Preached at Clyro, 18th Sunday after Trinity, September 25, 1853.
“Waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm you unto the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”—1 Corinthians i. 7, 8.
You have heard of people out on the hills at night who have been overtaken by a snowstorm and have lost the track by which they went up. You have heard of people—perhaps it may have happened to yourselves—who have been tossing all night on their beds in a fever. What do you think was the chief thought in the minds of both of them? It was surely this, ‘Oh, that the Sun would come forth! Oh, that he would not remain so long hidden from us! We know he is there. The morning must come; but oh, that it would break out now—that it would scatter this terrible darkness.’
These men know what it is to expect the coming forth of the sun,—what it is to long that he would lift up the veil that hides him from them. But we all do expect him, and wait for his rising. We should all be miserable if we were told by some one we believed, ‘He will not appear to-morrow.’ That would not be a message of grief and horror only to people on the hills and to the sick. It would be a message of grief and horror to the whole earth. Nothing else could make up for it. There may be ten thousand beautiful things on the earth, but that would be gone which enables us to see their beauty. In a little time the beauty itself would all be withered and dead. Each man might have hoarded treasures of his own; but when the common sun was withdrawn, all his particular blessings would be worth nothing to him. He would find that he and his poorest neighbours were on a level, alike in misery and desolation.
What has this to do with the words of St. Paul? Much, I believe. He speaks to the Corinthians, one and all, as to men waiting for the coming or the unveiling of Christ. They bore Christ’s name, they were signed with the sign of His cross; they believed Him to be the Source of Light, Peace, Healing, to them and to the whole world. Must they not then desire that He should be fully revealed to them and to the world? Must not that be the great hope of their hearts? Those who felt what confusion there was in their minds for want of His clear light, might long for it more than others; those that were sick at heart might long for His healing more than others. But would it not be a miserable thing to tell any man, ‘He will not appear;’ ‘He will never be revealed’?
Brethren, I am sure this would be the most horrible news that any one could have brought to the Corinthians. I am sure it would be the most horrible news that I could bring to you. I will tell you first why I say this about them, then I will tell you why I say the same about you.
St. Paul had found the Corinthians in great darkness of mind, worshipping many different gods, of whom they had different fancies and notions, worshipping the Goddess of Pleasure above all. They had a dream of some God, some Father, some Friend; at times they fancied these gods to whom they were doing homage were likenesses of Him, His children to whom he had given power in various places and over various things.
But then it seemed to them that there was more evil than good in the world, and that these powers must oftener mean evil to them than good, and that He from whom they got their powers must be harder and sterner than they were, and must design worse and more terrible mischiefs to the creatures He had formed.
They knew that they had done wrong; they felt as if He who had the government of the world must mean to punish them for the wrong; they thought they must try hard to persuade Him not to punish them; the more they tried, the more hopeless they were of escaping.
St. Paul came to these men, saying, ‘God, who created all things, hath sent forth His only begotten Son, the express image of His person, into this world of ours, to deliver it, and them who dwell upon it, from the enemies which are tormenting it. You are not mistaken; the evils of the world are as great as you take them to be. They are about you, tormenting you every hour. You do need to be set free from them. And you are not mistaken that these evils, the very worst of them, come from yourselves. You have committed evil, the desires which led to this evil are in your hearts. And you are not mistaken that God is a righteous Being, and that all these evils are sins against Him. But because that is so, He hath sent His Son to set you free from these plagues above all others. While He was on earth He was freeing men from plagues of body, hunger, leprosy, palsy, fever, and their minds from plagues of rage and madness, and confusion.’ All these, he said, were proofs that an evil spirit, a tyrant, had got dominion over men, and that they were acknowledging his dominion.
These things were not the will of His Father, they were contrary to His will. He came to do His Father’s will by making His creatures straight and well, by breaking the yoke of the oppressor. And now St. Paul said, He has proved Himself the conqueror. He died the death of the Cross. His love showed itself stronger than death. He rose from the dead. He ascended on high. He ascended, not because he was going to leave men or forget them, but that He might do good to the whole universe. Not merely to one here and one there; that He might be the king over all; that He might send His Spirit into the hearts of men, to teach them of Him and of His Father; to make men who had hated each other brethren in Him; to reconcile all to His Father; to fill up the gulf that separated the world after death from the world before death; to bring all things into one.
The Corinthians had believed the Apostle’s gospel; they had renounced their idols. They had been baptized into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost; they met together to eat that bread and drink that wine which declared that they were members of one body in Christ, and that Love had triumphed over sin and death and hell. The more earnestly they believed this to be true, the more they found it true. They found that there was a love stronger than the evil that was in them, stronger than the evil that was in their brethren—one which could convert the most rebellious to itself. But still the world was full of misery. There was this tyranny of the Roman Empire established over the greatest part of it; in each particular country and neighbourhood there were crimes, divisions, oppressions.
Besides believing, then, the Corinthians had need to hope and to wait. What had they to hope and wait for? That He who had been declared to be the deliverer of the world—who had proved Himself so by dying for it—who was proving Himself so in their hearts—would come forth, would declare Himself to be the King of kings and Lord of lords, would put down the wrong, would establish the right. To work for this, to wait for this, the Apostle tells them, was the best thing possible for them, one and all. This kept their heads above water, when they had the strongest current against them, and they found it hardest to strive against it; this helped them to strive against the sin that most easily beset them; against their pride, and their divisions, and their distrusts. This kept them together, because one was not looking for this end, and another for that; but all had the same end before them. Christ was He whom all alike were expecting.
