<u>God Spelling Himself out in Jesus.</u>
Jesus is God spelling Himself out in language that man can understand. God
and man used to talk together freely. But one day man went away from God.
And then he went farther away. He left home. He left his native land,
Eden, where he lived with God. He emigrated from God. And through going
away he lost his mother-tongue.
A language always changes away from its native land. Through going away
from his native land man lost his native speech. Through not _hearing_ God
speak he forgot the sounds of the words. His ears grew dull and then deaf.
Through lack of use he lost the power of _speaking_ the old words. His
tongue grew thick. It lost its cunning. And so gradually almost all the
old meanings were lost.
God has always been eager to get to talking with man again. The silence is
hard on Him. He is hungry to be on intimate terms again with his old
friend. Of course he had to use a language that man could understand.
Jesus is God spelling Himself out so man can understand. He is the A and
the Z, and all between, of the Old Eden language of love.
Naturally enough man had a good bit of bother in spelling Jesus out. This
Jesus was something quite new. When His life spoke the simple language of
Eden again, the human heart with selfishness ingrained said, "That sounds
good, but of course He has some selfish scheme behind it all. This purity
and simplicity and gentleness can't be genuine." Nobody yet seems to have
spelled Him out fully, though they're all trying: All on the spelling
bench. That is, all that have heard. Great numbers haven't heard about Him
yet. But many, ah! _many_ could get enough, yes, _can_ get enough to bring
His purity into their lives and sweet peace into their hearts.
But there were in His days upon earth some sticklers for the old spelling
forms. Not the oldest, mind you. Jesus alone stands for that. This Jesus
didn't observe the idioms that had grown up outside of Eden. These people
had decided that these old forms were the only ones acceptable. And so
they disliked Him from the beginning, and quarrelled with Him. These
idioms were dearer to them than life--that is, than _His_ life. So having
quarrelled, they did _worse_, and then--softly--_worst_. But even in their
worst, Jesus was God spelling Himself out in the old simple language of
Eden. His best came out in their worst.
Some of the great nouns of the Eden tongue--the _God_ tongue--He spelled
out big. He spelled out _purity_, the natural life of Eden; and
_obedience_, the rhythmic harmony of Eden; and _peace_, the sweet music of
Eden; and _power_, the mastery and dominion of Eden; and _love_, the
throbbing heart of Eden. It was in biggest, brightest letters that _love_
was spelled out. He used the biggest capitals ever known, and traced each
in a deep dripping red, with a new spelling--s-a-c-r-i-f-i-c-e.
<u>Jesus is God, following us up.</u>
You see, the heart of God had been breaking--_is_ breaking over the ways
things have been going down on this planet. Folk fail to understand Him.
Worse yet, they misunderstand Him, and feel free to criticize Him. Nobody
has been so much slandered as God. Many are utterly ignorant of Him. Many
others who are not ignorant yet ignore Him. They turn their faces and
backs. Some give Him the cut direct. The great crowd in every part of the
world is yearning after Him: piteously, pathetically, most often
speechlessly yearning, blindly groping along, with an intense inner tug
after Him. They know the yearning. They feel the inner, upward tug. They
don't understand what it is for which they yearn, nor what will satisfy.
For man was made to live in closest touch with God. That is his native
air. Out of that air his lungs are badly affected. This other air is too
heavy. It's malarial, and full of gases and germy dust. In it he chokes
and gasps. Yet he knows not why. He gropes about in the night made by his
own shut eyes. He doesn't seem to know enough to open them. And sometimes
he _will_ not open them. For the hinge of the eyelid is in the will. And
having shut the light out, he gets tangled up in his ideas as to what _is_
light. He puts darkness for light, and light for darkness.
Once man knew God well; close up. And that means _loved_, gladly, freely.
For here to know is to love. But one day a bad choice was made. And the
choice made an ugly kink in his will. The whole trouble began there. A man
sees through his will. That is his medium for the transmission of light.
If it be twisted, his seeing, his understanding, is twisted. The twist in
the will regulates the twist in the eye. Both ways, too, for a good change
in the will in turn changes the eyes back to seeing straight. He that is
willing to do the right shall clearly see the light.
But that first kink seems to have been getting worse kinked ever since.
And so man does not see God as He is. Man is cross-eyed Godward, but
doesn't know it. Man is color-blind toward God. The blue of God's truth is
to him an arousing, angering red. The soft, soothing green of His love
becomes a noisy, irritating yellow. Nobody has been so much misunderstood
as God. He has suffered misrepresentation from two quarters: His enemies
and His friends. More from--which? Hard to tell. Jesus is God trying to
tell men plainly what He is really like.
The world turned down the wrong lane, and has been going that way
pell-mell ever since. Yet so close is the wrong lane to the right that a
single step will change lanes. Though many results of being in the wrong
lane will not be changed by the change of lanes. It takes time to rest up
the feet made sore by the roughness of the wrong lane. And some of the
scars, where men have measured their length, seem to stay.
The result of that wrong turning has been pitiable. _Separation from God_,
so far as _man_ could make separation. There is no separation on God's
part. He has never changed. He remains in the world, but because of man's
turning his face away, He remains as a stranger, unrecognized. He remains
just where man left Him. And any one going back to that point in the road
will find Him standing waiting with an eager light glistening in His eyes.
_No_! That's not accurate. He is _a bit nearer_ than ever He was. He is
following us up. He is only a step off. Jesus is God eagerly following us
up.
<u>The Early Eden Picture.</u>
But one will never get to understand this Jesus until he gets a good look
at man as he was once, and as he is now. The key to understanding Jesus is
man, even as Jesus is the key to God. One must use both keys to get into
the inner heart of God. To get hold of that first key one must go back to
the start of things. The old Book of God opens with a picture that is
fascinating in its simplicity and strength. There is an unfallen man. He
is fresh from the hand of God, free of scar and stain and shrivelling
influence. He is in a garden. He is walking hand in hand with God, and
working side by side with God: friendship and partnership. Friends in
spirit: partners in service.
The distinctive thing about the man is that he is _like God_. He and God
are alike. In this he differs from all creation. He is God's link between
Himself and His Creation. Particular pains is taken by repetition and
change of phrase to make clear and emphatic that it was in the very image
of God that man was made. Just what does it mean that we men were made in
God's likeness? Well, the thing has been discussed back and forth a good
bit. Probably we will not know fully till we know as we are known. In the
morning when we see Him we shall be like Him fully again. Then we'll know.
_That_ morning's sun will clear up a lot of fog. But a few things can be
said about it now with a positiveness that may clear the air a bit, and
help us recognize the dignity of our being, and behave accordingly.
Man came into being by the breath of God. God breathed Himself into man.
The breath that God breathed out came into man as life. The very life of
man is a bit of God. Man is of the essence of God. Every man is the
presence-chamber of God.
