_THE ATTRACTIVE FORCE OF THE CROSS._
"Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from
this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify
Thy name. There came therefore a voice out of heaven, saying, I have
both glorified it, and will glorify it again. The multitude
therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it had thundered:
others said, An angel hath spoken to Him. Jesus answered and said,
This voice hath not come for My sake, but for your sakes. Now is the
judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast
out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto
Myself. But this He said, signifying by what manner of death He
should die. The multitude therefore answered Him, We have heard out
of the law that the Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou,
The Son of man must be lifted up? who is this Son of man? Jesus
therefore said unto them, Yet a little while is the light among you.
Walk while ye have the light, that darkness overtake you not: and he
that walketh in the darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye
have the light, believe on the light, that ye may become sons of
light."--JOHN xii. 27-36.
The presence of the Greeks had stirred in the soul of Jesus conflicting
emotions. Glory by humiliation, life through death, the secured
happiness of mankind through His own anguish and abandonment,--well
might the prospect disturb Him. So masterly is His self-command, so
steadfast and constant His habitual temper, that one almost inevitably
underrates the severity of the conflict. The occasional withdrawal of
the veil permits us reverently to observe some symptoms of the turmoil
within--symptoms which it is probably best to speak of in His own words:
"Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Shall I say, 'Father,
save Me from this hour'? But for this cause came I unto this hour.
Father, glorify Thy name." This Evangelist does not describe the agony
in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was needless after this indication of
the same conflict. Here is the same shrinking from a public and shameful
death conquered by His resolution to deliver men from a still darker and
more shameful death. Here is the same foretaste of the bitterness of the
cup as it now actually touches His lips, the same clear reckoning of all
it meant to drain that cup to the dregs, together with the deliberate
assent to all that the will of the Father might require Him to endure.
In response to this act of submission, expressed in the words, "Father,
glorify Thy name," there came a voice from heaven, saying, "I have both
glorified it, and will glorify it again." The meaning of this assurance
was, that as in all the past manifestation of Christ the Father had
become better known to men, so in all that was now impending, however
painful and disturbed, however filled with human passions and to all
appearance the mere result of them, the Father would still be glorified.
Some thought the voice was thunder; others seemed almost to catch
articulate sounds, and said, "An angel spake to Him." But Jesus
explained that it was not "to Him" the voice was specially addressed,
but rather for the sake of those who stood by. And it was indeed of
immense importance that the disciples should understand that the events
which were about to happen were overruled by God that He might be
glorified in Christ. It is easy for us to see that nothing so glorifies
the Father's name as these hours of suffering; but how hard for the
onlookers to believe that this sudden transformation of the Messianic
throne into the criminal's cross was no defeat of God's purpose, but its
final fulfilment. He leads them, therefore, to consider that in His
judgment the whole world is judged, and to perceive in His arrest and
trial and condemnation not merely the misguided and wanton outrage of a
few men in power, but the critical hour of the world's history.
This world has commonly presented itself to thoughtful minds as a
battle-field in which the powers of good and evil wage ceaseless war. In
the words He now utters the Lord declares Himself to be standing at the
very crisis of the battle, and with the deepest assurance He announces
that the opposing power is broken and that victory remains with Him.
"Now is the prince of this world cast out; and I will draw all men unto
Me." The prince of this world, that which actually rules and leads men
in opposition to God, was judged, condemned, and overthrown in the death
of Christ. By His meek acceptance of God's will in the face of all that
could make it difficult and dreadful to accept it, He won for the race
deliverance from the thraldom of sin. At length a human life had been
lived without submission at any point to the prince of this world. As
man and in the name of all men Jesus resisted the last and most violent
assault that could be made upon His faith in God and fellowship with
Him, and so perfected His obedience and overcame the prince of this
world,--overcame him not in one act alone--many had done that--but in a
completed human life, in a life which had been freely exposed to the
complete array of temptations that can be directed against men in this
world.
In order more clearly to apprehend the promise of victory contained in
our Lord's words, we may consider (I.) the object He had in view--to
"draw all men" to Him; and (II.) the condition of His attaining this
object--namely, His death.
I. The object of Christ was to draw all men to Him. The opposition in
which He here sets Himself to the prince of this world shows us that by
"drawing" He means attracting _as a king attracts_, to His name, His
claims, His standard, His person. Our life consists in our pursuance of
one object or another, and our devotion is continually competed for.
When two claimants contest a kingdom, the country is divided between
them, part cleaving to the one and part to the other. The individual
determines to which side he shall cleave,--by his prejudices or by his
justice, as it may be; by his knowledge of the comparative capacity of
the claimants, or by his ignorant predilection. He is taken in by
sounding titles, or he penetrates through all bombast and promises and
douceurs to the real merit or demerit of the man himself. One person
will judge by the personal manners of the respective claimants; another
by their published manifesto, and professed object and style of rule;
another by their known character and probable conduct. And while men
thus range themselves on this side or on that, they really pass judgment
on themselves, betraying as they do what it is that chiefly draws them,
and taking their places on the side of good or evil. It is thus that we
all judge ourselves by following this or that claimant to our faith,
regard, and devotion, to ourself and our life. What we spend ourselves
on, what we aim at and pursue, what we make our object, that judges us
and that rules us and that determines our destiny.
Christ came into the world to be our King, to lead us to worthy
achievements. He came that we might have a worthy object of choice and
of the devotion of our life. He serves the same purpose as a king: He
embodies in His own person, and thereby makes visible and attractive,
the will of God and the cause of righteousness. Persons who could only
with great difficulty apprehend His objects and plans can appreciate His
person and trust Him. Persons to whom there would seem little attraction
in a cause or in an undefined "progress of humanity" can kindle with
enthusiasm towards Him personally, and unconsciously promote His cause
and the cause of humanity. And therefore, while some are attracted by
His person, others by the legitimacy of His claims, others by His
programme of government, others by His benefactions, we must beware of
denying loyalty to any of these. Expressions of love to His person may
be lacking in the man who yet most intelligently enters into Christ's
views for the race, and sacrifices his means and his life to forward
these views. Those who gather to His standard are various in
temperament, are drawn by various attractions, and must be various in
their forms of showing allegiance. And this, which is the strength of
His camp, can only become its weakness when men begin to think there is
no way but their own; and that allegiance which is strenuous in labour
but not fluent in devout expression, or loyalty which shouts and throws
its cap in the air but lacks intelligence, is displeasing to the King.
The King, who has great ends in view, will not inquire what it is
precisely which forms the bond between Him and His subjects so long as
they truly sympathise with Him and second His efforts. The one question
is, Is He their actual leader?
Of the kingdom of Christ, though a full description cannot be given, one
or two of the essential characteristics may be mentioned.
1. It is _a kingdom_, a community of men under one head. When Christ
proposed to attract men to Himself, it was for the good of the race He
did so. It could achieve its destiny only if He led it, only if it
yielded itself to His mind and ways. And those who are attracted to Him,
and see reason to believe that the hope of the world lies in the
universal adoption of His mind and ways, are formed into one solid body
or community. They labour for the same ends, are governed by the same
laws, and whether they know one another or not they have the most real
sympathy and live for one cause. Being drawn to Christ, we enter into
abiding fellowship with all the good who have laboured or are labouring
in the cause of humanity. We take our places in the everlasting kingdom,
in the community of those who shall see and take part in the great
future of mankind and the growing enlargement of its destiny. We are
hereby entered among the living, and are joined to that body of mankind
which is to go on and which holds the future--not to an extinct party
which may have memories, but has no hopes. In sin, in selfishness, in
worldliness, individualism reigns, and all profound or abiding unity is
impossible. Sinners have common interests only for a time, only as a
temporary guise of selfish interests. Every man out of Christ is really
an isolated individual. But passing into Christ's kingdom we are no
longer isolated, abandoned wretches stranded by the stream of time, but
members of the undying commonwealth of men in which our life, our work,
our rights, our future, our association with all good, are assured.
2. It is a _universal_ kingdom. "I will draw _all_ men unto Me." The one
rational hope of forming men into one kingdom shines through these
words. The idea of a universal monarchy has visited the great minds of
our race. They have cherished their various dreams of a time when all
men should live under one law and possibly speak one language, and have
interests so truly in common that war should be impossible. But an
effectual instrument for accomplishing this grand design has ever been
wanting. Christ turns this grandest dream of humanity into a rational
hope. He appeals to what is universally present in human nature. There
is that in Him which every man needs,--a door to the Father; a visible
image of the unseen God; a gracious, wise, and holy Friend. He does not
appeal exclusively to one generation, to educated or to uneducated, to
Orientals or to Europeans alone, but to man, to that which we have in
common with the lowest and the highest, the most primitive and most
highly developed of the species. The attractive influence He exerts upon
men is not conditioned by their historical insight, by their ability to
sift evidence, by this or that which distinguishes man from man, but by
their innate consciousness that some higher power than themselves
exists, by their ability, if not to recognise goodness when they see it,
at least to recognise love when it is spent upon them.
But while our Lord affirms that there is that in Him which all men can
recognise and learn to love and serve, He does not say that His kingdom
will therefore be quickly formed. He does not say that this greatest
work of God will take a shorter time than the common works of God which
prolong one day of our hasty methods into a thousand years of solidly
growing purpose. If it has taken a million ages for the rocks to knit
and form for us a standing-ground and dwelling-place, we must not expect
that this kingdom, which is to be the one enduring result of this
world's history, and which can be built up only of thoroughly convinced
men and of generations slowly weeded of traditional prejudices and
customs, can be completed in a few years. No doubt interests are at
stake in human destiny and losses are made by human waste which had no
place in the physical creation of the world; still, God's methods are,
as we judge, slow, and we must not think that He who "works hitherto" is
doing nothing because the swift processes of jugglery or the hasty
methods of human workmanship find no place in the extension of Christ's
kingdom. This kingdom has a firm hold of the world and must grow. If
there is one thing certain about the future of the world, it is that
righteousness and truth will prevail. The world is bound to come to the
feet of Christ.
3. Christ's kingdom being universal, it is also and necessarily
_inward_. What is common to all men lies deepest in each. Christ was
conscious that He held the key to human nature. He knew what was in man.
With the penetrating insight of absolute purity He had gone about among
men, freely mixing with rich and with poor, with the sick and the
healthy, with the religious and the irreligious. He was as much at home
with the condemned criminal as with the blameless Pharisee; saw through
Pilate and Caiaphas alike; knew all that the keenest dramatist could
tell Him of the meannesses, the depravities, the cruelties, the blind
passions, the obstructed goodness, of men; but knew also that He could
sway all that was in man and exhibit that to men which should cause the
sinner to abhor his sin and seek the face of God. This He would do by a
simple moral process, without violent demonstration or disturbance or
assertion of authority. He would "draw" men. It is by inward conviction,
not by outward compulsion, men are to become His subjects. It is by the
free and rational working of the human mind that Jesus builds up His
kingdom. His hope lies in a fuller and fuller light, in a clearer and
clearer recognition of facts. Attachment to Christ must be the act of
the soul's self; everything, therefore, which strengthens the will or
enlightens the mind or enlarges the man brings him nearer to the kingdom
of Christ, and makes it more likely he will yield to His drawing.
And because Christ's rule is inward it is therefore of universal
application. The inmost choice of the man being governed by Christ, and
his character being thus touched at its inmost spring, all his conduct
will be governed by Christ and be a carrying out of the will of Christ.
It is not the frame of society Christ seeks to alter, but the spirit of
it. It is not the occupations and institutions of human life which the
subject of Christ finds to be incompatible with Christ's rule, so much
as the aim and principles on which they are conducted. The kingdom of
Christ claims all human life as its own, and the spirit of Christ finds
nothing that is essentially human alien from it. If the statesman is a
Christian, it will be seen in his policy; if the poet is a Christian,
his song will betray it; if a thinker be a Christian, his readers soon
find it out. Christianity does not mean religious services, churches,
creeds, Bibles, books, equipment of any kind; it means the Spirit of
Christ. It is the most portable and flexible of all religions, and
therefore the most pervasive and dominant in the life of its adherent.
