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John Henry Jowett
Reprinted, 1969, by
Prairie Bible Institute
Three Hills, Alberta, Canada
This edition is a revision of the
original edition printed by James
Clarke And Company, London, In
1911
I. THE SCHOOL OF CALVARY
"For to me to live is Christ"--Philippians 1:21
THERE are three cardinal words in the passage:
"me," "live," "Christ." The middle term "live" is
defined in the union of the two extremes. The two carbon electrodes of the arc lamp are
brought into relationship, and the result is a light of brilliant intensity. And these two
terms, "me" and "Christ," are brought into relationship, and there is
revealed "the light of life," and I become "alive unto God." The human
finds life in union with the divine.
Now this is the only contact which justifies the usage of
the term "life." Any other application of the word is illegitimate and
degrading. The word "life" stands defined in the relationship of the apostle's
words. But we take other extremes, and combine them, and we name the resultant,
"life."
"For me to live is money." Me -- money! And we
describe the union as "life." We are using a gloriously spacious and wealthy
term to label a petty and superficial gratification, which is as transient and uncertain
as the ephemera that dance through the feverish hour of a single summer's day.
"For me to live is pleasure!" Me -- pleasure! And
we describe the union as "life." It is a mere sensation, having no more
relationship to life in its reality than the sluggish and ill-defined existence of the
amoeba has to the large mental and spiritual exercises of the Apostle John. "She that
liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth."
"For me to live is fame" Me -- fame! And we
describe the union as "life." It is a mere galvanized spasm, and is no more
worthy of the regal term "life" than a will-o-the-wisp is worthy of bearing the
name of the sun.
Of all these relationships we may employ the New Testament
indictment and say, "Thou hast a name to live and art dead." All other
combinations fail. By no other fellowships can we produce the resultant. Life is the
unique product of a unique union. "This is life, to know Jesus." "For me to
live is Christ." Such was the rich and ineffable life of the Apostle Paul. Let us
turn our thoughts upon it in prayerful meditation.
The first condition of real life is something to love,
and the second condition is something to revere. For a living issue each of the
elements is essential. Each deprived of the other is robbed of its dynamic.
Neither can lift if the other be absent. Love without
reverence becomes a purely carnal sentiment, and resides in the channels of the flesh.
Reverence without love is like cold moonlight, and will never enrich the heart with the
presence of gracious flowers. Love without reverence is a destructive fever; reverence
without love is a perpetual frost. True love kneels in reverence; true reverence yearns in
love. Each, I say, is essential to the other, and both are needful in the creation of
worthy and wealthy life.
Now, where can love and reverence be best begotten? Where
can we find the atmosphere most fitted for their creation? Where can we learn to love and
revere in such a way that they shall become the spontaneous exercises of the soul?
I sometimes take down from my bookshelves a little book of
devotion written by a great mystic 300 years ago. I turn to Chapter 10 of this book and
read its quaint and engaging title: "Calvary is the true academy of love." If I
want a school where love is taught and revealed, I must seek the academy of Calvary! The
teaching is superlatively impressive, and even the dullest scholar makes progress in the
school. Let me quote from my much-sought-after devotional guide:
"The death and passion of our Lord is the gentlest, and
at the same time the strongest motive which can animate our hearts in this mortal life;
and it is quite true that the mystical bees make their most excellent honey in the wounds
of the lion of the tribe of Judah, who was killed, shattered, and rent on Mount
Calvary."
It is a quaint and very suggestive figure. Out of death,
which destroys all things, "has come forth the meat" of our consolation; out of
death, which is stronger than all things, "has come forth the sweetness" of the
honey of our love. We are to be like bees, and we are to "make our excellent
honey" in the wounds of the lion of the tribe of Judah.
Or, to return to my writer's title figure, we are to go into
the academy of Calvary, which is the all-excelling school of love. And what are we to do
when we get there? We are to employ the ministry of meditation.
I care not how unpractical the counsel may seem in this
busy, hurrying, breathless day. If we men and women are ever to attain unto life and make
progress in its ways, we have got to find time to go to school and learn.
I think one of the can't phrases of our day is the familiar
one by which we express our permanent want of time. We repeat it so often that by the very
repetition we have deceived ourselves into believing it. It is never the supremely busy
men who have got no time. So compact and systematic is the regulation of their day, that,
whenever you make a demand upon them, they seem to be able to find additional corners to
offer for unselfish service. I find that when I have comparatively little to pack into my
portmanteau it seems as full as when I have much. The less we have to pack the more
carelessly we pack it, and the portmanteau appears to be full.
There is many a man who says he has no time, who proclaims
his day to be full, but the fullness is the result of careless packing. I confess, as a
minister, that the men to whom I most hopefully look for additional service are the
busiest men. They are always willing to squeeze another item into their bulging
portmanteau.
But, even though our plea were legitimate, if our time were
crowded, if the portmanteau were packed, if we cannot find a corner of the day for
meditation in the school of Christ, then we must take something out and make room for it.
I think if we search our bags we shall find many and many a rag which takes up space, but
which is of very little worth, and which might very safely be banished.
But if even all the contents were valuables, even assuming
that they were pearls, the Master has declared that the secret of progressive living is to
sacrifice the pearl of inferior value for the pearl of transcendent worth. Even assuming
that the newspaper is not a rag, but a jewel, I do not think it wise to cram so many into
the bag that there is no room for the Book of Revelation, the title deeds of "the
house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
No, if we mean truly to "live," we have got to
find time for the highest of all exercises, meditation upon the eternal things of God. We
have to go to Calvary, the academy of love, and reverently contemplate the unveilings of
redemptive grace. How many of the men in our congregations ever open their Bibles for
private meditation from Monday morning to Saturday night? We give ourselves no
opportunity. Love and reverence are not the uncertain products of chance. They are the
sure and stately products of thought. If our thought be steadily directed, love and
reverence will follow in its train.
Let us go, then, into the school of Calvary, with eyes and
ears alert and quickened, that we may see and hear. We shall get into the secret places of
the Most High, and we shall behold the marvelous unveiling of Infinite Love. We shall hear
that wondrous evangel that Pascal heard, and which melted his heart, and hallowed all his
years: "I love thee more ardently than thou hast loved thy sin."
I cannot describe the tremendous impact which that sentence
makes upon my life. I know how I have sinned. I know how I have clung to my sin. I know
how I have yearned after it. I know what illicit pleasure I have found in it. I know how I
have pursued it at any cost. And, now, in the school of Calvary, my Master takes up this,
my so strenuous and overwhelming passion for sin, and contrasts it disparagingly with His
passion for me: "I love thee more than thou has loved thy sin." If in
some quiet moment that grand evangel swept through our souls in heavenly strains, we
should fall in love with the Lover, and our love would imply our entrance into eternal
life.
And as for reverence -- no man can go softly and
thoughtfully into the school of Calvary without falling upon his knees. He is awed by what
he sees, as well as by what he hears. "They gave Him vinegar to drink mingled with
gall, and when He had tasted thereof, He would not drink." "And they that passed
by reviled Him, wagging their heads." "Father, forgive them, they know not what
they do." "Now, from the sixth hour there was darkness over the land, until the
ninth hour." "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" "And when He
had cried again with a loud voice, He yielded up the ghost." I say, go into that
school -- quietly, privately, and you will soon be on your knees!
The old mystic is right -- Calvary is the academy in
which we may learn reverence and love. We are wooed by the vision into surrender and
spiritual fellowship, and through the gracious ministries of purification and illumination
we pass into perfected union with the Lord. Love and reverence for the Highest are the
conditions of true life, and in love and reverence for the Lord we attain unto eternal
life, and become partakers of the divine nature. "I live, yet not I, Christ liveth in
me." "For to me to live is Christ."
Now, let no one suppose that this mystical union with Christ
drives men into fruitless reveries and idle dreams. There is no one so practical, no one
so splendidly energetic, as the advanced mystic. Why, even Dr. Johnson, who I think cannot
be accused of effeminacy, or of any inclination toward a weak and watery sentiment,
describes the mystical saints as characterized by "vigour and efficacy." And, in
truth, any one who knows the history of the saints knows that these are their pronounced
public characteristics. They are vigorous; there is an optimistic robustness about their
carriage. They are efficacious; their energy is directed to definite and practical ends.
The Apostle Paul was a mystic. Read the middle chapters of
the Epistle to the Romans, the whole of the Epistle to the Ephesians, and all the Epistle
to the Colossians, and you will learn how profound and mystical was his union with the
Lord.
And was he practical? Was his life characterized by
"vigour and efficacy"? Go straight from the fine, subtle, mystical thinking of
the Epistle to the Romans to the busy, tumultuous doings of the Acts of the Apostles, and
you will get your reply.
John Tauler was a great mystic, one of the greatest of the
mystics, living in profound union with the Lord. Was he practical? Or was he a dreamer?
Listen to this little extract from one of his writings: "If a man while devoutly
engaged in prayer were called by some duty in the Providence of God to cease therefrom and
cook a broth for some sick person, or any other such service, he should do so willingly
and with great joy." There is a practical flavour about this man's mysticism. When
the Black Death raged in Strasburg John Tauler disregarded the Interdict, and worked day
and night among the plague-stricken people. Surely there is something vigorous and
efficacious about this man's fellowship with his Lord!
John Wesley was a mystic, led by the mystics into union with
the risen Lord. For him to live was Christ! Did John Wesley pass his years in coloured
reveries and dreams? Take the four volumes of his journal into your hands and find the
answer. John Wesley was the greatest English figure of the eighteenth century. We cannot
survey the practical life of the century without meeting him at every turn.
General Gordon was a mystic. His soldiers knew the meaning
of the white handkerchief when it floated outside his tent, and the sacred privacy was not
disturbed. Was he practical? The slums knew the sound of his feet, and the little waifs
and strays found hospitality in the sunny rooms of his grace-blessed soul.
In all these examples the mystical union with the Lord
resulted in marvelously practical energy, which issued in multiplied services for the
race. "For to me to live is Christ." "He that believeth on Me, out of him
shall flow rivers of living water."
When "to live is Christ" everything is claimed for
Him. Everything is sealed with the King's seal, and used for His exclusive glory. Said the
saintly Bengel, "Quicguid vivo Christum vivo." Whatever I live, I live
Christ! Through whatever I am to live, I live Christ; I set upon everything the imprint of
my Lord! Nothing is allowed to become an alien minister. No circumstance is allowed to
raise the flag of revolt. Bengel made every circumstance in his life pay tribute to
Christ.
Let me quote a little extract from an exquisite little book
of Thomas Boston, a Scotch mystic, whose life was abounding in labours: "Learn that
heavenly chemistry of extracting some spiritual thing out of earthly things. To this end
endeavour after a heavenly frame, which will, as is recorded of the philosopher's stone,
turn every metal into gold. When the soul is heavenly, it will even scrape jewels out of a
dunghill."
All of this just means that a man in Christ can make his
adverse environment ideal. He can make his disappointments his ministers. He can make his
adversities the King's witnesses. He can make his very bereavements glorify his Lord.
Whatever he lives, he lives Christ! If he lives through a season of sorrow, he lives
Christ. If he lives through a season of commercial ruin, he lives Christ. If his path take
him past a grave, he lives Christ! For him to live is Christ.
II. LOSE TO FIND "He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that
loseth his life for my sake shall find it" -- Matthew 10:39
This is surely a very extraordinary chapter. As its
contents pass before us we are possessed by feelings of ever-heightening surprise. Here is
Jesus, gathering about Him a little company of twelve men. No member of the little band
belongs to the ranks of power, or culture, or wealth. They are all inconspicuous, many of
them unlettered, the majority of them poor; it is just a company of working men standing
nervously on the borders of an unfamiliar publicity.
And now their Master is about to send them forth to proclaim
and perpetuate His ministry. With what kind of program will He inspire them? What glory of
possibility will He set before them? What light will He place upon the distant horizon to
cheer them in their mission? What will He say to kindle in the hearts of these timid
toilers a burning and insatiable enthusiasm?
When I turn to the program, I wonder at the oppressiveness
of the shadow. I wonder that the Master uses such black colours in depicting the coming
day. "Ye shall be brought before governors and kings for My sake." "Ye
shall be hated of all men for My name's sake." "When they persecute you in one
city, flee ye into another." "A man's foes shall be they of his own
household." "He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me, is not worthy
of Me."
I am amazed at the almost audacious candour of the program.
There is no hiding of the sharp flint, no softening of the shadow, no gilding of the
cross. The hostilities bristle in naked obtrusiveness. Every garden is a prospective
battlefield "I am not come to send peace, but a sword." The choice of the Christ
involves a perpetual challenge to war.
Now, if this be the program of the kingdom, what shall we
do? What are we tempted to do? We are tempted to frame for ourselves a very perverted
conception of the characteristics of a reasonable life. If our surrounding can be so
hostile, if our difficulties can be so stupendous, if the hatred we may awake can be so
intense, if we can call into being a mighty army of aliens, surely the policy dictated by
a sane and healthy judgment will be this: Take the line of least resistance; keep your
lips closed; go with the stream; look after yourself!
This is the method of reasonableness! This is the policy
which assures self-preservation! This is the secret of a successful and progressive life!
Keep your lips closed -- the policy of silence; go with the stream -- the policy of
opportunism; look after yourself -- the policy of self-aggrandizement. Such is the counsel
of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who strenuously urges upon me this threefold policy of silence,
drifting, and suction, if amid all these sleeping hostilities I would attain to a roomy
and successful life.
Now, in the chapter before us the Master absolutely reverses
the counsel. Not by the policy of the world shall we ever attain to self-preservation and
enrichment; it is a policy which speedily and inevitably leads to impoverishment and
self-destruction. The policy of the world leads to an apparent "finding"' in
reality it is a terrible "losing." Along these roads the apparent finder is the
loser; the apparent loser is the winner.
Let us proclaim the methods of the Lord. It is not by
silence, but by expression that we win; "Whoever shall confess Me before men."
It is not by drifting, but by endurance that we win; "He that endureth to the end
shall be saved." It is not be self-aggrandizement but by self-sacrifice that we win;
"He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." This is the secret of
Jesus; life is sustained and enriched by expression, by endurance, and by sacrifice.
Let us now apply these principles of the Master to the
individual life. Take the first -- life is secured and enriched by expression. Apply the
policy of silence to the domain of the feelings. Feelings which are never expressed
languish away and die. It is equally true of the noble and the base. Refuse expression to
an unworthy passion and we slay it by suffocation. Love that never tells its story, that
never utters itself in word, or gift, or service, fades away into drowsy indifference.
Sympathy that never becomes incarnate congeals into cold benumbment. Gratitude that never
testifies soon ceases to be felt.
Pursue the policy of silence in the matter of the
sentiments, and we shall speedily be despoiled of our wealth. Our feelings require an
outlet; they are oxygenated in speech. The price of retention is expression. We must give
them out if we would keep them in. We must lose them if we would find them.
Apply the policy of silence to the acquisition of a truth. A
truth that is never proclaimed is never really known. Truth reserves her rarest beauties
for the moment when she is being shared. If we retain her we only see her partially; if we
give her away we see her "in new lights." In the moment of communication she
reveals an unsuspected wealth. The teacher gains more knowledge while he is giving away
what he knows. Truth is vivified in the very ministry of expression. "What I tell you
in the ear, that proclaim ye upon the house tops!"
Perhaps our Master intended to suggest that we never see the
full glory of truth when we receive it; the full glory will break upon us only when we
proclaim it. Never tell the truth, and the truth will always remain dim; proclaim it, and
it will emerge from the mist in clear and most alluring outline. The price of retention is
expression. We must lose if we would find.
Take the second of the principles given us by our Lord --
the purposes of life are not served by the policy of drifting, but by the ministry of
resistance. Life is energized by endurance. Drifting may be the secret of easy living; it
never discovers the entrance into a spacious life. To go with the stream may be a luxury,
but it is a luxuriousness which is productive of a perilous enervation. We can never drift
into any really worthy and permanent wealth.
We can never drift into rest. The only people who never find
rest are the idle and the indolent. The preparative to rest is labour, and rest only
reveals its rich and essential flavours to those who have plodded the ways of toil. It is
the men who have lost who find. Rest never visits the idle man, even though he have an
easy chair in every room in the house. "Strive to enter into rest."
We can never drift into joy. The only people who are
strangers to joy are the people who shirk every difficulty, and never contend with a
troublesome task. It requires a little pressure even to get the juice out of a grape, and
it does seem as though the fine juices of life are only tasted where there is a certain
stress and strain, a certain pressure, a certain sense of burden and task. The precious
juice of joy is never the perquisite of the drifter; it visits the lips of resistance and
is the fruit of conquest. "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord"; that is the
commanding issue of prolonged strife and resistance.
We never drift into strength. Drifting makes no muscle; the
muscle is impoverished. The man who drifts with the stream appears to be conserving his
strength, while in reality the ease is just the measure of the leakage. It is the man who
appears to be expending strength who is really gaining it; the man toiling at the oar and
resisting the stream, he acquires the power of the stream he resists. The policy of
drifting appears to find, but it loses; the policy of resistance and endurance appears to
lose, but it grandly finds. "He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that
loseth his life for My sake shall find it."
Take the third of the principles proclaimed by the Lord --
it is not by the policy of self-aggrandizement that we can find the secrets of an enduring
progress. Life is not enriched by selfishness, but by sacrifice. Life becomes fruitful
only when it becomes sacrificial. This is true concerning our influence upon one another.
It seems ordained that life has to attain a certain fervour of sacrifice before it can
become contagious and multiply itself throughout the race. On the cold planes of
calculation and selfishness life is unimpressive, and its products leave the general life
unmoved.
It is even so with a poem, with a painting, with a sermon,
ay! With a courtesy; the measure of its impressiveness is just the measure of the
sacrifice of which it is the shrine. What is there in the poem of the heart, of energy, of
blood? What has the man put into it? What did he lose in its making? What
"virtue" has gone out of him? Just so much will be the measure of healing. Just
what he lost will be our gain; he becomes fruitful where he touches sacrifice.
But let us say more -- the poet himself is the gainer by so
much as he lost. The spirit of sacrifice not only impresses others, it fertilizes self. In
the fervent atmosphere of sacrifice buried seeds of possibility awake into life, which in
an air of cold calculation remain in their graves -- powers of perception, of resolution,
of effort. In the tropical heat of sacrifice they spring into strength and beauty.
I say, therefore, that the spirit of sacrifice enriches self
while yet it fertilizes others. Our giving is our getting. "With what measure ye
mete, it shall be measured to you again."
Here, then, are the gates to a rich and roomy individual
life; not silence, but expression; not drifting, but endurance; not self-seeking, but
sacrifice; for "he that findeth his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life
for My sake shall find it."