God is a _Spirit. Man_ is a spirit. He lives in a body. He thinks through
a mind. He _is_ a spirit, using the body as a dwelling-place, and the
mind as his keenest instrument. All the immeasurable possibilities and
capacities of spirit being are in man.
God is an _infinite_ spirit. That is, we cannot understand Him fully. He
is very close to us. The relationship is most intimate, and tender, yet
His fulness is ever beyond our grasp and our ken. _Man_ is infinite in
that he knows that God is infinite. Only like can appreciate like. He can
appreciate that he cannot appreciate God, except in part. He understands
that he does not understand God save in smaller part. He knows enough to
love passionately. And through loving as well as through knowing he knows
that there is infinitely more that he does not know. Only man of all
earth's creation knows this. In this he is like God. The difference
between God and man here is in the degree of infinity. That degree of
difference is an infinite degree. Yet this is the truth. But more yet: man
has this same quality _man_ward. He is infinite in that he cannot be fully
understood in his mental processes and motives. He is beyond grasp fully
by his fellow. Even one's most intimate friend who knows most and best
must leave unknown more than is known.
God is an _eternal_ spirit. He has always lived. He will live always. He
knows no end, at either end. All time before there was time, and after the
time-book is shut, is to Him a passing present. _Man_ is an eternal
spirit, because of God. He will know no end. He will live always because
the breath of God is his very being.
God is _love_. He yearns for love. He loves. And more, He _is_ love. Man
is like God in his yearning for love, in his capacity for love, and in his
lovableness. Man must love. He lives only as he loves. True love, and only
that, is the real life. He will give up everything for love. He is
satisfied only as he loves and finds love. To love is greater than to be
loved. One cannot always have both. God does not. But every one may love.
Every one does love. And only as there is love, pure and true--however
overlaid with what is not so--only so is there life.
God is _holy_. That word seems to include purity and righteousness. There
is utter absence of all that should not be. There is in Him all that
should be, and that in fulness beyond our thinking. Man was made holy.
There is in the Genesis picture of Eden a touch that for simplicity and
yet for revealing the whole swing of moral action is most vivid. In the
presence of conditions where man commonly, universally, the world around,
and time through, has been and is _most sensitive to suggestion of evil_
there is with this first man the utter absence of any thought of evil.[1]
In the light of after history there could be no subtler, stronger
statement than this of his holiness, his purity, at this stage.
And in his _capacity for holiness_, in that intensest longing for purity,
and loathing of all else, that comes as the Spirit of God is allowed
sway, is revealed again the capacity for God-likeness. It is the prophetic
dawn within of that coming Eden when again we shall _see His face_, and
have the original likeness fully restored.
God is _wise_, all-wise. Among the finest passages of the' Christian's
classic are those that represent God as personified wisdom. And here
wisdom includes all knowledge and justice. That the Spirit of God breathed
into man His own mental life is stated most keenly by the man who
proverbially embodied in himself this quality of wisdom. "The spirit of
man is the lamp of the Lord searching out the innermost parts." The
allusion is clearly to intellectual powers. There is in man the same
quality of mental keenness that searches into things as is in God. It is
often dulled, gripped by a sort of stupor, so overlaid you would hardly
guess it was there. But, too, as we all know, it often shines out with a
startling brilliance. It is less in degree than with God, but it is the
same thing, a bit of God in man. This explains man's marvellous
achievements in literature, in invention, in science, and in organization.
Two light master-strokes of the etching point in the Eden picture reveal
the whole mental equipment of the man. The only sayings of Adam's
preserved for us are when God brought to him the woman. She is the
occasion for sayings that reveal the mental powers of this first man.
Fittingly it is so. Woman, when true to herself, has ever been the
occasion for bringing out the best in man. "And the man said, _this time_
it is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; _this_ shall be called
woman, because out of man was this one taken. Therefore doth a man leave
his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife, and they become one
flesh." ... "And the man called his wife's name Eve; because she was the
mother of all living." Here is revealed at a glance the keen mental powers
at work. Here is the simplicity of statement that marks the speech of
strong men. The whole forest is in a single acorn. The whole of a human
life is in the primal cell. The chemist knows the whole body by looking
into one drop of blood. Here is revealed in one glance the whole man. Mark
the keen sense of fitness in the naming of woman--the last and highest
creation. Adam was a philologist. His mind was analytical. Inferentially
the same keen sense of fitness guided in all the names he had chosen. Here
is recognition of the plan for the whole race, a simple unlabored
foresight into its growth. A man's relation to his wife, his God-chosen
friend, as being the closest of life, and above all others is recognized,
together with the consequent obligation upon him. She comes first of all.
She becomes the first of all his relationships. The man and the woman--one
man and one woman--united, make the true unit of society. Any disturbance
of that strikes at the very vitals of society.
And God is a _Sovereign_--_the_ sovereign of the vast swing of worlds.
_Man_ likewise is a sovereign in the realm of nature, and over all the
lower creation. He was given dominion, kingship, over all the
earth-creation. Man is a king. He is of the blood royal. He was made to
command, to administrate, to reign. He is the judge of last appeals on the
bench of earth.
But there is more here. The chief characteristic of an absolute sovereign
is the imperial power to choose, to decide. Man was made an absolute
sovereign in his own will. God is the absolute sovereign. He has made man
an absolute sovereign in one realm, that of his will, his power of choice.
There is one place where man reigns alone, an absolute autocrat, where not
even God _can_ come save as the autocrat desires it, that is in his will.
And if that "_can_" bother you, remember that it was God's sovereign act
that made it so. So that God remains sovereign in making man a sovereign
in the realm of his will. There every man sits in imperial solitude.
Here then is the picture of man fresh from the hand of God. A spirit, in a
body, with an unending life, partly infinite, like God in his capacity for
love, for holiness, and wisdom, with the gift of sovereignty over the
lower creation, and in his own will. Like Him too in his capacity for
_fellowship_ with God. For only like can have fellowship with like. It is
only in that in which we are alike that we can have fellowship. These two,
God and man, walking side by side, working together, friendship in spirit;
partnership in service.
This man is in a _garden_ of trees and bushes, with fruit and flowers and
singing birds, roses with no pricking thorns, soft green with no weeds,
and no poison ivy, for there is no hate. And he is walking with God,
talking familiarly as chosen friend with choicest friend. Together they
work in the completion of creation. God brings His created beings one by
one to man to be catalogued and named, and accepts his decisions. What a
winsome picture. These two, God and a man in His likeness, walking and
working side by side; likeness in being; friendship, fellowship in spirit;
partnership, comradeship in service. And this is God's thought for man!
<u>Man's Bad Break.</u>
Then come the climax and the crisis. A climax is the climbing to the top
rung of the ladder. A crisis is the meeting place of possible victory and
possible disaster. A single step divides between the two--the
precipice-height, and the canon's yawning gulf.
