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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Master, by Bramwell Booth
+
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+Title: Our Master
+
+Author: Bramwell Booth
+
+Release Date: May, 2005  [EBook #8191]
+[This file was first posted on June 29, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, OUR MASTER ***
+
+
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+OUR MASTER
+
+Thoughts for Salvationists about Their Lord
+
+BY
+
+General Bramwell Booth.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"_As man He suffered--as God He taught_."
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY WIFE
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+Preface
+
+     I. The Man for the Century
+
+   II. The Birth of Jesus
+
+       "_For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
+        which is Christ the Lord_." (Luke ii. 11.)
+
+       "_The firstborn among many brethren_." (Rom. viii. 29.)
+
+  III. Contrasts at Bethlehem
+
+   IV. Christ Come Again
+
+       "_And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in
+        swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger_." (Luke ii. 7.)
+
+       "_Christ formed in you_." (Gal. iv. 19.)
+
+    V. The Secret of His Rule
+
+       "_For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the
+        feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as
+        we are, yet without sin_." (Heb. iv. 15.)
+
+   VI. A Neglected Saviour
+
+       "_And He came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were
+        heavy_." (Matt. xxvi. 43.)
+
+  VII. Windows in Calvary
+
+       "_And they crucified Him, and parted His garments, casting lots:
+        that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet. They
+        parted My garments among them, and upon My vesture did they cast
+        lots. And sitting down they watched Him there_." (Matt. xxvii. 35,
+        36.)
+
+ VIII. The Burial of Jesus
+
+      "_And after this Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus,
+       but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might
+       take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came
+       therefore, and, took the body of Jesus_." (John xix. 38. And
+       following verses.)
+
+   IX. Conforming to Christ's Death
+
+       "_That I may know Him . . . being made conformable unto His
+        death_." (Phil. iii. 10.)
+
+    X. The Resurrection and Sin
+
+       "_Concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was . . .
+        declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the
+        spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead_."
+        (Rom. i. 3, 4.)
+
+   XI. "Salvation Is of the Lord"
+
+       "_Salvation is of the Lord_." (Jonah ii. 9.)
+
+       "_Work out your own salvation_." (Phil ii. 12.)
+
+  XII. Self-Denial
+
+       "_If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and
+        take up his cross, and follow Me_." (Matt. xvi. 24.)
+
+ XIII. In Unexpected Places
+
+       "_And . . . while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus Himself
+        drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that
+        they should not know Him_." (Luke xxiv. 15, 16.)
+
+  XIV. Ever the Same
+
+       "_Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and
+        might are His: and He changeth the times and the seasons_."
+        (Dan. ii. 20, 21.)
+
+       "_I am the Lord, I change not_." (Mal. iii. 6.)
+
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+
+
+The present volume contains some of the papers bearing on the Birth and
+Death and Work of our Lord Jesus Christ which I have contributed from time
+to time to Salvation Army periodicals. I hope that in this form
+they may continue the service of souls which I am assured they began to
+render when, one by one, they were first published.
+
+Much in them has, I do not doubt, come to me directly or indirectly by
+inspiration or suggestion of other writers and speakers, and I desire
+therefore to acknowledge my indebtedness to the living, both inside and
+outside our borders, as well as to the holy dead.
+
+Bramwell Booth.
+
+Barnet, _May_, 1908.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+The Man for the Century
+
+
+
+I.
+
+_The Need_.
+
+
+The new Century has its special need.
+
+The need of the twentieth century will be men. In every department of the
+world's life or labour, that is the great want. In religion, in politics,
+in science, in commerce,  in philanthropy, in government, all other
+necessities are unimportant by comparison  with this one.
+
+Given men of a certain type, and the religious life of the world will
+thrive and throb with the love and will of God, and overcome all
+opposition. Given men of the right stamp, and politics will become another
+word for benevolence. Provided true men are available, science will take
+her place as the handmaid of revelation. If only men of power and
+principle are at hand, commerce  will prosper as she has never yet
+prospered, rooted in the great law which Christ laid down for her: "Do
+unto others as ye would that they should do unto you." If the men are
+found to guide it, philanthropy  will become a golden ladder of
+opportunity by which all in misfortune and misery may climb, not only to
+sufficiency and happiness here, but to purity and plenty for ever. And,
+given the men of heart, head, and hand for the task, the government of the
+kingdoms of this world will yet become a fulfilment of the great prayer of
+Jesus: "Thy will be done on earth, as it is done in Heaven."
+
+But all, or nearly all, depends on the men.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+_The Man_.
+
+
+The new Century will demand men.
+
+But if men, then certainly a _man_. Human nature has, after all, more
+influence over human nature than anything else. Abstract laws are of
+little moment to us until we see them in actual operation. The law of
+gravitation  is but a matter of intelligent wonder while we view its
+influence in the movements of revolving planets or falling stars; but when
+we see a baby fall terror-stricken from its little cradle to the floor,
+"the attraction of large bodies for small ones" takes on a new and
+heart-felt meaning. The beauty of devotion to truth in the face of
+opposition hardly stirs an emotion in many of us, as we regard it from
+the safe distance of our own self-satisfied liberty; but when we see the
+lonely martyr walk with head erect through the raging mob, and kiss the
+stake to which he is soon to be bound; when we watch him burn until the
+kindly powder explodes about his neck, and sends him to exchange his shirt
+of flame for the robe he has washed in the Blood of the Lamb; then, the
+beauty, the sincerity, the greatness, the God-likeness of sacrifice,
+especially of sacrifice for the truth, comes home to us, and captures even
+the coldest hearts and dullest minds.
+
+The revelation of Jesus in the flesh was a recognition of this principle.
+The purpose of His life and death was to manifest God in the flesh, that
+He might attract man to God. He took human nature that human nature might
+see the best of which it was capable. He became a man that men might know
+to what heights of power a man might rise. He became a man that men might
+know to what lengths and breadths of love and wisdom a man might attain.
+He became a man that men might know to what depths of love and service a
+man might reach.
+
+The men we need, then, for the twentieth century will find the pattern Man
+ready to their hand. Be the demands of the coming years what they may, God
+is able to raise up men to meet them, men after His own likeness--men of
+right, men of light, men of might--men who will follow Him in the
+desperate fight with the hydra-headed monsters of evil of every kind, and
+who will, by His Name, deliver the souls of men from the slavery of sin
+and the Hell to which it leads.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+_Standards_.
+
+
+The new Century will demand high standards, both of character and conduct.
+
+Explain it how we may, the fact is evident that religion has greatly
+disappointed the world. The wretched distortion of Christ's teaching which
+appears in the lives and business of tens of thousands of professed
+Christians, the namby-pambyism of the mass of Christian teachers towards
+the evil of sin, and the unholy union, in nearly all the practical
+proceedings of life, between the world and the bulk of the Christian
+churches, no doubt largely account for this, so far as Christianity is
+concerned.
+
+Mohammedanism is in a still worse plight, for though, alas! it increases
+even faster than Christianity, it is helpless at the heart. The mass of
+its devotees know that between its highest teaching and its best practice
+there is a great gulf, and they are slowly beginning to look elsewhere for
+rules by which to guide their lives.
+
+And what is true of Mohammedanism is true also of Buddhism--the great
+religion of the East. Its teachers have largely ceased to be faithful to
+their own faith; and, as a consequence, that faith is a declining power.
+Beautiful as much of its teaching undoubtedly is, millions who are
+nominally Buddhist are estranged by its failures; and are, with increasing
+unrest, looking this way and that for help in the battle with evil, and
+for hope amidst the bitter consciousness of sin.
+
+Such is a cursory view of the attitude of the opening century towards the
+great faiths of the world. Perhaps one word more than another sums it all
+up--especially as regards Christianity--and that word is NEGLECT--cold,
+stony neglect!
+
+And yet men are still demanding standards of life and conduct. The open
+materialist, the timid agnostic, no less than the avowedly selfish, the
+vicious and the vile, are asking, with a hundred tongues and in a thousand
+ways, "Who will show us any good?" The universal conscience, unbribed,
+unstifled as on the fateful day in Eden--conscience, the only thing in man
+left standing erect when all else fell--still cries out, "YOU OUGHT!"
+still rebels at evil, still compels the human heart to cry for rules of
+right and wrong, and still urges man to the one, and withholds him from
+the other.
+
+And it is--for one reason--because Jesus can provide these high standards
+for men, that I say He is _The Man for the Century_. The laws He has
+laid down in the Gospels, and the example He furnished of obedience to
+those laws in the actual stress and turmoil of a human life, afford a
+standard capable of universal application.
+
+The ruler, contending with unruly men; the workman, fighting for
+consideration from a greedy employer; the outcast, struggling like an
+Ishmaelite with Society for a crust of bread; the dark-skinned, sad-eyed
+mother, sending forth her only babe to perish in the waters of the sacred
+river of India, thus "giving the fruit of her body for the sin of her
+soul"; the proud and selfish noble, abounding in all he desires except the
+one thing needful; the great multitude of the sorrowful, which no man can
+number, who refuse to be comforted; the dying, whose death will be an
+unwilling leap in the dark--all these, yea, and all others, may find in
+the law of Christ that which will harmonise every conflicting interest,
+which will solve the problems of human life, which will build up a holy
+character, which will gather up and sanctify everything that is good in
+every faith and in every man, and will unite all who will obey it in the
+one great brotherhood of the one fold and the one Shepherd.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+_Liberty_.
+
+
+The new Century will call for freedom in every walk of human life.
+
+That bright dream of the ages--Liberty--how far ahead of us she still
+lies!
+
+What a bondage life is to multitudes! What a vast host of the human race,
+even of this generation, will die in slavery--actual physical bondage!
+Slaves in Africa, in China, in Eastern Europe, in the far isles of the sea
+and dark places of the earth, cry to us, and perish while they cry.
+
+What a host, still larger, are in the bondage of unequal laws! Little
+children, stricken, cursed, and damned, and there is none to deliver.
+Young men and maidens bound by hateful customs, ruined by wicked
+associations, torn by force of law from all that is best in life, and
+taught all that is worst. Nine men out of ten in one of the great European
+armies are said to be debauched morally and physically by their military
+service; and all the men in the nation are bound by law to serve.
+
+What a host--larger, again, than both the others--of every generation of
+men are bound by custom in the service of cruelty. It is supposed that
+every year a million little children die from neglect, wilful exposure, or
+other form of cruelty. Think of the bondage of those who kill them! Look
+at the cruelty to women, the cruelty of war, the cruelty to criminals, the
+cruelty to the animal creation. What a mighty force the slavery of cruel
+custom still remains!
+
+All that is best in man is crying out for emancipation from this bondage,
+and I know of no deliverance so sure, so complete, so abiding as that
+which comes by the teaching and spirit of Jesus. But, even if freedom from
+all these hateful bonds could come, and could be complete, without Him,
+there still remains a serfdom more degrading, a bondage more inexorable
+than any of these, for men are everywhere the bond-slaves of sin. Look out
+upon the world--upon your own part of it, even upon your own family or
+household--and see how evil holds men by one chain or another, and grips
+them body and soul. This one by doubt, this by passion, this by envy, this
+by lust, this by pride, this by strife, this by fear, this one by love of
+gold, this one by love of the world, and this one by hatred of God! _Is
+it not so_?
+
+What men want, then, is PERSONAL, INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY FROM SIN. Given that,
+and a slave may be free. Given that, and the child in the nursery of
+iniquity may be free. Given that, and the young man or maiden held in the
+charnel-house of lust may be free. Given that, and the victim of all that
+is most cruel and most brutal in life may still be free. Oh! blessed be
+God, he whom the Son makes free is free indeed!
+
+This, and this alone, is the liberty for the new Century--the Gospel
+liberty from sin for the individual soul and spirit, without respect of
+time or circumstance; and here alone is He who can bestow it--Jesus, the
+Lion of the Tribe of Judah.
+
+This, I say, is _The Man for the new Century_.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+_Knowledge_.
+
+
+The new Century will be marked by a universal demand for knowledge.
+
+One of the most remarkable features of the present time is the
+extraordinary thirst for knowledge in every quarter of the world. It is
+not confined to this continent or that. It is not peculiar to any special
+class or age. It is universal. One aspect of it, and a very significant
+one, is the desire for knowledge about life and its origin, about the
+beginning of things, about the earth and its creation, about the work
+which we say God did, which He alone could do.
+
+Oh, how men search and explore! How they read and think! How they talk and
+listen! Where one book was read a generation ago, a hundred, I should
+think, are read now; and for one newspaper then read, there are now,
+probably, a thousand. Every man is an inquiry agent, seeking news,
+information, or instruction; seeking to know what will make life longer
+for him and his; and, above all, what can make it happier.
+
+And here, again, I say that _Jesus is The Man for the new Century_.
+He has knowledge to give which none other can provide. I do not doubt that
+universities, and schools, and governments, and a great press, can, and
+will, do much to impart knowledge of all sorts to the world. But when it
+comes to knowledge that can serve the great end for which the very power
+to acquire knowledge was created--namely, _the true happiness of
+man_--then, I say, that JESUS is the source of that knowledge; that
+without Him it cannot be found or imparted; and that with Him it comes in
+its liberating and enlightening glory.
+
+Oh, be sure _you have that_! No amount of learning will stand you in
+its stead. No matter how you may have stored your mind with the riches of
+the past, or tutored it to grapple with the mysteries of the present,
+_unless you know Him, it will all amount to nothing_. But if you know
+Him who is life, that is life eternal. Knowledge without God is like a man
+learned in all the great mysteries of light and heat who has never seen
+the sun. He may understand perfectly the laws which govern them, the
+results which follow them, the secrets which control their action on each
+other--all that is possible, and yet he will be _in the dark_.
+
+So, too, knowledge, learning, human education and wisdom are all possible
+to man; he may even excel in them so as to be a wonder to his fellows by
+reason of his vast stores of knowledge, and yet know nothing of that light
+within the mind by which he apprehends them. Nay, more! he may even be a
+marvellous adept in the theory of religion, and yet, alas! alas! may never
+have seen its SUN--may still be in the blackness of gross darkness,
+because he knows not Jesus, the Light of the world, whom to know is life
+eternal.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+_Government_.
+
+
+The new Century will demand governors.
+
+Every thoughtful person who considers the subject must be struck by the
+modern tendency towards personal government all over the world. Whatever
+may be the form of national government prescribed by the various
+constitutions, it tends, when carried into practice, to give power and
+authority to individual rulers. Whether in monarchies like England, where
+Parliament is really the ruling power; or in republics like France and the
+United States, where what are called democratic institutions are seen in
+their maturity; or in empires like Germany and Austria, the same leading
+facts appear. Power goes into the hands of one or two who, whether as
+ministers, or presidents, or monarchs, are the real rulers of the nation.
+
+Perfect laws, liberal institutions, patriotic sentiments, though they may
+elevate, can never rule a people. A crowd of legislators, no matter how
+devoted to a nation, can never permanently control, though they may
+influence it. Out of the crowd will come forth one or two; generally one
+commanding personality, strong enough to stand alone, though wise enough
+not to attempt it. In him will be focussed the ideas and ambitions of the
+nation, to him the people's hearts will go out, and from him they will
+take the word of command as their virtual ruler. It has ever been so. It
+is so to-day. It will always be so.
+
+And as with nations so with individuals. _Every man must have a
+king_. Call him what we will, recognise him or not, every man is the
+subject of some ruler. And this will, if possible, be more manifest in the
+future than in the past. Men will not be satisfied to serve ideas, to live
+for the passing ambitions of their day, they will cry out for a king.
+
+Am I wrong when I say that JESUS IS THE COMING KING? In Him are assembled
+in the highest perfection all the great qualities which go to make the
+KING OF MEN. And so the new Century will need Him, must have Him; nay, it
+cannot prosper without Him, the Divine Man, for He is the rightful
+Sovereign of every human soul.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+_A New Force_.
+
+
+The new Century will demand great moral forces as well as high ideals.
+
+Nothing is more evident than that the forms and ceremonies of religion are
+rapidly losing--even in nominally Christian countries--all real influence
+over the lives of men. The form of godliness without the power is not only
+the greatest of all shams, but it is the most easily detected. Hence it is
+that a large part of mankind is either disgusted to hostility or utterly
+estranged from real religion by theories and ceremonials which, though
+they may continue to exist in shadow, have lost their life and soul.
+
+For example, the old lie, that money paid to a Church can buy
+"indulgences" which will release men in the next world from the penalty of
+sin committed in this, and the miserable theory which made God the direct
+author of eternal damnation to those who are lost, are among the theories
+which, though they are still taught and professed here and there, have
+long ago ceased to have real influence over men's hearts or actions. In
+the same way, there are multitudes who still conform to the outward
+ceremony of Confirmation, upon whose salvation from sin or separation from
+the world that ceremony has absolutely no influence whatever, although,
+for custom's sake, they submit to it.
+
+But a greater danger than this lies in the fact that _it is possible to
+hold and believe the truth, and yet to be totally ignorant of its
+power_. Sound doctrine will of itself never save a soul. A man may
+believe every word of the faith of a Churchman or a Salvationist, and yet
+be as ignorant of any real experience of religion as an infidel or an
+idolater. And it is this merely intellectual or sentimental holding of the
+truth about God and Christ, about Holiness and Heaven, which makes the
+ungodly mass look upon Christianity as nothing more than an opinion or a
+trade; a something with which they have no concern.
+
+The new Century will demand something more than this. Men will require
+something beyond creeds, be they ever so correct; and traditions, be they
+ever so venerable; and sacraments, be they ever so sacred. They will ask
+for an endowment of power to grapple with what they feel to be base in
+human nature, and to master what they know is selfish and sinful in their
+own hearts.
+
+And right here _The Man for the Century_ comes forward. The doctrine
+of Jesus is the spirit of a new life. It is a transforming power. A man
+may believe that the American Republic is the purest and noblest form of
+government on the earth, and may give himself up to live, and fight, and
+die for it, and yet be the same man in every respect as he was before; but
+if he believes with his heart that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
+and gives himself up to live, and fight, and die for Him, he will become a
+new man, he will be a new creature. The acceptance of the truth, and
+acting upon it, in the one case, will make a great change in his manner of
+life--his conduct; the acceptance of the truth, and acting upon it, in the
+other, will make a great change in the man _himself_--in his tastes
+and motives, in his very nature.
+
+Again, I say, this is what we shall need for the new Century. Not good
+laws only, but the power to observe them. Not beautiful and lofty ideals
+only, but the power to translate them into the daily practice of common
+lives. Not merely the glorious examples of a pure faith, but the actual
+force which enables men to live by that faith amid the littleness, the
+depression, the contamination, and the conflict of an evil world.
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+_Atonement_.
+
+
+The new Century will demand an atonement for sin.
+
+The consciousness of sin is the most enduring fact of human experience.
+From generation to generation, from age to age, amidst the ceaseless
+changes which time brings to everything else, this one great fact remains,
+persists--_the condemning consciousness of sin_. It appears with men
+in the cradle, and goes with them to the tomb; without regard to race, or
+language, or creed it is ever with us. It was this robbed Eden of its
+joys; it is this makes life a round of labour and sorrow; it is this gives
+death its terrors; it is this makes the place of torment which men call
+Hell--for the unceasing consciousness of sin will be "the worm that never
+dies."
+
+All attempts to explain it away, to modify its miseries, to extract its
+sting--whether they have come from the party of unbelief, or the party of
+education, or the party of amusement, have failed--and failed utterly. No
+matter what men say or do to get rid of it, there it is--staring them in
+the face! Whether they look amongst the most highly civilized peoples or
+amongst the lowest savages; whether they look into the past history of
+mankind or into its present condition, there is the _stupendous fact of
+sin_, and there is the incontrovertible fact that everywhere _men are
+conscious of it_.
+
+It is going to be so in this twentieth century. If God, in His mercy,
+allows the families of men to continue during another hundred years, this
+great fact will still stand out in the forefront of life. Sin will still
+be the skeleton at every feast, the horrid ghost haunting every home and
+every heart, the spectre, clothed with reproaches, ever ready to plunge
+his dripping sword into every breast.
+
+Sin. The world's sin. The sin of this one generation. The sin of one city.
+The sin of one family. The sin of one man--_my sin_! Ah! depend upon
+it, the twentieth century will cry aloud, "_What shall be done with our
+sin_?"
+
+Yet, thanks be to God! there is an atonement. The MAN of whom I write has
+made a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins
+of the whole world. He stands forth the ONLY SAVIOUR. None other has ever
+dared even to offer to the sin-stricken hearts of men relief from the
+_guilt_ of sin. _But He does_. He can cleanse, He can pardon, He
+can purify, He can save, because _He has redeemed_. "Thou wast slain,
+and hast redeemed us unto God by Thy blood, out of every kindred, and
+tongue, and people, and nation."
+
+Will you come and join in our great world-mission of making His atonement
+known? Will you turn your back on the littleness, and selfishness, and
+cowardice of the past, and arise, in the strength of the God-Man, to
+publish to all you can reach, by tongue, and pen, and example, that there
+is a sacrifice for men's sins--for the worst, for the most wretched, for
+the most tortured? As you set your face with high resolve towards the
+unknown years, take your stand with THE MAN FOR ALL THE AGES; and let this
+be your message, your confidence, your hope for all men-"_Behold the
+Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world_!"
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The Birth of Jesus.
+
+
+  "_For unto you is born . . . a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord._"
+   --Luke ii. 11.
+
+  "_The firstborn among many brethren_."--Romans viii. 29.
+
+
+The birth of Jesus is one of the great signs of His condescension; and, no
+matter how we view it, is perhaps scarcely less wonderful than His death.
+If the one manifests His glorious divinity, then the other exalts His
+wonderful humanity. If Calvary and the Resurrection reveal His power, does
+not Bethlehem make manifest His love? And did not both the former come out
+of the latter? The infinite glory which belongs to the cross and the tomb
+had its rise in the gloom of the stable. If the Babe had not been laid in
+the manger, then the Man would not have been nailed to the tree, and the
+Lamb that was slain would not have taken His place on the Everlasting
+Throne.
+
+I claim, therefore, a little more attention to the events which relate to
+the Saviour's birth, and to the lessons which may be derived from them;
+and though, perhaps, something of what I have to say will have already
+occurred to some who will read this paper, I will venture to suggest one
+or two thoughts as they have been presented to my own mind. Their very
+simplicity has made them of service to me.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+_He Came_.
+
+
+The nature of the whole work of our redemption is made manifest by the one
+fact--_He really came_. His everlasting love, His infinite
+compassion, His all-embracing purpose were from eternity; but we only got
+to know of it all because _He came_. If He had contented Himself with
+sending messages or highly-placed messengers, or even with making
+occasional and wonderful excursions of Divine revelation, man would, no
+doubt, have been greatly attracted, and perhaps even helped somewhat in
+his tremendous conflict with evil; yet he might never have been subdued in
+will, he might never have been touched and won back to God; he might never
+have been brought down from his pride to cry out, "My Lord and my God."
+No, it was _His coming to us_ that wrought conviction of sin, and
+then conviction of the truth in our hearts.
+
+He came Himself.
+
+There is something very wonderful in this principle of _contact_ as
+illustrated by the life of Jesus. Just as to save the human race He felt
+it necessary to come into it, and clothe Himself with its nature and
+conform Himself to its natural laws, so all the way through His earthly
+journey He was constantly seeking to _come into touch_ with the
+people He desired to bless. He touched the sick, He fed the hungry, He
+placed His fingers on the blind eyes, and put them upon the ears of the
+deaf, and touched with them the tongue of the dumb. He took the ruler's
+dead daughter "by the hand, and the maid arose." He lifted the little
+children up into His arms, and blessed them; He stretched forth His hand
+to sinking Peter; He stood close by the foul-smelling body of the dead
+Lazarus; He took the bread, and with His own hands brake it, and gave it
+to His disciples at that last farewell meal. He even took poor Thomas's
+trembling hand, and guided it to the prints in His hands and the wounds in
+His side.
+
+Yes, indeed, it is written large, in every part of His life, that He
+really came, and that He came very near to lost and suffering men.
+
+Is there not a lesson here for us, my comrade? As He is in the world, so
+are we. This principle in His life was not by accident or by chance, it
+was an essential qualification of His nature for the work entrusted to
+Him. It is a necessary qualification for those who are called to carry on
+that work.
+
+Is this, then, the impression you are able to give to those among whom you
+labour: that you have come to them in very truth; that in mind and soul,
+in hand and heart, you are seeking to come into the closest contact of
+love and sympathy with them, especially with those who most need you?
+
+Oh, aim at this! Do not for your own sake, as well as for your Master's,
+move about amid your own people, or among those to whom God and The Army
+have given you entrance, as one who has little in common with them, who
+does not know them, who does not feel with them. Go into their houses, put
+your hand sometimes to their burdens, take a share in their toils, nurse
+their sick, weep with them that weep, and rejoice with them that rejoice.
+Make them feel that it is your own religion, rather than The Army system,
+that has made you come to them. Let them see by your sympathy and kindness
+that love is the over-mastering influence in your life, the influence that
+has brought you to them. Compel them to turn to you as a warm-hearted
+unselfish example of the truths you preach. Let them feel that you are
+indeed come from God to take them by the hand, as far as may be, and lead
+them through this Vale of Tears to the City of Light and Rest.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+_His Humble Origin_.
+
+
+Everything associated with the advent of Jesus seems to have been
+specially ordered to mark His humiliation. It is true that Mary, His
+mother, was of the lineage of King David, but her relationship with the
+royal house was a very distant one, and the family had fallen upon sad
+times. The Romans were masters in the land, and a stranger sat upon the
+throne of Israel. Mary, therefore, was but a poor village maiden; Joseph,
+her betrothed husband, was a carpenter--an ordinary working man.
+Bethlehem, the place of the Saviour's birth, was a tiny straggling
+village, which, though not the least, was certainly one of the least of
+the villages of Judea. And Nazareth, where He grew from infancy to
+childhood, and from youth to manhood, was another little hamlet among the
+hilly country to the north of Jerusalem, and was held in low repute by the
+people of those days.
+
+The occupation chosen for the early life of Jesus was a humble one. He
+learned the trade of a joiner, and worked with Joseph at the carpenter's
+bench. His associates and friends were of the village community, and He
+"whose Name is above every name" passed to and fro and in and out among
+the cottage homes of the poor--as one of themselves. Probably none but His
+mother had, in these early years, any true idea of the mysterious promise
+which had been given concerning Him.
+
+What a contrast it all presents to the years of stress and storm and of
+victory which were to follow, and to the supreme influence His teaching
+and example were to exert in the world!
+
+Is there not something here for us? Do not the lowly origin and simple
+country habits and humble tastes of some of our comrades make them
+hesitate on the threshold of great efforts, when they ought to leap
+forward in the strength of their God? Let them remember their Master, and
+take courage. Let them call to mind the unfashionable, uneducated,
+uncultivated surroundings of Nazareth. Let them bear in mind the
+carpenter's shed, the rough country work, the bare equipment of the
+village home, the humble service of the family life. Let them, above all,
+remember the plain and gentle mother, and the meek and lowly One Himself,
+and in this remembrance let them go forward.
+
+To be of lowly origin, or of a mean occupation; to come out of poverty and
+want; to be looked down upon by the rich or the powerful ones of earth; to
+be treated as of no consequence by governments and rulers, and yet to go
+on doing and daring, suffering and conquering for God and right; what is
+all this but the fulfilment of Paul's words, "And base things of the
+world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things
+which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should
+glory in His presence"? Nay, what is it all but to tread in the very steps
+that the Master trod?
+
+
+
+III.
+
+_His High Nature_.
+
+
+But if, on the human side, our Redeemer's origin and circumstances were of
+the humblest, and we are thus enabled to see His humanity, as it were face
+to face, there was united with it the Divine nature; so that as our
+_Doctrines_ say, "He is truly and properly God, and He is truly and
+properly man." Many mysteries meet by the side of that manger, some of
+them to remain mysteries, so far as human understanding can grapple with
+things, till God Himself reveals them to our stronger vision in the world
+to come. But, blessed be God, some, things that we cannot compass with our
+mental powers are very grateful to our hearts.
+
+  How Thou canst love me as I am,
+    Yet be the God Thou art,
+  Is darkness to my intellect,
+    But sunshine to my heart.
+
+And we to whom the Living Christ has spoken the word of life and liberty,
+although we may not now fully comprehend this great wonder of all wonders
+--God manifest in the flesh--and may not be able effectively to make it
+plain to others, we cannot for ourselves doubt its central truth--
+_that_ GOD _dwelt with man_.
+
+Here was, indeed, a perfect union of two spirits. There was the suffering
+and obedient spirit of the true _man_; there was the unchanging and
+Holy Spirit of the true God. It was a union--it was a unity. It was God in
+man--it was man in God. A being of infinite might and perfect moral
+beauty, sent forth from the bosom of the Father; and yet a being of lowly
+and sensitive tenderness, having roots in our poor human nature, tempted
+in all points like as we are, and touched with the feeling of all our
+infirmities.
+
+Is it not to something of the same kind we are called? Is not every true
+Salvation Army Officer designed by God to be also (not, of course, in the
+same degree, but still up to the measure of his own capacity and of his
+Master's will) a dual, or two-fold creature, with associations and roots
+and attachments in all that is human, and yet with the divine life, the
+divine spirit, divine love, divine zeal, divine power, divine fire united
+with him and dwelling in him?
+
+The perfect man would have been a great marvel, a great teacher, a great
+prophet; but without the God he could never have been the perfect Saviour.
+The Divine, without the human, would have been an awe-inspiring fact, a
+spectacle of holiness too great for human eyes; but He could not have been
+a Saviour. If it were possible for us to conceive the one without the
+other we should certainly not find a JESUS in either.
+
+And so, your merely _human_ Officer, no matter how pure, how strong,
+how thoughtful, how clever, how industrious, will fail, and ever fail. And
+even so the Officer who is lost in visionary seeking after the Divine
+alone, to the neglect of action, of duty, of law, of self-denial, of the
+common conflicts and contracts of the man, will equally fail, and always
+fail. It is the man we want. The MAN--but the man born of the SPIRIT. The
+MAN--but the man full of the HOLY GHOST. The MAN--but the man with
+PENTECOST blazing in his head and heart and soul.
+
+Comrade, what are you? Are you striving to be a prophet without possessing
+the spirit of the prophets? Are you trying to be a priest without the
+priestly baptism? Are you labouring to be a king without the Divine
+anointing? Beware!
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+_From Infancy to Manhood_.
+
+
+Birth implies the weakness, the dependence,  the ignorance of infancy. But
+it implies, also, the promise of growth, of increase, of advance from
+infancy to manhood.  Thus it is with man generally. So it was with the Son
+of Man. First, He was "wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a
+manger." Presently He goes forth in His mother's arms into Egypt, and back
+to Nazareth. By and by it is written that "the Child grew and waxed strong
+in spirit, and the grace of God was upon Him." Then He is found in the
+Temple, asking that wonderful question about His Father's business, and at
+last we find Him "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God
+and man."
+
+We know, also, that He was found in fashion as a servant, and was obedient
+unto death; that He was tempted of the Devil, and that "He learned
+obedience by the things that He suffered." In fact, a very slight
+acquaintance with the history of His life reveals the truth that in some
+wonderful way He steadily grew in wisdom and grace; in the power to love
+and to serve, and in strength to grapple with sin and death--all the while
+He journeyed from the cradle to the grave and the victory beyond.
+
+His life was a discipline, in the very highest sense of the word. Many of
+the hopes He might rightly entertain about the success of His work were
+dashed. Much of His love for those around Him was disappointed, and His
+trust betrayed. He was despised where He should have been honoured:
+rejected where He should have been received. "He came unto His own, and
+His own received Him not." "Not this man," they cried, "but Barabbas." But
+out of it all He came forth perfect and entire, lacking nothing--the
+chiefest among ten thousand, the altogether lovely. It may be a mystery,
+but it is a fact all the same, that the more the precious and wondrous and
+eternal jewel was cut and cut again, the more the light and glory of the
+Day-spring from on High was made manifest to men.
+
+And here also I find a word of help and courage and cheer for you and me,
+my precious comrade. I am not sure that you could receive any more
+valuable Christmas gift than the full realisation of this truth--_that
+your advance from the infancy to the manhood of your life in God will not
+be hindered and delayed, but rather will be helped and quickened by the
+storms and trials, the conflicts and sufferings, which will overtake
+you_.
+
+It was so with the man Christ Jesus; it has been so with thousands of His
+chosen. As He, our dear Lord, was made perfect through suffering, so are
+His saints. We are "chosen in the furnace of affliction," and often cast
+into it, too! And yet He who chooses all our changes, might have spared us
+every trial and conflict, and taken us to victory without a battle, and to
+rest without a toil. But He knows better what will make us _men_, and
+it is _men_ He wants to glorify Him--men, not babes.
+
+The dark valleys of bitterness and loneliness  are often better for us
+than the land of Beulah. A certain queen, once sitting for her portrait,
+commanded that it should be painted without shadows. "Without shadows!"
+said the astonished artist. "I fear your Majesty is not acquainted with
+the laws of light and beauty. There can be no good portrait without
+shading." No more can there be a good Salvationist without trial and
+sorrow and storm. There might, perhaps, remain a stunted and unfruitful
+infant life--but a _man_ in Christ Jesus, a _Soldier_ of the
+Cross, a _leader_ of God's people, without tribulation _there can
+never be_. Patience, experience, faith, hope, love, if they do not
+actually grow from tribulations,  are helped by them in their growth. For
+what says the Apostle? "Tribulation worketh patience, and patience
+experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed."
+
+The finest pine-trees grow in the stormiest lands. The tempests make them
+strong. Surgeons tell us that their greatest triumphs are often those in
+which the patients have suffered most at their hands--for every stroke of
+the knife is to heal. The child you most truly love is the one you most
+anxiously correct, and "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth." Oh, _do_
+believe that by every blow of disappointment and sorrow He permits to fall
+upon you, He is striving to bring you to the measure of the stature of a
+man in Christ Jesus. _Do_ work with Him in the full knowledge that He
+will not forsake you. He, the Man who has penetrated  to the heart of
+every form of sorrow, and left a blessing there; He who has watched in
+silence by every kind of earthly grief, and found its antidote: the Man
+who trod the wine-press alone--He will be with you.
+
+And, since He is with you, see to it you acquit yourself well in His
+presence. It is related of an old Highland chief that when advancing to
+give battle he fell at the head of his clan, pierced by two balls from the
+foe. His men saw him fall, and began to waver. But their wounded captain
+instantly raised himself on his elbow, and, with blood streaming from his
+wounds, exclaimed, "Children, I am not dead; _I am looking to see if you
+do your duty_!"
+
+My comrade, this is the path of progress, the way of advance from the
+littleness and weakness of infancy to the battles and victories of
+manhood. It is the way of duty, and your Captain, with the wounds in His
+hands and His side, is looking on.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Contrasts at Bethlehem.
+
+
+
+The birth and infancy of Jesus--notwithstanding that Christmas time comes
+round again and again--receive less attention than they deserve; owing, no
+doubt, to the interest attached to the events of His manhood and death.
+Nevertheless, they suggest some useful lessons, especially to those of us
+who have much to do with the weak and trembling, and are ourselves, alas!
+often weak and trembling, too. May I offer one or two thoughts on the
+subject, which, though quite simple, have proved of blessing to my own
+heart?
+
+
+
+I.
+
+_Great weakness may be quite consistent with true greatness and
+goodness_.
+
+
+It is unnecessary to dwell even for a moment on the weakness of the Infant
+Jesus. The Scripture has left no possible doubt about it.
+
+Unable to speak, to walk, indeed to do anything for Himself--weak with all
+the weakness of the human race; yea, more truly helpless than a young bird
+or a tiny worm, the Holy Child was laid in the manger hard by the beasts
+that perish.
+
+And yet we know that there was the Divine SON, the Express Image of the
+Father, the Everlasting King, the Enthroned One, the Creator, "without
+whom was not anything made that was made"! It is indeed a contrast, which
+first astounds us, and then compels our adoration and love. Our God is a
+consuming Fire--_our God is a little Child_. Holy, Holy, Holy, is the
+Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory--_and yet He is
+there in fashion as a Babe_, for whom, in all His sweet innocence, they
+cannot find a room in the crowded inn.
+
+Yes, my friend, to be weak, to be small, to be sadly unfit for the strifes
+of time; to feel weary and unequal to the hard battles of life; to realise
+that you are pushed out and away by the crowd, to be contemptuously
+forgotten by the multitude shouting and singing across the road--all this
+may be your case; and _yet_ you may be God's chosen vessel, intended
+--framed "to suffer and triumph with Him." You, even you, may be destined
+by His wisdom to fill for Him some great place in action against the hosts
+of iniquity and unbelief. Above all, you may be appointed by God the
+Father to be like His Son, with a holy likeness of will, of affection, of
+character.
+
+For, indeed, weakness in many things is not inconsistent with goodness,
+and purity, and love. The manger has in this also a message for us. Out of
+that mystery of helplessness came forth the Lion-Heart of Love, which led
+Him, for us, to the winepress alone, and which, while we were yet rebels,
+loved us with an everlasting love, going, for us, to a lonely and shameful
+death. Take heart, then, remembering that it is out of weakness we are to
+be made strong. Be of good courage--to-day may be the day of the enemy's
+strength, when you are constrained to cry out: "This is your hour and the
+power of darkness!" but to-morrow will be _yours_. The weakness and
+humiliation of the stable must go before the Mount of Transfiguration, the
+Mount of Calvary, the Resurrection Glory, and the exaltation of the
+Father's Throne. Take heart!
+
+
+
+II.
+
+_A condition of complete dependence may be quite consistent with a great
+vocation--the call, that is, to a great work_.
+
+
+I suppose that there is nothing known to man so absolutely dependent upon
+the help of others as a little child! Life itself begins in total
+dependence upon another life, and is only preserved in still greater
+dependence on powers outside itself--for air, for light, for heat, for
+food, for clothes, for comfort--indeed, for every needed thing. This is
+especially the case with the child. The young lions and sheep, the tiny
+flies and the small fishes--these are all able to do something for their
+own support; but the new-born babe presents a picture of complete
+dependence. And this Babe was no exception. What a service of imperishable
+worth to all the world was rendered by His mother in her loving care of
+Him!
+
+And yet we know something of the stupendous task to which He came! That
+little Child was to become the greatest Example, the greatest Teacher, the
+greatest, the only Saviour, the greatest Healer of the sorrows of men, the
+greatest Benefactor, the greatest Ruler and King. Upon Him and upon His
+word, who lies there in His Virgin mother's arms, dependent on her breast
+for life and warmth, unnumbered multitudes were to rest their all for this
+life and the next--tens of thousands, in the face of inexpressible
+agonies, were to trust to Him their every hope, and for His sake were to
+die a thousand deaths.
+
+Let not, then, your heart be troubled because you also are so dependent on
+others--so hedged in by your circumstances, so limited by sickness and
+pain, so incompetent through inexperience and ignorance, or that you are
+so compelled to stand and wait when you would fain rush on and do or dare
+for your Lord. All this may be even so, and yet you may be called to share
+in the same high vocation as your Saviour.
+
+I read lately of an old saint chained for weary years to a dungeon-wall,
+unable even to feed himself, whose testimony for Jesus was powerful to the
+deliverance of many of his persecutors. He was killed at last, lest, one
+by one, he should convert the jailers also who were employed to supply him
+with food.
+
+Are you "bound" in some way? Are you chained fast to some strange trial?
+Are you appointed to serve in what seems like a den of beasts? Are you
+under the compulsion of some injustice? Are you made to feel helpless and
+useless without the support of those around you? Ah, well, do not repine.
+Do not forget that God's call comes often--Oh, so often--to just such as
+you--to witness for Him in spite of "these bonds," to declare the truth,
+to dare to reprove sin. Above all, _do not doubt your God. You may be
+very dependent to-day, but you may be more than victorious to-morrow_.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+_Poverty and friendlessness are often
+found in company with a great heart_.
+
+
+There was no home for Jesus in Bethlehem. There was no room for Him in the
+inn. There was no cradle in the stable. There was no protector when Herod
+arose to kill. What a strange world it is! Did ever babe open eyes on such
+a topsy-turvy condition of affairs? The King of Glory had not where to lay
+His head! Mary, it is true, was strong in faith, but both she and Joseph
+must needs soon fly into Egypt with the Babe. Refused at the inn, soon
+even the stable must cast them out!
+
+He came to take all men into His heart, and they, ere ever they saw Him,
+cast Him forth as an outlaw!
+
+And we who know what it means to be loved of Him, what can we say? Our
+hearts are bowed with something of shame and grief that He thus suffered,
+and yet we have a secret joy because He suffered so well! For of all the
+greatnesses of the Babe this is the greatest--the greatness of His heart.
+"The Sacred Heart of Jesus," the Romanists call it. "The All-Conquering
+Heart of Jesus," I prefer to name it. For it was His wealth of love that
+really gave Him the victory.
+
+Does one read these lines who is poor, who is cast out by those who are
+dear, who is a stranger in a strange land, who is driven from "pillar to
+post," who is harassed by open foes and wounded by secret enmity? Well, to
+that one let me say, remember your Lord's poverty and friendlessness;
+remember the tossings up and down of His infancy; the frugal cottage home
+in Nazareth wherein His family was finally gathered--despite its bareness
+and toil--was a place of peace and abundance, compared with the stable,
+the flight into Egypt, and the sojourn among aliens there.
+
+Are you, dear friend, tempted to complain of your narrow surroundings, of
+your small opportunity to shine before others, or of a want of
+appreciation of your service and gifts and powers by those who should know
+you? Oh, remember the Babe, and the long years of His condescension to men
+of low estate, to the cramped surroundings of the carpenter's shed, and
+the sleepy Jewish village. Are you tried sometimes because you have to
+suffer the hatred or jealousy, secret or open, of those for whom you feel
+nothing but goodwill, and who perhaps once thought themselves happy in
+your friendship? Well, in such hours, remember your Master, and the hatred
+of Herod seeking to kill the Child. Try to call to mind something of the
+secret, as well as the open, bitterness of men, religious and irreligious
+alike, which began to hunt Him while yet in swaddling clothes, and which
+hunted Him still all through His days.
+
+But amidst it all, what a great heart of passionate love was His! Blessed
+be His Name for ever! Whether the poverty and suffering and hatred were or
+were not favourable  to it, there it was--_the Great Heart of all the
+world_. What about you? Can you ever be again the same since you
+learned that He loved you? Can you ever be again content to remain little
+and narrow, with interests and affections that are little and narrow also?
