Corinthians

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The Limits of Liberty 1 of 2
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient- 1 Corinthians 6:12

It has been said by some one, I forget by whom, that a Christian has no rights, he has only duties. That is a very striking statement, and seems to sound the note of the heroic. Now in a loose and popular way, there may be some justification for that statement. It may have served its purpose as a word of warning to men who were always insisting on their rights. But for all that it should never have been spoken whatever purposes it may have served, for it is utterly antagonistic to the spirit of the Gospel of our Lord. If there is one thing Paul insists on more than another, it is the rights of the believer in Christ Jesus. He argues with a passionate intensity for the liberties of every Christian. Never is his style so animated, never so bold and luminous his thought, as when he fights the battle for his converts of their liberties in Jesus Christ. He knew that everything depended upon it, that the very life of the church depended on it. On it depended whether the church of Christ was to stand out or to be lost in Judaism. And so, sometimes by appeal to the Old Testament and always on the broad ground of grace, he appeals to his hearers to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free.

Liberties and Limitations

But then, following hard on this insistence and in some measure just because of it, we soon come to detect in the apostle the presence and pressure of another thought. Just as you have right through the Old Testament tremendous insistence on the awfulness of God, and then when God has been safeguarded so, we have the revelation of Christ that God is love. So in Paul you have first the splendid doctrine of the inalienable liberties of every Christian, and then the limitation of these liberties. So far from it being the case that a Christian has no rights, there is no man with rights so incontestable. They are to be cherished at whatever cost and in the teeth of angriest opposition. But then, having insisted upon that with all the emphasis of inspiration, Paul, with his wonderful knowledge of the heart, flashes light on the dangers of that liberty. All things are lawful to me, but all are not expedient. A Christian is one who is willing to forego. He uses his liberties as not abusing them; he recognizes limits in their exercise. And it is on these limits of our Christian liberty -- limits, mark you, always self-imposed- that I wish to speak. Such limits, as I understand my Testament, are determined by one or other of three interests.

Liberties Determined by Interests in Personal Safety

There is a passage in one of the Epistles which says, "Touch not; taste not; handle not." I know no passage in the Scripture that is oftener misunderstood than that one. It has been quoted as inspired direction to those who were yielding to temptation. It has been used as the motto of abstinence societies, as though it embodied apostolic counsel. Whereas as a matter of fact, if you read the passage carefully, you will find that the very opposite is true: these are the words of Paul's antagonists, and against their view of life he is in arms. The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof-- that is the ringing note of the apostle. There is nothing in it common or unclean: everything is to be received with thanksgiving. But then, having uttered that grand truth which we must never forfeit for any popular clamor, Paul proceeds to limit it in exercise by the consideration of his immortal well being. All things are lawful to me, says the apostle, but I will not be brought under the power of any. I will not let anything usurp dominion over this temple of the Holy Ghost. In other words, this brave and thoughtful man who insisted so passionately on his rights in Christ deliberately limited these rights in the interest of his individual safety. I know few sentences in literature more touching than the closing sentence of the ninth chapter here. "I keep under my body .... " says the apostle, "lest...I myself should be a castaway." I keep under my body is our version, but the word in the original is far more graphic. It is a word borrowed from the prize ring: it means, I beat my body black and blue. Now whatever Paul was, he was no ascetic and certainly he never preached asceticism. I can imagine the scorn he would have poured on the wild asceticism of the Middle Ages. Yet here, lest he should be a castaway, lest he should be rejected at the end, deliberately and in sternest fashion, he limited his great liberty in Christ. Think of it -- this great apostle haunted with fears of being cast away: never quite sure of himself -- never quite certain that he might not be tripped some day and overthrown! It seems incredible and yet to Paul it was so far from being incredible that he crushed his body down in terror of it. "Stand fast, therefore," he says to the Galatians, "in the liberty with which Christ hath made us free." Cherish as a principle that is inestimable the fullness of your liberties in Christ. But then remember that you are only human and weak and very liable to fall, and use your liberty as not abusing it.

Principles Versus Safeguards

Now as that was the apostle's practice, so it ought to be the practice of all Christians. It is along these lines that in Christ Jesus we ought to seek to regulate our lives. There are many who would exalt into a principle what may be only a salutary safeguard. There are many on the other hand who in the name of liberty pave their way to misery and ruin. But he who is wise -- he who is taught of God -- will be careful to avoid these two extremes, for neither of them has the mind of Christ. On the one hand, he will assert his liberty. He will say all things are lawful unto me. He will give no place in the charter of his rights to the touch not and the taste not and the handle not. But then recalling the awful possibility that in his voyage he should be cast away, he will impose upon himself stern limitations. He will remember how the best have fallen and fallen tragically in unexpected ways; he will remember that life is full of peril and that for the surest foot the ground is slippery; and so in the interests of individual safety -- and we cannot afford to trifle with our safety -- he will say all things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient.
And may I say in passing that such action is in full accord with the teaching of our Lord. I say it because there are so many nowadays who want to distinguish between Paul and Jesus. Now it is true that through the life of Christ there breathes the spirit of most glorious freedom. Think of His teaching on the Sabbath for example; think of Him at the marriage feast at Cana. There is a geniality, if I may put it so -- a human breadth in His teaching and example which has no better witness than just this, that it made every Pharisee indignant. All that is gloriously true, yet remember that this is also true. Never was there a teacher sent from God who could be so stem and severe as Jesus Christ. It was not the ardent and impetuous Paul -- it was the gentle and genial Savior who said, "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off; if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out." Is there anything radically bad in the right hand? It is the organ that I stretch out in prayer. Is there anything radically evil in the eye? God has made it, and what He made is good. And yet according to the word of Jesus, the hour may come when for a man's own safety it were wise to forfeit the gladness of the eye and cut away the glory of the hand. Mark you, if thy right hand offend thee -- there is no talk of anybody else. It is in the interests of a man's own life that he must use this drastic limitation. And so you see Paul is but echoing what he had learned from his Redeemer when he says, in the interests of personal safety, all things are lawful but all are not expedient.

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The Limits of Liberty 2 of 2
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

Liberty Limited in Interest of Christian Brotherhood

The classical instance of this Christian attitude is found in this first Epistle to the Corinthians. It is so interesting and so significant that you will bear with me if I give it in detail. The apostle pictures a Corinthian Christian invited to dinner by a friend. That friend is a heathen man and in comparatively humble circumstances. Now in the food that was set upon the table it was almost certain there would be temple meat: meat, that is, of beasts that had been sacrificed and then sold to the market by the priests. And the difficulty for the Christian guest was this, was he at liberty to eat that meat? If it had been offered to idols in the temple, would not eating it mean fellowship with idols? It was about that difficulty that they wrote to Paul, and his answer is supremely noble. Go to your dinner, he says, and ask no questions. Eat what is set before you and be thankful. If you start worrying about things like that, you will do conscience irreparable mischief. The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.

But now suppose that next to that Christian brother there is sitting another and a weaker Christian. He is struggling to be true to Christ, but the pull of the old life is terrible. And he turns to his stronger brother by his side, and he says to him anxiously, "That is temple meat." The question was (and it was a daily question) what was the stronger brother to do then? If he partook, his neighbor might partake, and that might be opening the gate to ruin. He would go home beset by the dark sense that he was again in fellowship with devils. But, on the other hand, if he did not partake out of consideration for that weaker conscience, what became of his liberty in Christ? So they wrote to Paul about that also, and I think you know how he replied. As a Christian man, he said, you are duty-bound to consider the weakness of your brother. Knit into fellowship by Jesus Christ, called to the bearing of each other's burdens, God forbid that you should use your liberty to offend one of these little ones. Mark you, there is no word of personal safety now. The stronger brother was perfectly secure. For him an idol was nothing in the world, and he could eat and drink with a good conscience. The only question was, how would his action affect the tempted and weak Christian by his side, and Paul says that is to be determinative. It might be very annoying to be hampered so. One might regard his neighbor as a nuisance. It was hard that a man should not enjoy himself because he had a weakling looking on. And it is then that Paul, in that great way of his, lifts up the matter into such an atmosphere that the man who is tempted to chafe at his restrictions bows his head in shame. Have you forgotten, says the apostle, that for that weak brother Jesus died? Have you forgotten that Christ endured for him the agony and the anguish of the Cross? Compared with that, how infinitely little is any sacrifice that you are called to make in the restriction of your Christian liberty.