It was a climax of opportunity; and a crisis of action. _God's_ climax of
opportunity to man. _Man's_ crisis of action. God made man sovereign in
his power of choice. Now He would go the last step and give him the
opportunity of using that power and so reaching the topmost levels. God
led man to the hill of choice. The man must _climb_ the hill if he would
reach its top.
Only the use of power gives actual possession of the power. What we do not
use we lose. The pressure of the foot is always necessary to a clear
title. To him that hath possible power shall be given actual power through
use.
This opportunity was the last love-touch of God in opening up the way into
the fulness of His image. With His ideal for man God went to His limit in
_giving_ the power. He could give the power of choice. Man must _use_ the
power given. Only so could he own what had been given. God could open the
door. Man must step over the door-sill. Action realizes power.
The tree of knowledge of good and evil was the tree of choice. Obedience
to God was the one thing involved. That simply meant, as it always means,
keeping in warm touch with God. All good absolutely is bound up in
this--_obeying God_, keeping in warm touch. To obey Him is the very heart
of good. All evil is included in disobeying Him. To disobey, to fail to
obey is the seeded core of all evil.
Whichever way he chose he would exercise his God-like power of choice.
Whichever way he chose, the knowledge would come. If he chose to obey he
would know good by choosing it, and evil by rejecting it. He knew neither
good nor evil, for he had not yet had the contact of choice. Knowledge
comes only through experience. In choosing not to obey, choosing to
disobey, he would know evil with a bitter intimacy by choosing it. He
would become acquainted with the good which he had shoved ruthlessly away.
With the opportunity came the temptation: God's opportunity; Satan's
temptation. Satan is ever on the heels of God. Two inclined planes lead
out of every man's path. Two doors open into them side by side. God's door
up, the tempter's door down, and only a door-jamb between. Here the split
hoof can be seen sticking from under the cloak's edge at the very start.
Satan hates the truth. He is afraid of it. Yet he sneaks around the
sheltering corner of what he fears and hates. The sugar coating of his
gall pills he steals from God. The devil bare-faced, standing only on his
own feet, would be instantly booted out at first approach. And right well
he knows it.
A cunning half lie opens the way to a full-fledged lie, but still coupled
with a half-truth. The suggestion that God was harshly prohibiting
something that was needful leads to the further suggestion that He was
arbitrarily, selfishly holding back the highest thing, the very thing He
was supposed to be giving, that is, likeness to Himself. Eve was getting a
course in suggestion. This was the first lesson. The school seems to be in
session still. The whole purpose is to slander God, to misrepresent Him.
That has been Satan's favorite method ever since. God is not good. He
makes cruel prohibitions. He keeps from us what we should have. It is
passing strange how every one of us has had that dust in his eyes. Some of
us might leave the "had" out of that sentence.
See how cunningly the truth and the lie are interwoven by this old
past-master in the sooty art of lying. "Your eyes shall be opened, and ye
shall be as God knowing good and evil." It was true because by the use of
this highest power of choice he would become like God, and through
choosing he would know. It is cunningly implied with a sticky, slimy
cunning that, by not eating, that likeness and knowledge would not come.
That was the lie. The choice either way would bring both this element of
likeness to God in the sovereign power of choice, and the knowledge.
Then came the choice. The step up was a step down: up into the use of his
highest power; down by the use of that power. In that wherein he was most
like God in power, man became most unlike God in character. First the
woman chose: then the man. Satan subtly begins his attack upon the woman.
Because she was the weaker? Certainly not. Because she was the stronger.
Not the leader in action, but the stronger in influence. He is the leader
in action: she in influence. The greater includes the less. Satan is a
master strategist, bold in his cunning. If the citadel can be gotten, all
is won. If he _could_ get the woman he _would_ get the man. She includes
him. She who was included in him now includes him. The last has become
first.
She was deceived. He was not deceived. The woman chose unwarily for the
supposed good. The man chose with open eyes for the woman's sake. Could
the word gallantry be used? Was it supposed friendship? He would not
abandon her? Yet he proved _not her friend_ that day, in stepping down to
this new low level. Man's habit of giving smoothly spoken words to woman,
while shying sharp-edged stones at her, should in all honesty be stopped.
Man can throw no stones at woman. If the woman failed God that day, the
man failed both God and the woman. If it be true that through her came the
beginning of the world's sin, through her, too, be it gratefully and
reverently remembered, came that which was far greater--the world's
Saviour.
The choice was made. The act was done. Tremendous act! Bring your
microscope and peer with awe into that single act. No fathoming line can
sound its depth. No measuring rod its height nor breadth. No thought can
pierce its intensity. That reaching arm went around a world. Millenniums
in a moment. A million miles in a step. An ocean in a drop. Volumes in a
word. A race in a woman. A hell of suffering in an act. The depths of woe
in a glance. The first chapter of Romans in Genesis three, six. Sharpest
pain in softest touch. God mistrusted--distrusted. Satan embraced. Sin's
door open. Eden's gate shut.
Mark keenly the immediate result that came with that intense rapidity
possible only to mental powers. At once they were both conscious of
something that had not entered their thoughts before. To the pure all
things are pure. To the imagination hurt by breaking away from God, the
purest things can bring up suggestions directly opposite. Through the open
door of disobedience came with lightning swiftness the suggestion of
using a pure, holy function of the body in a way and for a purpose not
intended. Making an end of that which was meant to be only a means to a
highest end. Degrading to an animal pleasure that which held in its pure
hallowed power the whole future of the race. There is absolutely no change
save in the inner thought. But what a horrid heredity in that one flash of
the imagination! Every sin lives first in the imagination. The imagination
is sin's brooding and birth-place. An inner picture, a lingering glance, a
wrong desire, an act--that is the story of every sin. The first step was
disobedience. That opened the door. The first suggestion of wrong-doing
that followed hot on the heels of that first step, through that open door,
struck at the very vitals of the race--both its existence and its
character. That first suggested unnatural action, with its whole brood,
has become the commonest and slimiest sin of the race.
Here, in the beginning, the very thought _shocked_ them. In that lay their
safety. Shame is the recoil of God's image from the touch of sin. Shame is
sin's first checkmate. It is man's vantage for a fresh pull up. There are
only two places where there is no shame: where there is no sin; where sin
is steeped deepest in. The extremes are always jostling elbows. Instantly
the sense of shame suggested a help. A simple bit of clothing was
provided. It was so adjusted as to help most. Clothing is man's badge of
shame. The first clothing was not for the body, but for the mind. Not for
protection, but for concealment, that so the mind might be helped to
forget its evil suggestions. It is one of sin's odd perversions that draws
attention by color and cut to the race's badge of shame. It would seem
strongly suggestive of moral degeneracy, or of bad taste, or, let us say
in charity, of a lapse of historical memory.
