 Chapter 6 of Our Master, Thoughts for Salvationists About their Lord. Chapter 6, A Neglected Saviour. And he came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. Matthew 26.43. 1. 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 hungrings and thirstings of men. It assisted in revealing to him the facts of human sin and the needs of the human soul. This enabled him more perfectly to be our living example, as well as the propitiation of our sins. And as he valued the consolations arising from human friendship and love, so also he had to suffer the loss of them in order that he might carry out his great work for God and man. For his worksake, 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 realized that their unfaithfulness was towards himself as a person, as well as to the great mission to which he had consecrated both himself and them. Now, when we are called upon to suffer in the same way, may we not be brought into very intimate fellowship with Jesus? Shall we complain because the servant is not above his Lord? Shall we doubt his love and care and power because he does not always shield us from that same blast of loneliness which swept over his own soul in the garden? When for the second, I, and for the third time, he found his three disciples asleep? Two. Sad as it is, it is nonetheless certain that we, too, must expect some in whom we have trusted to fail us in that hour when we most need them, be it the hour of supreme temptation or of great opportunity or of deep sorrow for the kingdom's sake. It was precisely this which happened to our Lord. It is bad to be so dependent on men, even on the most beautiful or most perfect souls that we cannot fight on without them. The dependence of love must work hand in hand with the independence of faith if we are to take our share in this trial of our master and to profit by it. Those who thus fail us will, perchance, be the very persons upon whom we have most reason to rely and whom in some sore trial of our faith or moment of danger we have specially called upon for defense 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. 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 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 for me. Am I wrong in saying that it was an added ingredient of bitterness in that cup to find that these, his trusted ones, could only sleep while he must go forward to suffer? But their failure did not stop him. No, not for one moment. There was agony in his heart, there were death shadows around him, and bloody sweat upon his brow. But he did not waver. He went right on to finish the work he had promised to do. Gladly he would have had them with him, steadfastly he goes forward without them. Here also is a lesson for you and for me. The work is more than the worker. And in times when we must lose, for our work's sake, that which we must count dearer to us than our lives, when the iron of disappointed love enters our soul as it entered his, we must follow him and go forward, steadfastly forward. For, 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. This strain is so great. The tax on brain and heart and hand is so constant. Life becomes so burdened with watchings and prayings and sufferings for and with others, that there is little, if any, time or strength left for oneself. And so they cannot keep up, but seek rest and quiet for themselves elsewhere. They are heavy and no longer feel the need to watch with us. Dear comrade, in your like trial do not doubt that the Lord Jesus is with you. Suffering of this kind will help to liken you to him. It is a very real bearing of the cross of Christ. Pitiful followers of him should we be if we wished to have only joy when he had only suffering. Five, but the disciples' strange failure did not call forth one word of bitterness from our Lord's lips. A gentle reproach was certainly implied in the words, Could ye not watch with me one hour? But no shade of personal displeasure expressed itself much as the occasion might seem to warrant it. No, Jesus knew the failures begotten of human weakness as well as the horror of human sin. And so he made allowances, and was as patient with those who left him as he was tender to those who were steadfast. He loved them both. Go thou and do likewise, in your home, in your family circle, in your core, in your office, in your work, be it what it may. When men fail and forsake your Lord, even if all disappoint and desert you, you must love them still. Be faithful with them, but above all be steadfast in your own purpose, and devote all your zeal and strength to finish the work that God has given you to do. In short, go forward without them, but let your words and thoughts and prayers for them be like your masters. And Jesus utters no word of complaint about this failure. The silence all through that great anguish is indeed very wonderful. And by man he abandoned himself all the more earnestly to his work for men without a murmur, and abandoned by God, as for a little time it seemed, he all the more completely abandoned himself to God. To have fellowship with him, you and I will have to walk the same path, and mind the same rule. When friends or followers or comrades trample upon the solemn covenants made alike to us and to God, and forsake and leave us to finish our work and tread our wine-press alone, let there be no moaning because of the pain it inflicts. When those upon whom we had a right, right by reason of natural law, or right by reason of the obligations and precious vows of friendship, or right on the ground of spiritual indebtedness, when those I say upon whom we had a right to depend fail us, let there be no complaining of their treatment because it is painful to us, let there be no filling of the earth with laments and wailings, no accusing of our accusers, no reviling of those who revile us. Let us be silent in the patience of Jesus and in the strength of his love, and let his way of meeting the loneliness of desertion be our way. Let us pray. But all the same, that sleep, that failure to respond to the personal claim of Jesus, was a sure forerunner of the cowardly flight and the deadly denial which followed it. The seeds of Peter's lies and curses were sown in the selfishness and slumber of the garden. They came to maturity in the kitchen of the judgment hall. Poor Peter, how many hours of bitter self-reproach would you have been spared had you been 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. 6. The method of love which Jesus adopted towards the Forsakers received the sanction of success, for they all came back. In spite of their shame and their fears, they returned to their allegiance with, I think, much more than their old faith and love. Judas was the only exception, and even he sought a place of repentance, and but for his horrid league with the jealous and cruel religionists would, I think, have found one. You see the lesson? If you go on with your work for God and finish it, paying no heed to those who, having put their hand to the plow, 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 cure you through your appointed labor for the world, but he will restore many of those others to their allegiance to him and his. Will they ever be quite the same? Will they not have lost something? Yes, they will indeed have lost, but if they come back, in reality they will gain more. The new union will be more divine than the former one. They will not merely rise on stepping stones of their own dead selves to hire things, but the beauty and excellence and glory of love, the exceeding profitableness of enduring grace and the sweet aroma of faithfulness, will be the more clearly manifest to the sons of man by reason of the weakness and breakableness of the human vessel. Let us then press forward without one backward glance until we finish our work. Let us thank God for those who are faithful. Let us love and