+Will you not rise, as He rose, above the small ambitions of the spiritual
+pigmies who meet you at every turn, determined to look beyond your own
+tiny circle, and the low aims of those around you? Depend upon it, you
+ought to do so. Depend upon it, the Holy Saviour can enable you to do so.
+Depend upon it, the world's great need is "Great Hearts." Will you be one?
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Christ Come Again.
+
+
+
+    "_And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in
+     swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger_."--Luke ii. 7.
+
+    "_Christ formed in you_."--Gal. iv. 19.
+
+The life of Jesus Christ in Palestine was a foreshadowing of His life in
+all who accept Him. God appointed Him a Saviour, not only because He
+should bring redemption nigh by a sacrifice which He alone could offer,
+but because He was also appointed to be the firstborn of many brethren, to
+be the head of a new family, the beginning--the new Adam--the first of a
+new line, in which character should cease to be merely human, even though
+perfect with all human perfections, and should become a union of the human
+and the Divine; in which, in fact, the body and mind and spirit of man
+should continue to exhibit the wonder of Christ's Incarnation, and show
+forth God clothed with man.
+
+The life of Jesus divides itself quite naturally into several distinct
+periods, each having its own special characteristics and peculiar history.
+There is His birth and infancy; His childhood; His youth; His manhood; His
+perfected or completed life following Calvary and the Resurrection; and,
+may we not say, His eternal glory, upon which a few of His disciples saw
+Him begin to enter in the transcending splendour of the Ascension.
+
+Every one of these phases or sections of His wonderful experience of earth
+has its continuing lessons for us. All speak aloud to us of His purposes
+and plans, and reveal to us the power and force of His inner life in the
+outward or public appearances and acts which belong to each. God has
+hidden many things from us--mysteries of nature, of grace, of eternity;
+but this mystery of God's relations to men, He has exhausted His resources
+in order to make plain. Before all else the life of Jesus is a revelation
+of the mind and methods, the principles and the practices of God, as they
+ought to appear, and as they ought to work out, amid the surroundings and
+limitations of humanity.
+
+It is to the beginnings of that life to which our thoughts turn at this
+Christmas season. We dwell with affection on the oft-depicted picture, and
+repeat the oft-repeated words, and join in the old, old Hallelujahs of the
+shepherds with something of the zest and freshness of a first love. The
+story is so unlike all others, and touches with such unerring potency
+chords in the human soul which call it to a higher and nobler life, that,
+no matter who gazes upon the Babe of Bethlehem, he feels a kinship with
+all the world in hailing the Desire of all Nations. The manger, the silent
+companions of the stable, the swaddling clothes--what a touch of human
+tenderness--_motherliness_, so to speak--is in that line, "and
+wrapped Him in swaddling clothes"!--the adoring shepherds, the star, the
+wise men (all thoughts of their wisdom for the moment gone); the gold, the
+frankincense, the myrrh, the rejoicing and yet trembling mother, the
+little Child--we see it all. Seeing, we believe; and believing, we
+rejoice. The Day Star from on High hath visited _us_. We _know_
+in whom we have believed. The great condescension is before us. Strength
+has made itself dependent on weakness, cause upon effect, eternity upon
+time, God upon man; and He has done it for our sakes.
+
+The Divine condescension never appears so new and so real to us as when we
+stand at the side of this lowly cradle. Here are no high-sounding
+doctrines, no hard words, no terrible commands, no far-off thunders of a
+new Sinai, no rumblings of a coming Judgment. Here we see Jesus, and Jesus
+only. Jesus showing Himself in our very own flesh and blood; submitting
+Himself to the weakness of our infirmities; voluntarily clothing Himself
+with our ignorance, and making God the present tangible possession of the
+whole human family, bringing Him "_very nigh to us, in our mouth and in
+our heart, if we can but believe_." And, more than this, God joined in
+that Babe His great strength to our great nothingness; He bound us to
+Himself; He robed us, as it were, with Himself, and He robed Himself in
+us. Henceforth the Tabernacle of God is with men. Henceforth every one of
+us may be conscious of an inward Presence, of which we may say in holy
+joy: "Angels and men before Him fall, and devils fear and fly."
+
+It is this manifestation of Jesus in His people for which the Apostle
+prays in the words I have quoted, "My little children, of whom I travail
+in birth again until Christ be formed in you." Nothing less will satisfy
+him, because he knew that nothing less will prevail against the power of
+the world, the flesh, and the Devil, in any human heart. "_Christ formed
+in you_," Christ born again in them--that is his agonised prayer, his
+one hope for them.
+
+In the workshops of human effort no instruments, no skill, no motive power
+exist for the formation and development of character apart from the
+energising vitality of God's Spirit dwelling in us. He is the
+indispensable foundation of any goodness, or wisdom, or beauty that can
+last. Purity begins and ends in Him. Faith finds her author and finisher
+in Him. Truth, which is the beauty of the soul, is but a reflection of His
+image, and love has no being but in Him. And so Paul says, _Let Him
+in_. Conformity to His example is only possible by the re-formation in
+you of His life, and the growth again in you of His person; the mind of
+Christ in your mind, the spirit of Christ in your spirit, the presence of
+Christ in your flesh and blood; the motive power of Christ, the Father's
+will, prompting your every thought and word and deed, and thereby
+transforming your body into a temple of the Son of God.
+
+And, because, in this unity of purpose with the Father, the Christ of
+Glory stooped to the infancy and childhood of Nazareth, yielding Himself
+completely to the bonds and limits inseparable from the life and
+conditions of a little child, and thinking no humiliation of our nature
+too deep for His love to tread, _so He will condescend to the lowest
+depths of weakness and want revealed in your heart and life_. He will
+meet you where you are. He will deal with you just where you are weakest
+and worst. This is indeed the key-note of all that God has to show you. It
+is your own link in the long chain of patient and ever-new revelations of
+God to man.
+
+For what is the history of man, what is the story the Bible has to tell,
+what is the testimony of all time, but that God has ever been speaking to
+man, appearing to man, opening now his eyes, and now his understanding,
+and now his heart, and making an everlastingly new revelation to the soul
+that God in him is his sole hope of glory. And His Christmas-message
+to-day is still the same. To you, if you are willing, Christ will come as
+really, as sensibly, as wonderfully--nay, a thousand times more so--as He
+came to Mary and to Bethlehem. In truth, a second coming; but in many and
+wonderful ways like unto the first.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+The childhood of Jesus was attended by remarkable recognitions of His
+Divinity. At His birth, at His dedication, in Herod's instant resolve to
+kill Him, in the Temple with the fathers, by many clear tokens men
+confessed and acknowledged that He was the Son of God. If He is being
+formed in you there will be equally definite and not very dissimilar signs
+of recognition.
+
+First, before all else, you will know, with Mary, that the new life
+entrusted to you is Divine; that God has entered into your heart to make
+all things new. It is just the absence of this assurance which stamps so
+much of the Christianity of the present day as--in effect--a religion
+without God. Its professors have no certainty. They seek, but they do not
+find; they ask, but they do not receive; they have no sure foundation in
+the sanction of their own consciousness to the indwelling Person; they
+have no revelation; they have, in short, no God. How far--even as the east
+is from the west--is this from the glorious confidence with which Mary
+sang, and in which you can join, if, indeed, your Christ is come: "My soul
+doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced _in God my
+Saviour_."
+
+Salvation is of the Lord, and so is the assurance of it. Where there is
+the life of God, there will be His witness, even in the heart of the
+weakest and slowest servant of all His household. If you are not clear
+about this first evidence of your Lord's coming, let me counsel you that
+there is something wrong. _If Christ be formed in you, you will
+assuredly know it beyond the power of men or devils to make you doubt_.
+
+But others than Mary also acknowledge this appearance of God "manifest in
+the flesh." The shepherds and the Wise Men, Holy Simeon, and Herod the
+king, each in his own way adds his own tribute to the New Life that had
+come down to man.
+
+The shepherds and the strangers from afar bow down and worship. Strangers,
+perhaps, were more ready to rejoice with you than your own kith and kin
+when first Christ came to you.
+
+Simeon, who had so desired to see the salvation of God, sees and is
+satisfied. Perhaps some Simeon had thus watched and waited and wept for
+you, and when the Lord came to His temple, he saw it, and was ready to
+depart with joy.
+
+Herod the king sought to kill the Child. So it is even now. Don't be
+deceived; where Christ comes, storms come. The world of selfishness and
+power and wealth will kill the Divine Thing in you, if it can. Between the
+prince of this world and the Prince of the world to come no truce was
+possible long ago in quiet Judea, and no truce is possible now. The spirit
+of the world is still the spirit of murder. It is called by other names
+to-day, and, under its influence, men will tell you that the life of God
+in you is not to take those forms of violent opposition to wrong, and of
+passionate devotion to right, and of burning zeal and self-denial for the
+lost, which they took in Jesus. The real meaning of their tale is that
+they are seeking to kill the Child.
+
+But do not be dismayed. Remember Mary's flight into Egypt. The great peril
+of her Son made her regardless of her friends, of her reputation, of her
+home, of her life. She must guard that precious Life at any cost, at any
+risk, at any loss. Is there not a lesson in her example? Let nothing, let
+not all the sum total of this world's pleasures and possessions lead you
+to risk the Life of God in your soul. Listen to no voices that counsel
+friendship, or parley, or compromise with the world--_the spirit of
+Herod is in it_. If you cannot preserve that Indwelling without flying
+--from somewhere, or something, or some one--then fly. If you cannot guard
+that Presence without losing all, then let all be lost, and in losing all
+you shall find more than all.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Side by side with these evidences of His Divinity the infancy and
+childhood of Jesus revealed His dependence and weakness; that is, _the
+reality of His human nature_.
+
+The first recorded act of His mother shows us one aspect of that weakness
+after a fashion which appeals to the tenderest recollections of the whole
+human family, "_She wrapped Him in swaddling clothes_"; and then, as
+though to mark for ever the perfection of dependence, the history goes on,
+"_and laid Him in a manger_." There are other equally striking
+incidents teaching just as clearly that the Babe was a babe, and that the
+Child was really a child. It is the perfect union of Him "Who was, and is,
+and is to come," with him who flourisheth as the flower of the field; the
+wind passeth over him, and he is gone.
+
+Even so may Christ be formed in you. The purity and dignity of His life
+will be all the more wonderfully glorious in the eyes of men and angels
+because it is linked with dependence and trial, and weakness and sorrow.
+As it was at Nazareth, so it is now. Hand in hand with Divinity walked
+hunger and weariness, poverty, disappointment, and toil. Did we think it
+would be otherwise? Did we, do we, sometimes wonder why the road is so
+rough, and the burden so heavy, and the sky so dark? Are we found asking
+the old question about sitting on the twelve thrones, judging those around
+us, and sharing in some way the royal glory of a King? and is there an
+echo of murmuring at these bonds and infirmities and drudgeries of daily
+duty and common sorrow? So did the Rabbis of old, and, in consequence,
+refused Him.
+
+Ah! the answer to it all is in the one word, it was because "He was made
+perfect through suffering;" it was because He learned obedience by the
+things He suffered that He must do it again through you--in you. Every
+energy of your being may thus be sanctified. Every pain, every sorrow,
+every joy, every purpose will be--not taken away; not crushed and hardened
+into a series of unfeeling forms and empty signs; not passed over as
+having no relation to his life, but touched and purified and ennobled with
+the love and power of an indwelling God.
+
+Yes, it is _man_ whom He came to restore--it is _man_, whose
+beauty and power were the glory of creation, that drew Him with infinite
+attractions from the centre of His Father's heaven, and plunged Him into
+the centre of a very hell of suffering and shame. It was man whose nature,
+passing by the angels, He took upon Him. It was man He swore to save. He
+loves our manhood--its will--its intelligence--its emotions--its passions;
+and it is our manhood He has redeemed. He designs to make men really men,
+to cleanse--to restore--to indwell in them, and finally to present every
+one in the beauty of a perfected character before the presence of His
+Father, without spot or blemish or any such thing.
+
+It is this great principle of Redemption that has found expression in The
+Salvation Army. We are of those who see in every human being the ruins of
+the Temple of God; but ruins which can be repaired and reconstructed, that
+He may fit them for His own possession, and then return and make them His
+abode.
+
+Never listen to that fatal lie, that to be a man means of necessity to be
+always a sinner; that humanity is only another word for irreclaimable
+desert or irreparable despair. When the enemy of your soul whispers to you
+out of his lying heart that because sin has found one of its strongholds
+in the appetites and propensities of your poor body, or in the original
+perversity of a rebellious spirit, and that you cannot be expected to
+triumph over that evil nature because it _is_ your nature, remember
+Bethlehem, and answer him with the promise of God, "_I will dwell in
+you, and walk in you_." It was because He purposed to cleanse wholly,
+body and soul and spirit, that He came, taking the body, soul, and spirit
+of a man, and that He will come again, taking your body, soul, and spirit
+as His dwelling-place.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+The birth and childhood of Jesus were the beginning of His great
+sacrifice, as well as the preparation for it. The spirit of Bethlehem and
+the spirit of Calvary are one. He was born for others that He might die
+for others. The mystery of God in the Babe was the beginning of the
+mystery of God on the cross. The one was a part of the other. If they had
+not "laid Him in a manger" for us, they could never have laid Him in the
+tomb, that He might "taste death for every man." And it was because "He
+grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and increased in wisdom, and the grace
+of God was upon Him" in those early years, that He was able afterwards to
+tread the winepress alone, to work out a perfect example of manhood, to
+wrestle with Death and the Grave, and finally to stand forth for us as the
+great Victorious One, conqueror of all our foes.
+
+And is it not in this same fashion and for this same purpose that Christ
+is to be formed in us? "_He grew_." Progress is the law of happiness,
+the law of holiness, the law of life. To stand still is to die. It was not
+enough for the fulfilment of His great mission that He should be born,
+that He should live--He must grow.
+
+Let us take that lesson to our hearts, in this superficial, painted,
+rushing generation. Let us beware of resting our hope to satisfy the
+eternal claims of God upon some great event in our spiritual history of
+long ago. It is not enough to have been converted. It is not enough to
+have had the adoption of the Father. It is not enough to have entered the
+spiritual family of Christ. It is not enough that even Jesus revealed
+Himself in us. Thousands of false hopes are built on these past events,
+which, divinely wrought as they may have been, have ceased to possess any
+vital connexion with the life and character of to-day. Such a religion is
+a religion of memory, destined to be turned in the presence of the Throne
+to unmixed remorse.
+
+But how, and in what, are we to grow? In manner and in substance like our
+Lord. Jesus grew in strength and stature, in wisdom and in grace--the
+grace of God was upon Him.
+
+_In spiritual strength and stature_; that is, from the timid babe to
+the bold and valiant soldier; in the power to do the things we ought to
+do, in the ability to obey the inward voice. It is by the exercise of the
+muscles and tendons of the babe that the bodily frame is fitted for the
+rush and struggle of life. It is by the A B C of the infant class that the
+mind is fitted to comprehend and appreciate the duties and obligations of
+political, social, physical, and family relationships. It is by the humble
+wail of the penitent, and the daily acts of loving help, that the soul
+learns to soar on eagles' wings, and shout the truth that God is gracious,
+and to brave difficulty and danger in His service. They go from strength
+to strength. Are you so journeying?
+
+_In wisdom_. Wisdom is a thing of the heart more than of the brain,
+and the wisdom of God is really a revelation of the love of God. To be
+"wise unto salvation" is to learn the lesson of love. To be "wise to win
+souls" is first to love souls. To feel that "it is more blessed to give
+than to receive," is the fruit of love. How different this from the
+calculating wisdom of this world!
+
+Dear comrade and friend, are you taking care that the Divine Life in you
+shall grow after this Christ-like fashion? When I hear Christian people
+say: "Oh, I have so little love, so little faith, so little joy," I
+generally find that it is so because they stifle and quench the blessed
+yearnings of the Divine Spirit to seek the souls of others; because they
+leave unanswered the urgings and promptings of duty which God in their
+conscience is demanding; because they neglect prayer, and self-denial, and
+heart-searching, and the Word of God; because, in short, they starve the
+Child. What wonder if love and faith are feeble, and joy is like to die!
+
+"And the grace of God was upon Him." Here was the promise of that entire
+sacrifice for men which culminated when a man cried out to Him on the
+cross: "_He saved others; Himself He cannot save_." It is ever thus
+that God repeats Himself. When we are ready to be offered up for the
+blessing and saving of others, then grace will come upon us for the
+struggle as it came upon Him. When Christ formed in us finds free course
+for all His mind and all His passion; when our eyes are opened to the
+great purposes of His life in the salvation of the whole world; and when
+we hear, through Him, the cry of those for whom He was born, and for whom
+He died, God will pour out on us grace to send us forth--grace sufficient,
+grace abundant, grace triumphant. Have you come to this? Can you say He is
+thus dwelling in you, and working in you, to will and to do of His good
+pleasure?
+
+Do not turn away with the paralysing fear that it cannot be; that the life
+of Jesus can never be lived out again in flesh and blood. Remember, He is
+"_the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever_." All He was in
+Bethlehem, to Mary and Joseph; all He was to His work-mates at Nazareth;
+all He was in the wilderness, fighting with fiends, in the deserts feeding
+the hungry, or among the multitude--healing the sick, blessing the little
+children, casting out devils, and preaching the Kingdom; all He was in
+Bethany, weeping over Lazarus, and crying, "Lazarus, come forth"; in the
+garden of His agony, in the darkness of His cross, in the hour of His
+Resurrection, all this--all--all--all--He is to-day. _He belongs to the
+everlasting Now_. All He was to the martyrs who died for His Name, all
+He has been to our fathers, He is to us, and will be to our children, for
+with Him is no variableness nor shadow of turning. Yes! This unchanging
+Christ "_is in us, except we be reprobate_," the Life and Image of
+God, and the Hope of Glory.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+The Secret of His Rule.
+
+
+
+    "_For we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the
+     feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we
+     are, yet without sin_."--Heb. iv. 15.
+
+We hail the Christmas season as the anniversary of our King's birth. Our
+eyes turn to the manger, and our hearts to Mary, for a thousand and one
+reasons, but the chiefest is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem as the
+Divine Son and the Royal Branch.
+
+Although we know that many shadows darken the way of the Cross, and that
+it is roughened by many thorns and agonies, many dark descents and weary
+struggles, we have always the assurance that at the end, and at the right
+time, there will be a crown and a throne.
+
+Standing at the manger, and looking over the hills of hatred and
+suffering, we can already see the great white Throne. From the wilderness
+of the Temptation we can even catch a glimpse of the marriage supper of
+the Lamb. In the darkness around the cross, we have visions of a great
+multitude, which no man can number, casting their crowns at the feet of
+the Crucified. Written large on all the life of Jesus there is, in fact,
+the witness that He will triumph. We know and feel it. It is revealed even
+when it is not stated. It is assured even when not promised.
+
+But I do not think that it is by virtue of this that Jesus Christ has
+exerted His greatest influence on the hearts of men. To be a king, to be
+in the royal line, is a great thing; and to be the Divine King is
+infinitely greater. To be a king, however, is one thing; to be a ruler is
+often quite another. The right descent, the royal birth, the due
+recognition, the ultimate taking possession of the throne, are enough to
+make the king, but far from enough to make the ruler.
+
+Principles, of course, there are, very important and far-reaching,
+involved in any sort of kingship. We have all heard of "the divine right
+of kings." We all see--even if we cannot understand it--the love of
+peoples for a king. Even when the heads of states are called by some other
+name than king, the fact of kingship is still there. All this denotes the
+working of great principles, having their roots in the deepest feelings of
+the human race. But I repeat, that to rule is quite another thing than to
+be a king. History abounds with examples of great monarchs who have not
+ruled, and of true rulers who have had no royal blood and no kingly
+throne.
+
+And just as there are facts in human experience which have made kings
+necessary and possible, so are there principles by which alone it is
+possible to rule.
+
+The kingship and rule of Jesus Christ our Lord was no exception. It is not
+my purpose to dwell here on the great and unchanging demands of the human
+soul which make His sovereignty a necessity of our well-being alike as
+citizens, and as individuals of His world. Unless the Lord is King, all
+must be confusion, dissonance, and disaster. The supreme fact in human
+life after all is, that our God is "the creator, preserver, and governor
+of all things."
+
+But what of His rule? There another principle comes into operation. On
+what is His _rule_ based? By what agency does He extend His
+_authority_ until it becomes _control_?
+
+And here it must be remembered that He aspires to rule men's hearts. His
+kingdom is moral and spiritual first, and then physical and material. That
+is why it will endure for ever. It is in the region of motive and
+affection, of reason and emotion, of preference and choice, that He
+designs to be Ruler. It is to reign in men's hearts that Christ laid aside
+His heavenly crown and throne. If He cannot be a Ruler there, then He will
+account little of His kingship in the skies.
+
+By what, then, does He rule? _Is it not by His compassion_? Has
+not that been the chief influence which has drawn men to Him, and held
+them in His service?
+
+Just think for a moment of one or two commonplace facts.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+_The Children_.
+
+
+At least three-fourths of the human family are always little children. To
+what does He owe the influence He exercises in the minds and hearts of
+multitudes of these little ones? His exalted throne? His royal lineage?
+His majesty? No; I think not to these, but to the revelation of His pity,
+His sympathy, His patience, His sweet, forgiving grace, His tender
+compassion as a Saviour. To them He is the "Friend above all others"--the
+Lowly One, the "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild." Viewing Him thus, they
+confess to Him in sin, they fly to Him in sorrow.
+
+His creative power, His everlasting habitations, His throne of
+unapproachable glory, His glorious and terrible judgments, are little more
+to the children than words and phrases--may I not say?--at best but the
+"trappings" of His person. They solemnise, they inspire, perhaps, with
+reverent fear; but they do not, they could not, secure that true
+ascendency over the nature of the child by which alone there can be real
+control and true rulership.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+_The Sorrowful_.
+
+
+Sorrow is the most common of all human experiences. There are no homes
+without it, and there are very few hearts which have not tasted of its
+cup. Earth is a vale of tears. Sooner or later, all men suffer. "Man is
+born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward," and to millions of men
+Christ has appeared in their affliction and taken possession of their
+lives.
+
+What was the secret of His influence over them? Was it His dominion from
+sea to sea? Was it even His victory over death and His kingly conquest of
+the grave? Was it His sovereign throne of power? No, I do not think it was
+thus He won them; but as "the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief,"
+who learned obedience by the things that He suffered, and who could
+compassionate with them in their sorrows also.
+
+It is one of the commonplaces of life that people associated in great
+suffering and trials obtain great influence with each other. And it is so
+here. Let the human heart once realise that in its deepest depths of
+sorrow it may have for helper One who has been deeper still; and it is in
+the nature of things that it should fly to that One for succour, for
+sympathy, for strength. And when that One out of His riches gives of His
+own might, and of His own sweet, unfathomed consolations, then His
+government is assured, His rule is established.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+_The Tempted_.
+
+
+Did I say that sorrow was the commonest of all human experiences? Ought I
+not to have said _temptation_? We all know the reality of temptation:
+its biting wounds, its power to assail, to harass, to irritate, to worry;
+its appeals to the senses, the animal in us; its assault of our
+confidence; its liberty to terrorise and to torment.
+
+Yes, every man is tempted. How shall he withstand temptation? What is it
+in Jesus Christ that calls the sorely-tempted one to Him? Is it His divine
+purity, His kingly holiness, His might as the supreme Sovereign whose law
+is good? No; I think that only those who have learned to love Him will
+love His law. Is it not rather the wonderful pity of Him of whom it is
+written, "We have a great High Priest, . . . touched with the feeling of
+our infirmities, . . . in all points tempted like as we are, yet without
+sin"? _Touched with the feeling of our infirmities_. There is the
+attraction of a supreme compassion for the tempted. There is the means by
+which the King of Righteousness becomes also the Ruler over tempted and
+sinful men.
+
+I can add but one other word now.
+
+If it is only by His continual compassion that our Master obtains and
+maintains His rule, will it not be by a similar means that we may hope to
+bless and influence the souls of men? Yes; that has been already the great
+lesson of The Salvation Army. It is founded on sympathy, on a universal
+compassion.
+
+The moment we turn away from that, and rely merely on our system, or on
+methods, or our teaching, we cease just in that proportion to be true
+Salvationists. We aspire to rule men's hearts. We care nothing for the
+position of a church or sect; we care everything for a real control over
+the souls and conduct of living men and women, that we may lead them to
+God and use them for His glory. It is by tenderness we shall win it. By
+seeking them in their sorrows and sins; by making them feel our true
+heart-hunger over them, our true love, our entire union with the Christ in
+His compassion for them.
+
+And the same principle will hold good in training those whom we have
+already won. This was, no doubt, the secret of Paul's great influence with
+his people. His whole heart was theirs; and they knew it. "We were gentle
+among you," he says, "even as a nurse cherisheth her children; so, being
+affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you,
+not the Gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear
+unto us."
+
+We know his courage, his lofty standard, his splendid impatience of shams,
+his tenacity of the truth, his contempt for danger, his daring unto death;
+and yet he can say of himself that, with it all, he was gentle among them
+as a nurse cherishing her children--ready to give up his very soul for
+them.
+
+Ah, Colonel, Captain, Sergeant, leaders all, whatever name you bear, do
+you want to lead and rule the people whom God has given you as a charge?
+Then here is the true secret of power--be for ever pouring out your
+heart's deepest, tenderest love for them, and most of all for the weak and
+the most unworthy and sinful amongst them. Do this, and you will not
+merely be walking after Paul--you will be walking _with_ Christ.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A Neglected Saviour.
+
+
+
+"_And He came and found them asleep again: for
+their eyes were heavy_."--Matt. xxvi. 43.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+There are few more instructive or more touching things in the life of our
+Lord Jesus Christ than His evident appreciation of human sympathy. Whether
+we observe Him at the marriage feast, or in the fishing-boat, or on the
+Mount of Olives, or when spending a time apart with His disciples, or in
+the Garden of His Agony, this appreciation expresses itself quite
+naturally and consistently. The Son of Man, though one with the Father,
+yet found joy and comfort in the society of men. What we call
+"companionship" had real charms for Him. It helped to draw Him out to the
+hungerings and thirstings of men; it assisted in revealing to Him the
+facts of human sin, and the needs of the human soul. Thus it enabled Him
+more perfectly to be our living example, as well as the propitiation for
+our sins.
+
+And as He valued the consolations arising from human friendship and love,
+so also He had to suffer the loss of them, in order that He might carry
+out His great work for God and man. For His work's sake, His soul was
+required to pass through the agony of losing every human consolation. Many
+were His moments of bitterness. The world proved itself to be, what it
+still remains, a cold-hearted affair; His own, to whom He came, received
+Him not. But the bitterest sorrow which can come to a leader was added to
+His cup, when He witnessed the failure of His trusted disciples in the
+hour of trial, and when He realised that their unfaithfulness was towards
+Himself as a person, as well as to the great mission to which He had
+consecrated both Himself and them.
+
+Now, when we are called upon to suffer in the same way, may we not be
+brought into very intimate fellowship with Jesus? Shall we complain
+because the servant is not above his Lord? Shall we doubt His love, and
+care, and power, because He does not always shield us from that same blast
+of loneliness which swept over His own soul in the Garden, when for the
+second, aye, and for the third time, He found His three disciples asleep?
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Sad as it is, it is none the less certain that we, too, must expect some
+in whom we have trusted to fail us in that hour when we most need them, be
+it the hour of supreme temptation, or of great opportunity, or of deep
+sorrow for the Kingdom's sake. It was precisely this which happened to our
+Lord. It is bad to be so dependent on men--even on the most beautiful, or
+most perfect souls--that we cannot fight on without them. The dependence
+of love must work hand in hand with the independence of faith, if we are
+to take our share in this trial of our Master and to profit by it.
+
+Those who thus fail us will, perchance, be the very persons upon whom we
+have most reason to rely, and whom in some sore trial of our faith or
+moment of danger, we have specially called upon for defence and prayer,
+for strength and sympathy, as did our Lord in the case of these disciples.
+Until now, Peter had been a valiant, not to say, reckless follower of
+Jesus; while all, John especially, had been well beloved and tenderly
+watched over by Him. And yet this woeful sleep deadens them to it all.
+Even for one short hour they cannot watch with Him.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+But such failure on the part of those who were loved and trusted will add
+immensely to the burden of the battle that we are fighting for God and the
+souls of men. It did so even to Jesus. Nothing more pathetic, more deeply
+heart-moving, is written in all God's Book, than this simple picture of
+the Man of Sorrows--struggling for the life of the human race, absolutely
+bereft of human aid--coming in the midst of His dark conflict to seek the
+touch of sympathy, a hand-grasp, a word, a look from those His well-loved
+followers, only to find them asleep in the gloom. Retracing His steps, He
+casts Himself on the ground, and cries, "My Father, if it be possible, let
+this cup pass from Me." Am I wrong in saying that it was an added
+ingredient of bitterness in that cup to find that these, His trusted ones,
+could only sleep, while He must go forward to suffer?
+
+But their failure did not stop Him. No, not for one moment. There was
+agony in His heart, there were death shadows around Him, and bloody sweat
+upon His brow, but He did not waver. He went right on to finish the work
+He had promised to do. Gladly would He have had them with Him; steadfastly
+He goes forward without them! Here also is a lesson for you and for me.
+_The work is more than the worker_. And in times when we must lose,
+for our work's sake, that which we count dearer to us than our lives, when
+the iron of disappointed love enters our souls, as it entered His, we must
+follow Him, and go forward, steadfastly forward.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+And after all, the failure of the disciples was very human. Their eyes
+were heavy. They were weary and sore tired. This, too, is typical of many
+of the losses we Salvationists are called upon to suffer. Some on whom we
+have relied and trusted grow weary in well-doing. The strain is so great!
+The tax on brain and heart and hand is so constant! Life becomes so
+burdened with watchings and prayings and sufferings for and with others,
+that there is little, if any, time or strength left for oneself! And so
+they cannot keep up, but seek rest and quiet for themselves elsewhere.
+They are heavy, and no longer feel the need to watch with us.
+
+Dear comrade, in your like trial do not doubt that the Lord Jesus is with
+you. Suffering of this kind will help to liken you to Him--it is a very
+real bearing of the Cross of Christ. Pitiful followers of Him should we
+be, if we wished to have only joy when He had only suffering.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+But the disciples' strange failure did not call forth one word of
+bitterness from our Lord's lips. A gentle reproach was certainly implied
+in the words, "Could ye not watch with Me one hour?" but no shade of
+personal displeasure expressed itself, much as the occasion might seem to
+warrant it. No! Jesus knew the failures begotten of human weakness, as
+well as the horror of human sin. And so He made allowances, and was as
+patient with those who left Him, as He was tender to those who were
+steadfast. He loved them both.
+
+Go thou, and do likewise. In your home; in your family circle; in your
+Corps; in your office; in your work, be it what it may; when men fail and
+forsake your Lord; even if all disappoint and desert you, _you must love
+them still_. Be faithful with them; but, above all, be steadfast in
+your own purpose, and devote all your zeal and strength to finish the work
+that God has given you to do. In short, go forward without them; but let
+your words, and thoughts, and prayers for them be like your Master's.
+
+And Jesus utters no word of complaint about this failure. The silence all
+through that great anguish is indeed very wonderful. Abandoned by man, He
+abandoned Himself all the more earnestly to His work for men without a
+murmur. And abandoned by God--as for a little time it seemed--He all the
+more completely abandoned Himself to God. To have fellowship with Him, you
+and I will have to walk the same path, and mind the same rule.
+
+When friends, or followers, or comrades trample upon the solemn covenants
+made alike to us and to God, and forsake, and leave us to finish our work
+and tread our winepress alone, let there be no moaning because of the pain
+it inflicts. When those upon whom we had a right--right by reason of
+natural law, or right by reason of the obligations and precious vows of
+friendship, or right on the ground of spiritual indebtedness--when those,
+I say, upon whom we had a right to depend fail us, let there be no
+complaining of their treatment because it is painful to us. Let there be
+no filling of the earth with laments and wailings, no accusing of our
+accusers, no reviling of those who revile us. Let us be silent in the
+patience of Jesus and in the strength of His love, and let His way of
+meeting the loneliness of desertion be our way--let us pray.
+
+But all the same, that sleep, that failure to respond to the personal
+claim of Jesus, was a sure forerunner of the cowardly flight, and the
+deadly denial which followed it. The seeds of Peter's lies and curses were
+sown in the selfishness and slumber of the garden; they came to maturity
+in the kitchen of the judgment hall. Poor Peter! How many hours of bitter
+self-reproach would you have been spared, had you but held out during that
+one brief hour of your watch in Gethsemane! How differently we could have
+regarded your poor wobbling nature! How differently, too, your Lord's
+great trial would have come to Him! How different might have been the
+history of mankind!
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+The method of love which Jesus adopted towards the forsakers received the
+sanction of success, _for they all came back_. In spite of their
+shame and their fears, they returned to their allegiance, with, I think,
+much more than their old faith and love. Judas was the only exception, and
+even he sought a place of repentance, and, but for his horrid league with
+the jealous and cruel religionists, would, I think, have found one.
+
+You see the lesson? If you go on with your work for God, and finish it,
+paying no heed to those who, having put their hand to the plough, look
+back; and if, in spite of your sorrow, you will struggle steadily forward
+in the face of the coldness and carelessness of those between whom and you
+there was once the tenderest love, God will not only carry you through
+your appointed labour for the world, but He will restore many of those
+others to their allegiance to Him and His.
+
+Will they ever be quite the same? Will they not have lost something? Yes,
+they will indeed have lost; but, if they come back, in reality they will
+gain more. The new union will be more divine than the former one. They
+will not merely
+
+  . . . rise on stepping stones
+  Of their dead selves to higher things;
+
+but the beauty, and excellence, and glory of love, the exceeding
+profitableness of enduring grace, and the sweet aroma of faithfulness,
+will be the more clearly manifest to the sons of men by reason of the
+weakness and breakableness of the human vessel.
+
+Let us, then, press forward, without one backward glance, until we finish
+our work. Let us thank God for those who are faithful; let us love and
+pray for those who fail, expecting to see them restored, healed, and
+purified.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Windows in Calvary.
+
+
+
+    "_And they crucified Him . . . And sitting down they watched Him
+     there_."--MATT, xxvii. 35, 36.
+
+Passing words spoken in times of deep emotion often reveal human character
+more vividly than a lifetime of talk under ordinary circumstances. Conduct
+which at other times is of the most trifling significance, reveals in the
+hour of fiery trial, the very inwards of the soul, even making manifest
+that which has been hidden, perhaps, for a generation. Thus, while
+watching a man with the opportunity and the temptation to deceive or
+oppress those who are in his power, you may see into the very thoughts of
+his heart; you may learn what he really is. Or you may measure the depths
+of a mother's love in observing her when, after violating every principle
+she has valued and lived for, her prodigal boy comes to ask her to take
+him in once more.
+
+In the same way, words spoken by the dying are often like windows suddenly
+uncovered, through which one may catch a glimpse of the ruling passion of
+life, in the light of which their life-witness and life-labour alike look
+different. It is this fact which often gives the dying hour of the
+meanest, importance as well as solemnity. The veriest trifler that ever
+trifled through this vale of tears has, in that last solemn hour something
+to teach of the secrets of mortality.
+
+And this revelation of the real facts of human experience is of the
+highest value to the world. It is one of God's witnesses to truth, _that
+truth will out_. Sooner or later, selfishness and sin will
+_appear_ in their naked deformity, to horrify those who behold them;
+and in the end, justice and truth and love are certain to be made manifest
+in their natural beauty, to convince and to charm and to attract their
+beholders.
+
+It is not only one of the uses of trial to bring this about, but it is one
+of the means by which God converts to His own high purposes, the miseries
+and sorrows the Devil has brought in. The one burns the martyrs; the other
+brings out of that cruel and frightful wrong the glorious testimony which
+is the very seed of His Church. The one casts us into fiery dispensations
+of suffering and loss; the other takes these moments of human anguish and
+desolation, and makes of them open windows through which a doubting or
+scoffing world may see what love can do. Thus He makes us to triumph In
+the midst of our foes, while working in us a likeness to Himself, the
+All-patient and All-perfect God.
+
+Nor is it the good and true alone who are thus made object-lessons to
+others, and to themselves, by these ordeals of pain. By them, many a bad
+man also is forced to appear bad to himself. Many a hypocrite, anxious
+about the opinions and the traditions of men, is at last stripped of his
+lies to see himself the wretched fraud he really is. Many a
+heart-backslider, whose religion has long ceased to be anything but a
+memory, awakes to the shame of it and to the danger; and often, thank God,
+awakes in time.
+
+Now, the words of the dying Christ on His cross are, in the same way, a
+true and wonderful revelation of His character and His spirit. As it is
+only by the light of the sun that we see the sun, so it is by Jesus that
+Jesus is best revealed. Never one spake like He spake; and yet in this
+respect, so real was His humanity, He spake like us all--He spake out what
+was in Him. _The Truth_ must, above all, and before all, make
+manifest what is true of Himself.
+
+To whom, then, did our Lord speak on the tree, and what spake He? What
+special thoughts and beauties of His soul do His words reveal?
+
+Jesus, so far as His words have been recorded for us, spoke from the cross
+to Mary His mother, to one of the thieves who was crucified with Him, to
+God His Father, and to Himself.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+_His Words to Mary_.
+
+    "_When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by,
+     whom He loved, He saith unto His mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then
+     saith He to the disciple, Behold thy mother_!"
+
+The position of Mary in those last hours was peculiarly grievous. She had
+lived to see the breaking down of every hope that a mother's heart could
+cherish for her son. Standing there amidst that mob of relentless enemies,
+and watching Jesus, forsaken by God and man in His mortal agony, her
+present sorrow, great as it was, was crowned by the memory of the holy and
+happy anticipations of His birth, and the maiden exultations of her soul
+when the angels foretold that her Son should be the Saviour of His people
+and their King. How cruelly different the reality had turned out! How far,
+how very far away, would seem to her the quiet days in Nazareth, the
+rapture of her Son's first innocent embraces, and the evening communions
+with Him as He grew in years! What tender memories the sight of those dear
+bleeding feet, those outstretched, wounded hands, would recall to that
+mother's heart! Yes, Mary on Calvary is to me a world-picture of desolate,
+withering, and helpless grief--of pain increased by love, and of love
+intensified by pain!
+
+And Jesus in His great agony--the Man of Sorrows come at last to the
+winepress that His heart might be broken in treading it alone; come to the
+hour of His travail; come to the supreme agony of the sin-offering; face
+to face with the wrath of the Judge, blackness and tempest and anguish
+blotting out for the moment even the face of the Father--forsaken at last
+--FORSAKEN--Jesus, in this depth of midnight darkness sees her standing by
+the cross. Bless Him, Oh, ye that weep and mourn in this vale of tears!
+Bless Him for ever! His eyes are eyes for the sorrowful. _He sees
+them_. He has tears to shed with them. He is touched with the same
+feelings and moved by the same griefs. He sees Mary, and speaks to her,
+and in a word gives her to John, and John to her, for mutual care and
+love. It was as though He said, "Mother, you bare Me; you watched and
+suffered for Me, and in this redeeming agony of My love, I remember your
+anguish, and I take you for ever under My care, and I name you Mine."
+
+Surely, there never was sorrow like unto His sorrow, and yet in its
+darkest crisis He has eyes and heart for this one other's sorrow. Far from
+Him, as the east from the west, is any of that selfish thought and selfish
+seclusion which grief and pain so often work in the unsanctified heart,
+aye, and in the best of us. What a lesson of practical love it is! What a
+message--especially to those who are called to suffer with Him for the
+souls of men--comes streaming from those words spoken to Mary. The burden
+of the people's needs, the care of the Church, the awful responsibility of
+ministering to souls--these things, sacred as they may be, cannot excuse
+us in neglecting the hungry hearts of our own flesh and blood, or in
+forgetting the claims of those of our own household.
+
+Dear friend and comrade, in _your_ sorrow, in your sore trial of
+faith, in _your_ Calvary, take to your heart this revelation of the
+heart of the Son of Man, and be careful of the solitary and heart-bleeding
+ones near you, no matter how humble and how unworthy they may seem.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+_His Words to the Thief_.
+
+
+    "_And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shall thou
+     be with Me in Paradise_."
+
+The crucifixion of the two robbers with Jesus was a sort of topstone of
+obloquy and disgrace contrived by His murderers with the double object of
+further humiliating Him in the eyes of the people, and of adding poignancy
+to His own agony. The vulgarity and shamefulness of it were the last touch
+of their contempt, and the last stroke of His humiliation. There was a
+kind of devilish ingenuity in this circumstantial way of branding Him as a
+malefactor. And yet in the presence of this extremity of human wickedness
+and cruelty, Jesus found an opportunity of working a wondrous work of God;
+a work which reveals Him as the Saviour, strong to save, both by His
+infinite mercy and by His infinite confidence in the efficacy of His own
+sacrifice.
+
+"_To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise_." Eyes and heart for the
+_sorrowful_ He had, as we see; and now ears, and hope nigh at hand,
+for the _sinful_. No word of resentment; no sense of distance or
+separation between the spotlessness and perfection of His character and
+this poor lonely convict--but a strange and wonderful nearness, now and to
+come. "_With Me_," He says--"_With Me in Paradise_." Ah! this is
+the secret of much in the life of the Son of God--this intimate, constant,
+conscious nearness to sinners and to sin! He had sounded the depth of
+evil, and, knowing it, He pitied, with an infinite compassion, its
+victims; He got as near as He could to them in their misery, and died to
+save them from it.
+
+That heart-nearness to the thief had nothing to do with the nearness of
+the crosses. Every one knows what a gulf may be between people who are
+very near together--father and son--husband and wife! No, it was the
+nearness of a heart deliberately trained to seek it; a heart delighting in
+mercy, and deliberately surrendering all other delights for it; hungering
+and thirsting for the love of the lost and ruined.
+
+  The hart panteth after the waters,
+  The dying for life that departs,
+  The Lord in His glory for sinners
+  For the love of rebellious hearts.
+
+And so He is quite ready, at once, to share His heaven with this poor
+defiled creature, the first trophy of the cross. Again--what a lesson of
+love!--how different, all this, from the common inclination to shrink away
+from contact and intercourse with the vile! Oh, shame, that there can ever
+have been such a shrinking in our poor guilty hearts! The servant is not
+above his Lord. He came to sinners. Let us go to them with Him!
+
+
+
+III.
+
+_His Words to the Father_.
+
+
+    "_Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do_."
+
+This prayer for His murderers is a revelation of the wonderful nearness
+and capacity of love. The Saviour passes from pole to pole of human ken,
+to find a ground on which He can plead for the forgiveness of those cruel
+and wicked men; and He finds it in their ignorance of the stupendousness
+of their sin against Him. It seems as though He chooses to remain in
+ignorance of what they did know, and to dwell only on what they did not.
+"They know not what they do!"
+
+It was ever so with Him! He has no pleasure in iniquity. Wrong-doers are
+so precious to Him that He never will magnify or exaggerate their wrong--
+no, not a hair's breadth. He will not dwell on it--no, not a moment,
+except to plead some reasonable ground for its pardon, such as this--the
+ignorance of the wrong-doer, or the rich efficacy of His sacrifice. He
+will only name sin to the Father, in order that He may confess it for the
+sinner, and intercede for mercy and for grace.
+
+This is the old and ever new way of dealing with injuries, especially
+"personal injuries." _Is it yours_? Are you seeking thus after
+reasons for making the wrong done to you appear pardonable? Is your first
+response to an affront or insult or slander, or to some still greater
+wrong, to pray the Father for those whom you believe to be injuring you,
+that His gracious gift of forgiveness may come upon them?
+
+That is the principle of Calvary. That is the spirit, the mind of Christ.
+That is the way in which
+
+  He won the meed and crown:
+  Trod all His foes beneath His feet,
+  By being trodden down.
+
+"_Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit_."
+
+Death has always been held to afford a final test of faith, and here the
+human soul of Jesus passed through that mortal struggle which awaits us
+all when heart and flesh shall fail. "_Into Thy hands_"--that is
+enough. As He passes the threshold of the unknown--goes as we must--into
+the Valley of the Shadow, faith springs forth and exclaims, "Into Thy
+hands." All shall be well. In this confidence I have laboured; in this
+confidence I die; in this confidence I shall live before Thee.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+_To Himself_.
+
+
+    "_It is finished_!"
+
+Thus in His last, ever-wonderful words Jesus pronounces Himself the
+sentence of His own heart upon His own work. _It is completed._ Every
+barrier is broken down, every battle is fought, every hellish dart has
+flown, every wilderness is past, every drop of the cup of anguish has been
+drunk up, and, with a note of victorious confidence, He cries out, "It is
+finished!" Looking back from the cross on all His life in the light of
+these words, we see how He regarded it as an opportunity for accomplishing
+a great duty, and for the fulfilment of a mission. Now, He says, "The duty
+is done--the mission is fulfilled; the work is finished!" Truly, it is a
+lofty, a noble, yea, a godlike view of life!
+
+Is it ours? Death will come to us. "The living know that they shall die."
+The waters will overflow, and the foundations will be broken up, and every
+precious thing will grow dim, and our life, also, will have passed. We
+shall then have to say of something, "_It is finished_!" It will be
+too late to alter it. "There is no man that hath power in the day of
+death."
+
+_What, then, shall it be that is finished_? A life of selfish ease,
+or a life of following the Son of Man? A life of sinful gratification, of
+careful thought of ourselves, unprofitable from beginning to end, or a
+life of generous devotion to the things which are immortal in the honour
+of God and the salvation of men?
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+The Burial of Jesus.
+
+
+Good Friday Fragments.
+
+
+  "_And after this Joseph of Arimathoea, being a disciple of Jesus, but
+   secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away
+   the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and
+   took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus, which at the
+   first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes,
+   about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and
+   wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is
+   to bury. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden;
+   and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.
+   There laid they Jesus therefore, because of the Jews' preparation day;
+   for the sepulchre was nigh at hand_."--John xix. 38-42.
+
+Death has many voices. This death and burial speak aloud in tones of
+triumph. It as a death that made an end of death, and a burial that buried
+the grave. And yet it was also a very humble and painful and sad affair.
+We must not forget the humiliation and poverty and shame written on every
+circumstance any more than the victory, if we would learn by it all that
+God designed to teach.
+
+
+
+I
+
+"_He tasted Death_."
+
+
+To many, even among those who have been freed from guilty fear, mortality
+itself still has terrors. By Divine grace they can lift up their hearts in
+sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection, and yet they shrink with
+painful apprehension at the thought of the change which alone can make
+that resurrection possible. There is probably no instinct of the whole
+human family more frequently in evidence than this repulsion for the
+grave. Death is such an uncouth and hideous thing.
+
+
+    Nothing but bones
+    The sad effect of sadder groans;
+  Its mouth is open, but it cannot sing.
+
+All its outward circumstances help to repel us--the shroud, the coffin,
+the grave, the silent shadows, the still more silent worms, the final
+nothingness. The mental conditions, too, generally common to the last acts
+of life, tend to intensify the feeling: the separation from much that we
+love, the sense of unfinished work, the appreciation of grief which death
+most usually brings to others: the reality of disappointed hopes, the
+feeling that heart and flesh fail, and that we can do no more--all these
+tend to make it in very truth the great valley of the dark shadow.
+
+To many, even among the chosen spirits of the household of faith,
+approaching death also starts the great "_Why_?" of unbelief. For, in
+truth, the death of some is a mystery. It is better that we should say so,
+and that they should say so, rather than that we should profess to be able
+to account for what, as is only too evident, we do not understand. In
+confronting death this mystery is often the great bitterness in the cup.
+To die when so young! To die when so much needed! To die so soon after
+really beginning to live! To die in the presence of so great a task! Oh,
+why should it be? How much of gloom and shadow has come down on hearts and
+households I have known, from the persistency of that "Why?" intensifying
+every repulsion for the hideous visitor, adding to every other the
+greatest of all his terrors--_doubt_.
+
+Now, in the presence of such doubts--or perhaps I ought rather to call
+them questionings and shrinkings--has not this vision of the dead body of
+our Lord something in it to charm away our fears? Does it not say to us:
+"I have passed on before; I that speak in righteousness, Mighty to save. I
+have trodden the winepress alone. At My girdle hang the keys of life and
+death; I, even I, was dead; yes, really, cruelly dead; but I am alive for
+evermore"?
+
+_He tasted death_. The king of terrors was out to meet Him. The long
+shadows of the gloomy valley really closed Him round, and He crossed over
+the chilly stream just as you and I must cross it--all alone. Nothing was
+wanting which could invest the scene, the hour, the circumstances with
+horror and repulsion. There was pain, bodily pain; there was mental
+anguish; there was the howling mob, the horrid contempt for Him as for a
+malefactor; the lost disciples and shattered hopes; the reviling thief;
+the mystery of the Father's clouded face; the final sinking down; the
+letting go of life; the last physical struggle--when He gave up the ghost
+and died.
+
+Yes. He passed this same way before you. He wore a shroud. He lay in a
+grave. The last resting-place is henceforth for us fragrant with
+immortality. The very horrors, and shadows, and mysteries of the
+death-chamber have become signs that death is vanquished. The tomb is but
+the porch of a temple in which we shall surely stand, the doorway to the
+place of an abiding rest. "In My Father's house are many mansions: if it
+were not so, I would have told you."
+
+Living or dying--but especially when dying--we have a right to cry with
+Stephen, the first to witness for Christ in this horror of death, "Lord
+Jesus, receive my spirit." To Him we commit all. He passed this way before
+with a worn and bruised body, in weakness and contempt, with dyed garments
+and red in His apparel, and on Him we dare to cast ourselves--on Him and
+Him alone. On His merits, on His blood, on His body, dead and buried for
+us. He will be with us even to the end--_He has passed this way before
+us_.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+"_A Savour of Death unto Death._"
+
+
+A celebrated Roman Emperor who had in the very height of his power
+embarked on a campaign for the extermination, with all manner of
+cruelties, of the followers of Jesus Christ, spoke one day to a Christian,
+asking him in tones of lofty contempt and derision:--
+
+"What, then, is the Galilean doing now?"
+
+"_The Galilean_," replied the Christian, "_is making a coffin_!"
+In a few years the great Emperor and the vast power he represented were
+both in that coffin!
+
+Since his day, how many other persecutors have also journeyed surely to
+it! How many infidels--nay, how many systems of infidelity, have passed on
+to dust and oblivion in that same casket! What multitudes of doubters--of
+ungodly, unclean, unregenerate--have been laid within its ever-widening
+bands! What vast unions of darkness, hatred, and cruelty, under the
+leadership of the great and the mighty, have been broken to pieces beside
+that coffin! How much that seemed for a time proud and rich and great in
+this poor world's esteem, has at last passed into it, and disappeared for
+ever! Yes, the martyr of long ago, on the blood-besmeared stones of
+persecuting Rome, was right, the Galilean Saviour and King not only made a
+Cross, but He made, and He goes on making, a coffin!
+
+Will _you_ not have His Cross? Is there no appeal to you to-day from
+that hill side, without the city wall? Does it not speak to _you_ of
+the power, the sweetness and nobleness of a life of service, of sacrifice
+for others, of toil for His world. Has it no message for _you_ of
+victory over sin and death, of life from the dead--life, abundant life, in
+the Blood of the Son of Man! Believe me, unless you accept His Cross, He
+will prepare for you a coffin. "The _wages_ of sin is death." It
+matters not how noble your aspirations, how lofty your ideals of life and
+conduct, how faithful your labour to raise the standard of your own life--
+unless you accept the Cross, all must go into the grave. Your highest
+aims, together with your lowest, your most cherished conceptions, your
+most deeply-loved ambitions, all must be entombed. "Whosoever shall fall
+on this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall it will
+grind him to powder."
+
+If His death-sacrifice be not a savour of life unto life it must be a
+savour of death unto death. This is the single alternative. Jesus Christ
+in life and death is working in you, in us all, toward one of these ends--
+either by love and tears and the overflowing fountain of His passion to
+gather us into the union of eternal life with Him and with the Father; or
+to entomb us--all that we have and all that we are--in the death and
+oblivion of the grave He has prepared.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+"_And He was Buried_."
+
+
+For a little time they lost Him. The grave opened her gloomy portals; they
+laid Him down, and the gates were closed--for a little time. And yet He
+was just as really there, as really alive for evermore, as really theirs
+and ours, as really a victor--nay, a thousand times more so, than if He
+had never bowed Himself under the yoke of Nature. He was gone on before,
+just a little while, that was all.
+
+Is not that the lesson of His burial for every one who sorrows for the
+loss of loved ones called up higher? Are they not buried with Him? Are
+they not gone on before? Are they not ours still? Are we not theirs as
+really as ever? He passed through that brief path of darkness and death
+out into the everlasting light of the Resurrection Glory. Do you think,
+then, that He will leave them behind? The grave could not contain
+_Him_. Do you think it has strength to hold _them_? You cannot
+think of Him as lying long in the garden of Joseph of Arimathaea; why,
+then, should you think of your dear ones as in the chilly clay of that
+poor garden in which you laid them? No--no! they are alive--alive for
+evermore; because He lives, they live also.
+
+Yes! this was the meaning of that strange funeral of His--this was at
+least one reason why they buried Him. It was that He might hold a flaming
+torch of comfort at every burial of His people to the end of time. Sorrow
+not, then, as those that have no hope. He is hope. Your lost ones,
+perhaps, were strongly rooted in your affection, and your heart was torn
+when they were plucked up. You cried aloud with the Prophet: "Woe is me,
+for my hurt! my wound is grievous. But I said, Truly this is a grief, and
+I must bear it; my tabernacle is spoiled, and all my cords are broken."
+Ah, but remember He was buried also. He knows about the way. He was there.
+He has them in His keeping. They are His, and yours still. You have no
+more need to grieve over their burial than over His. They live, they love,
+they grow, they rejoice. They are blessed for evermore.
+
+And our dear dead will meet us again, if we are faithful, in those bodies
+which our Lord has redeemed. That also is the witness of His burial and
+resurrection. The corruptible shall put on incorruption. In the twinkling
+of an eye shall it be done. And we shall see them in the body once more,
+even as His disciples saw Him. They supposed at first that they saw a
+spirit, but He said: No! "Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I
+Myself: handle Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye
+see Me have!"
+
+This blessed hope is our hope. Love is indeed stronger than death; many
+waters, nay, the swellings of Jordan themselves, cannot quench it! Dear
+ones, gone on before, we shall embrace you again; hand in hand--the very
+same hands--we shall greet our King:--
+
+  Together we'll stand
+  When escaped to the shore,
+  With palms in our hands
+  We Will praise Him the more;
+  We'll range the sweet plains
+  On the banks of the river,
+  And sing of Salvation
+  For ever and ever.
+
+Yes--we know and love you still, because we know and love our Lord.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+Conforming to Christ's Death.
+
+
+
+    "_That I may know Him . . . being made conformable unto His
+     death_."--Phil. iii. 10.
+
+"_Conformable unto His death_." At first sight the words are
+something of a surprise. "_His death?_" Has not the thought more
+often before us been to conform to _His life_? His death seems "too
+high for us"--so far off in its greatness, in its suffering, in its
+humiliation, in its strength, in its glorious consequences. How is it
+possible we should ever be conformed to such a wonder of love and power?
+And yet, here is the great Apostle, in one of those beautiful and
+illuminating references to his own experience which always seem to bring
+his messages right home to us, setting forth this very conformity as the
+end of all his labours, and the purpose in all his struggles. "What things
+were gain to me," he says, "those I counted loss for Christ; yea, I count
+all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
+Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them
+but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in Him*, having . . . the
+righteousness which is of God by faith: that I may know Him, and the power
+of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, _being made
+conformable unto His death_."
+
+[Footnote *: Or, as the Revised Version has it in the margin, "not having
+as my righteousness that which springs from the law; but that which is
+through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of God on the
+condition of faith: . . . becoming conformed unto His death."]
+
+There are probably deeps of thought and purpose here which I confess that
+I cannot hope to fathom; which in the limits of such a paper as this I
+cannot even suggest. Is it possible, for example, that the sorrow and
+suffering which fall upon those who are entirely surrendered to God and
+His work are, in some hidden way, sorrow and suffering for others? Is this
+what Paul means when he says in his letter to the Colossians: I "fill up
+that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ, in my flesh, for His
+body's sake, which is the Church"? It may be so. This would indeed be a
+glorious and a wonderful "_fellowship of His sufferings_."
+
+Or, again, consider what an entirely new light might be thrown upon God's
+dealings with us in afflictions and pain, if it should appear, in the
+world to come, that, in much which is now most mysterious and torturing to
+us, we had but been bearing one another's burdens! Every one knows how
+often love makes us long to bear grief and pain for those dear to us;
+every one has seen a mother suffer, in grateful silence, both bodily pain
+and heart-anguish, in her child's stead, preferring that the child should
+never know. Suppose it should turn out, hereafter, that many of the
+afflictions which now seem so perplexing and so grievous have really been
+given us to bear in order to spare and shield our loved ones, and make it
+easier for them--tossing on the stormy waters--to reach Home at last?
+Would not this add a whole world of joy to the glory which shall be
+revealed? And would it not transform many of the darkest stretches of our
+earthly journey into bright memorials of the infinite wisdom and goodness
+of our God?
+
+But I pass away from matters of which we have, at best, but a gleam, to
+those concerning which "he that runs may read."
+
+But if Christ upon His cross is meant for an object-lesson to His people,
+is it not reasonable to expect that His words spoken in those supreme
+moments should throw light upon that conformity to His death of which we
+are thinking? The words of the dying have always been received as
+revealing their true character. Death is the skeleton-key which opens the
+closed chambers of the soul, and calls forth the secret things--and in the
+presence of the "Death-Angel" men generally appear to be what they really
+are. Our Lord and Saviour was no exception to this universal rule.
+
+      To the latest breath,
+  We see His ruling passion strong in death.
+
+His dying words are filled with illuminating truth about Himself, and they
+throw precious light upon His death. Let us, then, tarry for a few moments
+before His cross, and look and listen while He speaks.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+"_Father, forgive them; they know not what they do_."
+
+
+Men were doing the darkest deed of time. Nothing was wanting to make it
+hateful to God and repulsive to mankind. All the passions to which the
+human heart is prone, and all that the spirits of Hell can prompt, had
+joined forces at Calvary to finish off, in victory if possible, the black
+rebellion which began in Eden. Everything that is base in human nature--
+the hate that is in man, the beast that is in man, the fiend that is in
+man--was there, with hands uplifted, to slay the Lamb. The servants of the
+Husbandman were beating to death the beloved Son whom He had sent to seek
+their welfare. It was amidst the human inferno of ingratitude and hatred
+that these words of infinite grace and beauty fell from the lips of Love
+Immortal. Long nails had just pierced the torn flesh and quivering nerves
+of His dear hands and feet; and while He watched His murderers' awful
+delight in His agony, and heard their jeering shouts of triumph, He lifted
+up His voice and prayed for them, "_Father--forgive_."
+
+There are thoughts that lie too deep for words. The inner light of this
+message may be revealed--it cannot be spoken. But one or two reflections
+will repay our consideration. Here was a consciousness of sin. Here was
+the suggestion of pardon. Here was prayer for sinners.
+
+A _consciousness of sin_--of theirs--ours--not His own. Infinite Love
+takes full account of sin. Boldly recognises it. Straightway refers to it
+as the source of men's awful acts and awful state. "_O My Father,
+forgive_!" On the cross of His shame, in the final grip with the mortal
+enemy, the dying Christ--looking away from His own sufferings, forgetful
+of the scorn, and curses, and blows of those around Him--is overflowing
+with this great thought, with this great _fact_--that men's first
+imperative, overwhelming need, is the forgiveness of their sin.
+
+_The suggestion of pardon_. He prays for it. What a transforming
+thought is the possibility of forgiveness! How different the vilest, the
+most loathsome criminal becomes in our eyes the moment we know a pardon is
+on the way! How different a view we get of the souls of men, bound and
+condemned to die, given up to selfishness and godlessness, the moment we
+stand by the cross of Jesus, and realise, with Him, that a pardon is
+possible! The meanest wretch that walks looks different from us. Even the
+outwardly respectable and very ordinary person who lives next door, to
+whom we so seldom speak, is at once clothed with a new interest in our
+minds, if we really believe that there is a pardon coming for him from the
+King of kings.
+
+He _prays_. Yes, this is the great prayer. What an example He has
+left us! It was not enough to die for the sinful--the ungrateful--the
+abominable--He must needs pray for them. Dear friend, you may have done
+many things for the ungodly around you--you may have preached to them, and
+set them also a lofty example of goodness; you may even have greatly
+suffered on their behalf; but I can imagine one thing still wanting: have
+you prayed the Father for them?
+
+Remember, He pleaded for the worst: those very men who said, "Let His
+blood be on us, and on our children." He prayed even for those, and I do
+not doubt that He was heard. Indeed, it was, I earnestly believe, His
+prayer which helped on that speedy revival in Jerusalem; and among the
+three thousand over whom Peter and the rest rejoiced were some who had
+urged on and then witnessed His cruel death, and for whom His tender
+accents ascended to the Throne of God amid the final agony of His cross.
+
+Dear friend, are you "becoming conformed unto His death"?
+
+
+
+II.
+
+"_To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise_."
+
+
+"_He saved others-He saved others--Himself He cannot save!_" Amidst
+the din of discordant voices, this taunt sounded out clear and loud, and
+fell upon the ears of a dying thief. Perhaps, as so often happens now, the
+Devil over-reached himself even then, and the strange words made the poor
+criminal think. "_'Others'--'others'--He saves others--then why not
+me?_" Presently he answered the railing unbelief of his fellow-prisoner;
+and then, in the simple language of faith, said to the Saviour: "Lord,
+remember me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom."
+
+Jesus Christ's reply is one of the great landmarks of the Bible. It
+denotes the boundary line of the long ages of dimness and indefiniteness
+about two things--_assurance of salvation in this life, and certainty of
+immediate blessedness in the life to come_. "To-day shalt thou be with
+Me in Paradise!" There is nothing like it in all the Scriptures. It is as
+though great gates, long closed, were suddenly thrown wide open, and we
+saw before our eyes that some one passed in where none had ever trodden
+before. The whole freedom and glory of the Gospel is illustrated at one
+stroke. Here is the Salvation of The Salvation Army! To-day--without any
+ceremonies, baptisms, communions, confirmations, without the mediation of
+any priest or the intervention of any sacraments--such things would indeed
+have been only an impertinence there--to-day, "TO-DAY shalt thou be with
+ME." Indeed the gates are open wide at last!
+
+But the great lesson of the words lies rather in their revelation of
+_our Lord's instant accessibility to this poor felon_. His nearness
+of heart; His complete confidence in His own wonderful power to save; His
+readiness of response--for it may be said that He leaps to meet this first
+repentant soul--are all revealed to us. But it is the fact that, amid that
+awful conflict, His ear was open to another's cry--and such another!--
+which appeals most to my own heart. With those blessed words of hope and
+peace in my ears, how can I ever fear that one could be so vile, so far
+away, so nearly lost, as to cry in vain? Nay, Lord, it cannot be.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+"_Woman, behold thy son_."
+
+
+When Jesus had spoken these words to His mother, He addressed the disciple
+He had chosen, and indicated by a word that henceforth Mary was to be
+cared for as his own mother. Great as was the work He had in hand for the
+world, great as was His increasing agony, He remembered Mary. He knew the
+meaning of sorrow and loneliness, and He planned to afford His mother such
+future comfort and consolation as were for her good.
+
+This tender care for His own is a rebuke, for all time, to those who will
+work for others while those they love are left uncared for; left, alas! to
+perish in their sins. If regrets are possible in the Kingdom of Heaven,
+surely those regrets will be felt most keenly in the presence of divided
+families. And if anything can enhance the joys of the redeemed, surely it
+must be that they are "families in Heaven." Who can think, even now,
+without a thrill of unmixed delight, of the reunions of those who for long
+weary years were separated here? What, then, will it be--
+
+  When the child shall greet the mother,
+    And the mother greet the child;
+  When dear families are gathered
+    That were scattered on the wild!
+
+And what strength and joy it was to Mary. Looking forward to the coming
+victory, He knew that nothing could so possess her mother-heart with
+gratitude, and fill her soul with holy exultation as this--that He, the
+Sacrifice for sin, the Conqueror of Death, and the Redeemer of His people,
+was _her Son_. And so He makes it quite plain that He, the dying
+Saviour, was Mary's Son.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+"_It is finished_."
+
+
+There is a repose, a kind of majesty about this declaration which marks it
+out from all other human words. There is, perhaps, nothing about the death
+of Jesus which is in more striking contrast with death as men generally
+know it than is revealed in this one saying. We are so accustomed to
+regrets, to confessions that this and that are, alas! _unfinished_;
+to those sad recitals which so often conclude with the dirge-like refrain,
+"it might have been," that death stands forth in a new light when it is
+viewed as the end of a completed journey, and the conclusion of a finished
+task. This is exactly the aspect of it to which our Lord refers. His work
+was done.
+
+The suffering, also, was ended. Darkness had had its night of sore trial,
+and now the day was at hand. Trial and suffering do end. It is sometimes
+hard to believe it, but the end is already appointed from the beginning.
+It was so with the Saviour of the world; and at length the hour is come,
+and He raises His bruised and bleeding head for the last time, and cries
+in token of His triumph, "_It is finished_!"
+
+But is there not also here a suggestion of something more? _Up to that
+concluding hour it was always possible for Him to draw back._ "I lay
+down My life for the sheep," He had said; "no man taketh it from Me, but I
+lay it down of Myself." His was, in the very highest and widest sense of
+the word, a voluntary offering, a voluntary humiliation, a voluntary
+death. Up to the very last, therefore, He could have stepped down from the
+cross, going no further toward the dark abyss. But the moment came when
+this would be no longer possible; when, even for Him, the sacrifice would
+be irrevocable--when the possibility "to save Himself" was ended, and when
+He became for ever "the Lamb that was slain," bearing the marks of His
+wounds in His eternal body. When that moment passed, He might well say,
+"It is finished."
+
+Is there not something that should answer to this in the lives of many of
+His disciples? Is there not a point for us, also, at which we may pass
+over the line of uncertainty or reserve in our offering, saying for ever--
+it is finished? Is there not an appointed Calvary somewhere, at which we
+can settle the questions that have been so long unsettled, and, in the
+strength of God, at last declare that, as for controversy of any kind with
+Him, "it is finished"? Is there not at this very same cross of our dying
+Saviour a place where doubt and shame may perish together--crucified with
+Him, and finished for ever?
+
+This would be, indeed, a blessed conformity to His death.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+"_I thirst_."
+
+
+This is the first of the three words of Christ which relate specially to
+His own inner experiences, and which I have placed together for the
+purpose of this paper.
+
+"_I thirst_." They gave Him vinegar to drink--or, probably, in a
+moment of pity the soldiers brought Him the sour wine which they had
+provided for themselves. He seems to have partaken of it, although He had
+refused the mixture that had been before offered Him merely to deaden His
+pain. To bear that pain was the lofty duty set before Him, and so He would
+not turn aside from it one hair's breadth.
+
+But He humbled Himself to receive what was necessary from the very hands
+that had been crucifying Him. He, who could have so easily commanded a
+whole multitude of the heavenly host to appear for His succour, and to
+whose precious lips, parched in death, the princes of the eternal Kingdom
+would have so gladly hastened with a draught from celestial springs,
+condescended to ask the help of those who mocked Him, and to take the
+support He so sadly needed from His triumphant persecutors.
+
+Oh, you who are proud by nature, who are reserved by nature, who are
+sensitive in spirit, who feel every wrong done to you like a knife
+entering your breast, and who, when you forgive an injury, find it
+difficult to forget, and harder still to humble yourselves in any way to
+those who, you feel, have wronged you--here for you is a lesson, here for
+you is an example, a precious example, of the condescension of Love. Yes.
+to love those who seem to be against you, to love those in whom there
+always appears to you to be some difference of spirit or incompatibility
+of temperament, will mean, if you are made conformable unto your Master's
+death, that you will be able to receive at their hands services,
+kindnesses, pity, advice, which your own poor, fallen nature would,
+without divine grace, have scorned and spurned.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+"_My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?_"
+
+
+Here is a great mystery. No doubt, to the human nature of our Lord, it did
+appear as though the Father had forsaken Him, and that was the last bitter
+drop in the cup of His humiliation and anguish. If men only knew it, the
+realisation that God has left them will be the greatest agony of the
+sinner's doom. And here upon the cross, our Lord, undergoing the penalty
+of sins not His own has yet to experience fully the severance which sin
+makes between God and the human soul.
+
+But, even to many of those who love and serve God fully, there does come
+at times something which is very similar to this strange and dark
+experience of our Lord's. Before the final struggle in many great
+conflicts, those inward consolations on which so much seems to depend are
+often mysteriously withdrawn. Why it should be so we do not know; it is a
+mystery. Some loyal spirits have thought that God withdraws His
+consolations and His peace, that the soul may be more truly filled with
+His presence, thus substituting for divine consolation the "God of
+consolation," and for divine peace the "God of peace." In any case we have
+this comfort: it was so with our Master. Do not let the servant expect to
+be above his Lord.
+
+This terrible moment of seeming separation from the Father, and the dark
+cry which was wrung from our Saviour's broken heart, did not, however,
+make the final victory any the less. And, if you are one with Him, and
+have really set your heart on glorifying Him, and if you can only
+_endure_, such moments will not take from your victory one shred of
+its joy. Oh, then, _hold on to your cross_! hold on to your cross!
+even if it seems, as it sometimes may, that God Himself has forsaken you,
+and that you are left to suffer alone, without either the sympathy of
+those around you, or the conscious support of the indwelling God. _Hold
+on to your cross_. This is the way of Calvary--this is becoming
+conformable to the death of the Lord Jesus.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+"_Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit_."
+
+
+Here our Lord enters upon the extremity of His humiliation. Death must
+have been repulsive to Him. If the failure of heart and flesh, the cold
+sweat, the physical collapse, the last parting, the solitude and
+separation of the grave are all repelling and painful to us, _how much
+more to Him_!
+
+And, indeed, the picture which Christ presents to the outward eye in these
+last moments is unquestionably one of deep humiliation. The disordered
+garments--stained with blood and dirt, the distended limbs, the bleeding
+wound in His side, the face smeared with bloody sweat and dust, the torn
+brow and hair, and the swollen features, must have combined with all the
+horrible surroundings to make one of the most gruesome sights that ever
+man saw. And it was at this moment, _in His extremity_, that He says:
+"Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." "Father, I have done all
+that I can do; now I leave Myself and the rest to Thee."
+
+Here is a beautiful message--the great message about Death. This is, in
+fact, the one way to meet the shivering spectre with peace and joy.
+
+But the great lesson of this last word from the cross of Jesus is the
+lesson of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob: _that faith in the Father is
+the inner strength and secret of all true service_. It was, in a very
+wonderful and real sense, by _faith_ that He wrought His wonders, by
+faith He suffered, by faith He prayed for His murderers, by faith He died,
+by faith He made His atonement for the sins of the world. The faith that
+not one iota of the Father's will could fail of its purpose.
+
+Oh, dear comrade and friend, here is the crowning lesson of His life and
+death alike--"_Have faith in God_." Will you learn of Him? In
+_your_ extremity of grief or sorrow--if you are called to sorrow--
+will you not trust Him, and say, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my
+bereaved and bleeding heart"? In your extremity of poverty--if you are
+called to poverty--Oh, cry out to Him, "Father, into Thy hands I commend
+my home, my dear ones." In your extremity of shame and humiliation--
+arising, maybe, from the injustice or neglect of others--let your heart
+say in humble faith, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my reputation, my
+honour, my all." In your extremity of weakness and pain--if you are called
+to suffer weakness or pain--cry out in faith, "Father, into Thy hands I
+commend this my poor worn and weary frame." In your extremity of
+loneliness and heart-separation from all you love for Christ's sake, if
+that be the path you tread, will you not say to your Lord, "Father, into
+Thy hands I commend my future, my life; lead Thou me on."
+
+Yes, depend upon it, _faith is the great lesson of the cross_. By
+faith the world was made; by faith the world was redeemed. If we are truly
+conformed to His death, we also must go forward in faith with the great
+work of bringing that redemption home to the hearts of men; and all we aim
+at, all we do, all we suffer, must be sought for, done, and suffered in
+that personal, simple faith in our Father and God which Jesus manifested
+on His cross, in that hour when all human aid failed Him, and when He
+cried in the language of a little child, "_Father, into Thy hands I
+commend My spirit_."
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+The Resurrection and Sin.
+
+
+
+    "_Concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was . . . declared
+     to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness,
+     by the resurrection from the dead_."--Romans i. 3, 4.
+
+Just as one of the great proofs, if not the great proof, of the truth of
+Christianity is the vast fact of the world's need for it, so one grand
+proof of the Resurrection lies in the fact that no interpretation of
+Christ's teaching or Christ's life would be worth a brass farthing--so far
+as the actual life of suffering man is concerned--without His Death and
+Resurrection. That teaching might be illuminating--convincing--exalting;
+yes, even morally perfect; and yet, if He did not die, it would be little
+more than a superior book of proverbs or a collection of highly-polished
+copy-book maxims. That life--that wonderful life--might be the supremest
+example of all that is or could be good and great and lovely in human
+experience; and yet, if He did not rise again from the tomb, it would,
+after all, be only a dead thing--like a splendid specimen of carved marble
+in some grand museum, exquisite to look upon, and of priceless value, but
+cold and cheerless, lifeless and dead.
+
+For it is a Living Person men need to be their Friend and Saviour and
+Guide. The splendid statue might possibly invite or challenge us to
+imitate it, but it could never call a human heart to love its stony
+features. Noble and pure as Jesus Christ's example undoubtedly was, it
+could of itself never satisfy a human soul or inspire poor, broken, human
+hearts with hope and love, or wash away from human consciousness the
+stains of sin. These things can only be done by a Living Person. So it is
+that we are not told to believe on His teaching or on His Church, but on
+_Him_. He did not say "Follow My methods or My disciples," but
+"_Follow_ ME." If He be not risen from the dead, and alive for
+evermore; if, in short, it be a dead man we are to follow and on whom we
+are to believe--then we are, indeed, as Paul says, "of all men the most
+miserable."
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+But it is the life of Jesus, and the evidence of that life, in us that are
+really all-important. _No extent of worldly wisdom or historical
+testimony can finally establish for us the fact and power of Christ's
+Resurrection, unless we have proof in ourselves of His presence there as a
+Living Spirit_. With St. Paul, we must "know Him, and the power of His
+resurrection." That is the grand knowledge. That is the crown of all
+knowledge. That is the knowledge which places those who have received it
+beyond the freaks and fancies of human wisdom or human folly. That is the
+knowledge which cleanses the heart, destroys the strength of evil, and
+brings in that true righteousness which is the power to do right. That is
+the greatest proof of the Resurrection.
+
+No books, not even the Bible itself; no testimony, not even the testimony
+of those who were present on that first Easter Day, can be so good as
+this, the experimental proof. It is the most fitting and grateful, and
+adapts itself to every type of human experience. _And it is beyond
+contradiction_! What avail is it to contradict those who can answer,
+"Hereby we know that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given
+us of His Spirit"? It is even beyond argument! For of what advantage can
+it be to argue with a man that he is still blind, when he tells you that
+his eyes have been opened, and when he declares, "Whereas I _was_
+blind, NOW I SEE"?
+
+To us Salvationists, the hope of the world, and the strength of our hard
+and long struggle for the souls of men, centre in this glorious truth. He
+is risen, and is alive for evermore; and because He lives we live also'
+All around us are the valleys of death, filled with bones--very many and
+very dry. Love lies there, dead. Hope is dead. Faith is dead. Honour is
+dead. Truth is dead. Purity is dead. Liberty is dead. Humility is dead.
+Fidelity is dead. Decency is dead. It is the blight of humanity. Death--
+moral and spiritual death in all her hideous and ghastly power--reigns
+around us. Men are indeed dead--"dead in trespasses and sins." What do we
+need? What is the secret longing of our hearts? What is the crying agony
+of our prayers? Is it for any human thing we seek? No. God knows--a
+thousand times, no! We have but one hope or desire, and that is "life from
+the dead." We want life, the risen life--life more abundant--life Divine,
+amid these deep, dark noisome valleys of the dead.
+
+Here, then, is our hope. He rose again, and ascended up on high, and
+received gifts for men. This is the hope which keeps us going on; this is
+the invisible spring from which our weary spirits draw the elixir of an
+invincible courage--Christ, the risen Christ, who has come to raise the
+dead! "You _hath_ He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins."
+Hallelujah!
+
+"Dead in sins!" Jesus never made light of sin. He used no disguise when He
+talked of it, no equivocal terms, no softening words. There is no single
+suggestion in all His discourses or conversations that He thought it
+merely a disease, or a derangement, or a misfortune, or anything of that
+kind, or that He deemed it anything but a ruinous and deadly rebellion
+against God--the great disaster of the world, and the most awful,
+dangerous, and far-reaching precursor of suffering in the whole existence
+of the universe. He said it was bad, bad all through--in form, in
+expression, in purpose; above all, in spirit and desire. That there was no
+remedy for it but His remedy. No rains in all the heavens to wash it, no
+waters in all the seas to cleanse it away, no fires in Hell itself to
+purge its defilement. The only hope was in the blood of His sacrifice. And
+so He came to shed it, to save the people from their sins.
+
+That is our hope. We are of those who see something of the fruits of sin,
+and to whom it is no matter for the chastened lights of the literary
+drawing-room. We know--some of us--how deep the roots of pollution can
+strike into human character by our own scorched and blistered histories;
+and we know by our observation into what deeps of black defilement men can
+plunge. The charnel houses of iniquity must ever be the workshops of the
+Salvationist. There we see of the havoc, the cruelty, the debauchment, the
+paralysis, the leprosy, the infernal fascination of sin. And we know there
+is only one hope--the Lamb that was slain, and rose again from the dead,
+and ever liveth for our salvation.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The only really satisfactory test of any faith, or system of faiths, lies
+in its treatment of sin. Human consciousness in all ages, and in all
+conditions of development, bears witness to the fact of sin with universal
+and overwhelming conviction. Men cannot prevent the discomfort of
+self-accusation which ever follows wrong-doing. They cannot escape from the
+bitter which always lies hidden in the sweet. They cannot forget the
+things they wish to forget. Even when they are a law unto themselves, they
+are compelled to judge themselves by that law. It is as though some
+unerring necessity is laid upon every individual of the race to sit in
+judgment upon his own conduct, and to pass sentence upon himself. He is
+compelled to speak to his own soul of things about which he would rather
+be silent, and to listen to that which he does not wish to hear.
+
+The proof that this is so is open, manifest, and indisputable. Human
+experience in the simplest and widest sense of the word attests it. It
+stands unquestioned amid floods of questions on every other conceivable
+subject. No system of philosophy, no school of scientific thought, no
+revelation from the heavens above or the earth beneath can really weaken
+it. It is not found in books, or received by human contact, or influenced
+by human example. It is revealed in every man. It is felt by all men. They
+do not learn it, or deduce it, or believe it merely. They know it. All men
+do. You do. I do.
+
+Many things contribute to this simple and yet supremely wonderful and
+awful fact of human experience. One of them is the faculty of thought. Man
+is made a thinking creature, and think he must; and if he thinks, he must,
+above all, think about himself, about his future, his present, his past. A
+great French writer--and not a Christian writer--says on this subject:
+"There is a spectacle grander than the ocean, and that is the conscience.
+After many conflicts, man yields to that mysterious power which says to
+him, 'Think.' One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea
+than the sea from returning to a shore. With the sailor this is called
+'the tide.' With the guilty it is called 'remorse.' God, by a universal
+law, upheaves the soul as well as the ocean."
+
+And side by side with this thinking faculty, there is the further fact,
+that God will not leave men alone. On those unerring and resistless tides
+He sends into the human soul His messages. He visits them. He arouses
+them. He compels their attention. In His providence, by acts of mercy and
+of judgment--by sorrow and loss--by stricken days and bitter nights, He
+makes them remember their sin. All the weapons in His armoury, and all the
+wisdom of His nature are employed to bring men to a sense of guilt--to
+prick them to the heart--in order to lead them to recognise and to confess
+and to turn away from sin. If, therefore, man by any invention had found
+out a way by which he could escape from the consciousness of evil without
+putting it away, God would not let him go.
+
+Clearly, then, the initial proof of success in religion must be that
+religion can deal satisfactorily with the conscious guilt of sin. To this
+high test, all theories, all pretences, all promises must come at last.
+What are they in their actual effect on the memories and consciences of
+men in relation to their sin? How do they treat with guilt? How do they
+meet remorse? Can they silence the clamours of the night? Can they give
+peace when it is too late to undo what sin has done? Do they suffice amid
+the deepening shadows of the death chamber--the place where ever and anon
+the forgotten past comes forth to demand the satisfaction so long delayed?
+
+But these, after all, are only the fruits--some of the fruits of sin. What
+of the thing itself? That is the sternest test of all. The mere
+condemnation of sin, no matter how fully it harmonises with our sense of
+what ought to be, does not satisfy man. The excusing of sin is no better;
+it leaves the sinner who loves his sin, a sinner who loves it still. If
+excuses could silence conscience, or set free from the bondage of hate or
+passion, how many of the slaves of both would soon be at liberty!
+
+The re-naming of evil which has often been attempted during the last two
+or three thousand years, and again in quite recent days, has little or no
+effect either upon its nature or upon those who are under its mastery. The
+new label does not change the poison. Its victim is a victim still. Nor
+does the punishment of sin entirely dispose of it, either in the sufferer,
+or in the consciousness of the onlooker. No doubt the discovery and
+punishment of sin do give men a certain degree of satisfaction, but at
+best it is only a _relief_, when what they need, and what they see
+their fellows need, is a _remedy_. Sending a fever patient to
+hospital is a poor expedient unless we cure the disease. Sending a thief
+to prison is a poor affair if he remains a thief. It is not in reality a
+victory over thieving; it is, in fact, a defeat.
+
+Yes--it is a cure we need. And we know it. A cure which is not merely a
+remedy for the grosser forms which evil takes in men's lives, and their
+terrible consequences, but a cure of the hidden and secret humours from
+which they spring. The deceitfulness of the human heart. The thoughts and
+intents which colour all men do. The lusts and desires, the loves and
+hates from which conduct springs. The selfishness and rebellion which
+drive men on to the rocks.
+
+The real question for us then is, Can our religion--does our religion,
+when tried by the test of human experience--afford any remedy for these?
+Unless it does, man can no more be satisfied or be set free by
+condemnations, or excusings, or re-christenings, or punishments of sin,
+than the slave can be contented with discussions about his owner's
+mistakes or emancipated by new contrivances for painting his chains!
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+But what is this sin, the consciousness of which is thus forced upon all
+--this determined, persistent, active evil? It is not the mere absence
+of good-a negative gain--but it is the love of, and the actual striving
+after that which is flatly condemned by God, and is in open rebellion
+against Him. The centreing of the corrupt heart upon its own corruption.
+Opposition to the pure will of God. Pride, falseness, unscrupulous
+ambition. Self-seeking, regardless of the means by which its object is
+obtained. Luxury, effeminacy, and sensuality. The lusts and fleshly
+passions. Malice, cruelty, and envy. The greed of gain. The love and
+thraldom of the world. There it is--the running sore of a suffering
+race. The outflow of the carnal mind, which is not subject to the law of
+God, neither indeed can be. There is no getting away from it. "Against
+this immovable barrier--the existence of sin--the waves of philosophy have
+dashed themselves unceasingly since the birth of human thought, and have
+retired broken and powerless, without displacing the minutest fragment of
+the stubborn rock, without softening one feature of its dark, rugged
+surface."
+
+And the worst of all is that sin is a wrong against God. _Man sins, of
+course, against himself._ That is written large on human affairs, so
+that no fool, however great a fool, may miss it. Well may the prophet say,
+"O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself!" Men mix the hemlock for
+themselves! The sinner is a moral suicide!
+
+_Man sins against his fellow._ Nothing is more evident to us than
+that men tempt and corrupt one another. They hold one another back from
+righteousness. They break down virtue, and extinguish faith, and silence
+conscience in their neighbours. They act as decoys and trappers for each
+other's souls. They play the Devil's cat's-paws, and procure for him the
+rum of their fellows, which could not be compassed without their aid. In
+short, the sinner is a moral murderer!
+
+But, after all--and it is a hideous all--_the crowning wrong, and the
+crowning misery, is that sin is sin against God_.
