Saying, what think ye of Christ? Whose son is he? They say?
Unto him? The Son of David Matthew twenty two forty two, first
published by Drummonds Tract Depot, Stirling, Scotland. Christmas is a season which
almost all Christians observe in one way or another. Some keep it as a
religious season, some keep it as a holiday. But all over the world,
wherever there are Christians, in one way or another, Christmas is kept.
Perhaps there is no country in which Christmas is so much observed as it
is in England. Christmas holidays, Christmas parties, Christmas family gatherings, Christmas
services and churches, Christmas hymns and carols, Christmas holly and misseltoe. Who
has not heard of these things? They are as familiar to English people as
anything in our lives. They are among the first things we remember when we
were children. Our grandfathers and grandmothers were used to them long before we were
born. They have been going on in England for many hundred years. They
seem likely to go on as long as the world stands. But reader,
how many of those who keep Christmas ever consider why Christmas is kept? How
many, in their Christmas plans and arrangements. Give a thought to him,
without whom there would have been no Christmas at all. How Many, ever,
remember that the Lord Jesus Christ is the cause of Christmas. How Many
ever, reflect that the first intention of Christmas was to remind Christians of Christ's
birth and coming into the world. Reader, how is it with you?
What do you think of at Christmas? Bear with me a few minutes while
I try to press upon you the question which heads this tract. I do
not want to make your Christmas merriment less. I do not wish to spoil
your Christmas cheer. I only wish to put things in their right places.
I want Christ himself to be remembered at Christs. Give me your attention while
I unfold the question. What think ye of Christ? One? Let us
consider firstly why all men ought to think of Christ? Two, let us
examine secondly the common thoughts of many about Christ. Three let us count up
lastly the thoughts of true Christians about Christ. Reader, I dare say,
the demands upon your time this Christmas are many, Your holidays are short.
You have friends to see, you have much to talk about. But still,
in the midst of all your hurry and excitement. Give a little time
to your soul. There will be a Christmas some year when your place will
be empty. Before that time comes, suffer me as a friend to press
home on your conscience the inquiry, what think ye of Christ? One?
First, then let us consider why all men ought to think of Christ?
This is a question which to be answered at the very outset of this tract.
I know the minds of some people when they are asked about such things
as I am handling today. I know that many are ready to say,
why should we think about Christ at all? We want meat and drink,
and money, and clothes and amusements. We have no time to think about
these high subjects. We do not understand them. Let parsons and old women
and Sunday school children mind such things if they like. We have no time
in a world like this to be thinking of Christ. Such is the talk
of thousands in this country. They never go either to church or chapel.
They never read their Bibles. The world is their god. They think themselves
very wise and clever. They despise those whom they call religious people. But
whether they like it or not, they will all have to die one day.
They have all souls to be lost or saved. In the world to
come, they will all have to rise again from their graves and to have
a reckoning with God. And shall their scoffing and contempt stop our mouths and
make us ashamed? No, indeed, not for a moment. Listen to
me, and I will tell you why all men ought to think of Christ.
Because of the office Christ fills between God and man. He is the
eternal son of God through whom alone the Father can be known, approached,
and served. He is the appointed mediator between God and man, through whom
alone we can be reconciled with God, pardoned, justified, and saved.
He is the divine person whom God the Father has sealed to be the giver
of everything that man requires for his soul. To him are committed the keys
of death and hell. In his favor is life. In him alone,
there is hope of salvation for mankind. Without him, no child of Adam
can be saved. Quote other foundation can no man lay than that is laid,
which is Jesus Christ. He that hath the Son hath life, And
he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. End. First
Corinthians three eleven first John five twelve, and ought not man to think of
Christ. Shall God the Father honor him, and shall not man. I
tell every reader of this tract that there is no person, living or dead,
of such immense importance to all men as Christ. There is no person
that men ought to think about so much as Christ. All men ought to
think of Christ because of what Christ has done for all men. He thought
upon man when man was lost, bankrupt and helpless by the fall and undertook
to come into the world to save sinners. In the fullness of time.
