398. My Creed
My Creed
Luk_6:17 : ’93And he came down with them, and stood in the plain.’94
Christ on the mountains is a frequent study. We have seen him on the Mount of Olives, Mount of Beatitudes, Mount Moriah, Mount Calvary, Mount of Ascension, and it is glorious to study him on these great natural elevations. But, how is it that never before have we noticed him on the plain? Amid the rocks, high up on the mountain, Christ has passed the night, but now, at early dawn, he is coming down with some of his friends, stepping from shelving to shelving, here and there a loosened stone rolling down the steep sides ahead of him, until he gets in a. level place, so that he can be approached without climbing from all sides. He is on the level. My text says, ’93He came down with them and stood in the plain.’94
Now, that is what the world wants more than anything else’97a Christ on the level, easy to get at, no ascending, no descending, approachable from all sides’97Christ on the plain. The question among all consecrated people today is, what is the matter with the ministers? Many of them are engaged in picking holes in the Bible and apologizing for this and apologizing for that. In an age when the whole tendency is to pay too little reverence to the Bible, they are fighting against Bibliolatry, or too much reverence for the Bible. They are building a fence on the wrong side of the road; not on the side where the precipice is and off which multitudes are falling, but, on the upper side of the road, so that people will not fall up-hill, of which there is no danger. There is no more danger of Bibliolatry, or too much reverence for the Scripture, than there is that astrology will take the place of astronomy, or alchemy the place of chemistry, or the canal-boat the place of the limited-express rail-train. What a theological farce it is; ministers fighting against too much reverence for the Scriptures; ministers making apology for the Scriptures; ministers pretending to be friends of the Bible, yet doing the book more damage than all the blatant infidels on all the earth. The trouble is our theologians are up in the mountain in a fight above the clouds about things which they do not understand. Come down on the plain and stand beside Christ, who never preached a technicality or a didacticism. What do you, O wise-headed ecclesiastic, know about the Decrees of God? Who cares a fig about your sublapsarianism or your supralapsarianism?
What a spectacle we have in our denominations today; committees trying to patch up an old creed made two or three hundred years ago, so that it will fit on the nineteenth century. Why do not our millinery establishments take out of the garrets the coalscuttle bonnets which your great-grandmothers wore and try to fit them on the head of the modern maiden? You cannot fix up a three-hundred-year-old creed so as to fit our time. Princeton will sew on a little piece, Union Seminary will sew on a little piece, and Allegheny Seminary and Danville Seminary will sew on other pieces, and by the time the creed is done it will be as variegated as Joseph’92s coat of many colors. Think of having to change an old creed to make it clear that all infants dying go to heaven! I am so glad that the committees are going to let the babies in. Thank you. So many of them are already in that all the hills of heaven look like a Sunday-school anniversary. Now, what is the use of fixing up a creed which left any doubt on that subject? No man ever doubted that all infants dying go to heaven, unless he be a Herod or a Charles Guiteau. I was opposed to overhauling the old creed at all, but, now that it has been lifted up and its imperfections set up in the sight of the world, I say, Overboard with it and make a new creed. There are today in our denomination five hundred men who could make a better one. I could make a better one myself. As we are now in process of changing the creed and no one knows what we are expected to believe, or will two or three years hence be expected to believe, I could not wait and so I have made a creed of my own, which I intend to observe the rest of my life. I wrote it down in my memorandum-book some six months ago, and it reads as follows: ’93My creed: The glorious Lord. To trust him, love him, and obey him is all that is required. To that creed I invite all mankind. T. DeWitt Talmage.’94
The reason Christianity has not made more rapid advance is because the people are asked to believe too many things. There are, I believe, millions of good Christians who have never joined the Church and are not counted among the Lord’92s friends, because they cannot believe all the things that they are required to believe. One-half the things a man is expected to believe in order to enter the Church and reach heaven have no more to do with his salvation than the question, How many volcanoes are there in the moon? or, How far apart from each other are the rings of Saturn? or, How many teeth were there in the jawbone with which Samson smote the Philistines? I believe ten thousand things, but none of them have anything to do with my salvation, except these two: I am a sinner and Christ came to save me. Musicians tell us that the octave consists only of five tones and two semitones, and all the Handels and Haydns and Mozarts and Wagners and Schumanns of all ages must do their work within the range of those five tones and two semitones. So I have to tell you that all the theology that will be of practical use in our world is made out of the two facts of human sinfulness and divine atonement. Within that octave swing ’93The Song of Moses and the Lamb,’94 the Christmas chant above Bethlehem, and the alleluia of all the choirs standing on seas of glass.
