. . Steelier! & Co. | 
 
 Alfred Hafne 
 
 New York
 
 The 
 Keys of the Kingdom 
 
 And Other Sermons 
 
 BY 
 
 R. J. CAMPBELL, M. A. 
 
 of The City Temple, London 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 TORONTO 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 LONDON AND EDINBURGH
 
 Copyright, 1903, by 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 (March} 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 63 Washington Street 
 Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburg: 30 St. Mary Street
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM - - J 
 
 II. SIN-BEARING - 22 
 
 III. THE SELF-REVELATION OF JESUS - - 37 
 
 IV. THE PROMISE OF THE COMFORTER - '51 
 
 V. THE SELF-ASSERTION OF JESUS - 69 
 
 VI. GOD'S PERFECTING OF LIFE - - 88 
 
 VII. THE HUMANITY OF GOD - - - 107 
 
 2203352
 
 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM
 
 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 ' ' And I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on 
 earth shall be bound in Heaven: and whatsoever 
 thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven." 
 Matt, xvi., 9. 
 
 THERE has been for ages now a very great 
 difference of opinion as to the meaning of this 
 remarkable utterance of our Lord. You will 
 remember that it forms part of a special ad- 
 dress to the Apostle Peter, and that it only 
 occurs once in the whole of the New Testa- 
 ment. It is recorded by St. Matthew, and by 
 St. Matthew alone. The utterance was called 
 forth by Peter's response to a question of our 
 Lord, the question being, " Who say ye that I 
 am ? " And Peter answered, " Thou art the 
 Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus 
 then addressed him in a specially solemn way, 
 singling him out, as it seemed, from the rest of 
 the disciples. These were the terms of His 
 address :
 
 8 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona; for flesh and 
 blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father 
 which is in Heaven. I say also unto thee, that thou 
 art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church: 
 and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 
 
 Next come the words of our text : 
 
 " I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind in earth 
 shall be bound in Heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt 
 loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven." 
 
 You know, I suppose, how the Bishops of 
 Rome interpret that particular text. The 
 whole utterance they take to be the bestowal of 
 a special commission on the Apostle Peter, 
 and the giving to him of a certain primacy and 
 a certain power of binding and loosing, in the 
 life beyond as well as in this life. This special 
 power they believe themselves to have inherit- 
 ed, as the successors of the Apostle in the bish- 
 opric of the Church of Rome. I pass by that 
 particular interpretation, for our business now 
 is not controversial, and it matters very little 
 to us how this text is interpreted by the rep- 
 resentatives of a great historic Church, to 
 which, in one sense, at least, we cannot be said 
 to belong. But I certainly think that it seems 
 to give to Peter a certain primacy : a primacy, 
 first, in the order of time. He was the first
 
 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 9 
 
 who recognised, and, recognising, confessed 
 that Christ was something more to him than 
 an ordinary teacher could have been. In the 
 expression, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
 the living God," was contained the germ of 
 all Peter's future experience. He knew God 
 in a new way because he knew Christ. Peter, 
 the Apostle, was born in the moment when he 
 knew the Father in Christ. Further, I think 
 it gives to Peter a special primacy in the or- 
 der of leadership. Whatever we may say as 
 to Peter's commission, we all agree that prac- 
 tically he did lead the Christian Church, for a 
 certain period, at any rate. And he did it un- 
 willingly, as we see from the last chapter of 
 St. John's Gospel. He was more than willing 
 that his brother Apostle, formerly his rival, 
 now for ever his friend, John the Divine, 
 should assume the leadership. But the words 
 of Christ, addressed to him in his humility, 
 admit of no misconception. " If I will that he 
 tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Tend 
 My sheep: feed My lambs." 
 
 Now, agreeing as we all do, that in both 
 these senses there is a certain significance to 
 be attached to this commission, is there any 
 other meaning to be read out of the text? 
 
 Our Lord's words are always full of spiritual
 
 10 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 meaning, and when any of them are recorded 
 you may be perfectly sure that the work of re- 
 cording them was not waste of time they 
 have some relation to us as individuals. I 
 think this text was a statement of Peter's own 
 spiritual experience that which was, and that 
 which was to be; and the same truth which 
 applied to this statement of Peter's own ex- 
 perience applies also to yours and mine. I 
 will try to show you what I mean. 
 
 I went, in company with someone else, to 
 see Mrs. Spurgeon's Home of Rest at East 
 Brighton, and in giving to you a description of 
 what one there saw, I am giving it through 
 the mind of a little child. The little one was 
 surprised as we entered into the hall. She had 
 no idea the entrance was so grand. The house 
 did not look anything very great outside. 
 When we got into the vestibule, we saw that it 
 was spacious, lofty, and beautiful. To some 
 people that would have been a house by itself. 
 However, we were not permitted to stay in the 
 entrance hall. We were shown into another 
 room on the ground floor, and though we had 
 not forgotten the hall, in a few moments our 
 interest was centred in the new room. From 
 its windows we could see a certain part of the 
 landscape and part of the sea, and we were
 
 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM n 
 
 told that people were accustomed to sit or stand 
 at the window and look out upon both. But 
 we came out of that room and went into an- 
 other, and, looking from the windows, we 
 found that the view was more extensive and 
 more beautiful. The windows faced the south, 
 and the whole beauty of the Brighton front 
 was laid open to us. We then ascended to 
 another storey. The higher we went, the more 
 we saw. We had not forgotten the entrance 
 hall and the rooms on the ground floor, but all 
 those were but experiences at the back of the 
 mind; the higher we climbed, the larger grew 
 our experience. W T e were led from room to 
 room each chamber, as it were, adding to 
 our experience. You have applied the illus- 
 tration, I doubt not, ere I have reached this 
 point. It seems to me that God leads us from 
 room to room, and every event of our life sup- 
 plies us with a key with which we can unlock 
 a new chamber of experience. There is noth- 
 ing that is accidental nothing that we can af- 
 ford to say is unimportant. God is always de- 
 livering to us the keys of His kingdom. We 
 are passing from experience to experience, 
 from room to room growing, developing, as 
 we are able. God knows what is best for us, 
 and as He calls us, so He shapes us.
 
 12 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 Apply this to the life of the Apostle Peter, 
 and you will see it to be true. When Peter 
 made his famous affirmation, he had, as it 
 were, just entered the vestibule of the king- 
 dom of God. The discovery of God in Christ 
 meant a great deal to him. He began a new 
 life from that very moment: it had point and 
 purpose which it had lacked before. He had 
 been drawn to Christ I suppose he could 
 hardly have said why; he knew Christ now in 
 a new and special way. In discovering Him, 
 he discovered the Father he entered the king- 
 dom of God. For what is the kingdom of 
 God ? To appropriate the words of our Lord, 
 " the kingdom of God is within you." " Say 
 not, Lo here! lo there! for, behold, the king- 
 dom of God is within you." It is the reign 
 of God in the hearts of men. It is the reign 
 of God, shall we say, amongst the nations of 
 the earth, beginning with the individual al- 
 ways. We come to Him one by one ; into the 
 kingdom we pass one by one. We scarcely 
 know, sometimes, when we have passed the 
 threshold; but that self-discovery which is at 
 the same time the discovery of our relation- 
 ship to God, soon leaves us in no doubt where 
 we are. When a man becomes a member of 
 the kingdom of God, knows God as his Father,
 
 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 13 
 
 and depends on Christ as his Saviour, he has 
 passed, as it were, from death unto life; hence- 
 forth everything is new. Who opened the 
 door? The Father, who supplies the key. 
 God puts the key into the hands of each man 
 by the particular event which leads him to 
 God, and with that he enters into the king- 
 dom, and passes from room to room in the 
 experiences of the soul. 
 
 Shall we say that the Apostle Peter was 
 forthwith perfect after he made his famous 
 affirmation? Shall we say that you, my 
 brethren, who have known Christ, are prepared 
 to affirm to-day your likeness to Him? Are 
 you what God means you to be? Are you 
 what Christ would like you to be? Are you 
 what you feel you ought to be? There is no 
 one amongst us who can say that. We are 
 passing from room to room ascending from 
 storey to storey, from experience to experience 
 looking out from each new room upon the 
 meaning of life, learning as we ascend. There 
 is no accident in all this. God leads us from 
 crisis to crisis each crisis with its lesson, each 
 lesson with its key. 
 
 In Peter's life I see three great crises. Let 
 us for our instruction give a few minutes to 
 each.
 
 14 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 1. The crisis of a great love. 
 
 2. The crisis of a great moral failure. 
 
 3. (The immediate sequence of the second) 
 
 The crisis of a great sorrow. 
 i. The crisis of a great love. No one 
 doubts Peter's love for Christ; Christ never 
 did. He loved his Master, and the very fact 
 that he could love changed him. We are like 
 him. You are very poor if no great love has 
 ever come into your life. You are the better 
 if you have ever given yourself in love to any 
 one. One has sometimes heard people mourn 
 that they ever had committed themselves to 
 a great love, because some of those to whom 
 you give the most give to you in return the 
 least. And you wish that it were not so ; you 
 wish to excise the experience, not only that of 
 ingratitude, but that of the bond of affection 
 which united you with the loved one. Never 
 wish that again. What you are to-day you 
 are in great measure because you have learned 
 to love. Do you regret that you ever com- 
 mitted yourself so far as to rob yourself of 
 luxury and ease and pleasure because of that 
 child who has not turned out all that you could 
 wish? Believe me, the chapter has not closed 
 yet by any means, but something of its mean- 
 ing you can read already. What difference
 
 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 15 
 
 has it made to you? You are wiser, kinder, 
 nobler, sweeter. It is a great thing to have 
 loved. " Say never, ye * loved once.' ' The 
 experience is built into your soul. God sup- 
 plied you with a key to the meaning of life 
 when He made you capable of loving some- 
 body. Never wish the experience undone; it 
 has helped to make you. Think of any one 
 who is incapable of such an affection. How 
 much of life such natures miss ! They remain 
 in the lower storeys; there is a vast landscape 
 hidden from them. They are able to mount 
 higher just in proportion as they are able to 
 give themselves to an ideal. A great love 
 transformed Peter; the power of love may 
 transform you. 
 
 2. The crisis of a great moral failure. 
 Then there came a great failure. From some 
 points of view the most interesting crisis of 
 Peter's life was when he failed his Master 
 through cowardice. No one would care to 
 affirm that Peter did not love the Lord whom 
 he denied; but Jesus knew he would deny 
 Him, because He knew Peter. Peter did not 
 know himself; and I affirm that he was a 
 better man immediately after the act of denial 
 than he was at the moment when he promised 
 his Master that he would never deny Him.
 
 1 6 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 We judge amiss so often because we judge 
 moral offence by deed rather than by disposi- 
 tion. It is possible that you and I were worse 
 men, worse women, in hours when we saw 
 nothing wrong with ourselves than we were 
 in those hours of self-contempt that followed 
 failure. If there be a man in this congrega- 
 tion this morning who is conscious of being a 
 moral failure, I would like to speak to that man. 
 You are in great danger, greater than you 
 know. You are also in a region of blessed- 
 ness greater than you know. Do you blame 
 yourself for sin? It is not the deed that you 
 call sin that is the greatest sin. It was your 
 spirit before you fell that was wrong. The 
 deed only revealed yourself to yourself. You 
 were a failure before you knew yourself. You 
 are in the region of blessedness now if you will 
 but have it so. There are some people who 
 cannot recover themselves from self -contempt. 
 No man merits contempt, not even from him- 
 self. That which happened to you was, that 
 God, who knew you better than you knew 
 yourself, withdrew His hand for a moment. 
 You fell that you might rise again. There 
 was tenderness in the act of God in permitting 
 you to know yourself by the deed that you call 
 sin, but which might be, if you allow it, your
 
 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 17 
 
 salvation. It is difficult to bear the cross of 
 moral failure. The valley of humiliation is 
 not a welcome place. The discipline of fail- 
 ure is necessary often for the shaping of a holy 
 life. Read the meaning : take the key into 
 your hand. The kingdom of God means the 
 reign of God in your heart, and this truth con- 
 cerns you at this moment more than it con- 
 cerns any one else in the world. Never mind 
 what any other person's relation to God may 
 be till you have adjusted your own. Say unto 
 that which has overthrown you, " Rejoice not 
 against me, O mine enemy! When I fall, I 
 shall arise." It is the will of God that through 
 moral failure you should be supplied with a 
 key to regions that lie higher than all you have 
 yet known. 
 
 3. The crisis of a great sorrow. Peter's 
 third experience was that of a great sorrow. 
 Would any of you wish to change places with 
 him after that terrible day when Christ was 
 crucified, and when, so far as Peter knew, He 
 was gone from him for ever. How he must 
 have reproached himself, condemned himself, 
 that he was not braver in the day of his Mas- 
 ter's tribulation! He had forsaken Him to 
 whom he had promised loyalty and affection 
 and Jesus was dead! Peter is not the only
 
 i8 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 person who has felt like that. It must be a 
 terrible thing for some people to look back 
 across an open grave and see what might have 
 been. And how possible it is to wish remorse- 
 fully but vainly that those who are gone could 
 come back again for a moment, that they 
 might see what the state of our heart toward 
 them really is, and hear our word of contri- 
 tion and self-reproach. But it cannot be. 
 They cannot return, and we we shall be mark- 
 ed for ever by that cross, that we cannot undo 
 for the dead that which we have done, and we 
 cannot do for the dead that which we have left 
 undone. Truly that is a great sorrow, a sorrow 
 for which there is no panacea. Is there no 
 panacea? There is just the same panacea that 
 there was for Peter. Look for the meaning of 
 the experience : there is a key there. The king- 
 dom of God extends to both earth and Heaven. 
 What you are resolving now for the kingdom 
 of Heaven's sake is changing you while you 
 resolve it. You are leaving behind you some- 
 what now for the kingdom of Heaven's sake : 
 you are changing as you leave it. You are 
 shaping yourself for eternity. The binding 
 and the loosing is going on. In Heaven there 
 is some record of your doings. Christ is the 
 medium between you and all whom you have
 
 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 19 
 
 ever wronged. We have wronged Him most 
 in wronging any. But God never meant a 
 man to become the victim of his own sins. 
 The self-discovery which a great sorrow makes 
 necessary supplies us with a new key to the 
 kingdom of God. We pass into a new cham- 
 ber, take a new view of life, and all that hap- 
 pens to us henceforth stands in some relation 
 to the experience which has passed, as well as 
 to that which is to come. To you are com- 
 mitted the keys of the kingdom of God not 
 all together, but one by one, as Christ com- 
 mitted them to Peter. 
 
 Some of you have been called to pass 
 through deep waters; and just for the moment 
 you may be wondering where God is, and why 
 He has left you so poor. Life seemed rich 
 but a few days ago; it is very sad and dreary 
 now. " The Lord gave, and the Lord hath 
 taken away." My brother, my sister, God has 
 given you a key to the kingdom of Heaven. 
 He has led you into a new room, and bidden 
 you look out upon life from a new point. The 
 change that is taking place in you may be 
 blessed shall be, if you let it be; remember- 
 ing that the kingdom of God is not only for 
 earth, but for Heaven not only for time, but 
 for eternity. This is a moment; there is a
 
 20 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 by-and-by, a gathering up of all things into 
 Christ. Learn to use the key that God has 
 given you; and by a great sorrow rise nearer 
 to Him. 
 
 In the hills around Brighton you may read 
 the history of the world. So in every man's 
 character you can read the history of mankind. 
 No one can cross the Downs without noticing 
 that something has been there which has helped 
 to make that which now is. Once upon a time 
 the sea washed round the foot of those cliffs 
 that we call the Dyke. This Brighton of ours 
 was once covered deeply with ice and snow 
 that never removed, summer or winter; there 
 has also been a time when the rocks round 
 about us were melted by fervent heat, and if 
 you care to read the story of the crust of this 
 little world of ours you will see it written in the 
 cliffs layer upon layer. In every blade of 
 grass there is latent the story of the whole ; lit- 
 tle by little it has been so made. In every 
 man's character there is latent every experience 
 through which he has passed. Your memory 
 may not be strong enough to take you back to 
 those hours when God was chiselling and fash- 
 ioning you for the mood of this moment; but 
 no matter how weak your memory is, the 
 experience is there; and however much you
 
 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 21 
 
 may wish it you cannot undo it without un- 
 doing what you are. Latent in us all there are 
 these experiences, which in God's providence 
 succeed each other, and leave us the same no 
 more. Appropriate this thought. It brings 
 great comfort with it. We are not alone; we 
 are not ignored; we are not left to ourselves. 
 We are led from room to room. God calls us 
 to the kingdom; and when we have passed 
 inside the door the keys of the rooms through 
 which we pass are given to us one by one, and 
 " Christ leads us through no darker rooms than 
 He went through before."
 
