435. The Glorious Christ

The Glorious Christ

Joh_3:31 : ’93He that cometh from above is above all.’94

The most conspicuous character of history steps out upon the platform. The finger which, diamonded with light, pointed down to him from the Bethlehem sky, was only a ratification of the finger of prophecy, the finger of genealogy, the finger of chronology, the finger of events’97all five fingers pointing in one direction. Christ is the overtopping figure of all time. He is the vox humana in all music, the line of grace in all sculpture, the most exquisite blending of lights and shades in all paintings, the acme of all climaxes, the dome of all cathedraled grandeur, and the peroration of all language.

The Greek alphabet is made up of twenty-four letters, and when Christ compared himself to the first letter and the last letter, the Alpha and the Omega, he appropriated to himself all the splendors that you can spell with those two letters and all the letters between them. ’93I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.’94 Or, if you prefer the words of the text, ’93above all.’94

What does it mean? It means, after you have piled up all Alpine and Himalayan altitudes, the glory of Christ would have to spread its wings and descend a thousand leagues to touch those summits. Pelion, a high mountain of Thessaly; Ossa, a high mountain; and Olympus, a high mountain; but mythology tells us when the giants warred against the gods they piled up these three mountains, and from the top of them proposed to scale the heavens; but the height was not great enough, and there was a complete failure. And after all the giants’97Isaiah and Paul, prophetic and apostolic giants; Raphael and Michael Angelo, artistic giants; cherubim and seraphim and archangel, celestial giants’97have failed to climb to the top of Christ’92s glory they might as well unite in the words of the text and say: ’93He that cometh from above is above all.’94

First, Christ must be above all else in our preaching. There are so many books on homiletics scattered through the country that all laymen, as well as all clergymen, have made up their minds what sermons ought to be. That sermon is more effectual which most pointedly puts forth Christ as the pardon of all sin and the correction of all evil’97individual, social, political, national. There is no reason why we should ring the endless changes in a few phrases. There are those who think that if an exhortation or a discourse have frequent mention of justification, sanctification, covenant of works and covenant of grace, that therefore it must be profoundly evangelical, while they are suspicious of a discourse which presents the same truth, but under different phraseology. Now, I say there is nothing in all the opulent realm of Anglo-Saxon speech of all the word treasures that we inherited from the Latin and the Greek and the Indo-European, that we have not a right to marshal in religious discussion. Christ sets the example. His illustrations were from the grass, the flowers, the salve, the barnyard fowl, the crystals of salt, as well as from the seas and the stars; and we do not propose in our Sunday-school teaching and in our pulpit address to be put on the limits.

I know that there is a great deal said in our day against words, as though they were nothing. They may be misused but they have an imperial power. They are the bridge between soul and soul, between Almighty God and the human race. What did God write upon the tables of stone? Words. What did Christ utter on Mount Olivet? Words. Out of what did Christ strike the spark for the illumination of the universe? Out of words. ’93Let there be light,’94 and light was. Of course, thought is the cargo, and words are only the ship; but how fast would your cargo get on without the ship? What you need, my friends, in all your work, in your Sabbath-school class, in your reformatory institutions, and what we all need, is to enlarge our vocabulary when we come to speak about God and Christ and heaven. We ride a few old words to death, when there is such illimitable resource. Shakespeare employed fifteen thousand different words for dramatic purposes; Milton employed eight thousand different words for poetic purposes; Rufus Choate employed over eleven thousand different words for legal purposes; but the average person has less than a thousand words that he can manage and that makes him seem so stupid.

