Old Wine and New: Occasional Discourses

by Joseph Cross

With such spectacles the Corinthians were not unacquainted. About two hundred years before St. Paul wrote this epistle, Lucius Mummius, the Roman consul, had conquered all Achaia; had destroyed Corinth, Chalcus and Thebes; and, by order of the senate, had been honored with a splendid triumph and the surname of Achaicus. Over the same people the apostle now has a triumph, but it is a triumph of very different character—a triumph in Christ by the power of the gospel, the glory of which he ascribes to God alone. As in a Roman triumph the smoke of altars and the odor of incense filled the city with a pleasant perfume, so the name and the doctrine of Christ preached by him and his colleagues pervaded Corinth and all the surrounding country—wherever those holy men had labored—with odors as of Eden; and the apostles appeared as triumphing in Christ over idols, demons, devils—over ignorance, prejudice, scepticism, superstition, false philosophy, and all the powers of darkness; yet appropriating no praise to themselves, but attributing all to the wisdom and the mercy of God. Indeed, it is God's triumph, not theirs. He has first triumphed over them, and is now making them the partners of his triumph. Better expressing the sense of the Greek original, Trench and Alford read, "leadeth us in triumph;" and other eminent critics give us substantially the same rendering; while Conybeare and Howson, in their admirable work on the "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," thus translate the language of the text: "But thanks be to God, who leads me on from place to place in the train of his triumph, to celebrate his victory over the enemies of Christ; and by me sends forth the knowledge of himself, a stream of fragrant incense, throughout the world." A pretty free translation, it is true; but embodying, no doubt, the precise meaning of the writer. "St. Paul regarded himself," says Fausett, "as a signal trophy of God's victorious power in Christ; his Almighty Conqueror leading him about through all the cities of the Greek and Roman world, as an illustrious example of his power at once to subdue and to save." The foe of Christ was now the servant of Christ. Grace divine had subdued and disarmed him. The rebel, the persecutor, the conspirator with hell, was brought into subjection, and rejoiced in his burden as a blessing. As to be led in triumph by man is miserable degradation, so to be led in triumph by the Lord of hosts is highest honor and blessedness. Our only true triumphs are God's triumphs over us. His defeats of us are our only true victories. Near the gate of Damascus the lion is smitten into a lamb by the hand of the Crucified; and in a short time the lamb has become his bravest champion. Brought into willing obedience, he falls into Christ's triumphal train, ascends into Christ's triumphal chariot; and, in full sympathy with Christ, becomes the partner of his triumph. Bengal writes—"who shows us in triumph"—that is, not only as conquered by Christ, but as conquering with him. Our victory is the fruit of his victory over us; and the open showing of that, so far from being our shame, is our greatest glory. Therefore saith the apostle—and it is the most heroic utterance of the prince of heroes: "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." And from this evangel of the crucifixion, which he lives to preach and will die to defend, arises the fragrant odor with which he and his companions are filling the world. As the approach of the triumphal procession is made manifest by the sweet perfume scattered far and wide by incense-bearers in the conqueror's train, so the heavenly Victor makes use of his vanquished to herald the victories of his grace and diffuse like fragrant odors the saving knowledge of his name. It is the triumph of grace over sin, the triumph of truth over error, the triumph of faith over unbelief, the triumph of divine love over human selfishness. It is the right triumphing over the wrong, the pure triumphing over the impure, the heavenly triumphing over the earthly, the spiritual triumphing over the sensual, the eternal triumphing over the temporal, the true religion triumphing over all superstition. It is God by Christ triumphing in man, and man through Christ triumphing with God; who leads us in triumph as his captives, shows us in triumph as his trophies, and "maketh manifest by us the savor of his knowledge in every place."

