By James Stalker
"But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, Who was of God made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." 1Co 1:30
I REMEMBER hearing a naturalist describe a species of jelly-fish, which, he said, lives fixed to a rock, from which it never stirs. It does not require to go in search of food, because in the decayed tissues of its own organism there grows a kind of seaweed, on which it subsists. I thought I had never heard of any creature so comfortable. But the naturalist who was describing it went on to say that it is one of the very lowest forms of animal life, and the extreme comfort which it enjoys is the very badge of its degraded position. As you rise in the scale of life, you come upon animals with multiplying wants; and it may be laid down as a general rule that, the nobler any form of animal life is, the more complex will its wants be found to be. This interesting law of natural history applies to human life also. A savage has very few wants. Compare his kit, if he requires to make a journey, with the innumerable articles which have to be packed, in all sorts of receptacles, when you move from home. Compare the simple life of an African kraal with the arrangements for the police, the water-supply, the food-supply, the post-office, the telegraph system of one of our cities. It may be laid down as a general rule, to which, however, there may be exceptions, that the progress of civilisation has for its badge the multiplication of wants.
But this law extends further: it holds good in the spiritual sphere. If you go back and trace the history of human nature in its higher types, you will discover that this has been the principle of ascent. In the ancient world three races stand out, head and shoulders, above their neighbours; the Greek, the Roman, and the Hebrew; and, if you go deep enough in the study of their history, you will discover that each of them felt some want of human nature as it had never been felt before, and taught the nations to feel it likewise; and this was its contribution to the progress of the world. And now the position to which any individual rises in the scale of humanity depends on the reproduction of these catholic wants in his experience, and the intensity with which he feels them. A man may live and die without feeling them, and he may be all the more comfortable on this account; but his comfort is like that of the jelly-fish, it is the badge of degradation.
It is the glory of Christianity to be intimately associated with these deep catholic wants of the soul: it is the divine provision for their satisfaction. This is precisely what is meant when it is said in our text that Christ is made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption; because each of these four things answers to a profound need of human nature.
Wisdom. - Perhaps St. Paul mentioned this first because he was writing to Greeks. Our text occurs in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and the Corinthians were Greeks with the outstanding features of their race strongly marked in their character and life. One of these was the passion for knowledge.
This is a part of human nature, but it does not speak out in all races or in all individuals. It is curious how little savages care to know. Some of them cannot count up as far as ten. They do not know the people living on the other side of the mountains which girdle their valley. They do not inquire whence the rivers come which fertilise their fields, or whither they flow. They reap a little corn from the soil, but do not suspect the mineral wealth which may lie beneath the surface. They go on from generation to generation doing the same things over and over again, and the grandson is no wiser than his grandfather. Intellectual curiosity has not been stirred in them; it is there, but it is latent.
In Greece, however, this latent capacity broke out as a great excitement and longing, which went on increasing from century to century. The Greeks sent out travellers on every hand, who gathered the most comprehensive acquaintance with the lands, the peoples, the habits and customs of the world in which they lived. They made amazing progress in ascertaining the natural history of plants and animals. They noted with keen eyes the positions and movements of the heavenly bodies. This thirst grew ever deeper. Men of vast intellectual reach rose among them, and carried inquiry forward into still more important regions. The knowledge of matter led on to the knowledge of mind ; the pursuit of knowledge deepened into the pursuit of wisdom. Socrates, the wisest of them all, told his fellow country men that the knowledge of the stars was far less important than the knowledge of their own souls. What is man? In his short life what is he meant to do? What is the prize which, if won, makes life a success, and which, if lost, makes life a failure? Who is the man of men, whom all should strive to be like?
Such were the questions on which the Greeks, under the guidance of their sages, whetted their intellects. They strove hard to find the answers to them, but the greatest of them only called themselves philosophers, that is, lovers or seekers of wisdom, not its possessors. An irresistible impulse sustained them in the search, and even the search was ennobling; but they knew that they had not found.
In the fulness of time St. Paul was sent to the representatives of this eager and active-minded race, and he was able to announce to them that he had found what they were seeking-" Jesus Christ," he said, " is made unto us wisdom." They had been inquiring what human life would be like, if it were absolutely fair and good- what were the lineaments and what the figure of manhood at its best. Ecce Homo, answered the Apostle, holding up before their eyes the image of his Master.
The consciousness of this want, which was first fully awakened in the land of Greece, will never again disappear from the human soul. None can rise to a high stature of manhood who has not felt it. At the present day it is the ruling passion of tens of thousands, to whom what is truth? Seems to be the most important question which can be asked. Through the obscure woods of ignorance eager pioneers are clearing pathways on every hand, and knowledge of all kinds is multiplying to unmanageable proportions. Perhaps, however, amidst our accumulations, we are not out of need of the advice which Socrates addressed to his contemporaries to return from the confines of creation home to their own souls. Where there is much knowledge there may be little wisdom. What is man? What is life? These are still the supreme questions, and no one can graduate into the ranks of the higher manhood who has not asked them with absorbing interest. And what are the answers? Is there any answer under the sun like this-Behold the man Christ Jesus, that is what manhood ought to be; Behold the life of Christ, that is what human life should be?