When we come to set forth the love of Christ we are going to take tenderest phraseology wherever we find it, and if it has never been used in that direction before, all the more shall we use it. When we come to speak of the glory of Christ the Conqueror, we are going to draw our similes from triumphal arch and oratorio and everything grand and stupendous. The French navy have eighteen flags by which they give signal, but those eighteen flags they can put into sixty-six thousand different combinations. And I have to tell you that these standards of the cross may be lifted into combinations infinite and varieties everlasting. Let me say to these young men who come from the theological seminaries into our services every Sabbath, and are after a while going to preach Jesus Christ, you will have the largest liberty and unlimited resource. You only have to present Christ in your own way. Jonathan Edwards preached Christ in the severest argument ever penned. John Bunyan preached Christ in the sublimest allegory ever composed. Edward Payson, sick and exhausted, leaned up against the side of the pulpit and wept out his discourse; while George Whitefield, with the manner and the voice and the style of an actor overwhelmed his audience. It might have been a very different story if Jonathan Edwards had tried to write and dream about a pilgrim’92s progress to the celestial city, or John Bunyan had attempted an ’93Essay on the Human Will.’94 Brighter than the light, fresher than the fountains, deeper than the seas, are all these Gospel themes. Song has no melody, flowers no sweetness, sunset sky no color compared with these glorious themes. These harvests of grace spring up quicker than we can sickle them. Kindling pulpits with their fire, and producing revolutions with their power, lighting up dying beds with their glory, they are the sweetest thought for the poet, the most thrilling illustration for the orator, they offer the most intense scene for the artist, and they are to the ambassador of the sky all enthusiasm. Complete pardon for direst guilt. Sweetest comfort for ghastliest agony. Brightest hope for grimmest death. Grandest resurrection for darkest sepulcher. Oh, what a Gospel to preach! Christ over all in it. His birth, his suffering, his miracles, his parables, his sweat, his tears, his blood, his atonement, his intercession’97what glorious themes! Do we exercise faith? Christ is its object. Do we have love? It fastens on Jesus. Have we a fondness for the Church? It is because Christ died for it. Have we a hope of heaven? It is because Jesus went ahead, the herald and the forerunner. The royal robe of Demetrius was so costly, so beautiful, that after he had put it off no one ever dared put it on; but this robe of Christ, richer than that, the poorest and the wannest and the worst may wear. ’93Where sin abounded, grace may much more abound.’94 ’93Oh, my sins, my sins!’94 said Martin Luther to Staupitz, ’93my sins, my sins!’94 The fact is, that the brawny German student had found a Latin Bible that made him quake, and nothing else ever did make him quake; and when he found how, through Christ, he was pardoned and saved, he wrote a friend, saying, ’93Come over and join us great and awful sinners saved by the grace of God. You seem to be only a slender sinner, and you don’92t much extol the mercy of God; but we that have been such very awful sinners praise his grace the more now that we have been redeemed.’94 Can it be that you are so desperately egotistical that you feel yourself in first-rate spiritual trim, and that from the root of the hair to the tip of the toe you are scar-less and immaculate? What you need is a looking-glass, and here it is in the Bible. Poor and wretched and miserable and blind and naked from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, full of wounds and putrefying sores. No health in us. And then take the fact that Christ gathered up all the notes against us and paid them, and then offered us the receipt!

And how much we need him in our sorrows! We are independent of circumstances if we have his grace. Why, he made Paul sing in the dungeon, and under that grace St. John from desolate Patmos heard the blast of the apocalyptic trumpets. After all other candles have been snuffed out, this is the light that gets brighter and brighter unto the perfect day; and after, under the hard hoofs of calamity, all the pools of worldly enjoyment have been trampled into deep mire, at the foot of the eternal rock the Christian, from cups of granite lily-rimmed, puts out the thirst of his soul.

Again I remark, that Christ is above all in dying alleviations. I have not any sympathy with the morbidity abroad about our demise. The Emperor Constantine arranged that on the day of his coronation the stone mason should come and consult him about the tombstone that after a while he would need. And there are men who are monomaniacal on the subject of departure from this life by death, and the more they think of it the less they are prepared to go. This is an unmanliness not worthy of you, not worthy of me.

Saladin, the greatest conqueror of his day, while dying, ordered that the tunic he had on him be carried after his death on his spear at the head of his army, and that then the soldier, ever and anon, should stop and say: ’93Behold, all that is left of Saladin, the emperor and conqueror! Of all the states he conquered, of all the wealth he accumulated, nothing did he retain but this shroud.’94 I have no sympathy with such behavior or such absurd demonstration, or with much that we hear uttered in regard to departure from this life to the next. There is a commonsensical idea on this subject that you need to consider’97there are only two styles of departure. A thousand feet underground, by light of torch, toiling in a miner’92s shaft, a ledge of rock may fall upon us, and we may die a miner’92s death. Far out at sea, falling from the slippery ratlines and broken on the halyards, we may die a sailor’92s death. On mission of mercy in hospital, amid broken bones and reeking leprosies and raging fevers, we may die a philanthropist’92s death. On the field of battle, serving God and our country, slugs through the heart, the gun-carriage may roll over us, and we may die a patriot’92s death. But after all, there are only two styles of departure’97the death of the righteous, and the death of the wicked’97and we all want to die the former.