 II 
 
 SIN-BEARING 
 
 " He was manifested to take away our sins." 
 
 I. John Hi., 5. 
 
 " It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know 
 that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him ; 
 for we shall see him as He is." I. John iii., 2. 
 
 LET us, first of all, read these two verses in the 
 Revised Version. They run thus : " We know 
 that He was manifested to take away sins ; and 
 in Him is no sin." (Marginal rendering: 
 " bear sins."} " It doth not yet appear what 
 we shall be; we know that if He shall be man- 
 ifested, we shall be like Him." (Marginal 
 rendering: " if it shall be manifested.") 
 
 Let us now take these two sentences in con- 
 junction, and paraphrase them into their mean- 
 ing in modern English. In the fifth verse we 
 read : " He was shown forth to the world " 
 in His birth, life, death, resurrection, and 
 His abiding influence in the hearts and lives of 
 men to-day " to take away sins " or, to bear
 
 SIN-BEARING 23 
 
 sins " and in Him there is no sin." The sec- 
 ond verse might read thus : " Beloved, we are 
 now sons of God, and it is not yet clear what 
 we shall be ; but we know that when it is made 
 clear" (not "when He shall appear") 
 when it is shown forth, when it is clear to us 
 what we are intended to be " we shall see we 
 are like Him." Now, put the two sentences to- 
 gether and read : " We shall be like Him in 
 bearing sins." 
 
 There is a dual meaning attached to one 
 word in the fifth verse, which is translated in 
 the Old Version by the phrase " take away." 
 But it has another meaning as well. The 
 meaning is simply " endure," " bear," " carry," 
 and this dual meaning ought to be present in 
 our minds when we study the sentence before 
 us. For it suggests two thoughts. The first 
 is that there is a work of Christ in relation to 
 sin in which we cannot share; but the second 
 is that there is a work of Christ in relation to 
 sin that we are called to share. Christ has a 
 relationship to the world which no single in- 
 dividual amongst us can have; but likewise 
 Christ, in redeeming the world, makes use of 
 every life that is consecrated to Himself. 
 
 Let us consider these meanings. The most
 
 24 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 important part of the message which Christ 
 brought to the world, the most important part 
 of the message which Christ delivers to the 
 world to-day, is addressed to the conscience 
 first, and afterwards to the reason and to the 
 heart. Our Lord's earthly ministry began with 
 one word : " Repent." Then came the prom- 
 ise : " The kingdom of God is at hand." 
 Put into homely language it is : " Come to 
 God turn to God ; for God has come to you." 
 It has always seemed to me that the message 
 to the conscience which Christ delivered creat- 
 ed a kind of obligation on His part to satisfy 
 the need that He then awakened. For, once 
 we have prevailed upon a man to sue for par- 
 don at the feet of the Eternal One, we have, 
 as it seems, stated at the same time our ob- 
 ligation to present to him the satisfaction of his 
 need ; and it has always appeared to those who 
 have come nearest to Christ that in discover- 
 ing man to himself, in awakening within him 
 the consciousness of a need of a Redeemer, He 
 at the same moment declares His own obliga- 
 tion to supply the answer to that need in the 
 bearing of sin. Many have never entered very 
 deeply into this aspect of truth, but some have, 
 and to them I repeat the message of the Gos- 
 pel : " He was manifested to take away sins ; "
 
 SIN-BEARING 25 
 
 and if you choose to insert the epithet of the 
 old translators you may " our sins." The re- 
 sponsibility for the better life that is before us, 
 and which the consciousness of guilt might hin- 
 der us from ever attempting, rests with Jesus 
 Christ. It was never meant that a man should 
 become the victim of his own sins, so that he 
 could not rise to the heights of holiness; and 
 this glorious Gospel, which bears upon the face 
 of it the vindication of its own genuineness, 
 in that it satisfies the need it awakens, comes 
 to the world to-day as the message of a Re- 
 deemer who came to bear away our sins. 
 
 Not to dwell longer upon this general point, 
 let me mention one apparent qualification. It 
 is that Christ, in bearing away sins, has not 
 removed, or seems not to have removed, the 
 penal consequences of sin. We are all aware 
 that there is no forgiveness in Nature; very 
 seldom is there forgiveness in human nature. 
 No man sees all the meaning of his deeds be- 
 fore he commits them ; but, once committed, it 
 seems as though they had become part of the 
 history of the universe, and the consequences 
 are inexorable. 
 
 To take a gross instance. Suppose that a 
 man has abandoned himself to the craving for 
 strong drink in such wise that he has wrecked
 
 26 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 his body, blunted his finer sensibilities of soul. 
 What does forgiveness include for that man? 
 Why, it means introducing him to a new hell, 
 of which even in his sins he had known noth- 
 ing. If you could succeed in inducing him to 
 believe that there is a pardoning God, and that 
 there is such a thing as the grace of God, you 
 have but brought him face to face with a new 
 struggle. Not a pang is spared him. The 
 craving remains what it was before, with the 
 exception that it is a daily humiliation to fight 
 down the beast within him. He might say 
 to himself that he is but bearing the conse- 
 quences of his own sin, that there is no one to 
 blame but himself, and that the Gospel never 
 provided such an emancipation in this life as he 
 would like to have the emancipation from 
 temptation. 
 
 But this is not so. There is another way 
 of looking at the spiritual significance of what 
 seems to be the consequence of our sins. Re- 
 move the word penal altogether from what a 
 soul endures that is being cleansed from the 
 presence of sin, and put in its place the word 
 discipline, and then think if before God we are 
 not all alike. You who, for the most part, have 
 been trying all your life to serve God, and 
 whose progress has been an increasing knowl-
 
 SIN-BEARING 27 
 
 edge of Him, whose joy in communing with 
 Him is without disguise, and who have a wit- 
 ness that you are in very deed the sons of God 
 you know, do you not ? that the way has not 
 been altogether a way freed from obstacles, and 
 difficulties, and conflicts, and agony of spirit. 
 Holiness is always purchased by these things; 
 and, if you have never fallen as your brother 
 has fallen, all the same this sharp lesson of life 
 has been yours. You have been disciplined 
 into what you are. Your nature has been 
 deepened, your heart has been made tender, 
 your outlook upon life far more solemn, by the 
 things that have come to you unsought and un- 
 welcomed, and that you have prayed to God in 
 agony of spirit to take away from you. 
 
 Now, turn to the poor drunkard and say your 
 message over again. Say : " Brother, I 
 have my discipline; you have yours. I have 
 my struggle : God has given you yours. Re- 
 member, with thankfulness, that you have been 
 digged out of a very deep pit indeed, and con- 
 tinue your struggle now, not as the consequence 
 of the past, but as the discipline which God 
 permits you for the perfecting of your soul in 
 the present and the future. Your sin has been 
 borne away long ago. Yours is the discipline 
 which comes to us all, and that it is so sharp
 
 and so strong is a mark, not of God's anger, but 
 of His favour, for ' whom He loveth, He 
 chasteneth ; and scourgeth every son whom He 
 receiveth.' ' 
 
 But, to proceed to the secondary meaning 
 of our text : " He was manifested to bear 
 sins." If you will turn to St. John i., 29, you 
 will read a sentence that reminds you of this 
 one, and, in fact, it is closer in meaning to it 
 than you would at first imagine. " Behold, 
 the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin 
 of the world." Now here the word is just the 
 same as in our text. It is simply " bear; " the 
 weight is laid upon Him. " The chastisement 
 of our sins was upon Him ; and with His stripes 
 we are healed." 
 
 There is an aspect of the work of Christ 
 in which every regenerate soul is called to 
 share. Here are some ways in which we can 
 apply this truth to our souls. 
 
 First, let us recognise that there is no man 
 who is able to bear his own sins. A very 
 familiar mode of expression in the present day 
 is to this effect : It is right for a man to have 
 to bear the consequences of what he has brought 
 upon himself by his own wickedness. A case 
 is before my mind at the moment, which I may 
 venture to give you, as an abstraction rarely
 
 SIN-BEARING 29 
 
 helps, while a concrete illustration does. I re- 
 member long ago being brought face to face 
 with a most pitiful case of ruin at the begin- 
 ning of manhood. A young man had fallen 
 into bad habits, and, by the influence of others, 
 had become a victim to the gambling mania. 
 He had gone so far as to tamper with his em- 
 ployer's money. Then the question for his 
 friends was, what was to be done? One of 
 his friends said (and, I think, charitably), that 
 the best thing to be done was to leave him to 
 the consequences of his own folly. It was then 
 asked what the consequences would be, and the 
 reply was that it was to be feared that they 
 would mean imprisonment, and, for the pres- 
 ent at any rate, ruin in the eyes of his circle 
 of friends. When it was asked why it was 
 considered desirable that the culprit should suf- 
 fer so much, the reply given was that it 
 was because he did not see his own responsi- 
 bility as he should, and he was not ashamed of 
 his sin, but merely afraid of exposure: his 
 spirit was wrong. Well, as things have turn- 
 ed out, that friend was right. The spirit of 
 the culprit was wrong ; it was simply cowardly. 
 He managed to shun for the moment the awk- 
 ward consequences of his own behaviour; he 
 did not have to endure the exposure, nor, what
 
 30 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 would have mattered very much less, the ac- 
 tual imprisonment; but I do not think he was 
 cured. But if he had been disgraced in the 
 eyes of society, the wife and child would have 
 been ruined as well as he, for they, who were 
 totally innocent and ignorant of it all, would 
 have been disgraced for evermore, and the poor 
 little one would have entered into life sadly 
 handicapped. Could it be said that, in allow- 
 ing that man to endure the penalty of his sin, 
 he was expiating it by himself? By no means. 
 No man sinneth to himself. 
 
 To take yet another truth. I should say 
 that behind every case of moral failure there 
 is a responsibility which cannot be placed upon 
 the right shoulders by anyone but God. When 
 I hear of a man having fallen, I am tempted 
 to inquire how many persons have contributed 
 to that fall; and, perhaps, if we were able to 
 trace the matter to its original sources, it would 
 be found that some who are most earnest in 
 serving God, and most anxious for His glory, 
 are included in the number of those who are 
 responsible. Have you ever been conscious 
 that you were doing harm to someone by the 
 very flippancy of your demeanour by your 
 off-hand behaviour in a certain crisis of his 
 career? What seemed to be your life was on
 
 SIN-BEARING 31 
 
 the surface the careless, or cynical, or world- 
 ly, or censorious side of your character and 
 by it you injured the moral susceptibilities of 
 another who stood near you, and into the fab- 
 ric of his responsibility entered a part of yours. 
 There is no man that falleth by himself. There 
 are a thousand agencies that have contributed 
 to make him what he is when the crisis comes ; 
 and none of us who know ourselves truly 
 would dare to point the finger of scorn. Per- 
 haps by what we have been and done, and by 
 what we have not been and done, we have con- 
 tributed to the fall of a brother, who, in the 
 sight of God, has not fallen alone. No man 
 should bear the full responsibility for his own 
 sins. 
 
 But, on the other hand, we have to fall back 
 upon the great promise that He who is the Life 
 of the world, the Fount of all compassion, is 
 sufficient for these things, and we are not. It 
 is not the province of the preacher to explain 
 how, but simply to say that so it is. Happily 
 for us who feel ourselves to be guilty in the 
 sight of God for other men's failures, there 
 is a compensation to be found not in human 
 nature, but in the Divine that is human Jesus 
 Christ our Saviour. 
 
 There are yet other instances in which we
 
 32 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 share with the Sin-bearer. Let me give you 
 one or two that are apparent to all, and then 
 leave you to apply the truth yourselves to cases 
 that are not so apparent. Do you remember 
 the dying words of Savonarola, who paid with 
 his life the penalty of his magnificent attempt 
 to establish the City of God in wicked Flor- 
 ence? One day he was addressing a crowd in 
 the Duomo ; another day he was led in disgrace 
 to the stake, amid the hoots of those who had 
 been hanging upon his words but a little time 
 before. George Eliot put into his mouth 
 words that give the experience of every true 
 martyr, whether he be crucified before the gaze 
 of mankind or in silence and shadow : " I 
 count as nothing; darkness encompasses me; 
 yet the light I saw was the true light." Rein- 
 zi, the last of the Roman tribunes, at the last 
 moment would have saved himself from the 
 fury of the rabble. He recognised in the hour 
 of his failure that he who would serve must 
 suffer, and that sometimes it seems as though 
 the service were not worth while. " I am 
 greater than Rome," he said, as he fell a vic- 
 tim to the people he had saved. Martin Lu- 
 ther, in his grand affirmation, " Here stand I : 
 I can none other : so help me God ! " under- 
 stood what it was to suffer vicariously. He
 
 SIN-BEARING 33 
 
 was bearing a burden not his own. God sav- 
 ed him, but he knew what it was even in life to 
 be crucified; for those who get beneath the 
 triumph of the great reformer discern at what 
 a soul agony it was purchased. Latimer, at 
 the stake in Oxford, declared the same truth: 
 " Be of good cheer, Master Ridley ! We shall 
 this day, by the grace of God, light such a can- 
 dle in England as shall never be put out." 
 The suffering servant of God was bearing sins 
 not his own. The accumulation of the guilt 
 of the world seems to fall upon these royal 
 ones who live and serve in the spirit of Christ. 
 So it always has been ; so it always will be. 
 The sin-bearers of the world, the saviours of 
 the world, are joined in spirit unto Him who 
 agonised in Gethsemane and died upon Cal- 
 vary. 
 
 Now, to pass from these dramatic scenes of 
 history to our more common life. Some of 
 you, not very willingly it may be, are sin-bear- 
 ers. I think of you, a husband, who have to 
 bear the frailties of a wife whom you took 
 for better or for worse. You bear the burden 
 and you say nothing about it ; you are the brav- 
 er and the truer and the nobler for it. I think 
 of the wife who appears not in public service, 
 but who is the strength of the husband who
 
 34 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 does; who sacrifices herself every day with 
 cheerfulness of spirit to brace him for the stern 
 conflict, and knows what it is, perhaps, to keep 
 to herself a certain sorrow that has made her 
 what she is. Every power for good is pur- 
 chased by soul agony. Where wrong has been 
 done to you; where you have been misunder- 
 stood ; where you have been wounded in spirit ; 
 where your deserts have been ignored by the 
 world that is round about you learn your les- 
 son. So it always has been; and we shall be 
 like Him when we see Him as He is. You 
 are accounted fortunate, perhaps, that there are 
 so many who carry your burden; and yet you 
 carry not only your own, but others'. Some- 
 times you feel rebellious; you wish it could 
 be otherwise that it were possible for the 
 truth about your life to become known to men, 
 who would then interpret you better. Never 
 wish it any more. It is just as it should be; 
 and when the purpose of it all shall appear, we 
 shall see that we are like Him sin-bearers. 
 