Limited by Love

And so we are taught this second lesson about the limits of our Christian rights. We are bound to limit them not only for our own sakes; we are bound to limit them for our brother's sake. No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. If we believe in the Fatherhood of God, then we believe in the brotherhood of man. And only he has the mind of Christ to whom that thought of brotherhood is regulative, not only in the exercise of power but also in the exercise of liberty. There are many things in life that are quite lawful and on whose lawfulness we must insist. There are things that you and I could practice safely, and be all the happier for our practice of them. But if to our brother they be fraught with peril and if they make it harder for him to do what is right, then for our brother's sake, if we are Christians, we are called to the limitation of our liberty. Mark you, there is no room in Christianity for the over-scrupulous and worrying conscience. We are in Christ, and the Son hath made us free, and we are never to lose the gladness of that freedom. All that the Scripture insists upon is this, that we are to use it in the bonds of love and never to hesitate to limit it if so doing we can help a brother. You say that is hard? I grant you it is hard. The Gospel admits that it is hard. It may be irritating when we want to live to have to consider the weak brother so. And then, flashing upon us in its glory, there comes the thought that Christ has died for him -- and after that we do not find it hard. Once realize the sacrifice of Christ and all our little denials are as nothing. He gave His life up for that weaker brother, and shall not we give up our liberty? It is thus that we come to have fellowship with Him and to know Him better as we take our journey, for fellowship grows not alone but by what we get: it grows also by what we yield.

Limited in the Interest of the Gospel

In the ninth chapter of this epistle we have a great instance of that motive. Paul has been arguing with overwhelming power for the right of the preachers of the Word to receive payment. He appeals to Scripture- he argues by analogy- he urges the great plea of common sense. He gives a demonstration irrefutable of the right of Gospel preachers to be paid. And then with one of those swift turns of his which help us to know him and to love him, he says, but I -- I have not used this right lest I should hinder the Gospel of Christ. There is an instance also in the life of Jesus which will help you to understand my meaning. It is when He was asked to pay the temple tax. It is only Matthew who narrates that incident, and it is natural that he should tell it for Matthew had been a tax-gatherer himself once and would be interested in taxes all his life. Well, when Jesus heard of the demand, you remember what he said to Peter? What thinkest thou, Simon, of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute -- of their own children or strangers? Peter saith unto him, Of strangers; and Jesus answered, Then are the children free. What He meant was that He was free, for the temple was His Father's house. He could have claimed exemption as a right. It was part of the liberty of sonship. But then had He insisted on His rights, is it not easy to see what would have happened? Jesus saw in an instant what would happen. He had proclaimed the sanctity of law: now men would say He was a lawbreaker. He had urged obedience to Moses' representatives: now He would be openly defying them. And so, not with His eye upon His own but with His eye on the unbelieving world, the tax was paid lest they should be offended. In other words, Christ limited His liberty in the supreme interests of the Gospel. Deliberately did He forego His rights when to assert them might have been a stumbling block. He was come to seek and save the lost, and though the lost might hate Him and revile Him, He would do nothing howsoever lawful that might make them harder to be won.

As it was with Jesus, so must it be with you and me. If we are members of the body of Christ then we have a duty to the world. It is no part of a believer's calling to consult the opinion of the world. A man may sometimes bear the greatest resemblance to his Lord when his action is laughed at by the worldly wise. All we are taught is that in our use of freedom we must remember those who are without, and how, by what we allow ourselves in Christ, they are like to be affected towards the Gospel. If the kind of life that we are living makes it less easy to believe in Christ; if our behavior whether at work or play is silently hardening anybody's heart, then, though everything we do is justified and well within the boundaries of our liberties, in the eyes of Jesus there is something wrong. All things are lawful, but all are not expedient, sometimes in the interests of our safety. All things are lawful, but all are not expedient, sometimes in the interests of our brother. All things are lawful, but all are not expedient, because around us there is a Christless world and men with their poor blind eyes are judging Christ by what they see in His professing people.

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The Grace of Happy-Heartedness 1 of 2
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

I would have you without carefulness -- 1 Corinthians 7:32 Cast thy burden upon the Lord -- Psalms 55:22

There are few graces which the world admires so much as the grace of a cheerful heart. There is a certain perennial attraction in men and women who bear their burdens well. When we see a face all lined with care it often touches the chord of pity in us. We are moved to compassion when it flashes on us what a story is engraven there. But the face that really helps us on our journey is seldom the face of battle and of agony; it is the face which has its sunshine still. None of us is enamored by a frown. All of us are attracted by a smile. We recognize by an unerring instinct that in happy-heartedness there is a kind of victory. And so we love it as we love the sunshine or the song of the birds upon the summer morning. It takes its place with these good gifts of God.

The Charms of Children

Children are possessors of this sunny attribute. That is one reason why the presence of children is such a perpetual solace and so refreshing. Children are far from being little angels as every father and every mother knows. They can be cruel and intensely selfish and amazingly and unblushingly untruthful. Yet when the worst is said of them that can be said, there yet remains in them this touch of heaven which is a greater blessing to the world than all the modem methods of communication. They cry., and then in the passing of an hour the heart that was inconsolable is healed. They scowl (and they are not pretty when they scowl), but so far as I know them they never bear any malice. They bully in the most shocking fashion, when you and I happen to be absent, but if they bully they almost never brood. "I would have you without carefulness" -- that is how the great apostle puts it. He was one of these men whose interests were too vast to allow him time for watching little people. But Christ, whose interests were far vaster, somehow or other always had time for that, and so He puts it, not "I would have you without carefulness," but "except ye become as little children."

Frivolity

Of course we must distinguish happy-heartedness from that poor counterfeit we call frivolity. A child may be absolutely irresponsible, but a child is never frivolous. No one is so swiftly touched to wonder. No one is so deeply moved with awe. When our children laugh at what to us is sacred, it simply means that they do not understand. The things that are wonderful and great in their eyes are not at all what we consider so, and note, you never find them mocking at what is wonderful and great to them. Now that is the very hallmark of frivolity. It recognizes what is great and jests at it. It is not an intellectual inability; it is much more truly a moral inability. Some of the most frivolous people I have known had plenty of brains and were as sharp as needles; it was their heart and not their brain which was contemptible. The great instance of frivolity in Scripture is that of the men who refused the invitation. They were by no means intellectual fools, these men. They could do a bit of work and do it admirably. But when this moment came they all made light of it -- they took it as a joke though it was kingly --they lost the opportunity of their lives because of their old habit of belittling. Different by all the world from that is the sweet genius of happy-heartedness. It is as swift to recognize the best as is frivolity to have a laugh at it. Indeed so far as my experience goes, frivolous people are commonly unhappy and are very often trying to forget something which is akin to tragedy.

Temperament

Now we are all apt to think that such a happy disposition is just temperamental. We are apt to think it is just born with people, and of course in a measure that is true. There are those with a perfect genius for the sunshine, and those with a perfect genius for the shadow. There are those who will carry a burden in a happy way without the slightest aid from any faith, and you, who wrestle in prayer about the thing, are bowed with it to the very ground. And not only is it temperamental. We might go further and say that it is racial. Broadly speaking, as we survey the world, we find it to be a national characteristic. For the Irish have it and the Scots have not; and the southern peoples and not the northern peoples; and the Kaffir boy out in South Africa will go singing and laughing over his work all day while his Dutch master, for all his Bible reading, will have a face as long as his prayers.

A Virtue To Be Won

But there is one thing in the Bible I have often noticed. I wonder if it has occurred to you? It is how often it classes with virtues to be won what we have reckoned to be gifts of nature. The Bible is always true to the great facts. It never diminishes nor distorts anything. It recognizes in the most liberal way the infinite divergences of nature. And yet I am often struck by how often it takes these natural endowments and says to you of what you do not have --"that is a virtue to be won." Think of courage -- do not we regard that as a gift? Don't we know that certain men are born courageous? Do you think every boy could say what Nelson said: "Fear, mother -- what is fear?

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The Grace of Happy-Heartedness 2 of 2
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

I never saw it"? And yet this courage, which with perfect justice we are in the way of regarding as temperamental, is viewed in Scripture as something to be won. Take joy. Are we the masters of our joy? Is not the capacity for joy inherent? Are there not those who gravitate to joy as there are others who gravitate to gloom? And yet our Savior says to His disciples, "These things have I spoken to you, that in me ye might have joy." And the fruit of the spirit is love and joy and peace.

Well now, as it is with these, so I take it as with happy-heartedness. In the eyes of God and in the light of Scripture it is a shining virtue to be won. It may be easier for some than others just because of the nature God has given. But remember we do not win our best when we have won our most congenial virtues. A happy disposition is possible for all -- that is what I want to urge tonight --and the unfailing secret of it lies in the casting of the burden on the Lord. It does not matter what the burden be. Burdens are just as various as blessings: They may be secret, or they may be public. They may be real, or they may be imaginary. But once a man has learned this deepest lesson that God is with him and will see him through, I say to the weariest and most desponding soul that happy-heartedness is in his grasp. Many of the heaviest burdens men can bear have to be borne where eyes can never pierce. Many of the heaviest burdens men can bear fall on them through the relationships of life. It matters not. There can be no exceptions in the magnificent impartiality of God. Cast thy burden on the Lord.