+
+Unless the Bible be a myth, and the prophets a disagreeable fraud, and the
+whole lesson of Jesus Christ's life and death an illusion, God is deeply
+concerned with man. That concern extends to man's whole nature, his whole
+existence, his whole environment; and most of all it is manifest with
+regard to his sin. God puts Himself forward in the whole history of His
+dealings with men as an intimate, responsible, and observing Party in the
+presence of wrong-doing. He watches. He sees. He knows. He will consider.
+He will remember or He will forget. He will in no wise acquit the guilty,
+or He will pardon. Justice and vengeance are His, and so is forgiveness.
+He will weigh in the balances. He will testify against the evil-doer, or
+He will make an atonement for him. He will cut off and destroy, or He will
+have mercy. He will repay, or He will blot out.
+
+From beginning to end of Revelation--and there is something in the human
+soul which strangely responds to Revelation in this matter--we have a
+sense, a spiritual instinct, of the truth which Job set forth, "_If I
+sin, then Thou markest me, and Thou will not acquit me from mine
+iniquity_," which is confirmed by Jeremiah, "Though thou wash thee with
+nitre and take thee much soap, _yet thine iniquity is marked before Me,
+saith the Lord God_;" and which is insisted upon by the Apostle when he
+writes, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every
+one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath
+done, whether it be good or bad."
+
+Yes, it is against the Lord God men have sinned, and to Him they are
+accountable. And they know it. Here again is something which does not come
+by observation or instruction, but by an inward sense which can neither be
+mistaken nor long denied. Sooner or later, men are compelled to
+acknowledge God, and to acknowledge that they have sinned against Him. As
+with David, when he cried out, "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned,
+and done this evil in Thy sight"--so to every man comes at last the
+awakening. We see, as David saw, that whomsoever else we have wronged,
+_God_ is most wronged; whomsoever else we may have injured, the great
+evil is that we have broken _His_ law and violated _His_ will.
+
+In the light of that experience, sin becomes instantly a terrible and
+bitter thing. The fact that sinners can win the approval of men, the
+honour of success; that they can hide iniquity; that they can for a time
+escape from punishment, makes no difference when God appears upon the
+scene. Evil starts up for judgment. Memory marshals the ranks of
+transgression. Retribution seems the only right thing to look for.
+Punishment appears to be so deserved that nothing else can be possible. In
+their own eyes they are guilty. Guilt is branded upon them.
+
+It is from this realisation of having offended God that there spring the
+dark forebodings of punishment. Men may dread it, and be willing to make
+superhuman sacrifices to escape it, but they expect it all the same. Thus
+in all ages men have cried out less for pardon and release from penalty
+than for deliverance from the guilt and domination of evil. Their language
+by a universal instinct has been like David's: "Have mercy upon me, O God,
+according to Thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of Thy
+tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine
+iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions:
+and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned."
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+"Salvation Is of the Lord"
+
+
+    "_Salvation is of the Lord_."--Jonah ii. 9.
+
+    "_Work out your own salvation_."--Phil. ii. 12.
+
+Salvation is of the Lord, or not at all. It is a touch; a revelation; an
+inspiration; the life of God in the soul. It is not of man only, nor of
+that greatest of human forces--the will of man, but of God and the will of
+God. It is not mere will-work, a sort of "self-raising" power--it is a
+redemption brought home by a personal Redeemer; made visible, tangible,
+knowable to the soul redeemed in a definite transaction with the Lord. It
+brings forth its own fruits, carries with it the assurance of its own
+accomplishment, and is its own reward. It is impossible to declare too
+often or too plainly that Salvation is of the Lord.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+And yet, around us on every side are those who are relying upon something
+short of this new life. They have set up a sort of human virtue in the
+place of the God-life. They are slowly mastering their disordered
+passions. The base instigations of their lower nature are being thwarted.
+Greedy appetites which reign in others are in them compelled to serve.
+Tendencies to cunning and falsehood, the fruits of which are only too
+apparent in the world at large, they watch and harass and pinch.
+Animosities, and jealousies, and envies--those enemies of all kinds of
+peace--are repressed, if not controlled.
+
+And these followers of virtue go further than this. They aim at building
+up a character which can be called noble, or at least virtuous. And some
+succeed--or appear to themselves to do so. They cultivate truth. Honesty
+is with them, whether as to their business or their social life, the best
+policy. They are just. They are temperate. By nature and by training they
+are kind and generous; so much so that it is as difficult to convict them
+of an unkindly act as it is easy to prove them more generous and liberal
+than many of the professed followers of Jesus. Often they are charitable,
+giving of their substance to the poor; not hard to please, considerate of
+their inferiors, patient with one another; in a very high sense they have
+true charity. And after long periods of struggle, and lofty and faithful
+effort, they may be able to claim that they have developed a fine
+character; that by self-cultivation, and perhaps by a kind of
+self-redemption, they have produced a very beautiful and desirable being!
+
+I will not stay to inquire how far heart conceit and heart deceit may
+account for much of this, or to suggest that a great contrast may exist
+between the outer life and the unseen deeps within. I will admit for the
+moment that all is as stated, and even more. What, then? With much of
+grace and beauty, it may be; trained and tutored in the ways of humility
+and virtue; able to live in the constant and kindly service of others, and
+devoted to truth and duty--with all these excellencies they may yet be
+dead while they live. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that
+which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Generous, lovable, dutiful,
+honourable flesh, but only flesh. A chaste, and, if you like to have it
+so, a useful life, but LIFELESS. A fine product of a lifetime of labour in
+the culture of the physical, intellectual, and moral powers, but, after
+all--DEAD. For "_He that believeth not on the Son of God hath not
+life_."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+In this view the body, and in a larger degree the mind, becomes a
+sepulchre for the soul. All the attention given to education, to
+refinement and culture, to the develop ment of gifts--for instance, such
+as music or inventive science--to the practice of self-restraint and the
+pursuit of morality, is so much attention to the casket that will perish,
+to the neglect of the eternal jewel that is enclosed. It may be possible
+to present a kindly, honest, law-abiding, agreeable life to our
+neighbours; to go through business and family life without rinding
+anything of great moment with which to condemn ourselves; to be thought,
+even by those nearest to us, to be living up to a high standard of
+morality, and yet--for all this has to do with the casket only--to be dead
+all the while in trespasses and sins.
+
+The young man who should spend his fortune upon his tomb would be scarcely
+so great a fool as he who spends his life on those things in himself which
+are temporal, to the neglect of those which are eternal. Only think of the
+absurdity of devoting the splendid energy of youth and manhood, the grand
+force of will, the skill of genius, and the other gifts which commonly men
+apply to their own advancement and success, to the adornment, enriching,
+and extension of one's _grave_!
+
+And yet this is very much the case of those of whom I am thinking. All
+their advances, whether in moral attainment, in personal achievement, or
+in worldly advantage, are, at the best, but enlargements and adornments of
+a tomb, and of a tomb destined itself to perish!
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+Do I, then, discourage good works? Has man no part to play in his own
+deliverance? Is he, after all, only an animal--the mere creature of
+circumstance and natural law? Have I forgotten that "faith without works
+is dead"? No, I think not. I have but remembered that _works without
+faith are dead also_. The one extreme is as dangerous as the other. The
+legal, mechanical observance of the rules of a right life, apart from a
+living faith in Christ, can no more renew the heart in holiness and
+righteousness, than can a mere intellectual belief of certain facts about
+Christ, apart from working out His will, save the soul, or make it meet
+for the inheritance of the saints. In both cases the verdict will be the
+same. The faith in the one is "_dead_"; the works in the other are
+also "_dead_."
+
+The fact is, Salvation is a two-fold work. It is of God--it is of man. Did
+God not will man's Salvation he could not be saved. Unless man will his
+own Salvation he cannot be saved. God is free. Man also is free. He may
+set up a plan for saving himself; but, no matter how perfect, it will fail
+unless it have God for its centre. And God, though He has devised the most
+infinitely complete and beautiful and costly scheme of redemption for man,
+will none the less fail unless the individual man wills to co-operate with
+Him. Man is not a piece of clay which God can fashion as He likes. He is
+not even a harp out of which He can get what strains He will without
+regard to its strings. There is in man something--a force--an energy--
+which must act in union with God, and with which God must act in wonderful
+partnership, if His will is to be accomplished.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+It is true, of course, that God does much for a man without his aid. I do
+not now refer to material blessings. He it is who gives us "life, and
+breath, and all things"--and gives them largely without our effort. But
+even in man God does much without his help. He calls. He stirs up
+conscience. He gives flashes of light to the most darkened heart. He
+softens by the hand of sorrow, and rebukes with the stripes of affliction.
+Memory, human affection, hope, ambition, are all made means by the Holy
+Ghost to urge men to holiness. The ministry of goodness in others is so
+directed as to point multitudes to the way of the Cross. But this will not
+provide the one thing needful. Instruction, clear views of the truth,
+belief in the facts of God's love and grace, admiration of Salvation in
+other lives, even the desire to declare the Gospel, may all be present,
+and yet the soul be--DEAD--dead in trespasses and sins--cursed, bound, and
+corrupted by dead works. Just as the noblest and highest efforts of man
+towards his own Salvation, _without the co-operating, life-giving work
+of God_, can result only in confusion and death; so the most powerful,
+gracious, long-suffering and tender yearnings and work of God for man's
+Salvation, _without the co-operating will of man_, can result only in
+distress, disappointment, and death.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+Are _you_ dead? Are _you_ in either of these classes? Are you
+relying on God's mercy; waiting for some strange visitation from on high;
+depending with a faith which is merely of the mind upon some past work of
+Christ; but without the vital power of His mighty life in you? Filled with
+desires that are not realised; offering prayers that are not answered;
+striving at times to work out a law of goodness which you feel all the
+time is an impossibility for you? Living, so to speak, out of your
+element--like a fish out of water? That is DEATH.
+
+Or are you, on the other hand, depending for Salvation on your own labour
+to build up a good character, and to live a decent, honourable, and honest
+life? Conscious of advance, but not of victory? The servant of a high
+ideal, but without _liberty_? The devotee of your own self? All the
+powers and qualities of your nature growing towards maturity, _except
+the powers of your soul_? The casket--as life goes on--growing more and
+more adorned, while the eternal spirit, the priceless jewel made to
+receive the likeness of God and enjoy Him for ever, seems ever of less and
+less worth to you? That also is DEATH.
+
+The man who is in either class is dead while he lives. He is a walking
+mortuary.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+Self-Denial.
+
+
+
+    "_If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up
+     his cross, and follow Me_."--Matt. xvi. 24.
+
+It is a striking thought that self-denial is, perhaps, the only service
+that a man can render to God without the aid or co-operation of something
+or some one outside himself. No matter what he does--unless it be to
+_pray_, which would hardly be included in the idea of _service_
+--he is more or less dependent upon either the assistance or presence of
+others. If, for example, he speaks or sings for God, whether in public or
+in private, he must have hearers; if he writes, it is that he may have
+readers; if he teaches, he needs scholars; if he distributes gifts, there
+must be receivers of his charity; if he leads souls to Christ, these souls
+must be willing to come; if he suffers persecution, there must be
+persecutors; or if, like Stephen, he is called to die for his Lord, there
+must be those who stone him, and others who stand by consenting to his
+death.
+
+A few moments' consideration will, I think, also show, that even in the
+sphere of our personal spiritual experience, it is very much the same. We
+can, after all, do but little for ourselves. Salvation comes to men
+through human instrumentality, and seldom apart from it. We are, I know,
+saved by faith; but how shall we believe unless we hear? and how shall we
+hear without a preacher? That instruction on the things of God, which is a
+necessity for every true child of God, comes almost invariably by the
+agency or through the experiences of others.
+
+The joys and consolation of fellowship can only be the result of communion
+with the saints. In spiritual things, as in ordinary affairs, it is the
+countenance of his friend which quickens and brightens the tired toiler as
+"iron sharpeneth iron." And though it is true that God can, and often
+does, wonderfully teach and inspire His people without the direct aid of
+any human agent, it is equally true that He generally does so by the
+employment of His word, which He has revealed to men, or by the recalling
+of some message which has already been received into the mind and heart.
+
+Nor does this in the least detract from our absolute dependence upon Him.
+The man who crosses the Atlantic in a steamship is no less dependent on
+the sea because he employs the vessel for his journey. We are no less
+dependent upon the earth for our sustenance because we only partake of the
+wheat after it has been ground into flour and made into bread. And so, we
+are no less dependent upon God because He has been pleased to employ
+various humble and simple instruments to save, and teach, and guide us.
+After full allowance has been made for the power and influence of
+intervening agencies, it is in Him we really live, and move, and have our
+being.
+
+But I return to my first word. There is one kind of service open to all,
+irrespective of circumstances and gifts, which can be rendered to God
+without the intervention of anyone. And this we may truly call
+self-denial. Much that quite properly comes under that description need
+never--probably will never--be known to anyone but God. It may be a holy
+sacrament indeed, kept between the soul and its Lord alone.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+_There is the Denial of all that remains of Evil in us._
+
+
+How many sincere souls, when they look into their own hearts, find, to
+their horror, evil in them where they least expected it; find them part
+stone, when they should be all flesh; find them bound to earth and the
+love of earthly things, when they should be free from the world and the
+love of the world; find them occupied, alas! so often with idols and
+heart-lusts, when God alone ought to rule and reign. Here is a sphere for
+self-denial. Here is a service to be rendered to God, which will be very
+acceptable to Him, and which you alone can perform.
+
+And if you would thus deny yourself, then examine yourself. Study the
+evils of your own nature. Recognise sin. Call it by its right name when
+you speak of it in the solitude of your own heart. If there are the
+remains of the deadly poison in you, say so to God, and keep on saying so
+with a holy importunity. "Confess your sins." Attack them as the farmer
+attacks the poison-plant amongst his crops, or the worms and flies which
+will blight his harvest, and which, unless he can ruin them, he knows full
+well will ruin him. That is the "_perfect self-denial_"--to cut off
+the right hand, and to pluck out and cast away what is dear as the right
+eye, if it offend against the law of purity and truth and love.
+
+_But you yourself are to do it_. Do not say you cannot, for you alone
+can. If you would be His disciple--His holy, loving, pure, worthy
+disciple--you must deny _yourself_. Cry to Him for help as much as
+you will--you cannot cry too often or too long--but you must do more than
+that: you must arise, and deny your own selfish nature; pinch, and harass,
+and refuse your own inward sins, and expose them to the light of God.
+Confess them without ceasing, mortify them without mercy, and slay them,
+and give no quarter. Say, and say in earnest:--
+
+  Oh, how I hate these lusts of mine
+    That crucified my God!--
+   These sins that pierced and nailed His flesh
+    Fast to the fatal wood.
+
+  Yes, my Redeemer, they shall die--
+    My soul has so decreed;
+  I will not longer spare the things
+    That made my Saviour bleed.
+
+  Whilst with a melting, broken heart,
+    My murdered Lord I view,
+  I'll raise revenge against my sins,
+    And slay the murderers too.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+_There are Denials of the Will_.
+
+
+Human nature is a collection of likes and dislikes. The great mass of men
+are governed by their preferences. What they like, they strive after; what
+they do not like, they neglect, or refuse, or resist. Many of these
+preferences, though not harmful in themselves, lead continually to that
+subjection of the will to self-interest, and help that self-satisfaction
+and self-love which are the deadly enemies of the soul. Now, true
+self-denial is the denial, for Christ's sake and the sake of souls, of
+these preferences. To say to God: "I sacrifice my way for Thy way--my wish
+for Thy wish--my will for Thy will--my plan for Thy plan--my life for Thy
+life"--this is self-denial.
+
+Nothing can be more acceptable to a good father's heart than the knowledge
+that his son, living and labouring far away from him amid difficulties and
+opposition, is courageously sacrificing his own preferences, and
+faithfully seeking to carry out his, the father's, will. In such a son
+that father sees a reproduction of all that is strongest and best in his
+own nature. And so it is with the Heavenly Father. No greater joy can be
+His than to see the resolute surrender of His children's own will to His,
+and the daily denial of their hopes and plans for themselves and theirs in
+favour of His plans.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+_There are Denials of the Affections_.
+
+  The precious things of earth--
+    The mother's tender care,
+    The father's faith and prayer--
+  From Thee have birth.
+
+And, just because love is of such high origin, and is the greatest power
+in human life, it is often captured and held by the Devil as his last
+stronghold against God. The heart is at once the strongest and the most
+sensitive part of our nature; and it is here, therefore, that we often
+find the most blessed and profitable opportunities for self-denial.
+
+That pleasant companionship, so grateful, so fruitful of joy, and yet so
+likely to tempt me from the path of faithful service, "Lord, I deny myself
+of it." That mastering affection for wife, or husband, or children--so
+beautiful in its strength and simplicity, and yet so exacting in its
+claims--"Lord, I deny myself of the abandonment to which it invites me; I
+put it in its proper place, second to Thee, and to the work Thou hast
+given me to do." That love of home, and friends, and circle, which is so
+powerful a factor in life, and enters so constantly into all the
+arrangements and details of our conduct, influencing so largely all real
+plans for doing God's work--"Lord, I will deny it, when it is in danger of
+lessening my labours for Thee and Thy Kingdom." The pleasant hour, the
+quiet evening, the restful book, "I will lay them at Thy feet, for Thy
+sake, when they hinder me doing Thy will. It is between me and Thee alone;
+it is the sacrifice of love."
+
+How precious it must be to God to see such self-denial! When the true
+lover sees the woman he has chosen leaving all for his sake, calmly laying
+down the love of father and family, and even braving the rebuffs and
+unkindness of those from whom before she has known nothing but affection,
+in order that she may give him her whole heart and life, how strong become
+the cords which bind him to her! Every sacrifice she makes for his sake
+forges another bond which will not easily be broken. And is the Lord a
+man, that He should be behind us in loving with an everlasting love those
+who thus give up and deny their own loves for Him? No! a thousand times
+no! He will repay. Every self-denial is a seedling rich with future joys.
+For it is indeed true that "He that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the
+Spirit reap life everlasting. He that overcometh shall inherit all things,
+and I will give him the morning star."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+_There are Denials with reference to our Gifts_.
+
+
+"Look not," says the Apostle, "every man on his own things, but every man
+also on the things of others." That is, even in the exercise of his
+choicest gifts and graces, let a man forget his own in his desire to
+employ and bring forward the gifts of others. "Let nothing be done through
+strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better
+than themselves." That is, in your own mind take a humble view of
+yourself, your own powers, and your own worthiness, and hold your comrades
+in higher esteem than you hold yourself, in honour preferring one another
+to yourself. _That would be a very real self-denial to some people!_
+
+"Recompense to no man evil for evil," though you know he well deserves it;
+"Avenge not yourselves." "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst,
+give him drink." "Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them
+that weep." That is, deny yourself of your own joys, that you may enter
+into the sorrow of others; and lay aside your own sorrows and tears, and
+silence your own breaking heart, when you can help others by entering with
+joy into their joys.
+
+You will see, beloved, that all this is work which _no one can do for
+you_, and that it is in a very true sense high service to God as well
+as to man.
+
+How, then, is it with you?
+
+Are you a self-denying disciple? If not, beware, lest it should shortly
+appear that you are not a disciple at all.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+In Unexpected Places.
+
+
+
+    "_And . . . while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus Himself
+     drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they
+     should not know Him_."--Luke xxiv. 15, 16.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+_The Knife-grinder_.
+
+
+The only person in the house, except the man and his wife, was a young
+domestic servant, a Soldier of The Salvation Army. Her employers were
+generally drinking when they were not asleep, and the drinking led to the
+most dreadful quarrelling. Disgusting orgies of one kind or another were
+of almost daily occurrence, and such, visitors as came to the house only
+added fuel to the fiery furnace of passion and frenzy through which the
+girl was called to walk.
+
+Since that happy Sunday afternoon two years ago, when she gave herself to
+God in the wholesome village from which she came, the meetings and the
+opportunity, given her by The Army, of doing some work for other souls had
+been a bright light in her life. Little by little religion had come to
+have for her something of the same meaning it had for St. Paul: though I
+fear she knew very little of St. Paul, or of the great and wise things he
+wrote--domestic service is seldom favourable to the study of the
+Scriptures. But the same spirit which led the great Apostle to confer not
+with flesh and blood, and which took him into Arabia before he went to
+Jerusalem, was leading this quiet, country maiden to see that to be a
+follower of Christ means something more than to win a fleeting happiness
+in this life and a kind of pension in the next. She was beginning to
+understand that to be really Christ's means also to be a Christ; that to
+be His, one must seek for the lost sheep for whom He died. And so Rhoda--I
+call her Rhoda, though that was not her name--when she found to what sort
+of people she had, in her ignorance of the great city, engaged herself,
+had set to work to seek their salvation.
+
+Many very good people would probably think that she would have been a
+wiser girl to have gone elsewhere--that the risks of such a position were
+very great, and so on. No doubt; but the light of a great truth was rising
+in Rhoda's heart and mind. She perceived in her very danger an opportunity
+to prove her love for her Saviour by risking something for the souls of
+those two besotted creatures, for whom she dared to think He really died.
+
+And so, day after day, she toiled for them: night after night she prayed
+for them. And in her sober moments the wreck of a woman, her mistress,
+wept aloud in her slobbering way, and talked of the days long, long ago,
+when she, too, believed in the things that are good.
+
+The first flush of novelty in the sense of doing an unselfish thing for
+God wore away, and presently Rhoda's real trial began. The drinking and
+fighting grew worse, and the difficulty of getting out to a meeting grew
+greater. Gradually the weary body robbed the struggling soul of its time
+to pray; and, worst of all, by slow degrees Rhoda's faith was shaken, for
+her prayers, her agonising prayers, on behalf of those dark souls were
+only too manifestly not answered. Was it worth while, after all, troubling
+about sinners? Was it her affair? Why should she care? Of what use could
+it be to become an Officer, in order to seek the many, if God did not
+hearken to her cry for the few?
+
+One day the Captain of the Corps to which Rhoda belonged called, and
+seemed grieved with her for neglecting the meetings. This was a heavy
+blow. She could not or would not explain, and when that night, in the
+midst of a drunken brawl, her master struck her in the face, heart and
+flesh both failed, and she determined to say no more about salvation, and
+to abandon all profession of religion.
+
+That night seemed long and dark, and when at last sleep came, the pillow
+was wet with tears of anguish, of anger, and of pride.
+
+"Scissors to mend! to mend! to mend!" The monotonous calls of London
+hawkers are a strange mixture of sounds--at one moment attractive, at
+another repelling; they are, perhaps, more like the cry of a bird in
+distress than anything else.
+
+Rhoda looked at her wood-chopper as the knife-grinder came nearer to the
+house, and as he passed beckoned him, and gave it to him. She made no
+remark. He was rough and grimy, and his torn coat gave him an appearance
+of misery, which his face rather belied. She was miserable enough, and
+made no reply to his cheery "Good morning!"
+
+Presently the axe was sharpened, and the man brought it to the door. She
+paid him.
+
+"Thank you," he said. And then, with kindly abruptness--"Excuse me, but I
+see you have been crying. Do you ever pray?" And, after a silence, "God
+answers prayer, though He may not do it our way. _He did it for me._
+I was a drunkard, but my mother's prayers are answered now, and I belong
+to The Salvation Army. Do you know any of them? Oh, they just live by
+prayer!"
+
+Rhoda stood in silence listening to the strange man till she ceased to
+hear him, and looking at him till she ceased to see him! Another Presence
+and another Voice was there.
+
+_It was the Christ_.
+
+Rhoda was delivered. She is still fighting for souls, and loves most to do
+it where Satan's seat is. But the knife-grinder never knew.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+_A Kiss_.
+
+
+The heat and smell in the narrow slum were worse than usual. A hot
+Saturday night in midsummer is a bad time in the slums, and worse in the
+slum public-houses. It was so on the night I speak of. In and out of the
+suffocating bar the dirty stream of humanity came and went. Men who had
+ceased long ago to be anything but beasts; women with tiny, white children
+in their bony arms; boys and girls sipping the naphtha of perdition, and
+talking the talk of fools; lewd and foul-mouthed women of the streets, all
+hustled and jostled one another, and sang, and swore, and bandied horrid
+words with the barmen--and, all the while, they drank, and drank, and
+drank! The atmosphere grew thicker and thicker with the dust and
+tobacco-smoke, and little by little the flaming gas-jets burnt up the
+oxygen, till by midnight the place was all but unendurable.
+
+Among the last to go was a woman of the town, who betook herself, with a
+bottle of whisky, to a low lodging-house hard by. There she drank and
+quarrelled with such vehemence that in the early hours of the morning the
+"Deputy"--as the guardian of order is called in these houses--picked her
+up and threw her into the gutter outside. There, amid the garbage from the
+coster-mongers' barrows and the refuse of the town, this remnant of a
+ruined woman lay in a half-drunken doze, until the golden sunlight mounted
+over the city houses and pierced the sultry gloom on the Sabbath morning.
+
+Another woman chanced that way. Young, beautiful alike in form and spirit,
+and touched with the far-offness of many who walk with Christ, she
+hastened to the early Sunday morning service, there to join her prayers
+with others seeking strength to win the souls of men.
+
+"What is that?" she asked her friend as they passed.
+
+"That," replied the other, "is a drunken woman, unclean and outcast."
+
+In a moment the Salvationist knelt upon the stones, and kissed the
+battered face of the poor wanderer.
+
+"Who is that--what did you do?" said the Magdalene. "Why did you kiss me?
+_Nobody ever kissed me since my mother died_."
+
+_It was the Christ_.
+
+That kiss won a heart to Him.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+_A Promotion_.
+
+
+Henry James was coming rapidly into his employer's favour. Thoughtful,
+obliging, attentive to details, anxious to please, and, above all,
+thoroughly reliable in word and deed, he was a first-class servant and an
+exemplary Salvationist. In the Corps to which he belonged he stood high in
+the esteem both of the Local Officers and the Soldiers, and there was no
+more welcome speaker in the Open-air or more successful "fisher" in the
+sinners' meetings than "Young James."
+
+The question of his own future was beginning to occupy a good deal of
+attention. Ought he to offer himself for Officership in The Army? He was
+very far from decided either one way or the other, when one evening at the
+close of business his master sent for him. He expressed his pleasure at
+the progress James was making, and offered him a greatly improved
+position--the managership of a branch establishment, with certain
+privileges as to hours, an immediate and considerable advance in salary,
+and the prospect of a still more profitable position in the future. There
+was really only one condition required of him--he must live in premises
+adjoining the new venture, and he must not come to and fro in the uniform
+of The Army. His employers had a high esteem for The Salvation Army. It
+was a noble work, and their opinion of it had risen since they had
+employed one or two of its Soldiers. But business was business, and the
+uniform going in and out would not help business, and so forbh.
+
+The young man hesitated, and, to the senior partner's surprise, asked for
+a week to consider.
+
+During the week there were consultations with almost every one he knew.
+The majority of his own friends said decidedly "Accept." A few
+Salvationists of the weaker sort said, "Yes, take it; you will, in the
+end, be able to do more for God, and give The Army more time, more money,
+more influence." On the other hand, the Captain and the older Local
+Officers answered, "No; it is a compromise of principle; the uniform is
+only the symbol of out-and-out testimony for Christ; you put it on in holy
+covenant with Him; you cannot take it off, especially for your own
+advantage, without breaking that covenant. Don't!"
+
+James promised himself--quite sincerely, no doubt--that it should not be
+so with him. And on the appointed day informed the firm that he accepted
+their proposal.
+
+The new enterprise was a success. Everything turned out better than was
+expected. At the end of six months the new manager received a cordial
+letter of thanks from the firm, and a hint of further developments.
+
+But Henry James was an unhappy man. He had gained so much that he was
+always asking himself how it came about that he seemed to have lost so
+much more! Position, prospects, opportunity, money--these were all
+enhanced. And yet he went everywhere with a sense of loss, burdened with a
+consciousness of having parted with more than he had received in return.
+As a man of business, the impression at last took the form of a business
+estimate in his mind. Yes, that was it; he had secured a high--a very
+high--price that evening in the counting-house, when the partners waited
+for his answer; he had parted with something; he had, in fact, sold
+something.
+
+_It was the Christ_.
+
+It proved a ruinous transaction.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+Ever the Same.
+
+
+A New Year's Greeting.
+
+
+   _"Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might
+     are His: and He changeth the times and the seasons."_--Daniel ii.
+     20, 21.
+
+   _"I am the Lord, I change not."_--Malachi iii. 6.
+
+"He changeth the times and the seasons." What a beautiful thought it is!
+Instead of the hard compulsion of some inexorable and unchanging law
+fixing summer where it must, and planting winter in our midst whether it
+be well or ill, here is the sweet assurance that the seasons change at His
+command; and that the winds and the waves obey Him. It is not some
+abstract and unknowable force, taking no account of us and ours, with whom
+we have to do, but a living and ruling Father: He who maketh small the
+drops of water that pour down rain; He who shuts up the sea with doors,
+and says: "Here shall thy proud waves be stayed"; He who maketh the south
+winds to blow, and by whose breath the frost is given; He who teaches the
+swallow to know the time of her coming, and has made both summer and
+winter, and the day and the night His servants--He is our Father. How
+precious it is to feel that our times are in His hands; and to know that,
+whether the year be young or old, He will fill it with mercy and crown it
+with loving-kindness!
+
+Do not be deceived by the modern talk about the laws of Nature into
+forgetting that they are the laws ordained by your Father for the
+fulfilment of His will. Every day that dawns is as truly God's day as was
+the first one. Every night that draws its sable mantle over a silent world
+sets a seal to the knowledge of God who maketh the darkness. Behind the
+mighty forces and the ceaseless activities around us stands the Sovereign
+of them all. The hand of Him who never slumbers is on the levers. The
+earth is the Lord's, and His chosen portion is His people; and when "He
+changes the times and the seasons," He fits the one to the other.
+
+It is with some such thoughts as these that I send out a brief New Year's
+Greeting to my friends. I wish them a Happy New Year, because I feel that
+God has sent it, that He wills it to be a happy year--a good year: that in
+all the changes it may bring, He will be planning with highest benevolence
+for their truest welfare. Whether, therefore, it holds for them sorrow or
+joy, it will be a year of mercy, a year of grace, a year of love. "Blessed
+be God for ever and ever, for wisdom and might are His. He revealeth the
+deep and secret things. He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light
+dwelleth with Him."
+
+Let us, then, go forward, and fear not.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+_Material Changes._
+
+
+All things that touch the life of man are marked for change. As knowledge
+advances, and men come nearer to the secrets of the world in which they
+live, they find how true indeed it is, that man is but "a shadow dwelling
+in a world of shadows." Everything is changing--everything but God. The
+sun, the astronomers tell us, is burning itself away. "The mountains," say
+the geologists, "are not so high as they once were; their lofty summits
+are sliding down their sides year by year. The everlasting hills are only
+everlasting in a figure; for they, too, are crumbling day by day. The
+hardest rocks are softening into soil every season, and we are actually
+eating them up in our daily bread."
+
+  The hills are shadows, and they flow
+    From form to form, and nothing stands;
+    They melt like mists, the solid lands,
+  Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
+
+The great ocean-currents are changing, and vast regions of the earth's
+surface are being changed with them, and Time is writing wrinkles on the
+whole world and all that is therein.
+
+But, above it all, I see One standing--my Unchanging God. "Thou, Lord, in
+the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are
+the works of Thine hands; they shall perish, but Thou remainest; and they
+all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them
+up, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall
+not fail."
+
+What a contrast there is between the Worker and His work, between the
+Creator and the creature! We see it in a thousand things; but in none is
+it so manifest for the wayfaring man, or written so large upon the fading
+draperies of time, as in this: "_They shall perish, but Thou
+remainest_."
+
+And greater changes yet seem to lie ahead. A universal instinct points to
+the time of the restitution of all things. "The whole creation groaneth
+and travaileth in pain together, waiting"--and it has been a long, weary
+waiting--"for deliverance." But the day of the Lord will come. "As the
+lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall
+the coming of the Son of Man be." In his vision John saw, as it were, a
+picture of that final change. "Lo," he says, "there was a great
+earthquake, and the sun became black as sack-cloth of hair"--it looks as
+though the wise men who say it will burn itself out are right!--"and the
+moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as
+a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
+And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every
+mountain and island were moved out of their places." What a combination of
+astounding catastrophes is here! Earth and stars are to meet in awful
+shock! Sun and moon to fail! Cloud and sky to disappear; the elements to
+melt with fervent heat--a world on fire!
+
+But, above it all, the Lamb that was slain will take His place upon the
+Throne--unmoved, unchanged, amidst the tumult of dissolving worlds. My
+God, my Saviour, in Thy unchanging love I put my trust:--
+
+  Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness
+  My beauty are, my glorious dress;
+  'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
+  With joy shall I lift up my head.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+_Changes of Association_.
+
+
+But far-reaching as are the changes in our material surroundings, those
+with which we have to battle in our personal associations are often as
+great, and are often much more painful. Indeed, man himself is the most
+changeable thing in all man's world.
+
+It is not merely that our companions and friends and loved ones die--the
+wind passeth over them, and they are gone, and the dear places that knew
+them know them no more--it is not merely this; nor is it that their
+circumstances change, that wealth becomes penury, that health is changed
+to weakness and suffering, and youth to age and decay--it is not merely
+this, but it is that _they_ change. The ardour of near friendship
+grows cold and fades away; the trust which once knew no limitations is
+narrowed down, and, by and by, walled in with doubts and fears; the
+comradeship which was so sweet and strong, and quickened us to great
+deeds, as "iron sharpeneth iron," is changed for other companionships; the
+love which seemed so deep and true, and was ready "to look on tempests" for
+us, becomes but a name and a memory, even if it does not change into a
+well of bitter waters in our lives.
+
+This fact of human mutability, this inherent changeableness in man, is the
+key to many of the darkest chapters of the world's history. The prodigal,
+the traitor, the vow-breaker, these have ever been far more fruitful
+sources of anguish and misery than the life-long rebel and law-breaker.
+
+The Psalmist touches the inner springs of sorrow when he says, "All that
+hate Me whisper together against Me; yea, Mine own familiar friend, in
+whom I trusted, which did eat of My bread, hath lifted up his heel against
+Me."
+
+No one who has once read it can forget that revelation of the pent-up
+shame and agony in David's heart, which was voiced in his cry, "O my son
+Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom,
+my son, my son!"
+
+The human heart probably fell to its lowest depth of ingratitude and sin
+when poor Judas changed sides and sold his Lord. What a change it was!
+Alas, alas, what a quagmire of uncertainties and shifting sand
+unsanctified human nature must be! Nay, _is_.
+
+I suppose that few of us have escaped some sorrowful experiences of this
+kind. Even to those who have not tasted the fruits of human fickleness in
+the great affairs of Christ's Kingdom, there has generally come some share
+of it into the more private relationships of life. In the home, in the
+family, or in the circle of friendship or comradeship, we have had to
+lament the failure of many tender hopes. But, blessed be the name of our
+God, who knoweth what is in the darkness, amidst the changing scenes we
+have found one Comfort. Above the strife of tongues, and over the stormy
+seas of sorrow, when, as Job said, even our kinsfolk have failed, and our
+familiar friends have forgotten us, there is borne to us the voice of One
+who sticketh closer than a brother, saying, "I am the Lord; I change not.
+With Me there is no variableness, neither the shadow of turning. I will
+never leave thee nor forsake thee." The more men change, the surer God
+will be; the more they forget, the more He will remember; the further they
+withdraw, the nearer He will come.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+_Personal Changes_.
+
+
+And we, ourselves, change also. As the years fly past, the most notable
+fact about us, perhaps, is the changes that are going on in our own
+experiences, our habits, our thoughts, our hopes, our conduct, our
+character. How much there was about us, only a few years ago, which has
+changed in the interval--nay, how much has grown different even since last
+New Year's Day! Indeed, might we not say of a great deal in us, which
+to-day is, that to-morrow it will be cast away for ever?
+
+Have you, my friend, not had to mourn over some strange changes?
+
+Has not your joy been often so quickly turned to sorrow that you have
+wondered how you yourself could be the same person? Has not some trifling
+circumstance often seemed to cloud your sky for days, darkening all the
+great lights in your heaven, so that your whole past, and present, and
+future have seemed different to you, and you stood in the stupor of
+astonishment at the gloomy change? Has not your zeal for souls been
+subject to like strange and unaccountable changes, so that the work you
+once thought impossible you have found easy; or the work you once
+delighted in, you now find hard, difficult, and barren? Has not your
+freedom in prayer, and your desire for it, wavered between this and that
+until you have not known what to think of yourself?
+
+Has not your perception of duty, and your devotion to it, at one time
+clear and strong, become at another so dim and feeble, that you have been
+utterly ashamed of your wobbling and cowardice, and amazed at your
+failure? And, most sorrowful of all, has not your love for your God and
+Saviour been up and down--shamefully down--so that when you have
+afterwards reflected on your coldness towards Him and His cause, you have
+been covered with confusion and astonishment at the fickleness of your own
+heart?
+
+And more than this. How great are the changes wrought in us by the curbing
+influence of time! How much that in youth and early manhood we meant to
+do, and could do, and did do, has to be laid down, or left to others, as
+our years approach the limits of their pilgrimage! I have known some men
+who, for this reason alone, did not desire to live beyond the years of
+strength and vigour--they preferred "to cease at once to work and live."
+
+The loss by death, or disappointments worse than death, of our friends and
+dear ones--what changes this also works! Unconsciously men narrow the
+sphere of their sympathies. The mainspring of life--love--grows slowly
+rusty for want of use, and from some hearts that were once true fountains
+of joy to those around them, the living water almost ceases to flow.
+Criticism, and fault-finding, and censoriousness too often take the place
+of generous labour for the welfare of the world. This may, no doubt, arise
+in part from the natural desire that others should profit by our past
+experiences, which renders us the more observant of their conduct the more
+we love. But, no matter what the cause, certain it is that within and
+without all seems to change.
+
+Is it not, then, a joy unspeakable that, amidst all this, whether we are
+or are not fully alive to the weakness, and variableness, and
+deceitfulness of our own hearts, we can look up to the ROCK that changeth
+NOT? In the darkest hour of disappointment with ourselves; in the depths
+of that miserable aftermath of sorrow and failure which follows all pride
+and foolish self-assertion; in the miry pit of condemnation and guilt in
+which sin always leaves the sinner, we can look up to Him whose power,
+whose grace, whose love is ever the same.
+
+Do you really believe it? There is a great hope in it for you if you do.
+High above all your changes, high above all the storms and disappointments
+that belong to them; high above all the wretched failure and doubting of
+the "do-the-best-I-can" life you are living, He lives to bless, to save,
+to uplift, to keep. Unnumbered multitudes, fighting their way to Him in
+spite of the timidities and wobblings, the "couldn'ts" and "wouldn'ts" of
+their own nature, have proved Him the Faithful and Unchanging God. Will
+not you?
+
+
+
+
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
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+<HEAD>
+<TITLE>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Our Master, by Bramwell Booth</TITLE>
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+<H1>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Our Master, by Bramwell Booth</H1>
+
+<PRE>
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Our Master
+
+Author: Bramwell Booth
+
+Release Date: May, 2005  [EBook #8191]
+[This file was first posted on June 29, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: utf-8
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, OUR MASTER ***
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+</PRE>
+
+
+<h1>Our Master.</h1>
+
+
+<h2>Thoughts for Salvationists<br />
+About Their Lord.</h2>
+
+
+<p align="center" class="smallcaps">by</p>
+
+<h3>General Bramwell Booth.</h3>
+
+
+<p align="center">"<i>As man He suffered--as God He taught</i>."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h4>To<br />
+
+My Wife.</h4>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>Contents.</h1>
+
+
+<p>Preface</p>
+
+
+<p>I. <a href="#ch_01">The Man for the Century</a></p>
+
+<p>II. <a href="#ch_02">The Birth of Jesus</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
+     which is Christ the Lord</i>." (Luke ii. 11.)</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>The firstborn among many brethren</i>." (Rom. viii. 29.)</blockquote>
+
+<p>III. <a href="#ch_03">Contrasts at Bethlehem</a></p>
+
+<p>IV. <a href="#ch_04">Christ Come Again</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in
+     swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger</i>." (Luke ii. 7.)</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>Christ formed in you</i>." (Gal. iv. 19.)</blockquote>
+
+<p>V. <a href="#ch_05">The Secret of His Rule</a>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the
+     feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we
+     are, yet without sin</i>." (Heb. iv. 15.)</blockquote>
+
+<p>VI. <a href="#ch_06">A Neglected Saviour</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>And He came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were
+     heavy</i>." (Matt. xxvi. 43.)</blockquote>
+
+<p>VII. <a href="#ch_07">Windows in Calvary</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>And they crucified Him, and parted His garments, casting lots:
+     that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet. They
+     parted My garments among them, and upon My vesture did they cast
+     lots. And sitting down they watched Him there</i>." (Matt. xxvii. 35,
+     36.)</blockquote>
+
+<p>VIII. <a href="#ch_08">The Burial of Jesus</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>And after this Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but
+     secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take
+     away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore,
+     and, took the body of Jesus</i>." (John xix. 38. And following
+     verses.)</blockquote>
+
+<p>IX. <a href="#ch_09">Conforming to Christ's Death</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>That I may know Him ... being made conformable unto His
+     death</i>." (Phil. iii. 10.)</blockquote>
+
+<p>X. <a href="#ch_10">The Resurrection and Sin</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>Concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was ... declared
+     to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness,
+     by the resurrection from the dead</i>." (Rom. i. 3, 4.)</blockquote>
+
+<p>XI. <a href="#ch_11">"Salvation Is of the Lord"</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>Salvation is of the Lord</i>." (Jonah ii. 9.)</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>Work out your own salvation</i>." (Phil ii. 12.)</blockquote>
+
+<p>XII. <a href="#ch_12">Self-Denial</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up
+     his cross, and follow Me</i>." (Matt. xvi. 24.)</blockquote>
+
+<p>XIII. <a href="#ch_13">In Unexpected Places</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>And ... while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus Himself
+     drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they
+     should not know Him</i>." (Luke xxiv. 15, 16.)</blockquote>
+
+<p>XIV. <a href="#ch_14">Ever the Same</a></p>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might
+     are His: and He changeth the times and the seasons</i>." (Dan. ii.
