The Uniting Name

“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”—Matthew xxviii. 19, 20.

“Why, it has often been asked by men of great ability and benevolence, of reverent and not captious minds,—why did the Early Church dwell so much upon mysteries concerning the Name and Nature of God? Why, above all, did it make these mysteries the bonds of communion between its members? Was it not a strange departure from the right and natural order of Christian education, to begin with those difficult problems which it is scarcely supposed that a few of the most initiated ever really master? Was it not a breach of all charity to take certain expressions, which only one here and there can pronounce without some inaccuracy or stammering, as shibboleths for the Church in all nations? Would not the Sermon on the Mount, with its heavenly morality; would not the life and example of Jesus Christ, have been an easier yoke, a lighter burden for the disciples young or old? Might they not have been the links of a far more comprehensive fellowship?”

Many take the answers to these questions almost for granted. They suppose it is clear that the old Church did not think of charity or comprehension at all; that its object was to discover the terms on which its corporation could be made most close and exclusive. And since that most undoubtedly ought not to be, and perhaps cannot be, our object, they conclude that the ancient methods must be altogether unsuitable for us. In general, the defenders of our symbols are not much disposed to dispute these premises, they demur only to the inferences. They say that the men of the first centuries were undoubtedly zealous above all things for Truth; to contend earnestly for the Faith once delivered to the saints was their function. They therefore could tolerate none of those compromises which we justify on the plea of promoting concord. Their wisdom, it is alleged, was “first pure”: when that quality was secured, and not till then, “peaceable.” And if, it is added, these old men would have been better for a little of our charity to soften their eagerness on behalf of nice distinctions, we have far more need of their unflinching determination and logical severity to counteract our tenderness and looseness. I would ask both these parties to reflect for an instant on the passage which the Church takes for its Epistle next Sunday, before they rest in the assurance that they have sounded the bottom of this question, and have ascertained what was the leading thought in the minds of those who proclaimed the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost most passionately and perseveringly. It would certainly appear as if the lessons, “God is Love, and he that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God;” “Whosoever saith that he loveth God and hateth his brother, is a liar,” were those which the compilers of the ancient Services, whence ours are derived, did most naturally associate with the mystery which is set before us to-day, however they might forget those same lessons when they had power to enforce the doctrine of the Trinity by decrees and excommunications. If there were only this evidence, I could not esteem it as slight. For an act of worship expresses the inmost mind of a man far more than his utterances in moments of passion and controversy. When that act is connected with a method and scheme of devotion, it acquires a still higher significance. And when it is adopted to be the united utterance of a whole society, not once, but statedly and successively, that society gives as great a witness, as distinct a pledge as we can imagine of its convictions and its principles. And therefore it is impossible that this instance can be a solitary or a peculiar one. Let it be remembered that the writer in the New Testament to whom all believers in the Trinity refer as the unfolder of that mystery is the writer from whom these passages are taken, and the character and purpose of whose life they are felt to reveal. Neither in the early ages, nor, I believe, in the middle ages, were those two aspects of St. John’s writings ever contemplated apart from each other. The Churchmen might themselves persecute cruelly, but they never doubted that he was declaring the name of the God of Infinite Charity, when he declared the name into which we are baptized.

But there is another way of examining the subject. Leaving St. John, and what is sometimes called his transcendental lore, we may consider those earlier Evangelists, from whom, according to some modern authorities, the fourth Gospel departs so widely. We may inquire what St. Matthew has to say of the message with which the Apostles were entrusted. That message is closely connected with a belief in the Trinity. If it is a narrow one, that belief may be reasonably charged with drawing lines which excluded different forms of thought and opinion, and therefore a number of true and earnest spirits, from the fold of Christ.

I. St. Matthew tells us that after His resurrection Jesus stood upon a mountain in Galilee, and spake these words to His disciples: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: and, lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.” I purposely exclude the sentence which introduces this command. I wish you only to remember that a set of Galilean fishermen were bidden to teach or make disciples of all nations. I wish you to remember that in some way or other these Galileans did make disciples among Jews, the worshippers of the I Am, the Jehovah; among Greeks, the worshippers of human heroes and the forms of nature. I will go no further. I will dwell upon no traditions respecting the journeys of them and their followers into more distant lands. Only consider what was necessary to bring these two portions of the world into a common fellowship.