Depending upon God

Now I want you to notice -- it is very important -- the words in which our text is couched. It is "cast thy burden on the Lord"; it is not "cast thy burden anywhere." I think there is nothing poorer or more cowardly than just the desire to be rid of burdens. It is always the mark of meanness in a character and the sorry witness of a contracting soul. For life grows richer by what we have to bear, and sympathies grow tenderer and broader, and the world expands into a richer place through things which we once thought would make us poorer. They say that the Indian by putting his ear to the ground can hear far off the galloping of horses. Erect, there is not a sound upon the breeze. Prone on the earth, he hears the distant trampling. And I daresay there are some here tonight who lived and moved upon a silent prairie until somehow they were bowed into the dust. The Bible never urges any man recklessly to cast his cares away. As soon would it urge the captain of a ship to cast out his ballast when he was clear of port. Knowing the preciousness of what is heavy, it bids us summon to our aid the power of God, and it is that which makes all the difference in the world. Now we know we are in the hands of One who providently caters to the sparrow. Now we know that on the line of duty we shall have strength for all that must be done. Now we can laugh with the children in the thick of it, and have our sunshine even in December, for God is with us and His name is wonderful and underneath are the everlasting arms.

Christ Makes the Difference

In closing I have one thing more to say -- one thing I never think of without shame. It is how much easier this secret is for us than it ever could have been for David. "Cast thy burden on the Lord," he wrote -- and of course he had first done it for himself. Now tell me, what was that Lord to David- that Lord into whose keeping he committed everything? He was the King eternal and invisible, and clouds and darkness were around His throne, and men looked to the left hand and He was not there, and to the right and lo! they could not find Him. Was not the faith of these old Jews magnificent? Could you have trusted in such a God as that? Could you have believed that the infinite Creator would open His arms and take your burden in? It might have been easy for a Greek to do it for he believed in the divinity of man, but how a Jew rose to a faith like that is to me as wonderful as any miracle.

But do you see how everything is changed now? We have Christ and that makes all the difference. For do you remember how, when Christ was here, men came and cast their burdens upon Him? Everyone did it, and did it as by instinct -- it did not matter what the burden was -- and "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Run through the gamut of our human burdens, and tell me if there were any that they failed to bring. They brought their sicknesses and they brought their fears. They brought their children and they brought themselves. And the strange thing is that though Christ was angry sometimes, and His eyes flashed in righteous indignation, not in a single instance do you find Him angry because anyone cast a burden upon Him.

We Can Achieve Joy

My brother and sister, if your faith is to be real, shall I tell you what you must always do? You must always carry into your thought of God what you have learned and seen of Jesus Christ. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father:" He is the express image of His person. You must carry up into your thought of God all the revelation of His Son. And I tell you that when you once do that the Fatherhood of God becomes so wonderful that even you, with your weak and trembling faith, are able to cast your burden upon Him. It took a hero to achieve it once. The weakest woman can achieve it now. It was once the act of a sublime enthusiasm. It is now within the reach of everyone of you. So sure are we in Christ of God's deep sympathy and of His care for us and of His love, that there is not a man or woman here who may not know the strength of happy-heartedness. Therefore I charge you in the name of Christ that you are not to let that burden weigh you down. I charge you to remember that you sin if you live in gloom and miserable wretchedness. Never frivolous, but always reverent-happy-hearted just because He knows -- I know no better way in this strange world of glorifying the Father and the Son.

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The Wonder of That Night 1 of 2
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

The same night in which he was betrayed -- 1 Corinthians 11:23

Attention has been directed in these days of ours to what is called the method of suggestion. The power of suggestion to influence thought and conduct is one of the great themes of educational science. We are taught that beneath our consciousness there is a whole world within each of us that lies asleep, and that it depends on the suggestive touch whether it will awaken to evil or to good. Now there can be little question that in throwing in this clause, Paul is acting on the method of suggestion. He is not just stating an historic fact nor indicating a bare point of time. He is conveying to the Corinthian church by the suggestion of the betrayal-night a veiled and delicate rebuke.

Divisions in the Church

Recall the circumstances of that church at Corinth. It was in a sad and pitiable state. It was rent with such unseemly factions that any one but Paul would have despaired of it. A church is always in the most deadly peril when its divisions are felt at the Lord's Table. It is bad enough when they interfere with service; it is far worse when they invade the ordinance. Yet at Corinth that was what had happened, and brotherly love had vanished from the ordinance and pride and selfishness and disregard of decency had reared their heads at the communion table. It was to such a church that Paul was writing when he said, "On that night in which he was betrayed. "Let them but think of that, in all the pathos of it, and it would shame them into a better spirit. How could any of them be proud again, or drunken or scornful of the poor, when they remembered that their feast was instituted in the infinite sorrow of betrayal-night. In other words, Paul flung this clause in to quicken and intensify right feeling. It was not an item of information merely; it was a call to worthier communicating.

The Wonder of Christ's Thanksgiving

One of the great features of the Last Supper was the prayer of thanksgiving which Jesus offered. It had its place, no less than the breaking of the bread, in the revelation which Paul had had from Christ. What was included in that thanksgiving is one of the things which God has hidden from us. We know from the Gospels that the bread and wine were blessed, but no one imagines that that was all. Clearly, there was such an outpouring of the heart, such adoration of the Heavenly Father, that none of the little band in that upper room ever forgot it to his dying day. John carried the thought of it to Ephesus. Peter recurred to it in distant Babylon. It had moved them to a depth of awe and wonder that was vivid to their last hour of ministry. Whenever they met to break the bread again on distant shores and after the lapse of years, swift as an arrow-flight their hearts went back to the wonderful thanksgiving of Jesus.

Thanksgiving Distinguishes the Lord's Table

So powerfully has that been impressed upon the church that thanksgiving has always distinguished the Lord's Table. In every fellowship and throughout all the ages one great mark of the Communion Service is gratitude. One of the oldest names for the feast is Eucharist, and Eucharist is the Greek for thanksgiving. One of the oldest traditions of the Table is that the poor should be remembered at it. And all this thankfulness expressed in name and offertory is not only the witness of our debt to God, it is the witness also of the depth of feeling that was stirred by the thanksgiving of Jesus. It is that which is written out in after ages. It is that which is testified to in every ordinance. Every time we meet to break the bread, we touch on the wonder of the upper room. We touch on the awe that filled the little company, as with the filling of the Holy Ghost, when they listened with rapt hearts and straining ears to the thanksgiving of their Master and their Lord.

The Adoring Gratitude of Christ

Now what was it that made that thanksgiving so wonderful? Well, that is a question we cannot fully answer. It may be that even if you and I had been there we could not have explained why we were moved so. But this is certain, that as the days went on and the disciples looked back upon it all, the thanksgiving grew doubly wonderful to them because of the hour in which it had been spoken. On that night in which he was being betrayed -- it was on that night our Lord broke into thanks. Think of it, in such an hour as that, no room for anything but an adoring gratitude! No wonder Peter never could forget it -- no wonder John never could forget it -- they never could forget that joy in God in the tense agony of the betrayal-night. Had Christ been looking forward to triumph the next day they might more easily have comprehended it. Had He been ringed about with perfect loyalty --they could have understood it then. But on that night on which He was betrayed- that then, in such an hour, Christ should adore, was something that grew and deepened in its mystery the more they brooded on it in the years.

The Wonder of Christ's Certainty

There is nothing more notable in the memorial supper than the perfect confidence of Jesus in the future. No trace of doubt can be detected in Him -- no slightest misgiving seems to have crossed His heart- as He looked away from His own little company down through the ages that were yet to be. Like all great moments in our earthly life, the Lord's Supper has a twofold reference. It reaches back into bygone days; it stretches forward to the untrodden future. And one of the singular things about our Lord which has attracted the eyes of every age is that at the Table, looking forward, He was possessed with a quiet and perfect confidence. "This do in remembrance of me," -- then He was to be loyally and lovingly remembered. "Ye do show the Lord's death until he come," -- then His memory was to last while the world lasted. In loving hearts right through the ages, on and on till the last trumpet sounded, Christ never doubted that His Name would live in warm and powerful memorial. Had He looked with quiet confidence across the past, it would not have arrested us so much. For all the past had been leading up to Him, and He had perfectly fulfilled the will of God. But that with equal confidence, unsullied and serene, He should have anticipated all coming time is something that has always stirred the church.