Righteousness - If St. Paul had the Greek element of the Christian Church in his eye when he said, " Christ is made unto us wisdom," he may have had in his eye the Roman element when he said, " Christ is made of God unto us righteousness." There was no doubt, such an element there; for Corinth, though a Greek city, was at that time ruled by the Romans, whose soldiers fortified its citadel and paraded its streets. Besides, it was a favourite resort of Romans, whether bent on business or pleasure.
Now, if the Greeks were the people of knowledge, the Romans were as distinctly the people of righteousness or justice. They had conquered the world. Originally a small tribe confined within a narrow domain on the banks of the Tiber, they gradually spread their conquests south and north, east and west, till these included the whole known world. They obliterated the boundaries between country and country by bringing them all under a common sway. They found the nations living at continual war with one another; but they reduced them to peace by taking the arms out of their hands, and compelled them to submit their conflicting claims to a new arbitrament. This was the arbitrament of law. The Romans were not only the conquerors, but also the lawgivers of the world. Wherever the irresistible tread of their legions opened up the way, their tribunals of justice followed, and their legal system is still the foundation of all modern codes of jurisprudence.
It was an immense problem which the Romans thus opened up-the relation of man to man and of nation to nation. But it cannot be said to have been solved by them. Justice has two sides: on the one hand, there is what you owe to me; on the other, there is what I owe to you. About the former I may be very keen, while I am still very negligent of the latter. There is a justice which compels you to give me my due; but this is very different from the justice which impels me to wish to give you yours. The Roman justice was of the coarser type. While compelling others to do right, the Roman himself was selfish and hard-hearted; the proudest day of his life was when he ascended in triumph to the Capitol with captive kings bound to his chariot; and in the arena he butchered the conquered in hundreds to make a holiday. He had not discovered the secret of justice.
But St. Paul had discovered it. This was why he was not ashamed of the Gospel, but ready to preach it to those at Rome also. He knew that he brought the very thing that Rome needed. What was it? It was love. Christ is righteousness, because Christ is love. Is not this the Gospel still for every age, and for our age? Is not this still the question of the day, the relation of man to man and of nation to nation, how to put an end to war; how to disarm the so-called Christian nations, which confront each other armed to the teeth; how to reconcile the bitterness between class and class, between capital and labour; how to melt your hard heart and mine, my reader, so that, instead of taking our brother by the throat with " Pay me that thou owest," we shall be chiefly anxious about paying him that which we owe-the debt of fair dealing, of sympathy and helpfulness? And what other answer to this question has the world yet discovered which can be compared with Christ's golden rule and His spirit of benevolence?
Sanctification. - Besides Greeks and Romans there was a third element in the Church of Corinth. In that age the Jews were scattered everywhere in pursuit of gain, just as they are in all centres of trade and commerce at the present day. In every city which he entered St. Paul found them; to them he always first offered the Gospel; and the Jewish converts formed the nucleus of the membership in all his churches. If it is reasonable to think that he had the Greeks in his eye when he said, Christ is our wisdom, and the Romans when he said, Christ is our righteousness, it is quite as likely that he had the Jews specially in view when he said, " Christ is made of God unto us sanctification."
The Jew' had an even more unique and important part to play in the evolution of the history of man than the two other elect races of the ancient world. He did not possess the intellectual gifts of the Greek. He had no art to speak of, and he had no philosophy till a late date, when he borrowed it from the Greeks. Nor had he the conquering instincts of the Roman. He often, indeed, dreamed of conquest and worldwide sway; but he was too timid and too much attached to the narrow land of his birth to realise his dreams.
But his genius took a more difficult and far nobler flight. In him the want of God first asserted itself with all its force. "As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, 0 God; " "0 God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee; my soul thirsteth for Thee, my soul longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land "-these are not only the utterances of individual psalmists, but the voice of the nation. The Jew aspired to walk with 'God; the highest blessedness he could think of was to be a saint.
It was only another side of the same state of mind when in the Jew there was developed the sense of distance from God and unworthiness to walk with Him. The Jew felt in the very marrow of his bones that he was a sinner. While intellect developed all its powers in the Greek race, conscience first unfolded all its powers in the Jewish; its majestic authority in commanding and forbidding, its vigour in condemning, the awful scourge of terror and remorse with which it chastises the soul that sinneth.
The Jew's question was, How can I be rid of my sin? How can I be just with God? But, as the greatest of the Greeks confessed that they were not possessors, but only lovers, of wisdom, so the greatest of the Jews confessed that their longing for purity and peace was never satisfied. They sought it by trying to keep the Law fully; but the ideal mocked their efforts, being too high for them. They sought satisfaction in the rites of sacrifice and attempted with rivers of blood to quench the thirst which was parching their souls. But the blood of bulls and of goats could not take away sin.
