_Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit._
He has cried with a loud voice, and the rocks have rent to its echo, and
the earth is shaken, and the Veil of the Old Testament is torn from top
to bottom as the Old Covenant passes into the New and the enclosed
sanctity of the Most Holy Place breaks out into the world. And now, as
the level sun shines out again beneath the pall of clouds, He whispers,
as at Mary's knee in Nazareth, the old childish prayer and yields up
His spirit into His Father's hands.
The last Paradox, then, is uttered. He Who saves others cannot save
Himself! The Shepherd of souls relinquishes His own. For, as we cannot
save our lives unless we lose them for His sake, so He too cannot save
them unless He loses His for our sake.
I. This, then, is merely the summary of all that has gone before; it is
the word _Finis_ written at the end of this new Book of Life which He
has written in His Blood. It is the silence of the white space at the
close of the last page. Yet it is, too, the final act that gives value
to all that have preceded it. If Christ had not died, our faith would be
vain.
Oh! these New Theologies that see in Christ's Death merely the end of
His Life! Why, it is the very point and climax of His Life that He
should lay it down! Like Samson himself, that strange prototype of the
Strong Man armed, he slew more of the enemies of our souls by His Death
than by all His gracious Life. _For this cause He came into the world_.
For Sacrifice, which is the very heart of man's instinctive worship of
God, was set there, imperishably, in order to witness to and be ratified
by His One Offering which alone could truly take away sins; and to deny
it or to obscure it is to deny or to obscure the whole history of the
human race, from the Death of Abel to the Death of Christ, to deny or
obscure the significance of every lamb that bled in the Temple and of
every wine-offering poured out before the Holy Place, to deny or to
obscure (if we will but penetrate to the roots of things) the free will
of Man and the Love of God. If Christ had not died, our faith would be
vain.
II. Once again, then, let us turn to the event in our own lives that
closes them; that death which, united to Christ's, is our entrance into
liberty and, disunited, the supreme horror of existence.
(1) For without Christ death is a violent interruption to life,
introducing us to a new existence of which we know nothing, or to no
existence at all. Without Christ, however great our hopes, it is abrupt,
appalling, stunning, and shattering. It is this at the best, and, at the
worst, it is peaceful only as the death of a beast is peaceful.
(2) Yet, with Christ, it is harmonious and continuous with all that has
gone before, since it is the final movement of a life that is already
_dead with Christ_, the last stage of a process of mortality, and the
stage that ends its pain. It is just one more passing phase, by which is
changed the key of that music that every holy life makes always before
God.
There is, then, the choice. We may, if we will, die fighting to the end
a force that must conquer us however we may fight, resisting the
irresistible. Or we may die, in lethargic resignation, as dogs die,
without hopes or regrets, since the past, without Christ, is as
meaningless as the future. Or we may die, like Christ, and with Him,
yielding up a spirit that came from the Father back again into His
Fatherly hands, content that He Who brought us into the world should
receive us when we go out again, confident that, as the thread of His
purpose is plain in earthly life, it shall shine yet more plainly in the
life beyond.
One last look, then, at Jesus shows us the lines smoothed from His face
and the agony washed from His eyes. May our souls and the souls of all
the faithful departed, through His Mercy, rest in Him!