Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

“While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?”—Matt. xxii. 41, 42.

Many have thought and said that God is punishing us in India for not communicating our faith to the natives of it. I ventured to ask on Wednesday whether He may not, first of all, be calling upon us to consider what the faith is which we have to communicate. That which is stirring in us will make itself felt; that which we have we must in some way impart. May we not have rather to reproach ourselves for not believing than for not publishing our belief? May not the question which is presented to us all be—not, “Why have you not taught Hindoos and Mahometans of Christ?” but, “What think ye of Christ?”

When our Lord proposed this question to the Pharisees, He added, “Whose Son is He?” Their answer was unusually direct, “The Son of David.” The Christ must unquestionably be a King, a Jewish King, a King not elected, but descended from the royal house.

So much they had learned from the Scriptures; so far they could not be mistaken. We may say that they were merely exhibiting their narrow nationality by making such a reply; but our Lord does not say so. I apprehend that He would have desired them to be more, not less, national than they were. Their misfortune was, that they belonged to a sect, and had forgotten their condition as Israelites; they consorted with Pharisees, who thought as they did, despised publicans and sinners, who were as much children of Abraham as themselves. If they had really believed in a Son of David, if they had in their hearts expected such a Christ, they would have found that they wanted something more than a Son of David; the promised Christ would have burst upon their eyes as He did upon those of the old Rabbi Simeon. But Moses, David, the Prophets were to them names in a book: how could He, the subject of the visions, be more? Must not the unrevealed descendant be even more a shadow than the departed ancestor?

If our Lord then asked us, “What think ye of Christ?” we should probably not say, “The Son of David.” We should avoid that description as coarse and earthly. But what would be our substitute for it?

I. One which is very frequent with us is, “The Founder of our Religion.” To that we should be exceedingly likely to resort, if we were conversing with a Brahmin or an Islamite. I am sure we mean something very real by that phrase; more, perhaps, than we like to speak; more than we know. It is used by many from a kind of shyness, in which there is a mixture of honesty. They dare not adopt more reverent language, lest they should profess more than they feel; they wish to show that they identify that name with the dearest traditions of their infancy, with that which they hold to be most sacred. I freely admit this; no one who knows anything of an Englishman’s reserve,—at least no one who shares in it,—should make even his most awkward utterance the measure of his inward thought.

But if language is not a safe test of the character of an individual, it does indicate very much respecting the character of the society which has given it currency; and it may be fairly tested by the effect which it must produce on the mind of the most simple or of the most acute of our Asiatic subjects who hears it. The first will think that the Founder of the Religion of the whites has given them—not the best and strongest things that belonged to them—but the poorest and weakest, the thing for which they themselves in general care least. He has not given them their courage, strength, truthfulness; but only something besides all these, perhaps (who can tell?) the very thing which often makes them boastful, unjust, tyrannical. The subtle logician, on the other hand,—a class which is much more numerous there than here,—will at once detect the curious inconsequence which is committed, the vicious circle which is described, by one who speaks this. “We ask you what your religion is, and you say it is a belief in the Christ. We ask you what the Christ is, and you say, He is the Founder of your Religion.”

What impression will remain in the mind of either, but one of indifference or contempt? But have we not better, sadder reasons than they have for feeling that such a phrase is worse than weak—that it is frightfully profane? What has “our religion” been? Who will fix upon any period in the history of the world, since the coming of our Lord—who will fix upon any place—and say without blushing what the religion of that time or that place has been? An eminent and accomplished dignitary of our Church has written a history, exemplary for its learning and impartiality, of Christianity in the Early Ages, and of what he happily calls the Latin Christianity of the Middle Ages. What is the result? Most who read the story would feel as if it were the work of a stern satirist, not of a specially calm and mild narrator. So far as Christianity is identical with “our religion,” so far as it is merely man’s conception about God and His Kingdom and His Church, and man’s attempt to realize these conceptions according to a method of his own, so far all is black and hopeless. And it is only because, through all this Christianity, we are able to see a Christ, ruling the universe, not according to man’s conceptions, but according to the eternal laws of Truth and Righteousness, and ever and anon bringing men to feel the poverty of their own conceptions, the wretchedness of their own realizations, and to cast down their imaginations and every high thing which exalts itself against His government, which prevents their being His servants;—it is only because the history of Christendom, from one end to the other, in one place or period of it as much as in another, if it is honestly told, testifies of this dominion, that the reading of it does not drive the student to Atheism and despair. There is no refuge from such Atheism and despair in the records of that Teutonic theory and practice of Christianity which has belonged to later times, any more than in the Greek or Latin theory and practice of it. What we have gained (and it is an infinite gain) is a demonstration that every attempt to substitute any system of religion or system of church polity for Christ, is resistance to God, and misery to man. But we have not gained any new power, we have lost much of the power which our ancestors possessed of constructing systems and making them work.

