595
October 1928
T h e
K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
Dr. Holden’s Keswick Key-Note O pening address of the C onvention
R. J. STUART HOLDEN , in the opening address of the Keswick Convention, July 14, took as the |WpJ|| basis o f the keynote message, the words of jjg a M Paul’s prayer fo r his friends at Ephesus (Eph. “ That the God o f our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father o f glory, may give unto you the spirit o f wis dom and revelation in the knowledge o f H im ; the eyes o f your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know.’’ These words he coupled with Paul’s other prayer in Eph. 3:14 : “ For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father o f our Lord Jesus Christ, o f whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that H e would grant you, according to the riches o f His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” So appropriate to the conditions in Christendom today, are Dr. Holden’s words that we reproduce herewith an extract from the address, praying that these searching words'may grip the hearts o f many of our readers. It is easy to indict the church generally and denounce all who disagree with our theological views, but the critical spirit is not carrying us further in our quest for blessing. If as Fundamentalists we have come to a place where we cannot face our own shortcomings, then the defeat of our cause is not far distant. May the Holy Spirit cause us to dwell upon the words o f Dr. Holden! “ Most o f us know that what is o f most pressing moment is not the present general situation of the world and Church, but the state o f Christ’s Body, the state o f Christ’s people, our own state. For, beloved, this is the key to the situation, to the righting o f the situation whose wrong and unhelpfulness we all deplore. To a large ex tent, it is the absence o f Christlike Christianity which causes and which ministers to the world’s almost con temptuous unconcern in regard to Christ. W h y the W orld D isbelieves “ May I put it this way—speaking always first to my self— the world generally does not believe in Him, whom it has not seen, because it has cause not to believe in us whom it has seen. Those of you who have, ever visited Rome will remember that in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican, where upon the roof are wonderful frescoes of Michael Angelo, the high-vaulted roof makes it quite impossible for the visitor to see the beauties in anything like detail o f Michael Angelo’s painting. As you go into the chapel, you will remember, there is handed to every visitor a square hand-mirror, and you carry it through the chapel thuswise, looking down at your mirror, the mirror reflecting the beautiful frescoes on the roof, and so you see and admire, and are uplifted by the beauty o f the centuries. Beloved, it is so that Jesus Christ is either reflected or distorted in this world of ours. Men take their measure of Him and determine and decide their attitudes towards Him, though they are not always aware B
that they are doing so, by what they see of Him in us. That is why the New Testament always insists upon char acter, upon conformity to Him, upon the working out in the terms and categories of life, of His Gospel. For the world of that day, to wnom this letter o f Paul’s was writ ten, as o f this day, takes its measure again, I say, of Jesus Christ by this very thing—:by the translation into life of obedience and'of the truth which is professed, and of the knowledge which is proclaimed. It was in His day, and it is in our day, the gap between the knowledge that is claimed and the life that is lived that was the greatest deterrent to the faith o f men to whom the Gospel was proclaimed. “ There are many difficulties in the way o f the world today, and many harmful influences playing upon the hearts and lives of men to keep them from Christ; but the greatest o f all is un-Christlikeness o f His followers. T he W orld ’ s G reat D ifficulty “ The world’s great difficulty in believing the Gospel is not philosophical, it is not historical, it is not intellectual at all. The world’s great difficulty is that it sees, so few o f us who are in any appreciably recognizable degree like Jesus Christ; and that is why any merely general indict ment o f the situation does not carry our consciences. We know only too well that we are ourselves intimately in volved in the situation, for, speaking generally, our knowl edge o f Christ appears to men who know us to be so sterile and so impotent. In the face o f His promises, in the face o f our own professions, it is all too evident that there are strange recalcitrant powers within us which persistently refuse obedience to Him. For instance, our tempers are not wholly dead, nor are our passions wholly quiescent. Our ambitions are not entirely silenced, and our prejudices are not altogether removed. Our decisions retain their overmastering energy, and our weaknesses have not fully disappeared; rather, in many cases, they have become strong by reason o f their own stubbornness. Nor is our self-assertiveness entirely dethroned; and all this is seen and known to those who know us and all this misrepresents Jesus Christ. “ The fact is that not a few of us are living on a rap idly diminishing spiritual capital. We have nothing left to live upon but the memory o f an old experience which has lost its thrill and lost its content of any moral value. There are others o f us— God forgive us—who are far too much like the world to impress the world. We are far too much like the thing we rebuke for our trouble or our sum mons to carry any authority. There are many who are perplexed about their own lives and the tendencies they are constantly discovering in themselves and the failures that they deplore with strong cries. “ Whatever be the secondary causes which have led to our present unsatisfactory condition of life, the honest quest o f us all surely is for stlch knowledge of Jesus Christ our Lord, as shall bring essential power into life pnd make us competent for His witness. ‘That ye may know, and that ye may dwell.’ “ There must be some simple moral act o f submission, not a matter of emotion at all but a matter of will; for
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