It is of this unity, brethren, that this day testifies; which is therefore a more wonderful and glorious day than that which testifies of the ascension of the Son to the right hand of the Father, or of the descent of the Spirit to fill the earth and the hearts of men with rivers of living water. But we can know little of the depth and sweetness of this day, if we forget how Christ revealed the mystery of it; how He both said and proved that to know Him is to know the Father! For that blessed doctrine, upon which Fathers and Reformers lived and died, we are fast substituting one which seems to put the Son at an infinite distance from the Father; which seems to make the will of the Son not the revelation of the Father's will, but the contrast to it. Nay, our orthodoxy—so strangely like what would have been called heresy in other days—is even daring to affirm that we may believe anything dark or malignant respecting the character of the Father, if only we gather from the Bible that that is its testimony concerning Him. Frightful contradiction! to set up a book against Him whom we believe to be its author! to say that a book, which is from first to last a denunciation of false and cruel gods, may possibly proclaim to us a false and cruel God, and that we should be bound to accept its message if it did! Gracious Father, deliver thy Church from doctrines which teach us that we are not to hallow thy name above all books and letters which thou in thy mercy hast bestowed upon us! Deliver us from those who teach us that we can see Thee anywhere except in thy Only-begotten Son; or that, if Thou art revealed in Him, Thou canst be anything but Light without darkness, Truth without falsehood, Love without cruelty. Teach us to hate all counterfeits of Thee; all notions of Thee which are derived from our darkness, our falsehood, our cruelty. Teach us to worship the Eternal Trinity, the One God of perfect charity blessed for ever. Amen.
DISCOURSE XVII.
THE TWO FATHERS.
[Lincoln's Inn, First Sunday after Trinity, May 25, 1856.]
St. John VIII. 43.
Why do ye not understand my speech? Even because ye cannot hear my word.
Those words of which I spoke to you last Sunday seem to have taken a sudden hold of some who listened to them. 'While He was speaking these things, many believed on Him.' When we recollect what those words were, we may at first wonder at this impression. He spoke of 'the Father being always with Him; of His doing always those things which pleased the Father.' Was not His discourse concerning a Father that which provoked His hearers most; that which shocked some of them most? Undoubtedly. And yet, if He spoke truly, if He did come to bear witness of a Father, if the Father did bear witness of Him, this must have been the discourse which attracted His hearers most—which had most power over them. The revelation of a man who was always in the presence of God, who delighted in Him, in whom He delighted, was the revelation which the heart and conscience of every man was waiting for. The heart and conscience might be closed against it by sensual indulgence, still more by spiritual pride; but it could break through both; it could prove itself true by overcoming both.
In this case, then, as in like cases which have occurred before, I should be very loth to explain away St. John's words,—to criticise the quality of the faith which he attributes to these hearers of our Lord. If we say, as some people would, that it was mere head faith, I do not think we shall make our own minds clearer; I am sure we shall be in great danger of denying the facts which the Apostle reports to us. Our Lord's words did not appeal to the understanding; they were not argumentative; we cannot account for their influence by any processes of logic. So far as one can judge from a very simple statement, they went straight to the heart; the faith which they called forth was a faith of the heart.
Does it appear, then, that the men who thus believed in Christ were satisfactory to Him? Let us follow the narrative. It will tell us all upon that subject that we need to know.