nature of the soul, the character of God, the destiny and hopes of man, were now realized truths. They did not depend on the capacity to follow a well-reasoned system of philosophy, but on the power to lead a new and a holier life. In the life of David Hill, the Chinese missionary, it is recorded that as time went on Mr. Hill was increasingly impressed by the conviction that something further should be done to reach the literati of the province, the proud Confucian scholars, in their strong antipathy to Christian truth. Frequently meeting these men he could not but be struck by their contemptuous attitude towards the Gospel, their hatred of foreigners, and their prejudice against missionary work. His whole heart went out to them in genuine sympathy. By offering prizes for essays on subjects taken from the Christian classics-the Scriptures-he got into touch with Hsi, a Confucian scholar, who carried off three out of four of the prizes. A little later he invited Hsi to be his teacher in studying the Chinese classics. Thus Hsi came to live with Mr. Hill, and became acquainted with the New Testament. Gradually, as he read, the life of Jesus seemed to grow more real and full of interest and wonder, and he began to understand that this mighty Saviour was no mere man, as he once imagined, but God, the very God, taking upon Him mortal flesh. Doubts and difficulties were lost sight of. The old, unquenchable desire for better things, for deliverance from sin, self, and the fear of death, for light upon the dim, mysterious future, came back upon him as in earlier years. And yet the burden of his guilt, the torment of an accusing conscience and bondage to the opium-habit he loathed but could not conquer, grew more and more intolerable. At last, the consciousness of his unworthiness became so overwhelming that he could bear it no longer, and placing the book reverently before him, he fell upon his knees on the ground, and so with many tears followed the sacred story. It was beginning then to dawn upon his soul that this wonderful, Divine, yet human sufferer, in all the anguish of His bitter cross and shame, had something personally to do with him, with his sin and sorrow and need. And so, upon his knees, the once proud, self-satisfied Confucianist read on, until he came to " the place called Gethsemane," and the God-man, alone, in that hour of His supreme agony at midnight in the garden. Then the fountains of his long-sealed heart were broken up. The very presence of God overshadowed him. In the silence he seemed to hear the Saviour's cry," My soul is exceeding sorrrowful, even unto death"; and into his heart there came the wonderful realisation, "He loved me, and gave himself for me." Then, suddenly, as he himself records, the Holy Spirit influenced his soul, and "with tears that flowed and would not cease," he bowed and yielded himself unreservedly to the world's Redeemer, as his Saviour and his God.1 4. Christ the Power of God.-The power of God is the force from above, manifested in those spiritual wonders which transform the heart of the believer; expiation which restores God to him, the renewal of will which restores him to God. We know nowby experience of many ages-how much more powerful that defeat, humiliation, overthrow, of Christ upon the Cross is than any victory which God could have given Him. It would have been a very small and commonplace exercise of power if God had interfered to set Christ free from the Cross. Had He come in darkness and flame; had He fallen upon the murderers of our Lord with sudden destruction; had He slain them as one man with the breath of His mouth, it had been a very poor display of the Divine power. Anybody could have done that (we may say with reverence) if only he possessed the necessary physical power. But to let Christ die, without a sign, without a struggle; to let Him suffer all things; to let Him taste of defeat, disgrace, and death; that was an exercise of power which was, indeed, worthy of God. (1) Christ crucified is the power of God in self-sacrifice. There is no power among men so great as that which conquers evil by enduring evil. It takes the rage of its enemy and lets him break his malignity across the enduring meekness of its violated love. Just here it is that evil becomes insupportable to itself. It can argue against everything but suffering patience; this disarms it. Looking in the face of suffering patience it sinks exhausted. All its fire is spent. In this view it is that Christ crucified is the power of God. It is because He shows God in self-sacrifice, because He brings out and makes historical in the world God's passive virtue, which is, in fact, the culminating head of power in His character. (2) Christ is, in His sacrifice, the mighty power of God for the salvation of men. This is the power that has new-created and sent home, as trophies, in all the past ages, its uncounted myriads of believing, new-created, glorified souls. It can do for 1 Life of David Hill, 118, 132. us all that we want done. It can regenerate our habits, settle our disorders, glorify our baseness, and assimilate us perfectly to God. There never yet was a human being delivered from the power of sin, except by the power of God; and the Divine power never was exerted upon any human being with that view, except through the Cross of Christ, that is, in consequence of what Christ has done and suffered in our room and stead. ¶ Christ can take the man at his worst and the woman at her basest, and out of them make saints that can love God and that God has loved; make saints that can cause the very breath of the world to grow fragrant and the very heart of the world to grow tender.1 (3) The power of Christ crucified is permanent and universal. Christ addresses Himself to the world; and His influence transcends all external accidents that serve very well for pomps and shows, because He addresses the hearts of men. The power of "Christ crucified" is this, He works personally in every believer, and is present to strengthen every faithful heart. The power which would have gratified the Jews would have been the demonstration of a moment-a sign, a wonder, a triumph; but the power which is to save a world must know no decay; it must exist at this moment in the same fulness in men's hearts as it did of old on the day of Pentecost. The Jew would have degraded and confined the power of the Messiah; the Jew and not St. Paul would have put the stumbling-block in the way of man's salvation; the truth, the simple truth, which was so obnoxious was after all the most complete manifestation of the power of God. 5. The Wisdom of God.-While the Cross of Christ, viewed in its bearing upon the condition and character of men, is a most striking manifestation of Divine power, it is no less striking a manifestation of Divine wisdom. Wisdom is shown in the adaptation of means to an end, so as most effectually to accomplish the object intended. The wisdom of God is the light which breaks on the believer's inward eye, when in the Person of Christ he beholds the Divine plan which unites as in a single work of love, creation, incarnation, redemption, the gathering together of all things under one head, the final glorification of the universe. 1 A. M. Fairbairn. (1) The Cross of Christ affords us a knowledge of the Divine character, which is complete in all its aspects, which shows us at once the just God and the Justifier of the ungodly-a knowledge which, as it stands revealed in His own word, and when it is not perverted by the ungodliness of the human heart, brings before our minds the Divine character, in the manner best fitted to mould or transform us into the full resemblance of the moral perfection of God. (2) Christ crucified is to the Christian the wisdom of God because the Cross explains (so far as they can be explained in this world) the dark mysteries of life and death, and because it is the practical guide to truth and happiness. All the wisdom man needs to take him safely through the perils and perplexities of life is to be learned from the Cross. ¶ St. Buonaventura (wise and strong himself) used to say that all the learning in the world had never taught him so much as the sight of Christ upon the cross. (3) The Divine wisdom is such that it comes within the reach of all. The wisdom of man would be offered to the select few. Not everybody can read Plato and understand him. Very few can read Hegel and understand him. There are great thinkers concerning whom we take it for granted that they are great thinkers, but can only say that the little we understand is good, and that we assume that the rest is quite as good. But God's wisdom comes to all. What if the world were to be saved by the wisdom of man? How many could thus be saved? What if we had to depend for redemption on the utterances of some wise philosopher? Thousands of the poor sons and daughters of men possessing little intellect and less learning would not be able to lay hold of it. But this is a wisdom coming into the hearts of all, and first of all by preference into the hearts of the simple and untutored and childlike. Away, haunt thou not me Save to perplex the head, Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go, Fed by the skiey shower, And clouds that sink and rest on hill-tops high, Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly? 1 Clough, Poems, 24. |