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The Wonder of That Night 2 of 2
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

Christ's View of the Centuries to Come

Of course it is possible to minimize this thought as it is possible to belittle everything about Christ. We are told that He was thinking only of His own here, and that His coming was expected in a year or two. There was no vision of the coming centuries -- no thought of you and me on that evening -- it was a word spoken to the disciples only till in a dozen years or so their Lord should come again. Of course there is much to be said for that view, or thinking men would never have advanced it. But deeper than any arguments in favor of it is its injustice to the spirit of the scene. And once we have grasped the spirit of the scene and turn to the life of Christ for confirmation of it, we see that it is something more than sentiment which finds the centuries in the heart of Jesus here. We learn from some of His most familiar parables how slowly and gradually the kingdom was to come. It could no more be hurried on than one could hasten the growing of the mustard seed.

We learn, too, that Jesus had an eye which ranged away beyond the bounds of Israel: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." It is that far-ranging and large spirit which you must carry into the upper room. An hour of high intensity like this was certain to be an hour of vision. If ever Christ saw imperially and magnificently, and we know from other sources that He did, would it not be on the eve before that day which was to close His earthly ministry by death? I believe, then, that in the upper room Jesus had an eye for all the ages. I believe that He was looking down the centuries to the table which is spread for you and me. And the singular thing is that with a range like that over the illimitable fields of time, Christ should have shown such quiet and perfect confidence.

Christ's Confidence in Spite of Human Betrayal

It is that wonder which is deepened as we recall the season when it was exhibited. Do we not feel afresh the marvel of such confidence on that night in which He was betrayed? Now it was evident beyond dispute what was moving in the heart of Judas. Now at last came leaping to the surface the treachery that had been brooded on in secret. And if this was the issue of the years of fellowship -- this unutterable malice of today -- was it likely there would be a bright tomorrow? Christ had spared no pains on His betrayer. He had lavished His love upon him constantly. He had done everything to woo and win him, and every effort He had made was baffled. And it was then, in such a bitter hour, when He well might have lost His faith in human loyalty, that He looked forward with confidence unquenched to the loyal remembrance of the ages. Christ knew in the quiet of that evening what was involved in the treachery of Judas. Already He saw the shadow of the cross and heard the evil voices crying "Crucify him." Yet with so much to drive Him to despair -- so much to suggest to Him that He had failed -- with a heart as calm as any summer sea He looked away to the loyalty of time. "This do in remembrance of me: ye do show the Lord's death till he come." Think of it, this grand unfaltering confidence amid the despairing horrors of that night! It would have been wonderful at any time, but surely we feel afresh the wonder of it when we remember that it was exhibited on the night in which He was betrayed.

The Wonder of Christ's Love

The Lord's Table is a feast of love, and yet the word love was never spoken at it. It is the picture of a love that is commended to us not so much in words as in deeds. In the early church they used to have a love-feast, and the love-feast was at first associated with the communion. But gradually and with growing insight the love-feast fell into disuse. Men came to feel that they did not need a love-feast to express the love that was in Christ; it was exhibited in all its height and depth in the simple ritual of the Last Supper. Here in the quiet of the upper chamber was given the pledge of a love that was unquenchable. Here there was gathered into one swift moment the yearning and the tenderness of years. Here did there flash out as in a flame of glory the love which had been striving through the past and which tomorrow, on the cross of anguish, was to be consummated and crowned in sacrifice.

Now do you not feel the wonder of that love afresh as you recall when it was pledged and sealed? That sealing would have been wonderful at any time, but on such a night as that it passeth knowledge. Had it been some Pharisee who was betraying him, we should not have marveled at it so. But it was no Pharisee --no enemy -- it was His own familiar friend in whom He trusted. Yet in the very hour of His betrayal when any other heart might have grown bitter, Christ deliberately seized his opportunity to show forth and to seal His dying love. Mazzini, that great-heart of Italy, tells us something of his sad experience. He tells us how bitter he grew -- how sick of soul -- when the men who had followed him fell away from him. But on that night when all forsook Him there is not one trace of hardening in Christ; on the contrary, it was that hour He chose to institute the memorial of His love. Is not this the wonder of Christ's love, that right through that betrayal it survived? And the question is, have not we too betrayed Him since we last gathered at the Communion Table? God knows we have, yet shall we eat and drink because of a love that has survived our past- that has forgiven everything in mercy, and in mercy will not let us go.

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Forewarned, Forearmed 1 of 2
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

We are not ignorant of his devices -- 2 Corinthians 2:11

This is a chapter of autobiography. It is one of the glimpses we get into the great human heart that everywhere throbs in these epistles. Some men's doctrine is so divorced from their life and their experience that the two seem separate spheres not to be thought of at the same moment. But it is never so with a really sincere man: and it is never so with Paul. What he believed was so bound up inextricably with what he was that he can pass from doctrine to his own history, and from his history back again to doctrine, and it all seems quite natural. O why is life so separated, part from part! Why are there these great gulfs between our Sunday and our Monday, our brain and heart, our doctrine and our practice! All Paul's theology is useless -- God may condemn us by it -- unless the tides of it sweep into every creek and inlet of this so broken and mysterious shore.

Well, in this chapter of autobiography our text occurs. "We are not ignorant of his devices." Do you observe that gracious we? Only God's perfect gentleman would have written that. As a matter of fact, these men of Corinth were ignorant of the devices of the devil. Had they but known them, he never could have spread such havoc in the church as these two letters reveal. An uninspired man, blind to the possibilities in others, would have said I. But Paul wrote in the Holy Ghost and had the outlook and the hope and the magnificent prospects of the Holy Ghost for every man within him. And in the power of that, he elevates these Corinthians to his own level -- some day they shall be there -- and he says we. It is the way of Paul. It is the way of Christ. It is the way of love: expecting great things from the most ignorant man; and by the very sunshine of the expectation, starting the growth of them.

Now I want in a simple way to expound on some of these devices. "Knowledge is power," said Lord Bacon: and to know some of the subtleties of that malevolent power that fights against us is so far to be forearmed. Paul does not tell us what the devices were. But probably the devices of today are very much the same as in Paul's time. For underneath all changing years and the growing complexities of life, this heart keeps wonderfully constant; and the arts that take it and that snare it now, took it and snared and slew it eighteen hundred years ago. We are not ignorant of his devices -- what, then, are some of these?

Satan Labels Evil Things with Pleasant Names

There is a tendency in all language to do that. Whether it springs from a very natural desire to hide the uglier sides of human life or whether it is the survival of some old pagan feeling that tried to propitiate the gods of nature by fair words, we cannot tell. But every language has been rich in what grammarians call euphemisms-those nice and delicate words that cover some offensive truth. When Prince George of Greece went over to Crete to become governor, there had been fierce rioting and bloodshed between the Muslims and Christians. And when he arrived and was received with great enthusiasm, the correspondent of the Times gave a very curious description of the scene. "The long rows of ruined houses, beneath which in some cases, the fire is still smoldering," he wrote, "are almost concealed by festoons and banners." It was an attempt to decorate and hide the tragedies. And language is always doing that. No man has ever loved to call the seamier side of things by its right name or to look the darker facts of life straight in the face. And from the first, language has been busy in fashioning its own festoons and banners to hide these ugly things. It is this tendency of human speech that is caught up and wrested by the devil into an engine and instrument of ill. If, in the natural shuddering at death, I shrink from saying, "My mother is dead," and say instead, "She is gone," there is no harm in that. But if by any trick of speech I veil the filthiness of sin, or if I cannot see how odious evil is because I have dubbed it with some pleasant name, I have been ignorant of his devices. Who called the world of self and pleasure the happy world? Who named the business man whose transactions border on the shady the smart man? Who said that the adulterer who is breaking his wife's heart had his little weakness? Who smiled and said the profligate was only fast? or called the sowing of a harvest of misery for children's children the sowing of wild oats? 0 cease that speech! Call vile things by their vile names, and be not ignorant of his devices.

Satan Makes His Onset on Our Strongest Side

Our characters are complex products, and in every one of us strong elements and weak are strangely blended. The strongest Achilles has his defenseless heel. And the worst of us is not altogether bad, the weakest of us not altogether weak. There is something that still rings true; there is some chord that will still make some music in us. Thou hast a worst side, and generally men take thee on thy worst side. But thou hast a best side, and God takes thee on that. And Satan, transforming himself into an angel of light, assails on that side too.

