Coleridge has somewhere said that there are two classes of Christian evidences –

Christianity and Christendom; the system in itself, its pure morality, its beneficent
teachings, and its results, its conquests, and achievements in the world. For it is
altogether beyond the power of human nature to work the moral changes which
Christianity has wrought either to convert men or to preserve them from falling.
That a man who is notorious in his neighbourhood, the talk and terror of the
countryside, a chartered libertine, an ame damnee, or even like St. Paul, a persecutor and
injurious; or like Augustine, or John Newton; that such an one should be suddenly
stopped, transformed, ennobled, should preach the faith which he once persecuted – this
is very difficult to account for on human grounds.
And that men, with every temptation to sin, everything to lose and nothing to gain by
godliness, worldly interest, pride, passion, shame, everything combining against religion
– that these should, nevertheless, denying ungodliness and worldly lust, live soberly,
righteously, and godly in the Sodom around them – this is no less a miracle of Divine
grace.
The influences that preserved an Obadiah, a St. Paul, a Pudens, and Linus, and
Claudia must have been from above. We know only too well what human nature,
unassisted by grace, is capable of. We know it tends inevitably, not to bear a rich crop of
virtues, but, like the cereals, to degenerate, to run to seed. In Socrates and Seneca –
“half-inspired heathens” – we see it at its best, and yet how wide the gulf between Nero’s
preceptor and the saints of Nero’s household. When we see our nature, planted in a
hotbed of grossness and profligacy, nevertheless yield the “peaceable fruits of
righteousness,” then we know that the hand of the great Husbandman must, if silently and
unseen, yet assuredly, have been at work. …
Society, both in England and on the continent of Europe, may be very godless; it may
be changing for the worse; we may be preparing for an outbreak of Communism,
Nihilism, Materialism, Atheism; the masses in our large towns may be very brutal and
besotted and animal, may be utterly estranged from religion in every shape; but, whatever
England is like, and whatever Europe is like, its state is nothing like so desperate as was
that of Rome Under Nero. …
And if the days of persecution are not ended; if in China, and Melanesia, and Turkey
the sword is still whetted against the Christian, can we find among them all a more
truculent persecutor than Jezebel, are more savage and unprincipled inquisitor than
Tigellinus. But we cannot pretend that our sufferings are anything like theirs.
No longer are the prophets hunted like partridges; no longer are they clad in the skins
of wild beast, or dipped into cauldrons of pitch, no longer do we hear the sanguinary cry,
Christianos ad leones. And yet, despite those terrible mockings and scourgings, those
agonies in the amphitheatre, those privations in the caves, religion, in Samaria and in
Rome alike, held its ground. … In Italy, the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the
Church; neither Nero, nor Decius, nor Diocletian could hinder the onward march of
Christ’s baptized host, and now it is a matter of history how one day the empire woke up
to find itself Christian. …
How constantly do men plead the adverse circumstances in which they are placed as a
reason why they cannot serve God. Sometimes it is a godless street or wicked hamlet;
sometimes it is an irreligious household or infidel workshop; or their trade is such, their
employers or associates are such, that they cannot live a godly life. But the example of
Obadiah, the example of those saints of the Praetorium, convicts them of untruth and
cowardice. They cannot have greater temptations or fiercer persecutions than befell those
Roman Christians. If they proved steadfast, and lived in sweetness and purity, which of
us cannot do the same wherever we may be placed? …
In a wicked city, in an impure court, through fire and blood, they kept the faith. … Yet
how many dishonour or deny it! How many are ashamed of their religion! With what
shame will they meet the brave confessors of the past! They will need no condemnation
from their Judge.

The Pulpit Commentary, I Kings p. 432-433, I Kings 18:3-4, (J. Hammond)

See also: Titus 2:12, 2 Timothy 4:21, Matthew 12:41, John 5:45)

Gold Nugget 270

Beyond Human Power

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