+     20, 21.)</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>I am the Lord, I change not</i>." (Mal. iii. 6.)</blockquote>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>Preface</h1>
+
+
+
+<p>The present volume contains some of the papers bearing on the Birth and
+Death and Work of our Lord Jesus Christ which I have contributed from time
+to time to Salvation Army periodicals. I hope that in this form
+they may continue the service of souls which I am assured they began to
+render when, one by one, they were first published.</p>
+
+<p>Much in them has, I do not doubt, come to me directly or indirectly by
+inspiration or suggestion of other writers and speakers, and I desire
+therefore to acknowledge my indebtedness to the living, both inside and
+outside our borders, as well as to the holy dead.</p>
+
+<p align="right" class="smallcaps">Bramwell Booth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smallcaps">Barnet</span>, <i>May</i>, 1908.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="ch_01"></a>I.</h1>
+
+<h2>The Man for the Century</h2>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>The Need</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>The new Century has its special need.</p>
+
+<p>The need of the twentieth century will be men. In every department of the
+world's life or labour, that is the great want. In religion, in politics,
+in science, in commerce,  in philanthropy, in government, all other
+necessities are unimportant by comparison  with this one.</p>
+
+<p>Given men of a certain type, and the religious life of the world will
+thrive and throb with the love and will of God, and overcome all
+opposition. Given men of the right stamp, and politics will become another
+word for benevolence. Provided true men are available, science will take
+her place as the handmaid of revelation. If only men of power and
+principle are at hand, commerce  will prosper as she has never yet
+prospered, rooted in the great law which Christ laid down for her: "Do
+unto others as ye would that they should do unto you." If the men are
+found to guide it, philanthropy  will become a golden ladder of
+opportunity by which all in misfortune and misery may climb, not only to
+sufficiency and happiness here, but to purity and plenty for ever. And,
+given the men of heart, head, and hand for the task, the government of the
+kingdoms of this world will yet become a fulfilment of the great prayer of
+Jesus: "Thy will be done on earth, as it is done in Heaven."</p>
+
+<p>But all, or nearly all, depends on the men.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>The Man</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>The new Century will demand men.</p>
+
+<p>But if men, then certainly a <i>man</i>. Human nature has, after all, more
+influence over human nature than anything else. Abstract laws are of
+little moment to us until we see them in actual operation. The law of
+gravitation  is but a matter of intelligent wonder while we view its
+influence in the movements of revolving planets or falling stars; but when
+we see a baby fall terror-stricken from its little cradle to the floor,
+"the attraction of large bodies for small ones" takes on a new and
+heart-felt meaning. The beauty of devotion to truth in the face of
+opposition hardly stirs an emotion in many of us, as we regard it from
+the safe distance of our own self-satisfied liberty; but when we see the
+lonely martyr walk with head erect through the raging mob, and kiss the
+stake to which he is soon to be bound; when we watch him burn until the
+kindly powder explodes about his neck, and sends him to exchange his shirt
+of flame for the robe he has washed in the Blood of the Lamb; then, the
+beauty, the sincerity, the greatness, the God-likeness of sacrifice,
+especially of sacrifice for the truth, comes home to us, and captures even
+the coldest hearts and dullest minds.</p>
+
+<p>The revelation of Jesus in the flesh was a recognition of this principle.
+The purpose of His life and death was to manifest God in the flesh, that
+He might attract man to God. He took human nature that human nature might
+see the best of which it was capable. He became a man that men might know
+to what heights of power a man might rise. He became a man that men might
+know to what lengths and breadths of love and wisdom a man might attain.
+He became a man that men might know to what depths of love and service a
+man might reach.</p>
+
+<p>The men we need, then, for the twentieth century will find the pattern Man
+ready to their hand. Be the demands of the coming years what they may, God
+is able to raise up men to meet them, men after His own likeness--men of
+right, men of light, men of might--men who will follow Him in the
+desperate fight with the hydra-headed monsters of evil of every kind, and
+who will, by His Name, deliver the souls of men from the slavery of sin
+and the Hell to which it leads.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Standards</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>The new Century will demand high standards, both of character and conduct.</p>
+
+<p>Explain it how we may, the fact is evident that religion has greatly
+disappointed the world. The wretched distortion of Christ's teaching which
+appears in the lives and business of tens of thousands of professed
+Christians, the namby-pambyism of the mass of Christian teachers towards
+the evil of sin, and the unholy union, in nearly all the practical
+proceedings of life, between the world and the bulk of the Christian
+churches, no doubt largely account for this, so far as Christianity is
+concerned.</p>
+
+<p>Mohammedanism is in a still worse plight, for though, alas! it increases
+even faster than Christianity, it is helpless at the heart. The mass of
+its devotees know that between its highest teaching and its best practice
+there is a great gulf, and they are slowly beginning to look elsewhere for
+rules by which to guide their lives.</p>
+
+<p>And what is true of Mohammedanism is true also of Buddhism--the great
+religion of the East. Its teachers have largely ceased to be faithful to
+their own faith; and, as a consequence, that faith is a declining power.
+Beautiful as much of its teaching undoubtedly is, millions who are
+nominally Buddhist are estranged by its failures; and are, with increasing
+unrest, looking this way and that for help in the battle with evil, and
+for hope amidst the bitter consciousness of sin.</p>
+
+<p>Such is a cursory view of the attitude of the opening century towards the
+great faiths of the world. Perhaps one word more than another sums it all
+up--especially as regards Christianity--and that word is NEGLECT--cold,
+stony neglect!</p>
+
+<p>And yet men are still demanding standards of life and conduct. The open
+materialist, the timid agnostic, no less than the avowedly selfish, the
+vicious and the vile, are asking, with a hundred tongues and in a thousand
+ways, "Who will show us any good?" The universal conscience, unbribed,
+unstifled as on the fateful day in Eden--conscience, the only thing in man
+left standing erect when all else fell--still cries out, "YOU OUGHT!"
+still rebels at evil, still compels the human heart to cry for rules of
+right and wrong, and still urges man to the one, and withholds him from
+the other.</p>
+
+<p>And it is--for one reason--because Jesus can provide these high standards
+for men, that I say He is <i>The Man for the Century</i>. The laws He has
+laid down in the Gospels, and the example He furnished of obedience to
+those laws in the actual stress and turmoil of a human life, afford a
+standard capable of universal application.</p>
+
+<p>The ruler, contending with unruly men; the workman, fighting for
+consideration from a greedy employer; the outcast, struggling like an
+Ishmaelite with Society for a crust of bread; the dark-skinned, sad-eyed
+mother, sending forth her only babe to perish in the waters of the sacred
+river of India, thus "giving the fruit of her body for the sin of her
+soul"; the proud and selfish noble, abounding in all he desires except the
+one thing needful; the great multitude of the sorrowful, which no man can
+number, who refuse to be comforted; the dying, whose death will be an
+unwilling leap in the dark--all these, yea, and all others, may find in
+the law of Christ that which will harmonise every conflicting interest,
+which will solve the problems of human life, which will build up a holy
+character, which will gather up and sanctify everything that is good in
+every faith and in every man, and will unite all who will obey it in the
+one great brotherhood of the one fold and the one Shepherd.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Liberty</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>The new Century will call for freedom in every walk of human life.</p>
+
+<p>That bright dream of the ages--Liberty--how far ahead of us she still
+lies!</p>
+
+<p>What a bondage life is to multitudes! What a vast host of the human race,
+even of this generation, will die in slavery--actual physical bondage!
+Slaves in Africa, in China, in Eastern Europe, in the far isles of the sea
+and dark places of the earth, cry to us, and perish while they cry.</p>
+
+<p>What a host, still larger, are in the bondage of unequal laws! Little
+children, stricken, cursed, and damned, and there is none to deliver.
+Young men and maidens bound by hateful customs, ruined by wicked
+associations, torn by force of law from all that is best in life, and
+taught all that is worst. Nine men out of ten in one of the great European
+armies are said to be debauched morally and physically by their military
+service; and all the men in the nation are bound by law to serve.</p>
+
+<p>What a host--larger, again, than both the others--of every generation of
+men are bound by custom in the service of cruelty. It is supposed that
+every year a million little children die from neglect, wilful exposure, or
+other form of cruelty. Think of the bondage of those who kill them! Look
+at the cruelty to women, the cruelty of war, the cruelty to criminals, the
+cruelty to the animal creation. What a mighty force the slavery of cruel
+custom still remains!</p>
+
+<p>All that is best in man is crying out for emancipation from this bondage,
+and I know of no deliverance so sure, so complete, so abiding as that
+which comes by the teaching and spirit of Jesus. But, even if freedom from
+all these hateful bonds could come, and could be complete, without Him,
+there still remains a serfdom more degrading, a bondage more inexorable
+than any of these, for men are everywhere the bond-slaves of sin. Look out
+upon the world--upon your own part of it, even upon your own family or
+household--and see how evil holds men by one chain or another, and grips
+them body and soul. This one by doubt, this by passion, this by envy, this
+by lust, this by pride, this by strife, this by fear, this one by love of
+gold, this one by love of the world, and this one by hatred of God! <i>Is
+it not so</i>?</p>
+
+<p>What men want, then, is <span class="smallcaps">personal, individual liberty from sin</span>. Given that,
+and a slave may be free. Given that, and the child in the nursery of
+iniquity may be free. Given that, and the young man or maiden held in the
+charnel-house of lust may be free. Given that, and the victim of all that
+is most cruel and most brutal in life may still be free. Oh! blessed be
+God, he whom the Son makes free is free indeed!</p>
+
+<p>This, and this alone, is the liberty for the new Century--the Gospel
+liberty from sin for the individual soul and spirit, without respect of
+time or circumstance; and here alone is He who can bestow it--Jesus, the
+Lion of the Tribe of Judah.</p>
+
+<p>This, I say, is <i>The Man for the new Century</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Knowledge</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>The new Century will be marked by a universal demand for knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most remarkable features of the present time is the
+extraordinary thirst for knowledge in every quarter of the world. It is
+not confined to this continent or that. It is not peculiar to any special
+class or age. It is universal. One aspect of it, and a very significant
+one, is the desire for knowledge about life and its origin, about the
+beginning of things, about the earth and its creation, about the work
+which we say God did, which He alone could do.
+
+Oh, how men search and explore! How they read and think! How they talk and
+listen! Where one book was read a generation ago, a hundred, I should
+think, are read now; and for one newspaper then read, there are now,
+probably, a thousand. Every man is an inquiry agent, seeking news,
+information, or instruction; seeking to know what will make life longer
+for him and his; and, above all, what can make it happier.</p>
+
+<p>And here, again, I say that <i>Jesus is The Man for the new Century</i>.
+He has knowledge to give which none other can provide. I do not doubt that
+universities, and schools, and governments, and a great press, can, and
+will, do much to impart knowledge of all sorts to the world. But when it
+comes to knowledge that can serve the great end for which the very power
+to acquire knowledge was created--namely, <i>the true happiness of
+man</i>--then, I say, that JESUS is the source of that knowledge; that
+without Him it cannot be found or imparted; and that with Him it comes in
+its liberating and enlightening glory.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, be sure <i>you have that</i>! No amount of learning will stand you in
+its stead. No matter how you may have stored your mind with the riches of
+the past, or tutored it to grapple with the mysteries of the present,
+<i>unless you know Him, it will all amount to nothing</i>. But if you know
+Him who is life, that is life eternal. Knowledge without God is like a man
+learned in all the great mysteries of light and heat who has never seen
+the sun. He may understand perfectly the laws which govern them, the
+results which follow them, the secrets which control their action on each
+other--all that is possible, and yet he will be <i>in the dark</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So, too, knowledge, learning, human education and wisdom are all possible
+to man; he may even excel in them so as to be a wonder to his fellows by
+reason of his vast stores of knowledge, and yet know nothing of that light
+within the mind by which he apprehends them. Nay, more! he may even be a
+marvellous adept in the theory of religion, and yet, alas! alas! may never
+have seen its SUN--may still be in the blackness of gross darkness,
+because he knows not Jesus, the Light of the world, whom to know is life
+eternal.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Government</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>The new Century will demand governors.</p>
+
+<p>Every thoughtful person who considers the subject must be struck by the
+modern tendency towards personal government all over the world. Whatever
+may be the form of national government prescribed by the various
+constitutions, it tends, when carried into practice, to give power and
+authority to individual rulers. Whether in monarchies like England, where
+Parliament is really the ruling power; or in republics like France and the
+United States, where what are called democratic institutions are seen in
+their maturity; or in empires like Germany and Austria, the same leading
+facts appear. Power goes into the hands of one or two who, whether as
+ministers, or presidents, or monarchs, are the real rulers of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>Perfect laws, liberal institutions, patriotic sentiments, though they may
+elevate, can never rule a people. A crowd of legislators, no matter how
+devoted to a nation, can never permanently control, though they may
+influence it. Out of the crowd will come forth one or two; generally one
+commanding personality, strong enough to stand alone, though wise enough
+not to attempt it. In him will be focussed the ideas and ambitions of the
+nation, to him the people's hearts will go out, and from him they will
+take the word of command as their virtual ruler. It has ever been so. It
+is so to-day. It will always be so.</p>
+
+<p>And as with nations so with individuals. <i>Every man must have a
+king</i>. Call him what we will, recognise him or not, every man is the
+subject of some ruler. And this will, if possible, be more manifest in the
+future than in the past. Men will not be satisfied to serve ideas, to live
+for the passing ambitions of their day, they will cry out for a king.</p>
+
+<p>Am I wrong when I say that JESUS IS THE COMING KING? In Him are assembled
+in the highest perfection all the great qualities which go to make the
+KING OF MEN. And so the new Century will need Him, must have Him; nay, it
+cannot prosper without Him, the Divine Man, for He is the rightful
+Sovereign of every human soul.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>A New Force</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>The new Century will demand great moral forces as well as high ideals.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more evident than that the forms and ceremonies of religion are
+rapidly losing--even in nominally Christian countries--all real influence
+over the lives of men. The form of godliness without the power is not only
+the greatest of all shams, but it is the most easily detected. Hence it is
+that a large part of mankind is either disgusted to hostility or utterly
+estranged from real religion by theories and ceremonials which, though
+they may continue to exist in shadow, have lost their life and soul.</p>
+
+<p>For example, the old lie, that money paid to a Church can buy
+"indulgences" which will release men in the next world from the penalty of
+sin committed in this, and the miserable theory which made God the direct
+author of eternal damnation to those who are lost, are among the theories
+which, though they are still taught and professed here and there, have
+long ago ceased to have real influence over men's hearts or actions. In
+the same way, there are multitudes who still conform to the outward
+ceremony of Confirmation, upon whose salvation from sin or separation from
+the world that ceremony has absolutely no influence whatever, although,
+for custom's sake, they submit to it.</p>
+
+<p>But a greater danger than this lies in the fact that <i>it is possible to
+hold and believe the truth, and yet to be totally ignorant of its
+power</i>. Sound doctrine will of itself never save a soul. A man may
+believe every word of the faith of a Churchman or a Salvationist, and yet
+be as ignorant of any real experience of religion as an infidel or an
+idolater. And it is this merely intellectual or sentimental holding of the
+truth about God and Christ, about Holiness and Heaven, which makes the
+ungodly mass look upon Christianity as nothing more than an opinion or a
+trade; a something with which they have no concern.</p>
+
+<p>The new Century will demand something more than this. Men will require
+something beyond creeds, be they ever so correct; and traditions, be they
+ever so venerable; and sacraments, be they ever so sacred. They will ask
+for an endowment of power to grapple with what they feel to be base in
+human nature, and to master what they know is selfish and sinful in their
+own hearts.</p>
+
+<p>And right here <i>The Man for the Century</i> comes forward. The doctrine
+of Jesus is the spirit of a new life. It is a transforming power. A man
+may believe that the American Republic is the purest and noblest form of
+government on the earth, and may give himself up to live, and fight, and
+die for it, and yet be the same man in every respect as he was before; but
+if he believes with his heart that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
+and gives himself up to live, and fight, and die for Him, he will become a
+new man, he will be a new creature. The acceptance of the truth, and
+acting upon it, in the one case, will make a great change in his manner of
+life--his conduct; the acceptance of the truth, and acting upon it, in the
+other, will make a great change in the man <i>himself</i>--in his tastes
+and motives, in his very nature.</p>
+
+<p>Again, I say, this is what we shall need for the new Century. Not good
+laws only, but the power to observe them. Not beautiful and lofty ideals
+only, but the power to translate them into the daily practice of common
+lives. Not merely the glorious examples of a pure faith, but the actual
+force which enables men to live by that faith amid the littleness, the
+depression, the contamination, and the conflict of an evil world.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>VIII.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Atonement</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>The new Century will demand an atonement for sin.</p>
+
+<p>The consciousness of sin is the most enduring fact of human experience.
+From generation to generation, from age to age, amidst the ceaseless
+changes which time brings to everything else, this one great fact remains,
+persists--<i>the condemning consciousness of sin</i>. It appears with men
+in the cradle, and goes with them to the tomb; without regard to race, or
+language, or creed it is ever with us. It was this robbed Eden of its
+joys; it is this makes life a round of labour and sorrow; it is this gives
+death its terrors; it is this makes the place of torment which men call
+Hell--for the unceasing consciousness of sin will be "the worm that never
+dies."</p>
+
+<p>All attempts to explain it away, to modify its miseries, to extract its
+sting--whether they have come from the party of unbelief, or the party of
+education, or the party of amusement, have failed--and failed utterly. No
+matter what men say or do to get rid of it, there it is--staring them in
+the face! Whether they look amongst the most highly civilized peoples or
+amongst the lowest savages; whether they look into the past history of
+mankind or into its present condition, there is the <i>stupendous fact of
+sin</i>, and there is the incontrovertible fact that everywhere <i>men are
+conscious of it</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is going to be so in this twentieth century. If God, in His mercy,
+allows the families of men to continue during another hundred years, this
+great fact will still stand out in the forefront of life. Sin will still
+be the skeleton at every feast, the horrid ghost haunting every home and
+every heart, the spectre, clothed with reproaches, ever ready to plunge
+his dripping sword into every breast.</p>
+
+<p>Sin. The world's sin. The sin of this one generation. The sin of one city.
+The sin of one family. The sin of one man--<i>my sin</i>! Ah! depend upon
+it, the twentieth century will cry aloud, "<i>What shall be done with our
+sin</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Yet, thanks be to God! there is an atonement. The MAN of whom I write has
+made a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins
+of the whole world. He stands forth the ONLY SAVIOUR. None other has ever
+dared even to offer to the sin-stricken hearts of men relief from the
+<i>guilt</i> of sin. <i>But He does</i>. He can cleanse, He can pardon, He
+can purify, He can save, because <i>He has redeemed</i>. "Thou wast slain,
+and hast redeemed us unto God by Thy blood, out of every kindred, and
+tongue, and people, and nation."</p>
+
+<p>Will you come and join in our great world-mission of making His atonement
+known? Will you turn your back on the littleness, and selfishness, and
+cowardice of the past, and arise, in the strength of the God-Man, to
+publish to all you can reach, by tongue, and pen, and example, that there
+is a sacrifice for men's sins--for the worst, for the most wretched, for
+the most tortured? As you set your face with high resolve towards the
+unknown years, take your stand with THE MAN FOR ALL THE AGES; and let this
+be your message, your confidence, your hope for all men-"<i>Behold the
+Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world</i>!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="ch_02"></a>II.</h1>
+
+<h2>The Birth of Jesus.</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote>  "<i>For unto you is born ... a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.</i>"--Luke ii. 11.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  "<i>The firstborn among many brethren</i>."--Romans viii. 29.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The birth of Jesus is one of the great signs of His condescension; and, no
+matter how we view it, is perhaps scarcely less wonderful than His death.
+If the one manifests His glorious divinity, then the other exalts His
+wonderful humanity. If Calvary and the Resurrection reveal His power, does
+not Bethlehem make manifest His love? And did not both the former come out
+of the latter? The infinite glory which belongs to the cross and the tomb
+had its rise in the gloom of the stable. If the Babe had not been laid in
+the manger, then the Man would not have been nailed to the tree, and the
+Lamb that was slain would not have taken His place on the Everlasting
+Throne.</p>
+
+<p>I claim, therefore, a little more attention to the events which relate to
+the Saviour's birth, and to the lessons which may be derived from them;
+and though, perhaps, something of what I have to say will have already
+occurred to some who will read this paper, I will venture to suggest one
+or two thoughts as they have been presented to my own mind. Their very
+simplicity has made them of service to me.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>He Came</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>The nature of the whole work of our redemption is made manifest by the one
+fact--<i>He really came</i>. His everlasting love, His infinite
+compassion, His all-embracing purpose were from eternity; but we only got
+to know of it all because <i>He came</i>. If He had contented Himself with
+sending messages or highly-placed messengers, or even with making
+occasional and wonderful excursions of Divine revelation, man would, no
+doubt, have been greatly attracted, and perhaps even helped somewhat in
+his tremendous conflict with evil; yet he might never have been subdued in
+will, he might never have been touched and won back to God; he might never
+have been brought down from his pride to cry out, "My Lord and my God."
+No, it was <i>His coming to us</i> that wrought conviction of sin, and
+then conviction of the truth in our hearts.</p>
+
+<p>He came Himself.</p>
+
+<p>There is something very wonderful in this principle of <i>contact</i> as
+illustrated by the life of Jesus. Just as to save the human race He felt
+it necessary to come into it, and clothe Himself with its nature and
+conform Himself to its natural laws, so all the way through His earthly
+journey He was constantly seeking to <i>come into touch</i> with the
+people He desired to bless. He touched the sick, He fed the hungry, He
+placed His fingers on the blind eyes, and put them upon the ears of the
+deaf, and touched with them the tongue of the dumb. He took the ruler's
+dead daughter "by the hand, and the maid arose." He lifted the little
+children up into His arms, and blessed them; He stretched forth His hand
+to sinking Peter; He stood close by the foul-smelling body of the dead
+Lazarus; He took the bread, and with His own hands brake it, and gave it
+to His disciples at that last farewell meal. He even took poor Thomas's
+trembling hand, and guided it to the prints in His hands and the wounds in
+His side.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, indeed, it is written large, in every part of His life, that He
+really came, and that He came very near to lost and suffering men.</p>
+
+<p>Is there not a lesson here for us, my comrade? As He is in the world, so
+are we. This principle in His life was not by accident or by chance, it
+was an essential qualification of His nature for the work entrusted to
+Him. It is a necessary qualification for those who are called to carry on
+that work.</p>
+
+<p>Is this, then, the impression you are able to give to those among whom you
+labour: that you have come to them in very truth; that in mind and soul,
+in hand and heart, you are seeking to come into the closest contact of
+love and sympathy with them, especially with those who most need you?</p>
+
+<p>Oh, aim at this! Do not for your own sake, as well as for your Master's,
+move about amid your own people, or among those to whom God and The Army
+have given you entrance, as one who has little in common with them, who
+does not know them, who does not feel with them. Go into their houses, put
+your hand sometimes to their burdens, take a share in their toils, nurse
+their sick, weep with them that weep, and rejoice with them that rejoice.
+Make them feel that it is your own religion, rather than The Army system,
+that has made you come to them. Let them see by your sympathy and kindness
+that love is the over-mastering influence in your life, the influence that
+has brought you to them. Compel them to turn to you as a warm-hearted
+unselfish example of the truths you preach. Let them feel that you are
+indeed come from God to take them by the hand, as far as may be, and lead
+them through this Vale of Tears to the City of Light and Rest.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>His Humble Origin</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>Everything associated with the advent of Jesus seems to have been
+specially ordered to mark His humiliation. It is true that Mary, His
+mother, was of the lineage of King David, but her relationship with the
+royal house was a very distant one, and the family had fallen upon sad
+times. The Romans were masters in the land, and a stranger sat upon the
+throne of Israel. Mary, therefore, was but a poor village maiden; Joseph,
+her betrothed husband, was a carpenter--an ordinary working man.
+Bethlehem, the place of the Saviour's birth, was a tiny straggling
+village, which, though not the least, was certainly one of the least of
+the villages of Judea. And Nazareth, where He grew from infancy to
+childhood, and from youth to manhood, was another little hamlet among the
+hilly country to the north of Jerusalem, and was held in low repute by the
+people of those days.</p>
+
+<p>The occupation chosen for the early life of Jesus was a humble one. He
+learned the trade of a joiner, and worked with Joseph at the carpenter's
+bench. His associates and friends were of the village community, and He
+"whose Name is above every name" passed to and fro and in and out among
+the cottage homes of the poor--as one of themselves. Probably none but His
+mother had, in these early years, any true idea of the mysterious promise
+which had been given concerning Him.</p>
+
+<p>What a contrast it all presents to the years of stress and storm and of
+victory which were to follow, and to the supreme influence His teaching
+and example were to exert in the world!</p>
+
+<p>Is there not something here for us? Do not the lowly origin and simple
+country habits and humble tastes of some of our comrades make them
+hesitate on the threshold of great efforts, when they ought to leap
+forward in the strength of their God? Let them remember their Master, and
+take courage. Let them call to mind the unfashionable, uneducated,
+uncultivated surroundings of Nazareth. Let them bear in mind the
+carpenter's shed, the rough country work, the bare equipment of the
+village home, the humble service of the family life. Let them, above all,
+remember the plain and gentle mother, and the meek and lowly One Himself,
+and in this remembrance let them go forward.</p>
+
+<p>To be of lowly origin, or of a mean occupation; to come out of poverty and
+want; to be looked down upon by the rich or the powerful ones of earth; to
+be treated as of no consequence by governments and rulers, and yet to go
+on doing and daring, suffering and conquering for God and right; what is
+all this but the fulfilment of Paul's words, "And base things of the
+world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things
+which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should
+glory in His presence"? Nay, what is it all but to tread in the very steps
+that the Master trod?</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>His High Nature</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>But if, on the human side, our Redeemer's origin and circumstances were of
+the humblest, and we are thus enabled to see His humanity, as it were face
+to face, there was united with it the Divine nature; so that as our
+<i>Doctrines</i> say, "He is truly and properly God, and He is truly and
+properly man." Many mysteries meet by the side of that manger, some of
+them to remain mysteries, so far as human understanding can grapple with
+things, till God Himself reveals them to our stronger vision in the world
+to come. But, blessed be God, some, things that we cannot compass with our
+mental powers are very grateful to our hearts.</p>
+
+<blockquote>  How Thou canst love me as I am,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;    Yet be the God Thou art,<br />
+  Is darkness to my intellect,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;    But sunshine to my heart.</blockquote>
+
+<p>And we to whom the Living Christ has spoken the word of life and liberty,
+although we may not now fully comprehend this great wonder of all wonders--God manifest in the flesh--and may not be able effectively to make it
+plain to others, we cannot for ourselves doubt its central truth--<i>that</i> <span class="smallcaps">God</span> <i>dwelt with man</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Here was, indeed, a perfect union of two spirits. There was the suffering
+and obedient spirit of the true <i>man</i>; there was the unchanging and
+Holy Spirit of the true God. It was a union--it was a unity. It was God in
+man--it was man in God. A being of infinite might and perfect moral
+beauty, sent forth from the bosom of the Father; and yet a being of lowly
+and sensitive tenderness, having roots in our poor human nature, tempted
+in all points like as we are, and touched with the feeling of all our
+infirmities.</p>
+
+<p>Is it not to something of the same kind we are called? Is not every true
+Salvation Army Officer designed by God to be also (not, of course, in the
+same degree, but still up to the measure of his own capacity and of his
+Master's will) a dual, or two-fold creature, with associations and roots
+and attachments in all that is human, and yet with the divine life, the
+divine spirit, divine love, divine zeal, divine power, divine fire united
+with him and dwelling in him?</p>
+
+<p>The perfect man would have been a great marvel, a great teacher, a great
+prophet; but without the God he could never have been the perfect Saviour.
+The Divine, without the human, would have been an awe-inspiring fact, a
+spectacle of holiness too great for human eyes; but He could not have been
+a Saviour. If it were possible for us to conceive the one without the
+other we should certainly not find a JESUS in either.</p>
+
+<p>And so, your merely <i>human</i> Officer, no matter how pure, how strong,
+how thoughtful, how clever, how industrious, will fail, and ever fail. And
+even so the Officer who is lost in visionary seeking after the Divine
+alone, to the neglect of action, of duty, of law, of self-denial, of the
+common conflicts and contracts of the man, will equally fail, and always
+fail. It is the man we want. The <span class="smallcaps">man</span>--but the man born of the <span class="smallcaps">Spirit</span>. The
+MAN--but the man full of the <span class="smallcaps">Holy Ghost</span>. The <span class="smallcaps">man</span>--but the man with
+<span class="smallcaps">Pentecost</span> blazing in his head and heart and soul.</p>
+
+<p>Comrade, what are you? Are you striving to be a prophet without possessing
+the spirit of the prophets? Are you trying to be a priest without the
+priestly baptism? Are you labouring to be a king without the Divine
+anointing? Beware!</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>From Infancy to Manhood</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>Birth implies the weakness, the dependence,  the ignorance of infancy. But
+it implies, also, the promise of growth, of increase, of advance from
+infancy to manhood.  Thus it is with man generally. So it was with the Son
+of Man. First, He was "wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a
+manger." Presently He goes forth in His mother's arms into Egypt, and back
+to Nazareth. By and by it is written that "the Child grew and waxed strong
+in spirit, and the grace of God was upon Him." Then He is found in the
+Temple, asking that wonderful question about His Father's business, and at
+last we find Him "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God
+and man."</p>
+
+<p>We know, also, that He was found in fashion as a servant, and was obedient
+unto death; that He was tempted of the Devil, and that "He learned
+obedience by the things that He suffered." In fact, a very slight
+acquaintance with the history of His life reveals the truth that in some
+wonderful way He steadily grew in wisdom and grace; in the power to love
+and to serve, and in strength to grapple with sin and death--all the while
+He journeyed from the cradle to the grave and the victory beyond.</p>
+
+<p>His life was a discipline, in the very highest sense of the word. Many of
+the hopes He might rightly entertain about the success of His work were
+dashed. Much of His love for those around Him was disappointed, and His
+trust betrayed. He was despised where He should have been honoured:
+rejected where He should have been received. "He came unto His own, and
+His own received Him not." "Not this man," they cried, "but Barabbas." But
+out of it all He came forth perfect and entire, lacking nothing--the
+chiefest among ten thousand, the altogether lovely. It may be a mystery,
+but it is a fact all the same, that the more the precious and wondrous and
+eternal jewel was cut and cut again, the more the light and glory of the
+Day-spring from on High was made manifest to men.</p>
+
+<p>And here also I find a word of help and courage and cheer for you and me,
+my precious comrade. I am not sure that you could receive any more
+valuable Christmas gift than the full realisation of this truth--<i>that
+your advance from the infancy to the manhood of your life in God will not
+be hindered and delayed, but rather will be helped and quickened by the
+storms and trials, the conflicts and sufferings, which will overtake
+you</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It was so with the man Christ Jesus; it has been so with thousands of His
+chosen. As He, our dear Lord, was made perfect through suffering, so are
+His saints. We are "chosen in the furnace of affliction," and often cast
+into it, too! And yet He who chooses all our changes, might have spared us
+every trial and conflict, and taken us to victory without a battle, and to
+rest without a toil. But He knows better what will make us <i>men</i>, and
+it is <i>men</i> He wants to glorify Him--men, not babes.</p>
+
+<p>The dark valleys of bitterness and loneliness  are often better for us
+than the land of Beulah. A certain queen, once sitting for her portrait,
+commanded that it should be painted without shadows. "Without shadows!"
+said the astonished artist. "I fear your Majesty is not acquainted with
+the laws of light and beauty. There can be no good portrait without
+shading." No more can there be a good Salvationist without trial and
+sorrow and storm. There might, perhaps, remain a stunted and unfruitful
+infant life--but a <i>man</i> in Christ Jesus, a <i>Soldier</i> of the
+Cross, a <i>leader</i> of God's people, without tribulation <i>there can
+never be</i>. Patience, experience, faith, hope, love, if they do not
+actually grow from tribulations,  are helped by them in their growth. For
+what says the Apostle? "Tribulation worketh patience, and patience
+experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed."</p>
+
+<p>The finest pine-trees grow in the stormiest lands. The tempests make them
+strong. Surgeons tell us that their greatest triumphs are often those in
+which the patients have suffered most at their hands--for every stroke of
+the knife is to heal. The child you most truly love is the one you most
+anxiously correct, and "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth." Oh, <i>do</i>
+believe that by every blow of disappointment and sorrow He permits to fall
+upon you, He is striving to bring you to the measure of the stature of a
+man in Christ Jesus. <i>Do</i> work with Him in the full knowledge that He
+will not forsake you. He, the Man who has penetrated  to the heart of
+every form of sorrow, and left a blessing there; He who has watched in
+silence by every kind of earthly grief, and found its antidote: the Man
+who trod the wine-press alone--He will be with you.</p>
+
+<p>And, since He is with you, see to it you acquit yourself well in His
+presence. It is related of an old Highland chief that when advancing to
+give battle he fell at the head of his clan, pierced by two balls from the
+foe. His men saw him fall, and began to waver. But their wounded captain
+instantly raised himself on his elbow, and, with blood streaming from his
+wounds, exclaimed, "Children, I am not dead; <i>I am looking to see if you
+do your duty</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>My comrade, this is the path of progress, the way of advance from the
+littleness and weakness of infancy to the battles and victories of
+manhood. It is the way of duty, and your Captain, with the wounds in His
+hands and His side, is looking on.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="ch_03"></a>III.</h1>
+
+<h2>Contrasts at Bethlehem.</h2>
+
+
+
+<p>The birth and infancy of Jesus--notwithstanding that Christmas time comes
+round again and again--receive less attention than they deserve; owing, no
+doubt, to the interest attached to the events of His manhood and death.
+Nevertheless, they suggest some useful lessons, especially to those of us
+who have much to do with the weak and trembling, and are ourselves, alas!
+often weak and trembling, too. May I offer one or two thoughts on the
+subject, which, though quite simple, have proved of blessing to my own
+heart?</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Great weakness may be quite consistent with true greatness and
+goodness</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>It is unnecessary to dwell even for a moment on the weakness of the Infant
+Jesus. The Scripture has left no possible doubt about it.</p>
+
+<p>Unable to speak, to walk, indeed to do anything for Himself--weak with all
+the weakness of the human race; yea, more truly helpless than a young bird
+or a tiny worm, the Holy Child was laid in the manger hard by the beasts
+that perish.</p>
+
+<p>And yet we know that there was the Divine SON, the Express Image of the
+Father, the Everlasting King, the Enthroned One, the Creator, "without
+whom was not anything made that was made"! It is indeed a contrast, which
+first astounds us, and then compels our adoration and love. Our God is a
+consuming Fire--<i>our God is a little Child</i>. Holy, Holy, Holy, is the
+Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory--<i>and yet He is
+there in fashion as a Babe</i>, for whom, in all His sweet innocence, they
+cannot find a room in the crowded inn.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, my friend, to be weak, to be small, to be sadly unfit for the strifes
+of time; to feel weary and unequal to the hard battles of life; to realise
+that you are pushed out and away by the crowd, to be contemptuously
+forgotten by the multitude shouting and singing across the road--all this
+may be your case; and <i>yet</i> you may be God's chosen vessel, intended--framed "to suffer and triumph with Him." You, even you, may be destined
+by His wisdom to fill for Him some great place in action against the hosts
+of iniquity and unbelief. Above all, you may be appointed by God the
+Father to be like His Son, with a holy likeness of will, of affection, of
+character.</p>
+
+<p>For, indeed, weakness in many things is not inconsistent with goodness,
+and purity, and love. The manger has in this also a message for us. Out of
+that mystery of helplessness came forth the Lion-Heart of Love, which led
+Him, for us, to the winepress alone, and which, while we were yet rebels,
+loved us with an everlasting love, going, for us, to a lonely and shameful
+death. Take heart, then, remembering that it is out of weakness we are to
+be made strong. Be of good courage--to-day may be the day of the enemy's
+strength, when you are constrained to cry out: "This is your hour and the
+power of darkness!" but to-morrow will be <i>yours</i>. The weakness and
+humiliation of the stable must go before the Mount of Transfiguration, the
+Mount of Calvary, the Resurrection Glory, and the exaltation of the
+Father's Throne. Take heart!</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>A condition of complete dependence may be quite consistent with a great
+vocation--the call, that is, to a great work</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>I suppose that there is nothing known to man so absolutely dependent upon
+the help of others as a little child! Life itself begins in total
+dependence upon another life, and is only preserved in still greater
+dependence on powers outside itself--for air, for light, for heat, for
+food, for clothes, for comfort--indeed, for every needed thing. This is
+especially the case with the child. The young lions and sheep, the tiny
+flies and the small fishes--these are all able to do something for their
+own support; but the new-born babe presents a picture of complete
+dependence. And this Babe was no exception. What a service of imperishable
+worth to all the world was rendered by His mother in her loving care of
+Him!</p>
+
+<p>And yet we know something of the stupendous task to which He came! That
+little Child was to become the greatest Example, the greatest Teacher, the
+greatest, the only Saviour, the greatest Healer of the sorrows of men, the
+greatest Benefactor, the greatest Ruler and King. Upon Him and upon His
+word, who lies there in His Virgin mother's arms, dependent on her breast
+for life and warmth, unnumbered multitudes were to rest their all for this
+life and the next--tens of thousands, in the face of inexpressible
+agonies, were to trust to Him their every hope, and for His sake were to
+die a thousand deaths.</p>
+
+<p>Let not, then, your heart be troubled because you also are so dependent on
+others--so hedged in by your circumstances, so limited by sickness and
+pain, so incompetent through inexperience and ignorance, or that you are
+so compelled to stand and wait when you would fain rush on and do or dare
+for your Lord. All this may be even so, and yet you may be called to share
+in the same high vocation as your Saviour.</p>
+
+<p>I read lately of an old saint chained for weary years to a dungeon-wall,
+unable even to feed himself, whose testimony for Jesus was powerful to the
+deliverance of many of his persecutors. He was killed at last, lest, one
+by one, he should convert the jailers also who were employed to supply him
+with food.</p>
+
+<p>Are you "bound" in some way? Are you chained fast to some strange trial?
+Are you appointed to serve in what seems like a den of beasts? Are you
+under the compulsion of some injustice? Are you made to feel helpless and
+useless without the support of those around you? Ah, well, do not repine.
+Do not forget that God's call comes often--Oh, so often--to just such as
+you--to witness for Him in spite of "these bonds," to declare the truth,
+to dare to reprove sin. Above all, <i>do not doubt your God. You may be
+very dependent to-day, but you may be more than victorious to-morrow</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Poverty and friendlessness are often
+found in company with a great heart</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>There was no home for Jesus in Bethlehem. There was no room for Him in the
+inn. There was no cradle in the stable. There was no protector when Herod
+arose to kill. What a strange world it is! Did ever babe open eyes on such
+a topsy-turvy condition of affairs? The King of Glory had not where to lay
+His head! Mary, it is true, was strong in faith, but both she and Joseph
+must needs soon fly into Egypt with the Babe. Refused at the inn, soon
+even the stable must cast them out!</p>
+
+<p>He came to take all men into His heart, and they, ere ever they saw Him,
+cast Him forth as an outlaw!</p>
+
+<p>And we who know what it means to be loved of Him, what can we say? Our
+hearts are bowed with something of shame and grief that He thus suffered,
+and yet we have a secret joy because He suffered so well! For of all the
+greatnesses of the Babe this is the greatest--the greatness of His heart.
+"The Sacred Heart of Jesus," the Romanists call it. "The All-Conquering
+Heart of Jesus," I prefer to name it. For it was His wealth of love that
+really gave Him the victory.</p>
+
+<p>Does one read these lines who is poor, who is cast out by those who are
+dear, who is a stranger in a strange land, who is driven from "pillar to
+post," who is harassed by open foes and wounded by secret enmity? Well, to
+that one let me say, remember your Lord's poverty and friendlessness;
+remember the tossings up and down of His infancy; the frugal cottage home
+in Nazareth wherein His family was finally gathered--despite its bareness
+and toil--was a place of peace and abundance, compared with the stable,
+the flight into Egypt, and the sojourn among aliens there.</p>
+
+<p>Are you, dear friend, tempted to complain of your narrow surroundings, of
+your small opportunity to shine before others, or of a want of
+appreciation of your service and gifts and powers by those who should know
+you? Oh, remember the Babe, and the long years of His condescension to men
+of low estate, to the cramped surroundings of the carpenter's shed, and
+the sleepy Jewish village. Are you tried sometimes because you have to
+suffer the hatred or jealousy, secret or open, of those for whom you feel
+nothing but goodwill, and who perhaps once thought themselves happy in
+your friendship? Well, in such hours, remember your Master, and the hatred
+of Herod seeking to kill the Child. Try to call to mind something of the
+secret, as well as the open, bitterness of men, religious and irreligious
+alike, which began to hunt Him while yet in swaddling clothes, and which
+hunted Him still all through His days.</p>
+
+<p>But amidst it all, what a great heart of passionate love was His! Blessed
+be His Name for ever! Whether the poverty and suffering and hatred were or
+were not favourable  to it, there it was--<i>the Great Heart of all the
+world</i>. What about you? Can you ever be again the same since you
+learned that He loved you? Can you ever be again content to remain little
+and narrow, with interests and affections that are little and narrow also?
+Will you not rise, as He rose, above the small ambitions of the spiritual
+pigmies who meet you at every turn, determined to look beyond your own
+tiny circle, and the low aims of those around you? Depend upon it, you
+ought to do so. Depend upon it, the Holy Saviour can enable you to do so.
+Depend upon it, the world's great need is "Great Hearts." Will you be one?</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="ch_04"></a>IV.</h1>
+
+<h2>Christ Come Again.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in
+     swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger</i>."--Luke ii. 7.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>Christ formed in you</i>."--Gal. iv. 19.</blockquote>
+
+<p>The life of Jesus Christ in Palestine was a foreshadowing of His life in
+all who accept Him. God appointed Him a Saviour, not only because He
+should bring redemption nigh by a sacrifice which He alone could offer,
+but because He was also appointed to be the firstborn of many brethren, to
+be the head of a new family, the beginning--the new Adam--the first of a
+new line, in which character should cease to be merely human, even though
+perfect with all human perfections, and should become a union of the human
+and the Divine; in which, in fact, the body and mind and spirit of man
+should continue to exhibit the wonder of Christ's Incarnation, and show
+forth God clothed with man.</p>
+
+<p>The life of Jesus divides itself quite naturally into several distinct
+periods, each having its own special characteristics and peculiar history.