Christians of our day sometimes undertake to prove that Jesus of Nazareth was a far more perfect and Divine Teacher than Socrates, than Confucius, than Zoroaster. If they can establish this point, they think they are making disciples of men who reverence these reformers. You will see at once how impossible it was that the fishermen of Galilee could have engaged in any such task as this. They knew nothing of the Greek or the Chinese or the Persian wisdom. They could institute no comparisons between it and what they had received from their own Master. And if they could, what would they have effected? The nations believed in certain gods. To these they referred any blessings, any civilization they had received. It was the punishments and curses which these could inflict that they dreaded. What was there in the announcement of a great, benevolent, supernaturally illustrious teacher, to displace these convictions, to abate these fears? Throw in what miraculous powers you please to aid them in their work, let them speak with ever so many tongues, let them be able to work ever so many marvellous cures, still if these only demonstrated the greatness of a certain Man who had been born and had died in Judæa, how could they supplant this faith in Divine beings? how could they bring these different fragments of faith into a whole?

II. But these Galileans could not possibly attach this sense to the word “make disciples,” because it was altogether foreign from their own experience. When Jesus had said to them, “Follow me,” “Become my disciples,” He had spoken to them of the Kingdom of Heaven; He had taught them the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven; He had bidden them go and tell their countrymen, The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. By degrees they learnt to enter into the force of these words. They found that He was revealing to them a strange world within themselves; that He was explaining, by the processes of the natural world with which they were most familiar, what processes God was carrying on in their hearts; that He was showing them, through the most ordinary human relations, in what relation they stood to Him and to His Father. They found that in every discourse, whether to them or to the multitude, He spoke of this Father, He said He had come into the world that they might see His Image and know His Will, that they might be formed in His Image and conformed to His Will. They found that He intended them to be His ministers in preaching His Father’s Kingdom to men; in manifesting the nature of it; in proving how much mightier it was than all powers of evil and discord, by healing sickness and casting out devils. If they were to be Christ’s disciples, how could they suppose that they should make all nations His disciples by merely setting Him forth as a greater, wiser, holier prophet than any that had come before Him? How could they do anything for the good of men, anything to bind the nations into one, unless they could bring them a Gospel concerning God, unless they could declare broadly and simply Who He was of Whom they had been dreaming, Whom they had been seeking for, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him; Who had never been far from any of them; Who, through all their crude conceptions, had been making Himself known in their consciences, Whom all their idolatries had not been able to hide or to banish from them?

III. Those words which He spoke as He stood on the Mount (those which I passed over), “All power is given to me in heaven and earth,” were indeed most necessary before they could believe that power would descend on them to execute such a command. Only if He had reconciled earth and heaven, only if He had conquered the visible as well as the invisible world, only if both were gathered up in Him, could they have the credentials or the inner might which were needed for heralds to the Nations. “Go ye therefore,” was the natural sequence to this assurance. But it was not enough. They were messengers from God to men, as he was, who had seen the vision in the burning Mount. They were messengers, as he was, to a sense-bound, earth-bound race, that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob had seen their affliction and had heard their cry, and was going to deliver them. But they had as much necessity to ask as Moses had: “Behold, when we come unto them and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers has sent us unto you and they shall say to us, What is His name? what shall we say unto them?” The answer was given before the question had arisen—“Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

