XXII

MEN OF UNDERSTANDING.

(Preached at an Ordination in 1874.)

“Men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do."-1 CHRON. xii., part of verse 32.

It is one of the notes of the Church of God that it has a marvelous adaptation to different times, circumstances, and races. Unvarying as to the unchanging faith, she draws forth from her treasures things new and old. The Tree of Life, ever from the one root, through the one stock, from branch, and twig, and stem, she is throwing out, with unfailing vitality, leaf after leaf for the healing of the nations. Because she is the body and spouse of Christ, because in her indwells the Eternal Spirit, she has a certain fitness for every possible situation in which she may be placed. She has a remedy for every ill, a relief for every want, an answer to every cry. Slavery and freedom, barbarism and civilization, peace and war, learning and ignorance, are alike, to her, only providential means of helping onward the children of men. She is like her Divine Lord, now in the midst of the doctors, now in the carpenter's shop, now in the crowded city, now on the lonely moun

tain-top, now casting a pitying glance on Magdalen, now denouncing woe on scribe and Pharisee, now bending in agony, now in the midst of innumerable hosts of angels; yet ever, from the glance of her eye, from the touch of her hand, from the intercession of her prayers, from the sternness of her wrath, from the majesty of her triumph, from the wail of her humiliation, nay, even from the hem of her garment, and her very shadow as she passes, sending forth strength, and healing, and peace.

Of this characteristic of the Church, her ministry must, in a measure, be sharers. Whatever she is, she is only it because she is the body of Christ. Because He lives, she lives also; in Him she lives and moves and has her being, and they too, as members of Him and of her-His body and spouse partake of her powers and energies. This indeed is true of all Christians, but of the ministry it is more especially true, because to them is a promise of Christ's presence and indwelling beyond that which is given to other men. To them He says, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." In short, as there never has arisen, and never can arise, any possible event or conditions, from the fall to the hour of judgment, for which she is not the refuge and stay of man, so in every age and all circumstances must and will her ministry be "Men of understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do."

In taking up the subject which the Church, by the rubrics in the Ordinal, imposes upon me, I think I shall be complying with the spirit of its direction if I consider under what conditions the ministry must be exercised, if one would be a "man of understanding of the times. And yet I must guard myself, at once, against

a possible misapprehension. The Christian clergyman a time-server? God forbid ! To truckle to the spirit of the age, to submit to the tone of the day, to make no protest against mere outcries, to be led along by popular notions, popular sins, tendencies to evil which captivate the multitude-this is no part of a Christian clergyman's duty. He must stand alone against the world, if God call him to it. He must surrender father and mother, wife and children, yea, and his own life also, if need be, to bear witness unto Him who said, "Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you!"

But not necessarily are the tendencies of the times. wholly evil. They are often the yearnings of humanity after God. They are the blind gropings after that Invisible Master who "was lifted up from the earth to draw all men unto Him." The world of to-day is still on the whole a baptized world, pervaded by the spirit of Christianity. Its movements are not entirely evil. Nay, like all great moral movements, no matter what of ignorance, of folly, of wickedness there may be in them, no matter how often they need in part to be protested against, they have in them their own remedy. Used aright, passed through the crucible, tried like gold in the fire, brought to the foot of the Cross, tested by the faith once delivered to the saints, guided heavenward, they become tides in human affairs, which move toward that glorious day which is yet to dawn, when upon our astonished vision shall burst the " new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteous

I do not, of course, mean to say that there are not in the world impulses wholly devil-born, tendencies to destruction and disintegration which we must fight to the

death. But the insight which shall distinguish between these and those, which shall be able in the former case to discern between good and evil, to find the remedy in the tendency itself, by developing what is good and true in the movement, to overpower what is base and false-this in the State is Christian statesmanship; this in the Church is the "knowing what Israel ought to do," and is that blessed wisdom which will make the Christian minister "a man of understanding of the times."

Let me dwell then for a moment upon a marked tendency of the times. Men do not regard authority as they once did. To say that the fathers taught it, or the Church proclaims it, or that it has been held from immemorial time, or even that the Holy Scriptures assert it, does not command the unwavering assent of those who hear, as once it did. Men wish to learn the reasons of things. It is not enough to know that men in bygone generations have been satisfied; we must be satisfied also. In proportion as men are able to investigate, they search in every direction. They test Scripture by science. They find out the laws. by which things are governed, and invade what once was deemed to be the realm of the supernatural, and show that the miracles of one age are sometimes the science of another. They pierce the bosom of the earth, and bring the hidden treasures of darkness to overthrow ancient traditions as to the age of the world and the antiquity of man. They trace history to its source and language to its primal roots. From Egyptian pyramids and Assyrian mounds they bring forth ancient inscriptions to confirm. or contradict the sacred story. Each animal that moves, each plant that grows, each living thing, no matter what the order to which it belongs, is searched to bear its wit

ness to the truth. Nay, they stand face to face with life. itself, and dare to ask that impalpable, mysterious thing whether it comes from the Eternal God, or springs into existence by spontaneous power. Through all the region of created things, from stars that move in their courses down to the tiniest flower that blooms, they cry to all the visible and temporal, "Speak to us of God!" Nay, they search into man himself, and strive to understand the laws of his being, and the working of his will, and the deep recesses of that hidden spirit which makes him most like unto God. They cry unto their souls, and say, "In thy weakness and feebleness, in thy strength and majesty, in the shortness of time and the sorrows of humanity, tell me, O my spirit, has God revealed Himself to thee, and dost thou know that thou shalt never die?" O awful questionings of this day of ours! O pleading cries that go to Heaven from an unsettled world! To hear them aright is to be "a man of understanding of the times."

I am well aware that there are those who go far beyond such questions as those I have mentioned. I know that there are those who, whether from moral guilt or intellectual pride, pass beyond the proper bounds of reasonable inquiry, and the due search into truth, and, rearing their Babel-towers to heaven, proclaim another religion than the eternal truth of God.

Reason bears a threefold office toward revealed truth, and within that province is indeed supreme, but only there. 1. It is the province of Reason to state in terms that the understanding can apprehend what the truths are which Revelation has declared.

2. It is the province of Reason to state as clearly what revealed truth is not; for, while the Revelation of God