# Our New Departure (Brooks)/Chapter 5

The fact that Christ has bought us at so great a price, establishes his claim on our grateful service; and the nature of his appointment and the purpose of his relations to us being what they are, he is, clearly, if we owe him any such service, entitled to be enthroned as paramount in the mastery of our lives. But is he, in any sense, essential to us? Do we, for any reason, owe it to ourselves as well as to him to become his disciples, and thus to make him the life of our being? It is one of the gravest of the many allegations to be made against the sacrificial theology, that it has poisoned the popular mind with the idea that he is not essential—except as an insurance against fire, or as the shelter of an overcoat or an umbrella amidst a storm, or as any expedient to save us from outward exposure or harm, is essential. One of the ever-recurring questions by way of objection to Universalism, as is well known, long has been, What is the use of Christ, or of faith in him, or of worship, or of anything we call religion, if there be no wrath of God, and no everlasting perdition, from which we need to be rescued? Only because we are under the condemnation of the Divine law, and Christ is an "expedient by which God can consistently and honorably forgive" us, the prevalent teaching has been, have we any occasion for him; and thousands of professed Christians—many of them far better people than such language would indicate—have habitually said, and thousands are still saying, Convince us that Christ has no such use to answer in our behalf, and we will give him no further thought or service; we will henceforth defy God, and revel in sin. In other words, as a contrivance enabling us to "make our peace with God," and evade the demands of justice, as a rescue from the fires of an endless hell, Christ is a convenience,—in a sense, a necessity; but in no other sense is he essential, or at all important to us.
​Happily, in the growing Christianization of opinion, this idea is giving place to a clearer insight into his relations to our interior spiritual life; but this is still, in substance, the doctrine of the creeds, as it is the wide-spread and mischievous popular impression.
Against all such teaching we have vigorously battled. Christ, we have affirmed, is God's provision for intrinsic human needs. This is our providential message, amidst the misleading theories of the Church—put upon our lips by every page of the Bible which explains man's condition or Christ's work. He is, we exist on purpose to proclaim, the bread of life; the light of the world; the water of which if any drink they shall thirst no more; the rest and peace of souls. And charged with this message, our business is to arouse men, as nothing else can, to understand that in no sense is he an expedient, or a convenience; that the need for him is vital, imperative, universal; that by no possibility can anything be successfully substituted in his stead; that to possess and appropriate him is to fulfil every condition of highest life and sweetest joy; and that not to have him, whoever one may be, or whatever else one may have or know, is inevitably to lack that which can alone give the ripest character, the most blessed experience, the completest manhood or womanhood to any soul; and the New Departure to which we are called in this regard is, a new and more determined effort so to give emphasis to these things, that, wherever our influence goes, it shall, to the same extent, be understood and felt, as never before, that Christ is thus, intrinsically and indispensably, a necessity to every soul.
That Christ is such a necessity is proved, look for the facts of human experience where we will. Let it suffice here to ask, in what state he found the world when he came into it? On many accounts, the period was a splendid one—the culmination of the finest possibilities, alike Jewish and heathen, in the way of human culture and civilization; rich in artistic taste, in external refinements, in purely intellectual ability and attainments. But spiritually the world was empty and decaying. A frequent New Testament term to represent its condition is 'perish'; and the word has a ​depth of meaning, as thus applied, which has been but feebly apprehended. Even the Jews, privileged as they had been, were sunk into an inane formalism, out of which all soul of genuine emotion or service had departed. Those whose only sustenance was in the mythologies or philosophies of the time were in a still worse case. "The world by wisdom knew not God." Human reason and conscience had demonstrated their insufficiency, unaided, for the highest purposes of morals and religion. The moral vigor of the race was exhausted. Its manhood was dying out. It had no principle or power competent to quicken it into 'newness of life.' Its recuperative energies, its ability for self-recovery, its spiritual stamina were gone; and but for God's succor, infusing some new life-blood, some saving force into it, the world would have rotted and collapsed in its utter degeneracy and corruption.
That this is the state of things everywhere indicated in the New Testament, is known to all who read it. The Apostle puts the sum of it all into few words when he says, "When we were without strength,"—i. e., morally impotent, unable to help ourselves,—"in due time, Christ died for the ungodly." And history outside the New Testament only too sadly confirms its representations. Alas! we have but to turn over the pages which tell of the inner life of Greece or Rome,—have but to go abroad among the nations, and study the spectacle, morally and religiously, everywhere presented, not merely to find wickedness, for much of that exists now even in our most Christian communities, and always will exist until the world's regeneration is accomplished, but to be shocked at the coarseness of the debauchery and debasement which characterized even the best life of the most advanced peoples, or to be somehow furnished with impressive evidence of the world's need of a Quickener and Redeemer. Paul's epitome (Rom. i. 21–32; ii. 1, 17–24) does but graphically present the undeniable facts.