 Every tragedy in the home circle, every hour 
 of agony through which you pass, every wrong 
 that you must endure in silence for there is 
 no redress upon this side of the grave is not 
 purposeless or accidental. It is a great privi-
 
 SIN-BEARING 35 
 
 lege to which you are called the high preroga- 
 tive of suffering. Some day we shall see the 
 meaning of it all, and never regret a moment 
 of it. You remember the incident in " Middle- 
 march," of that leader of society part of it 
 religious society who had obtained his world- 
 ly success by a means that he dare not own. 
 He had been the ruin of a poor old widow 
 woman. Her gold became his : the whole fab- 
 ric of his after influence was built upon a crime. 
 The day of exposure came it had to come 
 and on that day his wife uttered no word of 
 reproach, nor was she vehement in his de- 
 fence, nor did she torture him by telling him 
 what she meant to do. She left the room, and 
 came back without any of her rich robes, dress- 
 ed in plain and simple black, as befitted a new 
 condition. She said in demeanour that was 
 stronger than speech : "I have come to share 
 your shame." Up to that time he was not 
 sure whether she could stand by him ; but that 
 one act broke him down : she was bearing his 
 sin. In daily life we find such opportunities 
 still. Whether it be in secret trial or in open 
 shame, it is our privilege to be sin-bearers. 
 Christ summons us to a fellowship holy and 
 august. Shall we shrink from the trial ? May
 
 36 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 we all live so that when at last the day of 
 revelation comes, we may be of the 
 
 Choir invisible 
 
 Of those immortal dead who live again 
 
 In minds made better by their presence.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE SELF-REVELATION OF JESUS 
 
 John i., 35-51. 
 
 A LITTLE time ago a well-known preacher, de- 
 claring his own experience and doing his best 
 to move his hearers to a more solemn appre- 
 hension of spiritual truth, said, " It is not the 
 preaching of Christ, not eloquence, not earnest- 
 ness, not spiritual experience, not even the liv- 
 ing of a good life, that brings men to a saving 
 knowledge of Christ it is Christ Himself." 
 The statement arrested me at once, because I 
 felt that, thought it might be somewhat exag- 
 gerated, yet it was the basal truth upon which 
 all spiritual life exists the self-revelation of 
 Jesus. 
 
 The great need of to-day is that of a near 
 vision of Jesus. The longer I live the more 
 am I convinced that men do want to see Jesus. 
 They do not want many propositions about
 
 38 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 Christianity, except those propositions about 
 God which are to be found in our experience 
 of Christ. When we seek spiritual satisfaction, 
 each of us along the line of our own needs and 
 expressing our own nature, we are seeking 
 really for a revelation of Jesus. It is very 
 remarkable that this should be so,, in our own 
 day especially, because it shows how complete- 
 ly victorious is the spiritual nature of man over 
 every other part of his nature. Every asser- 
 tion of the highest in us is an appeal for 
 Jesus. 
 
 When we compare our own day with what 
 have been called (I know not with how much 
 exactness) the ages of faith, we are struck, in 
 spite of outward differences, with the similari- 
 ty of the experience of Christ which prevailed 
 then and prevails now. When you are reading 
 the pages of Thomas a Kempis you feel your- 
 self in some degree in another world, an entire- 
 ly new environment, but the experience that 
 lies at the back of it, the experience of 
 Christ, is precisely the same as that of any 
 saint of God in this place to-day; the reverent 
 familiarity with Jesus which was the note and 
 characteristic of the ages of faith is reproduced 
 now, and where it is not reproduced it is sought
 
 THE SELF-REVELATION OF JESUS 39 
 
 after as much as in the days of Thomas a 
 Kempis. The great need of the present day is 
 to bring men back to Jesus. Let me ask you, 
 then, to revise what you already know of the 
 process that has given us Jesus. 
 
 It is not so very many years ago that Christ 
 was, so to speak, rediscovered not the Christ 
 of faith, but the Jesus of actual history. The 
 ecclesiastical Christ has nearly disappeared. 
 There was a time in the history of the Church 
 when Jesus was lost sight of because the Second 
 Person in the Trinity occupied a place so con- 
 spicuous. And then came a tendency, which 
 is now, I think, spending itself, to rediscover 
 the actual Christ as He lived and walked and 
 talked in the days of His flesh; and as Dr. 
 Fairbairn has said very pithily, though that 
 rediscovery of Jesus meant for us a new begin- 
 ning in many ways, it cannot add anything to 
 our actual experience of the Christ of faith. 
 We have come very near to the historical Je- 
 sus; we see Him now as He seemed to the 
 fishermen of Galilee; we recognise His win- 
 someness, His tenderness, His compelling pow- 
 er, His authority ; but we know no more really 
 of the spiritual loveliness of Christ than St. 
 Bernard or St. Francis of Assisi. Christ has 
 for us, as He had for them, the religious value
 
 40 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 of God. We identify Him with the best that 
 we know of the Divine nature. He is the sat- 
 isfaction of our souls at their highest; He can 
 deal with human misery and weakness and 
 pain. We ask to-day, as they asked in the 
 long ago, " Let us see Jesus." 
 
 Then, how are we to obtain any clearer 
 vision of Jesus ? The thought may be shaping 
 itself in your mind while I speak, " By going 
 straight to the Holy Book." Here He is mir- 
 rored for us. No one going to the New Testa- 
 ment for the first time could be other than ar- 
 rested by the picture that its pages present of 
 the Jesus of history. Nothing precisely like 
 Him has ever been seen. His uniqueness is 
 demonstrated by our increasing knowledge of 
 what He did in the days of His flesh. But 
 do you think that we go to the Bible for our 
 first-hand knowledge of Christ ? I am not pre- 
 pared to say that it could not be so, but I 
 think I am right in saying that I have never 
 found it to be so. Our knowledge of Christ 
 is not a book knowledge. The Bible, giving 
 it the utmost prominence that you can, and 
 the greatest reverence, does not bring you to 
 Christ. It feeds your nature when you have 
 found Him; it supplements your spiritual ex- 
 perience as you grow like Him ; but you do not
 
 THE SELF-REVELATION OF JESUS 41 
 
 go to Christ, the greater number of you, by the 
 medium of Holy Scripture; there is something 
 else, a something which I shall try to demon- 
 strate to you. 
 
 A returned missionary tells a story of a 
 Hindu convert whom he discovered living by 
 himself where few white men ever passed. It 
 appeared that this man had come into posses- 
 sion of a copy of the New Testament. The 
 Jesus of the Gospels attracted him; he became 
 a Christian without knowing what the name 
 Christian really meant that is to say, he did 
 not call himself a Christian ; he simply came to 
 believe in Christ. He retired from the society 
 of his fellows in fact, he was expelled; he 
 lived quietly and humbly in a hut in the forest 
 by himself, feeding his spiritual life by what 
 he got from the Gospels and nothing else. 
 The story was exceedingly simple. The Jesus 
 of the Gospels had won his attention. " I 
 assured him," said the missionary, " of what 
 Jesus had been to me. Before I left him I 
 tried to make him understand the present Christ 
 rather than the Christ of the past who gave to 
 us a new vision of God. I revealed to him out 
 of my own spiritual stores what I knew of my 
 own Saviour, and that man was not only con- 
 firmed in his faith, but rose to a new spiritual
 
 42 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 level through what he learned from my ex- 
 perience of the living Christ." Great as was 
 the arresting power of what that Hindu found 
 in the Gospels, it took another altitude when 
 he discovered the living Christ, revealed first in 
 the experience of another, and then in the wit- 
 ness within. 
 
 Would you say, then, that we come to Christ 
 from what we see of Him in the lives and the 
 experience of other men? Is it sufficient to 
 live the good life? It has its value. You re- 
 member the story of the young man who was 
 sent to John Keble to learn Catholic truth, as 
 it was called? He was a man who would not 
 have been convinced by Keble's arguments, 
 though the person who sent him to Keble sent 
 him as to a Christian apologist. Keble was 
 silent, he simply lived; and before that man 
 left his company he was not only a Christian, 
 but an Anglo-Catholic. He left behind him 
 all the questions he had brought: Keble's life 
 was the greatest apologetic he had ever read. 
 I do not think that it would make me an Anglo- 
 Catholic, but it might bring me to Christ. The 
 witness of a good life is a great thing, but it 
 does not meet the whole range of experience. 
 Tauler, the author of the Theologica Germani- 
 ca, says somewhere that sometimes the best of
 
 THE SELF-REVELATION OF JESUS 43 
 
 men mistake the best of men. That is true, 
 and I think it is in the good purpose of God 
 that it should be so ; that God may be sufficient 
 for the best that is in man, that He should be 
 our closest Friend, our real Guide, our 
 Strength, our Sustainer. God Himself is the 
 compensation for human misunderstanding. 
 A strange thing it is that by our very limita- 
 tions we withhold from one another that sym- 
 pathy and respect without which it might be 
 supposed spiritual life could not be sustained. 
 And the power of a good life is not always 
 manifest. Goodness is usually its own vindi- 
 cation, but not always, for holiness is not in- 
 variably self-evident. We cannot live abso- 
 lutely and entirely so as to be certain of wit- 
 nessing for Christ. 
 
 From these considerations, we come very 
 naturally to the record that we have of the 
 manifestations of Jesus in this first chapter of 
 St. John's Gospel. The first to announce Him 
 was John the Baptist, His forerunner and her- 
 ald. He declared, without stopping to prove, 
 " Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away 
 the sin of the world ! " to all those who heard 
 him ; to all those who had followed him in the 
 hope of getting a glimpse into a higher and a 
 nobler life just as you and I do to-day: we
 
 44 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 listen to anyone who can open the kingdom of 
 Heaven. And two of those who heard him 
 turned and followed Jesus. " What seek ye? " 
 said the seeming peasant of Galilee. " Mas- 
 ter," was the reply, " where dwellest Thou ? " 
 " Come and see," was the answer, and they 
 abode with Him that same night. Next day 
 they separated the one of them is Andrew, 
 the other is clearly John, though he does not 
 say so each to bear his witness to the new 
 discovery. First, Andrew findeth his own 
 brother, Simon, and saith unto him, " We have 
 found the Messiah." Peter came to Jesus. 
 Mark, the declaration is in every case the same ; 
 the introduction is pretty much the same; but 
 the way in which Jesus deals with every sepa- 
 rate one is in every single case different. Peter 
 came, and Jesus, looking into his nature, said, 
 " You, the impulsive, the wayward, the un- 
 steady, the victim of your own moods; you, 
 the weak and unreliable, shall be called a 
 rock." Peter's secret thought was penetrated 
 there. It was what he wanted to be, and Christ 
 understood him, and he accepted Christ. He 
 would need no more witness of Andrew or 
 James. He had found the Messiah; the Per- 
 son who understood him, and answered him 
 along the line of his own need. And the most
 
 THE SELF-REVELATION OF JESUS 45 
 
 interesting case of all, perhaps, was that of the 
 introduction of Nathanael. Philip findeth Na- 
 thanael, and saith unto him, " We have found 
 the Messiah." Nathanael, the contemplative, 
 the retired, the spiritually-minded, asks him, 
 " Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " 
 Philip's answer is, " Come and see ! " He 
 spent no time in demonstrating he declared. 
 And at our Lord's first words, Nathanael asks, 
 " Whence knowest Thou me ? " not heartily, 
 I am sure, but questioningly. " Before that 
 Philip called thee, when thou wast under the 
 fig-tree, I saw thee." What was the reason 
 of Nathanael's response to that reply, " Thou 
 art the Son of God ; Thou art the King of Is- 
 rael ? " I will tell you. It was because of 
 what Jesus suggested rather than what Jesus 
 said. Nathanael was instantly aware that the 
 witness of Philip had been preceded by the 
 summons of Jesus, for Philip did not know 
 what Nathanael was doing under the fig-tree. 
 He was praying doubtless. " Under the fig- 
 tree," simply means the home. This Israelite 
 was praying at home for the vision of God 
 which was granted to him in the Messiah. 
 Jesus penetrated his secret thoughts just as He 
 had penetrated the thoughts of Peter. The 
 ambassador was forgotten ; Philip stood on one
 
 46 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 side, and Nathanael felt himself answered. 
 " Before that Philip called thee when them 
 wast praying in the secret place, / saw thee. 
 Thou shalt see greater things than these. 
 Thou shalt see heaven open. This is but the 
 vestibule of a great experience. Thou shalt 
 see heaven open, and the angels of God as- 
 cending and descending upon the Son of Man." 
 What took place from this time forth between 
 Nathanael and Jesus we do not know. He 
 appears in the last chapter of St. John's Gos- 
 pel as he appears in the first. He never was 
 very far away from the side of the Teacher. 
 He had found Him, and in finding Him had 
 a new vision of God. He had found Him, 
 and in a degree had found himself. He had 
 found Jesus by Jesus' own self-revelation, just 
 as we have to find Jesus in these days too. 
 
 And now to develop that thought by way 
 of application. 
 
 Let me say then, in the first place, to those 
 who are thinking of this great subject : recog- 
 nise Christ as present in your desire for Christ. 
 Everything that has hitherto gone before in 
 your acquaintance with Christ is just a witness 
 and a testimony. There is the witness of good 
 lives, and then the witness of declared truth, 
 which may be the Holy Book. But all these
 
 THE SELF-REVELATION OF JESUS 47 
 
 things are as nothing compared with your own 
 desire for Christ. Why is it that you thrill 
 and respond when you hear a spiritual truth 
 that you appropriate for yourself? Because it 
 was applied to your soul, not by the preacher, 
 but by the Lord. Many a man has taken out 
 of a sermon what was never put into it. God 
 does not always take His ambassadors into His 
 confidence. Many a person has been conscious 
 of a craving for God, and come to the person 
 that he thought could understand him, but the 
 second message was not like the first. What 
 was the reason ? Because God was in the first, 
 speaking to your heart without telling the am- 
 bassador anything about it. Christ declares 
 Himself in your own desire, in your craving 
 for Him. Think of the apologetic value of a 
 man's desire for God. Nearly every person 
 who has ever spoken to me about Christ want- 
 ed Christ, not because of any immediate advan- 
 tage, but to be at rest, to be at home, and to 
 be right. Christ holds the secret of all things, 
 and that is why sinful and suffering men and 
 women come to Him in these days as they 
 came in the days of His flesh. 
 
 But, further, Christ is revealed in the appeal 
 to Himself. We appeal too much to other 
 men's witness of Him. We find him frequent-
 
 48 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 ly in our withdrawal from the witness of men. 
 Cannot you think those of you whose knowl- 
 edge of Him is very slender, but whose desire 
 for Him is very great that Christ deals with 
 you individually, just as He dealt with Peter 
 and Philip and Nathanael, and that no person 
 can really help you beyond the threshold of the 
 kingdom of God? You must find Him for 
 yourself heart to heart, face to face; for 
 Christ reveals Himself in the appeal direct to 
 Christ. That effort and act of faith is worth 
 the while of any man. Speak to Jesus Him- 
 self; He is the author of everything that is 
 best in you; He preaches His own sermons, 
 takes His own texts, answers His own ques- 
 tions. Christ knows what is in man ; and you, 
 who are already His own, are present in His 
 heart. 
 
 And, again, Christ is witnessed in your own 
 peculiar need. Nothing is more common than 
 the habit in which we seem to take for granted 
 that our way of looking at spiritual truth is 
 the way in which every other man will. Every 
 preacher, I suppose, receives a vast amount of 
 theological advice, and it is always on the line 
 of individual experience. The amateur theolo- 
 gian says, " Why don't you preach the Gospel 
 in such a way? This and that declaration of
 
 THE SELF-REVELATION OF JESUS 49 
 
 Christ is sufficient in itself." But those who 
 know better recognise, as Dr. Robertson Nicoll 
 says, the tremendous difficulty as well as sim- 
 plicity of believing. Doctors say that every 
 case of sickness is different from every other, 
 and that when they know their profession best 
 they theorise least and observe most. In spirit- 
 ual things we are all different, because God 
 has made us so, and when we answer to the 
 Divine call within ourselves, we begin to climb 
 the steeps guided by the hand of Christ alone. 
 Christ is witnessed in our own individual, pe- 
 culiar needs. There is a great deal of pseudo- 
 spirituality in the world, a kind of craving for 
 God which rises no higher than a feeble desire 
 for friendship and converse with the Strongest. 
 " The bruised reed will He not break, and 
 smoking flax will He not quench." If the feel- 
 ing is no higher than that, perhaps it is enough 
 for Jesus. We have found the Friend that 
 comforteth, the Saviour, the satisfaction of our 
 souls. Try Him along that line of your own 
 needs. Appeal to the Christ Himself, and not 
 to all our witness of Christ. If the way to 
 peace is to be simple and easy for you, He will 
 make it so, for we cannot. 
 
