Читать книгу Luminescence, Volume 3 - C. K. Barrett - Страница 25

(Preached at Katherine Road 2/2/36 and Spring Head Mission 6/6/43)

1 Kings 2.4 “If thy children take heed to their way, to walk before me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul.”

“Living loyally under His (God’s) eye with all their mind and soul.” —Moffatt

The subject is Religion as Loyalty and it was chosen before the text was decided upon. You will not find the word loyalty in either the Authorized or Revised Version of the Bible; though the thing itself is on almost every page. Dr. Moffatt rightly introduces the word in this passage. Walking before God in truth is living loyally under His eye.

Though the text was not chosen until after the subject, I am not ashamed of it. It sums up what I want to say. I am not at all surprised that the promise made to David was that, if his sons would be loyal to God with all their mind and soul, there should never be wanting a man to sit on Israel’s throne. Men who live such lives are kingly men. But the subject is bigger than any text or incident in the Bible. The whole Bible is the text, and to be rightly conceived religion must be conceived as loyalty. Let us begin by asking an elementary question:

WHAT IS RELIGION?

Your dictionary will define it for you as “the outward act or form of which men indicate their recognition of a god or gods having power over their destiny.” Or it will give you this as an alternative: “A system of faith and worship.” Both definitions are true so far, and both are inadequate. If you have the soul of religion you will need a body in which it can express itself. For all our railing against creeds, I can’t for the life of me see how you can do without one of some sort. Your creed is your thought form. Still, neither of these definitions is finally satisfying. At the heart of religion is the idea and the fact of a tie, a covenant. Religion is vision of God, fellowship with God, making for righteousness. It implies faithfulness in the Divine side and loyalty on the human side. My simple definition of the Christian religion is faith in Jesus Christ our Savior and loyalty to Him as Lord. That compels the facing of another question:

WHAT IS LOYALTY?

Once more I turn to the dictionary and learn that loyalty is faithfulness in allegiance, being true to word and duty, it is devotion, fidelity. You know what it is for a man to be loyal to his king and his country. The loyal man plays the game and is true when others are not looking and when no galley applauds. He keeps the flag flying when things are at their worst. “Thy coat is shabby,” said a wife to her preacher husband in days when it cost to be loyal. “Yes,” came the answer, “but it has never been turned.” The loyalist is not necessarily the man who waves the biggest flag and gives the loudest cheer; he is the man who stays at his post, does his duty, never fails a friend but is faithful to the last. He is the man you can rely on. My point is that eventually religion is loyalty, an unswerving allegiance, a deathless devotion. It is something far more than correct views, right creeds, careful ritual; it is personal and passionate loyalty to the Lord, it means being bound to Christ by the soul’s tenacious purpose.

NOT DAZZLING, BUT DEPENDENCE

That may seem to make religion a rather colorless thing. There are times when loyalty wins the Victoria Cross or some other distinction. But in the main, loyal people do not dazzle or attract. Generally, they are the people who just keep on keeping on. They pursue their given ways without pomp or blaze of trumpets. They are doing a great work and cannot come down to receive the rewards of men. Think of and thank God for the men and women who have never been disloyal to the troth they plighted at the marriage altar—and you never hear of them! The most loyal man I ever knew, a man who served God in China for thirty years, a man who never broke his word or failed a friend—Frederick Galpin lived and died in obscurity and few recognized the heroic soul he was.

A few years ago I heard of the daughter of Tom Hughes—hardly anyone knew the author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays had a daughter and she had been living for thirty years in an East End tenement, seeking no publicity for the work she was doing. For thirty years, she had never had a holiday because the women she wanted to help couldn’t afford one. In our hearts we know that if loyalty is not dazzling, it is something better, it is dependable. You can be sure of these loyal folk. You can lean on them and they will not let you down. We owe an unpayable debt to the loyalty of those who seek no publicity or reward, who shun everything obtrusive and vulgar, and whose glory it is that they are dependable.

LOYALTY IN LIFE

I am insisting that religion is loyalty. It is, as Moffatt’s translation of the text says, “living loyally under God’s eye with all their mind and soul.” It means being loyal in the ordinary relationships of life. Tennyson said of Queen Victoria that she was “loyal to the royal within herself.” That is where loyalty begins. “To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man” (Hamlet). It works out as in our great Bunyan, “True to ourselves, our fellow men and Thee.” Christ does not ask less than the best of the best ethics and moralities. He asks more—“what do ye more than others?” So religion means loyalty to your word as your bond. It means loyalty to your friends and never letting them down. It means never betraying a trust or proving unworthy of confidence. It means being loyal to your wife, your parents, your home. It goes down to your thoughts as well as expresses itself in your words and actions.