It needs but the Spirit of God and the spirit of man, and Christ
mediating between them.
II. Such being Christ's object, what is the condition of His attaining
it? "I, _if I be lifted up_, will draw all men unto Me." The elevation
requisite for becoming a visible object to men of all generations was
the elevation of the Cross. His death would accomplish what His life
could not accomplish. The words betray a distinct consciousness that
there was in His death a more potent spell, a more certain and real
influence for good among men than in His teaching or in His miracles or
in His purity of life.
What is it, then, in the death of Christ which so far surpasses His life
in its power of attraction? The life was equally unselfish and devoted;
it was more prolonged; it was more directly useful,--why, then, would it
have been comparatively ineffective without the death? It may, in the
first place, be answered, Because His death presents in a dramatic and
compact form that very devotedness which is diffused through every part
of His life. Between the life and the death there is the same difference
as between sheet lightning and forked lightning, between the diffused
heat of the sun and the same heat focussed upon a point through a lens.
It discloses what was actually but latently there. The life and the
death of Christ are one and mutually explain each other. From the life
we learn that no motive can have prompted Christ to die but the one
motive which ruled Him always--the desire to do all God willed in men's
behalf. We cannot interpret the death as anything else than a consistent
part of a deliberate work undertaken for men's good. It was not an
accident; it was not an external necessity: it was, as the whole life
was, a willing acceptance of the uttermost that was required to set men
on a higher level and unite them to God. But as the life throws this
light upon the death of Christ, how that light is gathered up and thrown
abroad in world-wide reflection from the death of Christ! For here His
self-sacrifice shines completed and perfect; here it is exhibited in
that tragic and supreme form which in all cases arrests attention and
commands respect. Even when a man of wasted life sacrifices himself at
last, and in one heroic act saves another by his death, his past life is
forgotten or seems to be redeemed by his death, and at all events we own
the beauty and the pathos of the deed. A martyr to the faith may have
been but a poor creature, narrow, harsh and overbearing, vain and
vulgar in spirit; but all the past is blotted out, and our attention is
arrested on the blazing pile or the bloody scaffold. So the death of
Christ, though but a part of the self-sacrificing life, yet stands by
itself as the culmination and seal of that life; it catches the eye and
strikes the mind, and conveys at one view the main impression made by
the whole life and character of Him who gave Himself upon the cross.
But Christ is no mere hero or teacher sealing his truth with his blood;
nor is it enough to say that His death renders, in a conspicuous form,
the perfect self-sacrifice with which He devoted Himself to our good. It
is conceivable that in a long-past age some other man should have lived
and died for his fellows, and yet we at once recognise that, though the
history of such a person came into our hands, we should not be so
affected and drawn by it as to choose him as our king and rest upon him
the hope of uniting us to one another and to God. Wherein, then, lies
the difference? The difference lies in this--that Christ was the
representative of God. This He Himself uniformly claimed to be. He knew
He was unique, different from all others; but He advanced no claim to
esteem that did not pass to the Father who sent Him. Always he explained
His powers as being the proper equipment of God's representative, "The
words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself." His whole life was
the message of God to man, the Word made flesh. His death was but the
last syllable of this great utterance--the utterance of God's love for
man, the final evidence that nothing is grudged us by God. Greater love
hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. His
death draws us because there is in it more than human heroism and
self-sacrifice. It draws us because in it the very heart of God is laid
bare to us. It softens, it breaks us down, by the irresistible
tenderness it discloses in the mighty and ever-blessed God. Every man
feels it has a message for him, because in it the God and Father of us
all speaks to us.
It is this which is special to the death of Christ, and which separates
it from all other deaths and heroic sacrifices. It has a universal
bearing--a bearing upon every man, because it is a Divine act, the act
of that One who is the God and Father of all men. In the same century as
our Lord many men died in a manner which strongly excites our
admiration. Nothing could well be more noble, nothing more pathetic,
than the fearless and loving spirit in which Roman after Roman met his
death. But beyond respectful admiration these heroic deeds win from us
no further sentiment. They are the deeds of men who have no connection
with us. The well-worn words, "What's Hecuba _to me_ or I to Hecuba?"
rise to our lips when we try to fancy any deep connection. But the death
of Christ concerns all men without exception, because it is the greatest
declarative act of the God of all men. It is the manifesto all men are
concerned to read. It is the act of One with whom all men are already
connected in the closest way. And the result of our contemplation of it
is, not that we admire, but that we are drawn, are attracted, into new
relations with Him whom that death reveals. This death moves and draws
us as no other can, because here we get to the very heart of that which
most deeply concerns us. Here we learn what our God is and where we
stand eternally. He who is nearest us of all, and in whom our life is
bound up, reveals Himself; and seeing Him here full of ungrudging and
most reliable love, of tenderest and utterly self-sacrificing
devotedness to us, we cannot but give way to this central attraction,
and with all other willing creatures be drawn into fullest intimacy and
firmest relations to the God of all.
The death of Christ, then, draws men chiefly because God here shows men
His sympathy, His love, His trustworthiness. What the sun is in the
solar system, Christ's death is in the moral world. The sun by its
physical attraction binds the several planets together and holds them
within range of its light and heat. God, the central intelligence and
original moral Being, draws to Himself and holds within reach of His
life-giving radiance all who are susceptible of moral influences; and He
does so through the death of Christ. This is His supreme revelation.
Here, if we may say so with reverence, God is seen at His best--not that
at any time or in any action He is different, but here He is _seen_ to
be the God of love He ever is. Nothing is better than self-sacrifice:
that is the highest point a moral nature can touch. And God, by the
sacrifice which is rendered visible on the cross, gives to the moral
world a real, actual, immovable centre, round which moral natures will
more and more gather, and which will hold them together in self-effacing
unity.
To complete the idea of the attractiveness of the Cross, it must further
be kept in view that this particular form of the manifestation of the
Divine love was adapted to the needs of those to whom it was made. To
sinners the love of God manifested itself in providing a sacrifice for
sin. The death on the cross was not an irrelevant display, but was an
act required for the removal of the most insuperable obstacles that lay
in man's path. The sinner, believing that in the death of Christ his
sins are atoned for, conceives hope in God and claims the Divine
compassion in his own behalf. To the penitent the Cross is attractive as
an open door to the prisoner, or the harbour-heads to the storm-tossed
ship.
Let us not suppose, then, that we are not welcome to Christ. He desires
to draw us to Himself and to form a connection with us. He understands
our hesitations, our doubts of our own capacity for any steady and
enthusiastic loyalty; but He knows also the power of truth and love, the
power of His own person and of His own death to draw and fix the
hesitating and wavering soul. And we shall find that as we strive to
serve Christ in our daily life it is still His death that holds and
draws us. It is His death which gives us compunction in our times of
frivolity, or selfishness, or carnality, or rebellion, or unbelief. It
is there Christ appears in His own most touching attitude and with His
own most irresistible appeal. We cannot further wound One already so
wounded in His desire to win us from evil. To strike One already thus
nailed to the tree in helplessness and anguish, is more than the hardest
heart can do. Our sin, our infidelity, our unmoved contemplation of His
love, our blind indifference to His purpose--these things wound Him more
than the spear and the scourge. To rid us of these things was His
purpose in dying, and to see that His work is in vain and His sufferings
unregarded and unfruitful is the deepest injury of all. It is not to the
mere sentiment of pity He appeals: rather He says, "Weep not for Me;
weep for yourselves." It is to our power to recognise perfect goodness
and to appreciate perfect love. He appeals to our power to see below the
surface of things, and through the outer shell of this world's life to
the Spirit of good that is at the root of all and that manifests itself
in Him. Here is the true stay of the human soul: "Come unto Me, all ye
that labour and are heavy laden"; "I am come a light into the world:
walk in the light."