Chapter III (2)

“The faith of the Church anticipated the coming of Christ, ‘like a
roe or a young hart,’ with the dawn of the day promised in Eden; and
we hear her exclaiming in the Canticles—‘The voice of my beloved!
behold, He cometh, leaping upon the mountains, and skipping upon the
hills!’ She heard Him announce His advent in the promise, ‘Lo, I
come to do Thy will, O God!’ and with prophetic eye, saw Him leaping
from the mountains of eternity to the mountains of time, and skipping
from hill to hill throughout the land of Palestine, going about doing
good. In the various types and shadows of the law, she beheld Him
‘standing by the wall, looking forth at the windows, showing Himself
through the lattice;’ and then she sang—‘Until the day break and the
shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like the roe or the
young hart upon the mountains of Bether!’ Bloody sacrifices revealed
Him to her view, going down to the ‘vineyards of red wine;’ whence
she traced Him to the meadows of Gospel ordinances, where ‘He feedeth
among the lilies’—to ‘the gardens of cucumbers,’ and ‘the beds of
spices;’ and then she sang to Him again—‘Make haste’—or, flee
away—‘my beloved! be thou like the roe or the young hart among the
mountains of spices.’

“Thus she longed to see Him, first ‘on the mountain of Bether,’ and
then ‘on the mountain of spices.’ On both mountains she saw Him
eighteen hundred years ago, and on both she may still trace the
footsteps of His majesty, and His mercy. The former, He hath tracked
with His own blood, and His path upon the latter is redolent of
frankincense and myrrh.

“Bether signifies division. This is the craggy mountain of Calvary;
whither the ‘Hind of the Morning’ fled, followed by all the wild
beasts of the forest, and the bloodhounds of hell; summoned to the
pursuit, and urged on, by the prince of perdition; till the victim,
in His agony, sweat great drops of blood—where He was terribly
crushed between the cliffs, and dreadfully mangled by sharp and
ragged rocks—where He was seized by Death, the great Bloodhound of
the bottomless pit—whence He leaped the precipice, without breaking a
bone; and sunk in the dead sea, sunk to its utmost depth, and saw no
corruption.

“Behold the ‘Hind of the Morning’ on that dreadful mountain! It is
the place of skulls, where Death holds his carnival in companionship
with worms, and hell laughs in the face of heaven. Dark storms are
gathering there—convolving clouds, charged with no common wrath.
Terrors set themselves in battle-array before the Son of God; and
tempests burst upon Him which might sweep all mankind in a moment to
eternal ruin. Hark! hear ye not the subterranean thunder? Feel ye
not the tremor of the mountain? It is the shock of Satan’s
artillery, playing upon the Captain of our Salvation. It is the
explosion of the magazine of vengeance. Lo, the earth is quaking,
the rocks are rending, the graves are opening, the dead are rising,
and all nature stands aghast at the conflict of Divine mercy with the
powers of darkness. One dread convulsion more, one cry of desperate
agony, and Jesus dies—an arrow has entered into His heart. Now leap
the lions, roaring, upon their prey; and the bulls of Bashan are
bellowing; and the dogs of perdition are barking; and the unicorns
toss their horns on high; and the devil, dancing with exultant joy,
clanks his iron chains, and thrusts up his fettered hands in defiance
towards the face of Jehovah!

“Go a little farther upon the mountain, and you come to ‘a new tomb
hewn out of the rock.’ There lies a dead body. It is the body of
Jesus. His disciples have laid it down in sorrow, and returned,
weeping, to the city. Mary’s heart is broken, Peter’s zeal is
quenched in tears, and John would fain lie down and die in his
Master’s grave. The sepulchre is closed up, and sealed, and a Roman
sentry placed at its entrance. On the morning of the third day,
while it is yet dark, two or three women come to anoint the body.
They are debating about the great stone at the mouth of the cave.
‘Who shall roll it away?’ says one of them. ‘Pity we did not bring
Peter, or John with us.’ But, arriving, they find the stone already
rolled away, and one sitting upon it, whose countenance is like
lightning, and whose garments are white as the light. The
steel-clad, iron-hearted soldiers lie around him, like men slain in
battle, having swooned with terror. He speaks: ‘Why seek ye the
living among the dead? He is not here; He is risen; He is gone forth
from this cave victoriously.’

