And yet, looked at in another way, the thoughts of these two men stand
in sharp and striking contrast, the one with the other. '_I have
sinned_,' cried Job; '_what shall I do? What shall I do?_'
But there is no reply. In the course of the stupendous drama that bears
his name, Job scours sea and land, earth and sky, for some answer to the
wild questionings of his soul. He climbs the summits of the loftiest
mountains and thrids the labyrinth of the deepest mine; he calls to the
heights of the heavens and to the depths of the sea. But there is no
answering voice, and he is left to nurse his dumb and piteous despair.
Every attempt that he makes to rid his soul of its defilement is like
the effort of a man who, in trying to remove the stain from his window,
rubs on the wrong side of the glass.
But, in contrast with all this, John saw the Cross! How could he ever
forget it? Had he not stood beside it, gazed into the thorn-crowned
face, and received from those quivering lips their last sacred
bequest--the charge of the Saviour's mother? And, all through the
eventful years that followed, John never tired of presenting the Cross
as the only answer to the Patriarch's question. He may not have
perfectly understood it--no man ever yet comprehended all its heights
and sounded all its depths! But it is easier to accept it than to reject
it. For, if I reject it, I am confronted by an enigma even more
unanswerable than Job's.
Oh, why was He there as the Bearer of sin
If on Jesus my guilt was not laid?
Oh, why from His side flowed the sin-cleansing stream,
If His dying my debt has not paid?
If, that is to say, the Cross is not the divine answer to the mystery of
all the ages, then who shall attempt to solve the dark, inscrutable,
impenetrable mystery of the Cross?
V
But it is! Experience proves it! In the course of his dazzling
Apocalypse, John tells us that he saw a war being waged in heaven; and
the hosts of righteousness overcame their powerful and sinister foes by
the virtue of the blood of the Lamb. I do not know what he means--never
expect to know in this world. But I know that, in this life, something
very like it happens every day.
Martin Luther says that, in one of his periods of depression at the
Wartburg, it seemed to him that he saw a hideous and malignant form
inscribing the record of his own transgressions round the walls of his
room. There seemed to be no end to the list--sins of thought, sins of
word, sins of deed, sins of omission, sins of commission, secret sins,
open sins--the pitiless scribe wrote on and on interminably. Whilst the
accuser was thus occupied, Luther bowed his head and prayed. When he
looked up again, the writer had paused, and, turning, faced him.
'Thou hast forgotten just one thing!' said Luther.
'And that--?' asked his tormentor.
'Take thy pen once more and write across it all: "_The blood of Jesus
Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin!_"' And, at the utterance of
those words, the spirit vanished and the walls were clean!
In his _Grace Abounding_, Bunyan tells us of a period in his life during
which his soul seemed to be held in fetters of brass; and, every step he
took, he took to the sound of the clanking of chains. 'But about ten or
eleven o'clock on a certain day,' he says, 'as I was walking under a
hedge (full of sorrow and guilt, God knows), suddenly this sentence
rushed in upon me, "_The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us
from all sin._" At this I made a stand in my spirit and began to
conceive peace in my soul, and methought I saw as if the tempter did
leer and steal away from me, as being ashamed of what he had done. At
the same time also I had my sin and the blood of Christ thus represented
to me: that my sin, when compared to the blood of Christ, was no more to
it than this little clod or stone is to the vast and wide field that
here I see. This gave me good encouragement.'
Neither Martin Luther nor John Bunyan would object to my setting them in
the company of Donald Menzies. For, like them, Donald was at war with
principalities and powers, with the rulers of the darkness of this
world, with spiritual wickedness in high places. In the lonely anguish
of that grim struggle it seemed as though, at the last, the gates of
hell must have prevailed against him.
'Then,' he says, 'I heard a voice, oh, yes, as plain as you are hearing
me: "_The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin._"
It was like a gleam from the Mercy-seat, but I waited to see whether
Satan had any answer and my heart was standing still. But there was no
word from him, not one word. Then I leaped to my feet and cried, "Get
thee behind me, Satan!" And I looked round, and there was no one to be
seen but Janet in her chair with the tears on her cheeks, and she was
saying, "Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord
Jesus Christ!"'
'_When I uttered those words,_' says Luther, '_the evil spirit vanished
and the walls were clean!_'
'_When I made a stand upon those words,_' says Bunyan, '_the tempter did
steal away from me and I entered into peace!_'
'_When I heard those words,_' says Donald Menzies, '_I waited to see if
Satan had any answer, but there was no word from him, not one word!_'
This, surely, is what the seer means when he says that he saw all the
hosts of evil routed and scattered by the virtue of the blood of the
Lamb.