ENDURANCE THE TEST
And lastly, our Lord gives the warning that each spiritual fabric must be judged by its power of lasting.
“Every one therefore which heareth these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, which built his house upon the rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house: and it fell not; for it was founded upon the rock. And every one that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and smote upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall thereof.”
Here, again, is the tremendous claim: the only solid foundation for life is Jesus and His words.
We know how this necessity of a rock-like foundation for a spiritual structure, and the possibility of finding such a foundation only in His own words and person, were illustrated by our Lord’s method in the foundation of His Church. A crowd came round Him at the first, offering Him the same kind of allegiance which men will give to spiritual teachersand benefactors in moments of enthusiasm. “Many believed on his name, beholding the signs which he did.” And our Lord stood strangely aloof from them. “He did not trust himself unto them,” St. John says,“for that he knew all men, and because he needed not that any should bear witness concerning man, for he knew of himself what was in man.”[87] So He tested the would-be disciples, till at last by His strange self-withdrawing ways, by His severe words, by His enigmatic utterances, He had sifted out those who were really in earnest in following Him from those who were not; exhibiting in all this a strange contempt for majorities or mere numbers. At last He had gathered round Him the little band of those who were really ready to follow and obey to the uttermost, the band of His apostles. Here were men who had indeed got down to the rock, and were building on it and nothing short of it. Here were men who could trust Him and His word, and take as the basis for their life the confession of His name. Therefore, like that on which they built, theywere themselves rock-like, and not as the shifting sand of ordinary human nature. These then could be used as the foundations of Christ’s new society. So under circumstances where a special strain was put upon their loyalty, He asked the great question of the apostles; and Peter gave the great answer: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Then, as it were with a sigh of relief, our Lord turns upon him, and greets him with His supreme benediction, and recognizes in him—if not yet something which is ready to His hand, yet something which is capable of being made ready:
“Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter—rock-man—and upon this rock I will build my church.”[88]
Thus our Lord illustrated in His own practice what He teaches here. He would have men dig down to the rock, and build their spiritual fabrics there; and the rock is nothing else than His own person and His own word. To hear Him, and go away without imbibingHis teaching and putting it into practice, to be nominally a Christian but in reality of the world, that is to build a house upon the sand.
And the test of all spiritual fabrics is their capacity to stand the strain of wild and rough experiences. That is a formidable lesson for an age of rapid workmanship; an age which resents the necessity for underground work and silent preparation.
It suggests a momentous question with regard to the spiritual fabric of our own personal lives, and also in regard to any spiritual enterprise in which we may be engaged: Have we dug deep enough and got down to the rock, or have we preferred quick results to solid foundations? Have we thought Christ’s words impossible of application, and so been content with something short of Him? If so, our work is doomed. It will not last. It will not stand the rain and the wind and the storm.
We see how true this principle has proved in the history of the Church of Christ, which was built on the solid rock of His word and person. The Catholic Church through all vicissitudes hasyet endured. Body after body naming the name of Christ have arisen and seemed to succeed better than the Church for a time, generally through some defect in her teaching or character: for it has been generally through the fault of the Church that they have arisen, and on the neglect of the Church’s duty that they have spread. But these bodies have not exhibited lasting power. Any great catastrophe which, as it were, shatters the structure of human society down to its foundations, brings to naught multitudes of enterprises which seemed successful. But there is one society which has exhibited a marked capacity for lasting, which after whatever vicissitudes has shown that it has still the power of recovery and persistence. This is that Church which is rooted on the word of Christ, which has the succession from His apostles, in which are administered His sacraments according to His appointment, which holds to His apostolic tradition, and appeals back to His sacred Scriptures.
That is the test—to last! We must apply it to our own lives. We know that temptation is both thorough andsearching, and that our moral and religious principles will in different ways be tested to the uttermost. To stand the test and carry our moral being through it all to victory—that is the one thing that matters; and to make this possible there is one sovereign expedient—that is thorough and whole-hearted conversion of our will, our intellect, our affection, to Christ and His word.
“And it came to pass, when Jesus ended these words, the multitudes were astonished at his teaching: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.”
And here we leave the great sermon. It is not, as some suppose, the whole of Christianity. Those who have been inclined so to esteem it have been apt to underrate the amount of theological doctrine which is to be found in it. It postulates, as we have seen, two central doctrines: that of the divinity of Christ’s person, and that of the sinfulness of human nature. But, even so, it is not the whole of Christianity. It begets in us, or develops and deepens, the sense of sin, and so may be said to point to what it does not teach, the atonement by which our Lord has expiated thesins of the world, and brought us back to reconciliation with our Father which is in heaven. But again an atonement which merely secured our forgiveness for past sins would be no real remedy. It would leave us weak as we were before. Nothing can satisfy us but actual and permanent redemption from the power and the taint of sin. Thus again the sermon may be said to point forward to that great supply of moral power which by the coming of the Spirit of God has been given inwardly in the hearts of His people. It is that inward grant of Christlike power—the administration of the Spirit—which is the real essence of Christianity. All else is a preparation for it. Christianity is not so much a statement of the true end or ideal of human life as it is a great spiritual instrument for realizing the end.
The realizing of the moral end of life—that is the test of your Christianity. Be sure of that. The hold we have on our creeds, the use we make of the sacraments, can be judged by one test—do they lead to the formation in us of Christian character? The character may be cleansed and perfected after death,but here and now is our opportunity for laying its foundations deep and firm, and showing its power to absorb the whole of our being. That is the test which we cannot press home upon ourselves too often—am I becoming like Christ? Many will come to Him in that day with a record of their orthodoxy and of their observances, of their brilliant successes in His professed service; but He will protest unto them, “I never knew you.” He “knows” no man in whom He cannot recognize His own likeness.