He was born of the virgin Mary and lived for man thirty three years in
this evil world. At the end of that time, he suffered for sin
on the cross as man substitute. He bore man's sins in his own body
and shed his own life blood to pay man's debt to God. He was
made a curse for man that man might be blessed. He died for man
that man might live. He was counted a sinner for man that man might
be counted righteous. And ought not man to think of Christ. I tell
every reader of this tract that if Christ had not died for us, we
might all of us for anything we know be lying at this moment in hell,
all men ought to think of Christ because of what Christ will yet do
to all men. He shall come again one day to this earth with power
and glory, and raise the dead from their graves. All shall come forth
at his bidding. Those who would not move when they heard the church going
bell shall obey the voice of the archangel and the trump of God. He
shall set up his judgment seat and summon all mankind to stand before it to
him. Every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that he is
Lord. Not one shall be able to escape that solemn assize, not one
but shall receive it the mouth of Christ, an eternal sentence. Every one
shall receive, according to what He has done in the body, whether it
be good or bad. And ought not men to think of Christ. I
tell every reader of this tract that whatever he may choose to think now,
a day is soon coming when his eternal condition will hinge entirely on his relations
to Christ. But why should I say more on this subject? The time
would fail me if I were to set down all the reasons why all men
ought to think of Christ. Christ is the grand subject of the Bible.
The scriptures testify of him. Christ is the great object to whom all the
churches in Christendom profess to give honor. Even the worst and most corrupt branches
of it will tell you that they are built on. Christ is the end
and substance of all sacraments and ordinances. Christ is the grand subject which every
faithful minister exalts in the pulpit. Christ is the object that every true pastor
sets before dying people on their death beds. Christ is the great source of
light and peace and hope. There is not a spark of spiritual comfort that
has ever illumined a sinner's heart that has not come from Christ. Surely it
never can be a small matter whether we have any thoughts about Christ. Reader,
I leave this part of my subject here. There are many things which
swallow up men's thoughts while they live, which they will think little of when
they are dying. Hundreds are wholly absorbed in political schemes and seem to care
for nothing but the advancement of their own party. Myriads are buried in business
and money matters, and seem to neglect everything else but this world. Thousands
are always wrangling about the forms and ceremonies of religion, and are ready to
cry down everybody who does not use their shibaleths and worship in their way.
But an hour is fast coming when only one subject will be minded, and
that subject will be Christ. We shall all find, and many, perhaps
too late, that it mattered little what we thought about other things, so
long as we did not think about Christ. Reader, I tell you this
Christmas, that all men ought to think about Christ. There is no one
in whom all the world has such a deep interest. There is no one
to whom all the world owes so much. High and low, rich and
poor, old and young, gentle and simple, all ought to think about
Christ. Two, let us examine secondly the common thoughts of many about Christ.
To set down the whole list of thoughts about Christ would indeed be thankless
labor. It must content us to range them under a few general heads.
This will save us both time and trouble. There were many strange thoughts about
Christ when he was on earth. There are many strange and wrong thoughts about
Christ now when he is in heaven. The thoughts of some people about Christ
are simply blasphemous. They are not ashamed to deny his divinity. They refuse
to believe the miracles recorded of him. They pretend to find fault with not
a few of his sayings and doings. They even question the perfect honesty and
sincerity of some things that he did. They tell us that he ought to
be ranked with great reformers and philosophers like Socrates, Seneca, and Confucius,
but no higher. Thoughts like these are purely ridiculous and absurd. They utterly
fail to explain the enormous influence which Christ and Christianity have had for eighteen hundred
years in this world. There is not the slightest comparison to be made between
Christ and any other teacher of mankind lived. The difference between him and others
is a gulf that cannot be spanned, and a height that cannot be measured.
It is the difference between gold and clay, between the sun and a
candle. Nothing can account for Christ and Christianity but the old belief that Christ
is very God. Reader, are the thoughts I have just described your own?
If they are take care. The thoughts of some people about Christ are
vague, dim misty, and indistinct that there was such a person. They
do not for a moment deny that he was the founder of Christianity and the
object of Christian worship. They are quite aware that they hear of him every
time they go to public worship, and ought to have some opinion or belief
about him, they will fully admit, but they could not tell you what
it is they believe. They could not accurately describe and define it. They
have not thoroughly considered the subject. They have not made up their minds.