Mark the sad soliloquy of God: "Behold the man has become as one of us: He
has exercised his power of choice." He tenderly refrains from saying, "and
has chosen wrong! so pitiably wrong!" That was plain enough. He would not
rub in the acid truth. He would not make the scar more hideous by pointing
it out. "And now _lest_ he put forth his hand and take of the tree of
life." "_Lest!_" There is a further danger threatening. In his present
condition he needs guarding for his own sake in the future.
"_Lest_"--wrong choice limits future action. Sin narrows.
With man's act of sin came God's act of saving. Satan is ever on the heels
of God to hurt man. But God is ever on the heels of Satan to cushion the
hurt and save the man. It is a nip-and-tuck race with God a head and a
heart in the lead. Something had to be done. Man had started sin in
himself by his choice. The taint of disobedience, rebellion, had been
breathed out into the air. He had gotten out of sorts with his
surroundings. His presence would spoil his own heaven. The stain of his
sin would have been upon his eternal life. The zero of selfishness would
have been the atmosphere of his home. The touch of his unhallowed hand
must be taken away for his own sake. That unhallowed touch _has_ been upon
every function and relationship of life outside those gates. Nothing has
escaped the slimy contact.
Sin _could_ not be allowed to stay _there_. Its presence stole heaven away
from heaven. Yet sin had become a part of the man. The man and the wrong
were interwoven. They were inseparable. Sin has such a tenacious, gluey,
sticky touch! Each included the other. _It_ could not be put out without
_his_ being put out. So man had to be driven out for his own sake to rid
his home-spot of sin. The man was driven out that he might come
back--_changed_. Love drove him out that later it might let him in. The
tree of life was kept _from_ him for a time that it might be kept _for_
him for an eternity.
When he had _changed his spirit_, and _changed sides_ in the fight with
evil started that day, and gotten victory over the spirit now dominant
within himself, those gates would swing again. When the stain of his
choice would be taken out of his fibre it would be his right eagerly to
retrace these forced steps, and the coming back would find more than had
been left. Love has been busy planning the home-coming. The tree of life
has been grown in his absence to a grove of trees. The life has become
life more abundant.
<u>Outside the Eden Gate.</u>
The story of what took place outside that guarded gate makes clear the
love, the wise farsighted love that showed the man the way out that day.
To tell the story one must use a pen made of the iron that has entered his
own soul, and though the pen be eased with ball point, it scratches and
sticks in the paper for sheer reluctance. And only the tears of the heart
will do for ink.
That was a costly meal. That first bite must have been a big one. Its
taste is still in the mouth of the race. If that fruit were an apple it
must have been a crab. There has been a bad case of indigestion ever
since. If you think there were no crab-apples in Eden, then the touch of
those thickening lips must have soured it in the eating--man's teeth are
still on edge. The fruit became tough in the chewing. It's not digested
yet. That Garden of Eden must have been on a hill, with lowlands below,
and high hills above, and roads both ways. The man seems to have gotten
into the lowland road, and after a bit, struck some marshes and swamps,
with a good bit of thick gray fog.
The first result of the break with God was _in the man himself_. Man has
two doors opening into himself from God--the eye and the ear. Through
these God comes into the man and makes Himself known. Through these comes
all man knows of God. Both have their hinges in the will, the heart. Man
gave both doors a slam shut that day in Eden. Yet they went shut
_gradually_. That was the God-side of their shutting. He quickly slipped
in an air cushion so the shutting might be softened and delayed, and
meanwhile His presence be appealing to the man.
Refusing to obey God was equal to hearing without being willing to listen.
It was the same thing as looking with that reluctance that won't see, and
then doesn't see. Hearing and seeing lie deeper than ears and eyes, down
in the purpose, the will, the desire of the heart. Unwillingness dulls,
and then deafens the ears. It blurs, and then blinds the eye. An earnest,
loving purpose gives peculiar keenness to the ears, and opens the eye of
the eye. Ears and eyes are very sensitive organs. If their messages be not
faithfully attended to they sulk and pout and refuse to transmit messages.
It is a remarkable fact that habitual inattention to a sound or sight
makes one practically deaf or blind to it; and that close attention
persisted in makes one's ears and eyes almost abnormally keen and quick.
Love's ears and eyes are proverbially acute.
One may be so wholly absorbed in something that he absolutely does not see
the thing on which his eyes are turned. He does not hear the sounds that
are plainly coming to his ear because his thought, back of that his heart,
is elsewhere. Hearing, seeing is with the heart back of ears and eyes. God
is spoken of as silent. Yet His silence may be simply our deafness. The
truth is He is speaking all the time, but we are so absorbed that we do
not hear. He is ever looking into our faces with His great, tender, deep
eyes, but we are so wrapped up in something else that the gaze out of our
eyes is vacant to that Face, and with keenest disappointment, so often
repeated, He gets no answering glance.
Let anybody in doubt about the strict accuracy of this do some
experimenting on himself, either with outer things or regarding God. Let
him obey the inner voice in some particular that may perhaps cut straight
across some fixed habit, and then watch very quietly for the result. It
will come with surprising sureness and quickness. And the reason why is
simple. The man is simply moving back into his native air, and of course
all the powers work better.
This truth about the nerves of the ears and eyes running down into the
heart is constantly being sounded out in the old Book. A famous bit in
Isaiah puts it very clearly, and becomes a sort of pivot passage of all
others of this sort. That fine-grained, intense-spirited young Hebrew was
caught in the temple one day by a sight of God. That wondrous sight held
him with unyielding grip through all the after years. With the sight came
the voice, and the message for the nation: "Tell these people--you are
continually hearing, but you do not listen, nor take in what you hear.
Your eyes are open, they look, but they do not see." Then the voice said,
"Make their heart _fat_, and their ears _heavy_, and their eyes _shut_."
That is to say, by continually telling them what they will continually
refuse to hear because it does not suit the habit of their lives, he would
be setting in motion the action that would bring these results. The ears
that won't hear by and by _can't_ hear. The heart that will not love and
obey gets into a state of fatty degeneration. The valves that refuse to
move in loving obedience will get too heavy with fat to move at all. The
fat clogs the hinges. There is the touch of a soft irony in the _form_ of
the message. As though Isaiah's talking would affect their ears, whereas
it is their refusal to hear that stupefies the hearing organ. In
faithfulness God insists on telling them the truth even though He knows
that their refusal to do will make things worse. But then God is never
held back from good by the possible bad that may work out of it.
When Jesus came, the Jews, to whom His messages to the world were directly
spoken, were in almost the last stages of that sort of thing. So Jesus,
with the fine faithfulness of love blending with the keenest tact, spoke
in language veiled by parable to overcome the intense prejudice against
plainly spoken truth. They were so set against what He had to tell that
the only way to get anything into them at all was so to veil its _form_ as
to befool them into _thinking it truer_. Toward the close, His keenness,
for which they were no match, joining with the growing keenness of their
hate, made them see at once that the sharp edge of some of those last
parables was turned toward themselves.