“It is even so! For there are the shroud, and the napkin, and the
heavenly watchers; and when He awoke, and cast off His grave-clothes,
the earthquake was felt in the city, and jarred the gates of hell.
‘The Hind of the Morning’ is up earlier than any of His pursuers,
‘leaping upon the mountains, and skipping upon the hills.’ He is
seen first with Mary at the tomb; then with the disciples in
Jerusalem; then with two of them on the way to Emmaus; then going
before His brethren into Galilee; and, finally, leaping upon the top
of Olivet to the hills of Paradise; fleeing away to ‘the mountain of
spices,’ where He shall never more be hunted by the Black Prince and
his hounds.

“Christ is perfect master of gravitation, and all the laws of nature
are obedient to His will. Once He walked upon the water, as if it
were marble beneath His feet; and now, as He stands blessing His
people, the glorious Form, so recently nailed to the cross, and still
more recently cold in the grave, begins to ascend like ‘the living
creature’ in Ezekiel’s vision, ‘lifted up from the earth,’ till
nearly out of sight; when ‘the chariots of God, even thousands of
angels,’ receive Him, and haste to the celestial city, waking the
thrones of eternity with this jubilant chorus—‘Lift up your heads, O
ye gates! and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors! and the King of
glory shall come in!’

“Christ might have rode in a chariot of fire all the way from
Bethlehem to Calvary; but he preferred riding in a chariot of mercy,
whose lining was crimson, and whose ornament the malefactor’s cross.
How rapidly rolled his wheels over the hills and the plains of
Palestine, gathering up everywhere the children of affliction, and
scattering blessings like the beams of the morning! Now we find Him
in Cana of Galilee, turning water into wine; then treading the waves
of the sea, and hushing the roar of the tempest; then delivering the
demoniac of Gadara from the fury of a legion of fiends; then healing
the nobleman’s son at Capernaum; raising the daughter of Jairus, and
the young man of Nain; writing upon the grave of Bethany, ‘I am the
resurrection and the life;’ curing the invalid at the pool of
Bethesda; feeding the five thousand in the wilderness; preaching to
the woman by Jacob’s well, acquitting the adulteress, and shaming her
accusers; and exercising everywhere, in all his travels, the three
offices of Physician, Prophet, and Saviour, as he drove on towards
the place of skulls.

“Now we see the chariot surrounded with enemies—Herod, and Pilate,
and Caiaphas, and the Roman soldiers, and the populace of Jerusalem,
and thousands of Jews who have come up to keep the Passover, led on
by Judas and the devil. See how they rage and curse, as if they
would tear him from his chariot of mercy! But Jesus maintains his
seat, and holds fast the reins, and drives right on through the angry
crowd, without shooting an arrow, or lifting a spear upon his foes.
For in that chariot the King must ride to Calvary—Calvary must be
consecrated to mercy for ever. He sees the cross planted upon the
brow of the hill, and hastens forward to embrace it. No sacrifice
shall be offered to Justice on this day, but the one sacrifice which
reconciles heaven and earth. None of these children of Belial shall
suffer to-day. The bribed witnesses, and clamorous murderers, shall
be spared—the smiters, the scourgers, the spitters, the
thorn-plaiters, the nail drivers, the head-shakers—for Jesus pleads
on their behalf: ‘Father, forgive them! they know not what they do.
They are ignorant of Thy grace and truth. They are not aware of whom
they are crucifying. Oh, spare them! Let Death know that he shall
have enough to do with _me_ to-day! Let him open all his batteries
upon _me_! _My_ bosom is bare to the stroke. _I_ will gather all
the lances of hell in _my_ heart!’

“Still the chariot rushes on, and ‘fiery darts’ are thick and fast,
like a shower of meteors, on Messiah’s head, till He is covered with
wounds, and the blood flows down His garments, and leaves a crimson
track behind Him. As He passes, He casts at the dying malefactor a
glance of benignity, and throws him a passport into Paradise, written
with His own blood; stretches forth His sceptre, and touches the
prison-door of death, and many of the prisoners came forth, and the
tyrant shall never regain his dominion over them; rides triumphant
over thrones and principalities, and crushes beneath his wheels the
last enemy himself, and leaves the memorial of his march engraven on
the rocks of Golgotha!

