A Sermon Preached on September 23 by the Rey. A. N. Rowland in Union Church, Shanghai "By what authority are you doing these things?"—Luke XX 2.
The subject of authority is often up for discussion, and various theories are advanced and accepted. The Catholic finds it in the Church; the Protestant finds it in the Bible, and both have this in common that they look to the past which seems to get prestige just because it is past. But Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of heaven, that is always among us and within us, breathing the Spirit that is the source of growing truth and increasing light. Henceforward we must believe that authority resides in that spiritual Kingdom.
This great truth was illustrated before Christ came in the ministry of the prophets, who were ready to challenge the entire order of church and State in the name of the Spirit that was given them.
he same truth hag been illustrate ness is not with consequences but with facts. And after all Paul's case is perfectly in line with that of John the Baptist, of Elijah, Moses and Abraham.
Above all this was one of the issues fought out by our Lord. The so-called authorities in the Church questioned the origin of his authority. On the occasion of the scenes he created in the streets of Jerusalem and the courts of the temple the clergy and the officials of religion came upon him with this question: "By what authority are you doing these things?"
The answer of Jesus was to refer them back to John the Baptist, implying that the same principle was involved. And what was John's authority? It was purely spiritual. He had not got it in synagogue or temple. It was a matter of his own vision and exed in Christian history, for the dnd will to the will and mind of perience. He had given his mind Church has lived by the strength of those who were opposed and God, aid as a result he had been derided in their own day because crowned with spiritual authority. of some departure from tradition.
There were some things on which We are obliged to remind those his contemporaries were uncertain who make the Bible the only source or blind, concerning which he of authority that the makers of could say I know. And because the Bible, Abraham, Moses, Jereit was true the heart and mind of miah, Daniel, spoke on the auothers responded to it, and acthority of an inward experience, knowledged the authority of God's and those who would confine aumessenger. thority to the ancient Church that
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.