IV. The Name, the new and awful Name, was proclaimed. But it was not merely proclaimed. The Nations were not merely to be told, “It is this Being whom henceforth you are to worship; to this Name, the names of the Delphic Apollo and the Jove of the Capitol must bow.” Go ye, it was said, and baptize all nations into this name. Speak not of it as if it stood aloof from them, as if it were afar off them. This mystery is about them, embracing them, sustaining them. This is the Being out of Whose presence they cannot go,—Who, if they ascend into Heaven, is there,—if they make their bed in Hell, is there. In all their speculations, they have been beholding somewhere, projected to a distance from them, the vision of an awful Father and of a tender Brother. The sense of an Inspirer from whom all their thoughts and desires have come, has mingled with these visions and disturbed them. Each has crossed the other, and obscured it. Each has caught the colours of earth, till it has seemed to be only a mist drawn up from earth. Neither could subsist without the other; neither had any worth except as it was found to be no shadow cast from the worshipper, but the substance from which all the shadows that he pursues were cast. Let the Name be heard, but do not bring your paltry proofs to sustain the proclamation. It will sustain itself. You can trust God to make His creatures know that which He desires they should know. Be assured, all they have expressed in their mythologies, all they have been unable to express, all the wonders of creation, all the wonders within themselves, will be His hornbook. Only let your light shine forth before those whom you teach; only show that you come to claim them as your Father’s children, as the brethren of His Son, as the inheritors of the One Spirit; only hold forth the simple sign He has ordained, that He owns them and adopts them as sons, that He seals them with His Spirit; only believe, and tell them to believe, that He writes upon them His own Name, and the name of the City of their God,—that He makes them freemen of the New Jerusalem, fellow-heirs with His saints that have been and that shall be, and then see whether the idol-thrones do not fall; whether the Nations are able to uphold their separate gods any longer, whether all the pale names do not shrink and dwindle before the perfect light which God has kindled in the dome of this dark world,—not for the wise, but for the poor, the ignorant, for those that are out of the way.

V. I think, my brethren, the more we study this history, the more we shall be convinced that the preaching of this Name and the Baptism into this Name were the mighty powers by which the divided worship, the demon-worship, of the old world was overthrown. And this, because it was felt that there was one inclusive Truth revealed to mankind, a Truth which we cannot comprehend, but which comprehends us; a living Truth, which speaks itself out in a Person not in a proposition; a Truth into which we must be received, and which then will go with us through life and death, meeting us in every new stage of our education, interpreting itself to us by our own individual trials, and by all the trials through which the world, or any section of it, is appointed to pass, bringing within its circle the sage and the little child.

For here is one of the signs and tests of its power. Naturally the Church would have been disposed, and we know was disposed, to restrict Baptism to those who could understand the Gospel which was preached to them; could intelligently abjure idols, and repent consciously of sin; could enter into the teaching respecting Christ and the Father, which the Catechist imparted to them. But, by a force greater than that of any doctor, or of all the doctors in Christendom, a force which they could not account for, but to which they must yield, the doctrine established itself in all directions that the infant must also be signed with this Name. No greater triumph, I think, was ever won than this for mankind, over the prejudices of those who were the appointed heralds of God’s Revelation to it. If our confession and acceptance of that Revelation is once made the primary condition of our entering into God’s Family, the very idea of a Father is lost, and the Son and the Spirit are always in danger of being regarded merely as objects of our reverence. The Name becomes the one which distinguishes Christians, or certain Christians, from other people, not the Name which underlies and bears up the universe.

VI. To substitute for such a Name the most beautiful precepts or the divinest example, is to deprive these precepts of their living force, of their relation to humanity; it is to make the example something wholly external to us, which we may admire, but which we shall only make the most abortive attempts to imitate. When our Lord had told the disciples that they were to go forth making disciples of all Nations, and baptizing them into His Name, then He added, “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” The very highest, apparently the most hopeless commands of the Sermon on the Mount, become possible—the most amazing promises of it are brought within the reach of the wayfarer and the sinner,—when once he knows that the Father, whom he is to be like, has taken him into fellowship with Him; that the Son, in whom dwelt the perfect obedience, has made him a partaker of His nature; that the Spirit is with him, to create the purity of spirit, to which the Kingdom of Heaven belongs—the hunger and thirst after righteousness, which will assuredly be satisfied. The more we know of our own selfish instincts, and whither they would lead us, the more desperate, and often scornful, we feel about any maxims of morality. They are very fine; we can talk of them and repeat them; but to follow them is another matter. But the assurance, “You are grafted on a new stock; those selfish impulses are not the laws of your life; you are in Christ new creatures; the name of the Trinity is upon you;”—this restores to morality its proper sense and vital energy. We feel and confess that, when we are not observing all things which Christ has commanded, it is not because we have been walking in the track into which we have been put, but because we have erred and strayed from His ways like lost sheep.

