“I am come to send fire on the earth.”
Luke 12:49
If the gospel was a mere tame and spiritless influence, a mere soothing and stroking down of human faults and passions, a mere palliative and balsam for the wounds and sufferings, for the wrongs and woes of fallen nature, it would have differed in many other respects from the thing which Jesus Christ brought us from heaven. But certainly and most evidently in this, that it would have caused no strifes and no contentions, no violences and no discords.
It is because the gospel is first and above all else a “fire,” enkindled and sparkling, pervading and transforming the whole body and substance of the being to which it is effectually applied. It brings with it this irritating, this provoking, this exasperating influence upon every bystanding and surrounding being which repudiate, and “we will have none of it.”
It needs but a little reflection to make all hearts echo the statement. There are those in this day who tell us that the real gospel is a mere enforcement or suggestion, or, if you will, revelation of charity. We ask what is meant by “charity,” and we find that it is a sort of easy going tolerance for all creeds and all religions, a good-natured “live and let live” for all the philosophies, and all the philanthropies, and all the superstitions, and all the idolatries which have entered into the heart of man, as the truth and the whole of truth, the duty and the whole of duty, whether toward God or toward man.
If the gospel had thus entered the world, if this had been the idea of it as Christ and the apostles preached it, it would have raised no hostility. It could not possibly have had the history which we know Christianity has had, as flinging abroad upon the earth “division” or a “sword.” For this simple reason, it would not have had in it one single characteristic of “fire.”
Men would have been perfectly willing under Nero or Domitian to let Christians alone, if they would only have glided about among their contemporaries as men whispering peace and safety, hinting at a new divinity, one among many, each having some claim, and none having an exclusive claim to the belief and faith of mankind; a new divinity to occupy one niche of a crowded and world-wide pantheon–“Jesus and the resurrection.”
Athens would have let this alone. Rome would have let this alone. Human nature would have made room for this, because it would have put oil or water in the place of fire, because it would have been a mere religion of negatives and platitudes, stirred by no storm and brightened by no ray.
“I came to cast fire upon the earth,” and although fire has many beautiful and many comforting aspects, this is in virtue of a quality which makes it also, and before all else, penetrating and exploring, consuming and purifying. A power, first, formidable and destructive, then, secondly, an influence brightening and warming, cheering and comforting. It is thus with the sign, it is thus, also, with the thing signified.
