Mark 13:1-2

THE CONVENTIONAL AND THE MORAL

‘And as he went forth out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto Him, Master, behold, what manner of stones and what manner of buildings! And Jesus said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left here one stone upon another, which shall not be thrown down.’

Mark 13:1. R.V.

That Temple in Zion was the symbol of the national life, and not less of the ecclesiastical life, which found there its central expression. Our Saviour was pronouncing sentence on the Jewish Church and nation, and He was doing so on the verge of the supreme crime which filled to overflowing the chalice of national and ecclesiastical guilt. We cannot but be anxious to know why that splendid religious system was thus destined to ruin. What was the hidden weakness which would bring that proud, beautiful city to destruction?

I. The conventional and the moral.—As we approach the final and critical stage of Jewish national history from the earlier periods which are preserved to knowledge in the literature of the Old Testament, we perceive at once that two opposing agencies, present throughout, reached then their supreme antagonism. We may describe them by many terms, but perhaps the most satisfying is that which designates them respectively as the conventional and the moral.

II. Israel’s position.—Israel stood in the category of the nations and on their level, and its supreme vocation was to come out of that category and to rise above that level, and this the nation as a whole never did. It stood, and was contented to stand, in the groove of convention. On the other hand, there was the moral witness expressed in the actual fellowship of the prophets, and culminating in the teaching of Him Who was, and Who claimed to be, the Lord of the prophets. In Christ’s time the Jews had thoroughly conventionalised their religion. The distinctive element which the prophets had contributed, by title of which their writings never grow obsolete, but are competent to be the Scriptures of the Christian Church, had been submerged by these other elements—ritual, hierarchical, political, which the Jewish religion had in common with the other religions of mankind. That distinctive element was the moral element, and it finds its noblest expression in the Old Testament in the great oracle of Micah. ‘What doth the Lord require of thee?’ etc. But the token of conventionalised religion is the manifest divorce between religious beliefs and observances and the moralities of common life. Our Saviour’s tremendous indictment of His religious contemporaries is summed up in the reiterated phrase, so searching and so stern, ‘Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!’

III. And what of Christianity?—It is the spiritual religion par excellence. The life and the teaching of the Founder were one supreme protest against conventionalised religion, one supreme revelation of religion moralised. What of Christianity as we know it? It has certainly become conventionalised in aspect. Within the Church the institutions, the methods, the names of the older system have reappeared. Perhaps that was inevitable. But what of the spirit of our new Judaism? Is that also what it was? Is the token of the old hypocrisy to be seen on us also? We are proud, naturally, inevitably proud, of our historic Church. And what is Christ’s judgment of us? How does our religion express itself in common conduct? Is it or is it not moralised? At least we must be on the right road to find an answer if we hold fast to the point of sacrifice. How far does our Christianity compel us to acts and to habits of social helpfulness? How far does our religious observance draw in its train a higher standard of social action? How far does the Gospel, with its Divine example of justice, mercy, and love, find any discernible reflection in the lives of Christian men?

The best evidence of what we are is what we do, and we may wisely seek the proofs of our own religious sincerity in our conduct. There are on all sides of us urgent needs, and we can do something, though it be but little, to satisfy them. Are we doing it?

—Rev. Canon Hensley Henson.

Illustration

‘It is easy enough to give oneself up to the great tide of resentment which sweeps over us when we rise from the study of the Gospel in order to examine and to judge the current procedure of the Christendom we know. Tolstoy, crying his protest of agonised revolt at the spectacle of insane cupidity and brutal force which is offered by his undone and helpless country, wakes sympathetic echoes in all our hearts, but the moment we begin to think calmly, we lay down his burning pages with a sigh of impotent sorrow. What is gained, we ask, by these passionate invectives? Where can be found in them any guidance which good men may approve and practical men may adopt? War is hideous, irrational, and extravagant, and even futile, we are told, and no Christian man is disposed to resent the sternest denunciation of it; but when all is said, there is the old besetting problem, How to enforce justice and to maintain peace among the nations in such a world as this? and we are as far as our fathers from having any other solution than the precarious and doubtful solution offered by the sword. Similarly, when we come to our own personal action with regard to social problems such as the relief of the indigent, the recovery of the socially worthless, how easy it is to denounce the hypocrisy of the general practice. These questions are wonderfully complicated, wonderfully hard to answer, and yet answered they must be by every genuine disciple of Christ.’

WHEN?

‘Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled?’

Mark 13:4

Our Lord does not directly answer this question. His advice here is simply, ‘Take heed that no man deceive you.’ There is no short and easy way of wresting these secrets from God. But His warnings must be regarded and His messages carefully noted.