Thoughts such as these are foolish, silly, and unreasonable. To be a
dying sinner with an immortal soul, and to go on living without making up
one's mind about the only person who can save us, the person who will
at last judge us. Is the conduct of a lunatic or an idiot,
and not of a rational man. Reader, are the thoughts I have just
described your own? If they are take care. The thoughts of some men
about Christ are mean and low. They have no doubt a distinct opinion about
his position in their system of Christianity. They consider that if they do their
best and live moral lives, and go to church pretty regularly and use the
ordinances of religion, Christ will deal mercifully with them. At last and make
up any deficiencies. Thoughts such as these utterly fail to explain why Christ died
on the cross. They take the crown off Christ's head and degrade him into
a kind of make weight to man's soul. They overthrow the whole system of
the Gospel and pull up all its leading doctrines by the roots. They exalt
man to an absurdly high position, as if he could pay some part of
the price of his soul. They rob man of all the comfort of the
Gospel, as if he must needs do something and perform some work to justify
his own soul. They make Christ a sort of judge, far more than
a savior, and place the Cross and the Atonement in a degraded and inferior
position. Reader, are the thoughts I have just described your own? If
they are take care. The thoughts of some men about Christ are dishonoring and
libelous. They seem to think that we need a mediator between ourselves and our
Savior. They appear to suppose that Christ is so high and awful and exalted
a person that poor sinful man may not approach him, that we must employ
an episcopacy ordained minister as a kind of go between to stand between us and
Jesus and manage for our souls. They send us to saints, or angels
or the Virgin Mary, as if they were more kind and accessible than Christ.
Thoughts such as these are a practical denial of Christ's priestly office. They
overthrow the whole doctrine of his peculiar business as man's intercessor. They hide and
bury out of sight his especial love to sinners and his boundless willingness to receive
them. Instead of a gracious savior, they make him out in austere and
hard king, Reader, are the thoughts I have just described your own?
If they are take care. The thoughts of some men about Christ are wicked
and unholy. They seem to think that they may live as they please because
Christ died for sinners. They will indulge every kind of wickedness and yet flatter
themselves that they are not blameworthy for it, because Christ is a merciful savior.
They will talk complacently of God's election and the necessity of grace, and
the impossibility of being justified by works, and the fullness of Christ, and
then make these glorious doctrines, an excuse for lying, cheating, drunkenness,
fornication, and every kind of immorality. Thoughts such as these are as blasphemous
and profane, as downright infidelity. They actually make Christ the patron of sin.
Reader, are these thoughts I have described your own? If they are
take care? Reader. Two general remarks apply to all these thoughts about Christ
of which I have just been speaking. They all show a deplorable ignorance of
scripture. I defy anyone to read the Bible honestly and find any warrant for
them in that blessed book. Men cannot know their Bibles when they hold such
opinions. They all help to prove the corruption and darkness of human nature.
Man is ready to believe anything about Christ except the simple truth. He loves
to set up an idol of his own and bow down to it, rather
than accept the savior whom God puts before him. I leave this part of
my subject here. It is a sorrowful and painful one, but not without
its use. It is necessary to study morbid anatomy if we would understand health.
The ground must be cleared of rubbish before we build. Three. Let
us now count up lastly, the thoughts of true Christians about Christ. The
thoughts I am going to describe, are not the thoughts of many. I
admit this most fully. It would be vain to deny it. The number
of right thinkers about Christ in every age has been small. The true Christians
among professing Christians have always been few. If it were not so, the
Bible would have told an untruth. Straight is the gate, says the Lord
Jesus. And narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there
be that find it. Why does the gate? And broad is the way
that leadeth to destruction? And many there be which go in thereat many walk,
says Paul, of whom I tell you even weeping, that they are
enemies of the Cross of Christ, whose end is destruction. Matthew seven thirteen
and fourteen, Philippians three, eighteen and nineteen. True Christians have high thoughts
of Christ. They see in him a wondrous person far above all other beings
in his nature, a person who is at one and the same time perfect
God, mighty to save, and perfect man able to feel. They see
in him an all powerful redeemer who has paid their countless debts to God and
delivered their souls from guilt and hell. They see in him and almighty friend
who left heaven for them, lived for them, died for them, rose
again for them, that He might save them forevermore. They see in him
an almighty physician who washed away their sins in his own blood, put his
own spirit in their hearts, delivered them from the power of sin, and
gave them power to become God's children. Happy are they who have such thoughts?
Reader? Have you true Christians have trustful thoughts of Christ? They daily
lean the weight of their souls upon Him by faith for pardon in peace.
They daily commit the care of their souls to Him, as a man commits
a treasure to a safe keeper. They daily cling to Him by faith,
as a child in a crowd clings to its mother's hand. They looked to
Him daily for mercy, grace, comfort, help, and strength, as
Israel looked to the pillar of cloud and fire in the wilderness for guidance.
