01.02.06. The Eclipse of Hope

Part II Chapter VI. THE ECLIPSE OF HOPE

It would be inevitable that, in the condition of things described in the previous chapter, the primitive, hope of Christ’s second coming in glory should pass into utter eclipse If the Messianic reign had begun, and the kingdom had really been set up, why should Christians longer look for the Lord from heaven to establish His millen­nial throne? The cry, “Behold the kingdom!” now filled all mouths; the lavish splendors of the papal court dazzled all eyes; and there was little occasion for that other cry to be longer sounded, —Behold, He cometh!”—“the cry which was first uttered by that “brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ,” and which was continued for two hundred years by his faithful fellow-sufferers. So it was that Satan’s counterfeit drove the gen­uine coin out of circulation, till the early advent hope of the Church passed into almost complete oblivion.

Harnack, in his masterly article on the Millen­nium, shows that Augustine was the first theolo­gian “to grasp and elaborate the idea that the Church is the kingdom of Christ and the city of God; . . . that the millennial kingdom had com­menced with the appearing of Christ, and was, therefore, an accomplished fact.” And he adds that, “by this doctrine of Augustine’s, the old millenarianism, though not completely extirpated, was at least banished from the realm of the dog­matic. 1 Of course, as the papacy developed more and more subsequent to Augustine’s day, more and more was the millennial hope of the Church ob­scured. For that hope stands in direct antago­nism to every principle of the Hierarchy. As a learned writer has said: “It never pleased, but always gave offense to, the Church of Rome, be­cause it did not suit that scheme of Christianity which they have drawn. The Apocalypse of John supposed the true Church under hardships and persecutions; but the Church of Rome, suppos­ing Christ reigns already by His vicar the pope, hath been in prosperity and greatness, and the commanding Church in Christendom for a long time. This has made the Church of Rome al­ways have an ill eye upon this doctrine, because it seemed to have an ill eye upon her; and, as she grew in splendor and greatness, she eclipsed and obscured it more and more, so that it would have been lost out of the world as an obsolete error if it had not been revived by some at the Reformation,” (Thomas Burnet, 1635-1700).