Oh! then, let us leave off thinking of Christ as the Founder of our Religion, lest we should think of Him as founding something which will perish when He appears, which will be burnt up in the fires of His judgment day.

II. An earnest and devoted missionary would feel little tempted to adopt this language. He would say, “I think of Christ as my Saviour, my Lord and Master; I have found that without Him I cannot live or die. I find His service to be freedom. I would fain persuade all men to renounce every service but His.” What power does a man with ever so little of general culture possess, who can speak such words because he feels and knows them to be true! What hidden sympathies he can awaken in hearts that have become petrified in an habitual Christianity,—in hearts that have grown up in hatred of Christianity! To such testimonies, borne by self-denying men whose actions were lively commentaries on all that they uttered, who could be trusted by men that had never before known what trust was, we may attribute most of the triumphs which Protestants—perhaps the best of those which Romanists—have won. And why have these triumphs been so few? Why do we look back on the conversion of nations as belonging wholly to another day—to another stage in the history of the world? Is it not that the missionary does not follow out to its consequences that thought of Christ which in its germ he holds with such a strong and heroic grasp? Why is there, ever and anon, that strange unexpected response to his confession? Why does any Hindoo feel that there must be such a Saviour, such a Master as he speaks of? Why does any feel that that Master must be his? Can the earnest man who has yielded to Christ as a Master for himself, who has ventured so much upon the possibility that he might find others who could receive Him also, stop short of that full conviction which was expressed by the Apostle of the Gentiles, which alone gave him strength to preach his Gospel, that Christ is the Lord of every man; that He is the Saviour of the World? Of course he does believe this, in a sense. It stands written; he cannot reject it; in his heart of hearts he would grieve to reject it. But I think the time must come when he will find that he cannot hold his former faith unless he grounds it upon this teaching of St. Paul—that he must cease to think of Christ as his Deliverer and Master, or, at all events, cease to think that he has any message to men, if he does not think of Him as Lord of Men; that while we practically, and almost in terms, disclaim that title for Him, we hold the few proselytes we do make upon a most insecure tenure, often puffing them up with a sense of their superiority to those from whom they have separated, which is fatal to their characters as Christian men; often tempting them to presume upon their profession, till they plunge into sins as great as those which they have renounced. Whereas the Gospel, according to St. Paul, lays the foundation of Christian Churches and Kingdoms—composed, indeed, of men with all evil propensities, liable to all the Jewish and Heathen errors and sins which he lays bare in his Epistles, but—held together by a Divine Spirit, and witnesses to all men of that which they are intended to be.

III. St. Paul had been bred in that faith which the Pharisees announced when they said that Christ was the Son of David. Certainly he never renounced that faith. He was not converted from it when the vision on the way to Damascus told him that the Jesus whom he persecuted was the Christ.

