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Jenkins (E. E.), Life and Christ, 195.
Knight (H. T.), The Cross, the Font, and the Altar, 20'.
Liddon (H. P.), Advent in St. Paul's, 233.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Philippians, etc., 316.
„ „ Paul's Prayers, 192.
Maggs (J. T. L.), The Spiritual Experience of St. Paul, 125. Murray (A.), Aids to Devotion, 13.
„ „ Humility, 59.
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Thorne (H.), Notable Sayings of the Great Teacher, 227. Warfield (B. B.), The Power of God unto Salvation, 29.
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Presbyterian, Sept. 19, 1912 (J. Melli.s).
A Faithful Saying.
Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners ; of whom I am chief. — i Tim. i. 15.
1. In these words we have the first of a short series of five " faithful sayings," or current Christian commonplaces, incidentally adduced by the Apostle Paul in the course of his letters to his helpers in the gospel — Timothy and Titus — i.e. in what we commonly call his Pastoral Epistles. They are a remarkable series of five " words," and their appearance on the face of these New Testament writings is almost as remarkable as their contents.
Consider what the phenomenon is that is brought before us in these "faithful sayings." Here is the Apostle writing to his assistants in the proclamation of the gospel, little more than a third of a century, say, after the crucifixion of his Lord — scarcely thirty-three years after he had himself entered upon the great ministry that had been committed to him of preaching to the Gen- tiles " the words of this life." Yet he is already able to remind them of the blessed contents of the gospel message in words that are the product of Christian experience in the hearts of the community. Por just what these " faithful sayings " are, is a body of utterances in which the essence of the gospel has been crystallized by those who have tasted and seen its preciousness. Obviously the days when this gospel was Isjrought as a novelty to their attention are past. The Church has been founded, and in it throbs the pulse of a vigorous life. The gospel has been embraced and lived , it has been trusted and not found wanting ; and the souls that have found its blessedness have had time to frame its precious truths into formulas — formulas, not merely that have passed from mouth to mouth, and been enshrined in memory after memory until they have become proverbs in the Christian community, formulas, rather, which have embedded themselves
8o A FAITHFUL SAYING
in the hearts of the whole congregation, have been beaten there into shape, as the deeper emotions of redeemed souls have played round them, and have emerged again suffused with the feelings which they have awakened and satisfied, and moulded into that balanced and rhythmic form which is the hall-mark of utterances that really come out of the living and throbbing hearts of the people.
2. The particular one of these "sayings" which has been chosen as the text is a great assertion — an assertion which, if it be truly a " faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation," is well adapted to become even in this late and, it would fain believe itself, more instructed age, the watchword of the Christian Church and of every Christian heart. On the face of it, it simply aunounces the purpose, or, we may perhaps say, the philosophy, of the incarnation : " Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." But it announces the purpose of the incarnation in a manner that at once attracts attention. The very language in which it is expressed is startling, meeting us here in the midst of one of St. Paul's letters. For this is not Pauline phraseology that stands before us here ; as, indeed, it does not profess to be — for does not St. Paul tell us that he is not speaking in his own person, but is adducing one of the jewels of the Church's faith ? At all events, it is the language of St. John that here confronts us, and whoever first cast the Church's heart-conviction into this com- pressed sentence had assuredly learned in St. John's schooL For to St. John alone belongs this phrase as applied to Christ : " He came into the world." It is St. John alone who preserves the Master's declarations : " I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world " ; "I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness." It is he alone who, adopting, as is his wont, the very phraseology of his Master to express his own thought, tells us in his prologue that the true Light — that lighteth every man — was coming into the world, but though He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, yet the world knew Him not.