 One of the great dangers of the spiritual life 
 is mental vagueness ; and one of the great dan-
 
 50 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 gers of the mental life is spiritual apathy. 
 Give way to neither, but let your own need 
 witness, and leave to Jesus the task of saving 
 you. For my experience teaches me that it is 
 well to leave to God more and more to do, 
 and to men less and less. God can do for 
 you just what you need should be done. If it 
 is not possible to take hold by faith, it is pos- 
 sible to ask for the faith to take hold. Every 
 obstacle of which you 'are conscious, and which 
 other men do not see at all, will be removed 
 not by what somebody tells you, but by what 
 God does for you. Recognise that there must 
 be a solution of every difficulty of which every 
 man is conscious; that it is no delusion to be- 
 lieve that some have stood on the heights with 
 God. And if the obstacles are taken away that 
 seem so insuperable to you, they will be re- 
 moved by the power of the Holy Ghost, wit- 
 nessing for the Christ already in your heart. 
 Jesus is already speaking with you. Seek for 
 Him in your own heart and you will find Him 
 there.
 
 IV 
 
 THE PROMISE OF THE COMFORTER 
 
 " And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you 
 another Comforter, that He may abide with you for 
 ever ; even the Spirit of Truth ; whom the world 
 cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither 
 knoweth him ; but ye know Him ; for he dwelleth 
 with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you 
 comfortless. I will come to you." John xiv. , 15-18. 
 
 THERE are many ways in which men think and 
 speak of the person and work of the Holy 
 Spirit. For instance, some persons of a cer- 
 tain mental training cannot think of God at all 
 without thinking of Him somewhat in the 
 terms that have become familiar to Christian 
 thought, as the Trinity in Unity, the society in 
 unity, or, as the Shorter Catechism has it, 
 " There are three Persons in one God ; the same 
 in substance, equal in power and glory." Not 
 many people, however, I should suppose, think 
 of the Holy Spirit in this way, as the third 
 Person in the Trinity, or are ever troubled 
 about the difficulty of thinking of the Divine
 
 52 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 Being as lonely, impassive, far away ; One who 
 cannot contain within Himself the relations 
 which, so far as we know, go to make life per- 
 fect. We think of the Holy Spirit far less as 
 a necessity of thought than as an emanation of 
 God. Nevertheless, we will leave for the mo- 
 ment the statement of the creed of Christen- 
 dom, and come to the promise of the Spirit as 
 we have it in the words of our text. 
 
 In the verse before us we have the Holy 
 Spirit promised as the Comforter, or the Para- 
 clete. Let us consider the promise clause by 
 clause. 
 
 " I will pray the Father, and He shall give 
 you another Comforter." The word used here 
 for " pray " is not a usual one with our Lord, 
 and never employed in the Gospel of St. John, 
 save in a connection like the present, where 
 the Son is represented as speaking to the 
 Father. It tends to convey the thought of an 
 equal addressing an equal, or of someone in 
 another person's confidence presenting his de- 
 sire to that person. It reads thus, " I will 
 make request," or, " I will present your re- 
 quest to the Father," " and He shall give you 
 another Comforter." 
 
 " He shall give you another Comforter."
 
 PROMISE OF THE COMFORTER 53 
 
 The word rendered here as " Comforter " is 
 not always so rendered. In the margin it is 
 rendered " Advocate." We will pass over any 
 discussion as to the change, or the interpreta- 
 tion of this alternative, because I do not think 
 that it is so familiar to Christian experience as 
 the word for which it has been substituted. 
 " I will give you another Consoler." Even 
 that is not the whole thought, tender and beau- 
 tiful as it is. The Comforter really means the 
 Helper, the Strengthener, the Strong Friend; 
 and when our Lord says, " I will give you 
 another Comforter," He is referring in a man- 
 ner to Himself. " I have been," He was say- 
 ing in effect, " the Teacher, the Helper, the un- 
 failing Friend. Your hearts are filled with sor- 
 row at this very moment because I speak of 
 going from you. I will pray the Father, and 
 He shall give you another Comforter, who 
 shall do the same things." In our old Eng- 
 lish tongue the word Comforter did not mean 
 exactly what it means at the present day; its 
 content was rather larger. You will find in 
 the best of our older literature the word " com- 
 forter " employed again and again in the sense 
 of Strengthener. In the Latin tongue this is 
 the sense in which it is always employed. In 
 the Vulgate edition of the Bible it is to be
 
 54 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 found in connections where it has been ren- 
 dered into English somewhat differently. 
 Two instances of this rise to my mind. One 
 very familiar and precious passage is contained 
 in the 41 st chapter of Isaiah: "Fear thou 
 not ; for I am with thee : be not dismayed ; for 
 I am thy God; I will strengthen thee; yea, I 
 will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee, I will 
 uphold thee with the right hand of My 
 righteousness." Now, that is a very strong 
 and helpful promisCj is it not? The word 
 which is rendered there, " I will strengthen," 
 is in the Latin tongue from the word confortare. 
 It is the word whence our word " comfort " 
 was derived. Let me give you another illus- 
 tration. In the beginning of the Book of 
 Joshua, the Lord, giving the commission to 
 the new leader of Israel, says, " I will be with 
 thee as I was with Moses ; only be thou strong 
 and very courageous." Here again the same 
 word is rendered in the Vulgate by confortare, 
 " Be thou strengthened," " Be thou comfort- 
 ed." 
 
 From these instances you can see that the 
 word taken here as Comforter has a very large 
 and strong as well as gracious meaning. " I 
 will give you another Comforter a strong 
 One that He may be with you for ever."
 
 PROMISE OF THE COMFORTER 55 
 
 This Comforter is not given to us in exchange 
 for Christ. Christ speaks of Himself as a 
 Paraclete. Look once more at the significance 
 of the word Paraclete. It is a Greek word, 
 and simply means a someone called to the side 
 of someone else. And our Lord, I think, in 
 effect is speaking of Himself at the moment 
 as having been called to the rescue of humanity. 
 He does not even use the word " Holy Spirit," 
 for fear these men should mistake His mean- 
 ing. He thinks of Himself as called to help; 
 He came to teach, to rescue, to save. " And 
 now," He promises, " I go to My Father, but 
 I will call another to be with you for ever, not 
 to take My place but to reveal Me to the 
 world." " I will not leave you comfortless, 
 I will not leave you bereaved, I will not aban- 
 don you : I will come to you." After the local 
 presence is withdrawn, the universal presence 
 is given. " And I will give to you another 
 Comforter, the reinforcement of righteous- 
 ness, the Spirit of Power, the Spirit of Truth." 
 " Whom the world cannot receive, because 
 it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him " it 
 is not susceptible to His presence " but," He 
 says very strongly, " ye know Him, for He 
 dwelleth with you and shall be in you. / will 
 not leave you: I come to you." Now our
 
 56 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 Lord, speaking to men who knew Him in His 
 bodily presence, is evidently promising- a spirit- 
 ual sustenance of which they already knew 
 something. The Spirit of the Father had re- 
 vealed the Christ to Peter. " Blessed art thou, 
 Simon Bar-Jona; for flesh and blood hath 
 not revealed it unto Thee, but my Father which 
 is in Heaven." The Spirit is spoken of in- 
 differently as the Spirit of the Father and as 
 the Spirit of Christ. He is inseparable from 
 either. He is promised now as a reinforce- 
 ment of righteousness. He is promised as 
 some person who is already near to these sim- 
 ple men. " Ye know Him," saith our Lord, 
 " your hearts have been opened. There is to 
 be a fuller manifestation of the Spirit that is 
 already yours." This, then, we may take to 
 be the plain meaning of the passage before us. 
 We have now to try to understand the deeper 
 content of that meaning. 
 
 I will ask you, then, to look first of all at 
 our experience of the Holy Spirit as a Divine 
 influence. There are many Christian people 
 who never get beyond that point. They think 
 of the Holy Spirit as an influence emanating 
 from God, and though we have no need to 
 object to that view, it is well to try in a 
 measure to understand what that influence is.
 
 PROMISE OF THE COMFORTER 57 
 
 Let us take an illustration. There is a myste- 
 rious influence in the electric light which could 
 work mischief as well as good. No one knows 
 what it is, though we understand a little of the 
 modes in which it operates. We can guide it, 
 we can employ it for our use, but electricity 
 remains a mystery. Again, there is an opera- 
 tive power in the world, coming from some- 
 where, but invisible. The very air that we 
 breathe is an influence invisible, impersonal ; 
 plants and trees grow by means of it, we live 
 because of it. The sunlight also is impersonal 
 and invisible. Light is only visible in its ef- 
 fects, and without those effects we should 
 know nothing about it. There are certain 
 products which are the result of the com- 
 bined action of light and air; the flowers exist 
 by means of both. Now there are certain qual- 
 ities of human character known as fruits of 
 the Spirit. We speak of them as love and joy 
 and peace. They are the effect of the power 
 of the Spirit of God upon the soul of man 
 we cannot mistake them. In every holy life 
 we see evidence of them. The Spirit of the 
 Redeemer is reproduced in the character of all 
 who seek to follow Him. They are IN Christ, 
 as the trees and flowers grow in the air of 
 heaven. Humility, gentleness, patience, quiet-
 
 58 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 ness of spirit are no accidents, no results with- 
 out a cause. Where these are Christ is " I 
 will not leave you comfortless ; I come to you." 
 But if Christ is the atmosphere of the soul, 
 the Holy Spirit is as the light thereof, and it 
 is He who takes of the things of Christ and 
 builds them into life and character in the be- 
 lieving child of God, as the sunshine feeds the 
 grass of the field. 
 
 We have no objection, then, to the thought 
 that the Holy Spirit is a Divine influence, but 
 we ought to go still further in our interpreta- 
 tion of the goodness of God in His gift to us of 
 the Spirit, for our text speaks of Him as a 
 Person, a Person who is called to the side of, 
 and co-operates with, the Master in the work 
 of saving men. Jesus speaks of summoning 
 Him. He introduces, therefore, the idea of 
 personality. It is in the atmosphere of person- 
 ality that we are to realise what is meant by 
 this beautiful Divine influence. Now, what 
 do we know about that ? Let me try and show 
 you. A few days ago I went to the east end 
 of Brighton to witness the unveiling of the 
 portrait of Dr. James Spurgeon, who was, as 
 you remember, the colleague of his distinguish- 
 ed brother. One speaker, whose words greatly 
 appealed to me, speaking about the picture,
 
 PROMISE OF THE COMFORTER 59 
 
 said : " I cannot gaze upon those features 
 without emotion. They bring back the memo- 
 ry of my friend, who was to me a great in- 
 fluence. Charles Haddon Spurgeon was the 
 possessor of a potent personality, but so was 
 James Archer Spurgeon, who in a quieter fash- 
 ion, perhaps, exercised an influence all his own. 
 The effect of his presence upon me was always 
 one of repose. If I were near him I felt that 
 he rested me." Now, what was it that moved 
 this speaker to such an utterance ? Did he feel 
 that the picture gave him all he wanted of the 
 influence to which he made reference ? Not at 
 all. It but reminded him of what had been, 
 that which was now part of himself, and it 
 was not the form that satisfied him. What did 
 he mean? He remembered the life. Yes; 
 and more: remembered the very spirit of the 
 person, that atmosphere of the man which was 
 really doing the work, just as we cannot but 
 do for God or the devil our work in this world 
 by what we are, far more than by what we say, 
 or by what we think we effect. Every man or 
 woman brings his or her own influence. It 
 depends upon your own acquaintance with God 
 what is the real, though silent, influence you 
 exercise far more effectively than anything you 
 have set yourself consciously to do for Him.
 
 60 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 You have sometimes been in the presence of a 
 bad man, and you have felt possibly that there 
 was something about him that repelled you 
 even as you looked at him. There is a bad 
 influence as well as a good. And, on the other 
 hand, there is ever the potent influence of the 
 helpless innocence of a little child. I have 
 known men to come perturbed and worried, 
 and in a bad spirit, into the room where a little 
 child was and a glance at the little face was 
 enough. The influence of the little one was 
 not something imaginary. Sunday school 
 teachers, it is not your mental equipment that 
 is doing the work in the Sunday school; it is 
 what you are, and I would rather have a sancti- 
 fied life than I would have the cleverest man 
 or woman in the world for the training of the 
 children. They will remember you by the in- 
 fluence you cannot help exercising, by the pres- 
 ence of Christ you have brought to bear upon 
 them. Again, I have often seen rough men 
 awed by the presence of a weak woman. There 
 is an influence of a womanly purity that is 
 stronger than the utmost strength of evil. 
 Have you ever known what it is to be en- 
 couraged to do right, not by being told to do 
 so, but by being near a man stronger than 
 yourself, whose mere presence helped you so
 
 6i 
 
 that you were the stronger man because he 
 was there? There are men living to-day on 
 the strength of other men. 
 
 We know quite well what is meant by 
 spiritual influence when it is exerted by a 
 human personality. What shall we say, then, 
 about the tender potency of the Spirit of God, 
 not something impersonal, not something im- 
 aginary, but something we can observe at work 
 every day in this strange world of ours a 
 strong and wonderful living presence working 
 on the hearts of men? Christ Himself was 
 a Paraclete; Christ Himself exerted all these 
 good influences. Christ Himself yet lives in 
 the lives of men, by that Holy Spirit whom 
 He summoned to our aid. I wish I could be 
 eloquent enough to make you realise that this 
 is the very truth, for there are very many 
 who have never made trial of it. The Spirit 
 here referred to is called by our Master the 
 Spirit of Truth. Some know by a vital ex- 
 perience what this means. When they hear of 
 the Spirit of Truth they think about that mar- 
 vellous preservation of the Christian creed, con- 
 cerning which so much has been said and writ- 
 ten. They think about Church Councils in the 
 far back ages; they think about that formal 
 statement of a human experience of God which
 
 62 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 has been preserved in language like this : " I 
 believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of 
 Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His 
 only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the 
 Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered 
 under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and 
 buried. He descended into hell ; the third day 
 He rose again from the dead." These are 
 Christian facts that the Church has lived to 
 witness, and we believe the Church is taught of 
 the Holy Spirit; and that the truth has been 
 preserved by the presence of that Spirit. Just 
 so. But we have not done. There is a Spirit 
 of Truth who works in and for the individual, 
 an experience that that individual can share 
 with no one else. Remember that, just as we 
 are different the one from the other, so in a 
 certain measure must our experience of life and 
 our experience of God be our very own. When 
 the Spirit of Truth was promised, He was 
 promised to you as a man, as a woman, for your 
 life. Christ spoke of the Spirit as the Agent 
 in righteousness, regeneration, sanctification 
 the Spirit who gives certainty, assurance of 
 God ; the Spirit who rests upon a man for ser- 
 vice; and that promise reached right down the 
 ages till it found you, and it speaks to you this 
 morning. When I think of the Spirit of
 
 PROMISE OF THE COMFORTER 63 
 
 Truth, I think of the truth of the heart as well 
 as the truth of the head. There is the Spirit 
 that brings conviction ; the Spirit that works 
 by consolation. These and many more are as- 
 pects of the work of the Holy Ghost. You 
 and I are each of us one of God's great facts. 
 At the point where our lives separate we are 
 companied and guided by the Spirit of Truth. 
 You have some truth to receive, some truth to 
 live, some glorious things to discover alone 
 with God, apart with Jesus; some special ser- 
 vice to render for which man's counsel were 
 but in vain. Draw near, I beseech you, to the 
 Spirit of Truth. 
 