Now let me lift up the principles to a larger application. I
have tried to reveal their relationship to the individual, but they are equally applicable
to wider relationships -- to families, to societies, to states, and to the Church.
Let me confine this larger outlook to the life of the
Church. Here is the Church of Christ placed in an environment of sleeping hostilities. If
she moves, her foes awake and arrange themselves in serried ranks. Here and there she
meets with violent hatred, and everywhere she is confronted with gigantic tasks. The
difficulties are here in our homeland, and they are multiplied in lands afar.
What shall be our policy? We may not definitely formulate
the policy, and by the very absence of a clear and strong decision we may be snared into
the three perilous worldly policies of silence, drifting, and self-aggrandizement; a
policy of silence, not proclaiming in every place the evangel which we have received; a
policy of drifting, evading the enormous tasks and difficulties of the almost immeasurable
field of service; a policy of self-aggrandizement, appropriating the ministries of grace
to our own consolation, and sitting and singing ourselves "away to everlasting
bliss."
And here, again, is the word of the Saviour. By the methods
of the world the Church will never gain her life. Life gained in such conditions is
miserably delusive. The vitality is only apparent. The growth is dropsical. The finding is
only a losing. The Church that would grow rich must externalize and invest its treasure.
The Church that would live must die. If she would have her Olivet of enriched communion,
she must seek it by the way of Golgotha and the Cross. If she would gain, she must lose.
She must be a missionary Church, working out her salvation by the ministries of
expression, endurance, and sacrifice.
How would she gain? Turn again to our principles. The life
of the Church is secured and enriched by expression. I do not think the Church ever
discovers the manifold wealth of her evangel until she begins to proclaim it to the varied
and manifold needs of the race. Its adaptability to diverse circumstances brings strange
corroboration to its truth.
It is even so on the plane of matter. On the material plane
a scientific discoverer hungers for a multiplicity of tests. He longs to give his theory
the trial of multiplied experiments. The larger and more varied the range, the more
illumined and assured becomes his conviction. And here is the evangel of the Christ. We
can only apprehend it partially if we confine its application to our own needs. Set it in
a different light, and it will reveal an unsuspected glory.
Take it to India; bring it to bear upon the Hindoo; set it
side by side with his sad and dreary religion; let the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ be
seen in contrast with his own deity, inaccessible to human affection, or, indeed, to
anything else; proclaim the duty and privilege of holiness amid conditions which give
little emphasis to morals. Do all this, and it requires but little imagination to see that
our evangel will assume an undiscovered majesty and glory, which will warm and illumine
the minds and hearts of its own heralds.
Take it among the primitive islanders of the South Pacific;
take it among the keen and sinewy natives of Central Africa; take it among the half-awake
and conservative people of China; take it among the alert, absorbent, and prospecting
Japanese; and every new application will reveal a new adaptability of "the exceeding
richness of His grace."
We discover while we evangelize. Our torch emits new flame
while we light the lamps of others. We get while we give. "He that findeth his life
shall lose it; he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it."
Again, the principle is true in wider relationships. The
life of the Church is energized and enriched by endurance. The difficulties of home and
foreign missionary work are gigantic. No field has been discovered where the difficulty is
absent. The line of least resistance is to remain at ease. But the path to ease is not the
way to life. A difficulty should always be interpreted as an invitation. If the Church be
healthy, a great task will always be an allurement. For difficulties are only rightly
interpreted when they are regarded as promises.
Every difficulty contains prospective wealth. Break it open,
and the wealth is yours! We appropriate the strength of the enemy we vanquish. Overcome a
difficulty, and its power henceforth enlists on our side. That is a grand evangel, having
application both to individual and to common life.
There are monster difficulties in China. Let the Christian
Church overcome them, and the force of the monster difficulties is added to her strength.
We are energized by our tasks. Our muscle is made by our resistances. And, therefore, you
will find that the seasons of commanding difficulty have ever been the seasons of the
Church's exuberant health. The strong negative has begotten mighty affirmative. The forces
of persecution have produced sterling muscle and inflexible resolve.
Let us, therefore, look at difficulties as promises in the
guise of tasks. They are treasure houses presenting the appearance of bristling forts.
Break them open, I say, and the treasure is yours. To dare is to win! "He that loseth
his life shall find it."
And as for the third principle, only a word need be said.
The life of the Church becomes fruitful when it becomes sacrificial. When the church is
easeful she loses the power to redeem. I remember the old story of Pope Innocent IV and
Thomas Aquinas, who were standing together as bags of treasure were being carried in
through the gates of the Lateran.
"You see," observed the Pope, with a smile,
"the day is past when the Church could say, `Silver and gold have I none!'"
"Yes, Holy Father," was the saint's reply,
"and the day is past when the Church could say to the lame man, `Rise and
walk!'"
When the church's life is lived on the plane of ease, and
comfort, and bloodless service, she has no power to fertilize the dry and barren places of
the earth. When the Church becomes sacrificial, she becomes impressive. The sacrificial
things in history are the influential things today.
It is the men and the women who give away their being, the
bleeding folk, who are our present inheritance. The woman who gave the two mites still
works as a factor in the life of the race. Sir John Kelynge --
have you ever heard of him? -- the brutal, cynical justice who
thrust John Bunyan for twelve years into Bedford gaol, his very name is now a conundrum!
John Bunyan, the sacrificial martyr, is still fertilizing the field of common life with
energies of rich inspiration.
The finders have lost. The apparent losers are at the
winning post! The sacrificial are the triumphant. "They loved not their lives unto
the death, and they overcame by the blood of the Lamb." A sacrificial Church would
speedily conquer the world! "He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that
loseth his life for My sake shall find it."
III. THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST "For as the sufferings of Christ abound unto us,
even so our comfort also aboundeth through
Christ" -- 2 Corinthians 1:5
And that word "sufferings," when used by
the Apostle Paul, is not a big term to express a very little thing. "For we would not
have you ignorant, brethren, concerning our affliction which befell us in Asia, that we
were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of
life."
And still later in the same letter we have another glimpse
of the apostle in suffering. "In stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in
death oft, of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten
with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been
in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by
mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the
wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and
painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and
nakedness."
And yet, in the very midst of this tumultuous narrative,
like bird song in a thunderstorm, there rises this melodious assurance -- "As the
sufferings of Christ abound unto us, even so our comfort also aboundeth through
Christ."
It is a strange conjunction this of "suffering"
and "comfort." And it is all the more strange when they are put together in the
relation of cause and effect, and comfort emerges from suffering as springs have been
loosened by the earthquake at Messina, as volcanic influences are productive of conditions
which feed the most luxurious vines.
But apostolic teaching is also the teaching of common
experience. Apart altogether from the Christian revelation, men have learned that
affliction and consolation, suffering and blessedness, are not alien and mutually
repellent, but related by affinities vital and profound.
Even Positivism, which is just a vast scheme of benevolence
comprehending every form of sentient life, and which aims at universal blessedness,
"decks itself out in the blood-stained garment of Christian asceticism," and in
order to gain happiness employs the ministry of sacrifice. One of the primary precepts or
principles of Positivism is just this -- either suffer or die!
But the teaching which links the volcano and the vine, the
earthquake and the springs, suffering and blessedness, affliction and emancipation, is
preeminently significant of the Christian religion. It found its symbol of life in the
minister of apparent death. Its emblem of victory is a cross, and its ascending
transitions are crucifixions. It fashions its glories out of seeming shame, as the
loveliest hues are extracted from the blackest pitch.
It has only one path into life -- a strait gate and a narrow
way; it has only one secret of joyful liberty -- self-sacrifice and vigilant
self-restraint. "If any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself, and take up
his cross and follow Me." We can obtain the wine of life only through the crushing of
the grapes. Affliction introduces us to the juices and the mannas. "For as the
sufferings of Christ abound unto us, even so our comfort also aboundeth through
Christ."
And so let us turn our minds in quiet meditation upon those
"sufferings of Christ" in which fellowship we are to find our consolation. And
let us, first of all, remind ourselves of the words in which our Lord described His holy
purpose and ministry: "He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath
sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering
of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised." Such is the range
and richness of our Lord's redemptive mission.
Now, the range of our possible sufferings is determined by
the largeness and nobility of our aims. It is possible to evade a multitude of sorrows by
the cultivation of an insignificant life. Indeed, if it be a man's ambition to avoid the
troubles of life, the recipe is perfectly simple -- let him shed his ambitions in every
direction, let him cut the wings of every soaring purpose, and let him assiduously
cultivate a little life, with the fewest correspondences and relations.
By this means a whole continent of afflictions will be
escaped and will remain unknown. Cultivate negations, and large tracts of the universe
will cease to exist. For instance, cultivate deafness, and you are saved from the horrors
of discords. Cultivate blindness, and you are saved from the assault of the ugly. Stupefy
a sense, and you shut out a world. And, therefore, it is literally true that if you want
to get through the world with the smallest trouble you must reduce yourself to the
smallest compass.
And, indeed, that is why so many people, and even so many
professedly Christian people get through life so easily, and with a minimum acquaintance
with tribulation. It is because they have reduced their souls to a minimum, that their
course through the years is not so much the transit of a man as the passage of an amoeba.
They have no finely organized nervous system, or they have
deadened and arrested the growth of one nerve after another; they have cut the sensitive
wires which bind the individual to the race, and they are cosily self-contained, and the
shuddering sorrow of the world never disturbs their seclusion. Tiny souls can dodge
through life; bigger souls are blocked on every side.