You see, my brethren, that the apostolic work was missionary work—that the Church, as constituted by these heroic and holy men under the leadership of their divine Lord, was a missionary society—the primitive propaganda of the Christian faith. They were sent forth by the Captain of their salvation to conquer the nations for Christ, and gather captives from all countries into his triumphal procession. For this work St. Paul was added to the original number, and from his peculiar fitness by education and spiritual endowment became the most successful of them all. And the constitution of the Church is still unchanged; and our high calling in Christ Jesus has never been revoked; and your bishops and clergy to-day are but heralds and incense-bearers in the train of Immanuel's triumph; and every faithful communicant, and every baptized believer, and every humble neophyte, are triumphing with the heavenly Conqueror. Surely here is a demand for all our faith, for all our zeal, for all our moral heroism; and for an embassy like ours, "more than twelve legions of angels" might have been commissioned from the skies. Alas! where sleep our energies? where slumber the holy fires within our hearts? Calm and secure, here we sit in our Christian assemblies. With something of the Spirit we pray, with something of the Spirit we sing, and with much of the understanding we do both. With reverent delight we hear the word of grace, and with unspeakable gladness welcome its revelations of the unseen and the eternal. With our best faculties we inquire into its meaning, seek elucidations of it in ancient literature and modern criticism, and rejoice in its accumulating confirmations from history and from science. We worship with a comely ritual derived from the fathers, and celebrate the sacramental mysteries of our redemption in words that have warmed the hearts of martyrs. But while thus occupied, how little think we of the millions around us who for the same mercies are constantly invoking Heaven with the voice of all their sins and sorrows! For us, Christ "hath abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light by his gospel;" they follow their friends to the burial, and mourn for them without hope, no star gleaming over the grave, nor seraph beckoning out of the darkness beyond; they lie down to die, but above the pallid day no halo gathers, no seraph wings are hovering, no sweet familiar voices inviting to an eternal fellowship of joy. Have we no loving compassions for them, no desire to rescue and save their souls alive? Oh! look at the heathen world, where Satan holds undisputed empire, and man has never felt the power of Christian civilization. Look at the dark places of the earth, full of the habitations of cruelty; where Belial reigns supreme, and Moloch revels in fire and blood. Look at the countries that languish under the curse of the Crescent, where sense misnamed faith triumphs over reason, and strong delusion has quenched the last beam of divine knowledge, and obscured every ray of intellectual truth. Look at Jacob's heritage of milk, and honey, "destroyed by the wickedness of them that dwell therein"—the most beautiful of lands, the very garden of God, by ignorance and barbarism turned into a sterile waste and delivered up to the tenantry of noisome and noxious creatures. Look at the exiled children of Abraham, a vagabond race, roaming everywhere, and nowhere finding rest; the curse of their rejection branded on every brow, and reprobation written in every feature of an unmistakable physiognomy; their synagogues little better than Mohammedan mosques and pagan temples, their worship an empty and abrogated ceremonial, and Mammon substituted for the Messiah. Look at the villanous impostures of the Vatican, and the notorious corruptions of faith and worship wherever the Roman mystagogue holds sway; the habitual invocation of saints and martyrs; the adoration of images, pictures, and relics; the monstrous abuses and manifold abominations of the confessional; the doctrines of indulgence, purgatory, and human merit; the blasphemous dogmas of papal supremacy and infallibility, and the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin; with the legitimate and lamentable fruits—an abject and atheistic priesthood, and a thriftless and degraded people. Look at your own country, Christian though it is called—your own city, highly as it is favored of heaven; and see how far the masses lie from the living God; how his name is profaned, his altars abandoned, while every place of amusement is thronged with merry votaries of pleasure, and drunken men reel athwart the path of church-going people, and the house of her whose steps take hold on hell stands in the very shadow of the sanctuary, and libidinous songs and blasphemous oaths form the horrible counterpart to your sacred psalmody; on all sides temples of Bacchus and Beelzebub, with scenes of revelry and riot, debauchery and blood, where dissipation discards all disguise, impurity all shame, and impiety all fear. Look at your Western States and Territories—fields demanding a hundred missionaries where you have one; a numerous and constantly increasing population scattered over a vast extent of country, with only here and there a church and a school, like solitary torches a thousand miles apart struggling to dispel the deeper than Egyptian darkness of half a world; while Rome is rearing her temples and convents everywhere, everywhere establishing her brotherhoods and sisterhoods, founding orphan-asylums and educational institutes, exercising a powerful influence over the development of the youthful mind, and poisoning the wells whence the people are to draw the water of their salvation; and heresy and schism are setting up their tabernacles, and agnostic infidelity is travelling pari passu with population, and myriads of redeemed immortals are perishing for lack of knowledge. Look at your fair and sunny South-land, lately devastated by contending armies; churches in ashes, cities in ruins, fenceless plantations growing up to forests; bishops and clergymen wofully impoverished, and forced to resort to secular occupations for subsistence; earnest and anxious spirits, shipwrecked in the collision of sectarian crafts, struggling desperately in the dark waters of doubt, and longing to see the life-boats of the Church upon the billows; four million slaves in a state of semi-barbarism suddenly set at liberty like so many unfledged cagelings turned out to the wintry tempest, amidst hawks, and owls, and eagles, and every beast of prey; many of them already relapsing into their ancestral superstitions, suspecting one another as wizards and witches, practising hideous rites and abominable incantations, worshipping some exceptionally ugly old hag as a new incarnation of the Divinity, and dancing with demoniac noises over the graves of their dead. No fancy pictures are these which I present, nor overwrought descriptions of realities. Impossible were it to find language or figures to exaggerate the wretchedness of humanity unrelieved by the gracious revelations of God. In comparison of the moral ruin around us, what was the late catastrophe of a hundred South-American cities, whelming in a common destruction men, women and children to the number of forty or fifty thousand? Should some pilgrim from a distant sphere, traversing the ethereal space with wings of light, chance to cross the orbit of our fallen planet, and cast a momentary glance down at our condition, might he not hurry past with a shudder, suspecting that hell had emptied itself upon earth, and the unhappy race had been given over unredeemed to the dominion of the Devil?

