Once more we are here to remember Christ, as represented by the symbols on the Table. Are we sure that in remembering Christ, we are not remembering a myth? Are we sure that it is a real living person we are calling to mind when we break this bread and drink this wine? Yes, we are sure. We can give our reasons for this certainty, and no man can dispose of them. We stand upon facts and not upon opinions or may-be’s.

There are such things as shadows. There are ideas earnestly held among men which must be, and which, beyond all contradiction, are the mere figments of the imagination. Let us look at this first. Let us begin with cases that are plain. We meet three men-one a Roman Catholic, one a Protestant, and one an Agnostic. The Roman Catholic says, “I belong to the true church; we have an infallible head in our church-a man that acts with the authority of Christ. I can get my sins absolved by confessing to the priest. No man can be saved out of our church.” The Protestant says, “No man can be saved out of your church? It is just the other way about. No man can be saved in your church. Your church is the drunken harlot of the Apocalypse. Your Pope is the Man of Sin.” The Agnostic says, “My poor friends, why do you trouble yourselves in that way? You are both right. Nobody knows what truth is. The right thing is for each man to follow that which he thinks right, and condemn nobody.”

Now here are three men who earnestly hold ideas that must, one or two of them (and possibly, and in truth all of them) be mere figments of the imagination. It is not possible their ideas can all be true. There are scores of other types, and they stand for millions. Now, how are we to find our way? How are we to determine what is truth in the midst of the Babel? There must be a method. There is a method. We must carefully feel for the stepping stones of fact in the midst of the quagmire. We can. There are such things as facts. Let us find them and stick to them. We stand on them this morning. It is facts and nothing but facts that are at the bottom of the memorial institution that brings us together this morning.

The facts are not far off, and only to be seen through a telescope as it were. They reach straight away down from the far-off times to the very place and the very moment where we now stand. The facts touch us, and are before us as we sit assembled this morning. Let us realise them. Let us not doze unconscious in their presence like mere animals.

Here is fact no. 1-real fact-not impression, not matter of hearsay, not matter of speculation, but fact real as the building we are in, and inexpugnable as the great mountains. We have in our hands the professed letter of the apostle Paul, from which we have read an extract this morning. There is no denying this. Nobody can say to us “you only think you have.” Whatever they may say or think as to the professed letters themselves, they cannot begin to cast the shadow of a doubt on the fact that we have them, and have been reading them.

Here is fact no. 2. These professed letters of Paul have been in the hands of Christians ever since there were Christians upon the earth, and that is ever since the end of the first century. No man can deny this fact. Reckless and unprincipled men like Bradlaugh may say there is no evidence of an earlier existence than A.D. 150, and multitudes of the shallow populace may re-echo the careless dogmatism as if it disposed of the question. But none of them feel they dare allege the letters came into existence at that date. The evidence thoroughly weighed confutes the suggestion. The evidence that proves an existence at A.D. 150, proves it right away back to Paul’s day; for what is the evidence for A.D. 150? The existence of books written then-by Justin Martyr, Ignatius, Clement and others-in which Paul’s letters are quoted. What poor powers of induction must those unbelieving mortals possess, who can see in the quotation of Paul by these men, evidence of the existence of Paul’s letters in their day, and cannot see it in evidence that they must have existed long before then; for how is it possible that leading men in the Christian community would quote as a received authority writings that were not well-known to those to whom they wrote? And how is it possible that they would be well-known without a long previous standing among them? And how could any writings acquire such a standing except the real writings of the apostle Paul who had not been in his grave a hundred years at that time?

From these considerations of common sense, we get fact no. 3, that these professed letters of Paul are the very letters he wrote. There can be no possible escape from this, when the other facts are considered. There were in the first century, as evidenced by Pliny’s letter to Trajan, large communities of Christians scattered up and down the Roman Empire. These communities had mainly been founded by the labours of the apostle Paul, who wrote letters to them in absences from them at other places. Is it possible, think you, that any other than his own very letter could have obtained established currency among them while he was alive? And is it any more possible that letters not received as his letters at that time could have passed current as his letters in the generation after his decease? Use your common sense. We are similarly placed as regards the works of Dr. Thomas. He has been in his grave about 24 years. Is it possible, think you, that any work falsely professing to be his, could get into circulation among us as Dr. Thomas’ real writing? Let any man try. First, he could not produce such a writing: he might produce an imitation, the weakness and spuriousness of which would instantly be detected; and its condemnation by us would be its death as regards the confidence of anybody after us.