LOYALTY TO JESUS

But supremely, of course, the Christian religion is personal and passionate loyalty to Jesus Christ. It does not mean just believing something about Him or singing hymns to His praise. There is something prior to loyalty and that is consecration. You make Him the captain of your salvation and then give Him a complete trust, a cheerful obedience, and an unswerving loyalty. It means following Him at all costs and ordering your life according to His mind and will. It means that, just that, but it does mean that Galsworthy has given us a play called “Loyalties” and made us see situations where there is a clash of loyalties. Most of us know such situations. But for a Christian the supreme loyalty is never in question. Our first loyalty is pledged to Jesus Christ and neither pleasure, nor care, nor enemies must reduce us from it. If He is the captain of our salvation it is His to call and command, ours to follow and obey.

LOYALTY TO CHURCH

The Christian religion means loyalty to the Christian church. For the church is the body of Christ, the agent through which His kingdom comes, the one instrument that exists alone to establish His reign on the earth. There are folk who entice the church and cheerfully argue that it is nearly dead. It is worthwhile remembering that the bitterest critics of the churches never enter one. These folk will draw their own conclusions. Don’t you worry: The church can’t die for the life of it. It lives because Christ is its Head. No other institution knows so well the mind of Christ or exists alone for the pastures of the kingdom. Boldly I say it, through the church alone can the world be cured of its poisonous hates, devastating materialism, and bitter despair.

What the church needs is the loyalty of its members. If you ask me why you should make sacrifices for it, since it ever were the service comes before your own wishes, why you should care for its well-being and concerned that its congregations are small, there is only one reply—you are a member of it. Who asked you to join? Not me. I never asked one of you to join and never put a man’s name on the roll without his consent. It is not for me to dictate, it is for you to ask what loyalty to your membership involves.

Be loyal to the church of your choice though it is far from perfect. My home may not be as elaborate in its appointments as some of the homes I stay in, but because it is mine, it commands my loyalty and service. Bring your best to it. Put your youth and vitality, your courage and your resources, your laughter and your high spirits, into it. Seek to make your church worthy of your Lord.

LOYALTY’S GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY

Days of defection and defect give loyalty its golden opportunity. Just because the days are difficult and things do not seem to be going well with the church is surely no reason for desertion and disloyalty. This is one great chance to show the sincerity of our loyalty. Let one illustration serve instead of argument. Whenever I want to renew a proper pride in a church of my fathers’ and my choice, I take down Silvester Horne’s history of the churches. In it, among many stirring stories of splendid loyalty I read the story of Vavasor Powell (182), the intrepid Welsh evangelist. He died in 1670 having spent eleven of his fifty-three years in prison for no greater crime than that of preaching the gospel. If you search in Bunhill Fields you will find his tombstone and on it these words—“In the defection of many he found grace to be faithful.”

That is the grace we greatly need in these days. It is comparatively easy to be loyal when your cause is popular and your church is successful. But real loyalty is displayed when things are going wrong and the half-hearted scatter from what seems to be a sinking ship. “Then to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust, ere her cause bring fame and profit, and tis prosperous to be just, then it is the brave man chooses while the coward stands aside, till the multitude make virtue of the faith they have denied.”24

WHAT THIS VIEW OF RELIGION INVOLVES

Religion, I am insisting, is loyalty, loyalty to Christ, His church, and the wonderful life and service for which they stand. Such a view does not make religion easy, but it does make it simple and intelligible. It does not ask you to sign complex creeds or believe things that offend your intellect and tax your credibility. It asks you to consecrate your life to a leader, a captain, and then to be loyal at all costs to Him. That is all I have a right to ask, but I have the right to ask that. It is not for me to say you shall not go here or there or do this or that. But if Christ says, “Don’t go there or do that,” will you obey?

That is religion—loyalty to the captain. Such loyalty transforms and transfigures. Perhaps the most moving writing of the war years was Donald Hawkins’s “The Beloved Captain.” He tells how literally loyalty to the beloved captain made a bunch of odds and ends into a company of perfect soldiers. Still more will loyalty to the captain of our salvation mean the transforming of ordinary folk into soldiers who, in the good fight, play the part of heroes.

“Live loyally under God’s eye with all your mind and strength.” Such loyalty will bring its own radiant reward. One of the outstandingly happy memories of my early days is the memory of Rallies of Christian Endeavors. I recall the crowds of clear-eyed, happy-hearted, full-throated, eager youths and maidens. They were keener and happier than the crowds I have seen at football matches or in entertainment halls. I recall their radiantly happy rendering of the hymn that was their Marseillaise, and I would to God we could sing it in the same spirit. “Peal out the watchword! Silence it never! Song of our spirits, rejoicing and free, peal out the watchword! Loyal forever! King of our lives, by Thy grace we will be.”25

24. This is a quote from James Russell Lowell and his famous poem “The Present Crisis.”

25. This is from the famous hymn writer Frances Havergal, “True Hearted, Whole Hearted, Faithful and Loyal” (1878).