It is most striking to observe how, as the apos­tasy went on, not only the teaching on this sub­ject ceased, but the symbols, and worship, and ordinances of the Church became so changed as to silence their testimony to Christ’s second com­ing, and to throw that doctrine into eclipse. The seduction of the Church from its primitive simplicity was accomplished mainly by these two influences: pagan philosophy corrupting her doc­trine, and pagan ceremonies corrupting her wor­ship. Both of these were inherently hostile to the chaste and artless Chiliasm of the apostolic age. The primitive hope was intolerable to rational theology, because it could not be surveyed and mapped out upon its logic charts. Hence, no sooner had philosophy been installed in the apostle’s chair than it began to wage war upon the apostle’s doctrine. As the Apocalypse was regarded as the stronghold of millenarianism, determined siege was made against this book: its authority was ques­tioned, its value discounted, till it was finally driven from the canon; and, so far as the Greek Church was concerned, it was denied a place in Holy Scripture for centuries, and consequently “Chiliasm remained in its grave.” 2 Nor was this the worst injury emanating from this source. Pagan philosophy infused its own notions of a future life into ecclesiastical theol­ogy. It deftly substituted the Platonic doctrine of the immortality of the soul for the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. In har­mony with this change came in the notion of judgment being administered immediately after death in the disembodied state, instead of being reserved till the coming of the Lord and the raising of the dead, —a conception as charac­teristic of all heathen religions as it is foreign to the teaching of both the Old Testament and the New. This eschatology of the underworld, which even to this day so deeply colors our the­ology, could not fail to make strongly against the original advent faith of the Church. For it changed the up-look of primitive Christianity to the down-look of pagan mythology, by making death the object of consideration instead of the coming of Christ. This was the master-stroke of Satanic art, —the substitution of death for life, of mortality for resurrection, in the hopes of the Church. It is a perversion so radical and subtle that to this day many Christians are blinded by it, so that they imagine that their dying means the same thing as Christ’s coming. Twin coun­terfeits of paganism are these two; ritualism cor­rupting the liturgy of the Church with demon-worship, and Platonism corrupting the eschatol­ogy of the Church with death-worship. Instead of the expectation being fixed upon Christ’s ad­vent, it became fixed upon the soul’s exit; death was glorified into a good angel; and thus mor­tality, Satan’s masterpiece, supplanted resurrec­tion, Christ’s masterpiece, and the “Terrible Captain Sepulchre and his Standard-bearer Cor­ruption “were crowned and enthroned in the place of the Coming Christ, who is “the Resurrection and the Life.” In the gospel, death is made neither the terminus ad quem, [earliest point in time; Ed.] nor the terminus a quo, [latest point in time; Ed.]; that towards which we look for the consum­mation of our hopes, or from which we enter upon our complete sanctification and final perfection. “Not that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life,” is the inspired confession of the believer. And nothing will so completely quench the can­dle of our true hope as the opposite idea that death is the supreme deliverer to be waited for. The ceremonies which gradually grew up in the Church tended to the same result. For as worship more and more took the place of the Word in the Christian assembly, the contem­plation was withdrawn from the glories of the age to come. Purgatory was substituted for Paradise; masses for the disembodied souls in the former supplanted scriptural exhortations to the attainment of the rewards and glories of the latter. The lamp of prophecy, which the Lord left in the hands of his waiting Bride, had at last been exchanged for the tapers of heathenism. “We almost see the ceremonial of the Gentiles introduced into the Church under pretense of re­ligion,” exclaims Jerome, “piles of candles lighted while yet the sun is shining. Great honor do such persons render to the blessed martyrs, think­ing with miserable tapers to illuminate those whom the Lamb in the midst of the throne shines upon with the splendor of His majesty.” 3 It will be seen from this saying which way the candle of paganism throws its beams, as compared with the true light which Christ gave to His Church. “We have also a more sure word of prophecy,” writes Peter, “whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in your hearts.” Here is the lamp which amid earth’s night was to shed its rays far on towards the coming King, to meet and mingle with the light of His returning glory, “until the day break and the shadows flee away.” What a blow was it to the bridal hopes of the Church when ceremony took the place of scriptural preaching and expo­sition in the assemblies of Christians!

Observe the same suppression of primitive teaching in the Christian ordinances. Baptism, as instituted by our Lord, bore graphic witness to the first resurrection, and hence at every ad­ministration it uttered a visible “Behold he cometh!” Hear the apostolic exposition of this ordinance: “Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4): a text which shows, says Canon Westcott, that the very entrance of the primitive Christians into the Church “was apprehended under the form of a resurrection.” But as the rite became mutilated in the Western Church, the tongue with which it once proclaimed our advent hope was plucked out, and its testimony silenced, so that, as now widely practiced, the ordinance gives no suggestion of resurrection. 4 The Lord’s Supper, also, was not only robbed of its millennial witness, but made to express a completely contrary idea. For gradually the doc­trine of “the real presence “became associated with the communion. Originally the eucharist proclaimed the real absence of the Lord. —“This do in remembrance of Me” was its voice. We do not remember a present friend, but one who is absent. “For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death until He come.” —We do not wait the coming of one who is with us, but of one who is away from us. The Jews to this day keep a vacant seat for Eli­jah at their paschal meal, remembering the word of the Lord, “Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dread­ful day of the Lord,” thus making the feast an­ticipative as well as commemorative. And while the Bridegroom tarries, there is ever a vacant seat at the Lord’s table, left empty for the Lord Him­self, who distinctly said at the beginning that He would not henceforth participate in the cup with His disciples till He should drink it new with them in the Father’s kingdom. Of course, in the person of the unseen Holy Spirit, Christ is ever with His Church. But visibly and corporeally He is not present; and the communion was or­dained to proclaim this fact through the entire in­terim from His departure to His return. Alas! it was a sad blow to the Church’s advent hope when these two sacramental witnesses to our Lord’s return were brought into a conspiracy of silence concerning that blessed event, while one of them was made to bear false testimony, pro­claiming a literal presence of the Lord in body and blood, thus hushing into silence the “until He come” which the ordinance was originally commissioned to utter.