pray for those who fail, expecting to see them restored, healed, and purified. End of Chapter 6, Recording by Tom Hirsch. Chapter 7 of Our Master Thoughts for Salvationists About Their Lord This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tom Hirsch. Our Master Thoughts for Salvationists About Their Lord By Bramwell Booth. Chapter 7. Windows in Calvary. And they crucified him, and sitting down they watched him there. Matthew 27 verses 35 and 36. Passing words spoken in times of deep emotion often reveal human character more vividly than a lifetime of talk under ordinary circumstances. Conduct which at other times is of the most trifling significance reveals in the hour of fiery trial the very inwards of the soul, even making manifest that which has been hidden perhaps for a generation. Thus while watching a man with the opportunity and the temptation to deceive or oppress those who are in his power, you may see into the very thoughts of his heart. You may learn what he really is, or you may measure the depths of a mother's love in observing her when after violating every principle she has valued and lived for, her prodigal boy comes to ask her to take him in once more. In the same way words spoken by the dying are often like windows suddenly uncovered through which one may catch a glimpse of the ruling passion of life, in the light of which their life witness and life labor alike look different. It is this fact which often gives the dying hour of the meanest importance as well as solemnity. The various trifler that ever trifled through this veil of tears has in that last solemn hour something to teach of the secrets of mortality and this revelation of the real facts of human experience is of the highest value to the world. It is one of God's witnesses to truth, that truth will out. Sooner or later selfishness and sin will appear in their naked deformity to horrify those who behold them, and in the end justice and truth and love are certain to be made manifest in their natural beauty to convince and to charm and to attract their beholders. It is not only one of the uses of trial to bring this about, but it is one of the means by which God converts to his own high purposes the miseries and sorrows the devil has brought in. The one burns the martyrs. The other brings out of that cruel and frightful wrong the glorious testimony which is the very seed of his church. The one casts us into fiery dispensations of suffering and loss. The other takes these moments of human anguish and desolation and makes of them open windows through which a doubting or scoffing world may see what love can do. Thus he makes us to triumph in the midst of our foes, while working in us a likeness to himself, the all-patient and all-perfect God. Nor is it the good and true alone who are thus made object lessons to others and to themselves by these ordeals of pain. By them many a bad man also is forced to appear bad to himself. Many a hypocrite, anxious about the opinions and the traditions of men, is at last stripped of his lies to see himself the wretched fraud he really is. Many a heart-back slider whose religion has long ceased to be anything but a memory awakes to the shame of it and to the danger, and often, thank God, awakes in time. Now the words of the dying Christ on his cross are, in the same way, a true and wonderful revelation of his character and his spirit, as it is only by the light of the sun that we see the sun, so it is by Jesus that Jesus is best revealed. Never one spake like he spake, and yet, in this respect so real was his humanity. He spake like us all. He spake out what was in him. The truth must, above all and before all, make manifest what is true of himself. To whom, then, did our Lord speak on the tree, and what spake he, what special thoughts and beauties of his soul, do his words reveal? Jesus, so far as his words have been recorded for us, spoke from the cross to Mary, his mother, to one of the thieves who was crucified with him, to God, his father, and to himself. One is words to Mary. When Jesus, therefore, saw his mother, and the disciple standing by whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son, then saith he to the disciple, behold thy mother. The position of Mary in those last hours was peculiarly grievous. She had lived to see the breaking down of every hope that a mother's heart could cherish for her son. Standing there, amidst that mob of relentless enemies, and watching Jesus, forsaken by God and man in his mortal agony, her present sorrow, great as it was, was crowned by the memory of the holy and happy anticipations of his birth, and the maiden exultations of her soul, when the angels foretold that her son should be the saviour of his people and their king. How cruelly different the reality had turned out! How far, how very far away, would seem to her the quiet days of 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, Marian Calvary is to me a word picture of desolate, withering and helpless grief, of pain increased by love, and of love intensified by pain. And Jesus, in his great agony, the man of sorrows, come at last to the wine-press 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, O ye that weep and mourn in this veil of tears. Bless him forever. His eyes are eyes for the sorrowful. He sees them. He has tears to shed with them. He is touched with the same feelings and moved by the same griefs. He sees Mary, and speaks to her, and in a word gives her to John, and John to her, for mutual care and love. It was as though he said, Mother, you bear me. You watched and suffered for me, and in this redeeming agony of my love I remember your anguish, and I take you forever under my care, and I name you mine. Surely there never was sorrow like unto his sorrow, and yet in its darkest crisis he has eyes and heart for this one other's sorrow. Far from him, as the east from the west, is any of that selfish thought and selfish seclusion which grief and pain so often work in the unsanctified heart, I 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 come streaming from those words spoken to Mary. The burden of the people's needs, the care of the church, the awful responsibility of ministering to souls, these things, sacred as they may be, cannot excuse us in neglecting the hungry hearts of our own flesh and blood or in forgetting the claims of those of our own household. Dear friend and comrade, in your sorrow, in your sore trial of faith, in your calvary, take to your heart this revelation of the heart of the Son of Man, and be careful of the solitary and heart-bleeding ones near you, no matter how humble and how unworthy they may seem. To his words to the thief, and Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shall thou be with me in paradise. The crucifixion of the two robbers with Jesus was a sort of topstone of the obliquet 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 malfactor, 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 Savior, strong to save, both by his infinite mercy and his infinite confidence in the efficacy of his own sacrifice. Today shall thou be with me in paradise, eyes and heart for the sorrowful head he as we see, and now ears and hope nigh at hand for the sinful. No word of resentment, no sense of distance or separation between the spotlessness and perfection of his character and this poor lonely convict, but a strange and wonderful nearness now and to come with me, he says, with me in paradise. Ah, this is the secret of much in the life of the Son of God, this intimate, constant, conscious nearness to sinners and to sin. He had sounded the depth of evil, and knowing it, he pitied with an infinite compassion its victims. He got as near as he could to them in their misery, and died to save them from it. And heart-nearness to the thief had nothing to do with the nearness of the crosses. Everyone knows what a