VII. Yes, brethren, for Christ adds, “Lo! I am with you always, even to the end of the world. The things which I commanded you, when I was standing on the Mount, when I was sitting with you in the ship, are the things which I am commanding now; which I have been commanding since the world began; which I shall go on to command when your work is over on earth and I have called you home. Lo! I am with you; the Lord and King of your spirits, as much as I ever was; the bond between you and God, as I ever have been; the bond between you and all the men to whom you shall go preaching and baptizing, as I have ever been. You go to claim their homage not for a Prophet or King or Priest that lived once, but for a Prophet and a King and a Priest who was dead and is alive, and who liveth for evermore. You go to proclaim, not a religion of yours, not a master of yours, but the Son of Man and the Son of God. You go in the faith that He has been manifested to destroy the works of the Devil; all division, strife, hatred, all false worship; whatever rends the world asunder, whatever makes it unfit for the habitation of the Eternal God. You go among men who will have each his Gentile name, that which unites him to a family on earth, that which recalls to him the images of his forefathers. You go to put on them a Christian name, which shall remind them that they are brothers of a whole family in Heaven as well as in earth. You go therefore to lay the foundation of a city which lieth four-square, the length as large as the breadth, a city of pure gold, like unto clear glass.”

VIII. The foundation of that city has been laid, brethren; every nation of baptized men has confessed it, and brought its glory and honour into it. But this city has set itself up as a rival to the nations of the earth, instead of being their teacher, instead of making them the disciples of the Son of God. It has glorified His name,—not the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Therefore has there come all that contention and narrowness and hardness of heart into the Church, which has caused this Name to be evil spoken of, and which has made men wish that they could cast it off from them. Therefore has that which is the very expression of all unity, which recognises and harmonises all partial conceptions, which is the spring of all free and practical life, been slandered as the cause of separation—the mere contradiction of all that men had thought before it has been revealed to them,—the driest and most contracted of school theories. But Christ is with us always, even to the end of the age. However His ministers have misunderstood His commission however they have turned it to the curse of those whom they were sent to bless, He has been present in all generations, turning the confusions of the world and the sins of the Church into means of manifesting the glory of the Divine Name. The Church would have kept the nations down; would have made its own universality the excuse for denying their distinct callings, the blessed work which He has given them to do. He has punished the Church sorely for this oppression,—punished it by worse than outward calamities, by leaving it to the pride, sensuality, worldliness, into which it must fall, when it usurps powers which do not belong to it, and when it forgets its true Lord in some visible substitute for Him. Christ has called the nations to vindicate the moral and intellectual freedom without which they cannot worship Him. The Church in those nations has lost sight of the universality which appertains to it, and without which it cannot be a herald to all people. Christ has punished it by allowing sectarianism and divisions to creep into all corners of it; so that the unity of the nations is as much shaken as its own deeper and more comprehensive unity. But at the same time He has awakened sighs and cries for that larger and more embracing fellowship, which men often seek to satisfy by taking refuge in a closer atmosphere than that which they find it hard to breathe in. Only let them believe that He has not broken His promise, that He is with them still, and He will show by degrees that the name which was put upon them at the first gives them that catholicity, that freedom of the universe, which they can find in nothing else. They will find that it throws down no national altar on which we have asked strength and freedom and victory for our land; that it hallows the family altar on which we have worshipped the God of our Fathers. For the name of the God of Abraham and Isaac, the name of the Jehovah, is not lost in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost; the perfect and universal revelation explains all the gradual discoveries that were leading to it, and shows how each connected itself with some permanent portion of human society and of man’s inner being. And that perfect revelation will be proved at last to be indeed what an ecclesiastical system, what philosophical liberalism, has tried to be and failed, the assertion of a humanity in which all races are equally partakers. The Church which is to be will not be another than that which grew up under the authority of this commission, and has stood ever since in different lands, in different degrees of strength and feebleness, of sincerity and corruption. She will only have learned, through hard suffering, the foundation which she has forgotten, the work which she has neglected. She will cast off whatever wood, hay, or stubble, even whatever gold or precious stones, have hidden that foundation from us. She will be purged of whatever loveth and maketh a lie, that she may understand she is the witness of Truth to all nations. In them she may consecrate temples to hallow their civil order and life; she may pour her oil upon the king and the priest. But in herself—in that universal city, the New Jerusalem,—writes St. John, “I saw no temple, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”