Is there not some mode of getting out of the way of these nonessentials, these superfluities, these divergencies from the main issue? Is there not some way of bringing the Church down out of the mountain of controversy and conventionalism and to put in on the plain where Christ stands? The present attitude of things is like this: in a famine-struck district, a table has been provided and it is loaded with food enough for all. The odors of the meat fill the air. Everything is ready. The platters are full. The chalices are full. The baskets of fruit are full. Why not let the people in? The door is open. Yes, but there is a cluster of wise men blocking up the door, discussing the contents of the castor standing mid-table. They are shaking their fists at each other. One says there is too much vinegar in that castor, and one says there is too much sweet oil, and another says there is not the proper proportion of red pepper. I say, ’93Get out of the way and let the hungry people come in.’94 Now, our blessed Lord has provided a great supper, and the oxen and the fatlings have been killed, and fruits from all the vineyards and orchards of heaven crown the table. The world has been invited to come, and they look in and they are hungry and people would pour in by the millions to this world-wide table; but the door is blocked up by controversies and men with whole libraries on their backs are disputing as to what proportion of sweet oil and cayenne pepper should make up the creed. I cry: ’93Get out of the way and let the hungry world come in.’94
The Christian Church will have to change its tack, or it will run on the rocks of demolition. The world’92s population annually increases fifteen millions. No one pretends that half the number of people are converted to God. Mohammedans, Buddhists and Hindus make up one-third of the world’92s population. Protestants, one hundred and forty-three million two hundred and thirty-seven thousand; Catholics, two hundred and thirty million eight hundred and sixty-six thousand; Buddhists, four hundred millions. There are one hundred and seventy-six million eight hundred and thirty-four thousand Mohammedans and one hundred and ninety million Hindus. Meanwhile, many of the churches are only religious club-houses, where a few people go on Sunday morning, averaging one person to a pew or one person to a half dozen pews, and leaving the minister at night to sweat through a sermon with here and there a lone traveler, unless, by a Sunday evening sacred concert, he can get out an audience of respectable size. The vast majority of Church membership round the world put forth no direct effort for the salvation of men. Did I say there would have to be a change? I correct that and say, There will be a change. If there be fifteen million persons added every year to the world’92s population, then, there will be thirty million added to the Church and forty million and fifty million and sixty million. How will it be done? It will be done when the Church will meet Christ on the plain. Come down out of the mountain of exclusiveness. Come down out of the mountain of pride. Come down out of the mountain of formalism. Come down out of the mountain of freezing indifference. Old Dr. Stephen H. Tyng, great on earth and in heaven, once said to me: ’93I am in favor of a change. I do not know what is the best way of doing things in the churches, but I know the way we are doing now is not the best way, or the world would be nearer salvation than it seems to be.’94 So I feel; so we all feel, that there needs to be a change. The point at which we all come short is in not presenting Christ on the plain, Christ on the level with all the world’92s woes and wants and necessities.
The full change will have to come from the rising ministry. We now in the field are too set in our ways. We are lumbered up with technicalities. We have too many concordances and dictionaries and encyclopedias and systems of theology on our head to get down on the plain. Our vocabulary is too frosted. We are too much under the domination of customs regnant for many centuries. Come on, young men of the ministry. Take this pulpit, take all the pulpits, and in the language of the street and the marketplace and the family-circle preach Christ on the plain. As soon as the Church says by its attitude, not necessarily by its words, ’93My one mission is to help for this life and help for the life to come all the people,’94 and it proves its earnestness in the matter, people on foot and on horseback and in wagons and in carriages will come to the churches in such numbers that they will have to be met at the door by ushers, saying: ’93You were here last Sunday; you cannot come in today. Gentlemen and ladies, you must take your turn.’94 And, it will be, as in the Johnstown freshet and disaster, when a government station was opened for the supply of bread, and it took the officers of the law to keep the sufferers in line, because of the great rush for food. When this famine-struck world realizes that the Church is a government station set up by the Government of the universe to provide the Bread of Eternal Life for all the people, the rush will be unprecedented and unimaginable.
Astronomers have been busy measuring worlds, and they have told us how great is the circumference of this world and how great is its diameter, yea, they have kept on until they have weighed our planet and found its weight to be six sextillion tons. But by no science has the weight of the world’92s trouble been weighed. Now, Christ standing on the level of our humanity stands in sympathy with every trouble. There are so many aching heads: his ached under the thorns. There are so many weary feet: his were worn with the long journey up and down the land that received him not. There are so many persecuted souls: every hour of his life was under human outrage. The world had no better place to receive him than a cattle-pen, and its farewell was a slap on his cheek and a spear in his side. So intensely human was he that there has not been in all our race a grief or infirmity or exhaustion or pang that did not touch him once and that does not touch him now. The lepers, the paralytics, the imbecile, the maniac, the courtezan, the repentant brigand’97which one did he turn off, which one did he not pity, which one did he not help?
