Titus ii, 13.—"Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

“Our Great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.” I have quoted my text in the form in which if appears in the Revised Version. The King James Version reads, “looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” Obviously one would not use this text as settling beyond any question the divine nature of Jesus Christ. It is not exactly what one might call a proof text. And yet it squints so decidedly in that direction that one is justified in using it to suggest some thoughts along that line.

Now I have no intention of attempting to prove the divinity of our Lord, but I have thought that I would like to say a few practical things bearing on the subject, that perhaps I ought to say them, not in the way of attack upon nor criticism of anyone, but to speak out the faith that is in me, for what little effect it may have upon those who are accustomed to listen to my message from week to week, who are honestly disturbed at certain tendencies of the times, and who are really pained at the somewhat loose talk, as it regards the fundamentals of our religion, which funds such free currency today.

If I were addressed a congregation of atheists and unbelievers, if I were speaking to a body of young men and women of our colleges, who are supposed to bring a scientific test to all matters of faith, if I were talking to an audience of those restless wandering souls who are groping for some solid footing for their belief, then I should be counted a very courageous man for speaking out on this subject of the divinity of our Lord. But inasmuch as I am addressing a congregation of godly men and women who do believe, why I am merely a time-server, making sure of my salary, speaking the empty, harmless things my masters would have me speak, afraid to say my soul is my own.

Do you follow me? Well there is a little sarcasm there, and sarcasm is a dangerous weapon. What I am trying to get at is this, if a man speaks the things men like to hear he is more or less a coward, but if he speaks the things to which they take exception, he is a brave fellow, has the courage of his convictions, is eligible for a crown. But if that is true of one man speaking for one set of things to one group of people, it is true of another man speaking another set of things to another set of people. In other words, why isn’t the radical pouring out his ideas to admiring and approving hearers open to the same criticism as the conservative pouring out his ideas to admiring and approving hearers?

If we were to form our idea of a preacher from a certain line of chatter that is much in evidence to-day, we should conclude that no preacher had any business to attempt to preach, unless every time he went into the pulpit he began to smash around with the utmost abandon, throwing his bricks fast and furiously so as to be sure to hit something, whether he aimed at it or not.

There is a doctrine which has stood at the very center of Christianity from the first. Away hurtles a brick, and the people who like that sort of thing say, Amen—with their hands. There is a social and economic law that is, after all, in spite of its imperfect application the secret of the development of the body politic. Smash goes a brick, and the hurler is a hero. There is an honest respectable citizen trying to do his duty, as he sees it, and he gets flayed alive, and there is a mighty fanfare of trumpets. So it goes to the end of the chapter. The bull in the china shop is brought out and decked with ribbons, and the more china he smashes the more ribbons he gets.

Another man goes into the pulpit and preaches loyalty to the essential doctrines of the Church, loyalty to its laws and traditions, regard for the sacredness of its rites and customs; he fails to denounced the social and economic flaws of the land, and has a certain kindly Christian feeling for the men and women who are good enough to come and listen to him, and therefore does not brutally lacerate them, and then rub in salt. What kind of preacher is he? Why he is a time-server, a parasite, chiefly interested in looking out for his salary, afraid to speak the truth lest he lose his job, and people who think this look upon the Christian ministry as a job.

When editors lambaste their highest paying advertisers, when the young men and women of our colleges, who are supposed to bring a scientific test to all matters of, faith, get saucy and impudent, and tell their professors that they don’t know beans; when factory workers and clerks treat their employers with contempt, and tell them that they ought to fume and foam at every purchaser of their products, then and not till then will they qualify to write and talk about the cowardice of the preacher, who fails to smash idols and ideals every time he opens his mouth.

There, there, now, let us get back on the main line again, we have been running on that siding long enough.
”Our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.” That expresses my faith, and I am not ashamed of it. I see
no use in pussy-footing in the matter, and if that isn’t
to the liking of anyone why he has a perfect right to dislike it. I said at the outset that I had no intention of
attempting to prove the divinity of our Lord. What is the use? If that has not been proven by the Church to
the satisfaction of its adherents long before this, it is
rather late in the day for an obscure minister of the Church to attempt it, particularly in view of his solemn
ordination vows.

The fact of the matter is that I do not, see anything big, distinctive, compelling, worth-while, different, in Christianity if the center and the inspiration of it is not divine. Christianity then is just one of a thousand cults. I take precious little stock in the point that is so often made, that Jesus nowhere called Himself divine. What of it? Was He likely to go around Palestine wearing a label which read, “I am divine”? You can get a rather good line on a thing from the effects of which it is the cause.

There are some curious looking sticks, let us say, down in your cellar. They bear no label, “This is dynamite,” and you are in doubt just what they are, but when something happens, and you view the scene, if it so be you are privileged to do so, you don’t run over to the coroner’s and say that that, couldn’t have been dynamite, because it wasn’t labeled dynamite, but on the contrary you look at the effects, and say that that was dynamite all right, label or no label, and so far as you are concerned the argument is closed.

