^ In our own little world we have glorious sun-light flooding ourselves and bathing all things round about us, flooding ourselves and bathing us every day of every year. It is a most wonderful thing, this light. In many respects it is an impenetrable mystery and incomprehensibility. But it is not a secret. It lies open to the perception of all.
Nor are flowers secrets. In many respects there are secrets in them, and incomprehensibilities too. But in actual fact they lie open to the perception of all, and are not secrets. Nor are trees, although laden with wonders. Nor is grass, or grain, nor is winter with its frosts and snows, or summer with its fragrances, or spring with its anniversary springings, or autumn with its rainbow tints. While there are scientific and philosophic mysteries and incomprehensibilities in all these terrestrial phenomena, not one of them is a mystery in the classic sense of the term. They are, as matters of fact, things unveiled, un- muffled, unmantled, lying open in Nature to every one's percep- tion, so that he has but to look and see.
It is different with the Gospel. It does not lie quite on the surface of things around us, above us, and within us, especially in its glorious amplitude and universalities, and hence the Apostle, in his use of the word, calls it a " mystery." It had once been a secret, but it was now a secret no longer, at least to him. It had once been so much of a secret that to no mind but One was it known. It lay, as the Apostle expresses it in his Epistle to the Ephesians, " hid in God." ^
2. The particular mystery which the Apostle here stands amazed at is the introduction of the Gentiles to equal privileges under the Gospel with the Jews; and, in particular, to this privilege — that Christ should make glory sure to them by dwelling in them.
* W. T. Davison, The Indwelling Ohrlit, 270. ' J. Morison, Sheaves of Ministry, 37.
COLOSSIANS I. 27 439
Now this was what set Paul at variance with his nation. They had no quarrel with many of his opinions, but when he threatened their pride of separation they struck at his life. He might talk as he would of God, of sin, of forgiveness, but when they heard that he was bringing a heathen man into the Temple, and when they saw that, on his theories, there was no need of a Temple at all, the worshippers in Jerusalem were transformed into a murderous mob from whose clutch he had to be rescued by Eoman troops. Wise men do not run the risk of martyrdom in mere stubbornness, and when Paul speaks of " the mystery of Christ — for which I am in bonds," he does not vaguely mean the gospel, he means the freeness of the gospel. That is what had lain hidden in the mind of God, and it was for that he was " an ambassador in chains." In Ephesians iii. 4, 6, he is quite ex- plicit. "Ye can perceive," he says, "my understanding in the mystery of Christ; to wit, that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise." That, in Paul's view, was God's secret plan, hid from the ages and the generations, and now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets, and the text says that God willed it that this mystery should be made known among the Gentiles, not as bare fact, but as a very radiant and marvellous thing, a thing to sing about, a cause for which a man might very gladly live and die.
^ It is strange in looking back to see how nearly this secret of gladness was anticipated ages before. In three Psalms — the 96th, 97th, and 98th — you will find a sudden burst of song, just as when the dawn comes and the birds awaken, and the cause of it is Paul's discovery that God is all the world's God. " Sing to the Lord a new song. ... He has made known his salvation. He hath openly declared his righteousness in the sight of the nations. Let the sea roar," says the poet, " and the pride of its waves, the world and its people ; let the tossing waves clap their hands, let the hills sing for joy before the Lord, for he cometh to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and all the peoples with equity." It seemed as if at that time the full day of knowledge was at hand, but the time of promise passed, for " God enlargeth a nation, and straiteneth it again." Hearts which had expanded to take in the world, grew narrow and parochial, and darkness descended on the face of the earth. But now the day had come, and Paul felt his time too short for all he had to
440 CHRIST IN YOU THE HOPE OF GLORY
do in letting men know that the great and merciful God was actually for them,^
3. Our subject is " Christ in you, the hope of glory." Let us take it in this order — I. Glory.
II. The Hope of Glory. III. Christ in you the Hope of Glory.
I.
Gloky.
1. What is glory ? In our ordinary thought it is splendour, magnificence. We think of such a saying as " Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Or we think, more sublimely, of the words, " They shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matt. xxiv. 30). But in seeking a conception of glory suitable to our present text we should start with the incident in the Book of Exodus in which Moses desires to see the glory of God : " Shew me, I pray thee, thy glory." What is God's answer ? He said : " I will make all my goodness pass he/ore thee " (Exod. xxxiii. 18, 19). The glory of God is therefore His goodness made visible to us. We see His glory when we see Him " gracious to whom I will be gracious," and shewing " mercy on whom I will shew mercy." The goodness of Christ on the earth was seen as He " went about doing good." That was His glory in the state of His humiliation.