^ It seems to me as if, were I a layman in the days when some doctrine had got loose, as it were, into the wind and was being blown across the common and up and down the streets, I should go to church on Sunday, not wanting my minister to give me an oracular answer to all the questions which had been stated about it, but hoping that out of his sermon I might refresh my knowledge of Christ, get Him, His nature. His work, and His desire for me once more clear before me, and go out more ready to see this disputed truth of the moment in His light and as an * Bishop G. H. Wilkinson, For Quiet Moments, 10. * A. Maclaren.
388 CITIZENSHIP IN HEAVEN
utterance ot Him. . . . PreacJmig Christ ? That old phrase, which has been so often the very watchword of cant, how it still declares the true nature of Christian teaching ! Not Christianity, but Christ ! Not a doctrine but a Person ! Christianity only for Christ ! The doctrine only for the Person.^
3. The King can accomplish through the organized common- wealth more than he could accomplish by separate individuals. There are scientific museums where you may see a jar of water, another filled with charcoal, a bottle of lime, another with phosphorus and so forth. These, you are told, are the constituents of a human body. These are the materials out of which a body is made up. But in which of them do we find the properties of flesh and blood, to say nothing of the wonderful gifts, the marvellous endowments, of those bodies which God has given us. In a similar way a community of Christian men and women, knowing what is good, believing what is true, living pure lives, and breathing the spirit of heaven, would be not merely an aggregation of Christian people, but a Christian city distinctly different in its corporate life and corporate action from a city composed of equally able citizens who know nothing about Christ. They would be able to spread enlightenment, and to promote peace and happiness which would make their city a foretaste of that which shall never pass away. Noble deeds have been done when a thought or an emotion has taken possession of a community. What might we not hope for from a single city filled with Divine enthusiasm and moved by the spirit of God.
^ The poet Cowper saw in the rapid growth of England's power, even in his day, the earnest of a world-wide rule far eclipsing that of Kome. You remember how he pictures "the British warrior-queen," who has suffered direct indignity at the hands of the Eoman conquerors, consulting " the Druid, hoary chief," as to her country's wrongs, and listening to the " burning words " in which he portrayed, not only the destined fall of Eome, but also the future glory of her own land. Cowper was a patriot as well as a poet, jealous of England's liberties, conscious of England's destiny, anxious for England's good, and in " Boadicea " he claims that all who bear the name of Briton are inheritors of a more than Eoman empire, and (let us not forget) of a more than Eoman responsibility .^
^ Phillips Brooks, 126. " T. W. Drury, The Prison- Ministry of St. Paul, 44.
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4. Yet Christ reaches and moves society through the individual. The Saviour did not publish a plan of political reform, or a schedule of social science. Meeting His countrymen in little groups, or one by one, as they came, He showed them what was in His heart, and showed them the ineffable beauty of a holy and blessed " conversation " with His Father, while they were yet fishermen and publicans, and reapers and water-carriers, about their houses and fields. So began the everlasting empire and the everlasting age of righteousness through love, which was in time to lift itself over the palaces at Constantinople and Eome. Before men knew it, He had planted a kingdom to fill and possess the earth — planted it just where alone it could be planted, in the living heart and will of certain individuals who had ceased minding earthly things, or minded heavenly things far more. And so, precisely. He meets us to-day. With all His spirit of sacrifice and mighty power of redemption, with the cross on His shoulders and the scar in His side, He comes to each one of us, and speaks.
^ Individuals, feeling strongly, while on the one hand they are incidentally faulty in mode or language, are still peculiarly effective. No great work was done by a system ; whereas systems rise out of individual exertions. Luther was an individual. The very faults of an individual excite attention ; he loses, but his cause (if good and he powerful-minded) gains. This is the way of things : we promote truth by a self-sacrifice.^
^ Christianity has done more to produce individuality, and the development of personality, than any other force that has appeared in the world. It has accomplished what paganism had never succeeded in doing, " Even when we reach the climax of ancient civilization, in Greece and Eome, there is no adequate sense, either in theory or practice, of human personality as such." That is the dictum of Dr. Illingworth — no mean authority on the subject. He does not scruple to affirm that " the advent of Christianity created a new epoch both in the development and recognition of human personality." This, he asserts, is " a point of history which admits of no denial." And if any would inquire how it was brought about that this new sense of the worth of living, this quickened appreciation of the value of every individual vdth all that is involved of interest in life and its conditions, took possession of Christians, as it undoubtedly did, the answer that has to be given is wonderful enough. " As dying, and behold, we live."