+There is His birth and infancy; His childhood; His youth; His manhood; His
+perfected or completed life following Calvary and the Resurrection; and,
+may we not say, His eternal glory, upon which a few of His disciples saw
+Him begin to enter in the transcending splendour of the Ascension.</p>
+
+<p>Every one of these phases or sections of His wonderful experience of earth
+has its continuing lessons for us. All speak aloud to us of His purposes
+and plans, and reveal to us the power and force of His inner life in the
+outward or public appearances and acts which belong to each. God has
+hidden many things from us--mysteries of nature, of grace, of eternity;
+but this mystery of God's relations to men, He has exhausted His resources
+in order to make plain. Before all else the life of Jesus is a revelation
+of the mind and methods, the principles and the practices of God, as they
+ought to appear, and as they ought to work out, amid the surroundings and
+limitations of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>It is to the beginnings of that life to which our thoughts turn at this
+Christmas season. We dwell with affection on the oft-depicted picture, and
+repeat the oft-repeated words, and join in the old, old Hallelujahs of the
+shepherds with something of the zest and freshness of a first love. The
+story is so unlike all others, and touches with such unerring potency
+chords in the human soul which call it to a higher and nobler life, that,
+no matter who gazes upon the Babe of Bethlehem, he feels a kinship with
+all the world in hailing the Desire of all Nations. The manger, the silent
+companions of the stable, the swaddling clothes--what a touch of human
+tenderness--<i>motherliness</i>, so to speak--is in that line, "and
+wrapped Him in swaddling clothes"!--the adoring shepherds, the star, the
+wise men (all thoughts of their wisdom for the moment gone); the gold, the
+frankincense, the myrrh, the rejoicing and yet trembling mother, the
+little Child--we see it all. Seeing, we believe; and believing, we
+rejoice. The Day Star from on High hath visited <i>us</i>. We <i>know</i>
+in whom we have believed. The great condescension is before us. Strength
+has made itself dependent on weakness, cause upon effect, eternity upon
+time, God upon man; and He has done it for our sakes.</p>
+
+<p>The Divine condescension never appears so new and so real to us as when we
+stand at the side of this lowly cradle. Here are no high-sounding
+doctrines, no hard words, no terrible commands, no far-off thunders of a
+new Sinai, no rumblings of a coming Judgment. Here we see Jesus, and Jesus
+only. Jesus showing Himself in our very own flesh and blood; submitting
+Himself to the weakness of our infirmities; voluntarily clothing Himself
+with our ignorance, and making God the present tangible possession of the
+whole human family, bringing Him "<i>very nigh to us, in our mouth and in
+our heart, if we can but believe</i>." And, more than this, God joined in
+that Babe His great strength to our great nothingness; He bound us to
+Himself; He robed us, as it were, with Himself, and He robed Himself in
+us. Henceforth the Tabernacle of God is with men. Henceforth every one of
+us may be conscious of an inward Presence, of which we may say in holy
+joy: "Angels and men before Him fall, and devils fear and fly."</p>
+
+<p>It is this manifestation of Jesus in His people for which the Apostle
+prays in the words I have quoted, "My little children, of whom I travail
+in birth again until Christ be formed in you." Nothing less will satisfy
+him, because he knew that nothing less will prevail against the power of
+the world, the flesh, and the Devil, in any human heart. "<i>Christ formed
+in you</i>," Christ born again in them--that is his agonised prayer, his
+one hope for them.</p>
+
+<p>In the workshops of human effort no instruments, no skill, no motive power
+exist for the formation and development of character apart from the
+energising vitality of God's Spirit dwelling in us. He is the
+indispensable foundation of any goodness, or wisdom, or beauty that can
+last. Purity begins and ends in Him. Faith finds her author and finisher
+in Him. Truth, which is the beauty of the soul, is but a reflection of His
+image, and love has no being but in Him. And so Paul says, <i>Let Him
+in</i>. Conformity to His example is only possible by the re-formation in
+you of His life, and the growth again in you of His person; the mind of
+Christ in your mind, the spirit of Christ in your spirit, the presence of
+Christ in your flesh and blood; the motive power of Christ, the Father's
+will, prompting your every thought and word and deed, and thereby
+transforming your body into a temple of the Son of God.</p>
+
+<p>And, because, in this unity of purpose with the Father, the Christ of
+Glory stooped to the infancy and childhood of Nazareth, yielding Himself
+completely to the bonds and limits inseparable from the life and
+conditions of a little child, and thinking no humiliation of our nature
+too deep for His love to tread, <i>so He will condescend to the lowest
+depths of weakness and want revealed in your heart and life</i>. He will
+meet you where you are. He will deal with you just where you are weakest
+and worst. This is indeed the key-note of all that God has to show you. It
+is your own link in the long chain of patient and ever-new revelations of
+God to man.</p>
+
+<p>For what is the history of man, what is the story the Bible has to tell,
+what is the testimony of all time, but that God has ever been speaking to
+man, appearing to man, opening now his eyes, and now his understanding,
+and now his heart, and making an everlastingly new revelation to the soul
+that God in him is his sole hope of glory. And His Christmas-message
+to-day is still the same. To you, if you are willing, Christ will come as
+really, as sensibly, as wonderfully--nay, a thousand times more so--as He
+came to Mary and to Bethlehem. In truth, a second coming; but in many and
+wonderful ways like unto the first.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The childhood of Jesus was attended by remarkable recognitions of His
+Divinity. At His birth, at His dedication, in Herod's instant resolve to
+kill Him, in the Temple with the fathers, by many clear tokens men
+confessed and acknowledged that He was the Son of God. If He is being
+formed in you there will be equally definite and not very dissimilar signs
+of recognition.</p>
+
+<p>First, before all else, you will know, with Mary, that the new life
+entrusted to you is Divine; that God has entered into your heart to make
+all things new. It is just the absence of this assurance which stamps so
+much of the Christianity of the present day as--in effect--a religion
+without God. Its professors have no certainty. They seek, but they do not
+find; they ask, but they do not receive; they have no sure foundation in
+the sanction of their own consciousness to the indwelling Person; they
+have no revelation; they have, in short, no God. How far--even as the east
+is from the west--is this from the glorious confidence with which Mary
+sang, and in which you can join, if, indeed, your Christ is come: "My soul
+doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced <i>in God my
+Saviour</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Salvation is of the Lord, and so is the assurance of it. Where there is
+the life of God, there will be His witness, even in the heart of the
+weakest and slowest servant of all His household. If you are not clear
+about this first evidence of your Lord's coming, let me counsel you that
+there is something wrong. <i>If Christ be formed in you, you will
+assuredly know it beyond the power of men or devils to make you doubt</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But others than Mary also acknowledge this appearance of God "manifest in
+the flesh." The shepherds and the Wise Men, Holy Simeon, and Herod the
+king, each in his own way adds his own tribute to the New Life that had
+come down to man.</p>
+
+<p>The shepherds and the strangers from afar bow down and worship. Strangers,
+perhaps, were more ready to rejoice with you than your own kith and kin
+when first Christ came to you.</p>
+
+<p>Simeon, who had so desired to see the salvation of God, sees and is
+satisfied. Perhaps some Simeon had thus watched and waited and wept for
+you, and when the Lord came to His temple, he saw it, and was ready to
+depart with joy.</p>
+
+<p>Herod the king sought to kill the Child. So it is even now. Don't be
+deceived; where Christ comes, storms come. The world of selfishness and
+power and wealth will kill the Divine Thing in you, if it can. Between the
+prince of this world and the Prince of the world to come no truce was
+possible long ago in quiet Judea, and no truce is possible now. The spirit
+of the world is still the spirit of murder. It is called by other names
+to-day, and, under its influence, men will tell you that the life of God
+in you is not to take those forms of violent opposition to wrong, and of
+passionate devotion to right, and of burning zeal and self-denial for the
+lost, which they took in Jesus. The real meaning of their tale is that
+they are seeking to kill the Child.</p>
+
+<p>But do not be dismayed. Remember Mary's flight into Egypt. The great peril
+of her Son made her regardless of her friends, of her reputation, of her
+home, of her life. She must guard that precious Life at any cost, at any
+risk, at any loss. Is there not a lesson in her example? Let nothing, let
+not all the sum total of this world's pleasures and possessions lead you
+to risk the Life of God in your soul. Listen to no voices that counsel
+friendship, or parley, or compromise with the world--<i>the spirit of
+Herod is in it</i>. If you cannot preserve that Indwelling without flying--from somewhere, or something, or some one--then fly. If you cannot guard
+that Presence without losing all, then let all be lost, and in losing all
+you shall find more than all.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Side by side with these evidences of His Divinity the infancy and
+childhood of Jesus revealed His dependence and weakness; that is, <i>the
+reality of His human nature</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The first recorded act of His mother shows us one aspect of that weakness
+after a fashion which appeals to the tenderest recollections of the whole
+human family, "<i>She wrapped Him in swaddling clothes</i>"; and then, as
+though to mark for ever the perfection of dependence, the history goes on,
+"<i>and laid Him in a manger</i>." There are other equally striking
+incidents teaching just as clearly that the Babe was a babe, and that the
+Child was really a child. It is the perfect union of Him "Who was, and is,
+and is to come," with him who flourisheth as the flower of the field; the
+wind passeth over him, and he is gone.</p>
+
+<p>Even so may Christ be formed in you. The purity and dignity of His life
+will be all the more wonderfully glorious in the eyes of men and angels
+because it is linked with dependence and trial, and weakness and sorrow.
+As it was at Nazareth, so it is now. Hand in hand with Divinity walked
+hunger and weariness, poverty, disappointment, and toil. Did we think it
+would be otherwise? Did we, do we, sometimes wonder why the road is so
+rough, and the burden so heavy, and the sky so dark? Are we found asking
+the old question about sitting on the twelve thrones, judging those around
+us, and sharing in some way the royal glory of a King? and is there an
+echo of murmuring at these bonds and infirmities and drudgeries of daily
+duty and common sorrow? So did the Rabbis of old, and, in consequence,
+refused Him.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! the answer to it all is in the one word, it was because "He was made
+perfect through suffering;" it was because He learned obedience by the
+things He suffered that He must do it again through you--in you. Every
+energy of your being may thus be sanctified. Every pain, every sorrow,
+every joy, every purpose will be--not taken away; not crushed and hardened
+into a series of unfeeling forms and empty signs; not passed over as
+having no relation to his life, but touched and purified and ennobled with
+the love and power of an indwelling God.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it is <i>man</i> whom He came to restore--it is <i>man</i>, whose
+beauty and power were the glory of creation, that drew Him with infinite
+attractions from the centre of His Father's heaven, and plunged Him into
+the centre of a very hell of suffering and shame. It was man whose nature,
+passing by the angels, He took upon Him. It was man He swore to save. He
+loves our manhood--its will--its intelligence--its emotions--its passions;
+and it is our manhood He has redeemed. He designs to make men really men,
+to cleanse--to restore--to indwell in them, and finally to present every
+one in the beauty of a perfected character before the presence of His
+Father, without spot or blemish or any such thing.</p>
+
+<p>It is this great principle of Redemption that has found expression in The
+Salvation Army. We are of those who see in every human being the ruins of
+the Temple of God; but ruins which can be repaired and reconstructed, that
+He may fit them for His own possession, and then return and make them His
+abode.</p>
+
+<p>Never listen to that fatal lie, that to be a man means of necessity to be
+always a sinner; that humanity is only another word for irreclaimable
+desert or irreparable despair. When the enemy of your soul whispers to you
+out of his lying heart that because sin has found one of its strongholds
+in the appetites and propensities of your poor body, or in the original
+perversity of a rebellious spirit, and that you cannot be expected to
+triumph over that evil nature because it <i>is</i> your nature, remember
+Bethlehem, and answer him with the promise of God, "<i>I will dwell in
+you, and walk in you</i>." It was because He purposed to cleanse wholly,
+body and soul and spirit, that He came, taking the body, soul, and spirit
+of a man, and that He will come again, taking your body, soul, and spirit
+as His dwelling-place.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The birth and childhood of Jesus were the beginning of His great
+sacrifice, as well as the preparation for it. The spirit of Bethlehem and
+the spirit of Calvary are one. He was born for others that He might die
+for others. The mystery of God in the Babe was the beginning of the
+mystery of God on the cross. The one was a part of the other. If they had
+not "laid Him in a manger" for us, they could never have laid Him in the
+tomb, that He might "taste death for every man." And it was because "He
+grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and increased in wisdom, and the grace
+of God was upon Him" in those early years, that He was able afterwards to
+tread the winepress alone, to work out a perfect example of manhood, to
+wrestle with Death and the Grave, and finally to stand forth for us as the
+great Victorious One, conqueror of all our foes.</p>
+
+<p>And is it not in this same fashion and for this same purpose that Christ
+is to be formed in us? "<i>He grew</i>." Progress is the law of happiness,
+the law of holiness, the law of life. To stand still is to die. It was not
+enough for the fulfilment of His great mission that He should be born,
+that He should live--He must grow.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take that lesson to our hearts, in this superficial, painted,
+rushing generation. Let us beware of resting our hope to satisfy the
+eternal claims of God upon some great event in our spiritual history of
+long ago. It is not enough to have been converted. It is not enough to
+have had the adoption of the Father. It is not enough to have entered the
+spiritual family of Christ. It is not enough that even Jesus revealed
+Himself in us. Thousands of false hopes are built on these past events,
+which, divinely wrought as they may have been, have ceased to possess any
+vital connexion with the life and character of to-day. Such a religion is
+a religion of memory, destined to be turned in the presence of the Throne
+to unmixed remorse.</p>
+
+<p>But how, and in what, are we to grow? In manner and in substance like our
+Lord. Jesus grew in strength and stature, in wisdom and in grace--the
+grace of God was upon Him.</p>
+
+<p><i>In spiritual strength and stature</i>; that is, from the timid babe to
+the bold and valiant soldier; in the power to do the things we ought to
+do, in the ability to obey the inward voice. It is by the exercise of the
+muscles and tendons of the babe that the bodily frame is fitted for the
+rush and struggle of life. It is by the A B C of the infant class that the
+mind is fitted to comprehend and appreciate the duties and obligations of
+political, social, physical, and family relationships. It is by the humble
+wail of the penitent, and the daily acts of loving help, that the soul
+learns to soar on eagles' wings, and shout the truth that God is gracious,
+and to brave difficulty and danger in His service. They go from strength
+to strength. Are you so journeying?</p>
+
+<p><i>In wisdom</i>. Wisdom is a thing of the heart more than of the brain,
+and the wisdom of God is really a revelation of the love of God. To be
+"wise unto salvation" is to learn the lesson of love. To be "wise to win
+souls" is first to love souls. To feel that "it is more blessed to give
+than to receive," is the fruit of love. How different this from the
+calculating wisdom of this world!</p>
+
+<p>Dear comrade and friend, are you taking care that the Divine Life in you
+shall grow after this Christ-like fashion? When I hear Christian people
+say: "Oh, I have so little love, so little faith, so little joy," I
+generally find that it is so because they stifle and quench the blessed
+yearnings of the Divine Spirit to seek the souls of others; because they
+leave unanswered the urgings and promptings of duty which God in their
+conscience is demanding; because they neglect prayer, and self-denial, and
+heart-searching, and the Word of God; because, in short, they starve the
+Child. What wonder if love and faith are feeble, and joy is like to die!</p>
+
+<p>"And the grace of God was upon Him." Here was the promise of that entire
+sacrifice for men which culminated when a man cried out to Him on the
+cross: "<i>He saved others; Himself He cannot save</i>." It is ever thus
+that God repeats Himself. When we are ready to be offered up for the
+blessing and saving of others, then grace will come upon us for the
+struggle as it came upon Him. When Christ formed in us finds free course
+for all His mind and all His passion; when our eyes are opened to the
+great purposes of His life in the salvation of the whole world; and when
+we hear, through Him, the cry of those for whom He was born, and for whom
+He died, God will pour out on us grace to send us forth--grace sufficient,
+grace abundant, grace triumphant. Have you come to this? Can you say He is
+thus dwelling in you, and working in you, to will and to do of His good
+pleasure?</p>
+
+<p>Do not turn away with the paralysing fear that it cannot be; that the life
+of Jesus can never be lived out again in flesh and blood. Remember, He is
+"<i>the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever</i>." All He was in
+Bethlehem, to Mary and Joseph; all He was to His work-mates at Nazareth;
+all He was in the wilderness, fighting with fiends, in the deserts feeding
+the hungry, or among the multitude--healing the sick, blessing the little
+children, casting out devils, and preaching the Kingdom; all He was in
+Bethany, weeping over Lazarus, and crying, "Lazarus, come forth"; in the
+garden of His agony, in the darkness of His cross, in the hour of His
+Resurrection, all this--all--all--all--He is to-day. <i>He belongs to the
+everlasting Now</i>. All He was to the martyrs who died for His Name, all
+He has been to our fathers, He is to us, and will be to our children, for
+with Him is no variableness nor shadow of turning. Yes! This unchanging
+Christ "<i>is in us, except we be reprobate</i>," the Life and Image of
+God, and the Hope of Glory.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Secret of His Rule.</h4>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>For we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the
+     feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we
+     are, yet without sin</i>."--Heb. iv. 15.</blockquote>
+
+<p>We hail the Christmas season as the anniversary of our King's birth. Our
+eyes turn to the manger, and our hearts to Mary, for a thousand and one
+reasons, but the chiefest is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem as the
+Divine Son and the Royal Branch.</p>
+
+<p>Although we know that many shadows darken the way of the Cross, and that
+it is roughened by many thorns and agonies, many dark descents and weary
+struggles, we have always the assurance that at the end, and at the right
+time, there will be a crown and a throne.</p>
+
+<p>Standing at the manger, and looking over the hills of hatred and
+suffering, we can already see the great white Throne. From the wilderness
+of the Temptation we can even catch a glimpse of the marriage supper of
+the Lamb. In the darkness around the cross, we have visions of a great
+multitude, which no man can number, casting their crowns at the feet of
+the Crucified. Written large on all the life of Jesus there is, in fact,
+the witness that He will triumph. We know and feel it. It is revealed even
+when it is not stated. It is assured even when not promised.</p>
+
+<p>But I do not think that it is by virtue of this that Jesus Christ has
+exerted His greatest influence on the hearts of men. To be a king, to be
+in the royal line, is a great thing; and to be the Divine King is
+infinitely greater. To be a king, however, is one thing; to be a ruler is
+often quite another. The right descent, the royal birth, the due
+recognition, the ultimate taking possession of the throne, are enough to
+make the king, but far from enough to make the ruler.</p>
+
+<p>Principles, of course, there are, very important and far-reaching,
+involved in any sort of kingship. We have all heard of "the divine right
+of kings." We all see--even if we cannot understand it--the love of
+peoples for a king. Even when the heads of states are called by some other
+name than king, the fact of kingship is still there. All this denotes the
+working of great principles, having their roots in the deepest feelings of
+the human race. But I repeat, that to rule is quite another thing than to
+be a king. History abounds with examples of great monarchs who have not
+ruled, and of true rulers who have had no royal blood and no kingly
+throne.</p>
+
+<p>And just as there are facts in human experience which have made kings
+necessary and possible, so are there principles by which alone it is
+possible to rule.</p>
+
+<p>The kingship and rule of Jesus Christ our Lord was no exception. It is not
+my purpose to dwell here on the great and unchanging demands of the human
+soul which make His sovereignty a necessity of our well-being alike as
+citizens, and as individuals of His world. Unless the Lord is King, all
+must be confusion, dissonance, and disaster. The supreme fact in human
+life after all is, that our God is "the creator, preserver, and governor
+of all things."</p>
+
+<p>But what of His rule? There another principle comes into operation. On
+what is His <i>rule</i> based? By what agency does He extend His
+<i>authority</i> until it becomes <i>control</i>?</p>
+
+<p>And here it must be remembered that He aspires to rule men's hearts. His
+kingdom is moral and spiritual first, and then physical and material. That
+is why it will endure for ever. It is in the region of motive and
+affection, of reason and emotion, of preference and choice, that He
+designs to be Ruler. It is to reign in men's hearts that Christ laid aside
+His heavenly crown and throne. If He cannot be a Ruler there, then He will
+account little of His kingship in the skies.</p>
+
+<p>By what, then, does He rule? <i>Is it not by His compassion?</i> Has
+not that been the chief influence which has drawn men to Him, and held
+them in His service?</p>
+
+<p>Just think for a moment of one or two commonplace facts.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>The Children</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>At least three-fourths of the human family are always little children. To
+what does He owe the influence He exercises in the minds and hearts of
+multitudes of these little ones? His exalted throne? His royal lineage?
+His majesty? No; I think not to these, but to the revelation of His pity,
+His sympathy, His patience, His sweet, forgiving grace, His tender
+compassion as a Saviour. To them He is the "Friend above all others"--the
+Lowly One, the "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild." Viewing Him thus, they
+confess to Him in sin, they fly to Him in sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>His creative power, His everlasting habitations, His throne of
+unapproachable glory, His glorious and terrible judgments, are little more
+to the children than words and phrases--may I not say?--at best but the
+"trappings" of His person. They solemnise, they inspire, perhaps, with
+reverent fear; but they do not, they could not, secure that true
+ascendency over the nature of the child by which alone there can be real
+control and true rulership.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>The Sorrowful</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>Sorrow is the most common of all human experiences. There are no homes
+without it, and there are very few hearts which have not tasted of its
+cup. Earth is a vale of tears. Sooner or later, all men suffer. "Man is
+born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward," and to millions of men
+Christ has appeared in their affliction and taken possession of their
+lives.</p>
+
+<p>What was the secret of His influence over them? Was it His dominion from
+sea to sea? Was it even His victory over death and His kingly conquest of
+the grave? Was it His sovereign throne of power? No, I do not think it was
+thus He won them; but as "the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief,"
+who learned obedience by the things that He suffered, and who could
+compassionate with them in their sorrows also.</p>
+
+<p>It is one of the commonplaces of life that people associated in great
+suffering and trials obtain great influence with each other. And it is so
+here. Let the human heart once realise that in its deepest depths of
+sorrow it may have for helper One who has been deeper still; and it is in
+the nature of things that it should fly to that One for succour, for
+sympathy, for strength. And when that One out of His riches gives of His
+own might, and of His own sweet, unfathomed consolations, then His
+government is assured, His rule is established.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>The Tempted</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>Did I say that sorrow was the commonest of all human experiences? Ought I
+not to have said <i>temptation</i>? We all know the reality of temptation:
+its biting wounds, its power to assail, to harass, to irritate, to worry;
+its appeals to the senses, the animal in us; its assault of our
+confidence; its liberty to terrorise and to torment.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, every man is tempted. How shall he withstand temptation? What is it
+in Jesus Christ that calls the sorely-tempted one to Him? Is it His divine
+purity, His kingly holiness, His might as the supreme Sovereign whose law
+is good? No; I think that only those who have learned to love Him will
+love His law. Is it not rather the wonderful pity of Him of whom it is
+written, "We have a great High Priest,... touched with the feeling of our
+infirmities, ... in all points tempted like as we are, yet without  sin"?
+<i>Touched with the feeling of our infirmities</i>. There is the
+attraction of a supreme compassion for the tempted. There is the means by
+which the King of Righteousness becomes also the Ruler over tempted and
+sinful men.</p>
+
+<p>I can add but one other word now.</p>
+
+<p>If it is only by His continual compassion that our Master obtains and
+maintains His rule, will it not be by a similar means that we may hope to
+bless and influence the souls of men? Yes; that has been already the great
+lesson of The Salvation Army. It is founded on sympathy, on a universal
+compassion.</p>
+
+<p>The moment we turn away from that, and rely merely on our system, or on
+methods, or our teaching, we cease just in that proportion to be true
+Salvationists. We aspire to rule men's hearts. We care nothing for the
+position of a church or sect; we care everything for a real control over
+the souls and conduct of living men and women, that we may lead them to
+God and use them for His glory. It is by tenderness we shall win it. By
+seeking them in their sorrows and sins; by making them feel our true
+heart-hunger over them, our true love, our entire union with the Christ in
+His compassion for them.</p>
+
+<p>And the same principle will hold good in training those whom we have
+already won. This was, no doubt, the secret of Paul's great influence with
+his people. His whole heart was theirs; and they knew it. "We were gentle
+among you," he says, "even as a nurse cherisheth her children; so, being
+affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you,
+not the Gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear
+unto us."</p>
+
+<p>We know his courage, his lofty standard, his splendid impatience of shams,
+his tenacity of the truth, his contempt for danger, his daring unto death;
+and yet he can say of himself that, with it all, he was gentle among them
+as a nurse cherishing her children--ready to give up his very soul for
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, Colonel, Captain, Sergeant, leaders all, whatever name you bear, do
+you want to lead and rule the people whom God has given you as a charge?
+Then here is the true secret of power--be for ever pouring out your
+heart's deepest, tenderest love for them, and most of all for the weak and
+the most unworthy and sinful amongst them. Do this, and you will not
+merely be walking after Paul--you will be walking <i>with</i> Christ.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="ch_06"></a>VI. A Neglected Saviour.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>"<i>And He came and found them asleep again: for
+their eyes were heavy</i>."--Matt. xxvi. 43.</blockquote>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+
+<p>There are few more instructive or more touching things in the life of our
+Lord Jesus Christ than His evident appreciation of human sympathy. Whether
+we observe Him at the marriage feast, or in the fishing-boat, or on the
+Mount of Olives, or when spending a time apart with His disciples, or in
+the Garden of His Agony, this appreciation expresses itself quite
+naturally and consistently. The Son of Man, though one with the Father,
+yet found joy and comfort in the society of men. What we call
+"companionship" had real charms for Him. It helped to draw Him out to the
+hungerings and thirstings of men; it assisted in revealing to Him the
+facts of human sin, and the needs of the human soul. Thus it enabled Him
+more perfectly to be our living example, as well as the propitiation for
+our sins.</p>
+
+<p>And as He valued the consolations arising from human friendship and love,
+so also He had to suffer the loss of them, in order that He might carry
+out His great work for God and man. For His work's sake, His soul was
+required to pass through the agony of losing every human consolation. Many
+were His moments of bitterness. The world proved itself to be, what it
+still remains, a cold-hearted affair; His own, to whom He came, received
+Him not. But the bitterest sorrow which can come to a leader was added to
+His cup, when He witnessed the failure of His trusted disciples in the
+hour of trial, and when He realised that their unfaithfulness was towards
+Himself as a person, as well as to the great mission to which He had
+consecrated both Himself and them.</p>
+
+<p>Now, when we are called upon to suffer in the same way, may we not be
+brought into very intimate fellowship with Jesus? Shall we complain
+because the servant is not above his Lord? Shall we doubt His love, and
+care, and power, because He does not always shield us from that same blast
+of loneliness which swept over His own soul in the Garden, when for the
+second, aye, and for the third time, He found His three disciples asleep?</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Sad as it is, it is none the less certain that we, too, must expect some
+in whom we have trusted to fail us in that hour when we most need them, be
+it the hour of supreme temptation, or of great opportunity, or of deep
+sorrow for the Kingdom's sake. It was precisely this which happened to our
+Lord. It is bad to be so dependent on men--even on the most beautiful, or
+most perfect souls--that we cannot fight on without them. The dependence
+of love must work hand in hand with the independence of faith, if we are
+to take our share in this trial of our Master and to profit by it.</p>
+
+<p>Those who thus fail us will, perchance, be the very persons upon whom we
+have most reason to rely, and whom in some sore trial of our faith or
+moment of danger, we have specially called upon for defence and prayer,
+for strength and sympathy, as did our Lord in the case of these disciples.
+Until now, Peter had been a valiant, not to say, reckless follower of
+Jesus; while all, John especially, had been well beloved and tenderly
+watched over by Him. And yet this woeful sleep deadens them to it all.
+Even for one short hour they cannot watch with Him.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+
+<p>But such failure on the part of those who were loved and trusted will add
+immensely to the burden of the battle that we are fighting for God and the
+souls of men. It did so even to Jesus. Nothing more pathetic, more deeply
+heart-moving, is written in all God's Book, than this simple picture of
+the Man of Sorrows--struggling for the life of the human race, absolutely
+bereft of human aid--coming in the midst of His dark conflict to seek the
+touch of sympathy, a hand-grasp, a word, a look from those His well-loved
+followers, only to find them asleep in the gloom. Retracing His steps, He
+casts Himself on the ground, and cries, "My Father, if it be possible, let
+this cup pass from Me." Am I wrong in saying that it was an added
+ingredient of bitterness in that cup to find that these, His trusted ones,
+could only sleep, while He must go forward to suffer?</p>
+
+<p>But their failure did not stop Him. No, not for one moment. There was
+agony in His heart, there were death shadows around Him, and bloody sweat
+upon His brow, but He did not waver. He went right on to finish the work
+He had promised to do. Gladly would He have had them with Him; steadfastly
+He goes forward without them! Here also is a lesson for you and for me.
+<i>The work is more than the worker</i>. And in times when we must lose,
+for our work's sake, that which we count dearer to us than our lives, when
+the iron of disappointed love enters our souls, as it entered His, we must
+follow Him, and go forward, steadfastly forward.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+
+<p>And after all, the failure of the disciples was very human. Their eyes
+were heavy. They were weary and sore tired. This, too, is typical of many
+of the losses we Salvationists are called upon to suffer. Some on whom we
+have relied and trusted grow weary in well-doing. The strain is so great!
+The tax on brain and heart and hand is so constant! Life becomes so
+burdened with watchings and prayings and sufferings for and with others,
+that there is little, if any, time or strength left for oneself! And so
+they cannot keep up, but seek rest and quiet for themselves elsewhere.
+They are heavy, and no longer feel the need to watch with us.</p>
+
+<p>Dear comrade, in your like trial do not doubt that the Lord Jesus is with
+you. Suffering of this kind will help to liken you to Him--it is a very
+real bearing of the Cross of Christ. Pitiful followers of Him should we
+be, if we wished to have only joy when He had only suffering.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+
+<p>But the disciples' strange failure did not call forth one word of
+bitterness from our Lord's lips. A gentle reproach was certainly implied
+in the words, "Could ye not watch with Me one hour?" but no shade of
+personal displeasure expressed itself, much as the occasion might seem to
+warrant it. No! Jesus knew the failures begotten of human weakness, as
+well as the horror of human sin. And so He made allowances, and was as
+patient with those who left Him, as He was tender to those who were
+steadfast. He loved them both.</p>
+
+<p>Go thou, and do likewise. In your home; in your family circle; in your
+Corps; in your office; in your work, be it what it may; when men fail and
+forsake your Lord; even if all disappoint and desert you, <i>you must love
+them still</i>. Be faithful with them; but, above all, be steadfast in
+your own purpose, and devote all your zeal and strength to finish the work
+that God has given you to do. In short, go forward without them; but let
+your words, and thoughts, and prayers for them be like your Master's.</p>
+
+<p>And Jesus utters no word of complaint about this failure. The silence all
+through that great anguish is indeed very wonderful. Abandoned by man, He
+abandoned Himself all the more earnestly to His work for men without a
+murmur. And abandoned by God--as for a little time it seemed--He all the
+more completely abandoned Himself to God. To have fellowship with Him, you
+and I will have to walk the same path, and mind the same rule.</p>
+
+<p>When friends, or followers, or comrades trample upon the solemn covenants
+made alike to us and to God, and forsake, and leave us to finish our work
+and tread our winepress alone, let there be no moaning because of the pain
+it inflicts. When those upon whom we had a right--right by reason of
+natural law, or right by reason of the obligations and precious vows of
+friendship, or right on the ground of spiritual indebtedness--when those,
+I say, upon whom we had a right to depend fail us, let there be no
+complaining of their treatment because it is painful to us. Let there be
+no filling of the earth with laments and wailings, no accusing of our
+accusers, no reviling of those who revile us. Let us be silent in the
+patience of Jesus and in the strength of His love, and let His way of
+meeting the loneliness of desertion be our way--let us pray.</p>
+
+<p>But all the same, that sleep, that failure to respond to the personal
+claim of Jesus, was a sure forerunner of the cowardly flight, and the
+deadly denial which followed it. The seeds of Peter's lies and curses were
+sown in the selfishness and slumber of the garden; they came to maturity
+in the kitchen of the judgment hall. Poor Peter! How many hours of bitter
+self-reproach would you have been spared, had you but held out during that
+one brief hour of your watch in Gethsemane! How differently we could have
+regarded your poor wobbling nature! How differently, too, your Lord's
+great trial would have come to Him! How different might have been the
+history of mankind!</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The method of love which Jesus adopted towards the forsakers received the
+sanction of success, <i>for they all came back</i>. In spite of their
+shame and their fears, they returned to their allegiance, with, I think,
+much more than their old faith and love. Judas was the only exception, and
+even he sought a place of repentance, and, but for his horrid league with
+the jealous and cruel religionists, would, I think, have found one.</p>
+
+<p>You see the lesson? If you go on with your work for God, and finish it,
+paying no heed to those who, having put their hand to the plough, look
+back; and if, in spite of your sorrow, you will struggle steadily forward
+in the face of the coldness and carelessness of those between whom and you
+there was once the tenderest love, God will not only carry you through
+your appointed labour for the world, but He will restore many of those
+others to their allegiance to Him and His.</p>
+
+<p>Will they ever be quite the same? Will they not have lost something? Yes,
+they will indeed have lost; but, if they come back, in reality they will
+gain more. The new union will be more divine than the former one. They
+will not merely</p>
+
+<blockquote>  ... rise on stepping stones<br/>
+  Of their dead selves to higher things;</blockquote>
+
+<p>but the beauty, and excellence, and glory of love, the exceeding
+profitableness of enduring grace, and the sweet aroma of faithfulness,
+will be the more clearly manifest to the sons of men by reason of the
+weakness and breakableness of the human vessel.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, then, press forward, without one backward glance, until we finish
+our work. Let us thank God for those who are faithful; let us love and
+pray for those who fail, expecting to see them restored, healed, and
+purified.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="ch_07"></a>VII.</h1>
+
+<h2>Windows in Calvary.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>And they crucified Him.... And sitting down they watched Him
+     there</i>."--Matt, xxvii. 35, 36.</blockquote>
+
+<p>Passing words spoken in times of deep emotion often reveal human character
+more vividly than a lifetime of talk under ordinary circumstances. Conduct
+which at other times is of the most trifling significance, reveals in the
+hour of fiery trial, the very inwards of the soul, even making manifest
+that which has been hidden, perhaps, for a generation. Thus, while
+watching a man with the opportunity and the temptation to deceive or
+oppress those who are in his power, you may see into the very thoughts of
+his heart; you may learn what he really is. Or you may measure the depths
+of a mother's love in observing her when, after violating every principle
+she has valued and lived for, her prodigal boy comes to ask her to take
+him in once more.</p>
+
+<p>In the same way, words spoken by the dying are often like windows suddenly
+uncovered, through which one may catch a glimpse of the ruling passion of
+life, in the light of which their life-witness and life-labour alike look
+different. It is this fact which often gives the dying hour of the
+meanest, importance as well as solemnity. The veriest trifler that ever
+trifled through this vale of tears has, in that last solemn hour something
+to teach of the secrets of mortality.</p>
+
+<p>And this revelation of the real facts of human experience is of the
+highest value to the world. It is one of God's witnesses to truth, <i>that
+truth will out</i>. Sooner or later, selfishness and sin will
+<i>appear</i> in their naked deformity, to horrify those who behold them;
+and in the end, justice and truth and love are certain to be made manifest
+in their natural beauty, to convince and to charm and to attract their
+beholders.</p>
+
+<p>It is not only one of the uses of trial to bring this about, but it is one
+of the means by which God converts to His own high purposes, the miseries
+and sorrows the Devil has brought in. The one burns the martyrs; the other
+brings out of that cruel and frightful wrong the glorious testimony which
+is the very seed of His Church. The one casts us into fiery dispensations
+of suffering and loss; the other takes these moments of human anguish and
+desolation, and makes of them open windows through which a doubting or
+scoffing world may see what love can do. Thus He makes us to triumph In
+the midst of our foes, while working in us a likeness to Himself, the
+All-patient and All-perfect God.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is it the good and true alone who are thus made object-lessons to
+others, and to themselves, by these ordeals of pain. By them, many a bad
+man also is forced to appear bad to himself. Many a hypocrite, anxious
+about the opinions and the traditions of men, is at last stripped of his
+lies to see himself the wretched fraud he really is. Many a
+heart-backslider, whose religion has long ceased to be anything but a
+memory, awakes to the shame of it and to the danger; and often, thank God,
+awakes in time.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the words of the dying Christ on His cross are, in the same way, a
+true and wonderful revelation of His character and His spirit. As it is
+only by the light of the sun that we see the sun, so it is by Jesus that
+Jesus is best revealed. Never one spake like He spake; and yet in this
+respect, so real was His humanity, He spake like us all--He spake out what
+was in Him. <i>The Truth</i> must, above all, and before all, make
+manifest what is true of Himself.
+
+To whom, then, did our Lord speak on the tree, and what spake He? What
+special thoughts and beauties of His soul do His words reveal?</p>
+
+<p>Jesus, so far as His words have been recorded for us, spoke from the cross
+to Mary His mother, to one of the thieves who was crucified with Him, to
+God His Father, and to Himself.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>His Words to Mary</i>.</h4>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by,
+     whom He loved, He saith unto His mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then
+     saith He to the disciple, Behold thy mother</i>!"</blockquote>
+
+<p>The position of Mary in those last hours was peculiarly grievous. She had
+lived to see the breaking down of every hope that a mother's heart could
+cherish for her son. Standing there amidst that mob of relentless enemies,
+and watching Jesus, forsaken by God and man in His mortal agony, her
+present sorrow, great as it was, was crowned by the memory of the holy and
+happy anticipations of His birth, and the maiden exultations of her soul
+when the angels foretold that her Son should be the Saviour of His people
+and their King. How cruelly different the reality had turned out! How far,
+how very far away, would seem to her the quiet days in Nazareth, the
+rapture of her Son's first innocent embraces, and the evening communions
+with Him as He grew in years! What tender memories the sight of those dear
+bleeding feet, those outstretched, wounded hands, would recall to that
+mother's heart! Yes, Mary on Calvary is to me a world-picture of desolate,
+withering, and helpless grief--of pain increased by love, and of love
+intensified by pain!</p>
+
+<p>And Jesus in His great agony--the Man of Sorrows come at last to the
+winepress that His heart might be broken in treading it alone; come to the
+hour of His travail; come to the supreme agony of the sin-offering; face
+to face with the wrath of the Judge, blackness and tempest and anguish
+blotting out for the moment even the face of the Father--forsaken at last--FORSAKEN--Jesus, in this depth of midnight darkness sees her standing by
+the cross. Bless Him, Oh, ye that weep and mourn in this vale of tears!
+Bless Him for ever! His eyes are eyes for the sorrowful. <i>He sees
+them</i>. He has tears to shed with them. He is touched with the same
+feelings and moved by the same griefs. He sees Mary, and speaks to her,
+and in a word gives her to John, and John to her, for mutual care and
+love. It was as though He said, "Mother, you bare Me; you watched and
+suffered for Me, and in this redeeming agony of My love, I remember your
+anguish, and I take you for ever under My care, and I name you Mine."</p>
+
+<p>Surely, there never was sorrow like unto His sorrow, and yet in its
+darkest crisis He has eyes and heart for this one other's sorrow. Far from
+Him, as the east from the west, is any of that selfish thought and selfish
+seclusion which grief and pain so often work in the unsanctified heart,
+aye, and in the best of us. What a lesson of practical love it is! What a
+message--especially to those who are called to suffer with Him for the
+souls of men--comes streaming from those words spoken to Mary. The burden
+of the people's needs, the care of the Church, the awful responsibility of
+ministering to souls--these things, sacred as they may be, cannot excuse
+us in neglecting the hungry hearts of our own flesh and blood, or in
+forgetting the claims of those of our own household.</p>
+
+<p>Dear friend and comrade, in <i>your</i> sorrow, in your sore trial of
+faith, in <i>your</i> Calvary, take to your heart this revelation of the
+heart of the Son of Man, and be careful of the solitary and heart-bleeding
+ones near you, no matter how humble and how unworthy they may seem.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>His Words to the Thief</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shall thou
+     be with Me in Paradise</i>."</blockquote>
+
+<p>The crucifixion of the two robbers with Jesus was a sort of topstone of
+obloquy and disgrace contrived by His murderers with the double object of
+further humiliating Him in the eyes of the people, and of adding poignancy
+to His own agony. The vulgarity and shamefulness of it were the last touch
+of their contempt, and the last stroke of His humiliation. There was a
+kind of devilish ingenuity in this circumstantial way of branding Him as a
+malefactor. And yet in the presence of this extremity of human wickedness
+and cruelty, Jesus found an opportunity of working a wondrous work of God;
+a work which reveals Him as the Saviour, strong to save, both by His
+infinite mercy and by His infinite confidence in the efficacy of His own
+sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise</i>." Eyes and heart for the
+<i>sorrowful</i> He had, as we see; and now ears, and hope nigh at hand,
+for the <i>sinful</i>. No word of resentment; no sense of distance or
+separation between the spotlessness and perfection of His character and
+this poor lonely convict--but a strange and wonderful nearness, now and to
+come. "<i>With Me</i>," He says--"<i>With Me in Paradise</i>." Ah! this is
+the secret of much in the life of the Son of God--this intimate, constant,
+conscious nearness to sinners and to sin! He had sounded the depth of
+evil, and, knowing it, He pitied, with an infinite compassion, its
+victims; He got as near as He could to them in their misery, and died to
+save them from it.</p>
+
+<p>That heart-nearness to the thief had nothing to do with the nearness of
+the crosses. Every one knows what a gulf may be between people who are
+very near together--father and son--husband and wife! No, it was the
+nearness of a heart deliberately trained to seek it; a heart delighting in
+mercy, and deliberately surrendering all other delights for it; hungering
+and thirsting for the love of the lost and ruined.</p>
+
+<blockquote>  The hart panteth after the waters,<br />
+  The dying for life that departs,<br />
+  The Lord in His glory for sinners<br />
+  For the love of rebellious hearts.</blockquote>
+
+<p>And so He is quite ready, at once, to share His heaven with this poor
+defiled creature, the first trophy of the cross. Again--what a lesson of
+love!--how different, all this, from the common inclination to shrink away
+from contact and intercourse with the vile! Oh, shame, that there can ever
+have been such a shrinking in our poor guilty hearts! The servant is not
+above his Lord. He came to sinners. Let us go to them with Him!</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>His Words to the Father</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do</i>."</blockquote>
+
+<p>This prayer for His murderers is a revelation of the wonderful nearness
+and capacity of love. The Saviour passes from pole to pole of human ken,
+to find a ground on which He can plead for the forgiveness of those cruel
+and wicked men; and He finds it in their ignorance of the stupendousness
+of their sin against Him. It seems as though He chooses to remain in
+ignorance of what they did know, and to dwell only on what they did not.