Christ is the rock under their feet and the staff in their hands, their
ark and their city of refuge, their son and their shield, their bread
and their medicine, their health and their light, their fountain and their shelter,
their portion and their home, their door and their ladder, their root
and their head, their advocate and their physician, their captain and their elder
brother, their life, their hope, and their awe. Happy are they
who have such thoughts? Reader? Have you true? Christians have experimental thoughts
of Christ? The things that they think of Him. They do not merely
think with their heads. They have not learned them from schools or picked them
up from others. They think them because they have found them true by their
own heart's experience. They have proved them, and tasted them, and tried
them. They think out for themselves what they have felt. There is all
the difference in the world between knowing that a man is a doctor or a
lawyer while we never have occasion to employ him, and knowing him as our
own because we have gone to him for medicine or law. Just in the
same way, there is a wide difference between head knowledge and experimental thoughts of
Christ. Happy are they who have such thoughts? Reader? Have you?
True? Christians have loving and reverent thoughts of Christ. They love to do
the things that please Him. They like, in their poor weak way,
to show their affection to Him by keeping his words. They love everything belonging
to him, his day, his house, his ordinances, his people,
his book. They never find his yoke heavy, or his burden painful to
bear, or his commandments grieve us. Love lightens all. They know something
of the mind of mister Standfast in Pilgrim's progress, when he said, as
he stood in the river, I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of.
And whenever I have seen the print of his shoe in the earth,
then I have coveted to set my foot over it. Happy are they who
have such thoughts? Reader, have you true? Christians? Have hopeful thoughts
of Christ. They expect to receive far more from Him one day than they
have ever received. Yet. They hope that they shall be kept to the
end and never perish. But this is not all. They look forward to
Christ's second coming and expect that then they shall see far more than they have
seen, and enjoy far more than they have yet enjoyed. They have an
earnest of an inheritance now in the spirit dwelling in their heart, but they
hope for a far fuller possession when this world has passed away. They have
hopeful thoughts of Christ's second advent of their own resurrection from the grave, of
their reunion with all the saints who have gone before them, of eternal blessedness
in Christ Rist's kingdom. Happy are they who have such thoughts? They sweeten
life and lift men over many cares. Reader, have you such thoughts?
Reader? Thoughts such as these are the property of all true Christians. Some
of them know more of them, and some of them know less, But
they all know something about them. They do not always feel them equally at
all time. They do not always find such thoughts equally fresh and green in
their minds. They have their winter as well as their summer, and their
low tide as well as their high water. But all true Christians are more
or less acquainted with these thoughts in this matter. Churchmen and dissenters, rich
and poor, are all agreed if they are true Christians. In other things
they may be unable to agree and see alike, but they all agree in
their thoughts about Christ. One word they can all say, which is the
same in every tongue. That word is Hallelujah, praise to the Lord Christ.
One answer they can all make, which in every tongue is equally the
same. That word is amen, So be it. And now, reader,
I shall wind up my Christmas tract by simply bringing before your conscience the
question which forms its title. I ask you this day, what think ye
of Christ? What others think about him is not the question now. Their
mistakes are no excuse for you. Their correct views will not save your soul.
The point you have before you is simply this, what do you think
yourself? Reader? This Christmas may possibly be your last? Who can tell
you, but you may never live to see another December come round? Who
can tell? But your place may be empty when the family party next Christmas
is gathered together. Do not I entreat you put off my question or turn
away from it. It can do you no harm to look at it and
consider it. What do you think of Christ? Again? I beseech you
this day to have right thoughts of Christ, if you never had them before.
Let the time past suffice you to have lived without real and heartfelt religion.
Let this present Christmas be a starting point in your soul's history. Awake
to see the value of your soul and the immense importance of being saved.
Break off sharp from sin in the world, Get down your Bible and begin
to read it, Call upon the Lord Jesus Christ in prayer and beseech him
to save your soul. Rest not rest not till you have trustful, loving,
experimental, hopeful thoughts of Christ. Reader, mark my words, If
you will only take the advice I have now given you, you will never
repent it. Your life in future will be happier, your heart will be
lighter, Your Christmas gathering will be more truly joyful. Nothing makes Christmas meetings
so happy as to feel that we are all traveling on towards an eternal gathering
in heaven. Reader, I say, for the last time, if you
would have a happy Christmas, have right thoughts about Christ.