That vision, he says, was the revelation that Christ was in him, that the King Whom he had looked upon as far off was the Lord of his heart and reins, was claiming the dominion there. But he did not believe Him to be less the King of his nation. He began at once to convince the Jews—and that publicly—that Jesus was their King; that they as a nation owed Him homage. And when he turned from them to the Gentiles, it was that he might declare the Son of David to be the Son of Man; that he might declare the King of the Jews to be the King of the whole earth. He had begun to understand why David in spirit called the Son that was to sit upon his throne, his Lord; how truly He had been the Lord of him and of all kings and holy men and prophets who had lived in the times of old; how they had sung of Him and spoken by Him, and declared His Name as the Head of the Everlasting Age and as the Prince of Peace, as the Man who was in the midst of the Throne. He perceived that the revelation of the latter day, the revelation which Christ made when He came in the flesh, and died, and rose, and ascended on high, was the revelation of the hidden Father; that He came as the Son, not of David only, but of God, to adopt men into His family, to anoint them with the Spirit with which He was anointed. The new dispensation was not new because the Christ was now, for the first time, making Himself known. He had been before all worlds; His delights had been with the sons of men. Of His fulness had all received, and grace for grace. But it was a new dispensation, because He had emancipated and adopted that race which had been under tutelage and bondage as the children of His Father; because the full name of God, and of the city of God, could now be written upon them. If we answer the question in the text as St. Paul answered it, we shall say, “We think of Christ as the King who led the Hosts of Israel through the Red Sea into the Land of Promise. We think of Him as the true King of all those nations in the old world which were dreaming of other kings and leaders, and moulding them after their fancies. We think of Him as the source of all that was righteous, true, and brave in the chosen people. We think of Him as the only source of what was righteous, brave, and true in all the heathen people. We think of Him as having been made of the seed of David, according to the flesh; as having been actually born of a woman, and having actually died upon a Cross, that He might redeem the sons of women, that He might make reconciliation for all the sinners of the earth. We think of Him as declared by His resurrection to be the Son of God with power, as ascending on high to lead captive men’s captivity; as sitting on the right hand of God in our nature, the representative of men. We think of Him as proving His kingdom over men by sending the Spirit of Love, Truth, and Unity amongst men, to fight with all spirits of falsehood, hatred, strife, that are rending them asunder. We think of Him as coming to judge and punish that nation which had set up its own righteousness against His, which had refused to acknowledge men as its brethren, which had given itself up to hypocrisy and cruelty and malice. We think of Him as the Judge of all nations, whether confessing His name or rejecting it; as separating in each between that which is good and evil, false and true; as pledged at last to burn what is false with fire unquenchable, and not to let anything perish which has any life and worth in it. We think of Him as the source of all manliness, freedom, gentleness, in the nations of Christendom; every unmanly, slavish, ungentle act which has been done by any Christian man, priest, king, noble, peasant, being therefore done in defiance of His authority, in resistance to His Spirit; and those acts being most criminal and hateful in His sight, most dark and devilish, when they have been done under pretence of exalting Him and putting down His enemies. We think of Him as the Giver, not of rain only and fruitful seasons, but of moral instincts, a sense of what is just and lovely, a power of doing right and generous acts, to Pagans and to Mussulmans; we think of every Hindoo feeling respecting Incarnation and Sacrifices as a feeling after Him Who could truly become one with men, and truly and perfectly offer Himself for men. We think of Him as the inspirer of the Mussulman belief in a One Living God, and of the Mussulman’s wrath against idol worship. We think of Him as withering the strength of the Hindoo because he gave himself to unclean services and bloody sacrifices; as maintaining the cause of the Latin nations against Mahometanism because it divided man from God,—so reducing man into a slave, and turning God into a tyrant. We think of Him as fighting from age to age on behalf of the truth for which Romanists have been witnesses, that there is a one Family under one Head, united in one Father, possessed by one Spirit. We think of Him as fighting from age to age against that falsehood which has borne all detestable fruits in practice, that the Family on Earth has been separated from the Family in Heaven; that it has an earthly Lord, or an earthly Father; that the Spirit within it can ever be a Spirit working lies, and not the Spirit of Truth. We think of Him as fighting on the side of Protestants whensoever they are resisting these fictions and asserting the dominion of the Son of Man and the Son of God against His servants who usurp His name. We think of Him as fighting against Protestants, and baffling and confounding them, whensoever they set up their sect notions and theories against His universal and eternal kingdom. We think of Him as the source of all national strength, valour, freedom, to England; of all her Art, Science, Justice; certain to go forth with her hosts whenever they are going forth in the cause of righteousness and humanity; certain to call her to strict account for every unrighteous and inhuman act or purpose, for the worship of gold or any false and cruel god which degrades those who serve him from upright men into base and grovelling animals. We think of Him as the Searcher of every heart now, as the Judge of the quick and dead hereafter. We think of Him as the King Who will reign till all powers, voluntary and involuntary, are made subject to Him.”

IV. There is nothing in such statements as these which can seem new to any one; they are involved in the words which we repeat every Sunday—His Son, our Lord. There is not one of them which comes near to the comprehensiveness of St. Paul’s language, where he speaks of Christ as the Head of all Principalities and Powers, and of every name that is named, whether in this world or in the world to come. And yet there is something in them which will clash not only with the conceptions of men who would confine the thought of Christ within a set of notions, habits, services, which they call religious; which notions, habits, services, are so distinguished from the other occupations of their lives by their unreality that the religious and the unreal come at last to be nearly Synonymous expressions in their minds. I am afraid that many who give themselves credit for being unusually devout—nay, who have passed through periods of much sincere and fervent devotion, will think that the name of Christ loses its sacredness when it is brought out of the circle of their experiences into contact with the rough doings of the universe. And if the effect of any such thoughts of Christ as those I have set before you had a tendency to divide Him from the innermost sanctuary of the soul; to make the belief in Him, as a deliverer of the conscience from its burden of sin, less strong; to make Him more an outward ruler, less a ruler over the reason and the will,—I admit that this is a mischief for which no good, at least that I can imagine, could be a compensation. For were that the effect of what I have said, it would conspire, I think, with all that is most dangerous in our existing religious tempers. They lead us far too much to think of Christ as belonging to the past, as only to be read of in a book; they hinder men from awakening up to the conviction, “Lo! He was with me here in this place, in this lonely night, in this stormy sea, when this Sepoy had his knife at my throat—and I knew it not.” Not to put the Son of Man at a distance from men, but to declare how near He is to them in all their daily toils, in all their least and greatest trials, would I recur to the language of the Creeds and of the Scriptures respecting Him. Not to underrate the terrors of the conscience, or its need of deliverance, but to show how every Yogi torture, the burning of every widow, every superstition and every crime which superstition engenders, is the witness of these terrors, is a cry for that deliverance, would I claim that our thoughts of Christ should not be limited by the boundaries of Christendom. Not to show that there is any other name given among men which can set them free from this anguish, but to assert that the Son of God has explained the secret of it by showing that the sin of men is rebellion against a Father, and has sacrificed himself to take away that sin, and to unite men with His Father,—would I protest against every thought of Christ which would sever the link between Him and that which is deepest and most human in every one who is born into the world into which He was born, who dies in the world in which He died.