The universal trouble of the world is bereavement. One may escape all the other troubles, but that no soul escapes. Out of that bitter cup every one must take a drink. For instance, in order that all might know how he sympathizes with those who have lost a daughter, Christ comes to the house of Jarius. There is such a big crowd around the door, he and his disciples have to push their way in. From the throng of people, I conclude that this girl must have been very popular; she was one of those children whom everybody likes. After Christ got in the house, there was such a loud weeping that the ordinary tones of voice could not be heard. I do not wonder. The dead daughter was twelve years of age. It is about the happiest time in most lives. Very little children suffer many injustices because they are children, and childhood is not a desirable part of human existence’97they get so whacked or set on. But, at twelve years of age, the child has come to self-assertion and is apt to make her rights known. And, then, twelve years of age is too early for the cares and anxieties of life. So this girl was, I think, the merriment of the household. She furnished for them the mimicry and the harmless mischief and roused the guffaw that often rang through that happy home. But now she is dead and the grief at her departure is as violent as her presence had been vivacious and inspiriting. Oh! the bereavement was so sharp, so overwhelming! How could they give her up! I suspect that they blamed themselves for this or for that. If they had had some other doctor, or taken some other medicine, or had been more careful of her health, or if they had not given her that reproof sometime when she had not really deserved it. If they been more patient with her hilarities, and, instead of hushing her play, had participated in it! You know there are so many things that parents always blame themselves for at such times. Only twelve years of age! So fair, so promising, so full of life a few days ago, and now so still! Oh, what it is to have a daughter dead! The room is full of folks, but yonder is the room where the young sleeper is. The crowd cannot go in there. Only six persons enter, five besides Christ’97three friends, and, of course, the father and mother. They have the first right to go in. The heaviest part of the grief was theirs. All eyes in that room are on the face of this girl. There lay the beautiful hand, white and finely shapen, but it was not lifted in greeting to any of the group. Christ stepped forward and took hold of that hand, and said, with a tone and accentuation charged with tenderness and command: ’93Damsel, I say unto thee, arise!’94 And, without a moment’92s delay, she arose, her eyes wide open, her cheeks turning from white lily to red rose, and the parents cry, ’93She lives! She lives!’94 and, in the next room, they take up the sound, ’93She lives! She lives!’94 and the throng in front of the doorway repeat it, ’93She lives! She lives!’94 Will not all those who have lost a daughter feel that such a Christ as that can sympathize?
On another occasion, he showed how he felt about the loss of a son. Here are the obsequies. A long procession; a widowed mother following her only son. I know not how long the husband and father had been gone, but upon this son, who had now come to be a young man, the leadership of that household had fallen. I think he had got to be the bread-winner. He was proud of his mother, and she should never lack anything as long as he lived. And there is no grander spectacle on earth than a young man standing between want and a widowed mother. But that young man had fallen lifeless under accident or disaster, and he was being carried out. Only a very few hours in that land are allowed to pass between decease and burial. It is the same day or the next. And there they move on. Christ meets the procession. His eyes pick out the chief mourner. He puts his hand on the bier as much as to say to the pall bearers, ’93Stop! There will be no burial today. That broken heart must be healed. That mother must have her home rebuilt.’94 And then looking into the face of the young man (for in those lands the face is always exposed in such a procession), Christ speaks one sentence, before which Death fell prostrate under the bier: ’93Young man, I say unto thee, arise.’94 He sat up, while the overjoyed mother wrapped him in her arms and wellnigh smothered him with her caresses and the air was rent with congratulations. Can anyone who has ever lost a son doubt that Christ sympathizes with such woe? And how many there are who need that particular comfort. It was not hollow sentiment, when David, the psalmist, cried out at the news of his son’92s death, although he had been a desperately bad boy: ’93O Absalom, my son! my son! Would God I had died for thee. O Absalom, my son! my son!’94 But for such and all other bereavement there is divine condolence.
Christ on the plain! I care not from what side you approach him, you can touch him and get his help. Is it mental depression you suffer? Remember him who said: ’93My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’94 Is it a struggle for bread? Remember him who fed the five thousand with two minnows and five biscuits, neither of the biscuits larger than your fist. Is it chronic ailment? Remember the woman who for eighteen years was bent almost double, and he lifted her face until she could look into the blue sky. Are you a sailor and spend your life battling with the tempests? Remember him who flung the tempest of Gennesaret flat on the crystal pavement of a quiet sea.