In explaining to His puzzled disciples about this form of teaching, with
a sad irony that reveals both His heart's yearning and His mental
keenness, He uses more than once with variations this famous bit from
Isaiah. He makes the truth stand out more sharply by stating the opposite
of what He desires, making the contrast between His words and His known
desires so strong as not only to make plain the meaning intended, but to
give it a sharper emphasis.
The result that began with ears and eyes quickly affected the _tongue_.
That is nature's path. The inner road from ear and eye is straight to the
tongue. The tongue is the index of man's whole being. While through ear
and eye he receives all that ever gets in, through the tongue his whole
being is revealed. Of course his personality reveals itself very much
otherwise. In the carriage of the body. Strikingly so in the look of the
eye. The body itself, especially the face, becomes in time the mould of
the spirit within. Yet the tongue--what is said, how it is said, what is
_not_ said, the tone of voice--the tongue is the index of the spirit.
There is no stronger indication of mastery over one's powers than in
control of the tongue. When God would break up man's first great ambitious
scheme of a self-centred monopoly on the Shinar plains, He simply touched
his tongue. The first evidence of God's touch in the re-making of man on
that memorable Pentecost day was upon his tongue.
The effect upon his tongue of the break with God has been radical and
strange. Dumbness, and slowness or thickness of speech alternate with an
unnatural sharpness. Sometimes the spittle has a peculiar oiliness that
results in a certain slipperiness of statement. Sometimes it has a bitter,
poisonous, acid quality that eats its way into the words. There is a queer
backward movement in biting sometimes. Withal a strange looseness of
speech regarding the holiest things, and the most awesome truths, and the
Holy One Himself.
The moment a man gets a vision of God he is instantly conscious of
something the matter with his tongue. The sight that comes to his eyes,
the sound to his ears makes him painfully self-conscious regarding the
defect in his tongue. Moses found himself slow-tongued. Isaiah felt the
need of the cleansing coal for his tongue.
But man's whole inner mental process was affected. A peculiar sense of
fear, of dread, is woven inextricably into the very fibre of man's being.
His first reported word after that break was, "I was afraid." That sense of
fear--a horrid, haunting, nightmare thing--has affected all his thinking
and planning and every-day speech. No phrase is oftener on man's tongue
than "I'm afraid." Isaiah's classic utterance about ears and eyes has a
counterpart equally classic from Paul's pen, about the effect of sin upon
man's mental processes. A few lines in the letter to the Ephesian circle
of churches give a sort of bill of details of the mental steps down that
slope from the Eden gate.
Paul is urging these friends to live _no longer_ as they, in common with
all the races, had been living, in "the vanity of their mind, being
darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because
of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their
hearts; who, being past feeling, gave themselves up to lasciviousness to
make a greedy trade of all uncleanness." Here are seven steps down. The
first five are put in reverse order. Beginning where they have been, he
traces the five steps back to the starting point, and then adds the two
likely to follow with any who persist past this point.
The start of all sin is in the setting of one's self against God. Choosing
some other way than His. It is called here "hardening of the heart." The
native juices of the heart are drawn away from God and dry up. In this
Book the heart is the seat of both affection and will. It is the pivotal
organ of life. Any trouble there quickly and surely affects the whole
being. Then follows "ignorance." Of course. The heart controls both ear
and eye, the two great channels inward of knowledge. The hardening of the
heart locks both doors. And hard on the heels of that comes "_Alienated_
from the life of God." That is, _cut off,_ shut out of fellowship and
intimacy. Life is _union with God_. Through union God's life flows into
us. Union is rooted in knowledge _and_ in sympathy, fellow-feeling, a
common desire and purpose. The man snapping that tying cord cuts himself
off.
The next step is peculiarly pathetic--"darkened in their understanding."
The man has shut the shutters close, and pulled the shades down tight. Of
course it's dark inside. He is unable to see. First unwilling, now unable.
If the only thing that can be gotten for use as light be _darkness_, how
intense is that darkness! Then comes the pitiable result of acting as if
darkness were man's native air--"the vanity of the mind." That word vanity
means aimlessness. The mind is still keen, even brilliant, but the guiding
star is shut out, and that keen mind goes whirring aimlessly around.
Sometimes a very earnest aimlessness. The man's on a foggy sea without sun
or star. The compass on board is useless.
But more pitiable and pathetic yet; indeed utterly laughable if it were
not so terribly serious and pathetic:--this man in the dark proceeds
gravely to decide that this darkness of his own making is a superior sort
of light, and bows low in worship of its maker. He has even been known to
write brilliant essays on the light-giving power of blinding darkness,
with earnest protests at the evil of this thing commonly called light.
Sometimes having carefully cottoned up the shutters that no scrap of sun
light or sun warmth may get in, he strikes a friction match, and sits
warming himself, and eloquently sets forth his own greatness as shown by
the match, _friction_ match. Most of this sort of light and heat is of the
friction sort.
Then with reluctant hand, one who knows Paul's tender heart can well
believe, the curtain is drawn aside for the last two stages; the grosser,
gutter, animal stages, which, not always by any means, but all too
commonly follow. "Past feeling!" The delicate sense of feeling about right
and purity dulls and goes. The fine inner judgment blunts and leaves. The
shrinking sensitiveness toward the dishonorable and impure loses its edge
and departs. _Then_--pell mell, like a pack of dogs down a steep hill,
follows the last--"lasciviousness," the purest, holiest things in the
gutter-slime, and then, cold-blooded, greedy trading in these things.
That's the picture painted in shadows of Rembrandt blackness, newly
blackened, of the effect in man himself of turning away from God.
Now Jesus is the music of God's heart sounding in man's ears anew, that he
may be wooed back the old road to the Eden life. Jesus is the face of God,
close up, looking tenderly, yearningly, into man's face, that his eye may
be caught and held, and his heart be enchained.
<u>Sin's Brood.</u>
The second great result of that Eden break has been in _the growth of
sin_. In the seventeenth century after that it was said that man's heart
was a breeding place of thoughts whose pictured forms were bad, only bad,
with no spots of good, nor spurts of good. A thousand years later, Moses
giving the Hebrew tribes the ten commandments, adds a crowd of
particulars, some of them very grewsome, which serve as mirrors to reveal
the common practice of his age. The slant down of those first centuries
has evidently been increasing in its downward pitch.
More than a thousand years later yet, there is a summary made by Paul that
reveals the stage reached by sin in his day. Probably no one knew the
world of his time, which has proved to be the world's crisis time, as did
Paul the scholar and philosopher of Tarsus. Himself a city man, well bred
and well schooled, a world traveller, with acute, disciplined powers of
observation, and a calm scholarly judgment, he had studied every phase of
life cultured and lowly.
