Immagini della pagina
PDF
ePub

VI.

INSPIRATION AND MIRACLE.

'No man can come unto me except the Father which hath sent me draw him.'-JOHN vi. 44.

I

NSPIRATION is our subject: the natural inspiration of man, the special inspiration of Christ. 'No man can come unto me except the Father who hath sent me draw him.' Spiritual communion at its height depends, then, on something that through God's grace is, in its measure, common to him, to Christ, and to us. And though the son reveals to us the Father, yet in the first place it is some portion of the spirit of God in us that attracts us towards its fulness in his Son. Our Lord speaks to men not as one apart, as to those who have no kindred experiences, but from the heights and depths of our nature's fellowship with the Father of our spirits. Only as we have something of the spirit of our Father can we be drawn towards him who was alive to all its inspirations, and had it without measure.

Theology has so misinterpreted human nature, has so disowned what is highest in us whilst seek

ing protections and refuges against God, that we have lost consciousness of our spiritual birthright,we have not learned the elementary lesson of Christianity, we tremble as though we were guilty of presumptuous sin, distinctly to utter our conviction of a fact which our Lord so long ago declared to be a preliminary condition of any communion with him, that the inspiration given to him without measure is in measure natural to us, and that only through some participation of God's spirit can we be brought under the power of its complete presence in him. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? How could minds with no common spirit ever meet? They must for ever remain mysteries to one another. Is it not by fellowship of spirit that we have discernment of God himself? Does he not call us his children? Is that only a figure of speech? Do we pray to God in rhetoric? Are we so far gone in spiritual hollowness and falsehood as to suppose that God uses towards us swollen and unreal words? Rather, is not conscience a witness that the burden of God is laid upon our souls, that whatever is right in God's sight is also an obligation to us, that our holiest thoughts of him become a law unto ourselves, so that we cannot violate our feeling of his goodness without a sense of personal sin? Weak and dependent though we are, we yet can assume no lower responsibility than that we are bound by the righteousness of God. Whatever is his care, we know must be ours also. Whatever his providence is

seeking, we know that we too must work for. Religious man can never divest himself of the feeling that all the aims of God are also interests and obligations of ours. If that is a fact, can there be higher or fuller evidence that God is the Father of our spirits? Our nature, God in our nature, compels us to take up, so to speak, the mighty burdens of his providence; we can never without the consciousness of sin withhold our co-operation from any recognized purpose of his. Those views of the person of Christ which isolate him from human nature are chiefly melancholy for the evidence they afford of an estrangement from the first teaching of the gospel, that there is an inspiration of God natural to man, and that it is the germ and groundwork of our Lord's full glory. He who knew no touch of natural pity could not be moved by Christ's self-denying mercy. He that hath no seeds of eternal life in himself could not have them nourished and quickened by the living water, and by the living light.

This was evidenced in the first days of the gospel. Only those were drawn towards Christ in whom the diviner spirit was not entirely overwhelmed by the prevailing worldliness. All others, though attracted for a time by earthly hopes and external wonders, went back and walked no more with him. Miracles did not convert them. The sick were healed, the blind were made to see, the dead were raised, but the eyes of their spirits

were not opened, nor access found for God to their dead souls through these outward works of power. Miracle could not give inward inspiration: it could only challenge the notice of those who were susceptible of being touched by the real evidences of a heavenly fellowship. These might be at first in as great ignorance as others of the full scope of his kingdom, but they felt something of the love and righteousness that was the essence of his glory, and flesh and blood did not reveal it unto them but the spirit of their Father.

-

You know the strong repugnance which Christ always displayed towards signs and wonders as a means of attracting followers. He felt that belief of that kind was not faith: it implied no identity of desire and purpose with the spirit of God. A miracle could penetrate no man's heart with a tender, trusting, self-sacrificing love, a love through the joy of sympathy made heir of all things. Signs of the presence of God's power have no natural tendency to convert human affections into a temple for God's spirit. With the heart men believe unto righteousness: faith is drawn forth by the touch of living holiness and living goodness, however manifested. The sense of a wonderful presence, an atmosphere of mysterious awe and influence around him, might draw the gaze of the people, so that his divine wisdom and goodness, the real evidences of his mission, should have an opportunity of penetrating to their souls. They

I

would be like that voice from God, 'This is my beloved son; hear ye him.' It might not have been possible for one like Jesus, so meek in majesty, to have arrested public observation and held it on himself, had it not been for these signals of God; for, remember, that it is by spiritual manifestation that Christ has won the world; and how readily in that age of men so little kindred to himself, the character of our Lord, answering to no expectation, falling in with no stream of existing tendency, but thwarting every passion of the times, might have been lost to us, because there were none to observe its serene and natural beauty, to fathom its deeper sentiments, to perceive its profound and gentle unison with the spirit of Providence, to note and preserve for after generations the story of its divine beneficence. His contemporaries were, no doubt, liable to impressions of the supernatural, and we do not know what time may have been given for the entrance of tradition, but it is very remarkable that, some misunderstandings and some after mixtures being conceded, the 'works' assigned to Christ, with his accompanying 'words' are in an accord with the spiritual texture of the manifestation, not found in other narratives of signs and wonders. Perhaps also, considering the limitations of time and circumstance under which he appeared, they were necessary to bring into outward manifestation the peculiar greatness of Christ's character, to shew the perfect man.

It has been said with a profound

« IndietroContinua »