Now I know that while that is a simile of dynamite it isn’t a dynamite of a simile, that is, it isn’t a powerful simile. But it does illustrate exactly the thought in mind, which is that we can judge a whole lot as to the divinity of Jesus by the effects of Jesus’s life and work throughout the world in all these Christian centuries. We will not form our judgment by what has not been done, or what we think ought to have been done, but by what has been done; not by the lives that have seemingly felt nothing of His power and inspiration, but by the lives that have dared and endured great things, and have wrought great results for the world.

Granting that Jesus nowhere calls Himself divine, yet I submit that He not only allowed but encouraged, the impression to prevail that He was. More than once the name of God was given to Him, and it brought forth no rebuke from Him. If he was not God, and He did not think He was, then He was a pitiful and pathetic hypocrite and deceiver, not fit even to be the leader of an ethical cult, for the leader of such a cult ought, at least, to have fairly honest ethics, and I would not consider those ethics honest.

Shall we believe that that is the kind of being, who, for nineteen centuries has had the influence on human hearts that Jesus Christ has had, who, in spite of all the seeming failures of His Gospel, has, nevertheless, made the world a sweeter, fairer, safer, diviner place? O, ask us to believe something easy, something rational, something probable. It is a base libel on the memory of all those, who, through all the centuries since Christ lived and wrought upon, the earth, have given up their life for their faith, and have borne bitter sufferings, to say that they have followed merely a man, and a man of that type. They at least ought to have the credit of following an honest man. Over and over again in the sacred records Jesus is so associated with God the Father as to, imply divinity, to say the least of it. Attributes of God are possessed by Him, works of God ascribed to Him, divine prerogatives wielded by Him; and worship, which alone is due to God, was offered to Him and never refused by Him. One could marshal the texts of Scripture in support of all, this, but what is the use? It is easy enough to scrap the Scriptures, “and there ye are,” as Mr. Dooley would say.

Trace the history of the Christian Church from, the day of Pentecost; as it has found expression in all the different religious bodies, and you shall find a superb record of energy; of courage, of faith, of loyalty, of sacrifice. And shall we say that only a man has inspired all this, though he be the best man that ever trod the earth? Shall we say that a mere oriental mystic, with a message, which, in some of its essential details, was not original, has drawn in his train, through the centuries his millions and millions of adherents, and still is drawing them, stronger than ever? Shall we say that a man named Jesus, of obscure origin and humble training, has driven men over the ice and snow of the north, into the burning blistering heat of the tropics, to the far-off lonely islands of the seas, to teach the precious things of life and to lift their brothers up out of the sordid bestial condition in which ignorance and superstition held them with a vice-like grip, their brothers mind you, thought of as such because of the message they bore, and because of the immortal example of Him in whose name they went? That is begging the question, do you say? Remember my dynamite, and how absolutely certain we are that it is dynamite by the effects, and that is the only point I am trying to make now. Let those who can and will give profounder arguments for the divinity of our Lord, I am satisfied for the moment to argue back from the effects to the cause, and to maintain from the character and magnitude of the effects that the Cause is divine.

Saint Paul was able to say in the fast-fading twilight of a splendid life, “I know, whom I have believed,” and men must have that same definite, faith to-day, if they would make their religion the vital force it was to him. I do not believe Saint Paul would ever have made the slightest dent in Christian history if the conception of his Master, whose he was and whom he served, had not been just that conception set forth in this phrase of the text, “our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.’’

We are hearing a great deal in these days about freeing the Church from the narrowing and restrictive credal limitations. Well there is, of course, such a thing as demanding too much in the way of faith. I can sympathize with those who seek a simpler faith, and I am not very keen about the dry-as-dust-theological twistings and turnings of the centuries long gone. I am always filled with amazement and a certain admiration as I reflect upon the tremendous and stupendous importance of some nice little theological distinction, and wonder why men took it so seriously, and shed their ink so profusely. I grant you that they seem of very little consequence as compared with the realities of our daily life.

But while saying all that I cannot help feeling that there are certain things essential, and I count one of those things the divine character of our Lord Jesus Christ. That seems to me the very center of our faith, the great driving force of our religion, the one thing that gives it staying power. For, mind you, we are not concerned with something that is acceptable and popular for a day, but with something that runs through all the ages, something that must have in itself the power of propulsion, and that against every conceivable obstacle that may spring up in every age to retard its progress. Unless your ship is an old storm-wracked wind-jammer, depending upon wind for its motive force, you have got to have steam in the boilers, and plenty of it. The motive force that has carried Christianity through the centuries, and will carry it through the centuries to come, is the faith in Jesus Christ as God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God.

Before the mighty mystery of the Godhead of Jesus I stand in awe and admiration. I can not explain how He became divine, but I believe He is, and I believe that only faith in Him as the

“Strong Son of God, Immortal Love”

to use Tennyson’s phrase, can carry this religion of ours down the “arches of the years”, and keep it the one great divine agency for the regeneration of the world, for the glorious task of making man liker God. And as for me, should that faith be lost, lost with it is all that makes Christianity different and worth while. Let us hold clear, and strong, and steady, our faith in our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, and then shall we be prepared to meet all the storms that buffet us, and to ride them out in safety to the port whither we would come.