God grant that when your hour comes you may be at home. You want the hand of your kindred in your hand. You want your children to surround you. You Want the light on your pillow from eyes that have long reflected your love. You want the room still. You do not want any curious strangers standing around watching you. You want your kindred from afar to hear your last prayer. I think that is the wish of all of us. But is that all? Can earthly friends hold us up when the billows of death come up to the girdle? Can human voice charm open heaven’92s gate? Can human hand pilot us through the narrows of death into heaven’92s harbor? Can any earthly friendship shield us from the arrows of death, and in the hour when Satan shall practise upon us his infernal archery? No! Alas! poor soul, if that is all. Better die in the wilderness, far from tree shadow and from fountain, alone, vultures circling through the air waiting for our body, unknown to men, and to have no burial, if only Christ could say through the solitudes: ’93I will never leave thee, I will never forsake thee.’94 From that pillow of stone a ladder would rise heavenward, angels coming and going; and over the solitude and the barrenness would come the sweet notes of heavenly minstrelsy. Gordon Hall, far from home, dying in the door of a heathen temple, said: ’93Glory to thee, O God!’94 What did dying Wilberforce say to his wife? ’93Come and sit beside me, and let us talk of heaven. I never knew what happiness was until I found Christ.’94 What did dying Hannah More say? ’93To go to heaven, think what that is! To go to Christ, who died that I might live! Oh, glorious grave! Oh, what a glorious thing it is to die! Oh, the love of Christ, the love of Christ!’94 What did Mr. Toplady, the great hymnmaker, say in his last hour? ’93Who can measure the depths of the third heaven? Oh, the sunshine that fills my soul! I shall soon be gone, for surely no one can live in this world after such glories as God has manifested to my soul.’94 What did the dying Janeway say? ’93I can as easily die as close my eyes or turn my head in sleep. Before a few hours have passed I shall stand on Mount Zion with the one hundred and forty and four thousand, and with the just men made perfect, and we shall ascribe riches and honor and glory and majesty and dominion unto God and the Lamb.’94 Dr. Taylor, condemned to burn at the stake, on his way thither broke away from the guardsmen, and went bounding and leaping and jumping toward the fire, glad to go to Jesus, and die for him. Sir Charles Hare, in his last moment, had such rapturous vision that he cried: ’93Upward, upward, upward!’94 And so great was the peace of one of Christ’92s disciples that he put his fingers upon the pulse in his wrist and counted it and observed it; and so great was his placidity that after a while he said: ’93Stopped!’94 and his life had ended here to begin in heaven. But grander than that was the testimony of the worn-out first missionary, when, in the maritime dungeon, he cried: ’93I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand; I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me in that day, and not to me only, but to all them that love his appearing!’94 Do you not see that Christ is above all in dying alleviation?

Toward the last hour of our earthly residence we are speeding. When I see the sunset, I say, ’93One day less to live.’94 When I see the spring blossoms scattered, I say, ’93Another season gone forever.’94 When I close this Bible on Sabbath night I say, ’93Another Sabbath departed.’94 When I bury a friend, I say, ’93Another earthly attraction gone forever.’94 What nimble feet the years have! The roebucks and the lightnings run not so fast. From decade to decade, from sky to sky, they go at a bound. There is a place for us, whether marked or not, where you and I will sleep the last sleep, and the men are now living who will, with solemn tread, carry us to our resting-place. Ay, it is known in heaven whether our departure will be a coronation or a banishment. Brighter than a banqueting hall through which the light feet of the dancers go up and down to the sound of trumpeters will be the sepulcher through whose rifts the holy light of heaven streameth. God will watch you. He will send his angels to guard your resting-place, until, at Christ’92s behest, they shall roll away the stone.

So, also, Christ is above all in heaven. The Bible distinctly says that Christ is the chief theme of the celestial ascription, all the thrones facing his throne, all the palms waved before his face, all the crowns laid at his feet. Cherubim to cherubim, seraphim to seraphim, redeemed spirit to redeemed spirit, shall recite the Saviour’92s earthly sacrifice. Stand on some high hill of heaven, and in all the radiant sweep the most gracious object will be Jesus. Myriads gazing on the scars of his suffering, in silence first, afterward breaking forth into acclamation. The martyrs, all the purer for the flame through which they passed, will say: ’93This is Jesus, for whom we died.’94 The apostles, all the happier for the shipwreck and the scourging through which they went, will say: ’93This is the Jesus whom we preached at Corinth and at Rome and at Athens and at Antioch and at Jerusalem.’94 Little children clad in white will say: ’93This is the Jesus who took us in his arms and blessed us, and, when the storms of the world were so cold and loud, brought us into this beautiful place.’94 The multitude of the bereft will say: ’93This is the Jesus who comforted us when our heart broke.’94 Many who wandered clear off from God and plunged into vagabondism, but were saved by grace, will say: ’93This is the Jesus who pardoned us. We were lost on the mountains, and he brought us home. We were guilty, and he has made us white as snow.’94 Mercy boundless, grace unparalleled. And when, after each one has recited his peculiar deliverances and peculiar mercies, recited them as by solo, all the voices will come together into a great chorus, which will make the arches echo and re-echo with eternal triumph.

Edward I was so anxious to go to the Holy Land that when he was about to expire he bequeathed one hundred and sixty thousand dollars to have his heart, after his decease, taken there, and his request was complied with. But there are hundreds today whose hearts are already in the Holy Land of heaven. Where your treasures are, there are your hearts also. Quaint John Bunyan, of whom I spoke at the opening of the discourse, caught a glimpse of that place, and in his quaint way he said: ’93And I heard in my dream, and lo! the bells of the city rang again for joy; and as they opened the gates to let in the men I looked in after them, and lo! the city shone like the sun, and there were streets of gold, and men walked on them, harps in their hands, to ring praises withal; and after that they shut up the gates, which when I had seen, I wished myself among them!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage