12 - Chapter 12
XII. A NEW EARTH WHEREIN DWELLETH
RIGHTEOUSNESS.
Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for... a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness (2 Peter 3:13).
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). THE Christian Religion is a religion of hope; and we all know how fruitful for good a reasonable hope firmly held may be. What would our life be without hope? Who could live on through three score years and ten in utter hopelessness? Who could bear up under the troubles and trials, the sorrows and disasters of life if he had no hope of anything in heaven or earth?
Doubtless there are hopes which are false and spurious, hopes that will deceive us and fail us at the last, hopes that will encourage us in indolence, presumption, self-conceit, and lead us on to sorrow, mischief, and disaster. Nevertheless, any hope not positively sinful or wholly irrational is, perhaps, better for man than no hope at all; for, however poor and inadequate it may be, it will serve to keep him going until a worthier hope has taken possession of him. And we all know that the hope set before us in the Gospel is reasonable as well as adequate, worthy, holy, inspiring, ennobling, for it is founded on the conviction that God is the same yesterday, today, and for ever, and that His will must in the end be realised that all things serve God’s sovereign will and carry out His plans and purposes, which are plans and purposes of love to man, that the things which constitute the character of God are worthy of our love, trust, confidence that goodness is infinitely more powerful and enduring than evil, truth than lies, love than hate that the great Judge of all the earth will most certainly do right that truth, righteousness, love, mercy “ are principles to be carried out to the utmost extent, and to be trusted and followed in the direst extremity.”
True, the time has been when the hope of Christians was not in all respects similar to our own. ’ Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner, as ye have seen him go into heaven.’ These words were remembered by the early Christians and interpreted in a certain way they were a source of comfort and strength and joy. The expectation that the ascended Christ would shortly return in glory and in power for the sudden and miraculous establishment of His kingdom this hope sustained the early Christians in the darkest days, and enabled them with earnestness and confidence to do the duty that lay to their hand. When the Master in whom they so thoroughly trusted was taken away from them, when the whole world was arrayed against a handful of men whom it hated, despised, persecuted, how could the first Christians have hopefully set about the work to which they had been called, if they had not been persuaded that Christ would speedily return arrayed in glorious majesty, if they had not been convinced that soon He would emerge from His celestial chamber resplendent in glory, and attended by countless myriads of His Father’s angels? When the early Christians were bitterly opposed and violently persecuted, when even their most faithful efforts seemed unavailing and failure stared them in the face, it did them good to think that the day was coming, yea, was near at hand, when in the most sudden and unexpected way, by some signal manifestation of the power of God, a glorious trans-formation would be effected and men would behold new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. But in the meantime all things seemed to continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
Days, months, years passed, but Christ did not return in power and glory. Generation followed generation, but the mighty transformation had not become a thing of the past.
Nevertheless, during all these years the Christian Church had been increasing in numbers, power, and influence. Faithfully and effectively she had been giving herself up to the work of enlightening the world with Christ’s word of truth, and of permeating the world with His Holy Spirit. And notwithstanding the difficulties and dangers which she had to confront, her work had been abundantly blessed of the Lord, and there had been a movement upward and onward all along the line. Everyone will admit that the nations have gradually become more enlightened, more righteous, more merciful, more humane. But just on account of this success, the attention of Christian men has now become centred upon other aspects of Christian truth. Men have begun to realise that God’s Church is one on earth and in the heavens that the Church on earth is but the visible portion of a great invisible whole “ bound together in the same order of supernatural life.”
“ One army of the living God, To His command we bow, Part of the host have crossed the flood, And part are crossing now.”
We now see, as we never saw before, that the earth is also the dwelling-place of God, and the home of God’s saints. And we are beginning to ask in all seriousness the question, whether we really have been honestly trying heretofore to make the earth worthy of the honour which has thus been conferred upon it, and whether we have been doing our best to bring about a realisation of the prayer, ’ Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven ’?
Now, when we think of the earth as God made it, there can be no doubt that it was a suitable and fitting place for the abode of the Saints of God.
What a marvellous place is this earth on which we live, and which was meant to be to us, for a time at least, not merely a place of existence, but a home.
How interesting it is: how exceedingly fruitful; how surpassingly beautiful. The varied forms of life that are upon the earth, the growth of the way-side flower, the formation of a drop of dew, the coming of the rain, the origin of light and heat, the raising up of the hills, the laying out of the seas do we not find in these and in innumerable other things matters of the deepest interest and well fitted to exercise and educate our intellectual powers? And see how productive the earth is and how able “ to provide without stint the main requisites of human happiness.” Is it not a fruitful garden for man to dwell in? Is it not capable of producing in abundance food for our hunger and water for our thirst? And is it not a labouring machine constantly working for our good? The garden and the harvest-field, the forest and the glade, the mountain and the valley, the river and the ocean, the winds and the waves, the rain and the dew, the light and the heat do they not all in innumerable ways furnish us with the conditions and the means of healthy and happy living? And is not the earth beautiful as well as useful? Is there not beauty everywhere on earth and sky and sea for the eyes that are opened to behold it.
“ Every sort of beauty,” says Mr. Greg in his Enig-mas of Life, “ has been lavished on our allotted home; beauties to enrapture every sense, beauties to satisfy every taste; forms the noblest and the love-liest, colours the most gorgeous and the most delicate, odours the sweetest and the subtlest, harmonies the most soothing and the most stirring... Everything is bestowed in boundless profusion on the scene of our existence; we can conceive or desire nothing more exquisite or perfect than what is round us every hour.”
“ God made the country, and man made the town.”
It is only in a subordinate and qualified sense that there is any truth in these familiar words. For God made man, and God has given him strength and skill; and anything that man can do is simply a shaping into other forms, and a putting into new relationships the matter which God has prepared for his use. And it is to God that man owes the inspi-ration towards everything that is wise and good and worthy in his works in the country and in the town. But there is one thing in the life of man, whether it be in the country or in the town, which is not due to God. To the Christian the facts of nature are the acts of God; but to the Christian there is one thing in existence which is not a fact of nature, but an unnatural fact. Sin was not called into being by God. Evil formed no part of the original constitution of things. Man is himself responsible for sin and for all the sorrows and privations and miseries that have followed in its train.
God made man in His own image, and He meant man to love Him, and to live for Him. But He knew that a forced love is no love at all, and that a mechanical obedience is no obedi-ence at all. And so God endowed man with that freedom which is his grandest characteristic that free will without which real love and true service are impossible, but with which, alas, dis-obedience and sin may quite easily arise.
And, as we all know, man chose that alterna-tive which he ought carefully to have avoided.
Thoughtlessly or wilfully he preferred evil to good, the suggestions of Satan to the known will of God. And so the responsibility for the moral evil that is in the world rests solely with the free agents who have sinned.
We live in a Paradise of God’s arranging; but it is a Paradise where the lives of many have been made sad and miserable by the folly and the sin of man. “ The world which we inhabit is,” says B. F. C. Costelloe, “ the world our fathers made, and it is beset with the result of old ancestral sin: for it is the tragic property of wrong that its ill consequences affect not only him who does it, but also those to whom his life is bound in this great family of struggling souls.” And even now men cause evil things to be in what ought to have been a fair and delightful Paradise. Even now the sins of men cast a dark shadow where all ought to be purity and peace.
Even now men do what they ought not to do, and leave undone duties which they ought to perform. Only too often even now the evil hearts of men constrain and urge them on to vex and grieve and injure and persecute their fellow men and so they increase the evil that is upon the earth; that evil from which have come the trials, the troubles, the privations, the sorrows, the suffer-ingswhich are so often to be met with in the lives of men. But we who have faith in God do not believe that this state of matters will prevail upon the earth for ever. God’s in fcfee heaven^, and so it must sooner or later be all right with the earth God is on His throne overruling all things, and we who have faith in God are persuaded that there is a limit to the mischief that can be done by sinful man. Yea, because God hath already brought near His righteousness in Jesus Christ, we cannot believe that selfishness and injustice will characterise for ever the conduct of man towards his brother man. The spirit of Christ and His law will yet bear sway on the earth. Love and not selfishness will yet be the constraining power in men’s lives, and justice and considerateness will yet be the distinguishing marks of all those rules and regulations in accordance with which the wealth of the world is distributed. We who have faith in God look for a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. We believe that the kingdom of God will yet come, and that God’s will will yet be done on earth, as it is in heaven. And is there not, after all, a good reason for the hope that is in us? Are there not to be seen by us almost everywhere signs and indications in-numerable of the coming of that for which we look?