+"They know not what they do!"</p>
+
+<p>It was ever so with Him! He has no pleasure in iniquity. Wrong-doers are
+so precious to Him that He never will magnify or exaggerate their wrong--no, not a hair's breadth. He will not dwell on it--no, not a moment,
+except to plead some reasonable ground for its pardon, such as this--the
+ignorance of the wrong-doer, or the rich efficacy of His sacrifice. He
+will only name sin to the Father, in order that He may confess it for the
+sinner, and intercede for mercy and for grace.</p>
+
+<p>This is the old and ever new way of dealing with injuries, especially
+"personal injuries." <i>Is it yours</i>? Are you seeking thus after
+reasons for making the wrong done to you appear pardonable? Is your first
+response to an affront or insult or slander, or to some still greater
+wrong, to pray the Father for those whom you believe to be injuring you,
+that His gracious gift of forgiveness may come upon them?</p>
+
+<p>That is the principle of Calvary. That is the spirit, the mind of Christ.
+That is the way in which</p>
+
+<blockquote>  He won the meed and crown:<br />
+  Trod all His foes beneath His feet,<br />
+  By being trodden down.</blockquote>
+
+<p>"<i>Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Death has always been held to afford a final test of faith, and here the
+human soul of Jesus passed through that mortal struggle which awaits us
+all when heart and flesh shall fail. "<i>Into Thy hands</i>"--that is
+enough. As He passes the threshold of the unknown--goes as we must--into
+the Valley of the Shadow, faith springs forth and exclaims, "Into Thy
+hands." All shall be well. In this confidence I have laboured; in this
+confidence I die; in this confidence I shall live before Thee.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>To Himself</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>It is finished</i>!"</blockquote>
+
+<p>Thus in His last, ever-wonderful words Jesus pronounces Himself the
+sentence of His own heart upon His own work. <i>It is completed.</i> Every
+barrier is broken down, every battle is fought, every hellish dart has
+flown, every wilderness is past, every drop of the cup of anguish has been
+drunk up, and, with a note of victorious confidence, He cries out, "It is
+finished!" Looking back from the cross on all His life in the light of
+these words, we see how He regarded it as an opportunity for accomplishing
+a great duty, and for the fulfilment of a mission. Now, He says, "The duty
+is done--the mission is fulfilled; the work is finished!" Truly, it is a
+lofty, a noble, yea, a godlike view of life!</p>
+
+<p>Is it ours? Death will come to us. "The living know that they shall die."
+The waters will overflow, and the foundations will be broken up, and every
+precious thing will grow dim, and our life, also, will have passed. We
+shall then have to say of something, "<i>It is finished</i>!" It will be
+too late to alter it. "There is no man that hath power in the day of
+death."</p>
+
+<p><i>What, then, shall it be that is finished</i>? A life of selfish ease,
+or a life of following the Son of Man? A life of sinful gratification, of
+careful thought of ourselves, unprofitable from beginning to end, or a
+life of generous devotion to the things which are immortal in the honour
+of God and the salvation of men?</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="ch_08"></a>VIII.</h1>
+
+<h2>The Burial of Jesus.</h2>
+
+
+<p align="center" class="smallcaps">Good Friday Fragments.</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>  "<i>And after this Joseph of Arimathoea, being a disciple of Jesus, but
+   secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away
+   the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and
+   took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus, which at the
+   first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes,
+   about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and
+   wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is
+   to bury. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden;
+   and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.
+   There laid they Jesus therefore, because of the Jews' preparation day;
+   for the sepulchre was nigh at hand</i>."--John xix. 38-42.</blockquote>
+
+<p>Death has many voices. This death and burial speak aloud in tones of
+triumph. It as a death that made an end of death, and a burial that buried
+the grave. And yet it was also a very humble and painful and sad affair.
+We must not forget the humiliation and poverty and shame written on every
+circumstance any more than the victory, if we would learn by it all that
+God designed to teach.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<h4>"<i>He tasted Death</i>."</h4>
+
+
+<p>To many, even among those who have been freed from guilty fear, mortality
+itself still has terrors. By Divine grace they can lift up their hearts in
+sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection, and yet they shrink with
+painful apprehension at the thought of the change which alone can make
+that resurrection possible. There is probably no instinct of the whole
+human family more frequently in evidence than this repulsion for the
+grave. Death is such an uncouth and hideous thing.</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    Nothing but bones<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    The sad effect of sadder groans;<br />
+  Its mouth is open, but it cannot sing.</blockquote>
+
+<p>All its outward circumstances help to repel us--the shroud, the coffin,
+the grave, the silent shadows, the still more silent worms, the final
+nothingness. The mental conditions, too, generally common to the last acts
+of life, tend to intensify the feeling: the separation from much that we
+love, the sense of unfinished work, the appreciation of grief which death
+most usually brings to others: the reality of disappointed hopes, the
+feeling that heart and flesh fail, and that we can do no more--all these
+tend to make it in very truth the great valley of the dark shadow.</p>
+
+<p>To many, even among the chosen spirits of the household of faith,
+approaching death also starts the great "<i>Why</i>?" of unbelief. For, in
+truth, the death of some is a mystery. It is better that we should say so,
+and that they should say so, rather than that we should profess to be able
+to account for what, as is only too evident, we do not understand. In
+confronting death this mystery is often the great bitterness in the cup.
+To die when so young! To die when so much needed! To die so soon after
+really beginning to live! To die in the presence of so great a task! Oh,
+why should it be? How much of gloom and shadow has come down on hearts and
+households I have known, from the persistency of that "Why?" intensifying
+every repulsion for the hideous visitor, adding to every other the
+greatest of all his terrors--<i>doubt</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in the presence of such doubts--or perhaps I ought rather to call
+them questionings and shrinkings--has not this vision of the dead body of
+our Lord something in it to charm away our fears? Does it not say to us:
+"I have passed on before; I that speak in righteousness, Mighty to save. I
+have trodden the winepress alone. At My girdle hang the keys of life and
+death; I, even I, was dead; yes, really, cruelly dead; but I am alive for
+evermore"?</p>
+
+<p><i>He tasted death</i>. The king of terrors was out to meet Him. The long
+shadows of the gloomy valley really closed Him round, and He crossed over
+the chilly stream just as you and I must cross it--all alone. Nothing was
+wanting which could invest the scene, the hour, the circumstances with
+horror and repulsion. There was pain, bodily pain; there was mental
+anguish; there was the howling mob, the horrid contempt for Him as for a
+malefactor; the lost disciples and shattered hopes; the reviling thief;
+the mystery of the Father's clouded face; the final sinking down; the
+letting go of life; the last physical struggle--when He gave up the ghost
+and died.</p>
+
+<p>Yes. He passed this same way before you. He wore a shroud. He lay in a
+grave. The last resting-place is henceforth for us fragrant with
+immortality. The very horrors, and shadows, and mysteries of the
+death-chamber have become signs that death is vanquished. The tomb is but
+the porch of a temple in which we shall surely stand, the doorway to the
+place of an abiding rest. "In My Father's house are many mansions: if it
+were not so, I would have told you."</p>
+
+<p>Living or dying--but especially when dying--we have a right to cry with
+Stephen, the first to witness for Christ in this horror of death, "Lord
+Jesus, receive my spirit." To Him we commit all. He passed this way before
+with a worn and bruised body, in weakness and contempt, with dyed garments
+and red in His apparel, and on Him we dare to cast ourselves--on Him and
+Him alone. On His merits, on His blood, on His body, dead and buried for
+us. He will be with us even to the end--<i>He has passed this way before
+us</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<h4>"<i>A Savour of Death unto Death.</i>"</h4>
+
+
+<p>A celebrated Roman Emperor who had in the very height of his power
+embarked on a campaign for the extermination, with all manner of
+cruelties, of the followers of Jesus Christ, spoke one day to a Christian,
+asking him in tones of lofty contempt and derision:--</p>
+
+<p>"What, then, is the Galilean doing now?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The Galilean</i>," replied the Christian, "<i>is making a coffin</i>!"
+In a few years the great Emperor and the vast power he represented were
+both in that coffin!</p>
+
+<p>Since his day, how many other persecutors have also journeyed surely to
+it! How many infidels--nay, how many systems of infidelity, have passed on
+to dust and oblivion in that same casket! What multitudes of doubters--of
+ungodly, unclean, unregenerate--have been laid within its ever-widening
+bands! What vast unions of darkness, hatred, and cruelty, under the
+leadership of the great and the mighty, have been broken to pieces beside
+that coffin! How much that seemed for a time proud and rich and great in
+this poor world's esteem, has at last passed into it, and disappeared for
+ever! Yes, the martyr of long ago, on the blood-besmeared stones of
+persecuting Rome, was right, the Galilean Saviour and King not only made a
+Cross, but He made, and He goes on making, a coffin!</p>
+
+<p>Will <i>you</i> not have His Cross? Is there no appeal to you to-day from
+that hill side, without the city wall? Does it not speak to <i>you</i> of
+the power, the sweetness and nobleness of a life of service, of sacrifice
+for others, of toil for His world. Has it no message for <i>you</i> of
+victory over sin and death, of life from the dead--life, abundant life, in
+the Blood of the Son of Man! Believe me, unless you accept His Cross, He
+will prepare for you a coffin. "The <i>wages</i> of sin is death." It
+matters not how noble your aspirations, how lofty your ideals of life and
+conduct, how faithful your labour to raise the standard of your own life--unless you accept the Cross, all must go into the grave. Your highest
+aims, together with your lowest, your most cherished conceptions, your
+most deeply-loved ambitions, all must be entombed. "Whosoever shall fall
+on this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall it will
+grind him to powder."</p>
+
+<p>If His death-sacrifice be not a savour of life unto life it must be a
+savour of death unto death. This is the single alternative. Jesus Christ
+in life and death is working in you, in us all, toward one of these ends--either by love and tears and the overflowing fountain of His passion to
+gather us into the union of eternal life with Him and with the Father; or
+to entomb us--all that we have and all that we are--in the death and
+oblivion of the grave He has prepared.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<h4>"<i>And He was Buried</i>."</h4>
+
+
+<p>For a little time they lost Him. The grave opened her gloomy portals; they
+laid Him down, and the gates were closed--for a little time. And yet He
+was just as really there, as really alive for evermore, as really theirs
+and ours, as really a victor--nay, a thousand times more so, than if He
+had never bowed Himself under the yoke of Nature. He was gone on before,
+just a little while, that was all.</p>
+
+<p>Is not that the lesson of His burial for every one who sorrows for the
+loss of loved ones called up higher? Are they not buried with Him? Are
+they not gone on before? Are they not ours still? Are we not theirs as
+really as ever? He passed through that brief path of darkness and death
+out into the everlasting light of the Resurrection Glory. Do you think,
+then, that He will leave them behind? The grave could not contain
+<i>Him</i>. Do you think it has strength to hold <i>them</i>? You cannot
+think of Him as lying long in the garden of Joseph of Arimathaea; why,
+then, should you think of your dear ones as in the chilly clay of that
+poor garden in which you laid them? No--no! they are alive--alive for
+evermore; because He lives, they live also.</p>
+
+<p>Yes! this was the meaning of that strange funeral of His--this was at
+least one reason why they buried Him. It was that He might hold a flaming
+torch of comfort at every burial of His people to the end of time. Sorrow
+not, then, as those that have no hope. He is hope. Your lost ones,
+perhaps, were strongly rooted in your affection, and your heart was torn
+when they were plucked up. You cried aloud with the Prophet: "Woe is me,
+for my hurt! my wound is grievous. But I said, Truly this is a grief, and
+I must bear it; my tabernacle is spoiled, and all my cords are broken."
+Ah, but remember He was buried also. He knows about the way. He was there.
+He has them in His keeping. They are His, and yours still. You have no
+more need to grieve over their burial than over His. They live, they love,
+they grow, they rejoice. They are blessed for evermore.</p>
+
+<p>And our dear dead will meet us again, if we are faithful, in those bodies
+which our Lord has redeemed. That also is the witness of His burial and
+resurrection. The corruptible shall put on incorruption. In the twinkling
+of an eye shall it be done. And we shall see them in the body once more,
+even as His disciples saw Him. They supposed at first that they saw a
+spirit, but He said: No! "Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I
+Myself: handle Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye
+see Me have!"</p>
+
+<p>This blessed hope is our hope. Love is indeed stronger than death; many
+waters, nay, the swellings of Jordan themselves, cannot quench it! Dear
+ones, gone on before, we shall embrace you again; hand in hand--the very
+same hands--we shall greet our King:--</p>
+
+<blockquote>  Together we'll stand<br />
+  When escaped to the shore,<br />
+  With palms in our hands<br />
+  We Will praise Him the more;<br />
+  We'll range the sweet plains<br />
+  On the banks of the river,<br />
+  And sing of Salvation<br />
+  For ever and ever.</blockquote>
+
+<p>Yes--we know and love you still, because we know and love our Lord.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="ch_09"></a>IX.</h1>
+
+<h2>Conforming to Christ's Death.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>That I may know Him ... being made conformable unto His
+     death</i>."--Phil. iii. 10.</blockquote>
+
+<p>"<i>Conformable unto His death</i>." At first sight the words are
+something of a surprise. "<i>His death?</i>" Has not the thought more
+often before us been to conform to <i>His life</i>? His death seems "too
+high for us"--so far off in its greatness, in its suffering, in its
+humiliation, in its strength, in its glorious consequences. How is it
+possible we should ever be conformed to such a wonder of love and power?
+And yet, here is the great Apostle, in one of those beautiful and
+illuminating references to his own experience which always seem to bring
+his messages right home to us, setting forth this very conformity as the
+end of all his labours, and the purpose in all his struggles. "What things
+were gain to me," he says, "those I counted loss for Christ; yea, I count
+all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
+Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them
+but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in Him*, having ... the
+righteousness which is of God by faith: that I may know Him, and the power
+of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, <i>being made
+conformable unto His death</i>."</p>
+
+<p>[Footnote *: Or, as the Revised Version has it in the margin, "not having
+as my righteousness that which springs from the law; but that which is
+through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of God on the
+condition of faith: ... becoming conformed unto His death."]</p>
+
+<p>There are probably deeps of thought and purpose here which I confess that
+I cannot hope to fathom; which in the limits of such a paper as this I
+cannot even suggest. Is it possible, for example, that the sorrow and
+suffering which fall upon those who are entirely surrendered to God and
+His work are, in some hidden way, sorrow and suffering for others? Is this
+what Paul means when he says in his letter to the Colossians: I "fill up
+that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ, in my flesh, for His
+body's sake, which is the Church"? It may be so. This would indeed be a
+glorious and a wonderful "<i>fellowship of His sufferings</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Or, again, consider what an entirely new light might be thrown upon God's
+dealings with us in afflictions and pain, if it should appear, in the
+world to come, that, in much which is now most mysterious and torturing to
+us, we had but been bearing one another's burdens! Every one knows how
+often love makes us long to bear grief and pain for those dear to us;
+every one has seen a mother suffer, in grateful silence, both bodily pain
+and heart-anguish, in her child's stead, preferring that the child should
+never know. Suppose it should turn out, hereafter, that many of the
+afflictions which now seem so perplexing and so grievous have really been
+given us to bear in order to spare and shield our loved ones, and make it
+easier for them--tossing on the stormy waters--to reach Home at last?
+Would not this add a whole world of joy to the glory which shall be
+revealed? And would it not transform many of the darkest stretches of our
+earthly journey into bright memorials of the infinite wisdom and goodness
+of our God?</p>
+
+<p>But I pass away from matters of which we have, at best, but a gleam, to
+those concerning which "he that runs may read."</p>
+
+<p>But if Christ upon His cross is meant for an object-lesson to His people,
+is it not reasonable to expect that His words spoken in those supreme
+moments should throw light upon that conformity to His death of which we
+are thinking? The words of the dying have always been received as
+revealing their true character. Death is the skeleton-key which opens the
+closed chambers of the soul, and calls forth the secret things--and in the
+presence of the "Death-Angel" men generally appear to be what they really
+are. Our Lord and Saviour was no exception to this universal rule.</p>
+
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;      To the latest breath,<br />
+  We see His ruling passion strong in death.</blockquote>
+
+<p>His dying words are filled with illuminating truth about Himself, and they
+throw precious light upon His death. Let us, then, tarry for a few moments
+before His cross, and look and listen while He speaks.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<h4>"<i>Father, forgive them; they know not what they do</i>."</h4>
+
+
+<p>Men were doing the darkest deed of time. Nothing was wanting to make it
+hateful to God and repulsive to mankind. All the passions to which the
+human heart is prone, and all that the spirits of Hell can prompt, had
+joined forces at Calvary to finish off, in victory if possible, the black
+rebellion which began in Eden. Everything that is base in human nature--the hate that is in man, the beast that is in man, the fiend that is in
+man--was there, with hands uplifted, to slay the Lamb. The servants of the
+Husbandman were beating to death the beloved Son whom He had sent to seek
+their welfare. It was amidst the human inferno of ingratitude and hatred
+that these words of infinite grace and beauty fell from the lips of Love
+Immortal. Long nails had just pierced the torn flesh and quivering nerves
+of His dear hands and feet; and while He watched His murderers' awful
+delight in His agony, and heard their jeering shouts of triumph, He lifted
+up His voice and prayed for them, "<i>Father--forgive</i>."</p>
+
+<p>There are thoughts that lie too deep for words. The inner light of this
+message may be revealed--it cannot be spoken. But one or two reflections
+will repay our consideration. Here was a consciousness of sin. Here was
+the suggestion of pardon. Here was prayer for sinners.</p>
+
+<p>A <i>consciousness of sin</i>--of theirs--ours--not His own. Infinite Love
+takes full account of sin. Boldly recognises it. Straightway refers to it
+as the source of men's awful acts and awful state. "<i>O My Father,
+forgive</i>!" On the cross of His shame, in the final grip with the mortal
+enemy, the dying Christ--looking away from His own sufferings, forgetful
+of the scorn, and curses, and blows of those around Him--is overflowing
+with this great thought, with this great <i>fact</i>--that men's first
+imperative, overwhelming need, is the forgiveness of their sin.</p>
+
+<p><i>The suggestion of pardon</i>. He prays for it. What a transforming
+thought is the possibility of forgiveness! How different the vilest, the
+most loathsome criminal becomes in our eyes the moment we know a pardon is
+on the way! How different a view we get of the souls of men, bound and
+condemned to die, given up to selfishness and godlessness, the moment we
+stand by the cross of Jesus, and realise, with Him, that a pardon is
+possible! The meanest wretch that walks looks different from us. Even the
+outwardly respectable and very ordinary person who lives next door, to
+whom we so seldom speak, is at once clothed with a new interest in our
+minds, if we really believe that there is a pardon coming for him from the
+King of kings.</p>
+
+<p>He <i>prays</i>. Yes, this is the great prayer. What an example He has
+left us! It was not enough to die for the sinful--the ungrateful--the
+abominable--He must needs pray for them. Dear friend, you may have done
+many things for the ungodly around you--you may have preached to them, and
+set them also a lofty example of goodness; you may even have greatly
+suffered on their behalf; but I can imagine one thing still wanting: have
+you prayed the Father for them?</p>
+
+<p>Remember, He pleaded for the worst: those very men who said, "Let His
+blood be on us, and on our children." He prayed even for those, and I do
+not doubt that He was heard. Indeed, it was, I earnestly believe, His
+prayer which helped on that speedy revival in Jerusalem; and among the
+three thousand over whom Peter and the rest rejoiced were some who had
+urged on and then witnessed His cruel death, and for whom His tender
+accents ascended to the Throne of God amid the final agony of His cross.</p>
+
+<p>Dear friend, are you "becoming conformed unto His death"?</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<h4>"<i>To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise</i>."</h4>
+
+
+"<i>He saved others-He saved others--Himself He cannot save!</i>" Amidst
+the din of discordant voices, this taunt sounded out clear and loud, and
+fell upon the ears of a dying thief. Perhaps, as so often happens now, the
+Devil over-reached himself even then, and the strange words made the poor
+criminal think. "<i>'Others'--'others'--He saves others--then why not
+me?</i>" Presently he answered the railing unbelief of his fellow-prisoner;
+and then, in the simple language of faith, said to the Saviour: "Lord,
+remember me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom."
+
+<p>Jesus Christ's reply is one of the great landmarks of the Bible. It
+denotes the boundary line of the long ages of dimness and indefiniteness
+about two things--<i>assurance of salvation in this life, and certainty of
+immediate blessedness in the life to come</i>. "To-day shalt thou be with
+Me in Paradise!" There is nothing like it in all the Scriptures. It is as
+though great gates, long closed, were suddenly thrown wide open, and we
+saw before our eyes that some one passed in where none had ever trodden
+before. The whole freedom and glory of the Gospel is illustrated at one
+stroke. Here is the Salvation of The Salvation Army! To-day--without any
+ceremonies, baptisms, communions, confirmations, without the mediation of
+any priest or the intervention of any sacraments--such things would indeed
+have been only an impertinence there--to-day, "TO-DAY shalt thou be with
+ME." Indeed the gates are open wide at last!</p>
+
+<p>But the great lesson of the words lies rather in their revelation of
+<i>our Lord's instant accessibility to this poor felon</i>. His nearness
+of heart; His complete confidence in His own wonderful power to save; His
+readiness of response--for it may be said that He leaps to meet this first
+repentant soul--are all revealed to us. But it is the fact that, amid that
+awful conflict, His ear was open to another's cry--and such another!--which appeals most to my own heart. With those blessed words of hope and
+peace in my ears, how can I ever fear that one could be so vile, so far
+away, so nearly lost, as to cry in vain? Nay, Lord, it cannot be.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<h4>"<i>Woman, behold thy son</i>."</h4>
+
+
+<p>When Jesus had spoken these words to His mother, He addressed the disciple
+He had chosen, and indicated by a word that henceforth Mary was to be
+cared for as his own mother. Great as was the work He had in hand for the
+world, great as was His increasing agony, He remembered Mary. He knew the
+meaning of sorrow and loneliness, and He planned to afford His mother such
+future comfort and consolation as were for her good.</p>
+
+<p>This tender care for His own is a rebuke, for all time, to those who will
+work for others while those they love are left uncared for; left, alas! to
+perish in their sins. If regrets are possible in the Kingdom of Heaven,
+surely those regrets will be felt most keenly in the presence of divided
+families. And if anything can enhance the joys of the redeemed, surely it
+must be that they are "families in Heaven." Who can think, even now,
+without a thrill of unmixed delight, of the reunions of those who for long
+weary years were separated here? What, then, will it be--</p>
+
+<blockquote>  When the child shall greet the mother,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    And the mother greet the child;<br />
+  When dear families are gathered<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    That were scattered on the wild!</blockquote>
+
+<p>And what strength and joy it was to Mary. Looking forward to the coming
+victory, He knew that nothing could so possess her mother-heart with
+gratitude, and fill her soul with holy exultation as this--that He, the
+Sacrifice for sin, the Conqueror of Death, and the Redeemer of His people,
+was <i>her Son</i>. And so He makes it quite plain that He, the dying
+Saviour, was Mary's Son.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+<h4>"<i>It is finished</i>."</h4>
+
+
+<p>There is a repose, a kind of majesty about this declaration which marks it
+out from all other human words. There is, perhaps, nothing about the death
+of Jesus which is in more striking contrast with death as men generally
+know it than is revealed in this one saying. We are so accustomed to
+regrets, to confessions that this and that are, alas! <i>unfinished</i>;
+to those sad recitals which so often conclude with the dirge-like refrain,
+"it might have been," that death stands forth in a new light when it is
+viewed as the end of a completed journey, and the conclusion of a finished
+task. This is exactly the aspect of it to which our Lord refers. His work
+was done.</p>
+
+<p>The suffering, also, was ended. Darkness had had its night of sore trial,
+and now the day was at hand. Trial and suffering do end. It is sometimes
+hard to believe it, but the end is already appointed from the beginning.
+It was so with the Saviour of the world; and at length the hour is come,
+and He raises His bruised and bleeding head for the last time, and cries
+in token of His triumph, "<i>It is finished</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>But is there not also here a suggestion of something more? <i>Up to that
+concluding hour it was always possible for Him to draw back.</i> "I lay
+down My life for the sheep," He had said; "no man taketh it from Me, but I
+lay it down of Myself." His was, in the very highest and widest sense of
+the word, a voluntary offering, a voluntary humiliation, a voluntary
+death. Up to the very last, therefore, He could have stepped down from the
+cross, going no further toward the dark abyss. But the moment came when
+this would be no longer possible; when, even for Him, the sacrifice would
+be irrevocable--when the possibility "to save Himself" was ended, and when
+He became for ever "the Lamb that was slain," bearing the marks of His
+wounds in His eternal body. When that moment passed, He might well say,
+"It is finished."</p>
+
+<p>Is there not something that should answer to this in the lives of many of
+His disciples? Is there not a point for us, also, at which we may pass
+over the line of uncertainty or reserve in our offering, saying for ever--it is finished? Is there not an appointed Calvary somewhere, at which we
+can settle the questions that have been so long unsettled, and, in the
+strength of God, at last declare that, as for controversy of any kind with
+Him, "it is finished"? Is there not at this very same cross of our dying
+Saviour a place where doubt and shame may perish together--crucified with
+Him, and finished for ever?</p>
+
+<p>This would be, indeed, a blessed conformity to His death.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+<h4>"<i>I thirst</i>."</h4>
+
+
+This is the first of the three words of Christ which relate specially to
+His own inner experiences, and which I have placed together for the
+purpose of this paper.
+
+<p>"<i>I thirst</i>." They gave Him vinegar to drink--or, probably, in a
+moment of pity the soldiers brought Him the sour wine which they had
+provided for themselves. He seems to have partaken of it, although He had
+refused the mixture that had been before offered Him merely to deaden His
+pain. To bear that pain was the lofty duty set before Him, and so He would
+not turn aside from it one hair's breadth.</p>
+
+<p>But He humbled Himself to receive what was necessary from the very hands
+that had been crucifying Him. He, who could have so easily commanded a
+whole multitude of the heavenly host to appear for His succour, and to
+whose precious lips, parched in death, the princes of the eternal Kingdom
+would have so gladly hastened with a draught from celestial springs,
+condescended to ask the help of those who mocked Him, and to take the
+support He so sadly needed from His triumphant persecutors.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, you who are proud by nature, who are reserved by nature, who are
+sensitive in spirit, who feel every wrong done to you like a knife
+entering your breast, and who, when you forgive an injury, find it
+difficult to forget, and harder still to humble yourselves in any way to
+those who, you feel, have wronged you--here for you is a lesson, here for
+you is an example, a precious example, of the condescension of Love. Yes.
+to love those who seem to be against you, to love those in whom there
+always appears to you to be some difference of spirit or incompatibility
+of temperament, will mean, if you are made conformable unto your Master's
+death, that you will be able to receive at their hands services,
+kindnesses, pity, advice, which your own poor, fallen nature would,
+without divine grace, have scorned and spurned.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+<h4>"<i>My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?</i>"</h4>
+
+
+<p>Here is a great mystery. No doubt, to the human nature of our Lord, it did
+appear as though the Father had forsaken Him, and that was the last bitter
+drop in the cup of His humiliation and anguish. If men only knew it, the
+realisation that God has left them will be the greatest agony of the
+sinner's doom. And here upon the cross, our Lord, undergoing the penalty
+of sins not His own has yet to experience fully the severance which sin
+makes between God and the human soul.</p>
+
+<p>But, even to many of those who love and serve God fully, there does come
+at times something which is very similar to this strange and dark
+experience of our Lord's. Before the final struggle in many great
+conflicts, those inward consolations on which so much seems to depend are
+often mysteriously withdrawn. Why it should be so we do not know; it is a
+mystery. Some loyal spirits have thought that God withdraws His
+consolations and His peace, that the soul may be more truly filled with
+His presence, thus substituting for divine consolation the "God of
+consolation," and for divine peace the "God of peace." In any case we have
+this comfort: it was so with our Master. Do not let the servant expect to
+be above his Lord.</p>
+
+<p>This terrible moment of seeming separation from the Father, and the dark
+cry which was wrung from our Saviour's broken heart, did not, however,
+make the final victory any the less. And, if you are one with Him, and
+have really set your heart on glorifying Him, and if you can only
+<i>endure</i>, such moments will not take from your victory one shred of
+its joy. Oh, then, <i>hold on to your cross</i>! hold on to your cross!
+even if it seems, as it sometimes may, that God Himself has forsaken you,
+and that you are left to suffer alone, without either the sympathy of
+those around you, or the conscious support of the indwelling God. <i>Hold
+on to your cross</i>. This is the way of Calvary--this is becoming
+conformable to the death of the Lord Jesus.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+<h4>"<i>Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit</i>."</h4>
+
+
+<p>Here our Lord enters upon the extremity of His humiliation. Death must
+have been repulsive to Him. If the failure of heart and flesh, the cold
+sweat, the physical collapse, the last parting, the solitude and
+separation of the grave are all repelling and painful to us, <i>how much
+more to Him</i>!</p>
+
+<p>And, indeed, the picture which Christ presents to the outward eye in these
+last moments is unquestionably one of deep humiliation. The disordered
+garments--stained with blood and dirt, the distended limbs, the bleeding
+wound in His side, the face smeared with bloody sweat and dust, the torn
+brow and hair, and the swollen features, must have combined with all the
+horrible surroundings to make one of the most gruesome sights that ever
+man saw. And it was at this moment, <i>in His extremity</i>, that He says:
+"Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." "Father, I have done all
+that I can do; now I leave Myself and the rest to Thee."</p>
+
+<p>Here is a beautiful message--the great message about Death. This is, in
+fact, the one way to meet the shivering spectre with peace and joy.</p>
+
+<p>But the great lesson of this last word from the cross of Jesus is the
+lesson of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob: <i>that faith in the Father is
+the inner strength and secret of all true service</i>. It was, in a very
+wonderful and real sense, by <i>faith</i> that He wrought His wonders, by
+faith He suffered, by faith He prayed for His murderers, by faith He died,
+by faith He made His atonement for the sins of the world. The faith that
+not one iota of the Father's will could fail of its purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, dear comrade and friend, here is the crowning lesson of His life and
+death alike--"<i>Have faith in God</i>." Will you learn of Him? In
+<i>your</i> extremity of grief or sorrow--if you are called to sorrow--will you not trust Him, and say, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my
+bereaved and bleeding heart"? In your extremity of poverty--if you are
+called to poverty--Oh, cry out to Him, "Father, into Thy hands I commend
+my home, my dear ones." In your extremity of shame and humiliation--arising, maybe, from the injustice or neglect of others--let your heart
+say in humble faith, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my reputation, my
+honour, my all." In your extremity of weakness and pain--if you are called
+to suffer weakness or pain--cry out in faith, "Father, into Thy hands I
+commend this my poor worn and weary frame." In your extremity of
+loneliness and heart-separation from all you love for Christ's sake, if
+that be the path you tread, will you not say to your Lord, "Father, into
+Thy hands I commend my future, my life; lead Thou me on."</p>
+
+<p>Yes, depend upon it, <i>faith is the great lesson of the cross</i>. By
+faith the world was made; by faith the world was redeemed. If we are truly
+conformed to His death, we also must go forward in faith with the great
+work of bringing that redemption home to the hearts of men; and all we aim
+at, all we do, all we suffer, must be sought for, done, and suffered in
+that personal, simple faith in our Father and God which Jesus manifested
+on His cross, in that hour when all human aid failed Him, and when He
+cried in the language of a little child, "<i>Father, into Thy hands I
+commend My spirit</i>."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="ch_10"></a>X.</h1>
+
+<h2>The Resurrection and Sin.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>Concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was ... declared
+     to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness,
+     by the resurrection from the dead</i>."--Romans i. 3, 4.</blockquote>
+
+<p>Just as one of the great proofs, if not the great proof, of the truth of
+Christianity is the vast fact of the world's need for it, so one grand
+proof of the Resurrection lies in the fact that no interpretation of
+Christ's teaching or Christ's life would be worth a brass farthing--so far
+as the actual life of suffering man is concerned--without His Death and
+Resurrection. That teaching might be illuminating--convincing--exalting;
+yes, even morally perfect; and yet, if He did not die, it would be little
+more than a superior book of proverbs or a collection of highly-polished
+copy-book maxims. That life--that wonderful life--might be the supremest
+example of all that is or could be good and great and lovely in human
+experience; and yet, if He did not rise again from the tomb, it would,
+after all, be only a dead thing--like a splendid specimen of carved marble
+in some grand museum, exquisite to look upon, and of priceless value, but
+cold and cheerless, lifeless and dead.</p>
+
+<p>For it is a Living Person men need to be their Friend and Saviour and
+Guide. The splendid statue might possibly invite or challenge us to
+imitate it, but it could never call a human heart to love its stony
+features. Noble and pure as Jesus Christ's example undoubtedly was, it
+could of itself never satisfy a human soul or inspire poor, broken, human
+hearts with hope and love, or wash away from human consciousness the
+stains of sin. These things can only be done by a Living Person. So it is
+that we are not told to believe on His teaching or on His Church, but on
+<i>Him</i>. He did not say "Follow My methods or My disciples," but
+"<i>Follow</i> <span class="smallcaps">Me</span>." If He be not risen from the dead, and alive for
+evermore; if, in short, it be a dead man we are to follow and on whom we
+are to believe--then we are, indeed, as Paul says, "of all men the most
+miserable."</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+
+<p>But it is the life of Jesus, and the evidence of that life, in us that are
+really all-important. <i>No extent of worldly wisdom or historical
+testimony can finally establish for us the fact and power of Christ's
+Resurrection, unless we have proof in ourselves of His presence there as a
+Living Spirit</i>. With St. Paul, we must "know Him, and the power of His
+resurrection." That is the grand knowledge. That is the crown of all
+knowledge. That is the knowledge which places those who have received it
+beyond the freaks and fancies of human wisdom or human folly. That is the
+knowledge which cleanses the heart, destroys the strength of evil, and
+brings in that true righteousness which is the power to do right. That is
+the greatest proof of the Resurrection.</p>
+
+<p>No books, not even the Bible itself; no testimony, not even the testimony
+of those who were present on that first Easter Day, can be so good as
+this, the experimental proof. It is the most fitting and grateful, and
+adapts itself to every type of human experience. <i>And it is beyond
+contradiction</i>! What avail is it to contradict those who can answer,
+"Hereby we know that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given
+us of His Spirit"? It is even beyond argument! For of what advantage can
+it be to argue with a man that he is still blind, when he tells you that
+his eyes have been opened, and when he declares, "Whereas I <i>was</i>
+blind, NOW <b>I</b> SEE"?</p>
+
+<p>To us Salvationists, the hope of the world, and the strength of our hard
+and long struggle for the souls of men, centre in this glorious truth. He
+is risen, and is alive for evermore; and because He lives we live also'
+All around us are the valleys of death, filled with bones--very many and
+very dry. Love lies there, dead. Hope is dead. Faith is dead. Honour is
+dead. Truth is dead. Purity is dead. Liberty is dead. Humility is dead.
+Fidelity is dead. Decency is dead. It is the blight of humanity. Death--moral and spiritual death in all her hideous and ghastly power--reigns
+around us. Men are indeed dead--"dead in trespasses and sins." What do we
+need? What is the secret longing of our hearts? What is the crying agony
+of our prayers? Is it for any human thing we seek? No. God knows--a
+thousand times, no! We have but one hope or desire, and that is "life from
+the dead." We want life, the risen life--life more abundant--life Divine,
+amid these deep, dark noisome valleys of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, is our hope. He rose again, and ascended up on high, and
+received gifts for men. This is the hope which keeps us going on; this is
+the invisible spring from which our weary spirits draw the elixir of an
+invincible courage--Christ, the risen Christ, who has come to raise the
+dead! "You <i>hath</i> He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins."
+Hallelujah!</p>
+
+<p>"Dead in sins!" Jesus never made light of sin. He used no disguise when He
+talked of it, no equivocal terms, no softening words. There is no single
+suggestion in all His discourses or conversations that He thought it
+merely a disease, or a derangement, or a misfortune, or anything of that
+kind, or that He deemed it anything but a ruinous and deadly rebellion
+against God--the great disaster of the world, and the most awful,
+dangerous, and far-reaching precursor of suffering in the whole existence
+of the universe. He said it was bad, bad all through--in form, in
+expression, in purpose; above all, in spirit and desire. That there was no
+remedy for it but His remedy. No rains in all the heavens to wash it, no
+waters in all the seas to cleanse it away, no fires in Hell itself to
+purge its defilement. The only hope was in the blood of His sacrifice. And
+so He came to shed it, to save the people from their sins.</p>
+
+<p>That is our hope. We are of those who see something of the fruits of sin,
+and to whom it is no matter for the chastened lights of the literary
+drawing-room. We know--some of us--how deep the roots of pollution can
+strike into human character by our own scorched and blistered histories;
+and we know by our observation into what deeps of black defilement men can
+plunge. The charnel houses of iniquity must ever be the workshops of the
+Salvationist. There we see of the havoc, the cruelty, the debauchment, the
+paralysis, the leprosy, the infernal fascination of sin. And we know there
+is only one hope--the Lamb that was slain, and rose again from the dead,
+and ever liveth for our salvation.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The only really satisfactory test of any faith, or system of faiths, lies
+in its treatment of sin. Human consciousness in all ages, and in all
+conditions of development, bears witness to the fact of sin with universal
+and overwhelming conviction. Men cannot prevent the discomfort of
+self-accusation which ever follows wrong-doing. They cannot escape from the
+bitter which always lies hidden in the sweet. They cannot forget the
+things they wish to forget. Even when they are a law unto themselves, they
+are compelled to judge themselves by that law. It is as though some
+unerring necessity is laid upon every individual of the race to sit in
+judgment upon his own conduct, and to pass sentence upon himself. He is
+compelled to speak to his own soul of things about which he would rather
+be silent, and to listen to that which he does not wish to hear.</p>
+
+<p>The proof that this is so is open, manifest, and indisputable. Human
+experience in the simplest and widest sense of the word attests it. It
+stands unquestioned amid floods of questions on every other conceivable
+subject. No system of philosophy, no school of scientific thought, no
+revelation from the heavens above or the earth beneath can really weaken
+it. It is not found in books, or received by human contact, or influenced
+by human example. It is revealed in every man. It is felt by all men. They
+do not learn it, or deduce it, or believe it merely. They know it. All men
+do. You do. I do.</p>
+
+<p>Many things contribute to this simple and yet supremely wonderful and
+awful fact of human experience. One of them is the faculty of thought. Man
+is made a thinking creature, and think he must; and if he thinks, he must,
+above all, think about himself, about his future, his present, his past. A
+great French writer--and not a Christian writer--says on this subject:
+"There is a spectacle grander than the ocean, and that is the conscience.
+After many conflicts, man yields to that mysterious power which says to
+him, 'Think.' One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea
+than the sea from returning to a shore. With the sailor this is called
+'the tide.' With the guilty it is called 'remorse.' God, by a universal
+law, upheaves the soul as well as the ocean."</p>
+
+<p>And side by side with this thinking faculty, there is the further fact,
+that God will not leave men alone. On those unerring and resistless tides
+He sends into the human soul His messages. He visits them. He arouses
+them. He compels their attention. In His providence, by acts of mercy and
+of judgment--by sorrow and loss--by stricken days and bitter nights, He
+makes them remember their sin. All the weapons in His armoury, and all the
+wisdom of His nature are employed to bring men to a sense of guilt--to
+prick them to the heart--in order to lead them to recognise and to confess
+and to turn away from sin. If, therefore, man by any invention had found
+out a way by which he could escape from the consciousness of evil without
+putting it away, God would not let him go.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly, then, the initial proof of success in religion must be that
+religion can deal satisfactorily with the conscious guilt of sin. To this
+high test, all theories, all pretences, all promises must come at last.
+What are they in their actual effect on the memories and consciences of
+men in relation to their sin? How do they treat with guilt? How do they
+meet remorse? Can they silence the clamours of the night? Can they give
+peace when it is too late to undo what sin has done? Do they suffice amid
+the deepening shadows of the death chamber--the place where ever and anon
+the forgotten past comes forth to demand the satisfaction so long delayed?</p>
+
+<p>But these, after all, are only the fruits--some of the fruits of sin. What
+of the thing itself? That is the sternest test of all. The mere
+condemnation of sin, no matter how fully it harmonises with our sense of
+what ought to be, does not satisfy man. The excusing of sin is no better;
+it leaves the sinner who loves his sin, a sinner who loves it still. If
+excuses could silence conscience, or set free from the bondage of hate or
+passion, how many of the slaves of both would soon be at liberty!</p>
+
+<p>The re-naming of evil which has often been attempted during the last two
+or three thousand years, and again in quite recent days, has little or no
+effect either upon its nature or upon those who are under its mastery. The
+new label does not change the poison. Its victim is a victim still. Nor
+does the punishment of sin entirely dispose of it, either in the sufferer,
+or in the consciousness of the onlooker. No doubt the discovery and
+punishment of sin do give men a certain degree of satisfaction, but at
+best it is only a <i>relief</i>, when what they need, and what they see
+their fellows need, is a <i>remedy</i>. Sending a fever patient to
+hospital is a poor expedient unless we cure the disease. Sending a thief
+to prison is a poor affair if he remains a thief. It is not in reality a
+victory over thieving; it is, in fact, a defeat.</p>
+
+<p>Yes--it is a cure we need. And we know it. A cure which is not merely a
+remedy for the grosser forms which evil takes in men's lives, and their
+terrible consequences, but a cure of the hidden and secret humours from
+which they spring. The deceitfulness of the human heart. The thoughts and
+intents which colour all men do. The lusts and desires, the loves and
+hates from which conduct springs. The selfishness and rebellion which
+drive men on to the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>The real question for us then is, Can our religion--does our religion,
+when tried by the test of human experience--afford any remedy for these?