What springs out of this fact no.3, but fact no. 4-that is, that the things on which we rest our faith this morning are true. For, consider what Paul taught; consider the grounds on which he taught it, and consider the object with which he did so. He did not teach a system of philosophy, or a conviction of any kind derived at second hand. It is a feature of his letters that he deprecates philosophy as destructive of what he preached:

He preached Christ and Christ alone. He said,

He further said,

“The gospel which I preach is not after (i.e., according to) man: for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

What form the revelation took we are abundantly informed-wherein lies matter of powerful consideration. Many in our day profess to have received revelation because they have felt something strong in their heads-which may always be mere illusion-as when a man dreams. If this had been the nature of Paul’s revelation, we might have distrusted, for a man’s own brain may easily be out of order or deranged, or abnormally active in its impressions. His own certainty is no evidence to others, in such a case, and strictly speaking, no evidence to himself. Paul’s revelation was external to himself. It was not internal at all. It was communicated in the presence of others, who were all witnesses of what transpired, though they did not understand the Hebrew communications that passed. And the revelation produced palpable effects which all could recognise. They were all thrown to the ground, and Paul was blind when the incident was over, and had to be led by the hand into the place which he had come to enter by his own guidance, and by those whom it was his business to lead as captain by official commission. And then the revelation related to matters of recent occurrence and public notoriety and actual character-that is, the execution of Jesus Christ, and the active and successful proclamation of his resurrection by those who had been his companions in his lifetime. Paul had been an active opponent of that movement, and was in fact on an errand of hostility to it when he was struck down near Damascus by the lord showing himself to him with a light above the brightness of the sun. If Paul preached Christ with an energy with which no other preached him, and counted all things but dross that he might win Christ, it was not on hearsay; it was on the basis of that “experience” that men make so much of.

“I have seen Jesus Christ our Lord.”

“Last of all, he was seen of me also.”

“He said to me, for this cause I have appeared unto thee to make thee a minister and a witness.”

And consider the object of the enthusiastic efforts of a lifetime. It is defined in the words which Paul reports as having been heard by him out of the mouth of him who declared himself-“Jesus of Nazareth whom thou persecutest.”

Such an enterprise is out of the category of all human imaginations. It is only to be understood as part and parcel of an evolution of divine truth beginning proximately in that age with the miraculous achievements of Jesus, his resurrection after crucifixion, and the successful and miracle-attested testimony of apostles to that fact among the Judean and neighbouring populations. Understood as a continuance of that work, it is an enterprise both intelligible and rational. But to imagine it a craze of Paul’s is to present us with an idea in violent collision with every surrounding fact of the case.

And fact no. 4 is related to many other facts too numerous to categorise; the existence of the Jewish Scriptures; the history of the Jewish nation; the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy, down to our own distant day; and the nature of the sentiments that pervade the entire writings of Moses and the Prophets. Along with this, we have to place the nature of the works of Christ, by which he arrested universal public attention in Judea; the character of his teaching, and the character of his own sublime personality. Paul’s case, though so powerful of itself, is only an incident in a whole history of things. It is only one of many foundations upon which the truth of Christ stands. Let us not be afraid of taking up a strong position. Let us not be afraid of putting our foot down and saying: “This is the truth of God, and nothing else. Here and here alone, is to be found hope for man.”

There is much need for this decided attitude. We live in an extraordinary age, when the air is full of contradictory sounds, and when, if a man do not keep an eye open for himself, he may easily be blinded to the glory of Christ. There are endless theories, innumerable glosses, seductive eloquences, plausible claims, misleading claims.

“Try the spirits whether they be of God.”

We may easily try them when we have first settled that the work of Christ and the work of the apostles in the first century is the work of God. If a man with a new claim say, “No, the work of the first century was a work of fanaticism-a work of unwitting imposture,” then we say, “In that case it is not possible you can guarantee the truth of any work you may have in hand. If a work conducted with the ability, with the probity, with the intellectual lucidity, and with the miracle-working power of Christ and the apostles, was not a work of God, how can a work of yours be a work of God, characterised by feebleness and muddiness and incoherency and without power to do anything beyond the capacity of ordinary men?” But he may say, “Oh yes, granted that the work of Christ was the work of God: ours is also.” If so, we say, “Then we demand two things: that God attest it, and that it be in harmony with all that God has said and done before.” God never yet made a new revelation without showing signs that it was so. When God sent Moses, He empowered him to work miracles that would prove to Israel that he was not acting on his own motion. When God sent Christ, He enabled him to do “works which none other man did.” And Christ modestly took his stand on these, saying,