gulf may be between people who are very nearer together, father and son, husband and wife. No, it was the nearness of a heart deliberately trained to seek it, a heart delighting in mercy and deliberately surrendering all other delights for it, hungering and thirsting for the love of the lost and ruined. The heart panteth after the waters, the dying for life that departs, the Lord in his glory for sinners for the love of rebellious hearts. And so he is quite ready at once to share his heaven with this poor defiled creature, the first trophy of the cross. Again, what a lesson of love. How different all this from the common inclination to shrink away from contact and intercourse with the vile. Oh, shame that there can ever have been such a shrinking in our poor guilty hearts. The servant is not above his Lord. He came to sinners. Let us go to them with him. 3. His words to the father. There forgive them, for they know not what they do. This prayer for his murderers is a revelation of the wonderful nearness and capacity of love. The Savior passes from pole to pole of human kin to find a ground on which he can plead for the forgiveness of those cruel and wicked men, and he finds it in their ignorance of the stupendousness of their sin against him. It seems as though he chooses to remain in ignorance of what they did know, and to dwell only on what they did not. They know not what they do. It was ever so with him. He has no pleasure in inequity. Wrongdoers are so precious to him that he never will magnify or exaggerate their wrong. Know not a hair's breadth. He will not dwell on it. Know not a moment, except to plead some reasonable ground for its pardon such as this, the ignorance of the wrongdoer or the rich efficacy of his sacrifice. He will only name sin to the Father, in order that he may confess it for the sinner, and intercede for mercy and for grace. This is the old and ever-new way of dealing with injuries, especially personal injuries. Is it yours? Are you seeking thus after reasons for making the wrong done to you appear pardonable? Is your first response to an affront or insult or slander, or to some still greater wrong, to pray the Father for those whom you believe to be injuring you, that his gracious gift of forgiveness may come upon them? That is the principle of Calvary. That is the spirit, the mind of Christ. That is the way in which he won the mead and crown, trod all his foes beneath his feet, by being trod down. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. Death has always been held to afford a final test of faith, and here the human soul of Jesus passed through that mortal struggle which awaits us all when heart and flesh shall fail. Into thy hands, that is enough. As he passes the threshold of the unknown, goes as we must, into the valley of the shadow. Faith springs forth and exclaims, into thy hands, all shall be well. In this confidence I have labored, in this confidence I die, in this confidence I shall live before thee. For to himself it is finished. Thus in his last ever-wonderful words Jesus pronounces himself, the sentence of his own heart upon his own work. It is completed. Every barrier is broken down, every battle is fought, every hellish dart has flown, every wilderness has passed, 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 fulfillment of a mission. Now he says the duty is done, the mission is fulfilled, the work is finished. Truly, it is a lofty, unknowable, gay, a godlike view of life. Is it ours? Death will come to us, the living know that they shall die, the waters will overflow, and the foundations will be broken up. And every precious thing will grow dim, and our life also will have passed. We shall then have to say of something, it is finished. It will be too late to alter it. There is no man that hath power in the day of death. What then shall it be that is finished? A life of selfish ease, or a life of following the Son of Man? A life of sinful gratification, of careful thought of ourselves, unprofitable from beginning to end, or a life of generous devotion to the things which are immortal in the honor of God and the salvation of men? CHAPTER VIII of our master thoughts for salvationists about their Lord. CHAPTER VIII The Burial of Jesus. Good Friday Fragments. 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, and there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound weight, and then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen cloths and 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 sepulcher, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus, therefore, because of the Jews' preparation day, for the sepulcher was nigh at hand, John 19.38-42. Death has many voices. This death and burial speak aloud in tones of triumph, it as a death that made an end of death, and a burial that buried the grave, and yet it was also a very humble and painful and sad affair. We must not forget the humiliation and poverty and shame written on every circumstance, any more than the victory, if we would learn by it all that God designed to teach. One he tasted death. To many even among those who have been freed from guilty fear. Mortality itself still has terrors. By divine grace they can lift up their hearts in sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection, and yet they shrink with painful apprehension at the thought of the change, which alone can make that resurrection possible. There is probably no instinct of the whole human family more frequently in evidence than this repulsion for the grave. Death is such an uncouth and hideous thing. Nothing but bones, the sad effect of sadder groans. Its mouth is open, but it cannot sing. All its outward circumstances help to repel us, the shroud, the coffin, the grave, the silent shadows, and still more silent worms, the final nothingness. The mental conditions too, generally common to the last acts of life, tend to intensify the feeling, the separation from much that we love, the sense of unfinished work, the appreciation of grief which death most usually brings to others, the reality of disappointed hopes, the feeling that heart and flesh fail and that we can do no more. All these tend to make it, in very truth, the great valley of the dark shadow. To many, even among the chosen spirits of the household of faith, confronting death also starts the great why of unbelief. For in truth the death of some is a mystery. It is better that we should say so, and that they should say so, rather than that we should profess to be able to account for what, as is only too evident, we do not understand. In confronting death this mystery is often the great bitterness in the cup. To die when so young, to die when so much needed, to die so soon after really beginning to live, to die in the presence of so great a task, oh why should it be? How much of gloom and shadow has come down on hearts and households I have known, from the persistence of that why, intensifying every repulsion for the hideous visitor, adding to every other the greatest of all his terrors, doubt. Now in the presence of such doubts, or perhaps I ought to 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 wine-press alone, at my girdle hang the keys of life and death, I even I was dead, yes really, cruelly dead, but I am alive for evermore. He tasted death, the king of terrors was out to meet him. The long shadows of the gloomy valley really closed him round, and he crossed over the chilly stream, just as you and I must cross it, all alone. Nothing was wanting which could invest the scene, the hour, the circumstances with horror and repulsion. There was pain, bodily pain. There was mental anguish. There was the howling mob. The horrid contempt for him as for a malfactor, the lost disciples and shattered hopes, the reviling thief, the mystery of the father's clouded face, the final sinking down, the letting go of