Christ came as the succor thus required: God's remedy for the decaying energies as well as for the sin of the world; the fresh life-blood, to quicken; "the power of God and the wisdom of God," to vitalize and redeem. Our fourth chap​ter briefly glanced at what he was as an answer to then existing needs, and at what he has since been in the world. We cannot rationally explain the facts of history, either in their personal or their social, in their moral or their political aspects and significance, except as we confess his presence and power. And what has been will be. The decadence into which the world had spiritually fallen before Christ came does but show in what state it would now, or at any time, be, were he and what he has done withdrawn. Now, or in the future, as in the past, there is help or hope for souls only in Christ and the life that is in him; only in Christianity and God's redeeming energy in it.
There are those, indeed, who tell us that the world has outgrown Christianity. As well might they allege that the earth has outgrown the sun, or that human nature has outgrown itself. Stages and processes in the progress of our education may be outgrown; but do we, therefore, outgrow either the capacity to know, or the need of instruction, that we may know? In like manner, the world may outgrow certain forms of thought about God, and duty, and immortality; but it does not, therefore, outgrow them, nor the necessity of being informed concerning them. No doubt some interpretations of Christianity, and some accompanying theories of miracle and inspiration as connected wit it, have been outgrown. But to outgrow these, is one thing; to outgrow Christianity, is quite another. Christianity is founded in our very nature, and miracle and inspiration were necessities, if Divine instruction was to be specially communicated, or we were to have any assurance of its genuineness and truth. To outgrow these, or our need of them, is, therefore, as impossible as it is that our finite nature shall outgrow its finite limitations; as impossible as it is that the human understanding shall outgrow its need of a superior illumination, if it is to have any clear or satisfactory knowledge of spiritual things; or that sorrow shall outgrow its need of consolation; or that tempted and sinful souls shall outgrow the need of some help to arouse and strengthen, to vitalize and save them.
Science may enlarge the horizon of its discoveries, more and more 'reading God's thoughts after Him,' and those ​there may be who will imagine that Christ is to be thus supplanted,—some of them, possibly, that God is to be shown as having no longer a place in the universe. Others may talk vauntingly of reason and philosophy, of the intuitions of conscience and the soul, of human progress and development, insisting that these will fulfil every use which it has been thought Christianity is requisite to serve. All this has been, and is likely to be again. But so long as the human soul remains what it is, and the conditions of human quickening and regeneration abide what they are, Christianity is the one thing which cannot be outgrown. The world will outgrow theories in science, and systems of philosophy, and forms of speculative thought, and inductions from reason and conscience—for all these it has, many times, successively outgrown and cast aside; but Christ, or Christianity, never. Just as soon may the worlds outgrow space. Suppose them possessed with the idea that they want more room; where will they find it? With equal pertinence, we may ask, what field is there for growth outside the infinite scope of Christ's spirit, or the comprehensiveness of his plans? What is there beyond the universal Fatherhood and the universal Brotherhood, which are the sum of his teachings? What better than the golden rule which he lays down,—or than the love which he enjoins,—or than the regard for man which he enforces as the condition of acceptance with God? What purer, more unselfish, more magnanimous than the character on which he insists? What tenderer or more inclusive than his sympathy? What more ample than his consolations? What simpler than the way to God which he opens? What more certain or more inspiring than his disclosures of the life immortal? What grander or more encouraging than the spiritual enfranchisement and redemption of our race of which he assures us?
Those who talk so much about outgrowing Christ should answer these questions, and tell us how we are to outgrow what is so illimitable and universal,—tell us into what, having outgrown him, as they allege, they have advanced, or into what, outgrowing him, we are to go. Let the man who combines most of intellect and heart unfold into his loftiest possi​bilities, and still, alike in thought and affection, he will find Christ immeasurably above him, saying, Come up higher. Or, let any man—the wisest, the most 'advanced,' the most accustomed to boast himself of what he imagines is to supplant Christ, and thus to think himself superior to any need of him, be stricken into helplessness, or be humbled or prostrated by pain, or sickness, or some great sorrow piercing into the quick of his being,—by the agony of bereavement,—by the awakening of conscience and a disturbing sense of sin,—by no matter what, so that the shell of learned or materialistic assumption in which he is encased be broken, and the bubble of his conceit be made to collapse, and he be brought to some genuine consciousness of what he is and of his real needs; and amidst all that he has been accustomed to think sufficient—lacking only the Christ he has flattered himself he has outgrown—he will find himself, spiritually, in the condition of the traveller, who, famishing in the desert, pushed from him the bag which he had hoped contained water or food, exclaiming, "Ah me! it is only pearls!" Retort and crucible, telescope and microscope, philanthropy, and philosophy, reason and nature and schemes for human improvement are severally important in their places and for their legitimate uses; but when grief is to be assuaged, when starving hearts are to be fed and soothed, when a pitying God is to be found, and pardon is to be assured, or when even the least of the spiritual cravings which Christ fully satisfies is to be ministered to, these things are to the soul only as so many stones to one who is dying for bread. In these straits, whatever else one may have outgrown, his experience will demonstrate that he has not outgrown a need for Christ; and give but him to this humbled, awakened man, brought down from his inflated self-sufficiency, so that he shall clasp his hand and feel the inflowing of his presence, and he will have, in him, a sense of God's nearness and pity, an assurance of God's helpful grace and pardon, an experience of God's peace, and a power lifting him above all his vanity and broken-heartedness and sin, that, while enabling him to see a new meaning in every revelation of science and every suggestion of philosophy, in every delight of human knowledge and every ​indication of human progress, will put him into spiritual heights and satisfactions of which he had never dreamed before.
