Before the coming of the Messiah the Gentiles and Jews were two peoples ; a wall of partition kept them apart ; and the Jews imagined that the Gentiles were excluded from the covenant mercies of Jehovah, that they were for ever to remain "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the cove- nants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world." By the gospel, however, this Jewish prejudice was shown to be unfounded, and men of every nation were invited to participate in its inestimable blessings equally with the Jew. At the death of the Redeemer the wall of partition which separated the two nations was broken down, and henceforth the Jew was to have no peculiar advantage over the Gentile, all men were to be addressed simply as sinners, and to all men everywhere the gospel was to carry the glad tidings of pardon through the blood of the cross.
3. These words suggest also the one and only theme of Christian preaching. It is Christ, as we have seen, who alone is the subject of this verse. " He who was manifested in the flesh," who was crucified and "died for our sins," who rose again from the dead and ascended on high, who is exalted "to be a Prince and a Saviour" to "give repentance" and "remission of sins," who is the " King of kings, and Lord of lords," " upholding all things by the word of his power," who will come again to judge the quick and the dead — it is this Jesus, Son of God, and Son of man. Saviour, Brother, Master, Lord ; it is He, and He alone, who is the "mystery of godliness" that we are to declare unto men. Christ is the gospel, and to preach the gospel we must preach Christ.
^ Christ, and Christ alone — in all the glory of His Person, in all the fulness of His redeeming work, in all the greatness of His love, is the message of the Christian preacher. If Christ be left out of that message, it is not a sermon, but a speech. It may be an original and eloquent speech, but it has no power to touch the
I TIMOTHY III. i6 115
deepest things in the heart of man. It is like a richly chased and jewelled vase, without one drop of water in it, held to the piirched lips of the dying man, powerless to quench his thirst. But if Christ be in the sermon, its central theme, if the Incarnation, and the Atonement, and the Mediation, and the Eeign of Jesus light up every word the preacher speaks, then even the humblest servant of Christ, who has but a poor earthen cup to use, will have it filled to the brim with the water of life, and weary and sinful men and women will drink of that water, and never thirst again.^
^ " Nobody," it has been said, " has any right to preach who has not mighty affirmations to make concerning God's Son, Jesus Christ — affirmations in which there is no ambiguity and which no questioning can reach." They are strong and confident words, the words of a man who is given to saying strong and confident things ; there is in them, too, something of the ring of a challenge. But the confidence is justified, and the challenge is one which no Christian preacher can refuse. To make mighty affirmations con- cerning Jesus Christ — this is our business, this is what we are preachers for. We may make affirmations, many and mighty, concerning other matters, and gain for ourselves great glory as lecturers, or politicians, or social reformers ; but if we falter here we have lost the right to call ourselves preachers. . . . We desire to win men's faith for Christ. There is one way, and there is only one way, in which we can do it : we must set forth Christ Himself. Theological propositions concerning Him will avail us nothing. Christ must make His own appeal — the appeal of His words and works, of His life and death. If faith is not won by these it will never be coerced by the propositions of the Creeds. The only confession of Christ as Divine that has virtue in it is that which follows His work upon us, the intellectual inter- pretation of our own personal, spiritual relations to Him. Men must know themselves His debtors for salvation ; they must throne Him as Lord, Lord of the will. Lord of the conscience. Lord of the affections ; then when the voice from heaven proclaims, " This is my beloved Son, hear ye him," all that is within them will leap forth to speak its great, glad, consenting " Amen." 2
^ G. S. Barrett, llie Earliest Christian Hymn, 145. 2 G. Jackson, The Preacher and the Modem Mind, 187.
ii6 THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS
V.
"Believed on in the world."
What reception ensued on this presentation of Christ? He was "believed on in the world." The preaching was not vain. He was received in the character and for the purposes which were proclaimed. In the world, from which His presence was with- drawn, men ventured their all on what He had done for their souls, and committed the keeping of their souls to His hands ; and they found peace, and power, and life in Him, who, though gone into heaven, yet dwelt in their hearts by faith.