Son to adopt them into His family. It supposes a deliverance from the tyranny of evil gods and of visible things. It supposes a recognition of men as endued with spiritual capacities, created to bear the image of Him who is above them, and to rule over that which is below them. It supposes the establishment of sacrifice as the bond between the Divine and human nature, between the Divine and human life. It supposes the union of men into a society of which Christ is the living head, and which derives all its life from Him. It supposes the gift of a Comforter to dwell with them, and raise them, and unite them to their Father in heaven and their brethren on earth. It supposes the need of a perpetual renewal of Divine forgiveness and Divine strength, that men may not sink back into a worse death than that out of which He has raised them, that they may be witnesses for God, and bring forth fruits to God. It supposes a grace which shall be adapted to all special circumstances, sorrows, temptations. It supposes distinct graces flowing from the one perfect fountain of grace, which shall enable each member to fulfil its place in the body, to do the work which is assigned it without intruding upon the work of any other, to help the rest, to suffer with the rest. It supposes a continual struggle between life and death, light and darkness, grace and rude will, the Spirit and the world, God and the devil.
III. That the Churches of Asia might engage heartily in this struggle, that they might be victorious in it, St. John says to them, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.” He knew that in one sense this grace was with them all, and would be with them all. If it had not been compassing them about when they were heathens, there would have been no Gospel to preach to them. St. Paul could not then have told the savages of Lycaonia that God was sending the rains from Heaven and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. He could not then have prayed for the Ephesians that they might not live as the other Gentiles, ignorant of the life of God that was in them, alienated from Him by wicked works. The grace was there; the whole Creation would have withered if it had not been there; men would have destroyed it. But when He desired that it might be with them, He desired that they might know the power of it; that they might live under the habitual control of it, in the daily blessing of it. For redeemed, regenerate men to live as if they had never been redeemed, as if they were only born of the flesh, was possible, was easy: every day’s experience shewed how possible, how easy. To hold fast that which they had received, to believe that which was true, required a continual effort. What should brace them to the effort? What should quicken them so that they should not become benumbed with the world’s frosts, and covet sleep as benumbed men covet it, and die in that sleep? “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” was the awakening, renovating energy. It was assured to them in their Baptism. When they ate the bread and drank the wine, there was a witness of its perpetual, unchangeable vitality, of its power to keep them and strengthen each of them in his own tasks and trials. They might receive it in their daily food. All nature bore witness of it. They might receive it through the ministries of father and mother, of wives and children, of friends and of enemies. Crosses would be the sure pledges of it, seeing that in the Cross it was concentrated, that from the Cross it flowed down upon men.
I said that the Apostle desired this blessing for the Churches of Asia, and for all the members of those Churches. It is better to speak so. It is better to connect, as the Apostles always do connect, their divinest words, their most amazing assurances, with societies by which they were surrounded; with men and women whom they could distinguish by names. So the Gospel becomes definite; so we are reminded that it is addressed to creatures of our flesh and blood. But because it is so definite—because it is meant for creatures of our flesh and blood—it cannot be contracted to any region or any time. If the Apostle had said, “My grace, my love be with you,” his converts and disciples would have had a right to claim the words as theirs especially. But he knew that no such expression could satisfy any of them. He was obliged to take a higher flight that he might meet their necessities. He could say nothing less than this, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.” And that is the grace of the Son of Man and of the Son of God, of Him who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.
My friends, for the last fourteen years I have been ministering this grace to you. In looking back upon those years I see cause enough for shame and humiliation. But I wish to say it solemnly, and for the last time, that I feel no sorrow and repentance for any words I have spoken to you, respecting the absolute and eternal love of God; respecting the full and perfect manifestation of that love in the only-begotten Son; respecting the redemption and reconciliation which His incarnation and death, His resurrection and ascension, have effected for the whole world; respecting His presence with men and government over them; respecting the Eternal Spirit, who is One with the Father and the Son, and who is working in us, to guide us into all truth, to make us willing subjects of that love which has proved itself to be mightier than death and hell. I am deeply convinced that whatever I have said on these subjects has been too narrow, not too comprehensive; that any words which I have added to the words of the Scripture have contracted their freedom and the largeness of their application; that the Creeds and the Sacraments exhibit the eternal goodness of God, in its triumph over all that opposes it in every part of the universe, with a fulness which passes all that I have ever been able to think of or imagine. I mourn and repent because I have reduced these testimonies by my poor conception of them. I mourn over the coldness and hardness which must often have made them seem unreal to you. I mourn that I have not shown more confidence in the purposes of God towards you and towards all, more confidence that there is in each one of you that which craves for all good, and protests against all evil. For the insincerity and heartlessness which have kept me often at a distance from those whom I might have helped, I ask your forgiveness, and the forgiveness of Him whose message I have marred. And, therefore, it is an infinite comfort that I may part with you not with words of mine, not with wishes of mine, but with the assurance that there is a grace which penetrates beneath all words and all wishes, which can make its presence felt, which can make us gracious. I may say to you: “Friends and brothers, in the midst of your work, when you are trying to be honest and faithful, and finding how hard it is to be honest and faithful; in your family circles; as English citizens; in lonely hours; when you are struggling with temptations which only the Searcher of hearts knows; when you are trying to pray and cannot pray; when all things in heaven and earth seem unstable; when you are crushed with the remembrances of failure; when you are looking in vain for faces that once comforted you; in your tribulation as in your wealth; in the hour of death; in that day of Judgment, which shall shew us how closely we have been related to each other, and what a Divine Power has been using even the feeblest instrument, to draw us to itself: may the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”