By James Stalker
"Both young men and maidens; old men and children; let them praise the Name of the Lord." Psa 148:12-13a
A Scotch professor, addressing an academic audience in America, warned his hearers against cant. At the close, questions were invited, and one of the students asked the professor, " What is cant? " " There is a kind of religion," was the reply, " which is natural to an old woman, and there is another which is natural to a young man; but, if the young man professes to have the religion of the old woman, that is cant."
To some minds the form of this answer will doubtless appear undignified or even irreverent; and, although it might be defended on the ground of its being spoken on the spur of the moment and in reply to an irritating question, we will not defend it. Let the form go. But the substance we will not let go; for there is wisdom in it. It means that the young have special needs of their own, which the Gospel must: recognise, if it is to be of any use to them; and the mature or aged, in like manner, have their own special wants, which cannot be met by the provision made for the young, but can only be satisfied by a Gospel which understands and sympathizes with them.
No doubt it might be said that the religious wants of all, old and young, are alike-they all need the pardon of sin, the new heart and the promise of heaven; and for all alike there is the same Saviour. This is true; but, great truth though it be, it is only half the truth. There is another half, and it is this: Every season of life has its own necessities, its own sorrows, its own joys and aspirations; and it is by the delicate appreciation of these in every case, and by the possession of resources ample enough to meet them all, that the Gospel proves itself to be the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. Christ has a voice and a message for each separate human soul in the precise stage of its history at which He finds it, and it is by the nice adaptation of His sympathy to the condition of everyone that He is able, as He said, to draw all men to Himself.
I. For the young, He has the Gospel of Living; for the old the Gospel of Dying.
There is a gospel of dying; and it is well for us that there is, for we have all to die. When the solemn hour arrives in which we must leave this world and go to another, to face the great white throne, happy will it be for us if we know the secret which is able to transmute that mortal defeat into the greatest of all victories. There is no logic more unanswerable than that which says to us, " We must all die, and no man can tell how soon his own turn may come; therefore we ought to be ready; it is the height of folly to live unprepared, when we may die at any moment."
No wonder preachers make ample use of this logic, for to them death is an ever-present reality. Every week they are moving among the sick and dying; every other day they follow the dead to their long home. Death becomes to them an overmastering motive. It is so also to those into whose family circle the bolt of death has fallen. A considerable proportion of those who have passed middle life have, by repeated experiences, been made acquainted with death. If you speak to them about it, you awaken a hundred tragic and tender memories, every one of which constrains them to prepare to meet their God. Even when we are comparatively young, this may become the most powerful of all motives, if the finger of death has touched one who is so near to us as to be part of ourselves. In this way St. Augustine was converted through the death of his friend; Luther was driven into the convent by a flash of lightning cutting down a companion at his side; and in hundreds of cases the temporal death of one has become life eternal to another.
But, until death thus lays its cold finger on our own flesh, so to speak, it is strangely unreal to us, and the best logic, reasoning from it, produces almost no impression. To many of the young death is unthinkable; the thought of it will not stick to their minds, though they try. As the wing of the sea-fowl is provided with a natural unguent which enables her to shed the rain, as it falls, and the wave in which she dips, so nature seems to have provided the young with a power of keeping off this thought till the hour of providence strikes.
It is of life the young mind thinks, not of death; and therefore the gospel which appeals to it must be a gospel of life, not a gospel of death. It must mingle with the warm rush of the healthy blood and keep time with the beating of the bounding heart.
But is there not a response to this in the Gospel of Christ? Is it not pre-eminently a gospel of life? There is nothing else about which it is more constantly speaking. It comes not to circumscribe our life, but to intensify and enlarge it; not to devitalize us, but to send an ampler flood of energy through our veins. " I am come," said Christ, " that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly."
II. To the young, Christ brings the Gospel of Inspiration; to the old the Gospel of Consolation.
There is consolation in the Gospel; and sorely does the world need it. The successful are few, the disappointed are many. Man lies open to the attacks of misfortune at every point of the compass. His intellect may be able to cleave through the obstructions of fortune and breast the heights of success, when suddenly the body gives way, and the mind, though its own strength is undiminished, has to lag behind in the race, waiting for its frail attendant. Life is little; it is only a single stone at the most we can ay on the rising cairn of the purpose of the world. Life is short; we have scarcely well begun our work when we hear the hammer knocking to warn us that it is time to stop, and to appear before the great Taskmaster.
