Preaching Christ is not preaching about Christ. There is a well-known passage in the tenth chapter of Romans which gives a balanced account of the reason for the failure of so much preaching to produce any adequate or satisfactory results. The first part of the passage points to causes of failure in the preachers; the second half to causes of failure in the hearers. The great cause of failure in preachers is indicated in one of these opening interrogations as it is translated in the Revised Version. The old version, smoothing over a difficulty of translation, and giving not the actual sense of the words but what it was imagined St. Paul ought to have said and meant to say, reads thus, "How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?" Now the Revisers give us what St. Paul actually did write. "How shall they believe in him whom they have not heard?" You see there is a whole world of difference in the two phrases. According to the first one the difficulty of belief is that they have not heard about Christ; but according to the second it is that they have not heard Christ. According to the first the function of the preacher is to talk about Christ; but according to the second his function is to be a mouthpiece through whom Christ can speak about Himself. "They are not likely to believe," St. Paul says, "unless they hear Christ." If it was true when he wrote, it is abundantly true to-day. There are few indeed to-day who have not heard about Christ; but there are multitudes who have never heard Christ.1 3. Preaching Christ crucified.-St. Paul's subject was "Christ crucified." He would not preach Christ the Conqueror, or Christ the Philosopher (by preaching which he might have won both Jews and Greeks), but Christ the crucified, Christ the humble. There is a distinction between preaching Christ crucified and preaching the Crucifixion of Christ. It is said by some that the Gospel is not preached unless the Crucifixion be named. But the Apostle did not preach that; he preached ChristChrist the Example-Christ the Life-Christ the Son of ManChrist the Son of God-Christ risen-Christ the King of Glory. And ever and unfailingly he preached that Christ as a humble Christ crucified through weakness, yet living by the power of God. T "Reason cries, 'if God were good, He could not look upon the sin and misery of man and live; His heart would break.' The Church points to the Crucifixion and says, 'God's heart did 1 C. Silvester Horne, Relationships of Life, 139. break.' Reason cries, 'Born and reared in sin and pain as we are, how can we keep from sin? It is the Creator who is responsible; it is God who deserves to be punished.' The Church kneels by the cross and whispers, 'God accepts the responsibility and bears the punishment.' Reason cries, Who is God? What is God? The name stands for the unknown. It is blasphemy to say we know Him.' The Church kisses the feet of the dying Christ and says, 'We must worship the majesty we see.' O that Thy Name may be sounded Till the dead awaken and praise Thee, Sound forth as a song of triumph Jesus, dishonoured and dying, Name of God's tender comfort, Jesus the Lamb accepted, Jesus the Priest on His throne Jesus the King who is coming- III. THE RECEPTION OF THE MESSAGE. No two races, no two types of the human mind, could have been more widely different, more directly the opposite of each other, than the Jew and the Greek. The very fact that the Gospel was displeasing to the one might therefore have led us to expect that it would be sure to please the other. And yet Jews and Greeks, who agreed in nothing else, agreed in rejecting Christ. ¶ Widely different as the demands of the Jew and the Greek seemed at first, they were really asking one and the same thing; they were asking for an unspiritual religion; a revelation that should not deal with the heart at all in the way of trial or discipline, that would spare them the great trial of being called on to trust and to love, in spite of doubt and difficulty. What they sought for, in one word, was knowledge without belief. The Jew demanded a demonstration of God to his senses; the Greek demanded a demonstration of God to his intellect. The Jew required a revelation that should compel assent; the Greek required one that should give no occasion for doubt. Both demanded a religion without faith, both asked to see, both refused to believe in an invisible God, and, therefore, both rejected a crucified Christ.1 1. To the Jews, the death upon the Cross was a stumblingblock, ie. it was something which they could not get over, because it was so utterly contrary and so entirely repugnant to their religious ideas. It was a "stumblingblock"; literally a trap, something that arrests the foot suddenly in walking and causes a fall. Here, in the very forefront of the Gospel, was the stumbling-block, which they could not get over, and which prevented them from making any effort to weigh the evidences and the claims of Christianity. (1) To the Jew, the Cross meant failure of the most evident and pitiful kind; it meant impotence and weakness; it meant a life of great apparent promise, a career of great and wide-felt influence, ending in the most disastrous, the most humiliating acknowledgment of helplessness. It was not only incredible, it was disgusting and abominable, this "word of the Cross." That men should dare to speak of One crucified, of One hung upon a tree, of One who had suffered the death of the accursed as the Messiah of Israel, the Saviour of the world, the chosen Servant of Jehovah-their faces reddened with shame or gathered blackness with rage when they heard of it. In the Jewish writings of those ages our Lord is never directly spoken of. His name was to them a thing of nameless horror; He was a thing of darkness so fearful, so shocking, that to speak or write of Him was by tacit consent forbidden. Only in far-fetched figures and suggestions was that object of loathing dimly alluded to as the arch enemy of Israel.2 1 W. C. Magee. I COR.