Christ is in sympathy with all who have trouble with their eyes. Witness blind Bartimaeus. Witness the two blind men in the house. Witness the two blind men near Jericho. Witness the man born blind. Did he not turn their perpetual midnight into mid-noon, till they ran up and down clapping their hands and saying, ’93I see! I see!’94 That Christ is in sympathy with those who stammer, or have silenced ears, notice how promptly he came to that man with impediment of speech and gave him command of the tongue so that he could speak with ease, and, putting his fingers into the ears, returned the tympanum. Is there a lack of circulation in your arm, think of him who cured the defective ’93circulation and the inactive muscles of a patient who had lost the use of hand and arm, by saying, ’93Stretch forth thy hand!’94 and the veins and nerves and muscles resumed their offices, and through in doing so the joints may have cracked from long disuse, and there may have been a strange sensation from elbow to finger-tip, he stretched it forth! And nothing is the matter with you, but you may appeal to a sympathetic Christ. And if you feel yourself to be a great sinner, hear what he said to that repenting Magdalen, while with a scalding sarcasm he dashed her hypocritical pursuers. And see how he made an immortal liturgy out of the publican’92s cry, ’93God be merciful to me a sinner,’94 a prayer so short that the most overwhelmed offender can utter it, and yet long enough to win celestial domains. It was well put by a man who had been converted, and who remembered that in his dissolute days he found it hard to get occupation, because he could not present a certificate for good character. In commending Christ to the people he said, ’93Bless God, I have found out that Jesus will take a man without a character!’94 Christ on a level with suffering humanity. My text says: ’93He came down with them and stood in the plain.’94 No climbing up through attributes you cannot understand. No ascending of the heights of beautiful rhetoric of prayer. No straining after elevations you cannot reach. No hunting for a God you cannot find. But going right straight to him and looking into his face and taking his hand and asking for his pardon, his comfort, his grace, his heaven.
Christ on the level! When, during the siege of Sebastopol, an officer had commanded a private soldier to stand on the wall exposed to the enemy, and receive the ammunition as it was handed up, while he, the officer, stood in a place sheltered from the enemy’92s guns, General Gordon leaped upon the wall to help, and commanded the officer to follow him, and then closed with the words, ’93Never order a man to do anything that you are afraid to do yourself.’94 Glory be to God, the Captain of our salvation has himself gone through all the exposures in which he commands us to be courageous. He has been through it all, and now offers his sympathy in similar struggle. One of the kings of England one night in disguise walking the streets of London, and not giving account of himself, was arrested and put in a miserable prison. When released and getting back to the palace, he ordered thirty tons of coal and a large supply of food for the night prisoners of London. Out of his own experiences that night he did this. And our Lord the King aforetime endungeoned and sick and hungry and persecuted and slain, out of his own experiences is ready to help all and pardon all and comfort all and rescue all.
Oh! join him on the plain. As long as you stay up in the mountain of your pride you will get no help. That is the reason so many never find the salvation of the Gospel. They sit high up in the Mount Blanc of their opinionativeness and they have their opinion about God and their opinion about the soul and their opinion about eternity. Have you any idea that your opinion will have any effect upon the two tremendous facts, that you are a sinner, and that Christ is ready at your earnest prayer to save you? In the final day of accounts how much will your opinion be worth? Your opinion will not be of much importance before the blast of the archangel’92s trumpet. When the life of this planet shall be threshed out with the flail of thunderbolts nobody will ask about your opinions. Come down out the mountain of opinionativeness, and meet Christ on the plain, where you must meet him or never meet him at all, except as you meet him on the Judgment Throne.
A Christ easy to get at! No armed sentinel to challenge you. No ruthless officer to scrutinize the papers you present Immediate response. Immediate forgiveness Immediate solace. Through what struggle people must go to get a pardon from worldly authority! By what petition, by what hindrance, by what nervous strain of anxiety, by what adroitness. A Count of Italy was condemned to be put to death at Milan. The Countess, hearing of the sentence, hastened to Vienna to seek his pardon. The death warrant was already on its way. The Countess, arriving in Vienna in the night, hastened to the palace gates. The attendants forbade her entrance at all, and especially at night, but she overcame them with her entreaties, and the Empress was wakened and the Countess pleaded before her for the life of her husband, and then the Emperor was wakened to hear the same plea. Commutation of sentence was granted, but how could she overtake the officer who had started with the death-warrant, and would she be too late to save the life of her husband? By four relays of horses, and stopping not a moment for food, she reached the city of Milan as her husband was on the way to the scaffold. Just in time to save him, and not a minute to spare, she came up. You see there were two difficulties in the way: the one was to get the pardon signed, and the other to bring it to the right place in time. Glory be to God, we need go through no such exigency. No long road to travel. No pitiless beating at a palace gate. Pardon here. Pardon now. Pardon for the asking. Pardon forever. A Saviour easy to get at. A Christ on the plain!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage