Before I tell you the story of the servant of God, whose name you see at the beginning of this chapter, I would like to show you two pictures, that you may better understand what was the need for the work which God gave His servant to do. In order to do God’s work rightly, it is necessary that he who does it should not only be diligent, but that he should know what the work is which God requires to be done. This wisdom comes from God only. Our natural reason will not help us in the matter. That which we think the right thing may be just the wrong thing. Moses might, for example, have reasoned thus, when in Egypt: “I am here amongst heathen people, having a knowledge of God which they have not. I am in a position of great influence. What can I do better than devote myself to the great work of making God known amongst the idolaters of Egypt?” How many of God’s people might have been fully convinced that no greater and better work could be done than this. But God had another work for Moses, which was, in the eyes of man, perfectly useless and foolish.
It was a blessed thing for Moses that he understood this. Let us who believe in God look to Him for direction. Let us say, “Lord, what would’st Thou have me to do?” And till we have the Lord’s direction as to our work, let us wait upon Him, rather than bestir ourselves in that which we call service, but which may really be for our own satisfaction, and to the dissatisfaction of God. Moses waited forty years in the land of Midian before God put the work into his hands; and when the right time came, God called him forth. “My time is not yet come, but your time is alway ready,” were the words of reproof the Lord Jesus spoke to His unbelieving brethren. When God gives work, He gives the right work, and at the right time.
Let us look now at the two pictures. The first is that of an upper chamber in the old city of Troas. The time, a spring day about sixty years after the birth of the Lord Jesus. There is nothing remarkable in this upper chamber, save a table, and upon it a cake of bread and a cup of wine. There are seats, and lamps ready to be lighted when needed. Some men and women come in and sit down. If you ask them what they are come for, they will tell you, “We come together on the first day of the week to break bread.” If you say, “Why do you do so?” they reply, “Because the Lord Jesus told us to do this in remembrance of Him, and that we were thus to show forth His death till He come.” You see them break the bread and eat it together, and drink the wine. They sing, perhaps, a hymn. One or more pray. Another says a few words about the Lord. The women keep silence. At last a man stands up to preach. If you ask who it is, they will tell you it is Paul, the tent-maker. He preaches to them a long time. Afterward he talks to them, and they are so much interested that they stay there all night listening. What does he tell them? We know what it was he spoke about in his preaching there and elsewhere. He spoke of Christ—always of Christ. He told how Christ had died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He would prove this to them, and read to them what God, in the Old Testament, had said about it. He told them how Christ was buried, and how He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. He told them how Christ was now up in heaven, in the bright glory of God, and how he, Paul, had seen Him there, and heard His voice. He told them Christ would come again, and take up His people from the earth, first raising those who had died, then changing the bodies of those who were living, so that all together, in glorified bodies, should be caught up to meet Him in the air. He told them that Christ would come again after that, and His saints with Him; that He and His saints would judge the world, and judge angels, and that Christ should reign till He had put all enemies under His feet, and that those who have suffered with Him here shall reign with Him then. He told them that through this Man, Christ Jesus, is preached forgiveness of sins, full and perfect forgiveness, so that all who believe in Him are justified from all things. Justified freely by God’s grace, justified by Christ’s blood, justified before they had done one good work, and as soon as they believed in God and in what He has said about His Son. He told them that God had loved them even when they were dead in trespasses and sin; had loved them with such a great love that He not only sent His own Son to bear their punishment, whilst they were still His enemies, but that He had given to them, as soon as they believed, the same life that is in Christ—the same life with which Christ came out of the grave. More than this; having given them this life, He had then joined them by the Holy Spirit to Christ in glory—that Christ in heaven is the Head, and all those thus joined to Him the Church in which God the Spirit dwells. That they were thus already one with Christ, already fit for heaven, and that nothing in heaven, or earth, or hell could separate them from His love. That if they died they would go to be with the Lord, and, whether they died or lived, they should have, when He came, glorious bodies like His: and that, whilst God left them down here, it was that they might show forth the praises of Him who had called them out of darkness into His marvelous light. And, alas! he had something more to tell them. He said that in the last days perilous times should come—that after he was gone grievous wolves should enter in—that from amongst themselves men should arise, speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them—that the time should come when men would not endure sound doctrine, but would heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts—would turn away from the truth and listen to fables. Therefore they were to watch, and to remember this solemn warning.