As soon, therefore, as a man begins to enlarge his life, his
resistances are multiplied. Let a man tear out of his soul the petty selfish purpose and
enthrone a world purpose, the Christ purpose, and his sufferings will be increased on
every side. Every addition to spiritual ambition widens the exposure of the soul, and
sharpens its perception of the world's infirmity and the sense of its own restraints. How
then was it with that vast spiritual ambition of the Saviour which He Himself described in
words which I have quoted from the Gospel by Luke? That all-absorbing redemptive purpose
was bound to introduce Him to ceaseless suffering.
First of all, there were the sufferings which were incident
to the very existence of a majestic purpose. Vast ambitions are not kept burning in the
soul without fuel. They suck the very energies of the body into their own flame. Fine
passion makes a heavy drain upon the nerves; the suburbs are scoured to feed the fire at
the centre. There is not a man or woman of holy Christian passion today who is not
"burning the candle at both ends." They cannot help it.
And the consequence is they experience the sufferings which
are incident to the limitations of the flesh. The body is too frail for the fiery spirit.
The steed is exhausted while the driver is quite fresh. And, therefore, do these
passionate hearts suffer in the imprisonment of their own physical restraints. "I
have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened!"
And do you wonder, as you read the record of the sacred
life, that you come upon significant words like these: "And Jesus, being wearied, sat
thus by the well." "And He was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a
pillow." May I say it reverently -- it was the tired-out body, the exhausted minister
which carried the holy, passionate redemptive purpose of God.
And, second, there were His sufferings which were incident
to the passive antagonism of the indifferent. I mention these before I mention the
antagonism of His positive foes because I think they inflict a deeper wound. The fiery
crusader can meet an active opponent and overthrow him, but what can he do with the
indifferent who have not a spark of concern? If you are passionate about anything, the
indifference of others will make you wonder; if it is a moral enthusiasm, the indifference
will give you pain. "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?"
That is the cry of a wounded spirit. They would not even
turn aside to glance at the pearl of great price! I think there is no crucifixion for the
spiritually chivalrous man equal to that which is inflicted by the unconcern of those whom
he seeks to redeem.
There is on sentence in James Gilmour's diary which was
surely written in blood. It was written after years of labour. "In the shape of
converts I have seen no result. I have not, as far as I am aware, seen any one who even wanted
to be a Christian."
And that was the experience of a man who, when he arrived at
his field of labour, had written these words in his diary: "Several huts in sight!
When shall I be able to speak to the people? O Lord, suggest by the Spirit how I should
come among them, and guide me in gaining the language, and in preparing myself to teach
the life and love of Christ Jesus!...I have not, as far as I am aware, seen any one who
even wanted to be a Christian." Surely that was "the fellowship of His
sufferings!"
And third, there were His sufferings which were incident to
the active antagonism of His foes. There are the sufferings occasioned by passivity, but
there are also the sufferings occasioned by hostility. One man has no interest in your
message; the other listens and rejects. One man scarcely lifts his eyes to look at you.
"So was it in the days of Noah!"
The other stands up to you and declares you have a devil.
Your aims are distorted, your spirit is misinterpreted; you are said to be wearing a
stolen livery, assuming a benevolent purpose while you are seeking your own ends. And so
it was with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. "He came unto His own, and His own
received Him not." Hostilities were multiplied. "He was despised and rejected of
men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."
Now all these sufferings are sufferings which we can
partially share with our Lord. There are other of his sufferings, mysterious and awful, of
which we may know little or nothing.
"We
may not know, we cannot tell
What pains He had to bear."
Those secrets are yet enfolded in gross darkness; and all
that we at present know is this -- that out of the darkness, as from black subterranean
depths, there flows "a river of water of life, clear as crystal," medicinal,
strong in gracious healing, and carrying the virtuous energies of moral and spiritual
transformation. There is something here which we can never share. "It is
finished."
But the other sufferings I named we must and we shall share,
if we share the largeness of His purpose, and in our own degree seek the moral and
spiritual redemption of the race. There is a space left for your energies and mine, and
therefore for your sufferings and mine: we can "fill up that which is lacking of the
affliction of Christ."
And now, for one moment, I turn the matter around. "For
as the sufferings of Christ abound unto us, even so our comfort also aboundeth through
Christ." If we have fellowship in the one, we shall have fellowship in the other. I
have already said that if we lessened our lives we should lessen our sorrows. It is now
needful to add that if we lessen our lives we also lessen our joys. Deaden the sense of
hearing and you escape the discords, but you also lose the harmonies. Drug your artistic
sense, and you lose the pain of the ugly, but you also lose the inspiration of the lovely.
If by the enlargement of my life I let in human sorrow, I
also let in divine consolation. A big, holy purpose makes me more sensitive toward the sin
and hostility of man, but it also makes me more sensitive toward God. If the sufferings
abound, "so our comfort aboundeth also." If I said nothing more than this, this
alone would suffice; if we suffer with Christ, Christ Himself becomes a great reality.
When life is a picnic, we play with theology; when life becomes a campaign, we grope for a
religion. It is one thing sounding when your boat is in the open see; it is another thing
sounding when the menacing rocks are on every side.
When we suffer with Christ, we come to know Christ, to come
face to face with reality, and the idle superfluities drop away. "And our comfort
also aboundeth through Christ." Our fellowship with His sorrows makes us receptive of
His joys; "My joy shall be in you, and your joy shall be full." Our fellowship
in His battles makes us receptive of his peace; "My peace I give unto you."
There is no surer way of becoming sure of Christ than to
follow the way of sacrificial life and service. It may bring us into a fiery furnace of
suffering, but "in the midst of the fire" there shall be One "like unto the
Son of God."
IV. THE NEGLECTED CUP "The fellowship of His sufferings"-- Philippians 3:10
Let us continue our meditation on "the fellowship of
His sufferings." The phrase is taken from the eager speech of a veteran apostle! One
would have felt its fitness and congeniality upon the lips of a young man, some fresh,
enthusiastic knight, with his armour just newly belted about him, and setting out from the
threshold upon some crusade of valorous enterprise. In such conditions this strenuous
speech would have been congenial, and there would have been nothing startling in its
proclamation -- "I set out" that I may know Him, and "the fellowship of His
sufferings!"
But old men speak naturally of retirement; their fighting
days are over; and they leave the stern encounter to the younger men. They often speak of
having earned their rest, and the blazing ambitions of their earlier days have become
cool. They no longer covet the "hardness" of the battlefield; they steal through
the green pastures and by the still waters in the soft light of the setting sun.
But here is an old man with all the impetuous ambitions of
his prime. His burning zeal makes even the enthusiasm of young Timothy seem dim, and he
contends with the foremost of the youths for the hottest parts of the field.
He is in prison now, but he is like some stabled hunter
which hears the cry of the hounds. He is as tense and eager as ever. His ambitions are a
young man's ambitions; his very speech is a young man's speech; his metaphors and similes
are just those which leap most readily to the lips of youth; they are sought, not from
sleeping boats in the harbour, or from quiet flocks in the meadows, but from the
straining, strenuous worlds of the racecourse, the amphitheatre, and the gymnasium.
And so here he is, in the very van of the Lord's hosts, in
the very fighting line, ambitious to share with his Lord the central hardships of the
strife. "That I may know Him . . . and the fellowship of His sufferings."
"The fellowship of His sufferings!" That is
a great New Testament word, and especially is it one of the great determining words in the
speech of the Apostle Paul. Let us enter into its wealth through this little gate which I
find in the Acts of the Apostles. "And they had all things in common."
The little phrase, "in common," is closely akin to the word,
"Fellowship," and by the help of the one we may gain a clear interpretation of
the other. "They had all things in common"; they had a common room and a common
table, and they all shared alike in the abundance or impoverishment of the feast.
And so, too, there is a table at which our Master sits,
spread with the things which He and His have to eat and drink. And we, too, may have
"all things in common" with Him; nay, it is the high sign and seal of
discipleship that we do sit with Him at the common board.
But here is our frequent mistake, that we regard that table
as laden only with welcome provisions, and even with delicate and dainty luxuries. On that
table there is the provision of peace, and the provision of joy, and the provision of
glory! And over all the table, from end to end of it, there is the soft and healing light
of grace. That is how we think of the table, and, blessed be God, all these rare
provisions are surely to be found at the feast; and we may have all these things "in
common" with the Lord.
But there is also another cup on the table, a cup that is
very near the Master's hand, a cup which we very frequently forget or ignore. It is a
bitter cup, the cup of the Lord's sufferings. "Are ye able to drink of the cup that I
drink of?" Are we prepared to have "all things in common"? We drink
the cup of kindness, the overflowing cup of redeeming grace. "Are ye able to drink of
the cup that I drink of?"
"I have tasted," I think I hear him say, "I
have tasted and seen how gracious He is. I have drunk the cup of His salvation; but I
thirst for a deeper communion still; not only the sweet and palatable cup, but that dark
and bitter cup would I taste; that cup whose contents are as blood. I would have `all
things in common'! `I count all things but loss . . . that I may know Him . . . and the
fellowship of His sufferings.'"
Now our intimacy with the Lord can best be estimated by our
knowledge of the contents of that bitter cup. Other things upon the table have their
significance, and to taste them argues a certain measure of acquaintance with the King;
but the deeper significance gathers about that cup of darker hue. The quality of our
fellowship with the Lord is best revealed, not by our capacity for joy, but by our
capacity for suffering. We often test our communion with the Lord by the measure of our
equanimity. If our life is calm and passive, and the wrinkles are absent from our brow,
and we can sing, "Peace, perfect peace!" then we assume that our intimacy with
the Lord must be very deep and true.
