diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old/rmstr10h.htm')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/rmstr10h.htm | 4302 |
1 files changed, 4302 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/rmstr10h.htm b/old/rmstr10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9fec7be --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rmstr10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4302 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<HTML> +<HEAD> +<TITLE>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Our Master, by Bramwell Booth</TITLE> +<META HTTP-EQUIV="content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=utf-8"> +<style type="text/css"> + <!-- + h1,h2,h3,h4 { text-align: center; font-weight: bold;} + h1,h2,h3 { font-variant: small-caps } + h1 { margin-top: 2em } + .smallcaps { font-variant: small-caps } + --> + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} +</style> +</HEAD> +<BODY> +<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 +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****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 + +Character set encoding: utf-8 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, OUR MASTER *** + + + + +E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team <A HREF="http://www.pgdp.net">(www.pgdp.net)</A> + + + +</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 /> + Yet be the God Thou art,<br /> + Is darkness to my intellect,<br /> + 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> Nothing but bones<br /> + 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> 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 /> + And the mother greet the child;<br /> + When dear families are gathered<br /> + 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 /> + That crucified my God!--<br /> + These sins that pierced and nailed His flesh<br /> + Fast to the fatal wood. </blockquote> + +<blockquote> Yes, my Redeemer, they shall die--<br /> + My soul has so decreed;<br /> + I will not longer spare the things<br /> + That made my Saviour bleed.</blockquote> + +<blockquote> Whilst with a melting, broken heart,<br /> + My murdered Lord I view,<br /> + I'll raise revenge against my sins,<br /> + 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 /> + The mother's tender care,<br /> + 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 /> + From form to form, and nothing stands;<br /> + 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> +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, OUR MASTER *** + +This file should be named rmstr10h.htm or rmstr10h.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, rmstr11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, rmstr10ah.htm + + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our Web sites at: +<a href="http://gutenberg.net">http://gutenberg.net</a> or +<a href="http://promo.net.pg">http://promo.net/pg</a> + +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). + + +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +<a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04">http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext05</a> or +<a href="ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04">ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext05</a> + +Or /etext05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): + +eBooks Year Month + + 1 1971 July + 10 1991 January + 100 1994 January + 1000 1997 August + 1500 1998 October + 2000 1999 December + 2500 2000 December + 3000 2001 November + 4000 2001 October/November + 6000 2002 December* + 9000 2003 November* +10000 2004 January* + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. + +International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. + +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655-4109 + +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information online at: + +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html">http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html</a> + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +<a href="mailto:hart@pobox.com">Michael S. Hart [hart@pobox.com]</a> + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the eBook (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* +</PRE> + +</BODY> +</HTML> |