The Bible has many instances of that. Who above all patriarchs and prophets was noted for his meekness? Was it not Moses? Yet it was Moses who broke the tables in a passion and failed in the grace that most distinguished him. Whom do we call the father of the faithful? Is it not Abraham? Yet the worst sin in Abraham's life sprang out of want of faith. And patient Job sinned through impatience: and the brave Peter fell through cowardice. And gentle and most tolerant St. John, in that one hour when he would have the fire on the Samaritan villagers, was like to be the most intolerant of all. And did not Christ know this ? Christ's loftiest passion was for the kingdoms of the world that He might bring them into obedience to God. And it was there that the Prince of Darkness struck at him: "All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me."

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Forewarned, Forearmed 2 of 2
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

O friend, remember that. Where thou art strongest, watch! Where thou art best and bravest, be on thy guard! The choicest gifts that God has dowered you with may be your snare, and all that is best in you may be your ruin. The victim of intemperance might have been a happy man today but for the kindly heart and splendid fellowship that made him the darling of the social company. It was the best in him that gave a standing-ground for Satan. All that was best in him has proved his curse.

Satan Uses Tools

It is one mark of practical genius to choose the right instruments to do its work. A born administrator is a man who not only works hard himself, but has the skill of choosing the right men to be his assistants. That is always a mark of practical capacity. And a true general shows his genius to command by the way in which he uses each branch of the service--cavalry, artillery, and infantry- for its proper work. Every administrator must make use of agents; and he displays the greatest genius for administration who picks his agents with the greatest skill.

What a magnificent administrative genius that power must be that plots our ruin if we judge it by a test like that. Could you conceive a finer choice of instruments than Satan makes when he is seeking to overthrow a human soul? Out of a hundred gates into your hearts and mine, he passes by those that are barred and chooses one that will open at a touch. His is the plan and his the whole device. But he gets other hands and other hearts to do the work; and the whole history of the tempted world, and the whole story of your tempted heart, tells the consummate genius of the choice.

Think of our Lord's experience. First, in the wilderness Satan tempted Him. He came himself that time: he sent no messenger and used no agent. It was a personal conflict between the Prince of Darkness and the Prince of Life. But the next time the baffled tempter fell back upon this old device. Next time he does not come in person: he comes incarnated in Simon Peter. What, was it not a master-stroke of genius to reach at the heart of Jesus through the loyal heart of that disciple? And when Jesus turns and detects Satan's voice in Peter's tongue and cries, "Get thee behind me, Satan, thou savourest not the things of God," He was not ignorant of his devices.

And do you think that artifice is disused today? Has Satan's brain grown blunted in these latter times ? It is not the men who hate us and it is not the men and women we despise who tempt us most. It is those we trust and those who love us best who often prove hell's aptest messengers. If we but hated those who tempt us, life would become a very easy thing. It is because we love and reverence them so that for a thousand men and women life is hard. Come, tempter, in thine own cursed shape, and any coward shall beat thee off. But come through the loving heart of Simon Peter, and look through the loving eyes of Simon Peter, and speak through the loving lips of Simon Peter -- and only Christ can make us strong to say, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

Satan Shams Defeat

To sham defeat is a well-known trick in warfare. Nothing will sooner disorganize a regiment than to see the enemy routed on the field. While the fight rages, a man is nerved and strung for he is carrying his life in his hand and knows it. But with the victory there comes reaction, and men grow careless; and there are battles where the enemy has shammed defeat just to inspire that careless spirit. O sirs, we are not ignorant of his devices! This old device of sham defeat- have you not seen it? You fought like a man with your besetting sin and mastered it. God keep you watchful. God keep you on your guard. One careless hour and the routed sin is at the gates again, and the whole battle has to be fought anew. We thought the sin was dead, and it was only sleeping. We thought that we had slain that habit, and it is stealing over us again. We thought we had defeated Satan, and Satan only shammed defeat. Keep the loins girded and the lamps burning and the hand upon the sword until the end. Our unseen foe is a consummate strategist. Many a soul has been lost because it won --won in the first encounter, then said all's well and laid its arms aside -- till the old sin crept up again and sprang and the last state was worse than the first.

Satan Lays the Emphasis upon Tomorrow

We are always prone to put the accent there. It is very hard to grasp the true splendor of the present. Today seems insignificant; tomorrow shall be the real day for us. God never speaks that way. God's Bible never speaks that way. It tells us that the present is divine, and lays the whole emphasis upon today: "Now is the accepted time." And the Holy Ghost is saying, Today.

And this is the arch-device of the arch-tempter. In every life, for every start and every noble deed, God says, Today. In every life for every start and every noble deed, the devil says, Tomorrow. Is it conversion? Today, says God: Tomorrow, whispers Satan. Is it the breaking with that sin? Tomorrow. Is it the starting on a higher level? Tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, always tomorrow ! till by tomorrow's road we are at Never -- and the chance is gone, and the dream has vanished, and the hope is dead. O friends, young men and women, be not ignorant of that device. It will never be easier to come to Christ than now. It will never be easier to make the start than now. God says, Today, tonight! And God who says it is here to give the power that can save now, and can cleanse now, and can send you home now with old things passed away and all things new in Jesus Christ.

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The Inescapable Elements of Life
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

Approving ourselves.., in necessities -- 2 Corinthians 6:4

When the apostle speaks about necessities he does not think of necessary things. That is not the sense of the original. There are things, the opposite of luxuries, without which we could not live at all. Such are food and drink, and the air of heaven to breathe, and the refreshing ministry of sleep. But "necessities," in the idiom of the Greek, does not connote such necessary things; it means experiences from which is no escape. It is in such experiences Paul wants to be approved --to show himself a gallant Christian gentleman. He is determined to reveal his faith and joy in the inescapable elements of life. And so, brooding upon the text, one comes to ask the question, what are those things no one can escape from, in the strange and intricate complex of experience?

Inescapable Burdens

One thinks first of certain bitter things that reach men in the realm of mind or body. There are sufferings which pass away; there are others out of which is no escape. If a man falls ill of diphtheria or fever, he recovers, in the good providence of God. If he meets with an accident and breaks his arm, that fracture may be perfectly united. But there are other things, in the range of human ills, from which there is no prospect of escape in the long vista of the coming years. There is blindness, lameness, deafness, or congenital deformity of body. There are brains that never can be brilliant and faces that never can be beautiful. There are thorns in the flesh, messengers of Satan, hindering influence and power and service that are going to be present to the end. It is in things like these that Paul is quite determined to show himself an approved minister of God- brave and bright, faithful to his task, free from the slightest trace of jaundiced bitterness. And to do that is a far higher thing than to come untarnished from temporary trial. It is to "come smiling from the world's great snare, uncaught."

Temptation

Then one's thoughts go winging to temptation, for temptation is one of the "necessities" of life. Separate from each other in a thousand ways, we are all united in temptation. A man may escape the gnawing tooth of poverty or the anguish and the languor of disease. He may escape imprisonment's and stripes and the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." But no man, be he wise or simple, rich as Croesus or poor as Bartimaeus, ever escapes the onset of temptation. Temptation is a most obsequious servant. It follows a man everywhere --into the church, into the sheltered study, into the sweetest and tenderest relationships. Men fly to the desert to escape temptation only to find that it is there before them, insistent, as in the crowded haunts of men. That is the reason why our Lord was tempted. A Christ untempted is no Christ for me. He might be the Son of God in all His fullness, but He never for me could be the Son of Man. It is in such "necessities," or, in our Western idiom, such inescapable elements of life that the apostle yearns in Christ to play the man. Is there any finer victory than that? To resist the devil when he leaps or creeps on us clad in the most alluring of disguises; to do it not once, but steadily and doggedly, for when the devil comes he always comes again -- that is a far higher thing than to pass untouched from temporary trial. It is to stand (as Browning says) pedestalled in triumph.

Our Cross

Another of the "necessities" of life is what our Savior calls the cross. Just as in every lot there is a crook, so in every life there is a cross. You remember how our Lord declared this -- "If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross" -- not certain men in strange peculiar circumstances, but any man, right to the end of time. From which we gather that in the eyes of Christ the cross was universal in experience, one of the things that nobody escapes. The cross is anything very hard to carry- anything that takes liberty from living -- anything that robs the foot of fleetness or silences the music of the heart. And men may be brave and hide the cross away and wreathe it with flowers so that none suspects it, but, says Jesus, it is always there. There are only two things men can do with crosses --they can take them up or they can kick against them. They can merge them in God's plan of life for them, or they can stumble over them towards the glen of weeping. And what could be finer, in the whole range of life, than just to determine as the apostle did to be divinely approved in the cross? To take the cross up every morning and to do it happily for Jesus' sake -- never to quarrel with God for its intrusion --never to lose heart nor faith nor love -- that fine handling of one of life's "necessities" is indispensable to following Christ and is, through Him, in the compass of us all.

