The Significance of the Hour

Father, the hour is come. — John 17:1

This was the momentous hour in the life of Christ and in the history of the world. It was pregnant with issues vital and tremendous; you need not be told that it was the hour of the world’s redemption from sin and death by the vicarious sacrifice of the Son of God. All the events in the life of Christ and in the history of the world led up to and contributed to the fullness of this supreme hour. The humanity of Jesus staggered under the awful gravity of the situation. As the sins of all the ages, from Eden’s flaming gate to the final Judgement, were piled upon Him, He lifted his soul to heaven and began this wonderful intercessory prayer with the words, ​“Father, the hour is come.” The hour of the complete acceptance of the Father’s will, the hour to be bruised for man’s iniquity, the hour to be wounded for his transgressions (Isaiah 53:5), the hour of fiery baptism (An allusion to Matthew 3:11), the hour of solemn departure is come. 

As that was an important hour in the earthly life of Christ, so this is a most significant hour in the history of his church. We are face to face with some of the miraculous changes which have taken place throughout the years. Discovery, science, invention, education, imperialism, free speech, a more liberal and better interpretation of the Bible, have literally changed the face of the earth and revolutionized our mode of thinking and acting. Our church methods must be reconstructed if we are to successfully meet the demands of these changes. The future usefulness of the church will depend upon her ability and versatility to adapt herself to the circumstances which are so rapidly forming about her. 

For centuries, the church has been judged by its creeds and confessions, but today it is being judged by its deeds. People are not asking anymore what the church believes. The question now upon the lips of every thinking person is, ​“What is the church doing for the amelioration of the condition of mankind?” The majority of men do not care a lollipop about church doctrines; they are looking for a practical translation of the spirit of Jesus Christ in the everyday life of its members. The church will never draw and bind the masses to her communion by essays on faith, but by showing her faith by her works. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, a Supreme Court justice who served in the Civil War, began the cry more than a half century ago:

Away with your thumb-worn creeds, 
Large professions and little deeds, 
While freedom weeps, 
Wrong rules the land 
And waiting justice sleeps. 

This cry is being echoed and re-echoed by every town and hamlet in the civilized world. Christ came to give the world, not a set of doctrines and creeds, but an example of perfect manhood. He was manifested in the flesh to show us what God is and what man ought to be.

Instead of the church developing the purpose of Jesus, it has been fighting over doctrine for 1,800 years. I do not believe it is stretching the truth to say that enough blood has been shed by church members since the crucifixion of Christ to float a great steamship. Infidels, atheists, agnostics, and all manner of freethinkers are but the hot lava thrown up by the church volcanoes to blast and consume the spiritual hopes of humanity.

While we have fought over useless creeds, the doors of hell have been crowded with those whom we should have saved.… 

During the civil war in America, a good chaplain was walking over a hard-fought battlefield; all about him were the dead, the dying and the wounded. One poor fellow was lying in a rough spot, with the blood flowing freely from a dangerous wound. The chaplain approached him, Bible in hand, and gently said, ​“May I read you some words of comfort from this book?” The soldier replied, ​“I am about to bleed to death; can’t you do something to save me?” The chaplain used his handkerchief and part of his linen to stop the flow of blood. The minister then cleared away the rough stones and pushed his own cloak under the wounded man to make his bed as comfortable as possible. The soldier said, ​“I have been marching and fighting twenty-four hours without food or water; can’t you give me a morsel of bread and a swallow of water?” The chaplain gave him the last sandwich in his knapsack and then went back over the hill and brought a canteen of cool water with which he slaked the soldier’s thirst and bathed his fevered brow. 

The soldier, looked up at the preacher through tears of gratitude, said, ​“If there be anything in that book you wanted to read which will make a man do for another what you have done for me, in God’s name let me hear it.” The faithful servant turned to the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew and read the words of the Master, ​“I was hungered and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick and ye visited me; I was in prison and ye came unto me.” It is not necessary to add that this man was gloriously saved. 

The church should learn a most important lesson from this experience of the chaplain. The church has not discharged its obligation when it has hired a man to stand up twice one day in seven to explain its creeds and doctrine and piously to ram the Bible down the throats of the people. It must go into the highways and hedges during the week, caring for the sick, the wounded, the distressed and all that are needy, and then on Sunday they will hear us and believe us when we tell them of ​“Jesus, the mighty to save.” 

When the late Professor Henry Drummond of England was in Japan a few years ago, he delivered a speech before the student body of one of the native schools. At the close of the address he asked, ​“What shall I tell the English and American people when I reach home?” After a few moments of silence, a young man got up and, in a tremulous voice, said, ​“Tell them, Dr. Drummond, to send us no more creeds and doctrines; we are sick of them. But send us Christ.” 

The message of this Japanese student is the crying need of the world today. Send us Christ, is the cry from every factory and from every farm, from the mart and from the mansion, from the park and from the palace. The Lord God grant that I may live to see the day when the church shall have no creed or doctrine save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 

The hour is come for a concerted action of all the religious forces and factors. The non-churchgoing people are waiting for a united effort on the part of all denominations for the salvation of the world. We have hundreds of religious sects and more are being born every month. Each one of these vociferously contending that it is right and all the rest are wrong. Can we blame the masses if they flee from this Babel built by those who proclaim themselves the followers of the Prince of Peace? 

There are more than 500,000 people in so-called Christian America who do not attend church. The responsibility of reaching these nonchurchgoing millions rest upon the church. They are to be saved by the ordinary means of grace. No miracle is to be wrought, aside from the ordinary miracles of every day. No flood tide is to burst forth from heaven to sweep them into the church. We are to win them, not as denominations but as Christians. Christ did not tell denominations to go and proselyte. His marching orders, from Olivet’s brow nineteen centuries ago, to the Christian soldiers was, ​“Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:15‑20).