-2 2 R. Winterbotham. (2) There are multitudes of Christians who worship success; and these would reject and repudiate Christ as emphatically as the Jews if it were open to them, if they were really free to be consistent. Christ represents failure, weakness, humiliation; and they admire only what is successful in this world, what is strong in mere physical might, what is glorified by itself. They tell us that there are men of science who stumble at the Cross. There are young men and middle-aged men, and old men, so we are told, who follow us sympathetically until we come to the proclamation of the sacrifice of Christ as the atonement for sin, and there they stumble. Shall we remove the cross that these people may not stumble? If we do we remove the world's redemption at the same time. Even though it be a stumbling-block to some, we must preach Christ crucified.1 2. To the Greek-speaking heathens the doctrine was foolishness. The Greeks had been trained to speculation. Everything in their esteem ought to assume the shape of a theory, or a system, or a well-arranged argument, and ought to invite them with subtlety of discussion. The Apostle reduced them to what was in their eyes foolishness; he reduced them to a fact-Christ crucified. (1) Men who sought for wisdom had to find it in other quarters than these. Wisdom is of two kinds: theoretical and practical. Theoretical wisdom gives an account and an explanation of all things that are: of the state of the world, of the puzzles and trials of human life, of the nature and character of God and of man. Practical wisdom, again, teaches men how to live so as to make the best of life, to avoid most evil, and to attain most good. Now the doctrine of the Cross failed in every way (as they thought, and not unreasonably) to commend itself to wisdom. To see a man, who is said to be the best, and the prime favourite of heaven, dying a horrible death amidst general detestation does not explain anything; it only makes things very much more dark, and perplexed, and confused than before. Moreover, to point to a man who ended his days in such a wretched way can be no help in the way of practical guidance. No one but an absolute lunatic could desire such a fate, or regard it with anything but horror. Have we not a human nature? Are we not made of 1 J. Thomas. flesh and blood? Do we not rightly shrink from suffering, cold, hunger, pain, and all their kindred ills? Do we not instinctively desire to be warm, to be full, to be at ease, to be wrapped in comfort and in peace? The doctrine of the Cross, which is of its very nature opposed to all this, is not wisdom but foolishness; it does not deserve a hearing from sensible people. (2) The opposition which the Gospel met with in St. Paul's day was not of that day alone. The Jew and the Greek, the seeker after the sign and the seeker after wisdom, exist always. Still, wherever the Gospel is preached, must the preacher expect to hear from each of these the same demand that St. Paul heard ; still must be found, with St. Paul, Christ crucified a stumbling-block to the one and foolishness to the other. For these two-the seeker after the sign and the seeker after wisdom; the man who would rest all religion, all philosophy, all social polity, upon authority alone, and the man who would rest them all upon reason alone -this Jew, with his reverence for power, his love of custom and tradition-which are the power of the past—his tendency to rest always in outward law and form-the power of the present-his distaste for all philosophical speculation, his impatience of novelty, his dread of change-leaning always to the side of despotism in religion-and, on the other hand this Greek, with his subtle and restless intellect, his taste for speculation, his want of reverence for the past, his desire of change, his love of novelty, his leaning towards licence in society and scepticism in religion; what are they these two-but the representatives of those two opposite types of mind which divide, and always have divided, all mankind? 3. Those who listened to the call of God found in this preaching of the Apostle exactly what both Jew and Gentile were looking for. It was both a sign and a philosophy. The sign, the proof, which comes closest to us all is a change of heart, an emancipated will, a risen self, a new life. The mind humbled and exalted at once before the Cross of Christ, accepting the message of and love, found itself acted on by a new power. peace All things became new; old habits and corruptions fell off from the believers; they began to walk in newness of life. The great proof of moral regeneration was being exhibited in every Christian Church, and was to every one that felt it a philosophy. The |