“Christ is everywhere in the Scriptures spoken of as a Blessing; and
whether we contemplate His advent, His ministry, His miracles, His
agony, His crucifixion, His interment, His resurrection, or His
ascension, we may truly say, ‘All His paths drop fatness.’ All His
travels were on the road of mercy; and trees are growing up in His
footsteps, whose fruit is delicious food, and ‘whose leaves are for
the healing of the nations.’ He walketh upon the south winds,
causing propitious gales to blow upon the wilderness till songs of
joy awake in the solitary place, and the desert blossoms as the rose.

“If we will consider what the prophets wrote of the Messiah, in
connection with the evangelical history, we shall be satisfied that
none like Him, either before or since, ever entered our world, or
departed from it. Both God and man—at once the Father of eternity
and the Son of time, He filled the universe, while He was embodied
upon earth, and ruled the celestial principalities and powers, while
He wandered, a persecuted stranger, in Judea. ‘No man,’ saith He,
‘hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even
the Son of man who is in heaven.’

“Heaven was no strange place to Jesus. He talks of the mansions in
His Father’s house as familiarly as one of the royal family would
talk of Windsor Castle where he was born; and saith to His disciples,
‘I go to prepare a place for you; that where I am there ye may be
also.’ The glory into which He entered was His own glory—the glory
which He had with the Father before the world was. He had an
original and supreme right to the celestial mansions; and He acquired
a new and additional claim by His office as Mediator. Having
suffered for our sins, He ‘ought to enter into His glory.’ He ought,
because He is ‘God, blessed for ever;’ He ought, because He is the
representative of His redeemed people. He has taken possession of
the kingdom in our behalf, and left on record for our encouragement
this cheering promise, ‘To him that overcometh will I grant to sit
with me in my throne; even as I also have overcome, and am set down
with my Father in His throne.’

“The departure of God from Eden, and the departure of Christ from the
earth, were two of the sublimest events that ever occurred, and
fraught with immense consequences to our race. When Jehovah went out
from Eden, He left a curse upon the place for man’s sake, and drove
out man before him into an accursed earth. But when Jesus descended
from Olivet, He lifted the curse with Him, and left a blessing behind
Him—sowed the world with the seed of eternal blessings; ‘and instead
of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree; and instead of the briar
shall come up the myrtle-tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a
name, and an everlasting sign, that shall not be cut off.’ He
ascended to intercede for sinners, and reopen Paradise to His people;
and when He shall come the second time, according to the promise,
with all His holy angels, then shall we be ‘caught up to meet the
Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.’

“‘The Lord is gone up with a shout!’ and has taken our redeemed
nature with Him. He is the Head of the Church, and is the
representative at the right hand of the Father. ‘He hath ascended on
high; He hath led captivity captive; He hath received gifts for men;
yea, for the rebellious also, that God may dwell among them.’ ‘Him
hath God exalted, with His own right hand, to be a Prince and a
Saviour, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins.’ This
is the Father’s recognition of His ‘Beloved Son,’ and significant
acceptance of his sacrifice. ‘Wherefore God also hath highly exalted
Him, and given Him a name which is above every name; that at the name
of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in
the earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’

“The evidence of our Lord’s ascension is ample. He ascended in the
presence of many witnesses, who stood gazing after Him till a cloud
received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly
toward heaven, two angels appeared to them, and talked with them of
what they had seen. Soon afterward, on the day of Pentecost, He
fulfilled, in a remarkable manner, the promise which He had made to
His people: ‘If I go away I will send you another Comforter, who
shall abide with you for ever.’ Stephen, the first of His disciples
that glorified the Master by martyrdom, testified to his murderers,
‘Lo, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the
right hand of God!’ And John, the ‘beloved disciple,’ while an exile
‘in Patmos, for the word of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ,’
beheld Him ‘in the midst of the throne, as a Lamb that had been
slain!’ These are the evidences that our Lord is in heaven; these
are our consolations in the house of our pilgrimage.

