V THE KING'S OWN This is one of those passages which cannot be expounded. It can only be illustrated. It contains a feeling, an experience, a conviction. It suggests differences of mental attitude among men toward God. All men have some relation towards God. Some men have a peculiar relation toward him. The great apostle of the Gentiles acknowledges this difference of mental attitude when he speaks of some men as "a peculiar people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation," i. e., a nation set apart. For the root idea of holiness is simply this "set apart” as the vessels of the temple were set apart from the ordinary drinking vessels of common life. So the priests ministering in the temple were set apart from the ordinary men engaged in the ordinary employments of every-day life. In another passage the great apostle speaks of the Christ as "the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe." From something which otherwise would have come upon them because of universal sinfulness, Christ had saved all men; but in a more special way was he the Saviour of those who believe in him. Nowhere in the Bible is there any of that con founding of moral distinctions, that immoral universalism which is found in some modern theologies. Everywhere there is discrimination between the man who serveth God and the man who serveth him not. There are rewards for some which do not and cannot in justice belong to others, as in these words: "Every one therefore who shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven." Now in the present time, in his inner feeling and thinking, the godly man is different from the ungodly. The man whose heart-belief in Christ is the mainspring of his active life is different from the man who has nothing of that belief. As a man's wife and children are to him different from all other women and children, as a man's friends are to him different from men in general, as a man's country is to him different from all other countries so the godly man, in God's feeling for him, is different from all other men. He is related to God in a different way from that in which other men are related. He is "godly," i. e., he gives clear evidence of having in him something of the divine nature. He is a blood-relation, if we may venture to use such an expression. While we cannot dogmatically and definitely determine all there is of meaning in passages of this order, "Know that the Lord hath set apart him that is godly for himself," yet we can get enough out of it for enlightenment and encouragement. We may, without presumption, infer that there are intimacies of relationship with the Divine which do not belong to all. We may infer that it is worth while to be godly. We may infer that in the Divine dealings with man there are discriminations; that all men in God's sight are not morally alike; that between loyalty and disloyalty there is all the difference between what Carlyle would call the Eternal Yea and the Everlasting No. Now there is a current in our day which is running pretty strong, obliterating the ancient landmarks, which we need carefully to watch. It levels everything it touches. Perhaps I may make you understand what I mean if I say that it, this current of which I speak, has a tendency to obliterate moral distinctions. Between the best man and the worst there is no radical difference. Sin is simply a mistake a mental missing of the mark. It is an incident in life, or an accident merely. It is the product of heredity or environment. The sinner is to be pitied, not blamed. At the last, everybody will come out about right. Some people may go a very much longer way round to get to their final heaven; but they are sure to get there. There may be on this roundabout way, somewhere, a hell through which a man may have to pass, for as Browning puts it, "There may be heaven, there must be hell;" but as in Bunyan's Slough of Despond - there are steps in it and a way out on the other side. Such ideas will help you to understand what is meant when I say there is a strong current running nowadays, obliterating ancient landmarks which we do well to watch. Now it is always dangerous and usually mislead ing, to get your conclusions first and then make your premises fit them. It is very much like balancing a pyramid on its apex. In order to do it you have to put all around it boulders that do not properly belong there. And it is always unscientific to get away from facts. The scientific mood is assumed to be the dominant mood of our time. And so far as it keeps us rigidly to facts, it does us an immense service. To get great sweeping theories and then to compel our facts to come in and support them, or rather (as is so often done) to keep the facts waiting outside and to inflate our theories, until they have the dimensions of a great balloon, with gaseous opinions which seem to have very little relation to facts this can never be approved as scientific. And yet how much of this sort of thing there is! If science had done nothing else for us than to compel us to respect the common, every-day facts with which we are familiar, its service to our generation would be beyond price. We shall never get at truth, say the scientific men, except by sticking to facts and interpreting them as far as we can. I, for one, am willing to accept that position. We must remember, however, that there are several classes of facts facts external to us and facts internal, facts of revelation and facts of experience, facts material and facts mental and spiritual. A fact is something you cannot evaporate, something which stands its ground rigidly and immovably. The life of Jesus in Galilee and Judea is as much a fact as is the sun in the heavens. The life of Paul is as much a fact as the life of George Washington. |