I believe, brethren, that our words to you about this Indian chastisement must sound to you most idle, unmeaning words—must be most idle, unmeaning words—unless we take this course, unless we cherish these thoughts of Christ. How can we have the face to tell men that God is punishing them for not confessing Christ when we say in the same breath that they have no Christ to confess, that He is not the Lord and Saviour of Hindoos and Mussulmans, not the Lord and Saviour even of the English nation, but only of certain individuals of that nation who have privileges which do not appertain to their countrymen, or to mankind? How can we blaspheme God by saying that He subjects us to heavy calamities for not doing homage to a King who is not ours—for not proclaiming a Saviour to the nations who is not theirs? Or, is it meant that we are to proclaim some God who is not the Father of men in Jesus Christ, a God who executes vengeance at his pleasure, a God who does not seek to make men holy as he is holy? Alas! what need to tell them of such a God—they acknowledge him already! The fear is that they may lead our sons to acknowledge him too, that they may be so utterly bewildered by what they have heard and by what they see; by their vague traditions of a Saviour for mankind whom yet they dare scarcely speak of as a Saviour for themselves; by instincts to belief in the native mind which they cannot account for; by the consciousness of Wrong and the consciousness of Right, without knowing who has awakened either; by the sense of power, without being able to say whether it comes from the mere arms which they wield or from some singular gift bestowed upon the English race; by the conviction that that power ought to be used for the repression of crime, the assertion of Righteousness; by the mighty temptation to use it recklessly for the gratification of individual passion and vengeance;—that, at last, they will bow down before a Siva, clothing him with some holy name they have learnt in the West, but really contemplating him only as a destroyer.

Verily, brethren, Christ has been ruling over our nation—has been ruling over our empire,—whatever we may have thought of Him, or this would have happened to us long ago. Verily, He has proved His presence in that distant land, His care for Britons and Hindoos and Mussulmans, or no Christianity of ours would have been the least protection against that which it has encountered. And now He is speaking to us—not merely, as I said before, to our rulers, but to the fathers of families, to the masters of schools, to all who are to form men that shall carry the English name into other lands. He is not, I think, bidding us introduce some new scheme of education which shall prove us to be much wiser and better than our forefathers. The institutions which they have founded inspired higher thoughts of Christ than they could grasp themselves, or than we can grasp yet. They taught their children what we have sometimes in contempt called a Pagan lore. They themselves called it by a truer and more significant name—a humane lore. They thought—or they worked in the thought, if they were not conscious of it—that the servants of the Son of Man should know what men have felt, done, longed for, in all times and countries the most remote from their own. They believed instinctively that the revelation of Christ was the interpreter of the thoughts which He Himself had awakened in them; that He Himself was the satisfaction of them. Wonderful discipline for those who are to be citizens of an empire upon which the sun does not set! All we want is, that it should be connected with a still deeper and holier discipline, received in nurseries on the knees of mothers; that it should be connected with all the problems of the individual conscience; that it should expand to meet the problems of Modern History, the thoughts and speculations of the nations which modern discovery has made known; that the Bible should be treated, not as a book which stands aloof, frowning upon all these inquiries, but as the key to the meaning of them: and we have an armour with which we may safely send forth our young men to fight the hottest battles. Only let us teach them to think of Christ as the Author of all that is pure and true, as the enemy of all that is vile, in their own hearts and in the hearts of all of whom they read, of all with whom they shall converse; only let us teach them that their own thoughts and ours are no measure of what He is; only let us tell them that He would make them His knights, that the banner of His Cross will be over them in whatever lands they are, into whatever furnace they may be cast; only let us bid them expect, and let us expect ourselves, the hour when He shall appear in the glory of His Father, and when that glory shall fill the whole earth.