life, the last physical struggle when he gave up the ghost and died. Yes, he passed this same way before you. He wore a shroud. He lay in a grave. The last resting place is henceforth for us fragrant with immortality. The very horrors and shadows and mysteries of the death chamber have become signs that death is vanquished. The tomb is but the porch of a temple in which we shall surely stand, the doorway to the place of an abiding rest. In my father's house there are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. Living or dying, but especially when dying, we have a right to cry with Stephen the first to witness for Christ in this horror of death, Lord Jesus receive my spirit. To him we commit all. He passed this way before with a worn and bruised body, in weakness and contempt, with dyed garments and red in his apparel, and on him we dare to cast ourselves, on him and him alone, on his merits, on his blood, on his body, dead and buried for us. He will be with us even to the end. He has passed this way before us. To a Saviour of Death Unto Death A celebrated Roman emperor who had in the very height of his power embarked on a campaign for the extermination, with all manner of cruelties, of the followers of Jesus Christ, spoke one day to a Christian asking him in tones of lofty contempt and derision, what then is the Galilean doing now? The Galilean, replied the Christian, is making a coffin. In a few years the great emperor and the vast power he represented were both in that coffin. Since his day, how many other persecutors have also journeyed surely to it? How many infidels, nay, how many systems of infidelity have passed on to dust and oblivion in that same casket? What multitudes of doubters, of ungodly, unclean, unregenerate, have been laid within its ever-widening bands? What vast unions of darkness, hatred and cruelty, under the leadership of the great and the mighty, have been broken to pieces beside that coffin? How much the seemed for a time proud and rich and great in this poor world's esteem, has at last passed into it and disappeared forever? Yes, the martyr of long ago on the blood-beast mirrored stones of persecuting Rome was right. The Galilean, Savior and King not only made a cross, but he made, and he goes on making, a coffin. Will you not have his cross? Is there no appeal to you today from that hillside without the city wall? Does it not speak to you of the power, the sweetness and nobleness of a life of service, of sacrifice for others, of toil for his world? Has it no message for you of victory over sin and death, of life from the dead, life abundant life in the blood of the Son of Man? Give me, unless you accept his cross, he will prepare for you a coffin. The wages of sin is death. It matters not how noble your aspirations, how lofty your ideals of life and conduct, how faithful your labor 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 whom soever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. If his death sacrifice be not a saver of life unto life, then it must be a saver of death unto death. This is the single alternative. Jesus Christ, in life and death, is working in you in us all towards 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 entomus, all that we have and all that we are, in the death and oblivion of the grave he has prepared. Three, and he was buried. For a little time they lost him. The grave opened her gloomy portals. They laid him down, and the gates were closed, for a little time. And yet he was just as really there, as really alive for evermore, as really theirs and ours, as really a victor, nay a thousand times more so than if he had never bowed himself under the yoke of nature. He was gone on before, just a little while, that was all. Is not that the lesson of his burial, for everyone who sorrows for the loss of loved ones called up higher? Are they not buried with him? Are they not gone on before? Are they not ours still? Are we not theirs as really as ever? He passed through that brief path of darkness and death out into the everlasting light of the resurrection glory. Do you think, then, that he will leave them behind? The grave could not contain him. Do you think it has strength to hold them? You cannot think of him as lying long in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea. Why then should you think of your dear ones as in the chilly clay of that poor garden in which you laid them? No, no, they are alive, alive for evermore, because he lives. They live also. Yes, this was the meaning of that strange funeral of his. This was at least one reason why they buried him. It was that he might hold a flaming torch of comfort at every burial of his people to the end of time. Saronath, then, as those who have no hope, he is hope. Your lost ones, perhaps, were strongly rooted in your affection, and your heart was torn when they were plucked up. You cried aloud with the prophet, Woe is me for my hurt! My wound is grievous! But I said truly this is a grief, and I must bear it. My tabernacle is spoiled, and all my cords are broken. Ah, but remember, he was buried also. He knows about the way. He was there. He has them in his keeping. They are his, and yours still. You have no more need to grieve over their burial than over his. They live. They love. They grow. They rejoice. They are blessed for evermore. And our dear dead will meet us again, if we are faithful, in those bodies which our Lord has redeemed. That also is the witness of his burial and resurrection. The corruptible shall put on in corruption. In the twinkling of an eye shall it be done, and we shall see them in the body once more, even as his disciples saw him. They supposed at first that they saw a spirit, but he said, No, behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself, handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have. This blessed hope is our hope. Love is indeed stronger than death. Many waters, nay the swellings of Jordan themselves, cannot quench it. Dear ones gone on before, we shall embrace you again, hand in hand, the very same hands we shall greet our King. Together we'll stand when escaped to the shore, with palms in our hands we will praise him the more. We'll range the sweet plains on the banks of the river, and sing of salvation for ever and ever. Yes, we know and love you still, because we know and love our Lord. CHAPTER IX OF OUR MASTER THOUGHTS FOR SALVATIONISTS ABOUT THEIR LORD. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tom Hirsch. OUR MASTER THOUGHTS FOR SALVATIONISTS ABOUT THEIR LORD by Bramwell Booth. CHAPTER IX CONFORMING TO CHRIST'S DEATH. THAT I MAY KNOW HIM, BEING MADE CONFORMABLE UNTO HIS DEATH. CHAPTER III VERSE X CONFORMABLE UNTO HIS DEATH. At first sight the words are something of a surprise. His death has not the thought more often before us been to conform to his life. His death seems too high for us. So far off in its greatness, in its suffering, in its humiliation, in its strength, in its glorious consequences, how is it possible we should ever be conformed to such a wonder of love and power? And yet here is the great apostle in one of those beautiful and illuminating references to his own experience which always seems to bring his message right home to us. Going forth this very conformity as the end of all his labors and the purpose in all his struggles. What things were gained to me, he said, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung that I may win Christ and be found in him having the righteousness which is of God by faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death. A footnote, or the revised version has it in the margin, quote, 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, end quote. 