Let us now look at the other picture. We will pass over fourteen hundred years, and we will travel westward, and look in at a great and costly building in an European town. You see high pillars, and grand and beautiful arches, and vaulted roofs, and colored windows. You see the smoke of incense, making the great building look still more dim and solemn. You see at the top of some steps, here and there, a high table, laden with colored trappings, and gaudy ornaments, flowers in jars, tall candles which are lighted though it is day. You see images of gold and of silver, of wood and of stone, on the tables, and on every side of you. You see men in bright red, or green, or purple clothes, adorned with gold, and lace, and jewels. These men stand here and there before the altars. They chant in a strange tongue, so you do not know what they are saying. They hold up a golden box, and the men and women all around you fall down and worship, but you do not know what it is they are worshipping. If you asked them, they would tell you that it is Christ, and that He is in the golden box which the man is holding up. Could you look into the box, you would see there a small flat cake. The man in red and gold would tell you this was once a cake, but that he had the power to change it into Christ Himself, and that he had done so. Therefore this thing which looks like a cake, is to be worshipped and adored, for it is God. You might see in the prayer-book of that man who kneels before it “the Prayer to the Host.”
The host is the cake of which I have been speaking. The words of the prayer are these:
“I adore Thee, Lord Jesus Christ, and I bless Thee, that by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world. I pray to Thee, Lord, that Thou wilt pardon my sins.” The man turns back the pages to the beginning of the book, and he goes to kneel before an image of an old man, carved in stone. Could you look in his book, you would see why he does this. The words on the first page are these, “Whosoever says this prayer following, before the image of St. Gregory with five paternosters, and five Ave Marias, shall gain for each time forty-six thousand years of pardon. And this pardon is granted by the Pope Paul.”
Whilst the man repeats these prayers you can look around you. You see before one of the high tables there is a large crowd, much larger than before the other tables. Why so? Because there is the place where Mary, the mother of Jesus, is worshipped. Her image stands there. They call it “the Altar of Our Lady.” Listen to the prayer of that poor woman. “O Virgin, most holy, most certain hope of all those who hope in thee, receive my soul when it departs out of my body. I salute thee, sister of the angels, teacher of the apostles. I salute thee, strength of the martyrs. I beseech thee to help me in all my tribulations. Thou art the pathway of the erring, the salvation of those who hope in thee. O my Lady, in thee have I put my trust; deliver me, O my Lady. Save me, O Mary, fountain of mercy! Let thy mercy take away the multitude of our sins, and confer upon us an abundance of merits. All the earth doth worship thee, O Lady! To thee every angelic creature continually cries, Holy, Holy, Holy, Mary, mother of God! Thou art the gate of Paradise, the refuge of sinners, the Queen of heaven! Be pleased, O sweet Virgin Mary, to keep us without sin, now and forever! Come unto her, all ye that labor, and are heavy-laden, and she will give you rest!” *
But the man who was kneeling before St. Gregory is going out of the Cathedral. Follow him, and you will see that he stops, and kneels again in the churchyard. He finds a page in his prayer-book where are written these words:
“The Pope John XXIV grants to any person who says the above prayer in a cemetery as many years of pardon, each time, as there are corpses buried therein. And the Pope Innocent III grants three hundred years for each time that the following prayer is said.”
“The above prayer,” is a prayer, not to God, but “to the souls of the departed faithful,” telling them how the one who prays desires for them that they may be redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, and delivered from torment, and taken to be with the choirs of angels. And further, their prayers are “humbly besought” that the worshipper may be their companion in heaven. The prayer to which Pope Innocent has accorded a reward, is to desire that God will grant pardon of sins to the souls of his departed servants, that “because of these pious prayers they may have the pardon that they continually desire.”
The poor man has done. He walks home calculating the years of pardon he has gained that day. He has repeated each set of prayers six times. In four days therefore he will have gained more than a million years of release from torment. What does he not owe to the kindness of Pope Paul, Pope John, and Pope Innocent? Does he mean that the punishment of hell will thus be shortened? No! He is not thinking of hell, but of that third place of which his priest has told him, which is neither heaven nor hell, but where “faithful Christian souls” go when they die, there to be tormented for long, long ages, in fire, and with other tortures, till they become pure and clean, and fit for the company of the angels. This place the priest calls purgatory, therefore, “the place of purging.”
*Do not think that I am falsely accusing any in writing these awful words. It is always right and fair, in describing the religious belief of those who differ from us, to quote from their own books, and books which they acknowledge as right and sound. I shall therefore quote none but Roman Catholic books as to these matters. The words above are copied partly from a Roman Breviary, printed at Paris, in the year 1493, partly from “the Psalter of Our Lady,” written by Bonaventura, a man who is now in his turn worshipped by Roman Catholics on account of his “good works,” of which his writing this blasphemous Psalter is a sample.