Notes of a Sermon Preached by the Rev. C. E. Darwent in Union Church, Tientsin, on Sunday Morning, October 1.
Text:
James 1. 17. "Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above."
Luther is said to have called this epistle ''an epistle of straw." T suppose that was because it says go little about Luther's favourite doctrine of justification by faith. But that was surely rough on James. Seeing the relation in which James stood to Jesus, that he was his brother, he ought to know something about the Gospel. He does not seem to have believed in his brother at first but after. wands he did, and so his opin-jon on religious matters ought to be worth a great You will observe that the words 1 have quoted -follow 'a warning. Even dearly beloved brethren" need these. We all do. And James was the man to warn his brethren. The Jews in Jerusalem are sid to have had great, respect for James. He prayed so much. He is said to have had the skin of his knees as hard as a camel's from kneeling on the stone floor of the temple. That can never happen. to us, for we sit while we pray. It is the man who prays hard who can warn his brethren. And -he is the man, too, who can warn them against being deceived. We see the things about us in earth lights, and so get taken in, or deceived. He saw things in God's light, from much converse with God, the ''Father of Lights," in prayer, and so he ea things, and truths, and theorics of life and being in their true lights. So he can warn us, who live habitually in dim, cross, and murky lights. The thing that he is warning them against, whoever they were to whom the letter was written, is temptation. He says they have not to attribute it to God. For this plain reason: temptations come obviously from below, there is something that smacks of the nether regions in them. God could not possibly send them. A temptation is a bad thing, and so from below. Things that come from above are the only good things, So, it seems to me, we have here 2% great principle to guide us in our search for the truth: always to look out for the upper view of things. "Every good gift cometh from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights." There is always this difference between the view of faith and of unbelief and of all the world. of doubt. One always takes "the high road," and the other always! manages somehow to take "the low road." Religion starts at the top, and irreligion always starts at the bottom, and mostly remains there. Good things, things that encourage and cheer us up, come from above, as James says: things that depress us and make the outlook on life, to say nothing of eternity, come from below, from the lower reaches of existence and being. Let us see how true this is in some three or tour cases.
THE ORIGIN OF MAN, There is man, and his origin. Of course it is not so important to know where man came from, as where he is going to. We shall all know the truth of this statement some day. Still it is of some importance to know something of deal. the "pit out of which we.were digged" Now, here it is. All the schools of unbelief take a low view of man's \beginning. - Some go back to a primeval jelly or fire-mist. Others sec him as a development from some kind of anthropoid ape. The beginning of man's fortunes was that he got his forelimbs free, instead of having to use all four for walking or hanging on to the branch of a tree. Thus, with free forelimbs, he could lay about him on the other creatures with a stick, so that they with their teeth only, and limbs otherwise occupied, had no chance. And thus man get up as the lord of creation. Now, if he wishes, he can exterminate the whole of the higher creatures, as indeed he is doing, to satisfy woman's madness for furs, Some see in man a descendant from the Ismur, a tree-bear of Madagascar. That ought to keep us humble enough; though hardly so humble as the pictures of ice-age man, I think the Neanderthal man in' Mr. H. G. -Well's great History. We men are mostly plain enough no doubt, but a peep at the Neanderthal man, our fearful and happily remote ancestor, ought to create more humility than is observable in most of us. They dig up bits of skulls in Britain and France, and fearful prognathie jaws, and they hold them in their hands before us, and say, "Behold what you really have come from," and, by inference, what you are." - Occasionally you get a little to cheer you up in_ bein shown their paintings in Spani caves, and you feel that they did well to paint the woolly rhinoceros instead of a model from their own families; still the general impression made is depressing. All the emphasis is laid on the lower elements in man. He is indeed made of clay, amt r+ feeling so many of these books create is, that is all that we are, that we shall end where we began. In fact, according to many of these theories, man's prospects are not particularly bright. There is no incitement_to man to aim high in all this. But now turn to the Bible. Sav what you like about its inspiration, and theorize as you like, no sensible man can have any doubt, that it takes the upper view of man. Here it is, "And God said, Let us m=ke man in our image, after our likeness." Then there is the second account of 4 man's creation: "And God formed man of the dust of the ground, und breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." These texts cheer us up. The same old book says we have fallen. Still, that means we may get up again. The other view starts us at a low level and keeps us there. Even if it turns out to be true that there is something in both these views of man, that God entered into an already developing creature, and added a new spiritual element to him, and that is what is recorded in Genesis. Still, the thing for us sinners to remember is, that we come essentially from above, from God. What a truly awful thing it would have been if the Bible had been written "scientifically" and Moses had talked about our "simian ancestors." Ah! There would have been no religion nor progress at all. Man was sinful and low enough as it was. What he needed was to know that he is God's son. Turn to the New Testament. What do we read? Do you call it a dry Senealogy in the third chapter of Luke? do' not. You will not, if you hear the wonderful closing verses, ''Which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God." There is the view of Jesus and, in a true sense, of man. That is something to fill us with hope, and victory over the depressing cloud: of dust that cling to us. The salvation of the world has come from the upper view. By a strange fatality. man always, if left to himself, by God's Spirit always manages to take the "low road" instead of the "high road."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.