He pitched upon the great city centres in his active campaigning, and
worked out into the country districts. He was a world-bred man. He knew
the three over-lapping worlds of his time: the Hebrew, with its ideals of
purity and religion; the Greek, with its ideals of culture; and the Roman,
with its ideals of organization and conquest. He is writing from Corinth,
then the centre of Greek life, to Rome, the centre of the world's life.
His letter is the most elaborate of any of his writings preserved to us.
In its beginning he speaks of man, universally, morally, as he had come to
know him. His arraignment is simply terrific in its sweep and detail.
Let me pause and be measuring the words cautiously and then put this
down:--the description of the latter half of the first chapter of Romans
is a true description of man to-day. At first flush that sounds shocking,
as indeed it is. It seems as if this description can apply only to
degraded savages and to earth's darkest corners. But the history of Paul's
day, and before, and since, and an under view of the social fabric to-day,
only serve to make clear that Paul's description is true for all time, and
around the world.
There is a cloak of conventionality thrown over the blacker tints of the
picture to-day in advanced Christian lands. It is considered proper to
avoid speaking of certain excesses, or, if speech must be used, modestly
to say "unnamable." And it is a distinct gain for morality that it is so.
Better a standard recognized, even though broken. But commonly the
conditions are not changed. The differences found in different
civilizations to-day are differences only of _degree_. In the most
advanced cities of Christendom to-day may be found every bit of this
chapter's awful details, _but properly cloaked_. In European lands the
cloaks are sewed with the legal-stitch, which is considered the proper
finish. In lands where our Christian standards are not recognized the
thing is as open as in this chapter.
In four short paragraphs containing sixty-six lines in the American
Revision, Paul packs in his terrific philippic. He swings over the ground
four times. Nowhere does he reveal better his own fidelity to truth, with
the fineness of his own spirit. Here, delicacy of expression is rarely
blended with great plainness. No one can fail to understand, and yet that
sense of modesty native to both man and woman is not improperly disturbed,
even though the recital be shocking.
Here is paragraph one: Man knew God both through nature and by the direct
inner light. But he did not want Him as God. It bothered the way he wanted
to live. The core of all sin is there. All its fruitage grows about that
core. He became vain in his reasonings. He gave himself up to keen,
brilliant speculation. Having cut the cord that bound him to God,
unanchored, uncompassed, on a shoreless, starless sea, he drifts
brilliantly about in the dense gray fog.
Then he befooled himself further by thinking himself wise. He preferred
somebody else to God. Whom? Himself! Then--birds; then-beasts on all fours
with backbone on a line with the earth, nose and mouth close to the
ground; then--gray-black, slimy, crawling, creeping things. He traded off
the truth of God for a lie; the sweet purity of God for rank impurity. He
dethroned God, and took the seat himself. He bartered God for beasts and
grew like that he preferred. God's gracious restraint is withdrawn when he
gets down to the animal stage. Only here man out-animalled the animals.
The beasts are given points on beastliness. The life he chose to live held
down by the throat the truth he knew so well. That's the first summary.
The next two paragraphs are devoted to that particular sort of unnatural
sin first suggested to man after his disobedience, and which in all time
and all lands has been and is the worst, the most unnatural, the most
degrading, and the most common. It came first in the imagination. It came
early in the history of actual sin. It is put first by Paul in his
arraignment here. He gives it chief place by position and by particularity
of description. First was the using of a pure, natural function to gratify
unnatural desires. Then with strange cunning and lustful ingenuity
changing the natural functions to uses not in the plan of nature. Let it
all be said in lowest, softest voice, so sadly awful is the recital. Yet
let that soft voice be very distinct, that the truth may be known. Then
lower down yet the commercializing of such things. Unconcerned barter and
trade in man's holy, most potent function. Putting highest price on most
ingenious impurity.
Then follows the longest of these paragraphs running up and down the grimy
gamut of sin. Beginning with _all_ unrighteousness, he goes on to specify
depravity, greedy covetousness, maliciousness. Oozing out of every pore
there are envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity. Men are whisperers,
backbiters, God-haters, and self-lovers, in that they are insolent,
haughty, boastful. They are inventors of evil things, without
understanding, breakers of faith, without natural affection, ruthlessly
merciless.
The climax is reached in this, that though they _know_ God, and what He
has set as the right rule of life, they not only _do_ these things named,
but they delight in the fellowship of those who habitually practise them.
The stage of impulsiveness is wholly gone. They have settled down to this
as the deliberate choice and habit of life. Man is still a _king_, but all
bemired. He is the image and glory of God, but how shrivelled and
withered; obscured, all overgrown with ugly poison vines.
Let it be remembered at once that this is a _composite_ picture of the
race. Many different sorts of men must be put together to get such a view.
Sin works out differently in different persons. A man's activities take on
the tinge of his personality. So sin in a man takes on the color and tone
of his individuality.
One man has the inner disposition against God, accompanied by no excesses
at all. These things disgust him. He is refined in his tastes, perhaps
scholarly and intellectual in his thinking. That inner disposition may be
a sort of refined ignoring of God either defiant or indifferent. In
another, the animal nature swings to the front, stronger perhaps by
heredity, and, yielded to, it runs to the excess of riot. Then there is
the man with the strange yellow fever, whose love for the bright-colored
precious metal burns in his blood and controls every impulse and purpose.
And the man with intense love of power, of controlling men and things for
the sake of the immense power involved, with himself as the centre of all.
There is every imaginable degree of each of these, and every sort of
combination among them. The lines cross and re-cross at every possible
angle in various persons. A man is apt to get money-drunk then
society-drunk (with a special definition for the word society in this
connection), then lust-drunk. Or, he may swing direct from
money-intoxication into power-intoxication. Please notice keenly that each
of these four grows up out of a perfectly normal, natural desire. Sin
always follows nature's grooves. There is nothing wrong in itself. The sin
is in the wrong motive underneath, or the wrong relationship round about
an act. Or, it is in excess, exaggeration, pushing an act out of its true
proportion. Exaggeration floods the stream out of its channel. Wrong
motive or wrong relationship sends a bad stream into a good channel.
But sift down under the surface and always is found the same thing. The
upper growth is varied by what it finds on the surface to mingle with, but
the sub-stuff is ever the same. The root always is self. The whole seed of
sin is in preferring one's own way to God's way; one's self to God. The
stream of life is turned the wrong way. It is turned in. Its true
direction is up. The true centre of gravity for man is not downward, nor
inward, but upward and outward.