For, notwithstanding the backward state of some countries, is there not on the whole an upward movement among the nations? In spite of the selfishness and sin still in the world, are not men becoming more righteous, more considerate, more merciful, more humane in their feelings and sympathies? The teaching, the example, and the spirit of Christ have had a wonderfully beneficial effect upon the hearts and lives of men, ay even upon the conditions under which and the surround-ingsamid which men and women fulfil the task which destiny has set down for them. Christ’s life has been a fountain of new life in the world, His spirit a source of inspiration, His teaching and example the light of the world, and love and loyalty to Him a mighty power in the lives of men, constraining them to all manner of good deeds.
It is true that some have been inclined to doubt the truth of this assertion.
“The nineteenth wave of the ages rolls Now deathward since his death and birth, Has he fed full men’s starved-out souls? Has he brought freedom upon earth? Or are there less oppressions done On this wild world beneath the sun?”
These are very clever lines, but the questions to which they give expression are inspired by the spirit of prejudice or exaggeration. Had the poet said that Christians have not always been so true to the spirit and teaching of Christ as they ought to have been, and that consequently the world has not made the progress it ought to have made, we could all have thoroughly agreed with him. But we cannot shut our eyes to facts, and so we must know something of the blessings which Christianity has brought or has been the chief agent in bringing to mankind.
Innumerable are the improvements and ameliorations and reformations which have followed in the train of Christianity. “ The high conception that has been formed of the sanctity of human life, the protection of infancy, the elevation and final emancipation of the slave classes, the suppression of barbarous games, the creation of a vast and multifarious organisation of charity, and the education of the imagination by the Christian type, constitute together a movement of philanthropy which,” says Mr. Lecky in his History of European Morals, “ has never been paralleled or approached in the Pagan world.”
Now, when we remember what has been done by Christianity in the past, and when we think of the way in which the spirit and the teaching and the life of Christ have commended themselves to and have taken possession of the hearts and minds of multitudes of the most intelligent and influential men and women of our time, we cannot but be hopeful with regard to the future; we must believe in the progress which is yet to be made by us if only Christian men and women are true to the calling wherewith they are called of the Lord. But if we really wish to bring about that for which we look, we must endeavour to live up to our wishes: we must work along the line of our prayers. We must look to our hearts and lives, for out of the heart are the issues of life; and when we are cultivating the garden of our own lives, we are doing much to advance the Kingdom of God, for we are setting an example which, in the way of influence, must powerfully act upon the men and women who are round about us. And we must look to the way in which, in all our relation-ships, we act towards those who are brought into contact with us day after day. Think of the misery that is caused in this world by envy, malice, uncharitableness, evil-speaking, lies, dishonesty: and try to imagine what a changed place the earth would be if these things had no place in our hearts and lives, and if all men were true to Christ’s golden rule, His new commandment, and His doctrine of the brotherhood of humanity. And we must carefully bear in mind the duties that devolve upon us as citizens, who in free countries like our own have practically the making of the laws in our own hands. It is our Christian duty to see to it that the laws of the land are impartially ad-ministered, and that in themselves these laws are equitable and righteous, and for the good of the whole community. How difficult it is to make such laws we all know! But that is all the more reason why men possessed of the spirit of Christ and anxious for the advancement of His kingdom should pay strict attention to the duties devolving upon them as citizens, for upon the nature and character of the laws of the land depends to a great extent the question of the approach of that for which we look a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
Moreover, if that for which we look is at no very distant date to become a reality, we must cultivate that humane spirit which is ready to pass the bounds of our country and kindred, and to go on errands of mercy to the ignorant, the needy, the helpless, the oppressed, wherever they may be. On the face of the earth there are still many nations and tribes which are steeped in ignorance, superstition, or barbarism. There are still multi-tudes who need our prayers, our sympathy, our example, our help. And if they do not get these things it will be long, very long indeed, before that human eyes can see that for which Christians look a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. But we will not fail to help them we will not shirk altogether the white man’s burden if we are true to the calling wherewith we are called of the Lord. Freely we have received, and freely will we give and nobly will we do, if we remember the example of Christ, and bear in mind His words, ’ Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world.’