The Gospel of Christ answered this long drawn, passionate cry of centuries, when it said, " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." St. Paul, had sounded all the depths of this longing of his race; but his efforts only ended in the cry of despair, " Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? " till the secret of the Gospel was revealed to him, when he sprang to his feet, emancipated and strong, with the cry on his lips, " Thanks be unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord;" and, ever after, it was his mission to make known that " He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."
This want which the Jew discovered is as native to the human soul as that discovered by the Greek or the Roman. It is, indeed, the soul's deepest and most sacred need. Many may never have felt it but, till it is felt, the highest position which is accessible to manhood cannot be reached. In earth or heaven there is nothing so august, so elevating, so beautiful as holiness. And the way to holiness lies through the valley of humiliation for a guilty life and past the cross of Calvary. The friendship of Jesus is the guarantee of sanctity: " He is made unto us sanctification."
Redemption - We are moving among the deep things of human nature: these three cravings are among the most august qualities it possesses. But there is a fourth worthy to be put side by side with them - the craving for immortality.
That death does not end all-that the grave is not the goal of humanity, but only the gateway to a new existence of vaster range-this is surely the greatest discovery that the annals of the world record. Is it a discovery, or is faith in immortality universal? This is a question which has been much discussed. The truth I believe to be this: the longing for immortality is, like the thirst for knowledge or any other of the supreme wants mentioned above, native to human nature; but it does not follow that in all ages or in all countries it must have been keenly felt. An instinct may be native to the soul and yet long be latent; we can tell in what age, for example, and among what race the passion for wisdom first arose. It is not so easy to tell where the longing for immortality first decisively asserted itself. It does not seem, however, to have been in any of the three historical peoples of antiquity already mentioned- the Greeks, the Romans, or the Hebrews. Historians speak rather of Egypt and Persia -two countries lying on the dim borderland between the bright circle of civilisation and the surrounding continents of darkness- as the places where man first came to full consciousness of this demand of his nature.
But, having once asserted itself, the sense of this want can never die out of the human soul. Now and then, indeed, men may be heard speaking as if mankind might give up this hope and be perfectly content to die as a dog dieth. In the same way, last century, Rousseau and others advocated a return to a state of nature, in which there should be no more curiosity for knowledge or passion for wisdom than in the minds of savages. It is just as unlikely that the passion for immortality will die out of the minds of men as that the intellectual thirst which first grew keen in Greece will disappear and trouble men no more. And the calamity, if it were possible, would be an even more degrading one.
It requires, indeed, special experiences thoroughly to evoke this longing. It may be evoked by the sense of the inequalities of this life, which a more perfect world is needed to redress. There was one portion of St. Paul's audience on whom this would tell. I have spoken of his hearers as Greeks, Romans and Hebrews; but more numerous than any of these classes were the slaves, of whom there were four hundred thousand in the city of Corinth. To these there was hardly any outlet from degradation in this life, but they would eagerly grasp at the promise of redemption in the next. Perhaps no one can now feel the passion for immortality fully who has not known what it is to love intensely-to love wisdom, or to love moral perfection, or to love another heart. It is as your whole being goes out to an ideal object that it becomes intolerable to think that death is to interpose and end the development which has promised to be so vast, but has only commenced.
Sometimes it is while standing by a death-bed, on which lies one whose physical frame is worn to a shadow and on the verge of dissolution, but whose mind, instead of decaying with the body, seems only to be disengaging itself from obstructions and beginning to expatiate in its native strength, that one is pierced with the conviction that the spirit does not die with the body. But perhaps the most authentic intimation we receive of immortality is from conscience; it is that dread of something after death which accompanies the commission of crime, and gathers round the soul, as, on the eve of dissolution, it looks back to the unpardoned sins of a lifetime. In that dread hour men know that they have not done with their sins yet, but will have to face them again beyond the veil.
Thus immortality is not only a great hope, but also a great terror. We passionately long for it and yet, at the same time, we recoil from it in guilty fear. Who can reconcile this contradiction? Here is the answer: " Christ is made unto us redemption." He is both our redemption from death and our redemption from sin in one. In Him the great hope of immortality receives its justification, and in Him the great terror is transmuted into immortal joy.
Is not this a gloriously human Gospel? It meets us in our utmost straits, and delivers us. Have you not observed that it is in your best, your most thoughtful, your sanest moments that the Gospel seems truest to you? If you have ever been really wise, really sane, really a man, that was the time when you were nearest accepting Christ. It is in superficial and shallow moods, when the soul is blinded with the glare of the world and satisfying itself with vulgar prizes, that Christ appears unreal and unnecessary. Know yourself and you will know Him.
Yet, on the other hand, how gloriously divine this Gospel is! By a single gift, God has given all that human nature desires. He has given us Christ, and there is not a deep want which Christ does not satisfy. In the name of all to whom He is precious, let me commend Him to you. "Oh taste and see that He is good; who trusts in Him is blest."