But equanimity is a virtue very much misunderstood, and its
popular representative is often only a well-disguised indifference. "Peace" is
often used to label undignified and worldly ease, and as such it denotes no sort of
fellowship with the Lord. There is an equanimity which is death. We do not reveal our high
spiritual kinship by our ability to remain unruffled, but by our capacity to be stirred.
It is when life is upheaved to its depths that we know the Lord; it is when deep calleth
unto deep that we have the conditions of vital communion.
And so it is not by our pleasures, but by our pangs that we
may discover our likeness to the Lord. "Are ye able to drink of the cup that I drink
of?" That is the cup we forget, and yet it is in the cup of suffering that we attain
the finest and rarest spiritual communion.
And yet how far from this is the common reasoning! We say
one to another, "Have you found peace?" -- and if an affirmative answer be
returned, we give glory to God; and well we may, for to have drunk the cup of spiritual
peace is a sure witness that we are found at the table of the Lord.
But how far has our fellowship advanced? How rarely we ask
one another, "Have you become a partaker of the sufferings of Christ? Have you lifted
that cup to your lips? And if so, when and how and where did you taste the bitter
draught?"
I am afraid that if we were subjected to these most
searching questions the majority of us would have to confess that we had kept our eyes
upon the other parts of the table, and that we had confined ourselves to the sparkling and
welcome draughts of spiritual delight. But it is a shallow intimacy which confines itself
to the pleasures of the table; the deeper discipleship lays hold of the darker cup, and
enters into "the fellowship of His sufferings."
Now what is there in that much neglected cup? What is the
bitterness which we can have in common with the Lord? What darker experiences can we share
with Him? Nay, what is it we must share before we are kinsmen worthy of the name?
Well, no one can be long in the presence of the Saviour
without noticing that He always drank a bitter cup when He came into the presence of sin.
The prevailing sin hurt Him, it crucified His spirit long before it crucified His
flesh. Here is Jerusalem, wicked, wayward and indifferent, wasting its hallowed treasure
in decorated debauchery. And the Master gazes upon its unholy pleasures and shames, and He
weeps! Have we entered into the fellowship of that suffering? Have we tasted that cup? Or
have we been so fascinated by the glittering decoration as to be oblivious to the
debauchery?
Let us look at the Master, Jesus Christ, again, as He lifts
to His lips the bitter cup. "And Jesus stooped downs, and with His finger wrote on
the ground." Can you feel what is going on there? Have you never listened to a
questionable or unclean story, and, even while it was being told, for very shame you have
not known where to fix your modest eyes? "And Jesus stooped down, and with His finger
wrote on the ground." He was, at that very moment, drinking the bitter cup, and when
we share His burning shame, we enter into "the fellowship of His sufferings."
But how few there are who share it! We are interested in
sin; we can lift our eyes in delighted inquisitiveness; we can follow its unclean track
down column after column of reeking print, and we never hurl the record away in weeping
and consuming shame. Sin attracts us, it does not blister us; it interests, it does not
burn. We can gaze upon it in curious observation, and it does not create an emotional
convulsion. We can see it and laugh; we can see it and sleep.
The Master saw it and wept. What a discord is to a refined
and disciplined ear, so, in immeasurably deeper degree, should sin be to the intimate
companions of Christ. What a coarse daub is to a well-trained and interpreting eye, so
should sin be to eyes that have been anointed with the eye salve of grace. The sin of the
city should make all true Christians smart. But does it? Do we suffer with our suffering
Lord? Or is that a cup whose bitter draught we have not drunk?
Have you ever marked that word in the Book of Ezra, when
that sensitive soul had discovered the sin of his people? "I fell upon my knees, and
spread out my hands unto the Lord my God: and I said, O my God, I am ashamed and blush to
lift up my face to Thee!" The suppliant and his Lord were just then drinking out of
the same cup.
But how frequently in our life the shame is missing, and the
blush is absent, and there is no suffering, no pain! And, therefore, it is that because
there is no pain at sin; there is no haste to remove it. We are slow footed because we are
slow to burn.
Our feet will become "like hinds' feet" when there
is a burning shame in our souls, and when we taste the unutterable bitterness of all sin.
We shall be swift in the ways and ministeries of redemption when we have entered into
"the fellowship of His sufferings."
And that cup again! What else can we share, if our Saviour
and we are to have "all things in common"? We cannot be long with the Lord
without noting how deeply He suffered with the sufferings of others. Other folk's sorrows
He made His own, and He drank deeply of everybody's bitter cup. Have we entered into the
fellowship of those sufferings? You may possibly reply, "I've got enough of my
own!"
Yes, and that is perhaps the very reason why you have so
many! Personal sorrows, selfishly nursed, become more burdensome by the nursing. Many
times have I known a personal grief nursed into an intolerable load. "I've got enough
of my own!" So we have, and more than enough; but if we made other folk's sorrows our
own as well, the miracle would happen which has been wrought in innumerable lives, the
double load would be more tolerable than either of the single loads, and the yoke would
become easy and the burden light.
At any rate, when we add the fire of another man's suffering
to our own, there is One in the fire "like unto the Son of man," and in that
strong controlling Presence "the fire shall not kindle upon thee to destroy."
And, at any rate again, when we sorrow with another's sorrow, we are drinking the cup of
the Lord, and we enter into "the fellowship of His sufferings."
We can drink that cup of sympathetic suffering in silence.
It does not inevitably demand the clumsy instrument of speech. I remember a saintly woman
telling me some time ago how she had gone to call upon another woman, over whose life
there had suddenly fallen the cold shadow of a benumbing grief. "I just held her
hand, and said nothing, and we both wept!"
And when our visitor told me the story, I called to mind
how, when those premonitory symptoms occurred which periodically threatened mental
darkness to Mary Lamb, she and her brother, Charles Lamb, would go in the early morning,
or in the late night, speechless and weeping, over the desolate way that led to the
asylum. They said nothing to each other; they just walked the gloomy way, hand in hand. I
care little just now what his creed was; I say that when Charles Lamb gave his sorely
afflicted sister the hand of a silent but bleeding sympathy he was lifting to his lips the
bitter goblet from the table of his Lord; he entered into "the fellowship of His
sufferings."
Now I think we are born with an adequate equipment for
sharing the sufferings of our fellows. Our very birthright includes a sensitiveness to
another's woes. A little child instinctively discerns the shadow, and its tears fall in
ready sympathy. But as we grow older, we trifle with this precious inheritance. We waste
our substance. We pervert and prostitute our emotional wealth. We are moved, but we do not
move; we have a gracious impulse, but we give it no way; and what happens? The waters of
unfulfilled emotion congeal into frost, and the very ministers of intended service become
the friends of a severer alienation.
That is the peril of novels; they excite an emotion which
frequently reacts in petrifying power. And that is the peril of theatres. And that is the
peril of sermons! And that is the peril of grace! "It is a savour of life unto life,
or of death unto death." Aye, in these high places of emotion fire can become frost,
and the emotion which does not issue in practical ministry freezes and binds the very life
in which it was born. And so we leave our childhood behind, our endowment becomes our
bane, we cease to be able to enter into the sufferings of Christ -- and the Saviour
suffers alone.
But "blessed are they that mourn," who have not
lost their capacity of a weeping and helpful sympathy. Aye, thrice blessed are they who in
their prime retain the heart of a little child, who can weep with them that weep, who
tread the winepress with the Saviour and enter into "the fellowship of His
sufferings."
And, last, in this apostolic ambition to have all things in
common, we can enter into the fellowship of our Saviour's sufferings by the all-complete
surrender of ourselves to the service of our fellowmen. Our Lord served other people to
the point of physical weakness and exhaustion, and even unto death. Our service too
frequently ends where bloodletting begins. We stop short of the promise of fertility.
"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." Yes, and the blood of the
servant fertilizes the field of his service. "Ye have not yet resisted unto
blood!"
And it is just at that point of resistance that we begin to
win. It is just when our service becomes costly that it begins to pay. Life becomes
contagious when it becomes sacrificial. Our work begins to tell when the workman is
content to suffer; when he persists even unto blood.
But is it not true that for many of us our service ends just
when we reach the bitter cup? "Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink of?"
No, we are not able, and when our work and service become bitter, we give it up.
"From that day" -- Calvary in sight -- "many of His disciples turned back,
and walked no more with Him." That teacher in the school-- where is he now? Oh, he
got tired of it! Which just means that he was not able to go on when to go on drew blood;
he could not enter into "the fellowship of the sufferings."
And that is our pitiable mood. So long as there is no drain,
we can persist; when there is a demand for the veins to be opened, we retire. And so we
miss the best of the feast. For they who take into their hands the goblet of bitterness,
humbly saying, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not my
will, but Thine be done," will find that by that bitter draught they attain into a
spiritual kinship and companionship which is infinite compensation, and even in their
sorrow and weariness "the joy of the Lord is their strength."
And so just one word from old Samuel Rutherford, from a
letter he wrote to John Kennedy: "ye contracted with Christ, I hope, when first ye
began to follow Him, that ye would bear His Cross. Fulfill your part of the contract with
patience, and break not to Jesus Christ. . . Be honest, brother, in your bargaining with
Him. . . . Forward, brother, and lose not your grips. . . . In the strength of Jesus,
dispatch your business!"