Death

One last "necessity" remains: it is the grim necessity of death. For sooner or later death comes to every man; from the grip of death nobody escapes. Men used to ponder deeply upon death. Philosophy was the preparation for it. Books were written that dealt with holy dying. Preachers preached "as dying men to dying men." Now that has passed -- men's thoughts are turned to life -- they have abandoned the contemplation of the grave; and yet from death nobody escapes. Death is the last and grimmest of "necessities." "The paths of glory lead but to the grave." Death, like temptation and the cross, is an inescapable element of life. And then the apostle says: "In that last hour, when my eyes close on the familiar faces, God grant me grace to show myself approved." I go to be with Christ which is far better. O death, where is thy sting? The Lord God is merciful and gracious blotting out our transgressions like a cloud. With such a hope, with such a Father-God, with such a Savior on the other shore, the very weakest need not fear to die.

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A Plea for Simplicity
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

The simplicity that is in Christ- 2 Corinthians 11:3

There are some words that have a tragic history. To the hearing ear and to the understanding heart they whisper strange secrets about human progress. If we could follow them through all their changing meanings we should be reading the story of mankind. Nor, indeed, when we think of it, is this to be wondered at, or language is the echo of the soul. And whenever the soul of man has struggled heavenward I shall hear its echo high among the hills. The man who thoroughly knew the English tongue could almost sit down and write an English history. It is because we now rise and now fall that words become ennobled or debased.

Now one of the words that has a pitiful history is that word simple. It has wandered far from the simplicity of Christ. It has so changed its meaning and lost its early character that we are almost ashamed to use it in any other than a derogatory manner. Once, to be simple meant to be: free from guile . Simplicity, was the opposite of duplicity. But in the struggle with the world s sharp wits, the guileless man has generally fared so badly that the simple man has become the simpleton. I warrant you there was a world of holy meaning in the word innocent when Adam and Eve first felt the taint of sin. Yet now we look at the idiot, and we pity him, and we say, "He is an innocent. So once to be simple meant to be a Nathanael. And now it almost means to be a fool.

Great People Are Simple

And yet, if we have ever studied history at all, we must have been struck with a certain sweet simplicity about the characters of the very great--men. There is something of the child about the greatest; a certain freshness, a kind of sweet unconsciousness; a happy taking of themselves on trust; a sort of play- element throughout the drama. And all the time, powerfully, perhaps silently, they were swaying and steering this poor tossed world. Did you never feel that simplicity in Martin Luther? And did it never arrest you in George Washington? And did you never mark it in the great Duke of Wellington? One of the finest odes Tennyson ever wrote was his ode upon the death of that great duke. And I do not believe in all the noble verse of it, it rises to anything loftier than this: --

Foremost captain of his time,
Rich in saving common-sense,
And, as the greatest only are,
In his simplicity sublime.

Sin Imitates Simplicity

The greatest souls, then, have been truly simple. It is that simple element that has charmed the world. And I cannot think of any better witness to the abiding charm of true simplicity than the way in which vice has always tried to imitate it. Make up your mind clearly on this point: that sin is never simple, it is subtle. No matter how we interpret the story of Eden, the insinuating serpent is still sin. All sin is subtle, intricate, involved; leading a man into an infinite maze. It can give a hundred reasons for its counsel, when a good conscience is content with one. Do you remember how the great poet of Germany in his immortal tragedy of Faust- do you remember how he pictures Mephistopheles as the master of a consummate subtilty? He is always changing, that evil incarnation. He is always compliant: he is never the same. To Margaret he is one thing, and to Faust another. He is exquisitely accommodating everywhere --until we feel afresh how subtle sin is, what an utter stranger to genuine simplicity! And when sin shams that it is very simple -- and it is very fond of that device --we learn how attractive simplicity must be. It is a well-known practice of the hypocrite to make believe he is unusually candid. One of the last arts of an abandoned woman is to act like an innocent young girl again.  IT is the unwilling tribute of the bad to that simplicity of soul that in charms the world, but which is lost when the eye ceases to be single    and when the conscience ceases to be true.

The Simplicity of Christ

Now the most casual student of the life of Jesus must have noted the simplicity of Christ)In a sense far deeper than any other captain, our Lord is in His simplicity sublime. His name shall be called Wonderful, it is quite true. He was the Counselor, the everlasting King. But He was holy, harmless, undefiled; and a little child shall lead them, said the Prophet.

Think of His mode of life: was it not simple? It puts our artificial lives to shame There is a music in it, not like the music of the orchestra, but like the music of the brook under the trees. He loved John and Peter, not the Pharisee; and He drew to the children, not to the scribe'), and it was(all so natural and simple)that the blind Jews said, this is not the Christ. Had He come greatly with the sound of a trumpet, they would have hailed Him and cried, Behold! Messiah cometh. But they missed the divinity of what was simple, and He came unto His own and they received Him not.

Think of His teaching: was not that simple too? It puts our sermons and our books to shame. There is a false simplicity that springs from lack of thought, and there is a spurious and forced simplicity that I have heard some ministers adopt when they began, with a smile, to the children, and how the children hate it! But preach to true.

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The Apostolic Paradox 1 of 2
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

As unknown, and yet well known -- 2 Corinthians 6:9

It will at once occur to you how true this was of the apostles. There is not one of that first band of missionaries who were sent out to evangelize the world of whom we might not say in the words of our text, that they were unknown and yet well-known. There are no names in Christendom today more honored than the names of these evangelists. Wherever the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached and wherever the Word of God is read and loved, the names of Peter and James and John and Thomas are familiar in our ears as household words --yet how little we know of any one of them! We have a few glimpses of them in their work; we hear them speaking a few words of arguments, or it may be we have a brief writing from their pen. But what their childhood was and who their friends were; how they looked or what befell them in old age -- all this, and much more, is shrouded in darkness. Of all the disciples, then, it is singularly true, that they are unknown and yet well-known.

Jesus Was Unknown and Yet Well-Known

Nor does this hold only of the disciples. It is equally clear in the case of our Lord Himself. If our lot had been cast in Galilee while Jesus lived, there would have been few days in which we should not have spoken about Him. Men were intensely curious about Jesus, and every scrap of information was treasured. He was the daily topic of the marketplace; when women gathered at the well they spoke about Him; the dullest peasant in the remotest village had been startled to attention by His miracles --Jesus of Nazareth was indeed well-known. Yet after all how little they understood Him! In what obscurity He lived and wrought! Some thought He was Elias; others that He was Jeremiah; and not a few said "He is beside Himself." And outside of Palestine was the wide and noisy world with its senates and its markets and its armies, and into its voices of business and of pleasure there had never come one whisper of the Savior. You see how true it was, then, even of Christ, that He was unknown and yet well-known.

The Unknown Life

But if the words were true of the disciples and of Christ, they are not without truth for you and me. If we are striving to live the Christian life, this will also be one mark of our endeavor. I wish then to handle that rich theme, and to show how the Gospel carried out in life will make a man unknown and yet well-known.

First, then, "unknown" -- I shall suggest to you some of the reasons that make the Christian life an unknown life.

Well, to begin with, Christianity lays its chief stress upon qualities that do not impress the imagination of the world. There is nothing to startle and nothing to arrest in the kind of disposition which it inculcates. The spirit that is enforced in the beatitudes is not the spirit which the world applauds. What are the qualities that men admire? What is it that draws the attention of the crowd? Is it not brilliant gifts, ingenuity, physical dexterity, or audacity? I need not remind you that you look in vain for these in the program of the Galilean. "And He opened His mouth and taught them saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn; blessed are the meek; blessed are the merciful; blessed are the peacemakers." It is not a moral attitude such as that which makes a man the idol of the street. Our Lord deliberately laid His emphasis on the undramatic qualities of life. With a true insight into what was noblest and a true scorn for what was merely show, He caught the mighty and hurled them from their seat and exalted those of low degree. Instead of pride, Jesus proclaimed humility; instead of revenge of injuries, longsuffering; endurance was to supplant retaliation, and tender mercy the old and passionate hatreds. And it is the crowning of these unobtrusive virtues and the recognition of these voiceless things that make the Christian as a man unknown.

The Private Worship of the Christian

The distinctive exercises of the Christian are exercises which he never can reveal. Among all the differences between the pagan faiths and the faith which is our treasure and our glory, none is more marked or more notable than the change from an outward to an inward worship. It is almost impossible for us to realize how wholly external the old religions were. The idea that a man might move among his fellows, carrying all his religion in his heart, would have been laughed to scorn in pagan Rome. It was under the shadow of consecrated temples, or where the altar stood ready for the oxen, or within the sacred circle of the augur, or in the brilliant procession through the streets, it was in such scenes that the religious life of paganism found its peculiar and distinctive exercises. It knew not the secret of the closed door nor of the head anointed during fasting.