“The Apostle speaks of the _necessity_ of this event, ‘Whom the
heaven _must_ receive.’

“Divine necessity is a golden chain reaching from eternity to
eternity, and encircling all the events of time. It consists of many
links all hanging upon each other; and not one of them can be broken
without destroying the support of the whole. The first link is in
God, ‘before the world was;’ and the last is in heaven, when the
world shall be no more. Christ is its Alpha, and Omega, and Christ
constitutes all its intervenient links. Christ in the bosom of the
Father, receiving the promise of eternal life, before the foundation
of the world, is the beginning; Christ in His sacrificial blood,
atoning for our sins, and pardoning and sanctifying all them that
believe, is the middle; and Christ in heaven, pleading the merit of
His vicarious sufferings, making intercession for the transgressors,
drawing all men unto Himself, presenting the prayers of His people,
and preparing their mansions, is the end.

“There is a necessity in all that Christ has done as our Mediator, in
all that He is doing on our behalf, and all that he has engaged to
do—the necessity of Divine love manifested, of Divine mercy
exercised, of Divine purposes accomplished, of Divine covenants
fulfilled, of Divine faithfulness maintained, of Divine justice
satisfied, of Divine holiness vindicated, and of Divine power
displayed. Christ felt this necessity while He tabernacled among us,
often declared it to His disciples, and acknowledged it to the Father
in the agony in the Garden.

“Behold Him wrestling in prayer, with strong crying and tears:
‘Father, save me from this hour! If it be possible, let this cup
pass from me!’ Now the Father reads to Him His covenant engagement,
which He signed and sealed with His own hand before the foundation of
the world. The glorious Sufferer replies, ‘Thy will be done! For
this cause came I unto this hour. I will drink the cup which Thou
hast mingled, and not a dreg of any of its ingredients shall be left
for my people. I will pass through the approaching dreadful night,
under the hidings of Thy countenance, bearing away the curse from my
beloved. Henceforth repentance is hidden from my eyes!’ Now, on His
knees, He reads the covenant engagements of the Father, and adds, ‘I
have glorified Thee on the earth. I have finished the work which
Thou gavest Me to do. Now glorify Thou Me, according to Thy promise,
with Thine own Self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the
world was. Father, I will also that they whom Thou hast given Me be
with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory. Thine they were,
and Thou hast given them to Me, on condition of My pouring out My
soul unto death. Thou hast promised them, through My righteousness
and meritorious sacrifice, the kingdom of heaven, which I now claim
on their behalf. Father, glorify My people, with Him whom Thou
lovedst before the foundation of the world!’

“This intercession of Christ for His saints, begun on earth, is
continued in heaven. This is our confidence and joy in our journey
through the wilderness. We know that our Joshua has gone over into
the land of our inheritance, where He is preparing the place of our
habitation for Israel; for it is His will that all whom He has
redeemed should be with Him for ever!

“And there is a text which speaks of the period when the great
purposes of our Lord’s ascension shall be fully accomplished: ‘Until
the times of the restitution of all things.’

“The period here mentioned is ‘the dispensation of the fulness of
time,’ when ‘the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in,’ and ‘the
dispersed of Judah’ shall be restored, and Christ shall ‘gather
together in Himself all things in heaven and in earth,’ overthrow his
enemies, establish his everlasting kingdom, deliver the groaning
creation from its bondage, glorify His people with Himself, imprison
the devil with his angels in the bottomless pit, and punish with
banishment from His presence them that obey not the Gospel.

“To this glorious consummation, the great travail of redemption, and
all the events of time, are only preparatory. It was promised in
Eden, and the promise was renewed and enlarged to Abraham, to Isaac,
and to Jacob. It was described in gorgeous oriental imagery by
Isaiah, and ‘the sweet Psalmist of Israel;’ and ‘spoken of by all the
Prophets, since the world began.’ Christ came into the world to
prepare the way for His future triumph—to lay on Calvary the ‘chief
corner-stone’ of a temple, which shall be completed at the end of
time, and endure through all eternity. He began the great
restitution. He redeemed His people with a price, and gave them a
pledge of redemption by power. He made an end of sin, abolished the
Levitical priesthood, and swallowed up all the types and shadows in
Himself. He sent home the beasts, overthrew the altars, and quenched
the holy fire; and, upon the sanctifying altar of His own divinity,
offered His own sinless humanity, which was consumed by fire from
heaven. He removed the seat of government from Mount Zion, in
Jerusalem, to Mount Zion above, where He sits—‘a Priest upon His
throne,’ drawing heaven and earth together, and establishing ‘the
covenant of peace between them both.’