V. THROUGH GETHSEMANE TO OLIVET "Then
came to Him the mother of the sons of
Zebedee, with her sons, worshipping Him, and
asking a certain thing of Him" -- Matthew 20:20
"Then came"! And what was the particular
time which was assumed to be so favourable to the quest? What was the psychological
moment? What says the context, for the context so frequently sheds a lurid or interpreting
light upon the text? "And as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, He took the twelve
disciples apart, and on the way he said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the
Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests and scribes; and they shall condemn
Him to death, and shall deliver Him unto the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to
crucify; and the third day He shall be raised up."
The narrative is darkening into twilight and night; the
heavens are becoming overspread and there loom the approaching presences of betrayal and
condemnation and crucifixion. Surely, in such awful midnight, all petty and frivolous
thought will be upheaved as by the convulsions of an earthquake! Surely, all trifling
purposes will be enlarged by a solemn wonder! Surely, all hot and feverish ambition will
be cooled and transfigured into sacred pity and awe! "Then came to Him the mother of
the sons of Zebedee, with her sons . . . asking a certain thing of Him."
In a moment of austere sorrow private ambition became
obtrusive! We must not assume that these men and their mother had been unimpressed by the
master's sad and mysterious speech. I would rather assume that they had shared the general
depression, and had been subdued into tender seriousness and tears. But would not the
assumption make the association altogether violent and unnatural?
Natural or unnatural, I find many interpreting analogies in
my own experience. It is amazing how speedily a settled temper can stain through a new
impression and obliterate it. It is marvelous with what strength a dominant purpose can
break through a temporary emotion and subdue and destroy it. How often laughter walks just
at the heels of tears! How frequently frivolity pitches its tents in the very precincts of
the sanctuary!
It is almost incredible what subjects men can discuss when
they are returning from a funeral. We gaze into a cold grave, and the wells of emotion are
all at the flow; but within thirty minutes our thoughts have regained detachment, and our
speech is busy with private or public affairs. Our minds and hearts can be deeply ploughed
by the sharp, powerful share of public worship, but, almost before we reach the doors of
the sanctuary, the drifting sands of the world are about us again, and the furrows are
filled and obscured.
I am not launching an indictment; I am only illustrating an
apparently violent conjunction. The old association has its modern analogies, and I am
therefore not surprised that this sad and burdensome saying of the Lord should be
immediately linked with the request of selfish and vaunting ambition. "Then came to
him the mother of the sons of Zebedee, with her sons . . . asking a certain thing of
Him."
Now, who were the petitioners? Matthew records that the
petition was offered by the mother. In the Gospel of Mark, James and John are reported as
making the appeal. The probability is that all three engaged in the supplication, and what
one seemed to lack in urgency was supplied by the others.
It does not require a fanciful imagination to recreate some
of the preliminary conditions which preceded this open request. The incident here narrated
is the culmination of a plot; it is the efflorescence of assiduous culture. Behind this
public stage there are domestic conspiracies which it is not difficult to recall. Salome
and her two sons, James and John, have often discussed the sons' prospects in the coming
kingdom, and many a time, at the end of a day's fellowship with the Master, they have sat
late into the night, and even to the cockcrow, considering eligible places in the new
dominion.
"You are not half pushing enough," said Salome to
her brawny fisherman sons, "your hesitancy will be your undoing! Your silence will be
misinterpreted; your very reserve will be counted as indifference! Hangers-back will be
regarded as hangers-on, and in the day of dignities you will be nowhere near the throne!
"There's Peter, now, he is never far away from the
front, and I've seen the Master cast many a favouring eye upon him! And Nathanael, too,
seems to be deep in His confidence, for often have I marked them in long and serious
conversation! Judas has even received preliminary office, for already he has been
appointed treasurer to the growing band! And then there's Matthew, a skilled man of
affairs, with expert understanding of many things, and versed in the ways and mysteries of
government! There are a dozen available men, and available offices will not be plentiful,
and men like Judas will lose nothing for the asking. Pluck up, my sons, and assert your
eagerness!"
And so these two sons often retired to rest, with purpose
matured, with their decision made, and they fell asleep dreaming of principalities and
powers and exalted offices next to a throne. But in the cooler morning, reserve returned,
and the flowing purpose congealed again into rigid reluctance. And I cannot but think that
oftentimes they sought to throw the task upon their mother, urging that such a request
would come with far more force from her.
"No one can compete with your influence," they
said: "you are sister to Mary, His mother, and you can reckon upon her support, and
you can prefer the claims of blood!"
And so, day after day, the conversation would be renewed,
and day after day the petition was delayed. But now Jerusalem was coming into sight, the
centre of sovereignty and power, where the throne would be established, and the Master's
face was set so steadfastly toward it.
"It must be now or never," said Salome, "and
it shall be now!" "Then came to Him the mother of the sons of Zebedee, with her
sons, worshipping Him, and asking a certain thing of Him. And He saith unto her, What
wouldst thou? She said unto Him, Command that these my two sons may sit, one on Thy right
hand, and one on Thy left hand, in Thy kingdom."
And, now, let us reverently note the yearning pathos of the
Saviour's reply. "And Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask!" There
is little or no rebuke in speech or tone. There is no indignant retort that they are
asking amiss; there is only a graciously tender answer that they do not know the content
of their own request. He assumes that what they are seeking is near companionship in His
sovereignty, and very gently He intimates that they cannot have counted the cost.
"Ye ask for sovereignty alongside Me, that ye might
share in My dominion; ye know not what is involved in such sovereignty: ye know not what
ye ask! Ye think ye are asking for a garden, but in reality ye are asking for a
battlefield, for My gardens are just transformed battlefields; and every owner of a garden
has been a warrior on the field. Ye know not what ye ask!"
That is the principle of the Master's teaching. Men ask for
exalted summits, as though they were the immediate gift of the Saviour's hand, and they
are reached by hard and toilsome roads. The teaching is illustrated upon many planes of
desire, apart from the distinctly religious.
"Grant that I may stand upon Mount Olivet, my feet
resting at the very secret place of its uplifted and radiant splendour!" Ye know not
what ye ask: the fatigue, the toil, the danger, which characterize the road that leads to
it. "Grant that I may have the wondrously facile skill of some great instrumentalist,
that with perfect ease I may weave and fashion rich and moving harmonies! Let me sit upon
the throne of the musical world!" Ye know not what ye ask! The sleepless vigilance,
the uncheered rehearsals, the aching drill and discipline; musical sovereignties are
reached by very obscure and toilsome stairs.
It is not otherwise when we reason in the realm of the
spiritual. "Grant that we may sit with Thee on Thy throne!" In this high region
dignities are not doled, nor are laurels distributed to every caller at the gate. In the
army of the Lord promotion is not by patronage; it is the gracious heritage of fidelity.
We do not wing our way to crowns and sovereignties; step by step we trudge to them.
"Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler." "We
must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom."
"Ye know not what ye ask!" Ye are seeking for
sovereignties -- for moral conquests, for spiritual dominions, for some splendid royalty
of the soul: "Are ye able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?"
"Between you and a share in the sovereign glories of My kingdom there is a cup to be
drunk; are ye able?"
Our Saviour is using a very familiar figure in this of the
cup, for a man's cup was just the essential nature of the man's particular lot. A man's
cup might be sweet or bitter, good or ill, seized and quaffed with ready delight or drunk
with sad reluctance. "Thou anointest my head with oil: my cup runneth over!" And
that is a cup we all covet to share.
But these are not the draughts that form the mighty
cordials of the soul, and endow it with spiritual force and sovereignty. "Are ye able
to drink the cup that I am about to drink?" Can you share My present lot, My
sacrifice in thought, in prayer, in compassion and service? Will you share a night upon
the hill in ceaseless intercession? Will you weep with Me in Gethsemane, and bear upon
your burdened hearts the sins and sorrows of the world? Will you enter into the bitter
lots of others, and share their unwelcome draught? You ask for a conquest; well, then, are
you ready for a crusade?
That is the clarion call of the Lord. We are not called to
easy sovereignties, but to glorious campaigns. That is one of the primary significances of
the emblems which lie upon the table at the Lord's Supper. They are the memorials of a
superlative sacrifice -- a life broken, and spent, and laid down for the redemption of the
race. They are the emblems of a glorious inspiration, the emblems of a glorified life that
is forever sacrificed, ever willing to spend itself to restore and glorify mankind.
And they are the mysteries and symbols of a magnificent
calling, dumb mouths appealing to men to give themselves to a great crusade. For can we
look at His broken body, broken in service, and then scheme and scheme to keep our skins
entire and save them from being worn and broken in the hard and jagged way of service? And
can we gaze upon "the blood of the new covenant," the blood so freely shed, and
then immure ourselves in slippered ease, and never shed a drop of our heart's blood for
the uplifting of the children of men?
It is to young men that I would appeal, and by God's help I
would put speech into the dumb mouths of the emblems: it is a young Saviour -- only
thirty-three when He was crucified -- it is "the young Prince of Glory"
appealing to the young men, and in the broken bread claiming their bodies, even though
they may be broken in the enterprise, and claiming their very blood, that they, too, may
bleed in the holy service.
