But it is time that we came to close quarters. There are two people in
every congregation with whom the minister finds it very difficult to
deal. There is the man upon whose conscience sin lies very heavily, and
there is the man upon whose soul it sits very lightly.
The _first_ of these two perplexing individuals is afraid to approach
the Mediator. He feels it to be a kind of presumption. It is difficult
to argue with him. It is better to introduce him to Robert Murray
McCheyne. McCheyne had the same feeling. 'I am ashamed to go to Christ,'
he says. 'I feel, when I have sinned, that it would do no good to go. It
seems to be making Christ a Minister of Sin to go straight from the
swine-trough to the best robe.' But he came to see that there is no
other way, and that all his plausible reasonings were but the folly of
his own beclouded heart. 'The weight of my sin,' he writes, 'should act
like the weight of a clock; the heavier it is, the faster it makes it
go!'
And the _second_ of these difficult cases--the man upon whose conscience
sin sits so lightly--I shall introduce to Dr. MacLure. As Drumsheugh
told Dr. Davidson on that snowy Christmas night, 'if ever there was a
man who could have stood on his own feet in the Day of Judgment, it was
William MacLure.' Through all his long years in the glen, the old doctor
had simply lived for others. As long as he could cure his patients he
was content; and he was never happier than in handing the sick child
back to its parents or in restoring the wife to the husband who had
despaired of her recovery. If ever there was a man who could have stood
on his own feet in the Day of Judgment, it was William MacLure. Yet when
the old doctor came to the end of his long journey, his soul was feeling
after the same thing--a Friend in the Great Court, an Intercessor, a
Mediator between God and men!
'We have done our best,' said the old minister, in that last talk with
his elder, 'we have done our best, but the less we say about it the
better. We need a Friend to say a good word for us in the Great Court.'
'A've thocht that masel,' replied the agonized elder, 'mair than aince.
Weelum MacLure was 'ettling aifter the same thing the nicht he slippit
awa, an' gin ony man cud hae stude on his ain feet yonder, it was
Weelum.'
And for minister and elder and doctor--and me--'_there is one God and
one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus_.'