IN every century, and sometimes in every half century, yea, even in a quarter century, there comes a new current in the manner of thought, in the disposition and in the tendency of spirits.
This is then called the “spirit of the age,” and he who wills to be or to become something in the world, is then on the alert, to take that timespirit up into himself, and thereby first to show himself to be what is called a “child of his times,” and then to become the “man of his times.”
In this urge to conform to the “spirit of the age,” there is in part something good, but also on the other hand a serious evil.
Something good.
For also in these currents of the age God’s work, which He carries on in the world of the children of men, reaches forward toward its consummation. Cessation in that work of God there is none. Restlessly as the waters of the river it moves itself along toward the ocean of consummation. And therefore there is constant development and enrichment of life. He who remains standing outside of this, impoverishes. To the new forms of life, which God continually creates, we, too, must adapt ourselves. He who will not stool like a plant, but live as a man, must, for so much as these forms are concerned, as Da Costa sang so truly, be the “child of his times.”
See it with St. Paul. He does not copy Isaiah. He does not try to imitate David. He does not speak the language of a Moses. All that he writes is poured into the forms, manner of thought and expression of the Jewish, Greek and Roman world of his time. He wrote for his contemporaries, and therefore so that his contemporaries could understand him.
But that going along with one’s times becomes a serious evil, when it comes down to a drifting along with the spirit of the age, and when that spirit of the age is accepted without criticism.
Is not the duty bound upon the heart in Scripture again and again “Try the spirits,” i.e., the spirits which are abroad in the different centuries, “whether they be of God.”
If you find they are, then follow that spirit in its mighty course. But if not, then resist that spirit, and let not your heart, your home, your generation be infected by it. Over against it put the Spirit which is of God.
Thus both go wrong in the church of God, as well the man, who by reason of what is wrong in the time-spirit, remains zealous of the forms, which are no more of our time, as the other, who that he may coöperate with his times, incautiously admits, the spirit which is not of God.
THIS also applies to the praise which we have to contribute to the glory of our God.
When from his prison St. Paul wrote to that very influential church at Ephesus, in his prologue he came back to it three times, that all God’s work in His church, and in the souls in Christ’s church, was aimed at one end, and that this goal consisted of this, that we should be unto the praise of His glory.
First in the fifth verse, saying, “that God has predestinated us unto the adoption of children, that we should be to the praise of His glory.”
After that in the eleventh verse, saying, that also we “have come to be an inheritance, that we should be unto the praise of His glory.”
And for the third time in the fourteenth verse, glorying in the fact, that we “have received the earnest of the Holy Ghost, unto the praise of His glory.”
The praise of God’s glory is thus to the apostle no secondary matter, but the main goal at which everything must terminate, and toward which everything must be directed.
It is that praise of His glory, which God seeks in His redeemed and through His redeemed.
To praise God, to extol God, to make great the name of the Lord, to sing psalms unto God, to offer honor to God, is therefore the never-ending refrain, in which all the Scripture rests. It is the one mighty Selah of God’s holy Revelation.
It is against this that the spirit of the age arrays itself.
Religion… . O, let it be holy unto you. Piety… . it must be an ornament to you. Only, you have no absolute need of it. The thousands upon thousands which live without religion, are, provided they are honorable citizens, nothing less than you. Surely, piety gives you a richer stamp, but among the birds of heaven is not the pheasant more frequently desired than the lark?
You are told, therefore, that you must keep your religion to yourself. That you shall not sing from the branches, but must hide yourself with your piety in a breach of the wall.
Your religion must be to you a matter of the heart, at most of your home, but otherwise you must not let it be noticed. Your song before God from the branches, would disturb the ease of others by the way and be an hindrance to them in the market of life.
Piety is an ornament, but one which, O, so mystically must hide, and which the world will generously glory in, provided it never perceives anything of it.
ALAS, there are confessors of Jesus, who halfway join therein.
Confessors these halfhearted ones can scarcely be called. To confess is not merely to come out for Jesus among like-minded, but to come up for the Name of the Lord with the world, with the opponent, with him who rejects Jesus.