<u>God's Treatment of Sin.</u>
God's treatment of sin lets in a flood of light on the sort of thing it
is. Three times over in this summary Paul says that God "_gave them up._"
As they cast out all acknowledgment of God, He gave them up to an
_outcast_ mind. When they turned God out-of-doors, God left them indoors
to themselves. It was the worst thing He could do, and the best. Worst--to
be left alone with sin. Best, because the sin would get so vile that the
man in God's image would want to turn it out, and get God back. Man never
turns from sin until he feels its vileness to the sickening point. When
things get to the acute stage, and a sharp crisis is on, then as a rule
there will be an eager turning to the One who can cleanse and make over
new; but usually not until then.
Sin has a terrific gait. Give it a loose rein and man will get winded and
ready to drop. Only then is he ready to drop it. Sin can't be patched up
or mended. Nursing only helps it to its feet for a fresh start. The whole
trouble is in the nature of the thing. The heart pumps the hot blood of
rebellion. Its lungs can breathe only self-willed air. The worst
punishment of sin is that left alone it breeds more sin, and worse sin.
The worst of sin is in its brood. It is very prolific. Every sin is a
seed-sin. The breeding process gets the sort more refined in its
coarseness.
"This is the very curse of evil deed,
That of new sin it becomes the seed."[2]
And the plain statements of the Book, and the inevitable working of man's
nature, reveal all the bad results of sin intensifying indefinitely in
the after-life. Jesus is God letting sin do its worst, upon Himself, that
man might see its utter, stubborn damnableness, and eagerly turn from it,
and back to Him.
<u>A Bright Gleam of Light.</u>
Yet be it keenly marked, there is a very bright gleam of light across this
dark picture. In going over the story of sin with its terrific results now
and afterward, one needs to be very tender, for he is talking about
_men_--his _brothers_. And to be very careful not to say things that are
not so. Some good, earnest people have been thinking that the whole race
except a small minority were given over to eternal misery. The vast
majority of men has never heard the name of Jesus. And some very godly
people have seemed to think that these are lost forever.
Yet the old Book of God speaks very plainly here. Its meaning can be
gotten without any twisting of words. Neither the Jewish nation nor the
Christian Church can be regarded as favorites of God. God has no favorites
for salvation. The Jewish nation was chosen for _service_' sake. Through
it there came a special after-revelation of God. Through it came the
world's new Man. The Church is the repository of God's truth to-day, with
its window panes not always quite clear. Its great mission is to tell the
whole race of Jesus. Both were chosen for service.
Every nation knew God directly at the first. And be it said thoughtfully,
every man has enough of revelation and of inner light to lead him back to
God. A man's choice in this life is his choice always. Any student of the
ordinary working of man's mind can certify that. Whatever sort of being a
man deliberately, persistently chooses to be here and now, he will be
always. The only change possible in the after-life will be in the degree.
Never in the sort.
The Gospels speak of _believing on Jesus_, and of the bad results for
those who decline or refuse to have anything to do with Him. Of course it
is speaking of those who have heard of Him. There can be no believing on
Jesus without hearing, and of course in simple fairness no condemning on
any such grounds. The gospel message is wholly concerned with those who
hear.
But there is clear and plain teaching about the great outside majority of
past generations and of our own who have never heard. It was a member of
both Jewish nation and Christian Church, whose tongue, touched by the
Spirit of God, said, "God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation
he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to Him." That
is a simple standard, yet a searching one. Anybody, anywhere, with a truly
reverential thought upward, and a controlling purpose to be right in his
life, will find the door swinging wide. No other badges or tickets
required. This would include that remarkable woman of India, Chundra
Lelah,[3] all those weary years before the simple story of Jesus brought
its flood of light and peace, and all of her innumerable class.
Paul puts it as simply and a little more fully in the letter to the
Romans, that careful treatise which sums up with marvellous fulness and
brevity the gospel he preached to the world. In chapter two, he says, "to
them who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and
incorruption (He will give) eternal life." Note that in his review thus
far he has not yet gotten to Jesus the Saviour.
These people of whom he is now speaking have never heard of Jesus. They
are the great majority. Mark keenly the simple description of them. It is
a description, not of an achievement, but of a purpose. The absorbing aim
in their lives is _seeking upward_. The seeking controls the life. The
mastering spirit of these seekers is _patience, steadfastness_. They are
seeking for the highest thing. They are doing what seems to them to be
right, while seeking. They are doing right _patiently_.
Patience! What a world of conflicting experiences in a word!
Misunderstandings, breaks, slips, stumblings, failures, falls; but in all,
through all, _patience_, steadfastness. Taking a fresh hold at every turn.
And the gripping fingers ever learning a new tenacity. Pulling steadily up
a steep mountain side, in a blazing hot sun, blinded by dust, struck by
loosened rocks above rolling down, but--patiently, steadily, with
dust-blinded eyes, tugging _up_. To such is given the heart's
desire--eternal life. Ah! God judges a man by his _direction_, by the set
of his face. He may not be far up, but his face is turned up. His heels
show their backs. His toes point toward the top. That reveals the purpose,
the desire of the man inside. His choice is to be _up_. And it is choice
that makes character as well as revealing it. And the one thing that
concerns God is the character as revealed in the purpose.
There is a simple, pathetic story from mission lands, variously told, and
well vouched for, of a missionary pausing long enough in a village to tell
the story of Jesus to the crowd that gathered, and then pushing on. This
was the first visit of a missionary to this place and so the first news of
Jesus. The crowd listened eagerly with various results. There was one
listener, an old man, held in repute for his wisdom, who at once accepted
the missionary's story, and announced his acceptance of Jesus. His
neighbors expressed their surprise at his prompt acceptance of such a new
thing. The old man's quiet answer in effect was this: "Oh, I have long
trusted this Jesus, but I never knew His name before." There was no change
of purpose with this man, but, in the story of Jesus, the burst of light
that brought unspeakable peace as he kept on in his upward tug.
Yet all this will not hold back from glad sacrifice, from free giving,
from eager going to foreign mission lands a single man or woman who has
been caught by Jesus' Spirit. _The Master said, "Go ye_." That's enough.
For the largest wealth that may be given, for the keenest sacrifice that
may be endured, for the strongest life that may be devoted--that is quite
enough. And if more were needed--then to go, to give, to sacrifice for the
sake of helping our struggling brothers yonder know Jesus, and His
wondrous sacrifice and His _great peace_. To make them conscious of the
disgustingness of sin, to bring to them _a vision of Jesus' face_ to
allure, and enchain, to give a man's will an earnest boost, when he
_-would_ choose, but cannot seem to for the suction of sin, inherited and
ever growing upon his choosing powers. God sent _His_ best. Jesus
sacrificed His all in going. We'll gladly follow in such a train. Jesus is
God sending His best, sacrificing His dearest, giving His most, _going
Himself_ to get men started up the hill out of the bog.
<u>The Broken Tryst.</u>
Man's break back in Eden was very hard on God. That evening early, in the
twilight, God came walking in the garden to have the usual talk with His
friend. He came to keep tryst. It was the usual trysting place and
trysting hour, and God had the trysting spirit. We may think He came early
for this bit of fellowship. He was prompt. Nothing would be allowed to
disturb this appointment. But God was disappointed. It was His first
disappointment. The first one to be disappointed on this earth was God.
