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EXPERIENCE—Ihe Only Competent Clitic
TEXT.—John 9:29-30: “Herein is the mar
vel, that ye know not whence he is, yet he
opened my eyes.”
■ “ ■' l *
VER SINCE the planting of the
Christian religion the world has
teemed with men, and, to some ex
tent, women, who have delighted
to criticise it. And these have not
all been bad people. To be sure,
some of them have been, and some
have been men who had no faith
and have delighted in destroying
the faith of other people. 1 cannot conceive
of anything that is more hurtful to society
than the work of such a man, but in many
instances the critics of religion, of our Chris
tian system, have been splendid men and wo
men : have been men and women of splendid
works and of real substantial Christian char
acter. They have, however, in their methods
of criticism been perhaps very censorious.
They have been too much inclined to censure
in other people, what they so easily admit in
themselves. For the most part, they have
desired in their criticisms to arrive at truth
and whenever they arrive at truth, they sub
stantiate truth and strengthen it and defend
it with all their might and main.
I think that the greatest fault of such critics
is not one of motive, but one of method. They
have generally, as I have observed them, been
men, who, whenever they come to consider the
religion of Christ, feel in their hearts that
before looking they, themselves, have the truth
and that all that differ with them are in error,
and that, therefore, they should be extermi
nated. It is this lack of charity that I would
criticise more than anything else. Too, they
have been men and women at fault in their
method, in that they have failed to realize that
after all, the strongest argument in support
of Christianity is one’s own personal experi
ence. Our Lord Himself used this argument.
You remember when on one occasion John
was in prison, he sent his disciples to Jesus,
and they said, “We are from John; he has sent
us to ask you this question, Art thou he
that should come, or look we for another?’’
Jesus at that time was working some mighty
miracles; He was opening the eyes of blind
men; lie was unstopping deaf ears; healing
lepers, feeding the hungry, preaching the gos
pel to the poor. And Jesus turned aside from
FI is touches of healing and blessing, that at
the time were occupying His mind and heart,
and said to those disciples of John: “Go tell
John these things that you do see and hear.”
I have often wondered what kind of answer
John expected to get from those disciples? I
have often wondered if John did not perhaps
think that this man, whom he believed with
all his heart to be the Christ, and yet about
whom recently there was perhaps some shad
ow of doubt in his mind, would proceed to
reason with him, to show wherein He fitted
into and fulfilled fully the whole of the proph
ecies concerning the coming of the Messiah.
But Jesus knew man too well to follow that
kind of argument. He knew that there was a
better way to impress man than that. He
knew that cold philosophy or scientific or even
prophetic facts would fade by the side of actual
experience, and so Jesus said to them, “Go
tell John the things that ye do see and hear;
the things that are now occurring around
you; these are the arguments that are to estab
lish my deity and convince the world of my
Lordship.”
And so, my brethren, these Pharisees, when
they came to inquire about Jesus, came with
an honest purpose. They were not bad men.
I am bold to say that from careful study re
cently of their opportunity in New Testa-
7 abernacle Sermon by Reb. Len G. Broughton, D.D.
Stenographically reported for The Golden Age.—Copyright applied for.
ment times, the Pharisees were the very best
people in all that land. They were morally
without a fault, so far as we know; they were
the devotees of orthodoxy. They were the
finished representatives of the oldest religious
system that had ever graced the world. They
stood for the doctrines and the teachings and
the life that was so long proclaimed by Moses
and they followed in his footsteps. And these
men, when they went into an investigation
of Jesus and of His religious system and teach
ing, and of the people that followed after Him,
felt that they were perfectly warranted in mak
ing that investigation. Their consciences
were clean. They believed that they had the
religion that was to save the world; they be
lieved that they were obligated to the one God
and to their fellows for the advancement of that
system, and I can not find it in my heart to
criticise severely these Pharisees, for they
were sincere advocates of their own religion ;
but, however honest they were, it does not
change the facts of the case; it does not change
the results; it does not change their guilt in
the end. For through their honesty of convic
tion they were guilty of some -of the most out
rageous crimes in the name of religion that had
ever been known to the world. But, my breth
ren, these Pharisees are not by themselves in
their method. The great trouble with all the
orthodox world is the extent and end of its
Phariseeism. We are too prone to think that
we have the truth a. Jkall the truth, and that
those that differ with heretics and should
in a sense, be extermim&ed.