And that these Christians shun.
“Silent preaching” is their watchword. To be a quiet one in the land, from whom no witness for Jesus has ever gone forth. Pious at heart, at most pious in the home, but going about in the world as a dog that never barks.
Something which is then advocated like this: that the noblest witness for the Savior lies not in our word, but in our daily walk, and that provided we walk honestly and keep peace with all men, and make it our highest honor to be kind, this “silent preaching” stands on a line with what St. Paul advises the wife of a heathen husband, that she be quiet, that without words he may be won for Jesus.
Everything in direct contradiction to the teaching of Scripture, that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the preaching of the Word of God; in contradiction to the testament of Jesus to His apostles, that they must be His witnesses, His tireless witnesses, His witnesses to all the world; and in contradiction no less to the lofty note which sounds through all the psalms: Praise ye the Lord. It is good to sing praises unto our God. Praise is comely.
In contradiction also to the blood of our martyrs!
DID it never attract your attention, how painfully constant in Scripture the complaint of the faithful resounds, that in the grave no one can praise the Lord?
Take the close of Psalm 115: “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence; but we will bless the Lord. Hallelujah!”
Not the dead, but we who are still alive, who still have the voice in our throat, and therefore are still able to bless Him.
Does this say, that our dead have no insight into the glory of the Lord? That, mystically, in their hidden spiritual life, they have no ebullition of wordship of God’s glory?
On the contrary, in all this they very far excel us. The veil fell away from before them, and they know, what has never entered our heart. Also nothing diverts them. They are altogether one devotion, one adoration before God and His Christ.
But one thing they lack. They lack the bodily revelation. They know the spiritual praise of God as the angels know it. But they are unable in human language to bring that praise of the Lord to utterance. That only comes back to them after the resurrection, and then with a glory such as we on earth have never known.
NEVER say, therefore, that to the Lord our God it is the same, whether alone in the silence of the heart, or with loud voices blessing and witnessing we praise His holy Name.
A song that has no soul in it, as is often heard in public, or even a word of praise, in which no heart expresses itself, as you often hear this from painfully hollow barren orthodoxy, yea, that is singing and speaking untruth, by which the holiest is desecrated. Then thousand times better the quiet praise before God whispered in the soul than the tinkling cymbal of hollow metal.
But yet then only when the soul makes the lips eloquent and the tongue loose, then only when the heart empties itself in the voice of praise, and to the inward motion of the mind the word of worship and the sound of the song of praise couple themselves, is the human tribute of blessing and praising the Lord perfect.
In the beginning was the Word. By that Word all things are created visible and invisible. In the Word the Father uniquely generates the Son of His good pleasure. And therefore also to us men, by so much as we are created after the Image of God, that wondrous word, the word that sings psalms and the word that witnesses, is given, to tell all the wonders of the Lord and to speak forth His praise.
In the lilyseed hides the lily that presently appears, but only when the bud is set, and the flower is unfolded, in that fragrant and snow white chalice is the greatness of the Creator revealed.
So in our heart, in our soul, in our nature there is life in the germ, and only when what fills the soul goes out in the sound of praise, the lily chalice of our inner life unfolds itself, and exhibits the beauty of its inner glory.
And therefore the blessing, the praise of the Lord, which goes forth in the voice of men, is the consummation of all blessing, the perfection of all praise, which God seeks of His creature.
The angels still have this in advance of us, that in their spiritual being they offer pure worship, they worship with a perfect motion of spirit.
This God’s children on earth still lack. Impure is and remains till our death the purest urge of love, that from our innermost parts ascends to God. Also our prayers call for atonement, if they are to stand before the Holy One.
That impurity falls away with dying, when the body of sin is shaken off in death, and herein is the provisional glory of God’s children who went from us, that now in the soul they know holy, pure motions of worship, which are no more tainted by sin.
But however high this may stand, it is not yet the highest. And that highest only comes for them and for us, when all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth, and if they died in Jesus, not merely from a pure soul, but also with the voice of perfect purity of tone to sing the holy, holy, holy before the Throne of our God.