Adam had always met Him before. We may easily think met Him eagerly,
jubilantly, with glad, free, open face and clinging hands.
But the man was not there this time. He failed God. He broke tryst. He
stayed away. Indeed he had gone away. God didn't fail. He was there. The
man failed. They had a long distance talk. God called Adam. He was not
content to come to the trysting place. He must find the missing tryster.
Some folk would make God a sort of hard and dry keeper of His word: A sort
of trim syllogism, dry as punk. Some seem to think Him to be as they seem
to be. How our poor God has been slandered by His supposed defenders! God
was not satisfied to keep the appointment. _He wanted the man._ He
hungered for His friend, upon whom He had imprinted His own image. His
heart was hungry for fellowship. He wanted the comfort of a bit of talk.
So He starts at once eagerly, insistently to find the man.
That voice of God spoke out, tender, gentle, plaintive, pleading. You can
just hear the soft, very soft woodsman's cry, "Hello-alo, hello, Adam,
A-a-dam--here I am--waiting for you--I've kept my tryst--where are
_you_?--hello-o--hello--_where_--are--you?" The voice that spoke worlds
into being, that brought life and beauty to all creation, that brought
instant reverence and adoration from myriads of the upper world, that
voice now speaks to one, two: two who were one. All the heart of God, all
the power of God, in the soft voice talking to one man. God has always
been after the one man, and still is.
And the breezes hushed to hear that voice with its new pleading tone. The
birds stilled their song for this new music in minor mellowing tone.
Silence for a moment, the breezes hushed, the birds stilled, the creation
near by held its breath, God held _His heart still_, that He might catch
the first response to its cry. The twilight of that day had a pathetic
sight. It saw a broken tryst; a lonely God; words of fellowship unspoken.
A man and woman hiding. Skulking behind trees. Trees served a new purpose
that evening, not a good purpose. They never were meant to hide behind.
Sin perverts the use of all things.
All these weary years God has been standing wherever men are: standing,
waiting, calling man back to his tryst. Among the trees, in the crowded
city of man's making, He is ever calling, and eagerly, wondrously, helping
every one who answers. He is so near that a reaching hand always touches
Him. The voice of the heart never misses His ear. But His love and grief
shine out most on that bit of a hill, outside a city wall, on the east
coast of the middle-of-the-earth sea. That is earth's tallest hill. It can
be seen farthest away of any. Jesus up on that hill is God calling man
back to his broken tryst.
<u>God's Wooing.</u>
God seems to have fairly outdone Himself to get man to turn toward the old
trysting place. For when a man will turn around enough to get even a
glimpse of that God-Face, and a whisper of that God-Voice, he can
withstand no longer.
God has taxed all the ingenuity of His love to let man know about Himself.
He revealed Himself directly to the whole race at the start. He has in
every generation, and in every clime, on every hilltop and valley, in
every village and crowded city, been revealing Himself to the heart of
every man. There cannot be found one anywhere who has not heard the quiet
inner voice drawing up, and away from wrong.
In this world of wondrous beauty God is speaking. The glory-telling
heavens, the winsome coloring of trees and all growing things, the soft
round hills, the sublime mountains, the sea with its ever-changing mood
but never-changing beneficence upon the life of the whole earth, the great
blue and gray above, the soothing green below, the brighter colors in
their artistic proportion, the wondrous blendings--surely every bush and
other green thing, every bright twinkler in the blue, everything is aflame
with the presence that burns but in great love consumes not. His eyes are
indeed badly bothered that cannot see; his ears in queer fix that do not
hear. Yet sometimes the empty shoes seem few enough. But they are ever
increasing, and will yet more and more, by retail method, with wholesale
result.
But God comes closer yet in His wooing. The web of life's daily run, with
its strange mixing and blending, shadings and tints, is of His weaving.
He sits at life's loom ever watching and weaving. Were He but recognized
oftener and His hand allowed to guide the skein, how different the
weaving!
"Children of yesterday,
Heirs of to-morrow,
What are you weaving--
Labor and sorrow?
Look to your looms again;
Faster and faster
Fly the great shuttles
Prepared by the Master.
_Life's in the loom,
Room for it_--_room_!
"Children of yesterday,
Heirs of to-morrow,
Lighten the labor
And sweeten the sorrow:
Now--while the shuttles fly
Faster and faster,
Up and be at it--
At work _with_ the Master.
_He stands at your loom_,
_Room for Him_--_room_!
"Children of yesterday,
Heirs of to-morrow,
Look at your fabric
Of labor and sorrow.
Seamy and dark
With despair and disaster,
Turn it--and lo,
The design of the Master.
_The Lord's at the loom_,
_Room for Him--room_."[4]
When men's eyes seemed unable to see clearly these revelations of
Himself, God picked out a small tribe, and through long, patient,
painstaking discipline, gave to it, for the whole world, a special
revelation of Himself. In it, in the Book which preserves its records, in
the Man who came through it, God came nearer yet.
In Jesus, God told out His greatness most, and His love most tenderly. Man
is the fairest flower of earth's creation. It was love's fine touch that
to him God should reveal Himself best and most in the fairest flower of
the eternal creation. Only man could fully appreciate Jesus, God's Man,
and man's Brother.
But Jesus was known only to one generation--His own generation--to one
narrow strip of country, one peculiarly exclusive tribe, the very small
majority of all to whom He had come. So there came to be a Book that all
after-generations might know Him too. We of later generations know _of_
Jesus through the Book, in some shape or other, before we can come to know
Himself direct. And so we prize the Book above all others. Not for the
Book's sake, at all, of course, but because through it we come to know
Jesus. With loving reverence we handle it, for it tells of Him, our
God-brother.
Some learned folk have been much taken up with the make-up of the Book,
its paper and type, and punctuation, and binding. And they have done good
service in clearing away a lot of dust and cobwebs that had been gathering
on it for a long time. But we plain folk, absorbed in getting things
done, do not need to wait on their conclusions. If in those pages we have
found Jesus, and God in Jesus, the Book has fulfilled its mission to us.
To all directly, in nature's voice, and in our common daily life; to a
nation chosen for the special purpose, and through that nation and its
books; through Jesus to those who knew Him, and, by a Book telling of Him,
to all following, God came, _comes_ in His wooing, and looked, _looks_
tenderly into man's face. Each of these paths leads straight to God, and
each comes to include the others.
But chiefly in Jesus God came. Jesus is God going out in the cold black
night, over the mountains, down the ravines and gullies, eagerly hunting
for His lost man, getting hands, and face, and more, torn on the brambly
thorn bushes, and losing His life, in the darkness, on a tree thrust in
His path, but saving the man.