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 wonderful fellowship of his sufferings. Or again consider what an entirely new light might be thrown upon God's dealing 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. Everyone knows how often love makes us long to bear grief and pain for those dear to us. Everyone 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 great memorials of the infinite wisdom and goodness of our God? But I pass away from matters of which we have at best but a gleam to those concerning which he that runs may read. But if Christ upon his cross is meant for an object lesson to his people, is it not reasonable to expect that his words, spoken in those supreme moments, should throw light upon that conformity to his death of which we are thinking? The words of the dying have always been received as revealing their true character. Death is the skeleton key which opens the closed chambers of the soul and calls forth the secret things and in the presence of the death angel men generally appear to be what they really are. Our Lord and Saviour was no exception to this universal rule. To the latest breath we see his ruling passions strong in death. His dying words are filled with illuminating truth about himself, and they throw precious light upon his death. Let us then tarry for a few minutes before his cross and look and listen while he speaks. One father forgive them they know not what they do. Men were doing the darkest deed of time. Nothing was wanting to make it hateful to God and repulsive to mankind. All the passions to which the human heart is prone, and all that the spirits of hell can prompt, had joined forces at Calvary to finish off, in victory if possible, the black rebellion which began in Eden. Everything that is base in human nature, the hate that is in man, the beast that is in man, the fiend that is in man, was there with hands uplifted to slay the lamb. The servants of the husbandmen were beating to death the beloved son whom he had sent to seek their welfare. It was amidst the human inferno of ingratitude and hatred that these words of infinite grace and beauty fell from the lips of love-immortal. Long nails had just pierced the torn flesh and quivering nerves of his dear hands and feet, and while he watched his murderers awful delight in his agony, and heard their jeering shouts of triumph, he lifted up his voice and prayed for them, Father forgive. There are thoughts that lie too deep for words. The inner light of this message may be revealed, it cannot be spoken, but one or two reflections will repay our consideration. Here was a consciousness of sin. Here was the suggestion of pardon. Here was prayer for sinners. A consciousness of sin, of theirs, ours, not his own. Infinite love takes full account of sin, boldly recognizes it. Right away refers to it as the source of men's awful acts and awful state. O my Father forgive. On the cross of his shame, in the final grip with the mortal enemy, the dying Christ, looking away from his own sufferings, forgetful of the scorn and curses and blows of those around him, is overflowing with this great thought, with this great fact, that men's first imperative, overwhelming need, is the forgiveness of their sin. The suggestion of pardon, he prays for it. What a transforming thought is the possibility of forgiveness. How different the vilest, the most loathsome criminal, becomes in our eyes the moment we know a pardon is on the way. How different of you 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 realize, with him, that a pardon is possible. The meanest wretch that walks looks different from us. Even the outwardly respectable and very ordinary person who lives next door, to whom we so seldom speak, is at once clothed with a new interest in our minds, if we really believe that there is a pardon coming for him from the king of kings. He prays. Yes, this is the great prayer. What an example he has left us. It was not enough to die for the sinful, the ungrateful, the abominable. He must needs pray for them. Dear friend, you may have done many things for the ungodly around you. You may have preached to them, and set them also a lofty example of goodness. You may even have greatly suffered on their behalf. But I can imagine one thing still wanting. Have you prayed the Father for them? Remember, he pleaded for the worst. Those very men who said, Let his blood be on us and on our children. He prayed even for those. And I do not doubt that he was heard. Indeed it was I earnestly believe his prayer which helped on that speedy revival in Jerusalem, and among the three thousand over whom Peter and the rest rejoiced, were some who had urged on and then witnessed his cruel death, and for whom his tender accents ascended to the throne of God amid the final agony of his cross. Dear friend, are you becoming conformed unto his death? To. Today shall thou be with me in paradise. He saved others. He saved others. Himself he cannot save. It's the din of discordant voices this taunt sounded out loud and clear, and fell upon the ears of a dying thief. Perhaps, as so often happens now, the devil overreached himself even then, and the strange words made the poor criminal think, Others, others. He saves others. Then why not me? He answered the railing unbelief of his fellow prisoner, and then in the simple language of faith said to the Saviour, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. Jesus Christ's reply is one of the great landmarks of the Bible. It denotes the boundary line of the long ages of dimness and indefiniteness about two things, assurance of salvation in this life, and certainty of immediate blessedness in the life to come. Today shall 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 someone 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. Today, 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 impertence there. Today, to-day shalt thou be with me. Indeed the gates are open wide at last. But the great lesson of the words lies rather in their revelation of our Lord's instant accessibility to this poor felon, his nearness of heart, his complete confidence in his own wonderful power to save, his readiness of response, for it may be said that he leaps to meet this first repentant soul are all revealed to us. But it is the fact that amid that awful conflict his ear was open to another's cry, and such another which appeals most to my own heart. With those blessed words of hope and peace in my ears, how can I ever fear that one could be so vile, so far away, so nearly lost, as to cry in vain? Nay, Lord, it cannot be. 3. Woman, behold thy Son. When Jesus had spoken these words to his mother, he had dressed 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. His 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 were years were separated here? What then will it be, when the child shall greet the mother, and the mother greet the child, when dear families are gathered that were scattered on the wild? And what strength and joy it was to Mary? Looking forward to the coming victory, he knew that nothing could so possess her mother heart with gratitude and fill her soul with holy exultation as this, that he, the sacrifice for sin, the conqueror of death, and the redeemer of his people, was her son. And so he makes it quite plain that he, the dying Saviour, was Mary's son, or it is finished. There is a repose, a kind of majesty about this declaration, which marks it out from all other human words. There is, perhaps, nothing about the death of Jesus which is in more striking contrast with death, as men generally know it, than is revealed in this one saying. We are so accustomed to regrets, to confessions, that this and that are, alas, unfinished. To those sad recitals which so often conclude with the dirge-like refrain, it might have been that death stands forth in a new light when it is viewed as the end of a completed journey and the conclusion of a finished task. This is exactly the aspect of it to which our Lord refers. His work was done. The suffering also was ended. Darkness had had its night of sore trial, and now the day was at hand. Trial and suffering do end. It is sometimes hard to believe it, but the end is already appointed from the beginning. It was so with the Saviour of the world, and at length the hour is come, and he raises his bruised and bleeding head for the last time and cries in token of his triumph. It is finished. But is there not also here a suggestion of something more? Up to that concluding hour it was always possible for him to draw back. I lay down my life for the sheep, he had said. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. His was, in the very highest and widest sense of the word, a voluntary offering, a voluntary humiliation, a voluntary death. Up to the very last, therefore, he could have stepped down from the cross, going no further toward the dark abyss. But the moment came when this would be no longer possible, when even for him the sacrifice would be irrevocable, when the possibility to save himself was ended, and when he became forever the lamb that was slain, bearing the marks of his wounds in his eternal body, when that moment passed he might well say it is finished. Is there not something that should answer to this in the lives of many of his disciples? Is there not a point for us, also, at which we may pass over the line of uncertainty or reserve in our offering, saying forever, 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 the 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 forever? This would be, indeed, a blessed conformity to his death. 5. I Thirst. This is the first of the three words of Christ which relate specially to his own inner experiences, in which I have placed together for the purpose of this paper. I Thirst. They gave him vinegar to drink, or probably in a moment of pity, the soldiers brought him the sour wine which they had provided for themselves. He seems to have partaken of it, although he had refused the mixture that had been before offered him merely to deaden his pain. To bear that pain was the lofty duty set before him, and so he would not turn aside from it one hair's breadth. But he humbled himself to receive what was necessary from the very hands that had been crucifying him. He who could have so easily commanded a whole multitude of the heavenly host to appear for his sucker, and to whose precious lips, parched in death, the princes of the eternal kingdom would have so gladly hastened with a draft from the 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. O, 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, kindness, pity, advice, which your own poor fallen nature would, without divine grace, have scorned and spurned. 6. My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Here is a great mystery, no doubt to the human nature of our Lord. It did appear as though the Father had forsaken him, and that was the last bitter drop in the cup of his humiliation and anguish. If men only knew it, the realization that God has left them will be the greatest agony of the sinner's doom. And here upon the cross, our Lord, undergoing the penalty of sins not his own, has yet to experience fully the severance which sin makes between God and the human soul. But even to many of those who love and serve God fully, there does come at times something which is very similar to this strange and dark experience of our Lord's. Before the final struggle in many great conflicts, those inward consolations on which so much seems to depend are often mysteriously withdrawn. Why it should be so, we do not know. It is a mystery. Some loyal spirits have thought that God withdraws his consolations and his peace, that the soul may be more truly filled with his presence, thus substituting for divine consolation, the God of consolation, and for divine peace, the God of peace. In any case, we have this comfort. It was so with our Master. Do not let the servant expect to be above his Lord. This terrible moment of seeming separation from the Father, and the dark cry which was rung from the Saviour's broken heart, did not, however, make the final victory any the less. And if you are one with him, and have really set your heart on glorifying him, and if you can only endure, such moments will not take from your victory one shred of its joy. Hold then hold on to your cross, even if it seems, as it sometimes may, that God himself has forsaken you, and that you are left to suffer alone without either the sympathy of those around you, or the conscious support of the indwelling God. Hold on to your cross. This is the way of Calvary. This is becoming conformable to the death of the Lord Jesus. 7. Father into thy hands I commend my spirit. Here our Lord enters upon the extremity of his humiliation. Death must have been repulsive to him. If the failure of heart and flesh, the cold sweat, the physical collapse, the last parting, the solitude and separation of the grave are all repelling and painful to us, how much more to him. And indeed the picture which Christ presents to the outward eye in these last moments is unquestionably one of deep humiliation. The disordered garments, stained with blood and dirt, the distended limbs, the bleeding wound in his side, the face smeared with bloody sweat and dust, the torn brow and hair, and the swollen features must have combined with all the horrible surroundings to make one of the most gruesome sights that ever man saw. And it was at this moment in his extremity that he says, Father into thy hands I commend my spirit. Father I have done all that I can do. Now I leave myself and the rest to thee. Here is a beautiful message, the great message about death. This is in fact the one way to meet the shivering specter with peace and joy. But the great lesson of this last word from the cross of Jesus is the lesson of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, that faith in the Father is the inner strength and secret of all true service. It was in a very wonderful and real sense, by faith that he wrought his wonders. By faith he suffered. By faith he prayed for his murderers. By faith he died. By faith he made his atonement for the sins of the world. The faith that not one iota of the Father's will could fail of its purpose. Oh dear comrade and friend, here is the crowning lesson of his life and death alike. Have faith in God. Will you learn of him? In your extremity of grief or sorrow, if you are called to sorrow, will you not trust him and say, Father into thy hands I commend my bereaved and bleeding heart. In your extremity of poverty, if you are called to poverty, oh cry out to him, Father into thy hands I commend my home, my dear ones. In your extremity of shame and humiliation, arising maybe from the injustice or neglect of others, let your heart say in humble faith, Father into thy hands I commend my reputation, my honor, my all. In your extremity of weakness and pain, if you are called to suffer weakness or pain, cry out in faith, Father into thy hands I commend this my poor worn and weary frame. In your extremity of loneliness and heart separation from all you love for Christ's sake, if that be the path you tread, will you not say to your Lord, Father into thy hands I commend my future, my life, lead thou me on. Yes, depend on it. Faith is the great lesson of the cross. By faith the world was made. By faith the world was redeemed. If we are truly conformed to his death, we also must go forward in faith with the great work of bringing that redemption home to the hearts of men. And all we aim at, all we do, all we suffer, must be sought for, done and suffered in that personal, simple faith in our Father and God, which Jesus manifested on his cross. In that hour, when all human aid failed him, and when he cried in the language of a little child, Father into thy hands I commend my spirit. End of Chapter 9. Recording by Tom Hirsch. Chapter 10 of Our Master. Thoughts for Salvationists About Their Lord. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tom Hirsch. Our Master. Thoughts for Salvationists About Their Lord. By Bramwell Booth. Chapter 10. The Resurrection and Sin. Concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, Romans 1, verses 3 and 4. Just as one of the great proofs, if not the great proof of the truth of Christianity, is the vast fact of the world's need for it, so one grand proof of the resurrection lies in the fact that no interpretation of Christ's teaching or Christ's life would be worth a brass farthing, so far as the actual life of suffering man is concerned, without his death and resurrection. That teaching might be illuminating, convincing, exalting, yes, even morally perfect, and yet, if he did not die, it would be little more than a superior book of proverbs or a collection of highly polished copy book maxims. That life, that wonderful life, might be the supremest example of all that is, or could be good and great and lovely in human experience. And yet, if he did not rise again from the tomb, it would, after all, be only a dead thing, like a splendid specimen of carved marble in some grand museum, exquisite to look upon, and of priceless value, but cold and cheerless, lifeless and dead, for it is a living person men need to be their friend and savior and guide. The splendid statue might possibly invite or challenge us to imitate it, but it could never call a human heart to love its stony features. Noble and pure as Jesus Christ's example undoubtedly was, it could of itself never satisfy a human soul, or inspire poor, broken human hearts with hope and love, or wash away from human consciousness the stains of sin. These things can only be done by a living person, so it is that we are not told to believe on his teaching or on his church, but on him. He did not say, follow my methods or my disciples, but follow me. If he be not risen from the dead and alive forevermore, 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. One, but it is the life of Jesus and the evidence of that life in us that are really all important. No extent of worldly wisdom or historical testimony can finally establish for us the fact and power of Christ's resurrection unless we have proof in ourselves of his presence there as a living spirit. With Saint Paul we must know him and the power of his resurrection. That is the grand knowledge. That is the crown of all knowledge. That is the knowledge which places those who have received it beyond the freaks and fancies of human wisdom or human folly. That is the knowledge which cleanses the heart, destroys the strength of evil, and brings in that true righteousness which is the power to do right. That is the greatest proof of the resurrection. No books, not even the Bible itself, no testimony, not even the testimony of those who were present on that first Easter day, can be so good as this, the experimental proof. It is the most fitting and grateful and adapts itself to every type of human experience, and it is beyond contradiction. What avail is it to contradict those who can answer? Hereby we know that we dwell in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his spirit. It is even beyond argument, for of what advantage can it be to argue with a man that he is still blind, when he tells you that his eyes have been open, and when he declares, whereas I was blind? Now I see. To us salvationists, the hope of the world and the strength of our hard and long struggle for the souls of men, center in this glorious truth, he is risen and is alive for ever more, and because he lives, we live also. All around us are the valleys of death, filled with bones, very many and very dry. Of lies there, dead, hope is dead, faith is dead, honor is dead, truth is dead, purity is dead, liberty is dead, humility is dead, fidelity is dead, decency is dead. It is the blight of humanity, death, moral and spiritual death in all her hideous and ghastly power reigns around us. Men are indeed dead, dead in trespasses and sins. What do we need? What is the secret longing of our hearts? What is the crying agony of our prayers? Is it for any human thing we seek? No, God knows a thousand times no. We have but one hope or desire, and that is life from the dead. We want life, the risen life, life more abundant, life divine amid these deep, dark, noisome valleys of the dead. Here then is our hope. He rose again and ascended up on high, and received gifts for men. This is the hope which keeps us going on. This is the invisible spring from which our weary spirits draw the elixir of an invincible courage. Christ, the risen Christ, who has come to raise the dead. You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins. Hallelujah! Dead in sins. Jesus never made light of sin. He used no disguise when he talked of it, no equivocal terms, no softening words. There is no single suggestion in all his discourses or conversations that he thought it merely a disease, or a derangement, or a misfortune, or anything of that kind, or that he deemed it anything but a ruinous and deadly rebellion against God, the great disaster of the world and the most awful, dangerous, and far-reaching precursor of suffering in the whole existence of the universe. He said it was bad, bad all through, in form, in expression, in purpose, above all in spirit and desire, that there was no remedy for it but his remedy, no rains in all the heavens to wash it, no waters in all the seas to cleanse it away, no fires in hell itself to purge its defilement. The only hope was in the blood of his sacrifice. And so he came to shed it, to save the people from their sins. That is our hope. We are of those who see something of the fruits of sin, and to whom it is no matter for the chastened lights of the literary drawing room. We know, some of us, how deep the roots of pollution can strike into human character by our own scorched and blistered histories, and we know by our observation into what deeps of black defilement men can plunge. The charnelhouses of iniquity must ever be the workshops of the salvationist. Where we see of the havoc, the cruelty, the debauchement, the paralysis, the leprosy, the infernal fascination of sin, and we know there is only one hope, the land that was slain and rose again from the dead and ever liveth for our salvation. 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 wrongdoing. They cannot escape from the bitter which always lies hidden in the sweet. They cannot forget the things they wish to forget, even when they are a law unto themselves, they are compelled to judge themselves by that law. It is as though some unerring necessity is laid upon every individual of the race to sit in judgment upon his own conduct and to pass sentence upon himself. He is compelled to speak to his own soul of things about which he would rather be silent, and to listen to that which he does not wish to hear. The proof that this is so is open, manifest, and indisputable. Human experience, in the simplest and widest sense of the word, attests it. It stands unquestioned amid floods of questions on every other conceivable subject. No system of philosophy, no school of scientific thought, no revelation from the heavens above or the earth beneath can really weaken it. It is not found in books, or received by human contact, or influenced by human example. It is revealed in every man. It is felt by all men. They do not learn it, or deduce it, or believe it merely. They know it. All men do. You do. I do. Many things contribute to this simple and yet supremely wonderful and awful fact of human experience. One of them is the faculty of thought. Man is made a thinking creature, and think he must. And if he thinks he must, above all, think about himself, about his future, his present, his past. A great French writer, and not a Christian writer, says on this