+Unless it does, man can no more be satisfied or be set free by
+condemnations, or excusings, or re-christenings, or punishments of sin,
+than the slave can be contented with discussions about his owner's
+mistakes or emancipated by new contrivances for painting his chains!</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+
+<p>But what is this sin, the consciousness of which is thus forced upon all--this determined, persistent, active evil? It is not the mere absence
+of good-a negative gain--but it is the love of, and the actual striving
+after that which is flatly condemned by God, and is in open rebellion
+against Him. The centreing of the corrupt heart upon its own corruption.
+Opposition to the pure will of God. Pride, falseness, unscrupulous
+ambition. Self-seeking, regardless of the means by which its object is
+obtained. Luxury, effeminacy, and sensuality. The lusts and fleshly
+passions. Malice, cruelty, and envy. The greed of gain. The love and
+thraldom of the world. There it is--the running sore of a suffering
+race. The outflow of the carnal mind, which is not subject to the law of
+God, neither indeed can be. There is no getting away from it. "Against
+this immovable barrier--the existence of sin--the waves of philosophy have
+dashed themselves unceasingly since the birth of human thought, and have
+retired broken and powerless, without displacing the minutest fragment of
+the stubborn rock, without softening one feature of its dark, rugged
+surface."</p>
+
+<p>And the worst of all is that sin is a wrong against God. <i>Man sins, of
+course, against himself.</i> That is written large on human affairs, so
+that no fool, however great a fool, may miss it. Well may the prophet say,
+"O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself!" Men mix the hemlock for
+themselves! The sinner is a moral suicide!</p>
+
+<p><i>Man sins against his fellow.</i> Nothing is more evident to us than
+that men tempt and corrupt one another. They hold one another back from
+righteousness. They break down virtue, and extinguish faith, and silence
+conscience in their neighbours. They act as decoys and trappers for each
+other's souls. They play the Devil's cat's-paws, and procure for him the
+rum of their fellows, which could not be compassed without their aid. In
+short, the sinner is a moral murderer!</p>
+
+<p>But, after all--and it is a hideous all--<i>the crowning wrong, and the
+crowning misery, is that sin is sin against God</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Unless the Bible be a myth, and the prophets a disagreeable fraud, and the
+whole lesson of Jesus Christ's life and death an illusion, God is deeply
+concerned with man. That concern extends to man's whole nature, his whole
+existence, his whole environment; and most of all it is manifest with
+regard to his sin. God puts Himself forward in the whole history of His
+dealings with men as an intimate, responsible, and observing Party in the
+presence of wrong-doing. He watches. He sees. He knows. He will consider.
+He will remember or He will forget. He will in no wise acquit the guilty,
+or He will pardon. Justice and vengeance are His, and so is forgiveness.
+He will weigh in the balances. He will testify against the evil-doer, or
+He will make an atonement for him. He will cut off and destroy, or He will
+have mercy. He will repay, or He will blot out.</p>
+
+<p>From beginning to end of Revelation--and there is something in the human
+soul which strangely responds to Revelation in this matter--we have a
+sense, a spiritual instinct, of the truth which Job set forth, "<i>If I
+sin, then Thou markest me, and Thou will not acquit me from mine
+iniquity</i>," which is confirmed by Jeremiah, "Though thou wash thee with
+nitre and take thee much soap, <i>yet thine iniquity is marked before Me,
+saith the Lord God</i>;" and which is insisted upon by the Apostle when he
+writes, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every
+one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath
+done, whether it be good or bad."</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it is against the Lord God men have sinned, and to Him they are
+accountable. And they know it. Here again is something which does not come
+by observation or instruction, but by an inward sense which can neither be
+mistaken nor long denied. Sooner or later, men are compelled to
+acknowledge God, and to acknowledge that they have sinned against Him. As
+with David, when he cried out, "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned,
+and done this evil in Thy sight"--so to every man comes at last the
+awakening. We see, as David saw, that whomsoever else we have wronged,
+<i>God</i> is most wronged; whomsoever else we may have injured, the great
+evil is that we have broken <i>His</i> law and violated <i>His</i> will.</p>
+
+<p>In the light of that experience, sin becomes instantly a terrible and
+bitter thing. The fact that sinners can win the approval of men, the
+honour of success; that they can hide iniquity; that they can for a time
+escape from punishment, makes no difference when God appears upon the
+scene. Evil starts up for judgment. Memory marshals the ranks of
+transgression. Retribution seems the only right thing to look for.
+Punishment appears to be so deserved that nothing else can be possible. In
+their own eyes they are guilty. Guilt is branded upon them.</p>
+
+<p>It is from this realisation of having offended God that there spring the
+dark forebodings of punishment. Men may dread it, and be willing to make
+superhuman sacrifices to escape it, but they expect it all the same. Thus
+in all ages men have cried out less for pardon and release from penalty
+than for deliverance from the guilt and domination of evil. Their language
+by a universal instinct has been like David's: "Have mercy upon me, O God,
+according to Thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of Thy
+tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine
+iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions:
+and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="ch_11"></a>XI.</h1>
+
+<h2>"Salvation Is of the Lord"</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>Salvation is of the Lord</i>."--Jonah ii. 9.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>Work out your own salvation</i>."--Phil. ii. 12.</blockquote>
+
+<p>Salvation is of the Lord, or not at all. It is a touch; a revelation; an
+inspiration; the life of God in the soul. It is not of man only, nor of
+that greatest of human forces--the will of man, but of God and the will of
+God. It is not mere will-work, a sort of "self-raising" power--it is a
+redemption brought home by a personal Redeemer; made visible, tangible,
+knowable to the soul redeemed in a definite transaction with the Lord. It
+brings forth its own fruits, carries with it the assurance of its own
+accomplishment, and is its own reward. It is impossible to declare too
+often or too plainly that Salvation is of the Lord.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+
+<p>And yet, around us on every side are those who are relying upon something
+short of this new life. They have set up a sort of human virtue in the
+place of the God-life. They are slowly mastering their disordered
+passions. The base instigations of their lower nature are being thwarted.
+Greedy appetites which reign in others are in them compelled to serve.
+Tendencies to cunning and falsehood, the fruits of which are only too
+apparent in the world at large, they watch and harass and pinch.
+Animosities, and jealousies, and envies--those enemies of all kinds of
+peace--are repressed, if not controlled.</p>
+
+<p>And these followers of virtue go further than this. They aim at building
+up a character which can be called noble, or at least virtuous. And some
+succeed--or appear to themselves to do so. They cultivate truth. Honesty
+is with them, whether as to their business or their social life, the best
+policy. They are just. They are temperate. By nature and by training they
+are kind and generous; so much so that it is as difficult to convict them
+of an unkindly act as it is easy to prove them more generous and liberal
+than many of the professed followers of Jesus. Often they are charitable,
+giving of their substance to the poor; not hard to please, considerate of
+their inferiors, patient with one another; in a very high sense they have
+true charity. And after long periods of struggle, and lofty and faithful
+effort, they may be able to claim that they have developed a fine
+character; that by self-cultivation, and perhaps by a kind of
+self-redemption, they have produced a very beautiful and desirable being!</p>
+
+<p>I will not stay to inquire how far heart conceit and heart deceit may
+account for much of this, or to suggest that a great contrast may exist
+between the outer life and the unseen deeps within. I will admit for the
+moment that all is as stated, and even more. What, then? With much of
+grace and beauty, it may be; trained and tutored in the ways of humility
+and virtue; able to live in the constant and kindly service of others, and
+devoted to truth and duty--with all these excellencies they may yet be
+dead while they live. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that
+which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Generous, lovable, dutiful,
+honourable flesh, but only flesh. A chaste, and, if you like to have it
+so, a useful life, but <span class="smallcaps">lifeless</span>. A fine product of a lifetime of labour in
+the culture of the physical, intellectual, and moral powers, but, after
+all--<span class="smallcaps">dead</span>. For "<i>He that believeth not on the Son of God hath not
+life</i>."</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In this view the body, and in a larger degree the mind, becomes a
+sepulchre for the soul. All the attention given to education, to
+refinement and culture, to the develop ment of gifts--for instance, such
+as music or inventive science--to the practice of self-restraint and the
+pursuit of morality, is so much attention to the casket that will perish,
+to the neglect of the eternal jewel that is enclosed. It may be possible
+to present a kindly, honest, law-abiding, agreeable life to our
+neighbours; to go through business and family life without rinding
+anything of great moment with which to condemn ourselves; to be thought,
+even by those nearest to us, to be living up to a high standard of
+morality, and yet--for all this has to do with the casket only--to be dead
+all the while in trespasses and sins.</p>
+
+<p>The young man who should spend his fortune upon his tomb would be scarcely
+so great a fool as he who spends his life on those things in himself which
+are temporal, to the neglect of those which are eternal. Only think of the
+absurdity of devoting the splendid energy of youth and manhood, the grand
+force of will, the skill of genius, and the other gifts which commonly men
+apply to their own advancement and success, to the adornment, enriching,
+and extension of one's <i>grave</i>!</p>
+
+<p>And yet this is very much the case of those of whom I am thinking. All
+their advances, whether in moral attainment, in personal achievement, or
+in worldly advantage, are, at the best, but enlargements and adornments of
+a tomb, and of a tomb destined itself to perish!</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Do I, then, discourage good works? Has man no part to play in his own
+deliverance? Is he, after all, only an animal--the mere creature of
+circumstance and natural law? Have I forgotten that "faith without works
+is dead"? No, I think not. I have but remembered that <i>works without
+faith are dead also</i>. The one extreme is as dangerous as the other. The
+legal, mechanical observance of the rules of a right life, apart from a
+living faith in Christ, can no more renew the heart in holiness and
+righteousness, than can a mere intellectual belief of certain facts about
+Christ, apart from working out His will, save the soul, or make it meet
+for the inheritance of the saints. In both cases the verdict will be the
+same. The faith in the one is "<i>dead</i>"; the works in the other are
+also "<i>dead</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The fact is, Salvation is a two-fold work. It is of God--it is of man. Did
+God not will man's Salvation he could not be saved. Unless man will his
+own Salvation he cannot be saved. God is free. Man also is free. He may
+set up a plan for saving himself; but, no matter how perfect, it will fail
+unless it have God for its centre. And God, though He has devised the most
+infinitely complete and beautiful and costly scheme of redemption for man,
+will none the less fail unless the individual man wills to co-operate with
+Him. Man is not a piece of clay which God can fashion as He likes. He is
+not even a harp out of which He can get what strains He will without
+regard to its strings. There is in man something--a force--an energy--which must act in union with God, and with which God must act in wonderful
+partnership, if His will is to be accomplished.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is true, of course, that God does much for a man without his aid. I do
+not now refer to material blessings. He it is who gives us "life, and
+breath, and all things"--and gives them largely without our effort. But
+even in man God does much without his help. He calls. He stirs up
+conscience. He gives flashes of light to the most darkened heart. He
+softens by the hand of sorrow, and rebukes with the stripes of affliction.
+Memory, human affection, hope, ambition, are all made means by the Holy
+Ghost to urge men to holiness. The ministry of goodness in others is so
+directed as to point multitudes to the way of the Cross. But this will not
+provide the one thing needful. Instruction, clear views of the truth,
+belief in the facts of God's love and grace, admiration of Salvation in
+other lives, even the desire to declare the Gospel, may all be present,
+and yet the soul be--DEAD--dead in trespasses and sins--cursed, bound, and
+corrupted by dead works. Just as the noblest and highest efforts of man
+towards his own Salvation, <i>without the co-operating, life-giving work
+of God</i>, can result only in confusion and death; so the most powerful,
+gracious, long-suffering and tender yearnings and work of God for man's
+Salvation, <i>without the co-operating will of man</i>, can result only in
+distress, disappointment, and death.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Are <i>you</i> dead? Are <i>you</i> in either of these classes? Are you
+relying on God's mercy; waiting for some strange visitation from on high;
+depending with a faith which is merely of the mind upon some past work of
+Christ; but without the vital power of His mighty life in you? Filled with
+desires that are not realised; offering prayers that are not answered;
+striving at times to work out a law of goodness which you feel all the
+time is an impossibility for you? Living, so to speak, out of your
+element--like a fish out of water? That is DEATH.</p>
+
+<p>Or are you, on the other hand, depending for Salvation on your own labour
+to build up a good character, and to live a decent, honourable, and honest
+life? Conscious of advance, but not of victory? The servant of a high
+ideal, but without <i>liberty</i>? The devotee of your own self? All the
+powers and qualities of your nature growing towards maturity, <i>except
+the powers of your soul</i>? The casket--as life goes on--growing more and
+more adorned, while the eternal spirit, the priceless jewel made to
+receive the likeness of God and enjoy Him for ever, seems ever of less and
+less worth to you? That also is <span class="smallcaps">Death</span>.</p>
+
+<p>The man who is in either class is dead while he lives. He is a walking
+mortuary.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="ch_12"></a>XII.</h1>
+
+<h2>Self-Denial.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up
+     his cross, and follow Me</i>."--Matt. xvi. 24.</blockquote>
+
+<p>It is a striking thought that self-denial is, perhaps, the only service
+that a man can render to God without the aid or co-operation of something
+or some one outside himself. No matter what he does--unless it be to
+<i>pray</i>, which would hardly be included in the idea of <i>service</i>--he is more or less dependent upon either the assistance or presence of
+others. If, for example, he speaks or sings for God, whether in public or
+in private, he must have hearers; if he writes, it is that he may have
+readers; if he teaches, he needs scholars; if he distributes gifts, there
+must be receivers of his charity; if he leads souls to Christ, these souls
+must be willing to come; if he suffers persecution, there must be
+persecutors; or if, like Stephen, he is called to die for his Lord, there
+must be those who stone him, and others who stand by consenting to his
+death.</p>
+
+<p>A few moments' consideration will, I think, also show, that even in the
+sphere of our personal spiritual experience, it is very much the same. We
+can, after all, do but little for ourselves. Salvation comes to men
+through human instrumentality, and seldom apart from it. We are, I know,
+saved by faith; but how shall we believe unless we hear? and how shall we
+hear without a preacher? That instruction on the things of God, which is a
+necessity for every true child of God, comes almost invariably by the
+agency or through the experiences of others.</p>
+
+<p>The joys and consolation of fellowship can only be the result of communion
+with the saints. In spiritual things, as in ordinary affairs, it is the
+countenance of his friend which quickens and brightens the tired toiler as
+"iron sharpeneth iron." And though it is true that God can, and often
+does, wonderfully teach and inspire His people without the direct aid of
+any human agent, it is equally true that He generally does so by the
+employment of His word, which He has revealed to men, or by the recalling
+of some message which has already been received into the mind and heart.</p>
+
+<p>Nor does this in the least detract from our absolute dependence upon Him.
+The man who crosses the Atlantic in a steamship is no less dependent on
+the sea because he employs the vessel for his journey. We are no less
+dependent upon the earth for our sustenance because we only partake of the
+wheat after it has been ground into flour and made into bread. And so, we
+are no less dependent upon God because He has been pleased to employ
+various humble and simple instruments to save, and teach, and guide us.
+After full allowance has been made for the power and influence of
+intervening agencies, it is in Him we really live, and move, and have our
+being.</p>
+
+<p>But I return to my first word. There is one kind of service open to all,
+irrespective of circumstances and gifts, which can be rendered to God
+without the intervention of anyone. And this we may truly call
+self-denial. Much that quite properly comes under that description need
+never--probably will never--be known to anyone but God. It may be a holy
+sacrament indeed, kept between the soul and its Lord alone.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>There is the Denial of all that remains of Evil in us.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>How many sincere souls, when they look into their own hearts, find, to
+their horror, evil in them where they least expected it; find them part
+stone, when they should be all flesh; find them bound to earth and the
+love of earthly things, when they should be free from the world and the
+love of the world; find them occupied, alas! so often with idols and
+heart-lusts, when God alone ought to rule and reign. Here is a sphere for
+self-denial. Here is a service to be rendered to God, which will be very
+acceptable to Him, and which you alone can perform.</p>
+
+<p>And if you would thus deny yourself, then examine yourself. Study the
+evils of your own nature. Recognise sin. Call it by its right name when
+you speak of it in the solitude of your own heart. If there are the
+remains of the deadly poison in you, say so to God, and keep on saying so
+with a holy importunity. "Confess your sins." Attack them as the farmer
+attacks the poison-plant amongst his crops, or the worms and flies which
+will blight his harvest, and which, unless he can ruin them, he knows full
+well will ruin him. That is the "<i>perfect self-denial</i>"--to cut off
+the right hand, and to pluck out and cast away what is dear as the right
+eye, if it offend against the law of purity and truth and love.</p>
+
+<p><i>But you yourself are to do it</i>. Do not say you cannot, for you alone
+can. If you would be His disciple--His holy, loving, pure, worthy
+disciple--you must deny <i>yourself</i>. Cry to Him for help as much as
+you will--you cannot cry too often or too long--but you must do more than
+that: you must arise, and deny your own selfish nature; pinch, and harass,
+and refuse your own inward sins, and expose them to the light of God.
+Confess them without ceasing, mortify them without mercy, and slay them,
+and give no quarter. Say, and say in earnest:--</p>
+
+<blockquote>  Oh, how I hate these lusts of mine<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    That crucified my God!--<br />
+   These sins that pierced and nailed His flesh<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    Fast to the fatal wood. </blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  Yes, my Redeemer, they shall die--<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    My soul has so decreed;<br />
+  I will not longer spare the things<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    That made my Saviour bleed.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  Whilst with a melting, broken heart,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    My murdered Lord I view,<br />
+  I'll raise revenge against my sins,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    And slay the murderers too.</blockquote>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>There are Denials of the Will</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>Human nature is a collection of likes and dislikes. The great mass of men
+are governed by their preferences. What they like, they strive after; what
+they do not like, they neglect, or refuse, or resist. Many of these
+preferences, though not harmful in themselves, lead continually to that
+subjection of the will to self-interest, and help that self-satisfaction
+and self-love which are the deadly enemies of the soul. Now, true
+self-denial is the denial, for Christ's sake and the sake of souls, of
+these preferences. To say to God: "I sacrifice my way for Thy way--my wish
+for Thy wish--my will for Thy will--my plan for Thy plan--my life for Thy
+life"--this is self-denial.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing can be more acceptable to a good father's heart than the knowledge
+that his son, living and labouring far away from him amid difficulties and
+opposition, is courageously sacrificing his own preferences, and
+faithfully seeking to carry out his, the father's, will. In such a son
+that father sees a reproduction of all that is strongest and best in his
+own nature. And so it is with the Heavenly Father. No greater joy can be
+His than to see the resolute surrender of His children's own will to His,
+and the daily denial of their hopes and plans for themselves and theirs in
+favour of His plans.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+
+<h4><i>There are Denials of the Affections</i>.</h4>
+
+<blockquote>  The precious things of earth--<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    The mother's tender care,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    The father's faith and prayer--<br />
+  From Thee have birth.</blockquote>
+
+<p>And, just because love is of such high origin, and is the greatest power
+in human life, it is often captured and held by the Devil as his last
+stronghold against God. The heart is at once the strongest and the most
+sensitive part of our nature; and it is here, therefore, that we often
+find the most blessed and profitable opportunities for self-denial.</p>
+
+<p>That pleasant companionship, so grateful, so fruitful of joy, and yet so
+likely to tempt me from the path of faithful service, "Lord, I deny myself
+of it." That mastering affection for wife, or husband, or children--so
+beautiful in its strength and simplicity, and yet so exacting in its
+claims--"Lord, I deny myself of the abandonment to which it invites me; I
+put it in its proper place, second to Thee, and to the work Thou hast
+given me to do." That love of home, and friends, and circle, which is so
+powerful a factor in life, and enters so constantly into all the
+arrangements and details of our conduct, influencing so largely all real
+plans for doing God's work--"Lord, I will deny it, when it is in danger of
+lessening my labours for Thee and Thy Kingdom." The pleasant hour, the
+quiet evening, the restful book, "I will lay them at Thy feet, for Thy
+sake, when they hinder me doing Thy will. It is between me and Thee alone;
+it is the sacrifice of love."</p>
+
+<p>How precious it must be to God to see such self-denial! When the true
+lover sees the woman he has chosen leaving all for his sake, calmly laying
+down the love of father and family, and even braving the rebuffs and
+unkindness of those from whom before she has known nothing but affection,
+in order that she may give him her whole heart and life, how strong become
+the cords which bind him to her! Every sacrifice she makes for his sake
+forges another bond which will not easily be broken. And is the Lord a
+man, that He should be behind us in loving with an everlasting love those
+who thus give up and deny their own loves for Him? No! a thousand times
+no! He will repay. Every self-denial is a seedling rich with future joys.
+For it is indeed true that "He that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the
+Spirit reap life everlasting. He that overcometh shall inherit all things,
+and I will give him the morning star."</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>There are Denials with reference to our Gifts</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>"Look not," says the Apostle, "every man on his own things, but every man
+also on the things of others." That is, even in the exercise of his
+choicest gifts and graces, let a man forget his own in his desire to
+employ and bring forward the gifts of others. "Let nothing be done through
+strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better
+than themselves." That is, in your own mind take a humble view of
+yourself, your own powers, and your own worthiness, and hold your comrades
+in higher esteem than you hold yourself, in honour preferring one another
+to yourself. <i>That would be a very real self-denial to some people!</i></p>
+
+<p>"Recompense to no man evil for evil," though you know he well deserves it;
+"Avenge not yourselves." "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst,
+give him drink." "Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them
+that weep." That is, deny yourself of your own joys, that you may enter
+into the sorrow of others; and lay aside your own sorrows and tears, and
+silence your own breaking heart, when you can help others by entering with
+joy into their joys.</p>
+
+<p>You will see, beloved, that all this is work which <i>no one can do for
+you</i>, and that it is in a very true sense high service to God as well
+as to man.</p>
+
+<p>How, then, is it with you?</p>
+
+<p>Are you a self-denying disciple? If not, beware, lest it should shortly
+appear that you are not a disciple at all.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="ch_13"></a>XIII.</h1>
+
+<h2>In Unexpected Places.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>    "<i>And ... while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus Himself
+     drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they
+     should not know Him</i>."--Luke xxiv. 15, 16.</blockquote>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>The Knife-grinder</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>The only person in the house, except the man and his wife, was a young
+domestic servant, a Soldier of The Salvation Army. Her employers were
+generally drinking when they were not asleep, and the drinking led to the
+most dreadful quarrelling. Disgusting orgies of one kind or another were
+of almost daily occurrence, and such, visitors as came to the house only
+added fuel to the fiery furnace of passion and frenzy through which the
+girl was called to walk.</p>
+
+<p>Since that happy Sunday afternoon two years ago, when she gave herself to
+God in the wholesome village from which she came, the meetings and the
+opportunity, given her by The Army, of doing some work for other souls had
+been a bright light in her life. Little by little religion had come to
+have for her something of the same meaning it had for St. Paul: though I
+fear she knew very little of St. Paul, or of the great and wise things he
+wrote--domestic service is seldom favourable to the study of the
+Scriptures. But the same spirit which led the great Apostle to confer not
+with flesh and blood, and which took him into Arabia before he went to
+Jerusalem, was leading this quiet, country maiden to see that to be a
+follower of Christ means something more than to win a fleeting happiness
+in this life and a kind of pension in the next. She was beginning to
+understand that to be really Christ's means also to be a Christ; that to
+be His, one must seek for the lost sheep for whom He died. And so Rhoda--I
+call her Rhoda, though that was not her name--when she found to what sort
+of people she had, in her ignorance of the great city, engaged herself,
+had set to work to seek their salvation.</p>
+
+<p>Many very good people would probably think that she would have been a
+wiser girl to have gone elsewhere--that the risks of such a position were
+very great, and so on. No doubt; but the light of a great truth was rising
+in Rhoda's heart and mind. She perceived in her very danger an opportunity
+to prove her love for her Saviour by risking something for the souls of
+those two besotted creatures, for whom she dared to think He really died.</p>
+
+<p>And so, day after day, she toiled for them: night after night she prayed
+for them. And in her sober moments the wreck of a woman, her mistress,
+wept aloud in her slobbering way, and talked of the days long, long ago,
+when she, too, believed in the things that are good.</p>
+
+<p>The first flush of novelty in the sense of doing an unselfish thing for
+God wore away, and presently Rhoda's real trial began. The drinking and
+fighting grew worse, and the difficulty of getting out to a meeting grew
+greater. Gradually the weary body robbed the struggling soul of its time
+to pray; and, worst of all, by slow degrees Rhoda's faith was shaken, for
+her prayers, her agonising prayers, on behalf of those dark souls were
+only too manifestly not answered. Was it worth while, after all, troubling
+about sinners? Was it her affair? Why should she care? Of what use could
+it be to become an Officer, in order to seek the many, if God did not
+hearken to her cry for the few?</p>
+
+<p>One day the Captain of the Corps to which Rhoda belonged called, and
+seemed grieved with her for neglecting the meetings. This was a heavy
+blow. She could not or would not explain, and when that night, in the
+midst of a drunken brawl, her master struck her in the face, heart and
+flesh both failed, and she determined to say no more about salvation, and
+to abandon all profession of religion.</p>
+
+<p>That night seemed long and dark, and when at last sleep came, the pillow
+was wet with tears of anguish, of anger, and of pride.</p>
+
+<p>"Scissors to mend! to mend! to mend!" The monotonous calls of London
+hawkers are a strange mixture of sounds--at one moment attractive, at
+another repelling; they are, perhaps, more like the cry of a bird in
+distress than anything else.</p>
+
+<p>Rhoda looked at her wood-chopper as the knife-grinder came nearer to the
+house, and as he passed beckoned him, and gave it to him. She made no
+remark. He was rough and grimy, and his torn coat gave him an appearance
+of misery, which his face rather belied. She was miserable enough, and
+made no reply to his cheery "Good morning!"</p>
+
+<p>Presently the axe was sharpened, and the man brought it to the door. She
+paid him.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," he said. And then, with kindly abruptness--"Excuse me, but I
+see you have been crying. Do you ever pray?" And, after a silence, "God
+answers prayer, though He may not do it our way. <i>He did it for me.</i>
+I was a drunkard, but my mother's prayers are answered now, and I belong
+to The Salvation Army. Do you know any of them? Oh, they just live by
+prayer!"</p>
+
+<p>Rhoda stood in silence listening to the strange man till she ceased to
+hear him, and looking at him till she ceased to see him! Another Presence
+and another Voice was there.</p>
+
+<p><i>It was the Christ</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Rhoda was delivered. She is still fighting for souls, and loves most to do
+it where Satan's seat is. But the knife-grinder never knew.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>A Kiss</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>The heat and smell in the narrow slum were worse than usual. A hot
+Saturday night in midsummer is a bad time in the slums, and worse in the
+slum public-houses. It was so on the night I speak of. In and out of the
+suffocating bar the dirty stream of humanity came and went. Men who had
+ceased long ago to be anything but beasts; women with tiny, white children
+in their bony arms; boys and girls sipping the naphtha of perdition, and
+talking the talk of fools; lewd and foul-mouthed women of the streets, all
+hustled and jostled one another, and sang, and swore, and bandied horrid
+words with the barmen--and, all the while, they drank, and drank, and
+drank! The atmosphere grew thicker and thicker with the dust and
+tobacco-smoke, and little by little the flaming gas-jets burnt up the
+oxygen, till by midnight the place was all but unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>Among the last to go was a woman of the town, who betook herself, with a
+bottle of whisky, to a low lodging-house hard by. There she drank and
+quarrelled with such vehemence that in the early hours of the morning the
+"Deputy"--as the guardian of order is called in these houses--picked her
+up and threw her into the gutter outside. There, amid the garbage from the
+coster-mongers' barrows and the refuse of the town, this remnant of a
+ruined woman lay in a half-drunken doze, until the golden sunlight mounted
+over the city houses and pierced the sultry gloom on the Sabbath morning.</p>
+
+<p>Another woman chanced that way. Young, beautiful alike in form and spirit,
+and touched with the far-offness of many who walk with Christ, she
+hastened to the early Sunday morning service, there to join her prayers
+with others seeking strength to win the souls of men.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?" she asked her friend as they passed.</p>
+
+<p>"That," replied the other, "is a drunken woman, unclean and outcast."</p>
+
+<p>In a moment the Salvationist knelt upon the stones, and kissed the
+battered face of the poor wanderer.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is that--what did you do?" said the Magdalene. "Why did you kiss me?
+<i>Nobody ever kissed me since my mother died</i>."</p>
+
+<p><i>It was the Christ</i>.</p>
+
+<p>That kiss won a heart to Him.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>A Promotion</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>Henry James was coming rapidly into his employer's favour. Thoughtful,
+obliging, attentive to details, anxious to please, and, above all,
+thoroughly reliable in word and deed, he was a first-class servant and an
+exemplary Salvationist. In the Corps to which he belonged he stood high in
+the esteem both of the Local Officers and the Soldiers, and there was no
+more welcome speaker in the Open-air or more successful "fisher" in the
+sinners' meetings than "Young James."</p>
+
+<p>The question of his own future was beginning to occupy a good deal of
+attention. Ought he to offer himself for Officership in The Army? He was
+very far from decided either one way or the other, when one evening at the
+close of business his master sent for him. He expressed his pleasure at
+the progress James was making, and offered him a greatly improved
+position--the managership of a branch establishment, with certain
+privileges as to hours, an immediate and considerable advance in salary,
+and the prospect of a still more profitable position in the future. There
+was really only one condition required of him--he must live in premises
+adjoining the new venture, and he must not come to and fro in the uniform
+of The Army. His employers had a high esteem for The Salvation Army. It
+was a noble work, and their opinion of it had risen since they had
+employed one or two of its Soldiers. But business was business, and the
+uniform going in and out would not help business, and so forbh.</p>
+
+<p>The young man hesitated, and, to the senior partner's surprise, asked for
+a week to consider.</p>
+
+<p>During the week there were consultations with almost every one he knew.
+The majority of his own friends said decidedly "Accept." A few
+Salvationists of the weaker sort said, "Yes, take it; you will, in the
+end, be able to do more for God, and give The Army more time, more money,
+more influence." On the other hand, the Captain and the older Local
+Officers answered, "No; it is a compromise of principle; the uniform is
+only the symbol of out-and-out testimony for Christ; you put it on in holy
+covenant with Him; you cannot take it off, especially for your own
+advantage, without breaking that covenant. Don't!"</p>
+
+<p>James promised himself--quite sincerely, no doubt--that it should not be
+so with him. And on the appointed day informed the firm that he accepted
+their proposal.</p>
+
+<p>The new enterprise was a success. Everything turned out better than was
+expected. At the end of six months the new manager received a cordial
+letter of thanks from the firm, and a hint of further developments.</p>
+
+<p>But Henry James was an unhappy man. He had gained so much that he was
+always asking himself how it came about that he seemed to have lost so
+much more! Position, prospects, opportunity, money--these were all
+enhanced. And yet he went everywhere with a sense of loss, burdened with a
+consciousness of having parted with more than he had received in return.
+As a man of business, the impression at last took the form of a business
+estimate in his mind. Yes, that was it; he had secured a high--a very
+high--price that evening in the counting-house, when the partners waited
+for his answer; he had parted with something; he had, in fact, sold
+something.</p>
+
+<p><i>It was the Christ</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It proved a ruinous transaction.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="ch_14"></a>XIV.</h1>
+
+<h2>Ever the Same.</h2>
+
+
+<p align="center" class="smallcaps">A New Year's Greeting.</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>   <i>"Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might
+     are His: and He changeth the times and the seasons."</i>--Daniel ii.
+     20, 21.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>   <i>"I am the Lord, I change not."</i>--Malachi iii. 6.</blockquote>
+
+<p>"He changeth the times and the seasons." What a beautiful thought it is!
+Instead of the hard compulsion of some inexorable and unchanging law
+fixing summer where it must, and planting winter in our midst whether it
+be well or ill, here is the sweet assurance that the seasons change at His
+command; and that the winds and the waves obey Him. It is not some
+abstract and unknowable force, taking no account of us and ours, with whom
+we have to do, but a living and ruling Father: He who maketh small the
+drops of water that pour down rain; He who shuts up the sea with doors,
+and says: "Here shall thy proud waves be stayed"; He who maketh the south
+winds to blow, and by whose breath the frost is given; He who teaches the
+swallow to know the time of her coming, and has made both summer and
+winter, and the day and the night His servants--He is our Father. How
+precious it is to feel that our times are in His hands; and to know that,
+whether the year be young or old, He will fill it with mercy and crown it
+with loving-kindness!</p>
+
+<p>Do not be deceived by the modern talk about the laws of Nature into
+forgetting that they are the laws ordained by your Father for the
+fulfilment of His will. Every day that dawns is as truly God's day as was
+the first one. Every night that draws its sable mantle over a silent world
+sets a seal to the knowledge of God who maketh the darkness. Behind the
+mighty forces and the ceaseless activities around us stands the Sovereign
+of them all. The hand of Him who never slumbers is on the levers. The
+earth is the Lord's, and His chosen portion is His people; and when "He
+changes the times and the seasons," He fits the one to the other.</p>
+
+<p>It is with some such thoughts as these that I send out a brief New Year's
+Greeting to my friends. I wish them a Happy New Year, because I feel that
+God has sent it, that He wills it to be a happy year--a good year: that in
+all the changes it may bring, He will be planning with highest benevolence
+for their truest welfare. Whether, therefore, it holds for them sorrow or
+joy, it will be a year of mercy, a year of grace, a year of love. "Blessed
+be God for ever and ever, for wisdom and might are His. He revealeth the
+deep and secret things. He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light
+dwelleth with Him."</p>
+
+<p>Let us, then, go forward, and fear not.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Material Changes.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>All things that touch the life of man are marked for change. As knowledge
+advances, and men come nearer to the secrets of the world in which they
+live, they find how true indeed it is, that man is but "a shadow dwelling
+in a world of shadows." Everything is changing--everything but God. The
+sun, the astronomers tell us, is burning itself away. "The mountains," say
+the geologists, "are not so high as they once were; their lofty summits
+are sliding down their sides year by year. The everlasting hills are only
+everlasting in a figure; for they, too, are crumbling day by day. The
+hardest rocks are softening into soil every season, and we are actually
+eating them up in our daily bread."
+
+<blockquote>  The hills are shadows, and they flow<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    From form to form, and nothing stands;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    They melt like mists, the solid lands,<br />
+  Like clouds they shape themselves and go.</blockquote>
+
+<p>The great ocean-currents are changing, and vast regions of the earth's
+surface are being changed with them, and Time is writing wrinkles on the
+whole world and all that is therein.</p>
+
+<p>But, above it all, I see One standing--my Unchanging God. "Thou, Lord, in
+the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are
+the works of Thine hands; they shall perish, but Thou remainest; and they
+all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them
+up, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall
+not fail."</p>
+
+<p>What a contrast there is between the Worker and His work, between the
+Creator and the creature! We see it in a thousand things; but in none is
+it so manifest for the wayfaring man, or written so large upon the fading
+draperies of time, as in this: "<i>They shall perish, but Thou
+remainest</i>."</p>
+
+<p>And greater changes yet seem to lie ahead. A universal instinct points to
+the time of the restitution of all things. "The whole creation groaneth
+and travaileth in pain together, waiting"--and it has been a long, weary
+waiting--"for deliverance." But the day of the Lord will come. "As the
+lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall
+the coming of the Son of Man be." In his vision John saw, as it were, a
+picture of that final change. "Lo," he says, "there was a great
+earthquake, and the sun became black as sack-cloth of hair"--it looks as
+though the wise men who say it will burn itself out are right!--"and the
+moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as
+a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
+And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every
+mountain and island were moved out of their places." What a combination of
+astounding catastrophes is here! Earth and stars are to meet in awful
+shock! Sun and moon to fail! Cloud and sky to disappear; the elements to
+melt with fervent heat--a world on fire!</p>
+
+<p>But, above it all, the Lamb that was slain will take His place upon the
+Throne--unmoved, unchanged, amidst the tumult of dissolving worlds. My
+God, my Saviour, in Thy unchanging love I put my trust:--</p>
+
+<blockquote>  Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness<br />
+  My beauty are, my glorious dress;<br />
+  'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,<br />
+  With joy shall I lift up my head.</blockquote>
+
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Changes of Association</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>But far-reaching as are the changes in our material surroundings, those
+with which we have to battle in our personal associations are often as
+great, and are often much more painful. Indeed, man himself is the most
+changeable thing in all man's world.</p>
+
+<p>It is not merely that our companions and friends and loved ones die--the
+wind passeth over them, and they are gone, and the dear places that knew
+them know them no more--it is not merely this; nor is it that their
+circumstances change, that wealth becomes penury, that health is changed
+to weakness and suffering, and youth to age and decay--it is not merely
+this, but it is that <i>they</i> change. The ardour of near friendship
+grows cold and fades away; the trust which once knew no limitations is
+narrowed down, and, by and by, walled in with doubts and fears; the
+comradeship which was so sweet and strong, and quickened us to great
+deeds, as "iron sharpeneth iron," is changed for other companionships; the
+love which seemed so deep and true, and was ready "to look on tempests" for
+us, becomes but a name and a memory, even if it does not change into a
+well of bitter waters in our lives.</p>
+
+<p>This fact of human mutability, this inherent changeableness in man, is the
+key to many of the darkest chapters of the world's history. The prodigal,
+the traitor, the vow-breaker, these have ever been far more fruitful
+sources of anguish and misery than the life-long rebel and law-breaker.</p>
+
+<p>The Psalmist touches the inner springs of sorrow when he says, "All that
+hate Me whisper together against Me; yea, Mine own familiar friend, in
+whom I trusted, which did eat of My bread, hath lifted up his heel against
+Me."</p>
+
+<p>No one who has once read it can forget that revelation of the pent-up
+shame and agony in David's heart, which was voiced in his cry, "O my son
+Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom,
+my son, my son!"</p>
+
+<p>The human heart probably fell to its lowest depth of ingratitude and sin
+when poor Judas changed sides and sold his Lord. What a change it was!
+Alas, alas, what a quagmire of uncertainties and shifting sand
+unsanctified human nature must be! Nay, <i>is</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose that few of us have escaped some sorrowful experiences of this
+kind. Even to those who have not tasted the fruits of human fickleness in
+the great affairs of Christ's Kingdom, there has generally come some share
+of it into the more private relationships of life. In the home, in the
+family, or in the circle of friendship or comradeship, we have had to
+lament the failure of many tender hopes. But, blessed be the name of our
+God, who knoweth what is in the darkness, amidst the changing scenes we
+have found one Comfort. Above the strife of tongues, and over the stormy
+seas of sorrow, when, as Job said, even our kinsfolk have failed, and our
+familiar friends have forgotten us, there is borne to us the voice of One
+who sticketh closer than a brother, saying, "I am the Lord; I change not.
+With Me there is no variableness, neither the shadow of turning. I will
+never leave thee nor forsake thee." The more men change, the surer God
+will be; the more they forget, the more He will remember; the further they
+withdraw, the nearer He will come.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Personal Changes</i>.</h4>
+
+
+<p>And we, ourselves, change also. As the years fly past, the most notable
+fact about us, perhaps, is the changes that are going on in our own
+experiences, our habits, our thoughts, our hopes, our conduct, our
+character. How much there was about us, only a few years ago, which has
+changed in the interval--nay, how much has grown different even since last
+New Year's Day! Indeed, might we not say of a great deal in us, which
+to-day is, that to-morrow it will be cast away for ever?</p>
+
+<p>Have you, my friend, not had to mourn over some strange changes?</p>
+
+<p>Has not your joy been often so quickly turned to sorrow that you have
+wondered how you yourself could be the same person? Has not some trifling
+circumstance often seemed to cloud your sky for days, darkening all the
+great lights in your heaven, so that your whole past, and present, and
+future have seemed different to you, and you stood in the stupor of
+astonishment at the gloomy change? Has not your zeal for souls been
+subject to like strange and unaccountable changes, so that the work you
+once thought impossible you have found easy; or the work you once
+delighted in, you now find hard, difficult, and barren? Has not your
+freedom in prayer, and your desire for it, wavered between this and that
+until you have not known what to think of yourself?</p>
+
+<p>Has not your perception of duty, and your devotion to it, at one time
+clear and strong, become at another so dim and feeble, that you have been
+utterly ashamed of your wobbling and cowardice, and amazed at your
+failure? And, most sorrowful of all, has not your love for your God and
+Saviour been up and down--shamefully down--so that when you have
+afterwards reflected on your coldness towards Him and His cause, you have
+been covered with confusion and astonishment at the fickleness of your own
+heart?</p>
+
+<p>And more than this. How great are the changes wrought in us by the curbing
+influence of time! How much that in youth and early manhood we meant to
+do, and could do, and did do, has to be laid down, or left to others, as
+our years approach the limits of their pilgrimage! I have known some men
+who, for this reason alone, did not desire to live beyond the years of
+strength and vigour--they preferred "to cease at once to work and live."</p>
+
+<p>The loss by death, or disappointments worse than death, of our friends and
+dear ones--what changes this also works! Unconsciously men narrow the
+sphere of their sympathies. The mainspring of life--love--grows slowly
+rusty for want of use, and from some hearts that were once true fountains
+of joy to those around them, the living water almost ceases to flow.
+Criticism, and fault-finding, and censoriousness too often take the place
+of generous labour for the welfare of the world. This may, no doubt, arise
+in part from the natural desire that others should profit by our past
+experiences, which renders us the more observant of their conduct the more
+we love. But, no matter what the cause, certain it is that within and
+without all seems to change.</p>
+
+<p>Is it not, then, a joy unspeakable that, amidst all this, whether we are
+or are not fully alive to the weakness, and variableness, and
+deceitfulness of our own hearts, we can look up to the <span class="smallcaps">Rock</span> that changeth
+<span class="smallcaps">not</span>? In the darkest hour of disappointment with ourselves; in the depths
+of that miserable aftermath of sorrow and failure which follows all pride
+and foolish self-assertion; in the miry pit of condemnation and guilt in
+which sin always leaves the sinner, we can look up to Him whose power,
+whose grace, whose love is ever the same.</p>
+
+<p>Do you really believe it? There is a great hope in it for you if you do.
+High above all your changes, high above all the storms and disappointments
+that belong to them; high above all the wretched failure and doubting of
+the "do-the-best-I-can" life you are living, He lives to bless, to save,
+to uplift, to keep. Unnumbered multitudes, fighting their way to Him in
+spite of the timidities and wobblings, the "couldn'ts" and "wouldn'ts" of
+their own nature, have proved Him the Faithful and Unchanging God. Will
+not you?</p>
+<BR>
+<BR>
+<BR>
+<BR>
+<PRE>
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