When Christ sent the apostles, he asked them not to begin their work until he should send “power from on high” by which “the works that he had done, they should do also.” When they went forth preaching,

And now you say you have “a new revelation.” Where are your signs? If you cannot show any, then we are entitled to say it is a new craze-not a new revelation. Above all, when your new revelation contradicts what the prophets wrote and the apostles taught, we say you are condemned out of your own mouth. You admit that they spoke by inspiration, and yet you would have us discard their doctrines, and their prophecies, their commandments, for the muddy vagaries of modern Zadkiels and Co. No, never. We tell you we hold by what God said:

We may well say concerning your professed new revelation what the Mahommedan captain said about the Alexandrian library when he gave orders to burn it: “If it agree with the Koran, we don’t need it; and if it contradict the Koran, it is false.”

Therefore, with absolute confidence, we may attend to the breaking of bread in commemoration of Christ. The meeting for observing it is a necessity. We cannot keep our minds alive to the truth concerning him without it. The multitudinous details of daily life will deaden us to him if we do not antidote them by memorialisation in some shape or form. Our minds will be soon overgrown with the weeds of mortal life if we do not keep a place clear for him. The victory of faith requires that faith be kept well in the battle, otherwise the victory will be the wrong way. Faith will fall under the trampling feet of this life’s affairs. The battle is one between what we see and what we cannot see, yet may know to be true-between what we like and what we may not like, but know to be what God requires at our hands. How can we win in such a battle unless we have a strong sense of the reality of Christ? It has been well said that the apostles had no doubts. They did not require to argue themselves into conviction as we have to do who live in an age so remote from the facts. They knew the truth about Christ just as we know the truth of our own affairs. There is no argument in their writings to prove the Bible true. Men do not argue about the self-evident. In our day the Truth is not so self-evident, so we have to get at its acquaintance in another way. When once we attain this acquaintance, the result is the same. Conviction enables us to act the part of the convinced. John affirms this in other words when he asks the question,

A man really believing in the divine sonship of Christ will certainly feel himself energised to the doing of those things that Christ requires. Who is he that fails in this respect but he that is either ignorant or doubtful of the nature and living reality and authority of Christ? Enlightened faith becomes by habit a sort of constant sense of sight, and we all know that sight would be very powerful in this matter. Who is there, if Christ were amongst us, but would feel constrained to do what he commands and to abstain from all that he forbids? Believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God amounts to the same thing. It involves what we read in Hebrews 13:

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”

Believing this, we must believe that Jesus is as much alive at every moment of our life as he was on the day that he appeared to Saul of Tarsus as a light above the brightness of the sun. And if alive, we must recognise that we are under his vivid cognisance, and that if he spoke, he would say to us, as he said to the Asian ecclesias of the first century,

“I know thy works.”

Would not the recollection of this bring great and purifying circumspection all the day long? And when we add to this the fact that he is coming again, and that though for the moment he is not with us, the hour will certainly come when we shall stand before him to hear his estimate of our deserts, the power of our faith to give us the victory seems complete. This is the victory that overcometh the world even our faith. Faith is the result of knowledge of what God has revealed. Knowledge of this is only to be had where it is contained. It is contained only in the Bible. Thus, reading the Bible is the great source of the knowledge that will save us by the victory of faith, so that in a special sense is the saying of the apostles true, that-

Therefore, no wise man will omit the reading of the Bible from the programme of his daily life, nor will he read in such a way as to give it little chance of making an impression on his mind, such as reading it in a time of weariness, or reading it in too large quantities at long intervals. A wise man will show the same wisdom in this as in his daily food. A little every day at the right time will make the spiritual man healthy and strong, where long fasts, followed by crams, will enfeeble and derange. Some think they can get on very well without Bible reading, and that it is enough for them to know the Truth sufficiently and believe and obey the gospel at their first contact. Those who think thus will find themselves out of harmony with fact. The mind is not retentive of knowledge-especially divine knowledge. The impressions of knowledge have to be renewed again and again, otherwise knowledge will evaporate.

These admonitions of wisdom may fall faintly on the ear in this time of peace and silence while we are left alone with the Word of God for a season: they will burn like fire when this life is past, and we stand before the Lord at his coming to receive the due reward of our deeds.

Taken from: - “Seasons of Comfort” Vol. 2

Pages 529-535

By Bro. Robert Roberts

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