I. An unprofitable question.—Not only is the question a vain one, and maybe a dangerous one, but also it is an unprofitable one. Is there any one who, in his heart of hearts, would really wish to have the future clearly unrolled before him? There are few people strong enough to stand up against anxiety, even as regard evils which exist only in the imagination. These evils, ‘beyond all other evils, which never come,’ have power already to torture a man to divide up his mind into minute fragments, according to the meaning of the expressive Greek word, so that he cannot give himself wholly to anything. Few of us could bear to have a definite answer to this ‘When?’ as it concerns our life. None of us would be the better for it, most of us would be the worse; and therefore those who pretend to lift the veil are either deceivers, or they are those who have not studied the best interests of man.

II. The discipline of the present.—An anxiety which exchanges an uncertain and possible evil for one which is definite, fixed, and certain, is not the only evil which would accrue from a too intimate knowledge of the future. There is a very real danger of missing the present, of escaping God’s discipline and graduated training which belongs to the daily life, lived in dependence on God and in earnest endeavour to make each day count in the probation and equipment of our lives.

III. Days of the Son of Man.—There are days of the Son of Man which stand out in the lives of most of us, to be remembered with fear, with awe, with thankfulness, or love, but they are not the isolated days that we take them to be. If we knew the inner working of God’s power we should see that there is nothing sudden with Him, and that these striking days of the Lord are but the culmination of a series of days, monotonous and uneventful as we thought them, but in reality charged with consequence and pregnant with purpose. It is for these quiet days, these uneventful days, that I plead; these days so like each other, so simple, so monotonous, while we stand still and ask the ‘When?’ of some fancied future, or even of some certain destiny, such as death or judgment; while we stand still and look back and say, ‘Then,’ even of days whose very happiness seem to make the present gloom more insupportable.

IV. Present and future.—If we knew the future, if we knew accurately the date of God’s judgments which we feel are about to fall, if we knew exactly the date of our death, the date of our own judgment, if not the date of the judgment of the world, would not the temptation be inevitable to live in the future? Work would not be worth while, which was so soon to be cut short. Or work might be deferred, when there was so long a time in which to do it. It is a great truth, that we shall not be judged at the great day for our sins alone, but for our use of time, our use of the days. When will God come to judgment? He is judging now. Why, then, unfold the future at all? Surely, that we may cultivate that which will remain, that we may busy ourselves about those things which will stand—the gold, silver, and precious stones which will endure the fire, and not the wood, hay, stubble, which will be burnt up. As the disciples gazed at the Temple, around which judgment was gathering, it was the towers and walls, and outward ritual which was to perish; they were either the symbols of a material formalism, or the time had come when they were to give way to realities. But there were things in that Temple which would survive its destruction, and even the Day of Judgment. The presence of God would remain, the abiding treasure of those who waited for Him. So, in view of judgment to come, let us cultivate those things that will remain. Let us day by day lay up treasure in heaven, let us grow in grace, let us ‘labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life.’

—Rev. Canon Newbolt.

Illustrations

(1) ‘ “When?” asked the astrologer, as he scanned the heavens and persuaded himself that he read the riddle of the future in the stars. “When?” asks the fortune-teller as he pretends, by physical delineation, to read man’s future and unlock the secrets of the coming hours. Now it is Charles I, who, walking through the Bodleian Library, tests the Sortes Virgilianae (as they were called), and extracts from the casually-opened page the sinister message which was regarded afterwards as prophetic of his doom. Now it is some village maiden on All Hallows’ E’en, or the modern dabbler in crystal-gazing and soothsaying, and all these superstitions which crowd upon even an educated and civilised people when they turn their backs on the revelation of God, and feel the void which has been caused by the loss of spiritual peace and assurance.’

(2) ‘In the precincts of old St. Paul’s, in the Pardon cloister, there was one of those quaint and grim delineations of the dance of death, where the king on his throne, the soldier, the merchant, the priest, the youth, the maiden are all depicted as overshadowed by the unseen presence of death, ever at hand, ever ready to strike. Such a vision is ever present to the anxious, the nervous, the valetudinarian.’

(3) ‘What solid good, what useful information, what contribution to moral or spiritual welfare is being procured by modern spiritualism? Is it claimed that thereby the bereaved have comfort in intercourse with their loved ones? Is this the highest form, or the only form, of intercourse possible? Is there no possibility of a delusion here brought about in the spiritual world, with the ultimate aim of materialising, lowering, confining human affections to the life down here, instead of lifting up those who are separated, both one and the other, into the ample folds of the love of God? There is very little doubt that dealers in spirit communications have, in some instances, at all events, intercourse with supernatural agents in ways which they themselves do not understand. But at the end there lies too often madness, delusion, a bitter disappointment, perils to the very well-being of the soul, which sharply forbid any conscientious Christian from attempting thus to snatch an answer to that “When?” which God alone can discover, and which God in His mercy wills to hide from us until His will concerning us is ready to be revealed.’