Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

DISCOURSE VII.

FAITH OF THE APOSTLES.

AND THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, AND DWELT AMONG US,
AND WE BEHELD HIS GLORY, THE GLORY AS OF AN
ONLY-BEGOTTEN SON WITH HIS FATHER, FULL OF GRACE
AND TRUTH.
- John i. 14.

A CARDINAL point in the evidences of Christianity is the historical fact of the full, firm, and enduring faith of Christ's Apostles. If the New Testament is at all to be relied on as history, nothing can be more certain than that the disciples, his intimate and daily companions, had not been long in his society before they became fully convinced of his divine mission and authority, and their respect for him deepened into veneration. The perfection of his character, the profundity of his wisdom, the impressiveness of his miracles, and the intimacy of his apparent communion with God, made them feel in his presence a species of awe, which speaks out at every turn. It increased during his ministry, and was most distinctly manifested at the last supper. It received only a partial and temporary shock at his crucifixion, and broke forth anew, and rose to a higher elevation, after his resurrection and ascension.

Not only so, we see this faith manifested by the different Apostles in a different manner, according to the temperament, natural endowment, and circumstances of each. Nathaniel, at the commencement of Christ's ministry,-a plain, unsophisticated Israelite, who expected the Messiah simply as a national deliverer,-when Jesus gave him proof of supernatural and prophetic knowledge, exclaimed, "Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel." Peter, after many and more striking evidences of a divine mission, declared, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." But Peter afterwards denied him, and perhaps, with the other disciples, lost all faith in him at his crucifixion. Yet, after the resurrection and ascension of his Master, he was the boldest of them all. As one of the witnesses of these decisive events, he confronted his whole nation, and told the rulers to their face, that they had been the betrayers and murderers of the true Messiah.

But Peter proved his faith, not only by his words, but by his deeds. He spent his life in preaching Jesus as the true Messiah, first to the Jews, probably without a full comprehension of the extent of his mission, and after the vision at Joppa, to both Jews and Gentiles, as the great spiritual Teacher of the world, and the pledge of immortality to all mankind. The Jewish fisherman, ignorant, narrow, rash, and unstable, is in the course of years transformed into the Christian sage, saint, and martyr, calm, wise, deliberate, self-possessed, and immovable. In old age, after having passed through every possible trial of his faith, he writes a clear and undoubting

declaration of his faith: " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant. mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time."

Nothing can exceed the calm confidence here expressed in the resurrection of Christ, the cardinal miracle of the Christian religion, and in that immortality which was assured by it. And then, if we are to receive the Second Epistle as Peter's, and the critical objections to it are, in my judgment, very slight, we have another most explicit declaration of faith. "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount."

In the Epistle of James, we see the same firm and confident faith. But his Christianity and his faith in Christ are of a different type, as became the peculiarities of his temperament and circumstances. He was a Jerusalem Jew, though converted to Christianity, and it is probable that he continued to conform himself to the law of Moses, as well as the Confined, as it would

Gospel, as long as he lived.

seem, to Jerusalem all his days, and mingling the law of Moses with the Gospel, without the dialectic learning of Paul, or the poetic and creative genius of John, he seems to have regarded the new dispensation as merely supplementary to the old, and Christianity itself as only a more stringent and spiritual law. There is nothing in him of the high ideality which led John to personify the Word; nor of that broad conception of Christianity, which led the Apostle of the Gentiles to speak of Jesus everywhere as the world-redeeming Messiah. To him, the Calvinistic abuse of the doctrine of justification by faith was in the highest degree offensive. In one thing, however, he coincides with his fellow-Apostles, in a firm and undoubting faith, maintained in the face of a persecuting world. It was a sufficient expression of his faith, that he was willing to forsake his countrymen, and preside over the Christian Church in the midst of the betrayers and murderers of his Master. His Epistle, short as it is, is his testimony to all succeeding ages, and leaves his faith to be accounted for by those who suppose that Christianity was first founded on some grand deception or mistake.

I return to the Apostle John. In him we see, in my judgment, not only the strongest marks of a personal faith, but of a faith having passed through the stage of mere belief, and arrived at the higher one of sentiment and affection. We do not readily give our affections, until our full confidence is won. As long as any doubt remains, there is a fear of the disappointment and mortification that always follow the consciousness of having been deceived, which forbids intimacy, and chills the current of

affection. In the case of John, there is ample proof that there was left in his mind no doubt of the perfect integrity of his Master.

His opportunities of full and accurate knowledge were ample and satisfactory. He had been a disciple of John the Baptist, and was with Jesus from the very commencement of his ministry. He was the disciple whom Jesus loved, and on whose bosom he leaned, or, in modern phrase, was his most intimate companion. He was one of the three who were permitted by Jesus to behold the transfiguration. He was one of the two who ran to the sepulchre, on the morning of the resurrection, and ascertained, by personal inspection, that the body of Jesus was not there. To his care the mother of Jesus was intrusted by his latest breath. From her he must have learned, during the remainder of her life, everything in the history of her son which could either confirm or shake his faith.

It is the tradition of the Church, and his Gospel bears the evidence, that it was written long after the others. The experiences of a long ministry must have either corroborated or unsettled his faith. Jesus, during his life on earth, had made large promises of divine aid to his Apostles, when he should have left the world; in the first place, to give them assurance that he was still in being, in the second, to give them guidance and direction as to what they were to do in his cause, and in the third place, to confer upon them those miraculous powers which were necessary to confirm their faith in their Master's mission, and the reality of their own. He must have known whether those promises were ever fulfilled.

« ÎnapoiContinuă »