"Ye know not what ye ask!" How frequently we
share these uninformed petitions! We, too, are asking for summits, and the Lord answers
our prayer; but it is so unlike the answer we expected, for we find ourselves in heavy and
burdensome roads; but these are the first fruits of grace, for they mark the road that
leads to the heights. I asked the gardener for a finer hedge, closer in texture, a vesture
without raggedness -- no hole, no rent or seam. And, oh, what mutilations followed the
request, what clippings, what bleedings, what apparent waste! A finer hedge had to be
gained through the ministry of sacrifice.
You ask your Lord for sovereign joy. You know not what you
ask. Deeper joy is the issue of deeper refinement; and so, instead of immediate joy, the
Lord led you into the discipline of severity, that the chords of your soul might be
rendered more sensitive, that so to their more delicate responsiveness there might be
given more exquisite delight.
You ask for sovereign beauty, spiritual beauty; you ask that
"the beauty of the Lord" might be upon you. You know not what you ask; for
between you and that sovereignty there lies Gethsemane, with its exhausting but
beautifying ministries of intercessory prayer and sacrifice.
You are asking for Heaven, for a sovereign abode in the
seats of the blest. You know not what you ask!
"They
climbed the steep ascent of heaven,
"Through peril, toil, and pain!"
Heaven is the abode of the sacrificial, the gathering place
of crusaders; the secret of Heaven's glory is to be found in the glorious characters we
have fashioned on the way.
And so the gist of it all is this: thrones are for those
who are fit to sit on them; we arrive at our throne when we are ready to rule.
Sovereignties come to us in grace and sacrifice. It is well to lift our eyes to the hills,
to the sublime human sovereignties which fill the vision in the sacred Word, and then, in
the strength of God's blessed grace and love, set out for the difficult climb.
For we have not to wait for our Lord's companionship until
we reach a throne; He is with us while we are aspiring to it. He does not wait the
warrior's arrival when the battle is over and won; He is with us on the field. Our
companionship does not begin at the summit; it begins at the base. It is an interchange of
cups from the start, "I will come in and sup with him, and he with Me."
The sons of Zebedee came to the throne, but by ways of which
they had never dreamed. "Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands
to vex certain of the Church. And he killed James the brother of John with the
sword." . . . "Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of!" James
scaled his sovereignty by the bloody slopes of martyrdom. As for John, the evening of his
days was a stormy and blood-red sunset, spent in the pains of an exile sustained by the
inexpressible fellowship of his Lord.
VI. THE SUPPER OF THE LORD "Ye do proclaim the Lord's death till He come"--
1 Corinthians 11:26
The Lord's Supper is a permanent memorial of Calvary.
It is purposed to keep a stupendous sacrifice in mind, and to prevent it from becoming a
neglected commonplace. It is a lowly gateway into a most mysterious place. In its
wonderful precincts there is unthinkable bitterness of sorrow. And yet out of the very
bitterness there comes sweet bread for the soul. There are tears in its silences, and
there is also "joy unspeakable and full of glory." How, then, shall we come to
the feast?
Sometimes we have come to the Lord's Supper as though it
were a battleground, and we have forgotten the feast. We have come as noisy
controversialists, and not as hungry guests. We have contended for spiritual privileges
which we have not used. We have been heated, quarrelsome, defiant, and we have gone
unblessed away.
And ministers have sometimes been so ensnared by the
administrative part of the office that they have altogether forgotten that they were
sinners. They have "administered," but they have not received, and when they
have left the table there has been no holy glow about their souls, and no taste in their
mouth of "the glorious liberty of the children of God."
How, then, shall we come to the feast? Let us come as impure
suppliants. There is no room here to boast of personal merits, but abundance of room
to sing the wonders of redeeming grace. This is no place to exhibit webs of our own
weaving; it is rather a place of exchange, where we lay down our defective garments and
humbly receive "the best robe" in the Father's house, even "the robe of
righteousness and the garment of salvation." The most elaborate garment of the
self-made man looks very drab and seedy when set in the light which shines around the
table of the Lord.
The best thing we can do is to say nothing about our own
clothes, but humbly seek that "wedding garment," which is the gift of the Lord
of the feast. "Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the
angel. And he answered and spoke unto those that stood before him, saying, Behold, I have
caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with apparel. . . . So
they set a fair mitre upon his head, and clothed him with garments; and the angel of the
Lord stood by."
How shall we come to the feast? Let us come as sickly
disciples, whose obedience has been thin and faint. We have been anaemic in His
service. There has been an obtrusive want of rich, red blood, and the curious, quizzing
world has seen the lack, and has wondered whether we were real kinsmen of the warrior with
the "red apparel," or whether our claim is a presumptuous pretense. The only
authorized Alpine rope has a red worsted strand running through it from end to end. And
the really sealed followers of the Lord are known by their red strand, the blood sign, the
red, endless line of sacrifice. A life which shows the wan colour of a selfish
worldliness, which has nothing to distinguish it from the children of mammon, cannot claim
moral kinship with the Lord, who "laid down His life for His friends." We need
the red strand. "My blood is drink indeed." We come to the table in order that
our sickly anaemia may be changed into strong and sacrificial chivalry.
"We
lay in dust life's glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life
that shall endless be!"
And so we come as unimpressive weaklings, who in
ourselves are devoid of forceful grip, and who lack the splendid virile influence of
contagious health. We have too frequently moved about our work as though we had
"received the spirit of bondage again to fear," and were strangers to the spirit
of "love and of power and of a sound mind."
And, therefore, devils have not trembled when we drew near,
and when we have commanded their expulsion they have remained powerful and enthroned. They
have laughed at our approach, and had we carefully listened we might have heard the old
challenge: "Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who are ye?" The "voice of
the great Eternal" was not in our tone, and so the evil spirit proved himself
stronger than the professed disciples of the Lord, and we could not cast him out.
And now we come for the bread of strengthening. And this
holy bread, this bread of tears, this bread of affliction, is the food of giants. It
endows the soul with "the power of His resurrection," and it transforms the
ineffective weakling into a strong son of God, and perfectly equips him as a minister of
salvation. We have come from defeat and failure up many a pilgrim road, and from many a
clime, and we are now in the guest chamber, where the gracious Host is accustomed to meet
weary and disheartened pilgrims, and where he graciously feeds them with "the finest
of the wheat."
"Jesus, Thou joy of
loving hearts,
Thou
fount of life, Thou light of men,
From the best bliss that earth
imparts
We
turn unfilled to Thee again!"
And what will He do with us? What will He do for us? What
will He do in us? Well, first of all, He will commune with us. He will whisper
again to our hearts the wondrous consolations of the fourteenth of John. He will deliver
us from our distraction, and He will smooth out all wrinkling and wasteful cares.
"Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be
afraid!" Have we not experienced this quieting ministry of the feast? Have we not
known the gracious seasons when the real life forces have begun to move, and the soul has
begun to kindle, and the envious distractions of the world have melted away, just as the
imprisoning ice loosens its grasp in the genial breath of the spring? "Did not our
heart burn within us while He talked with us by the way?"
And thus, while He communes He will communicate, and the
communication is so marvelously abounding and complete that we become incorporate with the
Lord. The fifteenth of John shall follow the fourteenth; and when the separating fears and
sins have been washed away and we are clean, we shall know ourselves to be engrafted into
the Vine of Life. And no figure of speech, be it ever so intimate, can express the
closeness of the incorporation. But friendship, be it endowed with feelers and tendrils
most exquisite, leaves half the tale untold. Even wedded bliss, when the union seems
fleckless and indissoluble, only dimly reflects the fellowship of the soul and Christ. The
Apostle Paul ransacked human experience for symbols of correspondence and intimacy; but
even when he had used the best and most expressive, he laid down his pen in utter
impotence, despairing ever to shadow forth the marvelous kinship of the soul whose life is
"hid with Christ in God."
And how shall we go away from the feast? We must go as
heralds. We must "proclaim the Lord's death till He come." The Lord's death!
We must go out to vagrant pilgrims, who are painfully following illicit lights, and
becoming more and more confused, and we must lead them to this strange, solemn birthplace
of eternal life and light and hope.
We must "proclaim the Lord's death!" We must tell
our struggling fellows that in that fertile gloom gilt finds its solvent, tears become
translucent, and moral infirmity begins to "leap as a hart." Yes, we must leave
the table as heralds, and this must be our cry: "Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye
to the waters, and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat; yea, come buy wine and
milk without money and without price."
And we must go as covenanters. We have taken
"the new covenant" in His blood, and the holy sacrament will be fresh upon our
lips. And there must be something about us akin to the Scottish Covenanters when they
emerged from Greyfriars churchyard, having entered into holy bond and covenant with the
Lord. There must be something in our very demeanour telling the world that we have been at
a great tryst, and our lives must be gravely, grandly quiet, confident in the glorious
Ally, with whom the covenant has been made.
There must be nothing dubious in our stride. Our courage
must be kingly, as though we have imperial friendships, and as though in very truth we
"walk with God." It must be apparent to everybody, in the home, and in the
market, and in the street, that we, too, have been "brought again from the dead, . .
. through the blood of the everlasting covenant."
As heralds we must go, and as covenanters, and as
crusaders, too. We must leave the table as the covenanted knights left King Arthur's
table, "to ride abroad, redressing human wrong," and to labour for the creation
of conditions like unto those whose fair pattern we have seen in the Mount. We may test
the reality of our communion by the vigour of our crusades. We must drink our politics
"from the breasts of the Gospel."