I need hardly stay to tell you how Jesus Christ has come and changed all that. The distinctive exercises of the Christian life are not procession and sacrifice and augury. The distinctive worship of the Christian life is worship which we never can reveal. Could you conceive of anyone in earnest making a parade of secret prayer? Are there not hours of fellowship with heaven which would be tarnished if we talked of them? Do we ever speak of the minute denials or of those strengthening of the will in little things which every honest Christian practices? All that is most distinctive in the Christian -- his prayer, his battle, his joy, his cross-bearing -- takes place in the mystical room with the closed door. And it is this- the silence and the secret -- that makes the Christian as a man unknown.

The Service of the Christian

Again, the distinctive service of the Christian life is not a service that attracts attention.

When a man embarks on a political career, he knows that the reward of eminence is fame. Just in proportion to his genius or eloquence will the eyes of a waiting nation turn towards him. When a man adopts a military career, he hopes for some action that may bring him glory. He dreams of doing some gallant deed and waking to find that he is famous. In the life of politics then, as in the life of war, a certain fame is quite inevitable, and he who wins the laurel in the senate or shows conspicuous courage in the field is certain to attract attention.

But the distinctive service of the Christian life is not a service that attracts attention. There is no glitter and no glamour in it. There is none of the pomp and circumstance of war. It is a quiet and lowly service; it is a work of faith and a labor of love; like the Lord who inspires it, it will not strive nor cry, nor lift up its voice in the streets. It climbs the dark stair and enters the wretched home where the poor wife, perhaps, is lying on a sickbed hoping against hope and praying to God that her husband will not come reeling home tonight, and there it ministers with unwearied patience and with a love that will not let go. It gathers the children into the mission school, prays over them and visits them at home, and in spite of discouragement it perseveres for it hears the Savior saying "Feed my lambs." It visits the fatherless and widows in affliction, it sings in the hospitals, it stands at the prison gates. It comes like a glimpse of sunshine to the poorhouse; it takes the fallen by the hand and calls her sister. All that is going on in this great city. Yet when you open your paper you never read of that. You read of pantomimes and of concerts and of the fiscal question and of the discussions in the House of Commons. The truest service of the Christian life is never a service that attracts attention. The kingdom cometh not with observation. The seed was growing while the farmer slept. It is this lowly and unnoticed service, done for the sake of Him who died for us, that makes the Christian as a man unknown.

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The Apostolic Paradox 2 of 2
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

The Life Hid With God

But I have yet to mention the deepest of all reasons, and I shall give it to you in the apostle's words. "For ye are dead," says Paul in a great passage, "and your life is hid with Christ in God." Mysterious words -- deep beyond our searching; yet boundless in encouragement and hope! For they tell us that if we be Christ's indeed, our true life cannot be seen of men; it is hidden with Jesus Christ in God's pavilion till the day comes when it shall be revealed. When on a frosty night you look up at the Northern star, have you never said of it "unknown and yet well known?" There is not a sailor in our hemisphere but knows it. It is the first star which we point out to our children. There are countless stars whose name we never learn, but the Northern star is well-known to all. But are there mountains in it and are there valleys? Are there lakes and seas or are there living creatures? "Ah," says the sailor when I ask him that, "I don't mean that I know it in that sense." Unknown and yet well-known, you see, and unknown because hung aloft in heaven; and ye are dead and your life is hid in heaven with One who is the bright and morning star. If, then, you are truly following Christ never be anxious to explain yourself; do not be eager to be understood and never grow impatient to be recognized. Take up thy cross; study to be quiet; redeem the time; follow the gleam bravely. Remember that with all the saints you are to walk heavenward as a man unknown.

"Yet Well-Known."

But in spite of the obscurity of the Christian life, it is true that the Christian is well-known.

First, he is well-known when he little thinks of it. I have often been struck in preaching throughout Scotland with one feature of our church's life. I do not think I was ever in a parish where there was not one elder who stood out from all his brethren as a man of wisdom and of the spirit and of prayer. Those of you who were trained in country homes, perhaps more especially in country manses, will, I am sure, corroborate what I say. The elder may have lived in the humblest circumstances and been utterly unknown to the great world beyond, but everyone trusted him and everyone revered him and knew that he was a man of God. No one had ever seen him at secret prayer, yet no one ever doubted that he prayed. He never whispered what his right hand was doing, yet somehow all the village had the news. He moved about happy to be unknown and yet never dreaming how well-known he was. There is a deep sense in which that holds true of all loyal followers of Christ. Their life is telling where they may never think and their influence is far wider than they dream. The world is full of eager and watchful eyes, and there is not a man so poor but he has his audience. Some one is always helped or always hindered by the kind of life we lead from day to day. Back to thy duty then; take up thy cross. Resume thy service with all its disappointment. There are hearts that are thanking God for thee today -- thou art unknown, and yet well-known.

Well-Known in Heaven

Again, the Christian is well-known in heaven. In that great world where God the Father is and where there is one like to the Son of Man; in that eternal home where the angels are and where they watch with profoundest interest this earthly drama, there is nothing of more absorbing interest than the struggle and the service of the saint. Many of our estimates are overturned in heaven. There are strange reversals of magnitude in glory. Things that seem mighty here are trifles there, and the world's least is sometimes heaven's greatest. We often read of deafening applause, and it may be that the applause is deafening in the little area of some city hall. But the same applause given in the Highlands would hardly waken an echo in the valley and not a sound of it would reach the ear of him who was standing on the mountaintop.

So, much of the noisy cheering of the world has died away before it reaches glory, and yet all heaven was watching Jesus Christ who would not strive nor cry nor lift up His voice in the streets. It is the trials and triumphs of the spirit that are of vital interest to the heavenly hosts. It is the cry and the yearning of the soul which echo in the heart of the Redeemer. There is not a prayer that we utter but He hears it. There is not a temptation we master but He sees it. We cannot do the smallest deed of kindness but like a dove it flies back to the ark. Unknown -- yes, the Christian is always that, and yet I think he is well-known in heaven.

Well-Known at the Judgment

Then, lastly, the Christian may be unknown now, but he shall be well-known in the last judgment.

If there be any truth in the Gospel which we preach, the day is coming when the books will be opened and the small and great shall be summoned before God. You will be there and I shall be there; we shall be face to face with Almighty God at last. And swift as a flash of thought all that we were and did shall leap into light before ten million eyes. I forbear to dwell upon the awful misery of the man or woman whose life has been a lie. Faced by that God who is a consuming fire, and still more, faced by the love of Christ, what words in the whole range of human speech could tell the horror of that last unmasking? God grant that it be not thus with you and me! But ah! what words shall ever tell the joy of the last judgment if we have really been trusting Christ and fighting heavenward! "Lord," we shall say, "was it I who prayed these prayers, was it I who gave that cup of water to the little one? I had quite forgotten it. It had passed with time." But the Lord shall answer, "Child, I never forget." "Lord," we shall say, "was it I who won that soul in the days when I labored in Sunday School? I thought my work was a failure with the boy." So all that we ever strove to be and do, our secret hope and cry and struggle and victory -- all shall be written out and meet us again when we stand before the judgment seat of God. And then we shall understand what our text means, "As unknown, and yet well-known."

[nChrist]

Free Grace 1 of 2
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee. -- 2 Corinthians 12:9

What the thorn was of which the apostle speaks is a question we never can answer. A hundred explanations have been given, yet certainty has never been obtained. Each age has its own interpretation, each commentator has his chosen theory, and we are still as far away from exact knowledge as ever. We may learn a little, it is true, from the language in which the apostle tells us about it. He tells us his trouble was a thorn. It was not like a cut of sword or a gash of a saber; it was something to all appearance insignificant, but how it festered! It was not in the spirit, it was in the flesh; it was a bodily and not a mental torment. Thus far Paul himself is witness; but beyond that we go at our own risk. Paul was not at all the kind of man to dwell with evident relish on his ailments. Paul was a gentleman and hid all that, kept a happy face to the wide world, and only when the cause of God demanded it, when he might help to glorify the Lord, did he touch in the most delicate fashion on the things that were given him to suffer.

But if we cannot tell what the apostle's thorn was, we can at least discover what it did for him. It was as rich in blessing for his soul as the sweetest promise of his Lord. In the first place, it helped to keep him humble when in peril of spiritual pride; in the second place, it drove him to his knees, brought him as a suppliant to the throne; and thirdly, it gave him a new experience of the sustaining of the grace of God, "My grace is sufficient for thee."