Thus was Christ’s prophecy literally fulfilled: “While the Bridegroom tarried they all slumbered and slept.” And it was fulfilled exactly as the language signifies. For the word translated “slumbered “is nustazw, to nod. At first there were faithful witnesses, such as Nepos, Methodius, Apollinaris, and Lactantius, who sought to rouse the lethargic Church, but there was only a mo­mentary awakening, followed by a deeper relapse into slumber. The Church drowsed and nodded, then fell into a profound sleep; and during the long period of the Dark Ages the advent faith dis­appeared. Not utterly, indeed, for in Harnack’s expressive phrase, “It still lived on in the lower strata of Christian society; and in certain under­currents of tradition it was transmitted from century to century.” That is, while the harlot Church, including the great body of nominal Christians, became completely dead to this truth, the true Bride, the woman in the wilderness, obscure, despised, and persecuted, still cherished it in secret. Hence all through the ages we find glimmering rays from the Virgin’s lamp falling here and there in the surrounding darkness. The Waldensian candlestick, with its motto, “Lux in tenebris,” [light in darkness; Ed.], threw stray beams of advent light into the encircling gloom. Read the following from the Noble Lesson, a famous treatise originating in that body about A. D. 1200: “O brethren, hear a noble lesson: we ought often to watch and be in prayer; for we see that this world is near its fall. We ought to be very careful to do good works, for we see that the end of the world is approaching.” That other band of sackcloth witnesses, the Paulicians, gave similar testimony. For while the great body of Christendom had settled down into a contented earthly citizenship, these hunted and hated Protestants saluted each other as sunekdhmoi,— “Fellow-exiles;” and while the blind virgin-worshipers adored the Mother of God, these spoke of the Jerusalem above, the Mother of us all, as that from whence Christ, the “Fore­runner, having for us entered,” would surely come again. Even from within the Catholic communion came stray testimonies, like that of Bernard of Cluny in the twelfth century:—

“The world is very evil. The times are waxing late. Be sober and keep vigil. The Judge is at the gate.” But these were only broken rays, feeble heart-reflections from those who had kept sight of “The Bright and Morning Star,” in the mid­night of the Church’s apostasy. We do not for­get that there were powerful outbreaks of expec­tation of Christ’s return, like that which marked the dawn of the thousandth year of the Christian era. But the conception which characterized these was that of a Judge coming in terror, not of a Bridegroom returning to bring joy to his waiting Bride. The patience of hope revived only in a panic of fear. The forebodings of this period having passed, Christendom relapsed once more into profound slumber concerning her prim­itive hope, —a slumber disturbed only here and there by the dreams of those whom she counted visionaries and fanatics. So it continued till the dawn of the Reformation.

Endnotes:

1 The article, “Millennium,” by Prof. Adolph Harnack, of Berlin, to which we constantly refer in this chapter, is in the last edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It is the ablest exhibi­tion, in brief compass, of the primitive and historical claims of pre-millenarianism, and of the causes of the Church’s decline therefrom, with which we are acquainted.

2 Professor Harnack, avowing that millenarianism “was in former times associated—to all appearance inseparably associ­ated—with the gospel itself,” adds that “it can only exist along with the unsophisticated faith of the early Christians;” that “the millenarians of the ancient Church, just because they were mil­lenarians, despised dogmatic in the sense of philosophic theol­ogy.” Professor Van Oosterzee also observes that there is an irreconcilable “inner discrepancy between the modern theolog­ical philosophy and the prophetic and apostolical Scriptures.” [Person and Work of the Redeemer, p. 450.] 3 Adv. Visilandum,c.ii.

4 Dean Stanley declares that the change from the primitive form of immersion to sprinkling has “set aside the larger part of the apostolic language regarding baptism, and altered the very meaning thereof” (Essay on Baptism). Dean Goulburn, regret­ting that immersion, which is the rule of his church, has been discontinued, says that, were it still practiced, “The water clos­ing over the entire person would then preach of the grave which yawns for every child of Adam, and which one day will engulf us all in its drear abyss. But that abyss will be the womb and seed-plot of a new life. Animation having been for one instant suspended beneath the water, —a type this of the interruption of man’s energies by death, —the body is lifted up again into the air by way of expressing emblematically the new birth of resur­rection.” [Bampton Lectures, 1850, Oxford Edition, p. 18.].