 One never knows how near the truth one 
 may be in a supposition of this kind. I may 
 be addressing a man who has never yet tried 
 because he does not feel as if he could to look 
 his own life in the face. I want you to do it 
 now. Christ has never left you. When we 
 speak about Jesus from the pulpit, we are apt 
 to drop into conventionalism, and to say what 
 we are expected to say, rather than what every- 
 body knows and feels to be pulsating, living 
 truth. Listen. Christ has never left you; and 
 that is the reason why you have so often been 
 in wretchedness concerning the mistakes and 
 failures of your life. Mr. Hugh Price
 
 64 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 Hughes once said in a sermon something of 
 this kind : " It is an awful thing for me to 
 reflect that I stand to-day, as it were, in the 
 place of Christ to you not because He is ab- 
 sent, but because He is here. He does not 
 speak for Himself; He speaks through my lips 
 to you. The appeal to which you are listening 
 now is Christ's appeal to those whom He has 
 never left." This is what I am trying to dem- 
 onstrate to you. Christ is near you, knows 
 you, draws you, appeals to you. The Christ 
 is present with you now, and -may I say it 
 humbly? the message which I now deliver to 
 your heart is Christ's message. For the mo- 
 ment we will say that the preacher stands in 
 the place of Christ. If your heart responds, 
 it is because of the influence of the Divine 
 Spirit who was summoned to the side of Jesus, 
 and who applied the message of Christ to your 
 soul. The sermon is preached in your own 
 heart. The Spirit who convicts is at work 
 within your heart even now. Look at your 
 life faithfully, for the Spirit speaks only truth. 
 He convicts of sin, of righteousness, and of 
 judgment. The Lord our God is a consuming 
 fire. A course of sin cannot last; it comes to 
 an end some time, and a man reaps what he 
 has sown. There are men whose life is a lie;
 
 PROMISE OF THE COMFORTER 65 
 
 men who persist in evil ways about which they 
 dare not think. The judgment is gone forth. 
 Will you allow me to speak a solemn word to 
 such as you? If you are thinking about your 
 life as it appears to you now, in the light of 
 the Holy Spirit, stop right where you are, and 
 let the Spirit of conviction become to you the 
 Spirit of regeneration, for He who declares to 
 you the guilt of sin can deal with the soul 
 agony. Coming to the Cross of Christ, you 
 come in a power not your own, but of the Spirit 
 of God. " Come now,, and let us reason to- 
 gether, saith the Lord; though your sins be 
 as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; 
 though they be red like crimson, they shall be 
 as wool." 
 
 We have spoken of the Spirit of regeneration. 
 " Ye must be born again," said our Divine 
 Master. " The wind bloweth where it listeth, 
 and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst 
 not tell whence it cometh and whither it go- 
 eth : so is every one that is born of the Spirit." 
 I recently read an utterance of the Master of 
 Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to the effect that 
 men are hungry for the knowledge, the assur- 
 ance, of a Divine power outside themselves, 
 greater than themselves, that can help and lift 
 and save. That is the power I am preach-
 
 66 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 ing now. I am preaching to those who 
 feel that their life is wrong within, with- 
 out, but who cannot get to God. I 
 speak to those in whom, against their will, 
 evil passions surge and prevail. I speak to 
 the man who knows perfectly well the facts of 
 his being, but who does not know how to get 
 free. God knows that it is so, and if you are 
 conscious of such a feeling now, it is because 
 the Spirit of regeneration is present in your 
 soul. The touch of God can heal you. The 
 ray of light which reaches your eye at this 
 moment has come many million miles to meet 
 it : it was meant for you and no one else. The 
 Spirit who beareth witness about Christ is the 
 Spirit who is the agent of the new birth. " The 
 wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest 
 the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence 
 it cometh and whither it goeth : so is every 
 one that is born of the Spirit " born of the 
 Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot re- 
 ceive, because the heart is not open to receive 
 Him. 
 
 Lastly, there is the Spirit of consolation. 
 Is there not a truth about God which declares 
 Him as the God of compassion? I think so. 
 It may be that the first message of Christ is to 
 the conscience; but there is a message for 
 everyone who is weighed down by the anguish
 
 PROMISE OF THE COMFORTER 67 
 
 of this world. Have you a great trouble which 
 you try to forget? You seem very much left 
 to yourself. When we speak about God we 
 use words, words about a winsome idea; but 
 you want comfort, sympathy, to lift you out of 
 yourself, and give you a new start. I would 
 like to speak, then, to you who are conscious 
 of this absence of peace of mind. If you have 
 a great trouble, let me tell you that it may 
 contain God's message for you ; but that it was 
 never meant that that grisly companion should 
 remain with you. God can heal as well as 
 wound. He binds up the broken in heart, and 
 giveth deliverance to the captive. Let me show 
 you what I think God means with you. 
 
 Here lies a little sufferer on a bed of pain; 
 the mother is watching beside the cot. The 
 little one sleeps, not the sleep of perfect health, 
 but of sickness and pain. You can see that 
 the dreams are tortured. There is every now 
 and then an expression of agony upon the little 
 face, and the mother tenderly touches the suf- 
 ferer and wakes her. What a look of relief 
 there is upon the face of the little one ! " Oh, 
 mother! " says the child's voice, " I have been 
 dreaming such dreadful things. I dreamt that 
 I was right away in a lonely place, and that I 
 called for you, and you could not hear, but now 
 I am awake I see your face looking down
 
 68 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 upon me.'' There is the consciousness of that 
 strong, tender presence, and the comfort of the 
 discovery is immeasurable. The little one is 
 at rest awake who could not find rest in sleep. 
 I think there are many of you who need to 
 realise that God's face is looking down upon 
 you in your torturing dreams, and yet you 
 think that He is far away from this darksome 
 place whence you have called to Him, and that 
 He could not hear. There is no one can hear 
 so well. The still small voice is calling you, 
 and the everlasting arms are around you, for 
 the Comforter that has been sent to you is very 
 God. He is the gift of peace, the peace which 
 passeth understanding, which the world can 
 neither give nor take away. His is the touch 
 of the hand of God, the touch which wakes you 
 from the sleep of anguish to the joy of com- 
 munion with the All-Father. His presence it 
 is which discovers the Saviour to you, and re- 
 veals to your consciousness the abiding blessing 
 of His love. He is the Strong One, the Com- 
 forter, the Helper. The Christ whom we 
 preach is present by the Holy Spirit, and that 
 Spirit was meant for you and given to you. 
 " If ye, then, being evil, know how to give 
 good gifts unto your children ; how much more 
 shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy 
 Spirit to them that ask Him ? "
 
 THE SELF-ASSERTION OF JESUS 
 
 "This voice came not because of Me, but for Xonr 
 sakes." John xii., 30. 
 
 OUR Lord had come up to Jerusalem to keep 
 the Feast of the Passover. He came, knowing 
 that He was coming to passion and to death. 
 He came in spite of the remonstrances of those 
 who loved Him best. He stood for the mo- 
 ment at the height of His outward popularity, 
 not because of what He actually taught and 
 aimed at, but because the people thought they 
 saw in Him the patriot chief who was to re- 
 deem Israel. Our Lord had a triumphal en- 
 try into Jerusalem. That very act brought 
 upon Him the malevolence of the Pharisees, 
 and ended in His trial and crucifixion. But 
 He had a purpose in view, from which He 
 would not draw back. The simple men who 
 surrounded Him were not aware of this, nor 
 could they understand what He was doing in
 
 70 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 thus drawing the attention of His enemies 
 publicly to Himself. Certain Greeks had ac- 
 companied the Jews to the Feast. Jerusalem 
 at this time was a gathering place of all na- 
 tions. The Jews came from all quarters of the 
 world to keep the Passover; others came to 
 trade with the Jews; and it was therefore a 
 great opportunity for the Messiah to put for- 
 ward His claims, and He did not shrink from 
 thus acting. When the Greeks came to Philip, 
 desiring to see Jesus, His answer was, " The 
 hour is come that the Son of Man should be 
 glorified," and He continued, " If any man 
 serve Me, let him follow Me ; and, where I am, 
 there shall also My servant be; if any man 
 serve Me, him will My Father honour. Father, 
 glorify Thy name." Then there comes the su- 
 pernatural visitation, when the voice from 
 Heaven spake, saying, " I have both glorified 
 it, and will glorify it again." Our Lord drew 
 public attention to Himself at this time by the 
 assertion of His glory with the Father, a claim 
 which is nothing short of blasphemous if He 
 were not what Christendom supposes Him to 
 be. He makes service of Christ and service of 
 God synonymous " If any man serve Me, him 
 will My Father honour." He actually be-
 
 THE SELF-ASSERTION OF JESUS 71 
 
 comes His own Gospel, and offers Himself to 
 the world and asks for homage to Himself. 
 So striking is this self-assertion of Jesus that 
 it has puzzled the best thought of the world 
 external to Christianity from that day to this. 
 One example I may instance is that of M. 
 Renan, the author of the " Life of Jesus," 
 which was so widely read not long ago. M. 
 Renan says that either the Fourth Gospel is 
 unhistorical, or that the Christ therein set forth 
 had lost in the latter part of His life a little of 
 His transparency of character, and poses as be- 
 ing that which He was not. But when we 
 come to compare the Fourth Gospel with the 
 other three, in spite of the seeming contradic- 
 tion between them, there is an underlying unity 
 apparent in the two sides of the character of 
 Jesus. 
 
 In the first place, we note that the type of 
 goodness which Jesus exhibited to the world 
 was one in which lowliness and tenderness 
 were conspicuous ingredients. The combina- 
 tion of these ingredients with the sternness of 
 our Lord against sin was something entirely 
 new to humankind. Stoicism had given its 
 ideal to the world, an ideal in which self-re- 
 spect was carried to a point that would not be 
 tolerated nowadays. But Stoicism, with all its
 
 72 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 admirableness, fell short of the ideal of the 
 meek and lowly Jesus, who combined the most 
 exquisite tenderness with the greatest firmness 
 and even inexorableness toward wrong. But 
 the lowliness of Christ is no pretence. The 
 washing of the disciples' feet was an act per- 
 fectly in harmony with all the rest of His life. 
 It was the same Saviour who took the little 
 children up in His arms and blessed them. It 
 was the same Saviour who was called the 
 friend of publicans and sinners. And the 
 same Jesus sat on the well-side talking to the 
 woman of Samaria, who not only a Samari- 
 tan, but a woman of abandoned character 
 was yet worth the while of the Master of the 
 universe at that moment. It was the same 
 Jesus who said to the guilty woman who was 
 being hounded to death, " Doth no man con- 
 demn thee? Neither do I condemn thee. Go 
 in peace, and sin no more." But why speak 
 further about the lowliness and tenderness of 
 Jesus? These facts stand out in relief: they 
 form the very commonplace of Christianity to- 
 day. 
 
 But side by side with this we are confronted 
 with the problem of that strange self-assertion 
 of Jesus, and here the three Synoptical Gos- 
 pels and St. John's Gospel are at one.
 
 THE SELF-ASSERTION OF JESUS 73 
 
 We should remark it is perfectly clear that 
 He meant all men to know what pretensions 
 He put forth. He drew attention to Himself 
 on purpose that men might understand what 
 He thought concerning Himself, and what His 
 witness to Himself was. If we turn back to 
 the 6th chapter of St. John's Gospel we find 
 these words : " I am the living bread which 
 came down from Heaven : if any man eat of 
 this bread he shall live for ever; and the bread 
 that I will give is My flesh, which I will give 
 for the life of the world." And again in the 
 58th verse : " This is that bread which came 
 down from Heaven; not as your fathers did 
 eat manna, and are dead : he that eateth of this 
 bread shall live for ever." The immediate ef- 
 fect of these two utterances was that some of 
 those who, up to that time, had thought well 
 of Jesus, went back and walked no more with 
 Him. Then came the almost pathetic inquiry, 
 "Will ye also go away?" and the answer, 
 " Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the 
 words of eternal life." The self-assertion of 
 Jesus at this point was not understood, even 
 by those who knew Him best, but the winsome- 
 ness of the other side of his character compelled 
 them to remain with Him. They felt that
 
 74 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 Jesus spake as though He knew the very heart 
 of the Father, and they adhered to Him. 
 
 Now, before passing from the witness of the 
 Fourth Gospel to the claims of Jesus, I think 
 we should say something about the supposed 
 opposition between its account of them and that 
 given by the other three. The Fourth Gos- 
 pel has been called in question many times, and 
 again at this hour. Who wrote it? It is im- 
 possible, some say, that John the Divine should 
 have written it : it is evidently an expression of 
 the later opinion of Christendom about its risen 
 Master. The Christ of the Gospel begins to 
 speak about Himself in the very first chapter. 
 The prologue to the Gospel opens with a theo- 
 ry of the person of Christ which is in har- 
 mony with all His utterances in the same Gos- 
 pel. Further than this, there can be no mis- 
 take as to the deliberateness with which that 
 theory is taught. The three Synoptical Gos- 
 pels are very simply put together, but the 
 Fourth Gospel is different. It has a design 
 from beginning to end; it is perfectly propor- 
 tioned in all its parts ; the argument concerning 
 the person of Jesus and the consistency of His 
 acts and utterances with it are present all 
 through. The Gospel shows us the lowliness 
 of Jesus, but it further and more emphatically
 
 THE SELF-ASSERTION OF JESUS 75 
 
 shows us the assertion of the personal claims 
 of Jesus. If the Fourth Gospel, and the Fourth 
 Gospel alone, were to put these forward, we 
 should be at a loss what to think ; but in order 
 that we may be at no loss whatever, let me ask 
 you to turn back to one of the Synoptical Gos- 
 pels and read what is written there. 
 
 In Matt, x., 39, we read : " He that findeth 
 his life shall lose it ; and he that loseth his life 
 for My sake shall find it. He that receiveth 
 you receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me 
 receiveth Him that sent Me." What august 
 and staggering claims are here put forth ! and 
 what one of you, however great your saint- 
 ship, dare put forth a claim approaching to 
 that ? Nay, I will dare to say that the greater 
 your saintship, the less will you be inclined to 
 put forth such claims. But now read in an- 
 other synoptical chapter an utterance which is 
 in similar spirit to that given in the thirteenth 
 chapter of St. John : " At that time Jesus an- 
 swered and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord 
 of Heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid 
 these things from the wise and prudent, and 
 hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, 
 Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight." 
 This is very beautiful and humble, but it does 
 not stop there. " All things are delivered unto
 
 76 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 Me of My Father; and no man knoweth the 
 Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man 
 the Father, save the Son, and he to whomso- 
 ever the Son will reveal Him." Close together 
 we have an assertion of the tenderest compas- 
 sion and deepest humility combined with the 
 most august claim to supremacy which we have 
 been considering up to now. And the chapter 
 closes with the gracious invitation, " Come un- 
 to Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, 
 and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon 
 you, and learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly 
 in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 
 For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." 
 Thus, even the gracious invitation is a stu- 
 pendous self-assertion. 
 
 There can be no mistake, then. Whichever 
 Gospel we turn to, whichever man bears record 
 of Jesus, they all tell the same story that the 
 lowliness of Jesus, the tenderness of Jesus, 
 were blended with a claim to sinlessness, a 
 claim to supremacy such as repelled some of 
 those who thought best of Him, and was only 
 accepted by those who had, as it were, nestled 
 to His heart. And the more puzzling becomes 
 this ideal as we try to adopt it for imitation. 
 It has become the fashion for men of the pres- 
 ent day to advocate the imitation of Christ.
 
 THE SELF-ASSERTION OF JESUS 77 
 
 The ideal for imitation changes a little with the 
 progress of the centuries (I wonder what 
 Thomas a Kempis would say to the ideal set 
 forth by a speaker on a Socialist platform) 
 but all would claim to find something in Christ 
 worthy of imitation. John Stuart Mill, the 
 great philosopher and unbeliever, said he could 
 think of no better rule of action than to en- 
 deavour so to live that Christ would approve 
 our lives. A few years ago a book was pub- 
 lished by an American writer, " What would 
 Jesus do ? " It had an unprecedented sale, be- 
 cause of the question that was asked on the 
 title page. It is evident that the conscience of 
 the civilised community everywhere accepts 
 Christ as the norm and the standard of what 
 humanity ought to be, and pronounces Him to 
 be worthy of imitation. Imitate Him? we 
 dare not imitate Him. Imitate His lowliness ? 
 Yes, we can do that; but even in that there is 
 something we cannot imitate, as I shall pres- 
 ently endeavour to show. Imitate His ten- 
 derness ? Oh yes, we cannot go too far in that. 
 But imitate His claim to sinlessness? or His 
 claim to supremacy? Without blasphemy no 
 man can do that. We are confounded when 
 we try to account for and to combine these two
 
 78 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 sides of the character of Christ, unless we ac- 
 cept His own witness to Himself. 
 
