Tj Thus, as arising out of the historical facts, the Gospel becomes the presence of Christ in the soul. It is precisely this, and only this, that makes the Gospel to be for us a Gospel. It is the transcendent miracle of the power of the Cross. What is the crowning fact of Church History throughout these nineteen centuries? Is it not the unceasing stream of testimony of believers who have realized the redeeming and sanctifying power of Christ in their own lives ? We meet with it in the great hymns of the Church, in its most spiritual thinkers, in the musings of its mystics, in the triumphant shout of its martyrs, in the battles of its reformers, and in the biographies of its saints. Everywhere it is the personal experience of the redeeming and conquering Christ. "Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father. When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers. Thou sittest at the right hand of God, in the glory of the Father."
4. But above all else, it was far^ St. Paul, and it must be for usj the Gospel of the grace of God/ It is God's free gift of
flvjjAgm, In this sense it was new, in this sense news^_and od new>. The. Gospel is still essentially new in its pro- imation of the method of salvation by grace. All other messages had said, " Do this and live." " Perform some ritual,
24o NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL
make a pilgrimage, torture yourself, pay something, so shall you be saved."
Tf Dr. Sven Hedin, in recounting his recent travels in Tibet, speaks of coming to a Holy Mountain. Around this mountain pilgrims from remote parts of Asia were wearily trudging. When asked why they were doing this, the reply was that so they hoped to find salvation. Another traveller in the same region speaks of observing near a monastery a hole in a wall near the ground. Placed near it was a platter with some coarse food on it. Presently a shrivelled, gaunt hand was seen to be thrust out through the hole and the food taken. " Who lives down there?" asked the travellers. "Oh, a very holy man," was the reply. "How long has he been in that dungeon?" " Twenty-five years." " Has he ever been out ? " " No." " Will le ever come out ? " " Not till he is carried out a dead man."
[Ah ! this is the universal heresy, the perennial error : that men can earn their salvation; pay for It;, dojsomething to merit it.
|And the Gospel comes in witbJLtsrreversal of human imaginations, laying, *'The gift of God is eternal_Jif^ " ; .and that is newa jndeed.1
II.
Why should he be Ashamed of it?
1. It was so insignificant He had just written down the word Eome in his letter. Now that which impressed every subject of the Empire when his thoughts turned towards Rome, was its unrivalled grandeur. The very name of Eome was the symbol of magnificence and power. For Eome was the seat of empire; the city which had conquered and which ruled the world. Eome was the centre of society; she welcomed to her receptions all that was noble and wealthy and distinguished; all the year round her palaces were thronged by dependent kings and princes. Eome was the nurse and patroness of such learning and thought as was tolerated by the political jealousies of the Imperial age; the great days of Athens were already of the past; literature was too much of a courtier to take up its abode contentedly in a conquered province. Nay, Eome was, in a sense, a great religious centre too, or at least a great centre of the current religions. At that date, all that was spiritual, as well as all that was debased and superstitious and grotesque,
1 H. Windross.
ROMANS i. 16 241
found a place and a haunt in Rome; with magnificent im- partiality, she smiled a welcome to all the truths and all the falsehoods that presented themselves at her gates. And the Gpspel — how did it look when placed in juxtaposition with the greatness of Eome ? Was it not, relatively to everything in the great capital, as far as the natural sense and judgment of man could pierce, poor and insignificant? The best informed, who deigned now and then to bestow a thought upon the morbid fancies of the Eastern world, could have distinguished in it only a rebellious offshoot from the most anti-social and detested religion in the Empire; it was itself an "exitiabilis superstitio " ; and it had about it a touch of inconsequence and absurdity from which Judaism was free. The estimate which an average French Academician might be supposed to form of Quakerism is probably not unlike the estimate which approved itself to the most cultivated minds in Eome as due to the religion of St. Paul and St. John.
T| Paul's word is alive to-day. Where is the word of Nero ? Paul's Gospel is as much as ever the power of God. The Eome of Nero we dig for to-day beneath its burial mounds. On the ruins of old Eome, the message which Paul preached has built a spiritual empire many times wider than the empire of the Caesars. The obscure missionary who was led on foot through the Appian Gate among the throng of passengers, bound to a soldier of Nero's army, has proved the mightier of the two ; and who shall say to-day at Eome that Paul had any cause to be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ ? x