Now I compared this expectation to the looking out for the sun, which I said would certainly shine out in due time, however long the night might seem. But is not there a great difference? The Corinthians waited for Christ—were they not disappointed? Did He come as the sun comes, out of the dark night? After eighteen hundred years has He ever yet appeared? Brethren, the Corinthians were not disappointed. They found more, not less, than they looked for. He whom they believed to be the King of the world proved Himself to be the King of the world. The Jewish nation, which had said, “We will not have this man to reign over us,” was broken in pieces. He whom it rejected, was He who had held it together; without Him it had no life. That breaking up of the nation was an unveiling of Jesus Christ—a clear manifestation of His dominion over men, of His presence in the midst of them. It had been no cunningly-devised fable they had believed. He who was called the carpenter’s son, He who suffered under Pontius Pilate as a malefactor, was the head of all principalities and powers. He was ruling amidst the powers of heaven and amidst the inhabitants of the earth.
But what, you may say, were the Corinthians the better for this? Did this knowledge save them from dying? Had they not to suffer just what their fathers had suffered before them? Had not some of them to bear even harder and more intolerable deaths than their fathers? Even so! Their threescore and ten years came to an end. Some of them breathed out their souls on their beds, some on crosses, some in the fire. They did not escape what the only-begotten Son had endured. And what then? They had learned who it is that governs in both worlds. They had learned that Christ is there as He is here. They had learned that as He is veiled from men here, there He is unveiled. They had learned that death is not a barrier which separates from Him, for He has borne it. They had learned all these lessons; and therefore could wait for the sun with perfect confidence that it would appear. They could be sure that if it shone on them, it would shine on multitudes besides. They could bid all people look for this universal sun. They could tell them that it was a miserable thing not to be expecting the light, and a miserable thing to be loving darkness, rather than light. They could encourage all to come to the light, to walk in it, and live in it, that when it broke out in its full glory they might rejoice that now they had all which they had dreamed of, and waited for; all that was needful to make them thoroughly blessed.
II. So was it with the Corinthians. Why is it to be different with us? We are baptized, as they were, into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. We have heard, as they heard, that Christ is the great deliverer and king. We have had more proofs than they had that He is actually reigning in this country of ours. We have proofs of it in our own consciences. Every sin of which our heart condemns us, is a witness of a righteous Lord who is the enemy of sin. We have the witness of it in the world about us. Every event that has happened in any nation of the earth; any great judgment that has befallen it; any great deliverance that has been wrought for it, has been a day of the Lord, an appearing of Christ; a proof that He is in deed and not in name only our sovereign. If we do not receive it as such, the reason is that our eyes are darkened, that we do not see things as they are. The saints in light, who must perceive in whatever befell them on earth, in whatever befalls the kinsfolk and friends whom they have left behind, sure tokens that He is in the midst of us teaching, guiding, reproving, blessing us; they must wonder at their own blindness, that they did not confess this to be so always. And they must expect with confidence the full revelation of the Son of God, to finish all that He has begun, to establish peace where there was war, and freedom where there is tyranny, and order where there is injustice and confusion. They are sure that He will work out all His purposes, that He will accomplish all His Father’s will. ‘How long, O Lord,’ they cry; ‘how long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood? How long dost Thou wait before thus making the earth a place where men may dwell together in love, and where God may dwell with them, and be their God?’
And, oh, brethren, we sinners upon earth may join in that cry of theirs; we may join our hopes and longings with those of the men who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, and are for ever before the Throne. ‘What,’ some of you may say, ‘must not I who have so many dark thoughts in me, must not I tremble to meet my Lord? Can I desire to see Him whose eyes are as a flame of fire who looketh into the thoughts and intents of the hearts—must not I shrink and quail, when He appears?’ It is a good question. Would to God any of you are asking it in your hearts; then I could give you the answer, and it is this:—Be sure, brethren, that Christ will appear, and that every eye shall see Him; and that the thoughts of every heart will be made manifest before Him. There is no more doubt of that than there is that the sun will rise out of this coming night, and will make all things clear and plain that are hidden in the darkness, or confused in the twilight. And if you have hidden thoughts that you do not wish to be revealed, seeing that they must be laid bare then, oh, let them be laid bare now! Christ’s light is about you at this moment; you need not wait for that till another day; you may come to it, you may ask Him to scatter the darkness that is in you now. It is a miserable thing to have that within us which we are ashamed of; it becomes worse when Christ says, ‘I will deliver you from it, I will take it out of you, I will give you a clean heart and a right spirit.’ Well, then, I say: if you seek for this day by day; if you beg Christ to separate you from the evil that is in you, and to make you right, you are expecting Him; you are waiting for Him. And instead of looking at it as a thing to be dreaded that He should appear at last in His full glory, and put out this darkness in you altogether, that is the very thing of all others you must wish for; you can be content with nothing short of that. And let not any of us, dear brethren, be content with less than that, for Christ promises us no less; and our folly and our misery is, that we do not ask Him and trust Him to fulfil His promises. They exceed all that we can ask or can think. He is willing to make us pure; He is willing to make this earth pure. In a little time, when this world and its fashion have passed away from before our eyes, we shall find that it is so. We shall find that we had Him with us all through our pilgrimage; that He was every moment speaking to us, and moving us to do right; every moment warning us of the wrong. We shall find that we erred in hoping not too much, but far, far too little! If we had hoped more, we should have been freer, and purer, and more loving. We have despaired of God’s goodness, therefore it has been far from us.
But let us despair no longer. For the will of our Father in heaven is to do us good, to save us, to bring us to the knowledge of His truth. His will is that we should receive the blessings He has given us, and wait for the blessings He has in store for us.