subject, there is a spectacle grander than the ocean, and that is the conscience. After many conflicts, man yields to that mysterious power which says to him, think. One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. With the sailor this is called the tide. With the guilty it is called remorse. God, by a universal law, upheaves the soul as well as the ocean. And side by side with this thinking faculty, there is the further fact that God will not leave men alone. On those unerring and resistless tides, he sends into the human soul his messages. He visits them, he arouses them, he compels their attention. In his providence, by acts of mercy and of judgment, by sorrow and loss, by stricken days and bitter nights, he makes them remember their sin. All the weapons in his armory, 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 recognize and to confess and to turn away from sin. If, therefore, a man by any invention had found out a way by which he could escape from the consciousness of evil without putting it away, God would not let him go. Clearly, then, the initial proof of success in religion must be that religion can deal satisfactorily with the conscious guilt of sin. To this high test, all theories, all pretenses, all promises, must come at last. What are they in their actual effect on the memories and consciousness of men in relation to their sin? How do they treat with guilt? How do they meet remorse? Can they silence the clamors 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 wherever and a none the forgotten past comes forth to demand the satisfaction so long delayed. But these, after all, are only the fruits, some of the fruits of sin. What of the thing itself? That is the sternest test of all. The mere condemnation of sin, no matter how fully it harmonizes with our sense of ought to be, does not satisfy man. The excusing of sin is no better. It leaves the sinner who loves his sin a sinner who loves it still. If excuses could silence conscience or set free from the bondage of hate or passion, how many of the slaves of both would soon be at liberty. The renaming 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 upon its nature or upon those who are under its mastery. The new label does not change the poison. Its victim is a victim still. Nor does the punishment of sin entirely dispose of it, either in the sufferer or in the consciousness of the onlooker. No doubt the discovery and punishment of sin do give men a certain degree of satisfaction, but at best it is only a relief when what they need and what they see their fellows need is a remedy. Sending a fever patient to hospital is a poor expedient unless we cure the disease. Sending a thief to prison is a poor affair if he remains a thief. It is not in reality a victory over thieving. It is, in fact, a defeat. Yes, it is a cure we need and we know it. A cure which is not merely a remedy for the grosser forms which evil takes in men's lives and their terrible consequences, but a cure of the hidden and secret humours from which they spring, the deceitfulness of the human heart, the thoughts and intents which color all men do, the lusts and desires, the loves and hates from which conduct springs, the selfishness and rebellion which drive men on to the rocks. The real question for us, then, is can our religion, does our religion, when tried by the test of human experience, afford any remedy for these? Unless it does, men can no more be satisfied or be set free by condemnations or excusings or rechristenings or punishments of sin, then the slave can be contented with discussions about his owner's mistakes or emancipated by new contrivances for painting his chains. Three, 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, in the actual striving after, that which is flatly condemned by God and is in open rebellion against him. The centering 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, sensuality, the lusts and fleshly passions, malice, cruelty and envy, the greed of gain, the love and thralldom of the world. There it is, the running sore of a suffering race, the outflow of the carnal mind which is not subject to the law of God. Neither, indeed, can be. There is no getting away from it. Against this immovable barrier, the existence of sin, the waves of philosophy have dashed themselves unceasingly since the birth of human thought, and have retired broken and powerless without displacing the minutest fragment of the stubborn rock, without softening one feature of its dark, rugged surface. And the worst of all is that sin is a wrong against God. Man sins, of course, against himself. That is written large on human affairs, so that no fool, however great a fool, may miss it. Well, may the prophets say, O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself. Men mix the hemlock for themselves. The sinner is a moral suicide. Man sins against his fellow. Nothing is more evident to us than that men tempt and corrupt one another. They hold one another back from righteousness. They break down virtue and extinguish faith and silence conscience in their neighbors. They act as decoys and trappers for each other's souls. They play the devil's cat's paws and procure for him the realm of their fellows which could not be compassed without their aid. In short, the sinner is a moral murderer. But after all, and it is a hideous all, the crowning wrong and the crowning misery is that sin is sin against God. Unless the Bible be a myth, and the prophets a disagreeable fraud, and the whole lesson of Jesus Christ's life and death and illusion, God is deeply concerned with man. That concern extends to men'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 feelings with men as an intimate, responsible, and observing party in the presence of wrongdoing. 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 evildoer. He will make an atonement for him. He will cut off and destroy, or he will have mercy. He will repay, or he will blot out. From beginning to end of revelation, and there is something in the human soul which strangely responds to revelation in this matter, we have a sense, a spiritual instinct, of the truth which Job set forth. If I sin, then they'll marquist me, and thou will not acquit me from mine iniquity, which is confirmed by Jeremiah, though thou wash me with nighter, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, sayeth the Lord, 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 heth done, whether it be good or bad. Yes, it is against the Lord God men have sinned, and to him they are accountable, and they know it. Here again is something which does not come by observation or instruction, but by an inward sense which can neither be mistaken nor long denied. Sooner or later men are compelled to acknowledge God, and to acknowledge that they have sinned against him. As with David when he cried out, Against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight. So to every man comes at last the awakening. We see, as David saw, that whomsoever else we have wronged, God is most wronged. Whomsoever else we may have injured. The great evil is that we have broken his law and violated his will. In the light of that experience sin becomes instantly a terrible and bitter thing. The fact that sinners can win the approval of men, the honor of success, that they can hide iniquity, that they can for a time escape from punishment, makes no difference when God appears upon the scene. Evil starts up for judgment. Memory marshals the ranks of transgression. Retribution seems the only right thing to look for. Punishment appears to be so deserved that nothing else can be possible. In their own eyes they are guilty. Guilt is branded upon them. It is from this realization of having offended God that their 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 thoroughly 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.