Man needs consolation, and the Gospel of Christ gives it. It supplies that which will take the place of worldly losses. When the ground begins to roll round us in the earthquake of change, and the sand to slip away on which we have been standing, it directs us to the Rock which is the same yesterday and to-day and forever. Blessed is he who, when the star of time is sinking in the west, has learned to look to the east for the rising of the day-star of eternity.
These are the consolations of the Gospel; it is full of them, and they are infinitely precious. But they are for the old, or at least the mature, not for the young. You this not yet able to receive them, and, if you press them on it, you are offering what it does not want. It wants inspiration, not consolation.
Youth looks round on the world in which it finds itself, and notes its defects with a. fresh and inevitable glance. It burns to put them right. It looks on the figures of those who have played their part well in the past and longs to emulate them. Its own powers are still a mysterious, unmeasured set of possibilities; but it longs to measure them against the task of the world-to plunge into the great game of life and make its mark.
Now, has the Gospel no sympathy with this state of mind? I think it has the greatest sympathy with it. Christ taught the individual to realise his dignity as an immortal being; and the life He condemned most severely was that which accomplishes nothing. He Himself, the humble Carpenter of Nazareth, while rejecting the bribe of the kingdoms of the earth, yet aimed at worldwide influence: and He taught His lowly followers to expect to sit on thrones judging the twelves tribes of Israel. One of the commonest religious sentiments of our day is that expressed in the lines of Keble, -
"The trivial round, the common task
Would furnish all we ought to ask-
Room to deny ourselves; a road
To bring us daily nearer God."
It is a beautiful and a true sentiment: there is nothing too small to be done to the honour of God; there is no sphere too humble to be accepted thankfully; no task too trivial for anyone's devotion to whom Providence has assigned it. Yet I venture to say that this sentiment, though true, is not nearly so true, is not nearly so characteristic of Christianity and of the New Testament, as its exact opposite. The prevailing strain of the New Testament is not that there is nothing too small to do in Christ's service but rather that there is nothing too great to attempt in the name of Christ. The New Testament is from beginning to end a record of how men who were nothing in themselves became princes of thought and action through the inspiration of Christ; and it still comes to the young heart, on the edge of the battle of life, not to cool it with the maxims of prudence, but to tighten its armour and put the sword into its hand, and, breathing into it high aspiration, to send it forth into the struggle, crying, " I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."
III. For the young, Christ has the Gospel of Giving; for the old the Gospel of Receiving.
Many would, doubtless, say that religion is all receiving. They feel that they have received so much from Christ, and that what they can give Him is such a trifle in comparison, that nothing should be spoken of in religion except what Christ has done for us. This is the conviction into which we grow more and more with advancing years. We feel more and more the wickedness of the natural heart and the hopelessness of any good thing coming out of us. It is a strange fact-but it is a fact-that, the better people grow, they are the more conscious of their own wickedness; the holiest person is the one readiest to say, I am the chief of sinners. In the same way, those who do most good feel that they are doing nothing: the power they have is. not their own; they have nothing that they have not received.
This is the sentiment of the most advanced piety. Yet there is a gospel of giving; and it appeals particularly to the young. Christ has a cause on earth which can only be carried on by the energy of those who are willing to devote themselves to His service. He needs men and women to think for Him, to plan for Him, to speak and act for Him, to be His brain and heart, His eyes and lips, His hands and feet in the world. He is not here any longer to carry on His cause Himself; He has left it to the charge of those who are willing to act in His name. His cause is the cause of goodness and progress; its aim is to make God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It has all the forces of evil ranged against it; and it has to advance in the face of opposition and scorn. It needs courage, initiative, sacrifice; it needs the lives of men. Christ appeals to every man and says, " Will you give your life to My cause? You could do something to help Me, and I would prize your help. Are you to be part of the opposition which I and My cause have to overcome, fighting passively or actively on the side of evil? There is no neutrality; he that is not with Me is against Me."
This appeal comes home especially to the young. You may live fifty years yet, or more, in the world. Your influence during that time will be a solid contribution either to Christ or to the enemy of Christ; and it will never cease to act as a factor on the one side or the other through all future history. To which side are you going to give it? Can you be harbouring the ignoble thought that you may give three fourths or nine-tenths of life to Christ's enemy, and then come to Him with the poor fraction left over at the last, in the hope of escaping punishment and getting into heaven? This is the meanest kind of religion that the heart of man has ever conceived. Give Christ the whole-your life unbroken, your strength of heart and brain and muscle in its prime. There is a work you can do for Him in youth that none can do in old age. Ay and there is an experience of Him and of His love which only a young heart can enjoy.