 Now, the purpose with which these claims 
 were made begins to loom a little clearer on 
 our vision. I take it that the self-assertion of 
 Jesus was in line with the purpose latent in the 
 expression of His own goodness. What do 
 we take to be the normal goodness at which 
 all men should aim, and by which we approve 
 or condemn our fellows? It is that goodness, 
 to be complete, must have its final expression 
 in love. Here is a man who sits on the magis- 
 trate's bench, whose sentences are accepted 
 without criticism : they are perfectly just. No 
 man can hope to bribe him ; no man can hope 
 to deflect his judgment by personal considera- 
 tions. When men speak of this man they say, 
 He is a model of integrity : his uprightness is 
 beyond question. Is he good? To a degree, 
 yes, he is good. Now we will go home with 
 him. I see that in the home circle his wife 
 speaks to him, not as a confidential companion, 
 but as one apart. I see that his little children 
 keep out of his way. Not one of them must 
 confess a weakness, for fear of heavy censure. 
 He is hard, unsympathetic, inexorable. What 
 do you say instantly when you are trying to 
 estimate his character? He thinks he is good,
 
 THE SELF-ASSERTION OF JESUS 79 
 
 only he might not say so ; you could trust him 
 with your money and your reputation he 
 would betray neither ; but he stops short some- 
 where; he is nearer to the Stoic than to the 
 Saviour. Goodness is not complete except its 
 final expression be tenderness such as that of 
 Jesus; and, without such expression, goodness, 
 as Christ would have understood it, cannot be 
 said to exist. 
 
 Here we come to see something of the pur- 
 pose of the Master's life. His goodness could 
 stop short of no self-oblation. His whole life 
 was an offering. The witness of His own 
 words comes to our help here : " The Son of 
 Man is come to seek and to save that which 
 was lost." " The Son of Man came not to be 
 ministered unto but to minister, and to give 
 His life as a ransom for many." Once more : 
 " I receive not honour from men." Now we 
 can understand what He meant when He said, 
 " This voice came not because of Me, but for 
 your sakes." The self-assertion of Jesus is in 
 line with His compassion ; it is part of the ex- 
 pression of goodness. It is in the interest of 
 humanity and to give confidence that He so 
 speaks. It is part of His sinless, loving minis- 
 try. 
 
 From this position we may make two further
 
 8o THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 inferences. The first is that the lowliness of 
 Christ is of incomplete service to men as a gos- 
 pel without the proclamation of His sinless- 
 ness. And the second is, that the tenderness of 
 Jesus, without His supremacy, fails in reaching 
 to the needs of men. 
 
 Take the first of these propositions, and let 
 us speak about the lowliness of Jesus. We 
 have but to refer to the simple and beautiful 
 stories which are told best of all, perhaps, in 
 the 1 5th chapter of St. Luke. The late Pro- 
 fessor Bruce opines that that chapter was a ser- 
 mon, and was preached to an audience of pub- 
 licans and sinners gathered in Matthew's 
 house. Jesus proclaimed the gracious invita- 
 tion of God as if it were His own, and told the 
 story of the prodigal who took the portion of 
 goods that was his and went into the far coun- 
 try, where, after coming to want and misery, 
 he thought of his father, and made up his mind 
 to return. " And when he was yet a great 
 way off his father saw him^ and ran and fell 
 on his neck and kissed him," and brought him 
 home with rejoicing. Think of the tenderness 
 of that message, combined with the lowliness 
 of the Messenger, who thus addressed an au- 
 dience of outcasts. But here is a remarkable 
 thing. Not only was Jesus infinitely lowly and
 
 THE SELF-ASSERTION OF JESUS 81 
 
 tender, but He said so. Now, if you find a 
 humble man who says he is humble, you are 
 apt to deny his humility. " I am meek and 
 lowly in heart," said Jesus. Our humility at 
 its best contains something of contrition. All 
 our excellence is derived, and we know it. If 
 there is good in us, it comes from God. I re- 
 member an expression used once by one who is 
 a bishop to-day; and if that be the expression 
 of his inmost life, it is well for the Church of 
 God. Some one had just been reminding him 
 of an act of goodness which he had performed. 
 He said, " Any good I have ever been able to 
 do is of the unearned mercy of God." That is 
 true humility. We feel that the merit is not 
 ours, but God's. All human excellence is de- 
 rived, and the note of contrition runs through- 
 out it. But the humility of Jesus is not of 
 such an order. It partakes of it, but it goes 
 beyond it. Jesus in His humility knew that 
 He was supreme over all men in excellence. 
 His goodness had no flaw. There was no 
 room for contrition. He was the Lamb with- 
 out blemish and without spot. Jesus was the 
 only one who could carry such a claim, and 
 carry it with meekness. Jesus, who stood at 
 the very heart of things, whose character was 
 harmonious and radiant with holiness derived
 
 82 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 from the Heaven of Heavens, held all this in 
 trust for humanity. He could, without being 
 self -regarding, without looking to His reputa- 
 tion, or thinking of what was due to Himself, 
 support the consciousness of an excellence 
 which is transferred from Him to those saints 
 of God who are trying to follow Him to-day. 
 
 Such is the humility of Jesus, and even when 
 we try to approach it we recognise that our 
 very power of being humble is derived from 
 Him. Oh, brethren, when we try to look 
 through the ranks of men for one who approxi- 
 mates to our ideal of Jesus we can easily read 
 the uniqueness of His humility by our difficulty 
 in finding one. The late Henry Drummond 
 was conspicuous for being a hearer of spiritual 
 griefs. Drummond's very lowliness and ten- 
 derness were the reason. You know the diffi- 
 culty to-day in finding such another as Drum- 
 mond. Such men are indeed hard to discover. 
 But the moment we think about Jesus the heart 
 cries : " Oh that He were here ! I could tell 
 Him ! " Just as the Magdalene went to His 
 feet, so some of us not only weak women, but 
 strong men would do to-day if Jesus stood 
 here, and we could touch Him with our hands. 
 We would tell the whole story of grief and dis- 
 appointment and humiliation and failure and
 
 THE SELF-ASSERTION OF JESUS 83 
 
 sin, and we should know that He would listen, 
 listen as though there were no other such story 
 in the wide world. We value his lowliness as 
 a gateway to God. Jesus would listen. He 
 has no place where He reserves something from 
 humanity. His heart is open at all times to 
 receive the griefs that humanity has to bring. 
 But if He could give us no more than sym- 
 pathy, where then were the value of Jesus? 
 His lowliness leads us unto His sinlessness, and 
 He alone not like Drummond, not like 
 Moody, not like Spurgeon, not like any saint 
 of God that ever hears our story is the only 
 one who has the right to forgive. " Which 
 of you convinceth Me of sin ? " was the chal- 
 lenge of the Saviour to the hostile Jewish 
 world, and how thankful we are to-day to think 
 that He is present to heal and to succour and to 
 save all men who come to Him in penitence 
 and self-despair. We welcome the lowliness, 
 we rejoice in the sinlessness. Oh, that self-as- 
 sertion of Jesus, and the confidence it brings ! 
 
 And, lastly, I have said that we could not 
 speak in the same terms of the tenderness of 
 Jesus if we did not think of His kingship. In 
 this strange world of ours there is very much 
 kindness though but very little gratitude. 
 Sometimes we meet with an instance of hero-
 
 84 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 ism which teaches us a truth about kindness 
 which otherwise we might miss. It is this : 
 there is an ingredient of strength in all tender- 
 ness. It is full of surprises. Here is a public 
 man who has a host of enemies as well as a 
 host of friends. When he has some evil to 
 denounce he does it with vigour ; and men hate 
 him. " What a character," they say ; " too 
 rugged, too extreme, too self-assertive ! " We 
 will watch beside him and observe how tender 
 he is to that little child. The strong man is 
 led about by the hand of a baby. Death enters 
 the home, and the little one is snatched away. 
 See how the great heart is broken with grief, 
 and how well the others in the home under- 
 stand. They can read his real nature. The 
 tenderness that is written there is a tenderness 
 allied with strength. His fidelity has been test- 
 ed beyond doubt. There are two sides to that 
 man's nature, and they are not inconsistent 
 rather the contrary. But now let us take an- 
 other example, somewhat different. Here is a 
 mother whose son is in disgrace. The world 
 frowns upon him. Men have ceased to believe 
 in him, and with only too good reason. Per- 
 haps the mother cannot believe in him either; 
 but she won't leave him. She is close beside 
 him; her eyes are closed to his defects.
 
 THE SELF-ASSERTION OF JESUS 85 
 
 She will fight for him against the hostility of 
 society. She will admit nothing against 
 his better nature, in spite of the mis- 
 givings that are in her heart. She will 
 stand by this disgraced outcast and bear 
 his burden for him. Oh, the strength of a 
 love like that! Or again, look at that young 
 girl who is the breadwinner of the family. She 
 says nothing about the hardships she has to 
 undergo. When she returns in the evening, 
 jarred and hurt by the unkindnesses of the day, 
 she just keeps the story to herself, and does 
 not tell it to the home circle for fear of how 
 it will sound to the invalid who is so helpless. 
 There are marvellous stories in the world of 
 the strength that is latent in all tenderness. 
 Love makes strong. And I will say that no 
 man or woman has ever been capable of a deed 
 of self-sacrifice, but they were the stronger for 
 it. There is strength latent in all tenderness, 
 which is a flash, as it were, of the nature of 
 God. 
 
 We draw near to Jesus now with this 
 thought in our minds. Human strength may 
 go far, but it cannot insure our well-being, our 
 final victory over the things within and without, 
 which our imperfect nature has most cause to 
 dread. But if Jesus' witness to Himself were
 
 86 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 true, if He were not mistaken, if those august 
 claims that He put forth have stood the test of 
 time, and are true to-day; if the Fourth Gos- 
 pel and the other three unite in the same testi- 
 mony concerning Him who was before the 
 ages, to whom the world belongs; then all is 
 well with you and me. We want to approach 
 Him with our story of the past. We have not 
 done as we should ; we have come far short of 
 what we intended ; and we pour our prayer into 
 the ear of some One whom Christendom affirms 
 to be Jesus. There is no story that is not al- 
 ready known to Him, no part of our being that 
 is not already open to Him. When you come 
 with your troubles, it is to the Lord of Life 
 and Death. If that be not true, Oh, it were 
 better far that mankind had never heard the 
 story the sorrow of it would be too fearful! 
 But there is no doubt about it. " God so loved 
 the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, 
 that whosoever believeth in Him should not 
 perish but have everlasting life." Lest we 
 should mistake, He said : " If a man love Me, 
 he will keep My words; and My Father will 
 love him, and We will come unto him, and 
 make our abode with him." Precious truth! 
 for it gives us possession of the Infinite. " All 
 things are yours; this was for your sakes."
 
 THE SELF-ASSERTION OF JESUS 87 
 
 " All things are yours ; whether Paul, or Apol- 
 los, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, 
 or things present, or things to come all are 
 yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is 
 God's."
 
 VI 
 GOD'S PERFECTING OF LIFE. 
 
 "The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me." 
 
 Ps. cxxxviii., 8. 
 
 OUR text is taken from one of the captivity 
 Psalms. Israel is rejoicing in her deliverance 
 from a long stage of political thraldom. She 
 speaks through the voice of the Psalmist, and 
 this is her utterance of thanksgiving to God. 
 At the same time, it is a recognition of the 
 oneness of the people of Israel in God. Israel 
 is homeless; her home has to be re-made. 
 She is delivered from one danger, but others 
 confront her. Her problems are by no means 
 over; her difficulties have only just begun. 
 Nevertheless, her song is one of triumph : 
 what God hath begun, that He will also com- 
 plete. " The Lord will perfect that which con- 
 cerneth me." 
 
 This text is one peculiarly suitable to an 
 audience gathered together at the beginning
 
 GOD'S PERFECTING OF LIFE 89 
 
 of the twentieth century. For we seek, with 
 perhaps a larger vision than was ever given 
 to ancient Israel, the essential truth which it 
 declares. None of us can mistake what we 
 may call the intellectual and spiritual climate 
 of the day in which we live. And if we are 
 to be faithful ministers of Christ, it is requisite 
 that we should obey His own injunction, and 
 learn to read and to interpret the signs of the 
 times. 
 
 I take it that the century which has just 
 closed that wonderful century has given to 
 us many good things, as well as many others 
 of more doubtful importance. And one of 
 the things which has become a mental posses- 
 sion of our own day is the new emphasis which 
 has been placed upon the solidarity of the race. 
 We see now, as perfectly as Israel ever did, 
 perhaps more perfectly even than the inspired 
 Psalmist, the solidarity of man with man, and 
 of all with God. The day of a selfish and 
 blatant individualism is gone by; and in mak- 
 ing that remark I speak from the point of view 
 of a minister of Christ, and not of one whose 
 plan and purpose it is to declare news about 
 social emancipation. We just know this 
 and cannot escape from knowing it that " no
 
 90 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 man liveth to himself." The individual 
 realises himself in society, and apart from 
 society his individuality is naught. Personali- 
 ty is only discovered in relations; and for us 
 to say, in the words of the Psalmist, " The 
 Lord will perfect that which concerneth me," 
 is the same thing as to say, " The Lord will 
 perfect that which concerneth man." For the 
 one unescapable reality of all human life is 
 God! 
 
 Nor can we stop here. One note that has 
 been struck, I think, with considerable power 
 in the years that are just over, is that of the 
 essential unity of all existence. A certain 
 great scientist, speaking of an older theology 
 than that perhaps in which you and I were 
 trained, characterised it as not only being 
 somewhat selfish, but he says whether right- 
 ly or wrongly that it was somewhat " con- 
 ceited." " We have discovered," he says, 
 " that the world transcends the interests of 
 humanity. Whereas once we spoke of men as 
 the crown of creation, that for the sake of 
 which all else exists, now we have come to dis- 
 cover that we are each of us, and humanity as 
 a whole, but a very puny factor in the life of 
 the universe. If there be a purpose in it all,
 
 GOD'S PERFECTING OF LIFE 91 
 
 it is one which transcends the interests of 
 humanity, yet still remains an ordered whole." 
 Once more, therefore, we discover not only 
 the solidarity of man with nature, and all with 
 God ; but we discover that the universe is one. 
 Yes; in every relationship with which we are 
 familiar, examined in all senses and directions, 
 we cannot but realise that, for good or for 
 evil, the universe is one. The garment of na- 
 ture is woven seamless throughout. We are 
 related and inter-related, not only one to the 
 other, but to the whole mysterious existence 
 of which we form a part. Then the question 
 of questions necessarily becomes: Is there a 
 soul thereof ? And we who are trying to read 
 the signs of the times ought to be ready with 
 our evangel to meet what I believe, in the 
 providence of God, has been a created ques- 
 tion, namely, Is there a soul to this whole of 
 mysterious existence of which we ourselves are 
 a part? What is at the heart of things? 
 Of what kind is He who reigns? Of what 
 kind is He in whom our being and 
 our interests are co-ordained? And there can 
 be no answer to that question sufficient for the 
 hour outside the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We 
 are not only ministers of Christ, but I pray
 
 92 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 you to remember that we are stewards of the 
 mysteries of God. 
 
 Here it is that revealed religion comes in 
 with its note of good confidence and high 
 hope. Apart from Christ, what answer is 
 there to the riddle of existence? And I think 
 here one may say, without being misunder- 
 stood, that for moral and spiritual import no 
 sufficient stress has been placed upon what 
 Christendom has come to regard as the cos- 
 mical significance of Christ. Jesus spake not 
 only to the individual conscience and heart, 
 but speaks to those who are rooted and 
 grounded in Him to-day, in such terms as 
 these : God has never ceased to reign ; and that 
 expression of the life of God which alone has 
 value for a noble soul, and which can satisfy 
 the highest cravings of the human spirit, is 
 revealed in Jesus Christ. It is Christ who 
 reigns and in whom creation is unified. And 
 the revelation comes not first, mind you, to the 
 intellect; it comes first to the conscience, it 
 grips the heart. The cosmical significance of 
 Christ is that which gives to us sweet confi- 
 dence and high hope, when we reflect upon 
 the fundamental questions of our life and des- 
 tiny. For if the same Jesus who taught upon 
 the hill-side of Galilee in the long ago; who
 
 GOD'S PERFECTING OF LIFE 93 
 
 sat upon the well of Samaria speaking to 
 one of abandoned character, an outcast; the 
 Jesus of the home at Bethany; the Jesus who 
 wept by Lazarus' grave; the Jesus who healed 
 the sick, cleansed the lepers, raised the dead: 
 if that same Jesus be seated upon the Throne 
 of the Universe then all is well! And it is, 
 it seems to me, at the present day a serious 
 omission from much of our pulpit teaching, 
 that we do not press to the very front the 
 ground of our confidence that things cannot 
 be wrong, that God has never ceased to reign 
 because all authority is committed, in Heav- 
 en and on earth, to the Christ whom we adore ! 
 " The Lord will perfect that which concerneth 
 me." 
 
