Some Christian Convictions: A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day ThinkingCoffin, Henry Sloane
Religion
Some Christian Convictions: A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking
Coffin, Henry Sloane
Christianity -- 20th century; Theology, Doctrinal -- Popular works
And when once Jesus is authoritative for a man, He is the _supreme_
religious authority. A tolerant Roman, like Alexander Severus, set
statues of Apollonius, Christ, Abraham, Orpheus, "and others of that
sort," in his lararium; and many today are inclined to make a similar
religious combination. Where Christ is concerned, there can be for His
followers no other "of that sort." We cherish every discovery of the
Divine by any saint of any faith which does not conflict with the
revelation of Jesus; but to those who have found Him the Way to the
Father, His consciousness of God is decisive. In the margin of his copy
of Bacon's _Essays_, William Blake wrote opposite some statement of that
worldly-wiseman, "This is certain: if what Bacon says is true, what
Christ says is false." A loyal Christian must set every opinion he meets
as clearly in the light of his Lord's mind, and choose accordingly his
course in the seen and in the unseen.
When through Jesus we are in fellowship with His God, Jesus Himself
becomes to us _the revelation of God_. The Deity to whom we are led
through His faith discloses Himself to us in Jesus' character. What we
call Divine, as we worship it in One whom we picture in the heavens or
indwelling within us, we discover at our side in Jesus; and if we are
impelled to speak of the Deity of the Father, when we characterize our
highest inspirations from the unseen, we cannot do less than speak of
the Deity of the Son, through whom in the seen these same inspirations
pass to us. Jesus Himself awakens in us a religious response. We
instinctively adore Him, devote our all to Him, trust Him with a
confidence as complete as we repose in God. We are either idolaters, or
Jesus is the unveiling in a human life of the Most High; He is to us God
manifest in the flesh.
And Jesus is also _the revelation of what man may become_. None ever had
a sublimer faith in man than He who dared bid His followers be perfect
as their Father is perfect. He did not close His eyes to men's glaring
unlikeness to God; He said to His auditors, "ye being evil"; He believed
in the necessity of their complete transformation through repentance.
But when He asked them to follow Him, He set no limits to the distance
they would be able to go. He did not warn them that they must stop at
the foot of Calvary, while He climbed to the top; or that they could not
go with Him in His intimacy with the Father. Some Christians, out of
reverence for Jesus, think it necessary to draw a sharp line between Him
and ourselves, and remind us that we cannot overpass it; but He drew no
such line. He believed in the divine possibilities of divinely changed
men. As a matter of fact we find ourselves immeasurably beneath Him,
and, the more we long to be like Him, the greater the distance between
us seems to become. But He is as confident that He can conform us to His
likeness, as that He Himself is at one with His Father.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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