"Lord, to whom shall we go?" once said Peter to Christ; "thou hast the words of eternal life." And this but puts into speech the universal outcry of our spiritual consciousness, however or in whomsoever awakened. The same necessities of human nature continually assert themselves; and, whatever changes or modifications may occur in opinions about him, or in the interpretation of his words, Christ, "the same yesterday, to-day and forever," will be the one sole sufficient answer to these necessities, so long as men have need of God and the assurance of His fatherly love, and the conscience has need of guidance, and the heart has need of peace, and the erring have need of forgiveness, and the dying have need of "the power of an endless life."
It is this fact that we are called to emphasize and enforce, summoning men to that practical appropriation of Christ which is essential to their best life. Ignorant, tempted, weak, suffering, sinful, they are to be made to feel it is in vain that we turn to reason or philosophy, to science or our own intuitions; in vain that we invoke any power of progress or 'development' in ourselves. 'None but Christ, none but Christ,' reiterated the brave old martyr, amidst the tortures of the stake; and so, attempt what substitutes we may, that which is deepest in us will compel every one of us, like him, at some time to say. Christ is the quickening spirit, and only he. He is "the way, the truth and the life;" "the light which lighteth every man;" "the fountain of living water;" "the bread of life;" "wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." In our weakness there is no hand like his to make us strong. On the bed of pain, his ministries alone can soothe us to rest. When our hopes are shattered, no voice like his can compose our disappointment, or inspire us with resignation and trust. When our hearts are wounded, there is no balm like his to heal. Standing above our dead, only he transfigures death, and shows us the path of our departed illumined in the radiance of an immortal life. And in our moral impotence and disease, in the waywardness of our wills, in our ​conflicts with temptation, in our bondage to sin and our insubordination to God, our only sufficient help, no less surely, must come from him. Only at the foot of his cross can we have that loathing of sin, or be melted into that condition of penitence and consecration, essential to newness of life; and only in contact with him, as the medium of God's regenerative grace, can we effectively learn the lesson of duty, or be invigorated, vitalized, saved. None like him, none but he, can fill us with the idea of excellence, or give us 'power to become the sons of God.'
And what is thus true of individuals is equally true of the race. Humanity is but the aggregate of individuals, and there is help or redemption for it only where help and redemption are to be found for the feeblest soul that makes part of it. Nations and the race can be lifted up only as individuals are lifted up. Why is Turkey 'the sick man' of Europe? Why, mainly, but that Christianity has not been, for these many centuries, an element in the thought and life of the people? And what is it that, by common consent, as we watch the wondrous change in progress in Japan, is so assuring us of a nobler destiny for that hitherto exclusive nation? What but the indications that Christianity—first, in the ideas and usages of our Christian civilization, and then through the introduction of the Bible, and as a transforming faith—is to become a power in minds and hearts there? Christ is the one answer to the universal need. In him alone the conditions for the world's spiritual cure and elevation anywhere are fulfilled. "Without him we can do nothing." Human wisdom, and the pride of reason, and the vanity of 'culture,' and the pompous self-sufficiency of men unwilling to acknowledge their dependence, may dream their dreams, and propose their plans, for the amelioration of society, and the regeneration of the world, without him; but they will prove, every one of them, like the empty lamps of the virgins—prove only dreams and failures; and from them all the world must turn at length to Christ: "Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."
In the power of this truth we are to make ourselves ​morally mighty; and only as we become possessed and instinct with this power, as ministers, as a people, as an organized and evangelizing Church, whatever else we may have or be, is there any positive and saving work, or any desirable Christian future, for us. In this be strong, is the one word that comes from all God's voices to us.