 If we press this truth too far, then we are 
 in danger perhaps of weakening the sense of 
 moral responsibility. Here again one touches 
 upon a characteristic of our own day. Chris- 
 tian brethren, this is a time of comparative 
 moral apathy. These periods seem to come 
 in cycles. The great wave of Puritan inten- 
 sity of two centuries ago no sooner spent itself 
 than there came a time of wild reaction, when 
 men lived for the moment, and in the name 
 of humanism perpetrated false thoughts and 
 actions. Once more we have entered upon a
 
 94 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 period of moral apathy. Let us watch it; let 
 us learn to discern its characteristics. Men 
 are not in earnest now very much about 
 anything; neither in secular nor in sacred 
 things can you, without much labour and self- 
 sacrifice, work up any enthusiasm. There is 
 an absence of the willingness to take re- 
 sponsibility, which willingness characterised 
 those who have left us the spiritual heritage 
 that we enjoy to-day. Men are willing to let 
 things slide. Anybody else may carry the 
 cross, so long as we are not troubled by it. 
 
 Again, there is a strange and regrettable 
 weakening of the sense of sin. Preachers who 
 ignore that fact are not faithful to the evangel 
 which has been committed to them as a trust 
 from God. And sometimes it has seemed to 
 me as if we were more in earnest to comfort 
 and reassure humanity than we are to press 
 home upon sinners their responsibility to the 
 Judge of all the earth, whose sternness is not 
 the less real because He is also the meek and 
 lowly Jesus. This weakening of the sense of 
 sin is due, in part, to the weakening of the note 
 of authority in our evangel. Let us never 
 cease to preach the terrors of the Lord ; for to 
 preach the sternness of God is necessary, if 
 we are preaching rightly the benevolence of
 
 95 
 
 God. Because whom He loves He will not 
 spare; and to understate His sternness because 
 of His love is wrong, for the two can never 
 be considered apart. The Lord our God is a 
 consuming fire. He will perfect that which 
 concerneth man, even though He triumph at 
 his cost. 
 
 In this regard we are sometimes accused, 
 and rightly accused, perhaps, of making for- 
 giveness too easy. In a remarkable article 
 written in the British Weekly by Dr. Robert- 
 son Nicoll concerning " Scoundrelism," he 
 said in substance this : That Christian preach- 
 ers, in common with many other teachers of to- 
 day, are in danger of prophesying smooth 
 things, and sprinkling the way of life with rose 
 water. We have lost the note of authority, 
 somehow, in our pulpit preaching. Men criti- 
 cise us, which ought not to be possible; we 
 ought to challenge men. And the writer goes 
 on to say that it seems as though, by the very 
 weakening of our evangel, we are contributing 
 to the weakening of the sense of sin, to which 
 reference has been already made. And he 
 asks the questions, What can repentance do? 
 What, also, can it not do? His conclusion 
 seems to be, Though repentance can bring the 
 sinner back to God, and secure the blending
 
 96 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 of the spirit of the penitent with the spirit of 
 the Maker and the Judge, yet it never can re- 
 mit the penalty of sin. He who goes to the 
 far country very seldom comes back ; and when 
 he comes back, he cannot find the old home as 
 he left it. Life is so stern, that it ought never 
 to be played with. " God is not mocked : 
 whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
 reap." " Not something else," as Robertson, 
 of Brighton, has said, " but just that." 
 
 In reading that article, I felt how very neces- 
 sary it was that we should be recalled to the 
 significance of the Gospel we preach. It is 
 too solemn for us to trifle with it. But at the 
 same time I felt that the writer had, in em- 
 phasising a solemn truth, failed to see or, at 
 any rate, failed to say something which has 
 been entrusted to every preacher of the Gospel 
 to say. What can repentance do? Much. 
 It can bring the sinner back to God. What 
 can it not do ? It cannot remit penalty ? Yes, 
 it can, and does. It is a strange fact that at 
 the very moment when we have failed to make 
 clear to men the sinfulness of sin, and have 
 made forgiveness too easy, the world has been 
 reminding us that there is no such thing as 
 forgiveness at all. That, I take it, is the or- 
 dinary experience of sinful man. To every
 
 GOD'S PERFECTING OF LIFE 97 
 
 man, or to most men, shall I say, forgiveness 
 is associated in some degree with some remis- 
 sion of the penalty of wrongdoing. The two 
 are not one ; but men feel about them as though 
 they were. Forgiveness seems unreal, except 
 it be accompanied by an evangel which says, 
 " Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be 
 as snow ; though they be red like crimson, they 
 shall be as wool." 
 
 Hear what society says concerning this. 
 Here, it may be, is a man who had sinned 
 against the laws of his country. He once oc- 
 cupied a high position in the esteem of the 
 society in which he had been born. He is 
 placed inside the prison-house: society exe- 
 crates him, and, it may be, complains that the 
 sentence was not long enough, and talks about 
 the time when he will come out. He will 
 never come out. Once the door is closed, so- 
 ciety has closed it for ever. There is no more 
 going back, there is no more taking up the 
 threads of forfeited opportunity. That which 
 is done can never be undone. All through life 
 that sinner will be shadowed by the wrong 
 that he committed in the hour of sinful de- 
 lirium. There is no forgiveness in society. 
 
 And there is no forgiveness in nature. Men
 
 98 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 know it; and when we play with the facts of 
 life in the pulpit, they feel that our message is 
 unreal. Here comes a drunkard to you lis- 
 tening to your evangel, and trying to take hope 
 therefrom. And the thought in his mind 
 whether he presents it to you or not is this, 
 as he holds up his trembling hands : " Can 
 aught give me back the virile manhood I have 
 forfeited that strength of constitution which 
 seems gone for ever? And if not, where can 
 the forgiveness of God come?" If God for- 
 gives, can God restore? Can that which has 
 been be as though it has never been? For 
 this is the cry of every man who has become 
 a victim to his own sinful passion. 
 
 Here is another though I do not wish to 
 weary you with a mulitplication of instances : 
 Here is a man who has lived to the flesh, and 
 of the flesh reaped corruption. This lustful 
 one has bequeathed a dread heritage to his 
 children. And as he listens to the sound of 
 the Gospel of Jesus, which rings in his ear as a 
 message of sweetness, he thinks to himself: 
 " How can that which hath been done be un- 
 done by this Gospel that sounds so sweet, 
 though so unreal? Can God give me back 
 again the lives of my children which I have 
 shattered ? Can God restore to me that oppor-
 
 GOD'S PERFECTING OF LIFE 99 
 
 tunity not for my own sake do I ask it 
 that I have thrown away? Alas, no! 
 
 The tender grace of a day that is dead 
 Will never come back to me." 
 
 The penalty of sin seems to remain. No the 
 world will not believe in forgiveness. 
 
 Now, the answer to the very real difficulty 
 thus created appears to me to be that which 
 we read about in the 55th chapter of Isaiah 
 the transmutation of the curse. There is no 
 going back, because there is something better 
 further on. The curse becomes the cross. 
 Every saint of God has to carry his. And I 
 would say to the poor drunkard who comes to 
 me with his shaking hands: Brother, God in 
 His mercy has ordained that you carry your 
 cross. It was self-imposed in the first in- 
 stance. You must carry it for His sake now. 
 And, brother, we are just alike, you and I, for 
 I must carry mine, and all children of the Lord 
 must carry theirs. " Whom the Lord loveth 
 He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom 
 He receiveth." 
 
 Repentance, if it be true, has no note of 
 selfishness in it; and your palsied one would 
 say, " Right, and just, and true are the ways 
 of the Lord. I take this penalty as a disci-
 
 ioo THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 pline to be received, as that which God has 
 given me." If not this cross, then some other ; 
 and for all who love Him, God turns the pen- 
 alties of sin from a curse into a blessing. The 
 stains become the stigmata; the stripes of the 
 Lord become the marks of the Lord Jesus. 
 The evangel is there. " The Lord will per- 
 fect that which concerneth me." 
 
 Once more. It seems as though the Gospel 
 contained in this text extends to the ulterior 
 consequences of human sin. Oh, if we could 
 but sin to ourselves, and ourselves bear the 
 cost! But the innocent suffer for the guilty; 
 those who love, frequently suffer more than 
 the sinner himself. It is because of the solid- 
 arity of the race, to which reference has just 
 been made, that no man liveth to himself, that 
 the consequences of wrongdoing are felt far 
 beyond the region of the personality of him 
 who commits the wrong. Here is a problem. 
 A man comes to himself ; it is not the thought 
 of repentance, or of what he himself may bear, 
 that troubles him; it is the thought of that 
 which he can never overtake which is working 
 its effect in the lives of other men. Is there 
 an evangel for that? I think there is, and it 
 is to be found in my text. To him who comes 
 in faith to God, there is a blessed future of
 
 GOD'S PERFECTING OF LIFE 101 
 
 hope promised. Yes: it is God who takes 
 charge of the whole of the circumstances, and 
 of the whole circumference of effect also in 
 which you are concerned, and " the Lord will 
 perfect that which concerneth you." 
 
 As I stood and looked out into the most 
 beautiful street in the world Princes Street, 
 Edinburgh and watched the smoke from a 
 hundred chimneys ascending into the heavens 
 above, and all the hurrying throng below, the 
 thought crossed my mind : Is this foul smoke, 
 which is penetrating the atmosphere, to ac- 
 cumulate and to increase till the whole is poi- 
 soned and rendered unfit for human beings to 
 breathe? And then there came the obvious 
 and commonsense fact that even as it ascends 
 it is being transmuted, and it will return to- 
 morrow as something else than that which was 
 sent away. The sewage passing under our 
 feet away out to the great ocean does not go 
 there to be destroyed, but to be transformed; 
 and it will come back again to refresh this 
 land in rain. These fleecy white clouds above 
 us in the heavens whence came they ? From 
 many a marsh, from many a stagnant pool, 
 from many a reeking slum. There they are 
 purified, and now suspended in the firmament 
 of God.
 
 102 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 We are giving out every day by what we 
 are, as well as by what we do, facts which are 
 affecting other lives, and we cannot recall them. 
 The moment for that has gone by directly the 
 sin is committed. Yes; we cause the suffer- 
 ing and we do the harm. Yet God uses both. 
 He reigns. He has never abdicated. Our life 
 is in His charge. And the moment thought 
 becomes volition in any man, and passes into 
 act, that moment it is swallowed up like some- 
 thing in the atmosphere in the mighty de- 
 signs of God. Strive as you may, you can- 
 not defeat Him. " Shall not the Judge of all 
 the earth do right ? " Keep ever humble, peni- 
 tent one. Turn to what you can do. Cease 
 to mourn for what you cannot do. Think of 
 what the dying Arthur says in " The Idylls 
 of the King:" 
 
 I have lived my life, and that which I have done 
 May He within Himself make pure. 
 
 " The Lord will perfect that which con- 
 cerneth me." 
 
 All the past things are past and over; 
 The tasks are done and the tears are shed. 
 
 Yesterday's errors let yesterday cover; 
 Yesterday's wounds which smarted and bled 
 Are healed with the healing which God has shed.
 
 GOD'S PERFECTING OF LIFE 103 
 
 Let them go, for you cannot relieve them 
 
 Cannot undo, and cannot atone. 
 God, in His mercy, receive and forgive them. 
 
 Only the new days are our own; 
 
 To-day is ours, and to-day alone. 
 
 Again, the thought full of significance and 
 helpfulness comes to us from this text, that 
 for all to whom self-expression in this life 
 has been denied, there is a Divine truth to com- 
 fort them : " The Lord will perfect that which 
 concerneth me." In a congregation gathered 
 from amongst serious-thinking men, many 
 being true servants of God, there must be many 
 who know what it is to hear the sad music of 
 humanity. I think scarcely any man can take 
 life and duty seriously without sometimes feel- 
 ing the pressure of sadness upon what he 
 thinks, as well as upon what he says. You 
 cannot help it. Live faithfully unto God, and 
 though your optimism be undoubted, always 
 therein you must discern, and must possess, 
 and must declare, the note of solemnity. It 
 is because the heart of man is evil continually, 
 that deep down we discern the sad music of 
 humanity. You have been trying to live out 
 your life; sometimes you failed to do what you 
 set yourself to do, sometimes it seemed as 
 though you were misunderstood in the best
 
 104 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 effort that you put forth. Consecration to 
 God does not necessarily mean that you are to 
 be understood of your fellows in this world. 
 You have tried to do something for God. Mr. 
 Ruskin tells us that no well-meant effort, put 
 forward with consecrated motive, can ever fail. 
 Sometimes it seems as if it has failed. The 
 best attempted actions, carried out with most 
 honest purpose, sometimes seem to do more 
 harm than good. 
 
 For the comfort of the people of God let us 
 hear His message upon such a suggestion as 
 this " The Lord will perfect that which con- 
 cerneth me." Once in a village in Germany 
 so I have been told there lived a man of 
 genius, who built for the village church an 
 organ, wherewith public worship was to be 
 conducted. But he could not give it voice. 
 Years went by and he became the laughing- 
 stock of the community. He could not bring 
 harmony forth from the instrument that he had 
 himself created. It was latent and slumbered 
 there, and needed a master-hand to awaken it. 
 But one day there came the great musician, 
 Sebastian Bach, to that township, and the peo- 
 ple flocked to hear him. And timidly 
 amongst the rest approached this man whom 
 the people had for years laughed at. And he
 
 GOD'S PERFECTING OF LIFE 105 
 
 entreated Bach, " Master, lay your hands up- 
 on the keys of my instrument, and see if the 
 harmony be there." And when Bach com- 
 plied, then that to which utterance had seemed 
 denied suddenly gave forth melody so sweet 
 that not only was the poor old man vindicated, 
 but what was a greater matter to him his 
 very soul leaped up in thankfulness to God. 
 He had now expressed himself, and it was for 
 this he had been living those many years past. 
 Ah, and sometimes it seems to us as if our 
 Lord delay eth His corning. All workers with 
 Christ know what it is to go into Gethsemane 
 with the Master, for all noble souls are lonely 
 sometimes. Our faith is dim, and we turn to 
 the Old Book for the comfort which we are 
 entitled to receive. Yes, " The Lord will 
 perfect that which concerneth me." 
 
 Live truly unto God : wait for that better 
 day, that day of His appearing, when the Sun 
 of Righteousness shall shine round about you. 
 Then all done faithfully unto God shall stand 
 as the great purpose He has purposed; and 
 Christ will interpret that which men have fail- 
 ed to read. " The Lord will perfect that which 
 concerneth me." 
 
 Any church to live must be a missionary 
 church. Every member must be a missionary.
 
 io6 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 This is what we have to take to the world 
 and no faltering note this! Christ crucified, 
 as the Lord of life and death. I would put 
 no bound to the Saviourhood of Christ. Christ 
 is our Saviour from everything which hu- 
 manity has cause to dread, and our Saviour 
 to everything for which humanity ought to 
 hope. Go with the blessing of God upon you, 
 for power must come to the message, as you 
 lay it alongside human need : " Though your 
 sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as 
 snow; though they be red like crimson, they 
 shall be as wool." " The Lord will perfect 
 that which concerneth me."
 
 VII 
 
 THE HUMANITY OF GOD 
 
 " Thomas answered and said unto Him, 'My Lord and 
 my God."' John xx., 28. 
 