What I want to come to this morning, is
this: If I know what the lesson taught in that
text is, it is a lesson that the whole Christian
world ought to know and experience and prac
tice in its efforts to spread Christianity. What
is it? It is a lesson of the importance of
personal Christian experience, as a means of
propagating the truth of the Gospel. When
Jesus saw this blind man, He stopped and
spat on the ground and took the mud and
touched his eyes and told him to go and bathe
in the pool of Siloam. He did it and was
cured of his blindness. And there was a great
upstir because of it. The Pharisees at once
began to try to find something that would ac
count for that miracle performed by Jesus. At
once they said, “He was not really blind, per
haps. Let us ask his parents.” They find
them and ask, “Was this boy born blind?”
They say, “Ask him?” Then they asked the
man himself, and he said, “1 was.” Then they
said, “What remedies did He use?” This man
said, “I don’t know how He did it. I only
know that He put clay on my eyes and told
me to go and wash in the pool of Siloam, and
I did it.” They said, “Who is He? Where
did lie come from? Let us know something
about Him ; we want to know something of the
source of His power.” Said the man, “I do
not know anything about that; that is the mar
vel, that you cannot tell whence He is and yet
He hath opened my eyes.” The one thing that
was of most importance on that occasion was
not the place from which Jesus came; it was
the fact that that man had his eyesight given
him. That is worth everything to that man.
And it is exactly so with reference to the prop
agation of the Gospel. Oh, if the world could
be persuaded of this truth, how much great,
intellectual power would be turned in a differ
ent channel. Instead of men delving in philos
ophies and science and history and literature to
try to find an explanation of Jesus Christ and
the Christian religion and the progress of the
Church of Jews, we would simply take the
results as we sec them and go forth as the
early disciples, witnessing for Him who has
done these things.
Who is the only man that can give us a real,
The Golden Age for March 9, 1911.
satisfactory, intelligent conception of the
place of Christianity in the world? He is not
the historian who sits back yonder and writes
about it. We have seen that tried. I have
recently read afresh Gibbons’ story of the
“Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Per
haps no such historian ever lived as Gibbon ;
and no more bitter en’emy of Christianity ever
lived than he. And it is very interesting to
see how he began with the rapid rise of that
great empire and pictures it in all of its mag
nitude and its glory until it reached the zenith,
and then as he began to show the signs of
its approaching decay, how the people had
grown so worldly and sensual and dissolute in
the gratification of their desire that they could
not go any further in that direction. And as
one reads along in those early chapters of the
decline period, he expects almost on every
page that he turns to see the hastening on the
part of the historian to the culmination and
fall of the empire; he cannot understand how
the thing could possibly live any longer, and
yet, somehow, the crash doesn’t come. The
people continue in the exercise of their bestial
lusts and desires and in the gratification of
their worldly aspirations, and yet the end does
not come, and all at once he plunges into that
chapter in which he gives briefly the history
of the Christian Church, and while he does not
state it, he would not state it so for the world,
there is to be found the explanation of the
staying of the hand of destruction. In his
efforts to describe the Church at that early
period in the Roman Empire which had spread
practically all over the world, how little he
says, and how hard he tries to account for the
power of this new sect. He cannot account
for it on the ground of intelligence, for they
are the uneducated and uncultured ; he cannot
account for it on account of wealth, for they
have not any money; they are the beggar ele
ment. He cannot account for it on the ground
of numbers, for they were just a few feeble
people and yet they had, somehow, an influ
ence, as he is forced to acknowledge, that grap
pled with the entire empire from Caesar’s
throne to the man on the streets; and we know
that that influence, secretly working, was
the staying hand; it was the thing that kept
the people from eating themselves up in the
gratification of their greedy desire. Gibbon
winds up his chapter, absolutely powerless to
account for the influence of this strange sect.
And so, my brethren, when we come to look
at the march of civilization in all the ages of
the (. hurch it has been just the same way. Take
our own country. I have recently read a story
in which the history of the great educational
movement of this country has been given and
I have been amazed, I have been delighted to
see that back of the greatest educational en
terprises that America has, has been the Chris
tian religion. Harvard University was founded
by a minister of the gospel. It was built by
Christian money, money raised through and
by the Christian Church. Brown Universitv
was built by Christianity; Yale and Chicago
University, and most all the great educational
institutions of this country were conceived and
built and for a time managed under Christian
auspices. It is true that many of them have
departed from the true teachings of Chris
tianity, but oh, my friends, it does not change
the fact that back of this great agent of the
civilization and salvation of the whole race of
man has been Christian religion. It has been
the product of the ruling, mysterious hand that
for ages has baffled the wisest men. We mav
not be able to account for the fact of Jesus, for
the source from which He has come; these
very institutions today may not, and are . not,
counting for Him as thev should, but thev
(Continued on page 14.)