My Bible contains two stories--one near its beginning and one near its
end--which to-day I must lay side by side. The _first_ is the story of a
man who feels that he is suffering more than his share of the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune. He thinks of God as very high and very
holy; too wise to err and too good to be unkind; yet he cannot shake
from his mind the conviction that God has misunderstood him. And, in his
agony, he cries out for one who can arbitrate between his tortured soul
and the God who seems to be so angry with him. Oh, for one a little less
divine than God, yet a little less human than himself, who could act as
an adjudicator, an umpire, a mediator between them! But neither the
heavens above nor the earth beneath can produce one capable of ending
the painful controversy. 'There is no daysman who can come between us
and lay his hand upon us both!'
_A God!_
_But no Mediator!_
That is the _first_ story.
The _second_ story, the story from the end of the Bible, is the story of
an old minister whose life-work is finished. He writes, in a reminiscent
vein, to a young minister who is just beginning; and earnestly refers to
his own ordination. 'Whereunto,' he asks, 'was I ordained a preacher and
an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity?' What is
his message? He answers his own question. It is this. '_For there is one
God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus._'
_A God!_
_And a Mediator!_
_Job_ needed a Friend in the Great Court; but, alas, he could not find
one!
_Paul_ tells Timothy that he was ordained for no other purpose than to
point men to Him who alone can intercede.