 You will hardly need to be reminded of the 
 circumstances under which these words were 
 first spoken. This is the place in the New 
 Testament where the Deity of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ is first and plainly affirmed. If the 
 apostle's account is true, and I believe every 
 syllable of it is, this is the first time in the 
 history of the world when the experience of a 
 loving disciple discovered the humanity of 
 God. Thomas was privileged, doubter though 
 he was, to fix the faith of Christendom in the 
 sentence which is our text " My Lord and 
 my God." All creeds begin in experience, and 
 every man has his creed, even when he says 
 he has not. As is your experience, so is your 
 creed. The mere utterance of a sentence, an- 
 other man's sentence, though you may call it 
 your creed, is not your creed unless it is a part
 
 io8 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 of your life. How much Thomas meant by 
 his utterance one cannot say, but that ejacula- 
 tion which sprang from a loving heart, from 
 a delighted and devout soul, " My Lord and 
 my God," was the affirmation of an experience 
 which, afterwards put into a creed, has helped 
 to form and fashion thousands of lives, and to 
 supply the inspiration for a myriad noble 
 characters. The Deity of Jesus stands as the 
 first article of the Christian faith if we are to 
 believe in a Divine deliverer at all. I am well 
 aware that many persons, especially, perhaps, 
 young people, have very great difficulty in be- 
 lieving in the Divinity of Christ, as it is call- 
 ed. I am going to try to show you that you 
 believe it already, and that as you live nobly 
 you are sure to believe it more. First, let me 
 state your difficulty. 
 
 One has often heard men say: 
 
 How much simpler your Christianity would 
 be if you were to preach your human master 
 and leave supernaturalism out of your Gos- 
 pel. We admit that Christ was a good man; 
 we will go further and say, He is the best 
 Man that ever lived, the pattern and example 
 of humanity for all time. But don't ask us 
 to believe that He was God; that is a strain 
 upon credulity. It has nothing to do with
 
 THE HUMANITY OF GOD 109 
 
 the ethic of Christianity, and, in fact, helps to 
 weaken it. 
 
 I have heard others say: 
 
 Don't ask me to believe in the Divinity of 
 Christ, because you push Him away from 
 me when you do that, and I want Him to 
 come near. If I can only say to myself, 
 Christ is a man, like myself, believing in Him 
 and following Him becomes simpler for me. 
 But when you say He is God, He is at an im- 
 possible distance from me at once, and when 
 you speak of a High Priest, touched with the 
 feeling of my infirmities, and tempted in all 
 points, like as I am, you speak in an unknown 
 tongue. That Jesus does not help me half so 
 much as the Jesus that stands down beside me 
 and lives my life. 
 
 A third form in which that difficulty is 
 stated is this: 
 
 How are we to understand this double 
 Christ who, on every page of the New Testa- 
 ment, is presented as our ideal and example, 
 Master and Lord? Now He is praying to the 
 Father, and He says, " My Father," and, while 
 He says it, He looks up as we do to my God 
 and your God. And now He hangs on Cal- 
 vary there is wrung from Him the cry of 
 seeming despair that has been wrung from
 
 no THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 human souls before and since " My God, my 
 God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? " Yet you 
 say He was God God suffering, God in 
 agony, God cry to God. How can it be ? You 
 ask me to believe an impossible thing a dual 
 nature and a dual consciousness. Don't put 
 stumbling-blocks for the weak. Say straight 
 out, you preachers, Jesus was man and have 
 done with it, and then, in His struggles and 
 in His triumphs, I feel that I have a part. 
 
 Have I stated your difficulty fairly and 
 frankly? I will meet you with my answer. 
 It is that Jesus as God my God, Very God 
 of Very God. I could not do without Him. 
 Give me the Christ or I have no Father; and 
 without the Christ the hope of poor humanity 
 is gone. Mr. Gladstone said in the evening 
 of his life, in answer to a question from a 
 correspondent, " All I think, and all I write, 
 and all I hope, is based upon the Divinity of 
 our Lord that one central hope for our poor 
 wayward race." 
 
 There is the assertion then. I take my 
 stand with Thomas, and speak through his 
 lips when I say, " My Lord and My God." 
 Now for that demonstration, if demonstration 
 can be found. Remember this : All religious 
 faith that is worthy of the name is the re-
 
 THE HUMANITY OF GOD ill 
 
 sultant in experience of a number of propo- 
 sitions which, taken separately, would be un- 
 convincing, but taken in the mass are over- 
 whelming in their power of producing con- 
 viction. So it is with this first tenet of the 
 Christian faith the Godhead of Jesus Christ. 
 Let me clear a preliminary difficulty out 
 of your way. You are accustomed to think 
 and speak of humanity and divinity as though 
 they were two different things. They are not ; 
 they are one thing and indivisible. In Christ 
 there were not two natures, but one. When 
 we say two, we speak as men and with men's 
 limitation. The humanity of Christ was His 
 divinity, and when you have gathered all hu- 
 manity together, you have got Deity, not two 
 things, but one thing. There is no line be- 
 tween man and God, looking downwards; 
 there is a distinct line between man and God, 
 looking upwards. God is all that you are, and 
 infinitely more. He lives more of your life 
 than you live yourself. He knows every 
 thought before it is born, and if you separate 
 yourself from Him in thought He will follow 
 you with His chastisement, because He cannot 
 rid Himself of that part of His life which is 
 in you. Humanity and divinity are insepara-
 
 H2 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 ble, and that consciousness of Deity covers 
 all that is human. 
 
 Now, can you suppose that you know very 
 much about Deity when you have said this? 
 All that you know about Deity is human, 
 every bit of it. We speak about the God who 
 is declared in the mountain and in the flood, 
 the God who speaks by nature, and so on; but 
 Henry Drummond notwithstanding, I would 
 say with Mr. Dallinger, that great Wesleyan, 
 " You will read no God in Nature except that 
 God you take to Nature. It is in humanity 
 that you find Him. Nature may confirm, she 
 cannot affirm, what you know about God. 
 No, it is in humanity, humanity at its best, 
 that you must read what you know about God. 
 
 I am not afraid of taking you to the Gospel 
 for the answer. All men who believe in God 
 got Him from Christ. Unitarian, Trinita- 
 rian, if you have a worthy notion of your 
 Father in heaven, you took it from Jesus of 
 Nazareth; He brought it to the world; He 
 never took it away. Humanity at its highest 
 has given us God; and yet I need not shrink 
 from saying, even in Jesus you have not all 
 there is of God. Infinitely far beyond His be- 
 ing is that fathomless abyss which is still the 
 Father, and Jesus looked up at the Father,
 
 THE HUMANITY OF GOD 113 
 
 infinite in power, majesty, and glory, when He 
 said, " My God," but when I look up at the 
 Father, I have to look at Him through the 
 form of Jesus Christ, and say, " You are Lord 
 and God to me; I cannot see the Father's face 
 except as I look on you. 
 
 Now, let us come a little closer still to 
 demonstration. Admitting that humanity is 
 part of the life of God, and must be for I do 
 not wish to be unduly metaphysical, and I 
 hope I am speaking in the language of com- 
 mon life admitting that humanity and di- 
 vinity are one, the measure of humanity is 
 how much of divinity it can contain. There 
 is not a man, be he never so foolish and never 
 so bad, but contains some divinity. The di- 
 vine spark within you which makes you man 
 and marks you man, is God. The deepest 
 self in every man is God. The rest may be 
 beast never mind, that is God which is most 
 truly you. And you don't stand by yourself. 
 All humanity is related. If you are a bad 
 man, I am a sufferer because of it ; if you have 
 done something good I am a beneficiary. If 
 you are living a true life, all the community 
 feels the result. No man liveth to himself. 
 We are bound together by invisible bonds that 
 the worst of us cannot break and the strongest
 
 H4 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 cannot transcend. Now, is there one being 
 anywhere that holds us all. We are all to- 
 gether, we cannot escape that, and we don't 
 want to. It is just an ordinary fact, an or- 
 dinary experience. You are bound to your 
 fellows. The whole life of humanity is in 
 some sort centered in you. Is there any being 
 anywhere, is there any soul, in earth or heaven 
 or both, that holds us all? I think I have 
 found Him? I find Him here. The question 
 was never asked about anybody else in the his- 
 tory of the world, Is He man or is He God? 
 Here is a soul that holds yours, a life that cov- 
 ers yours. He came to His own, and His own 
 received Him not. Jesus Christ is the Man 
 of men, the Man to whom the rest look up, 
 and something more than that, the Man Whose 
 life is the spring and the source of all that is 
 human. " Before Abraham was," he said of 
 Himself, " I am." I put that into a sentence : 
 Jesus Christ is just that side of the nature of 
 God in which the humanity lies. 
 
 But we can go further still. Jesus Christ 
 becomes a pledge and guarantee of infinite 
 God for the salvation of men. Not only is 
 He God, and must be God, because His life 
 is behind and above yours, and is the source of 
 all that is worthiest to live in yours; but Jesus
 
 THE HUMANITY OF GOD 115 
 
 Christ brings infinite God into finite human 
 life. Every noble thought you have, every 
 worthy deed you do, has come from farthest 
 heaven, and has come through the life of Jesus 
 Christ. Moreover, great may be your iniqui- 
 ty, intractable may be your sin, but Jesus 
 Christ, Very God of Very God, has shown 
 Himself sufficient for your sin. Were it only 
 for that, I would preach the Sinless Man, who 
 rescues sinful men, and in the humanity of my 
 Lord, the true humanity by which He takes 
 His place by my side, I read the infinity, the 
 eternity, the holiness of Deity; and so I am 
 saved by the Cross of Christ. 
 
 Now, may I quit this long and somewhat 
 abstract discussion, and come to what I think 
 will clear up the difficulty, if any remains, by 
 a figure drawn from human experience? Last 
 Sunday morning, as I stood face to face with 
 my own congregation, the sight of a lady 
 there reminded me of a story she had told me 
 of an incident that came under her observa- 
 tion in visiting the sick in Brighton. She 
 said she had called upon a poor woman, an 
 ignorant woman, a hard-working toiler, and 
 one of those patient souls who never seem to 
 have a thought for themselves, but who live 
 for other people all their days. As she was
 
 n6 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 dying she was anxious about her children. 
 The visitor tried to interest her in her own 
 salvation, but it could not be done; she had 
 not time to listen, she was so anxious about 
 her children, what was to become of them now 
 that the mother who had earned the few pence 
 that kept them from penury was passing away ? 
 The visitor told her about Jesus and about 
 God, and said the love of God was sufficient 
 for her babes. What do you suppose was the 
 reply of the dying woman ? She said, " I 
 don't believe in God; I have never found that 
 God the Father gave me much help in my 
 struggle to live; I am afraid of Him, but I 
 believe in Jesus, and I think if He were here 
 I could tell Him all my troubles, and I am 
 sure He would answer and help me." You 
 will be surprised, doubtless, to think that such 
 an utterance could ever have been made, that 
 anybody anywhere could have separated be- 
 tween Jesus and God. She talked of them 
 both as though they were alive, and then said, 
 " I don't believe in God, and cannot trust 
 Him, but if Jesus were here if Jesus were 
 here ! " The truth is that human nature spoke 
 out there in a demand whose urgency will nev- 
 er be lessened unless you bring God to the res- 
 cue of human sorrow when you breathe the
 
 THE HUMANITY OF GOD 1 1/ 
 
 name of Jesus. She spoke what we all feel. 
 Jesus pledged the great heart of God when 
 He said, " My Father and your Father : I 
 will pray the Father for you, and He shall 
 send you another comforter ; " "I and My 
 Father are one/' When you have seen Him, 
 you have seen all you need to know of God, 
 you have penetrated to that last place in His 
 nature. Nature is only the outwork of God; 
 Jesus gives us the very heart of the Father. 
 
 One more, and it may be a little personal, 
 but let it pass. The other day, a little person 
 in my house came home to tell me of a strange 
 thing she had seen on a placard about her 
 father. She did not say so, she said " about 
 the minister of the City Temple." I have 
 been extremely careful not to read a single 
 word anywhere else than on the placard about 
 that personality within the last few weeks. 
 The little one told me again and again of what 
 she had seen here and seen there. I said, 
 " Well, this is a person that you don't seem 
 to know anything about; he has so many vir- 
 tues, so many peculiarities, and so many ac- 
 complishments, and, to judge by the pencil- 
 lings and the reproduced presentments here and 
 there, he is a person you have never seen." 
 I said to her, " I wonder who he is ? " She
 
 Ii8 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 put both her arms around my neck, as she said, 
 " He is my Father ! " And I look up to 
 farthest heaven, and I see that not a planet 
 stirs a hair's-breadth from its course, and I 
 am lost in the immensity of the conception, 
 and I am afraid as I think of the machinery, 
 and I come down to earth, and I bend over a 
 broken heart, and I hear a man cry, " God be 
 merciful to me! " I think of that poor atom 
 of humanity, and I think of that pathless in- 
 finity over against it, and then I remember and 
 say, my Jesus is the Master and the Lord, the 
 King of Lords, and the friend of the sorrow- 
 ful all the same. 
 
 Let us try to put ourselves into the very 
 imagination of Thomas, and see how he 
 thought and felt. Thomas had come to some- 
 body that he thought had brought new truth 
 to the world. "Is not this a King?" He 
 was telling his friends, " This man that I have 
 just found is going to grasp the scepter of 
 the Caesars, and when He has got it, He will 
 rule over such a kingdom as the world has 
 never seen ! " But, in a while, Thomas and 
 his friends forgot the king as they sat listen- 
 ing open-mouthed to One who spake as never 
 man spake. Into the very upper room these 
 men carried their little ambitions and their
 
 THE HUMANITY OF GOD 119 
 
 hopes to see their Master crowned with a 
 crown of gold. Oh, but when they saw Him 
 crowned with a crown of thorns it seemed as 
 though all their hopes were overwhelmed, and 
 they had to begin at the beginning again, and 
 look for another than this, this poor suffering 
 One who was dying on Calvary, both hands 
 nailed to the tree; and they could not do it; 
 they found they loved Him. And it was be- 
 cause Thomas's heart was breaking at the 
 news that He was dead, murdered by those 
 He had tried to save, that in his despair he 
 said, " I saw Him ! I saw Him die ; I cannot 
 believe He will ever live again." " My Lord " 
 he called Him ; and " Lord " here means noth- 
 ing but Master; I might call you Lord, and 
 mean nothing more than Thomas meant when 
 he said " Lord " to Jesus. " My Master has 
 gone; He will never come back. I saw Him 
 die. Except I see in His hands the prints of 
 the nails, and put my ringer on the print of the 
 nails, and thrust my hand where I saw the 
 spear go, I will not believe." Then he look- 
 ed up and saw Him. His Master spoke and 
 said, " Put your ringer on the print of the 
 nails, thrust your hand into my side, Thom- 
 as." Thomas did not wait to do either, but 
 he cried out in a joy that there was no sup-
 
 120 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 pressing, and in a faith which had just been 
 sorrow, and recalled a love which had been his 
 whole life, as he thought about the Jesus who 
 told him of the Father. " He has come back ! 
 He is something more than He was before to 
 me. How is it I never saw it? Why was it 
 I never saw it? My Lord and My God!" 
 He had learned the humanity of God in the 
 love that was drawn out of him in spite of 
 himself to the human Jesus; and now they 
 saw Him as He was, the Lord of life and glory, 
 the Soul of humanity, the Friend of the lost, 
 and the Deliverer of all who call unto Him; 
 they found that the grave could not hold Him. 
 When Thomas and those with him cried out, 
 " My Lord and my God," a new hour of 
 triumph had dawned for humanity, and it is 
 shining to-day. 
 
 Put your difficulties into the pit. Away 
 with them! For Jesus has given you God. 
 Don't deprive your life of anything that would 
 help to make it grand and good. You need 
 a Saviour, whether you have ever recognised 
 it or not, and you need a heavenly friend, such 
 as He was and is; and without Him there is 
 none other. I summon you to Thomas's 
 creed and Thomas's Lord, saying with the 
 voice of the doubter, " My Lord and my
 
 THE HUMANITY OF GOD 121 
 
 God," and He will never fail you all the days 
 of life. Christ is our Saviour from every- 
 thing which humanity has cause to dread, and 
 our Saviour to everything for which humanity 
 ought to hope. 
 
 I hope to see my Pilot face to face, 
 When I have crossed the bar.
 
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