But why dwell on this dismal theme? Oh! I could tell you of victories demanding another David to sing them or another Isaiah to record them, till every loving heart should leap for joy and exult in hope of millennial triumph. But I would fain stir your compassion. I am feeling for your purse-strings among your heart-strings. I want to play a tune upon your spirits which shall echo in Colorado, and make music in New Mexico, and reverberate from the heights of the Himalaya, and gladden the hills round about Jerusalem. Can we survey the valley of vision, and not prophesy to all the winds of God? Can we see millions of immortal beings crushed by the dominion of Satan, and not cry amain to the Prince of peace to come and unseat the great usurper, and establish his own universal and everlasting empire? And how shall we pray successfully, if we answer not our own prayers by pouring our offerings into the Lord's treasury? How shall we arrest the long carnival of crime, and error, and delusion, and infidelity, if we bestir not all our Christian energies, occupying every available position, evoking every beneficent agency of the Church, barricading with Bibles and Prayer-Books the teeming way to ruin, and bridging with the blessed cross the mouth of the flaming pit? Thus, my brethren! may we save souls from death, and give new joy to benevolence in other worlds, and gladden the heart that eighteen hundred years ago quivered for us upon the point of the Roman spear, and fill the reverberant universe with the shout of the apostle—"Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place!"

[[1]] Preached at a missionary meeting in New York, 1868.

XVI.

FRATERNAL FORGIVENESS.[[1]]

So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.—Matt. xviii. 35.

When John Wesley was in Georgia, he was dining one day with Gov. Oglethorpe. A negro waiter at the table committing a careless blunder, the governor said to his guest: "See this good-for-nothing servant; he is always doing wrong, though he knows that I never forgive." "Does your Excellency never forgive?" replied Mr. Wesley; "then it is to be hoped that your Excellency never does wrong." A beautiful reproof; and the more effectual, no doubt, from its gentleness. Those who need forgiveness for their own faults, certainly ought to forgive the faults of others. "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven;" but "he shall have judgment without mercy, who hath showed no mercy." This is the lesson taught us in the gospel for the day,[[2]] which I shall endeavor to unfold and apply. For moral elevation, the passage is very remarkable. Found in some old Greek or Roman volume—in some parchment dug up from Herculaneum or Pompeii—on some tablet or cylinder discovered amidst the débris of Nineveh or Babylon—it would have awakened the wonder of the world, and men would never have been weary of praising its transcendent charity.