The Kingliness of Grace

Now, what is grace? Is it the same as love? Yes, at the heart of it, it is the same as love. When you get deep enough down to the heart of it, love and grace are indistinguishable. The difference is that love can travel anywhere, upwards, or on the levels of equality, but grace can only travel downwards. A king can always be gracious to his subjects; a subject can never be gracious to his king. He may love his king and be intensely loyal, but he can never be gracious to his king; for grace is love able to condescend to men of low estate, leaning down with royalty of pity to the lowly and wretched and lost. That is why we call it sovereign grace; it is a peculiar prerogative of sovereignty. That is why we talk of free grace. That is why, when we think of the grace of God, our thoughts go out immediately to Christ, for it is in Christ and Christ alone we learn the love of God to sinful men.

So far, then, for the setting of the words. And now I want to speak of certain seasons when you and I, as Christian people, find this text upon our hearts. True, we need its message every hour, for we are not under the law but under grace; but for the grace of God in Jesus Christ there is no hope, even for a day; and yet to us as to the apostle here, seasons come of quite peculiar need when, like a cry of cheer across the storm, we hear, "My grace is sufficient for thee." On one or two of these seasons let me briefly touch.

The Sense of Sin

This word is full of joy when we awaken to a sense of our own sin. It is, we notice, one of the features of our age that it is shallow in its sense of sin. It does not feel the burden of its sin in the profound way our fathers did. Partly owing to that lack of quiet which is so notable in recent years, partly owing to the attention which is now directed to the social gospel, believers are not so deep in their own hearts as were the Christians of an older school. Now, that may be true or that may not be true, but this, I think, has never been gainsaid: sooner or later if one believes in Christ, he is wakened to a sight of his own sin. It may be given him at his first approach to Christ, be the cause that leads him to the Savior; or, being brought to Christ in gentler ways, it may visit him further on his journey. Sometimes he is awakened in the heart by contact with a pure and holy life; sometimes it is by the preaching of the Word or by the singing of a simple hymn. Sometimes it is in the seasons of the night when a man is alone with his own conscience; sometimes it is by reading the Bible; or it is born of great sorrow falling, not upon us, but on another; there is something in the suffering of our loved ones that makes us feel mysteriously guilty. It is in these ways, as in a hundred others, that the Spirit of God convicts us of our sin. We get a swift glimpse of what we are -- see what we are for ourselves. Now there is no talk of reformation, we want something more radical than that; and for the first time we cry despairingly, "Lord, be merciful to me a sinner." Is it not in such an hour that our text reveals the richness of its meaning? It is then we awaken to the Godhead of Christ: "My grace is sufficient for thee." Deeper than our deepest sinfulness is the grace of God in Jesus Christ; able to forgive and to redeem is the love that was revealed on Calvary. Suppose that in the whole of history there had never been anyone so vile as you, yet even to you this very moment is offered abundant and everlasting pardon. It was sufficient for David in his lust, so terribly aggravated by his birth and station; it was sufficient for Peter when he denied his Lord who was going to shed His blood for him. The penitent thief found it enough for him. It was enough for him who had the seven devils. There is nothing that grace will not attempt, and there is nothing that grace cannot achieve. When we are awakened to a sense of sin the only word to rest upon is this, "My grace is sufficient for thee."

[nChrist]

Free Grace 2 of 2
by George H. Morrison - 1866-1928

Grace in Suffering

Once more this word is full of comfort in the seasons when we are called upon to suffer. It is a condition of our present life that no one ever is exempt from suffering. That is a stated part of the agreement on which we get our leasehold of the world. To one suffering is of his body, to another it may come in mind. One it may reach in his material fortunes, another through a brother or a son. In one case it may be swift and sharp, vanishing like a summer tempest, while in another it may be long and slow and linger through the obscurity of years. There are many to whom God denies success, but to none He denies to suffer. Sooner or later, stealing from the shadow, it lays its piercing hand upon our hearts. Had it been otherwise the heart of man Would never have been a man of sorrows to suffer as He suffered who is our ideal.

Now when we are called to suffer there is nothing more beautiful than quiet fortitude; to take it bravely and quietly and patiently is one of the noblest victories of life. There are few sights more morally inspiring than that of someone who has a cross to carry; someone of whom we know, perhaps, that every day must be a day of pain, yet we never hear a murmur from him, he is always bright. He is so busy thinking about others that he never seems to think about himself. I have known people such as that; I do thank God that I have known them! There is no sermon so moving in its eloquence as the unuttered sermon of the cheerful sufferer. Among all the thoughts that God has given to make that victory possible to us, there is none more powerful than this, "My grace is sufficient for thee."

A friend of mine not long ago was visiting one of the hospitals in London. She was greatly touched by the look of happy peace on the face of one of the patients in a ward. A little while afterwards she asked a nurse who was the greatest sufferer in that ward, and the nurse, to her intense surprise, indicated the man she had first noticed. Going up to him, she spoke to him and told him what the nurse had said, and how she admired his courage when night and day in such pain. "Ah, miss," he said, "it is not courage; it is that," and he pointed to his bed head, and there was a colored text with this scripture upon it.

It was that which upheld him in the night; it was that which sustained him in the day. It was the love of God in Jesus Christ making itself perfect in his weakness.

Grace in Temptation

Then there is the hour when we are assaulted by temptation. Like suffering, temptation is universal, and like suffering, it is infinitely varied. Probably in all the human family no two are ever tempted quite alike. It is true that temptations may be broadly classified, clustered, as it were, around common centers. There is one class that assails the flesh, another that makes its onset on the mind; yet every temptation is so adapted to the person tempted that perhaps in all the ages that have gone no one was ever tempted just like me. To me there is no argument so strong as this for the existence of a devil. There is such subtlety in our temptations that it is hard to conceive of it without a brain. We are tempted with incomparable cunning; temptation comes to us all so subtlety and so sure that nothing can explain it but intelligence. Temptation is never obtrusive, but it is always there. It is beside us in the crowded street; it has no objection to the lonely moor; it follows us to the office and home; it dogs our footsteps when we go to church; it insists in sharing in our hours of leisure, and kneels beside us when we go to pray. At one and twenty we are sorely tempted, and say, "By-and-by it will be better; wait till twenty years have passed away, temptation will no longer assail us." But forty comes and we are tempted still; not now as in the passion of our youth, but with a power that is far more deadly because it is so hardening to the heart. There is not a relationship so sweet and sacred but temptation chooses it for its assault; there is not an act of sacrifice so pure, but temptation meets us in the doing of it. It never despairs of us until we die. So tempted as we are, is there any hope for us at all against that shameless and malevolent intelligence? Yes, we are here to proclaim that there is hope in unremitting watchfulness, there is hope in every breath of prayer. "Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees"; but above all there is hope in this: when we are tempted and are on the point of falling, we can lift up our hearts to Christ and hear Him say "My grace is sufficient for thee." Was He not tempted in all points like as we are, and yet was He not victorious? Did He not conquer sin, lead it captive, and lay it vanquished at His feet forever? And now you are His and He is yours; that victory which He had won is yours. It is at your disposal every hour. Say to yourself when you are next tempted, "He is able to keep me from falling. He that is with me is mightier than they that are against me." Better still, say nothing, but just listen as He rises up beside His Father's throne and calls to you, His tempted children, "My grace is sufficient for thee."

Grace in the Hour of Death

Again, shall we not need this word when life is ending, when we come to die? There is no pillow for a dying head except the grace of God in Jesus Christ. When I was a young minister in Thurso I was called into the country one beautiful summer day to the bedside of an elder who was dying. He was a godly man, a grave and reverent saint, a man whose only study was the Bible; summer and winter he was never absent from his familiar comer in the sanctuary. And now he was dying, and, as sometimes happens even with the choicest of the ripest saints, he was dying in such a fear of death as I have never witnessed since that hour. Outside the open window was the field with a shimmer of summer heat upon it; far away there was the long roll of the heavy waves upon the shore; here in the cottage was a human soul that walked reverently and in the fear of God, overmastered by the fear of death. Well, I was a young man then, very ignorant, very unversed in the deep things of the soul, and I tried to comfort him by speaking of the past -- what an excellent elder he had been; and I shall never forget the look he gave me, or how he covered his face as if in shame, nor how he cried, "Not that, sir, not that! There is no comfort for me there." It was then I realized for the first time that the only pillow to die on is free grace. It was then I felt how all we have done is powerless to uphold us in the valley of death, for all our righteousness are as filthy rags and bring no ease upon a dying bed.

This is our only stay: "My grace is sufficient for thee."

THE END