Now, when we cease to be ’ fervent in spirit, serving the Lord,’ when we are tempted to weari-ness in well-doing, when we are disappointed and disheartened by an apparent want of success in our efforts to advance the Kingdom of God on earth, it will help us greatly if we remember:
I. The inherent difficulty that there always is in the doing of good.
We all know how difficult it is to drive away the misconceptions and prejudices and superstitions and erroneous beliefs which have taken possession of the minds of men. And we all know how difficult it is to rid our-selves of evil habits which we have carelessly or wilfully formed. Bad habits are easily and quickly called into being, but to get rid of them when formed severely tries the temper and the strength of the best of men. For they come almost to be part and parcel of our nature, and to separate ourselves from them is like to self-destruction. But the formation of good habits is an affair of the greatest difficulty. For here we have to go against the grain of the natural man, and our selfish desires and sinful inclinations and un-hallowed passions proclaim war against any and every attempt to control or restrict or restrain them. And when for a prolonged period we have been the slaves of evil habits the task which the self-reformer sets himself is difficult in the extreme. ’ Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil.’
We need not be disheartened, therefore, when we do not meet with all the success we could wish for in our many and varied efforts to serve the Lord and to advance His kingdom on the earth. To enlighten the minds of men, to purify their hearts, to ennoble their lives, to give an upward tendency to their thoughts and desires and wishes, to take part and lot with Christ in the regeneration of the world this is a glorious work, but it is a difficult and trying one, and he who would have a share in it must not expect to accomplish all his wishes in a moment, and as by the wave of a magician’s wand.
II. We must carefully remember that there always is a harvest to our sowing a result from our faithful efforts to serve God and to advance His kingdom although we may not be able to see it in all its fulness or to put a right estimate upon it.
Some result from our labours, if they are earnest and worthy, we are likely to see. But the sum total of the results accomplished by us, we may never know. And the results which we cannot trace may be infinitely more important than those which we can trace. In the past the good work done in the world was not wholly accomplished by the few great men whose labours obviously have not failed and whose names have been handed down in honour to our day. In the past there were millions of unknown toilers whose humbler lives have done good service to mankind. Their labours were not in vain, though they are unremembered now, and though they were unnoticed even in their own day. And just so is it with ourselves. It is not the few but the many who are carrying on the world’s work so that it may be well with those who are to come after us. Multitudes of men and women are blessing the world by their labours, and yet their labours are left unnoticed and we cannot trace the results of their good deeds.
Nevertheless, none of these good deeds are ever lost. They never fail of a good result. They leave indelible traces on the souls of those who do them: they are recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life: and they all go to the making of that mighty stream of goodness by which Providence fertilises the ages. The bread cast upon the waters may not be found for many days; but found at last it shall be by some one or other. The rain when it has fallen disappears beneath the surface of the earth, and for a time no trace of it is seen; but when the warm and genial weather comes again, it causes the earth to abound in vegetation. And equally productive and salutary are the good deeds done by men and women.
“ We scatter seeds with careless hand, We dream we ne’er shall see them more; But for a thousand years Their fruit appears In weeds that mar the land Or healthful store. The deeds we do, the words we speak, Into still air they seem to fleet;
We deem them ever past, But they shall last: In the dread judgment They and we shall meet.”
Think, for a moment, of the greatest work that ever was done on earth. Think of that unknown life that for thirty years was lived at Nazareth.
Think of the three years’ patient preaching amid abuse, insult, contempt. When Jesus died no life seemed so unsuccessful and so unproductive as His. When our Saviour hung upon the Cross His life appeared to be a total failure, for all His disciples and followers had forsaken Him, and the penitent thief seemed to be the only soul that He had for His hire. But the Saviour’s Cross became the throne of His power. And ever since that day all eyes have been drawn to Him who, on the Cross, was lifted up; and even those who do not professedly belong to Him have had to admit that His influence on the hearts and lives of men has been, and still is, the greatest and the most beneficent the world has ever known.
Let us think on these things, and let us lay them to heart. Let us trust in the Lord and do good, assured of this, that no deed done for Christ ever fails of a result or of a reward.
’ Let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.’ ’ Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.’