There is a great word in one of Kingsley's letters which
was written when the condition of the people was burdening him with its ever-deepening
tragedy, and when his spirit was being tortured with the sense of accumulated
degradations. And this is what he wrote:
"If I had not had the communion at church today to tell
me that Jesus does reign, I should have blasphemed in my heart, I think, and said,
`The devil is king!'" But he left the feast, he assures us, braced and strengthened,
and with "a wild longing to do something for his fellow men!" That is it, the
power of the holy blood must be proved in our positive action upon the kingdom of the
night.
"The Son of God goes
forth to war,
A
kingly crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams
afar,
Who
follows in His train?"
And so let us turn to our feast. The door is open and the
King is near, and blessed are all they that love His appearing. Let all human ministries
veil their faces and stand aside, and let the soul have undistracted dealings with the
Lord.
VII. THE MORNING GLORY "He is risen" -- Matthew 28:6
And what a sunrise this was after these dark days of
disaster and hopeless defeat! It was "like some sweet summer morning after a night of
pain." Love had been weeping amid the fallen leaves of her own tender hopes. All her
joys were silenced like the songs of wounded birds. Love had been peacefully anticipating
the coming of an endless summer, and lo! Here was winter, in dark and merciless severity!
The great Lover had seemed to be the very fountain of life, with quickening vitality which
nothing could destroy, and yet the fountain had been choked up in Gethsemane and Calvary!
"We trusted that it had been He who should have redeemed Israel," but the
shining, welcoming pool proved to be only a mirage; hope withered in disillusionment; and
the brutal majesty of material force held the entire field.
And so all the disciples were in a mood of deepest and
darkest depression. The light had been cut off from their minds. They were in the dark.
The taste had gone out of their lives. Everything had become stale and profitless. Simon
Peter was gloomy with despondency and haggard with remorse. Two disciples were walking in
the twilight to Emmaus, "looking sad," communing about the awful and sudden
eclipse in which their hopes had been so miserably quenched.
In every life the light was out. Mary Magdalene started at
the "early dawn" to carry spices to the grave, but there was no dawning in her
spirit, and the roadway was wet with her tears. Even in the heart of the Magdalene there
was no vigil burning, like uncertain candle in a dark and gusty night. No one was
anxiously watching on the third day, with eyes intently fixed upon a mysterious east. No;
death reigned, and wickedness, and hopelessness, and no one was looking for the morning!
And then came the cry, "He is risen!" The Lord is
alive. His tomb is empty! He has shaken off death and its cerements, and He has marched
out of the grave! Think of that trumpet note pealing through the late night. Think of that
great burning light streaming through the darkness, kindling life after life into blazing
hope again -- now the Magdalene, now Peter, now John, now the two journeying to Emmaus,
now Thomas, until the entire disciple band was a circle of light again. It was an almost
unspeakable revolution. "The people that sat in darkness have seen a great
light!" "The Lord is risen indeed!"
Now what did the apostles find in the resurrection which
made them give it this weighty and unfailing emphasis? What was its practical
significance? What did it mean? First of all, it meant this, that Jesus of Nazareth had
been clearly manifested to be the Son of God. Before this wonderful morning the
disciples had been the victims of uncertainty, chilled by cloudy moods of doubt and fear.
But with the resurrection the uncertainty ends. It is not
only that the immediate darkness passes, but the troublesome mists are lifted as well, and
the Master emerges as the clearly manifested Son of God. "Arise, shine, for thy light
is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee!"
Now, it is with that trumpet note that St. Paul begins his
great letter to the Romans. It is well to remember this, because the letter to the Romans
is largely concerned with sin and the guilt of sin, and with the sacred ministry of
emancipation from its stain and power. And yet, on the very threshold of this mighty book,
it is the eternal Sonship of the Lord which is proclaimed, and this in association with
the fact of His resurrection from the dead.
Here is the big-lettered placard we meet as soon as we
address ourselves to travel this fine and bracing mountain road: "Jesus Christ . . .
declared with power to be the Son of God . . . by the resurrection from the dead."
Not, you will notice, "declared to be the Son of God with power"; the power
belongs to the declaration, the proclamation, the trumpet.
Before the Easter morn the trumpet had seemed to the
apostles to give an uncertain sound; there was either a trembling in its notes or a
trembling in their ears; but now, with the resurrection, all uncertainty had gone, and the
trumpet rang out its glorious blast, firm and rich and clear. "Declared with power to
be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead!"
What else did it mean? In the power of the resurrection
the apostles saw a vast reservoir of spiritual energy for the quickening and emancipation
of the race. This was their reasoning and their faith, that the Lord, who had emerged
from the grave, and had thereby vanquished death, had the power to vanquish all death,
whether it enthroned itself in body, mind, or soul. This was their faith, as this was
their evangel, that in Christ we, too, can rise out of death into newness of life, that,
just as He walked out of that tomb, we, too, can walk out of the grave and graveyard of
our own corrupt past, and in vigour and sweetness of being become alive unto God.
"I hold it true with him
who sings
To
one clear harp in diverse tones,
That men may rise on steppingstones
Of their dead selves to higher
things!"
Ay, but those lines omit the evangel. It is true that man
can take his own dead self, and stand upon it, and use it as a step into a larger life of
blessedness and sacrifice, but the energy wherewith to rise upon the dead self is only to
be found in "the power of the resurrection."
That is Paul's gospel, and there is no other. We rise with
Christ, we are risen with Christ. Because of the Lord's Easter morn we may pass out of our
three days of death and corruption, and may rise to the "higher things," and
have our own Eastertide "in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." That is what the
apostles found in the resurrection -- vitality enough to quicken all the dead, whether the
corruption be in body or in soul. "In Christ shall all be made alive."
And surely we have a wonderful symbolism of all this in the
mystic movements of the springtime. If anyone would be besieged by suggestions of the
resurrection, let him look about in garden and in field, and he will see the quickening
glory. Spring is ever a gracious time to me. Never do I so intensely feel the pressure of
the quickening Spirit as when I see the black hedgerows bursting with their flooding life
into green and tender leaf. Never do I so realize the surging, encompassing energy of
God's resurrection communion when the dominion of winter is breaking and the time of the
singing of birds is come. "In Christ shall all be made alive!"
I would have the resurrection power flow into my dead
affections, and make them bud in tender sympathies, and gentle courtesies, and all the
exquisite graces of the heart of my Lord. And I would have the resurrection power pervade
my dead conscience, and make it act with hallowed sensitiveness, with fine scrupulous
feeling of the sacred and the profane. And I would have the resurrection power possess my
mind, and make it fertile in noble ideals, in holy purpose, and in chivalrous resolution.
Wherever there is death where there ought to be life, let
there come an Easter dawning and the springtide of our God. And that possibility is just
the apostolic evangel, and it is born in the light and joy of the resurrection of our
Lord. Again and again I would say, "In Christ shall all be made alive!"
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall
hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live." "Because He
lives, we shall live also!"
And, last, to the early apostles the resurrection had this
further significance, that in it right was manifested as the ultimate might. It had
seemed to the apostles as though the truth had been defeated, that it had been overwhelmed
by hordes of wickedness, and that amid the laughter and ribaldry of its foes it had sunk
in complete and final disaster.
But on the Easter morn the truth emerged again. It snapped
the cerements of the grave, and reappeared almost before the laughter of the enemy had
ceased. "Vain the stone, the watch, the seal!" "Truth crushed to earth
shall rise again!"
I say that the apostles laid hold of this as one of the
primary significances of the resurrection, the vital tenacity of the truth, the
indestructibility of the right, its sure and certain resurrection. If we cannot
permanently bury the Christ, we cannot permanently bury the Christlike; if One emerged
from His temporary grave, so assuredly will the other. Right is the ultimate might, and
all the forces of Hell cannot gainsay it.
It may seem at times as though truth is a frail and fragile
creature, a tender presence in a tempestuous day, and men may take her, and scourge her,
and crucify her, and bury her in a sealed and guarded grave; but, as surely as right is
right and God is God, that buried frailty shall reappear in invincible majesty, and shall
incontestably dominate and command the affairs of men.
That is apostolic teaching; and, therefore, written in this
faith we have that wonderful ending to Paul's great resurrection chapter in his letter to
the Corinthians. Have we marked its culmination? "Wherefore," he says, in the
closing verse, when he has just taunted the beaten forces of death and the grave, and sang
anew the praises of the Lord, "wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast,
unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your
labour is not in vain in the Lord." Do we mark the force of the succession? He
seems to say, "Your Lord emerged from the grave in irresistible strength and glory.
There were no bonds strong enough to hold Him. He broke them all like tender threads.
There was no grave mighty enough to imprison the truth; all the stones were rolled away!
So shall it be with the truth in our life and service. It
shall not go under in endless defeat. Our strength shall not be spent for nought, precious
water easily spilt upon the ground. Every bit of truth shall live, every bit of chivalrous
service shall abide for ever." "Wherefore, be ye steadfast, unmoveable.";
go on living the truth, speaking and doing the truth, even though immediate circumstances
crush you like a juggernaut -- go on -- there is resurrection power in the truth, and it
shall reappear and surely conquer, and your labour shall "not be in vain in the
Lord."
And so it is true, what we learned in childhood, for the
Easter morn confirms it, "Kind words can never die, no, never die!" And so it is
true what is said by Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Truth gets well if she is run over by a
locomotive, while error dies if she scratches her finger."
"Truth crushed to earth
will rise again,
The
eternal years of God are hers,
But error wounded, writhes
with pain,
And
dies amid her worshippers."
"He is risen!" And in our Lord's resurrection is
the pledge of the resurrection of all that shares His nature.
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© 2002 by Kevin W. Michael.
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