1 Timothy 6:20-21 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to your trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings… What the deposit was, we may not doubt. It was the Christian faith, in its entirety and purity; and the contexts, in which the apostle's repeated warning occurs, present to us the occasions which even then rendered it necessary. "Profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called," were, even then, undermining the faith of their authors and of those who listened to them; and it was requisite that even one who had received from the lips of St. Paul himself "the form of sound words," should be exhorted to "hold it fast." But to us, at this far later stage of the Church's history, the admonition comes fraught with many a lesson, to be drawn from the experience of the past, and also from the peculiar circumstances in which we find ourselves placed, by the providence of God, as members of the Church of England. The deposit of the faith may be regarded under a more simple or a more complex form. Any Christian man who can recite the Apostles' Creed may be said to have the deposit of the faith stored in his memory; but how much more, "pertaining to life and godliness," does he not require, both for the enlightening of his understanding, and for the guidance of his life? Brethren, do we consider as we ought the precious form in which the Christian faith has been delivered to us in our Book of Common Prayer? It has been recently affirmed by a distinguished Presbyterian, that "the Church, if she would fulfil her mission, must avail herself of the riches which her children during all these ages have been gathering for her." Here is, indeed, the deposit of the faith, elucidated and interpreted in all its fulness. Learned and unlearned, the wayfaring man and little child, are here instructed, in respect of their manifold necessities and obligations, in respect of their diversified relations both to God and to man, what it is to believe the gospel of Christ. Again, there is a most important feature of our Church, in respect of which we must surely feel how urgent is the duty faithfully to guard the deposit which has been committed to our trust. We cannot but regard as a most signal instance of God's wondrous working for us, the circumstance that He accorded to us the power, which many others did not possess, of retaining in its integrity the constitution of the Church as it has existed from apostolic times. Surely a thoughtful man must ask, with all reverence, why God thus dealt with us; nor will he permit himself to hold the gift in less esteem, because it was not vouchsafed to others. If it be indeed our duty to regard our ecclesiastical polity as a blessing which has been secured to us by the grace and favour of God — if, in this regard, we have indeed cause to say, "The lines are fallen to us in pleasant places; yea, we have a goodly heritage" — then let us be very careful never ourselves to speak or to act, never to lead others to speak or to act, in the spirit of those of whom we read, that "they thought scorn of that pleasant land" which God had given them. Again, if our Book of Common Prayer be indeed a precious treasure house in which is stored for our use the deposit of the Christian faith, must we not be very careful to guard it from neglect, to secure to it its due honour? Are we, then, as careful as we should be here? We cannot be "guarding the deposit" if we give, or teach others to give, a non-natural sense to the language of the Baptismal Office, of the Catechism, of the Office for the Administration of the Holy Communion, or of the Ordinal: we are not handing on, as faithful stewards, that which has been committed to our trust, except we give their full significance to the teaching of the Prayer Book, as well as to that of the Articles. Suffer me to mention another point, which is essential to the "guarding of the deposit." A complaint is not unfrequently made of those who preach not Christ, but the Church. I do not deny that the want of a right understanding of Christian truth, and of a due feeling of its sacred character, may possibly lead to this monstrous result; but I would venture to remind you, that if we would "guard the deposit" faithfully, we must preach both Christ and His Church. It is, indeed, a fatal error not to "hold the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands, having nourishment ministered, and being knit together, increaseth with the increase of God"; but it is also a most grievous error, so to hold the Head as to ignore the divinely appointed organization, through which, as the apostle assures us, the nourishment of the body is dispensed, and its unity and strength secured. We cannot speak faithfully of Christ the Vine, of Christ the Head, of Christ the chief Corner-Stone, without speaking also of that wondrous, spiritual structure, His gracious relation to which is marked by the many names of love and power which are assigned to Him in Holy Scripture. Some persons may be tempted not to "guard the deposit" in certain points, by the hope of conciliating those who are unhappily separated from us. They may desire to withdraw what others regard as unauthorized pretensions, and so to occupy a common ground with them. What, then, must be the necessary effect of their doing so, while "the deposit," as enshrined in the formularies of our Church, remains what it is? They must deprive themselves of all excuse, before God and man, for using or assenting to those formularies. And, more than this, so far as their action is concerned, the Church becomes degraded into the most presumptuous and arrogant of sects, presuming, as she does from their point of view, to utter before God words of most awful and solemn import, to which her heart does not respond, and before men to make pretences and speak "great swelling words of vanity," while she yet repudiates her title to any real distinction from other Christian bodies which put forward no such claims. If we will not "guard the deposit" which has been committed to our trust as a Church, we have no alternative but to renounce it openly and honestly, having first put to ourselves with all seriousness the momentous inquiry, "Did that deposit come to us from the hand of God, or no?" But whither will men turn, if they should unhappily resolve to forsake the historic Church of the past, which we are taught to believe and to confess, as retaining to the end of the world her imperishable continuity, marvellously as she may be taught to adapt herself to the needs of successive generations, and to the various characteristics of "the nation of them that are saved, that shall walk in her light"? Once more, let me present to you that which appears to many a further and most cogent reason for unflinching steadfastness and faithfulness to our high trust. I refer to the remarkable position in which the Church of England has stood ever since the Reformation, in respect of all other Christian bodies throughout the world; and more than ever at this day stands, by virtue of her own wide extension and of her intercommunion with other branches of the Church Catholic, holding the same faith and observing the same order with herself. "If there be," says Bishop Lightfoot, "any guiding hand in the progress of history, if there be any Supreme Providence in the control of events, if there be any Divine Presence and any Divine call — then the position of England, as the mother of so many colonies and dependencies, the heart and centre of the world's commerce and manufacture, and the position of the English Church, standing midway between extremes in theological teaching and ecclesiastical order, point to the Church of this nation, with the very finger of God Himself, as called by Him to the lofty task of reconciling a distracted kingdom and healing the wounds of the nations." For the sake, then, of this inspiring hope, under the sense of this overwhelming responsibility, let us as members of that vast communion, whose worship ascends to God from well-nigh every portion of our globe, resolve by His help to "guard the deposit" which He has committed to our trust, and to stand still in the safe paths of duty and obedience, if haply our eyes or our children's eyes may be blessed by seeing this great "salvation of God." (G. Whittaker, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: |
    |