“Blessed be God! we can now go to Jesus, the Mediator; passing by
millions of angels, and all ‘the spirits of just men made perfect;’
till we ‘come to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better
things than that of Abel.’ And we look for that blessed day, when
‘this gospel of the kingdom’ shall be universally prevalent; ‘and all
shall know the Lord, from the least even to the greatest;’ when there
shall be a ‘new heaven, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness;’ when both the political, and the moral aspects of our
world shall be changed; and a happier state of things shall exist
than has ever been known before,—when the pestilence, the famine, and
the sword shall cease to destroy, and ‘the saints of the Most High
shall possess the kingdom’ in ‘quietness, and assurance for ever.’
Then cometh the end, when Emmanuel ‘shall destroy in this mountain
the veil of the covering cast over all people, and swallow up death
in victory!’”

Such sermons as we have quoted surely convey a living and distinct idea of the kind of power which made the man remarkable. It is, from every aspect, very unlike the preaching to which we are now accustomed, and which, therefore, finds general favour with us; it is dogmatic in the last degree; nothing in it is tentative, or hypothetical, yet the dogmatism is not that of a schoolman, or a casuist; it is the dogmatism of burning conviction, of a profound and unquestioning faith in the veracity of New Testament truth, and the corresponding light and illustration from the Old. In these sermons, and others we shall place before our readers, there is nothing pretty, no nice metaphysical or critical analysis, no attempt to carve giants’ heads on cherry-stones. He realized his office as a preacher, not as one set apart to minister to intellectual luxury, or vanity, but to stand, announcing eternal truth. The people to whom he spoke were not _dilettantic_, he was no _dilettante_. We can quite conceive,—and therefore these remarks,—that the greater number even of the more eminent men in our modern pulpit will regard the style of Christmas Evans with contempt. We are only setting it forth in these pages. Evidently it told marvellously on the Principality; it “searched Jerusalem with candles;” those who despise it had better settle the question with Christmas Evans himself, and show the superiority of their method by their larger ministerial usefulness.

The worth and value of great preaching and great sermons must depend upon the measure to which they represent the preacher’s own familiarity with the truths he touches, and proclaims. The history of the mind of Christmas Evans is, from this point of view, very interesting. We can only get at it from the papers found after his death; but they reveal the story of the life, walk, and triumph of faith in his mind and heart. He kept no journal; but still we have the record of his communions with God amongst the mountains,—acts of consecration to God quite remarkable, which he had thought it well to commit to paper, that he might remind himself of the engagements he had made. It was after some such season that he said to a brother minister, “Brother, the doctrine, the confidence, and strength I feel will make people dance with joy in some parts of Wales;” and then, as the tears came into his eyes whilst he was speaking, he said again, “Yes, brother!”

Little idea can be formed of the Welsh preacher from the life of the minister in England. The congregations, we have seen, lay wide, and scattered far apart. Often, in Wales ourselves, we have met the minister pursuing his way on his horse, or pony, to his next “publication;” very often, his Bible in his hand, reading it as he slowly jogged along. So Christmas Evans passed his life, constantly, either on foot or on horseback, urging his way; sometimes through a country frowning as if smitten by a blow of desolation, and at others, laughing in loveliness and beauty; sometimes through the hot summer, when the burning beams poured from the craggy mountains; sometimes in winter, through the snow and rain and coldest inclemency, to fulfil his engagements. For the greater part of his life his income was never more than thirty pounds a year, and for the first part only about from ten to seventeen. It looks a wretched sum; but we may remember that Luther’s income was never much more; and, probably, what seems to us a miserable little income, was very much further removed from want, and even poverty, than in other, less primitive, circumstances is often an income of hundreds. Certainly, Christmas Evans was never in want; always, not only comfortable, but able even to spare, from his limited means, subscriptions to some of the great societies of the day.