"_A Savour of Death unto Death._"
A celebrated Roman Emperor who had in the very height of his power
embarked on a campaign for the extermination, with all manner of
cruelties, of the followers of Jesus Christ, spoke one day to a Christian,
asking him in tones of lofty contempt and derision:--
"What, then, is the Galilean doing now?"
"_The Galilean_," replied the Christian, "_is making a coffin_!"
In a few years the great Emperor and the vast power he represented were
both in that coffin!
Since his day, how many other persecutors have also journeyed surely to
it! How many infidels--nay, how many systems of infidelity, have passed on
to dust and oblivion in that same casket! What multitudes of doubters--of
ungodly, unclean, unregenerate--have been laid within its ever-widening
bands! What vast unions of darkness, hatred, and cruelty, under the
leadership of the great and the mighty, have been broken to pieces beside
that coffin! How much that seemed for a time proud and rich and great in
this poor world's esteem, has at last passed into it, and disappeared for
ever! Yes, the martyr of long ago, on the blood-besmeared stones of
persecuting Rome, was right, the Galilean Saviour and King not only made a
Cross, but He made, and He goes on making, a coffin!
Will _you_ not have His Cross? Is there no appeal to you to-day from
that hill side, without the city wall? Does it not speak to _you_ of
the power, the sweetness and nobleness of a life of service, of sacrifice
for others, of toil for His world. Has it no message for _you_ of
victory over sin and death, of life from the dead--life, abundant life, in
the Blood of the Son of Man! Believe me, unless you accept His Cross, He
will prepare for you a coffin. "The _wages_ of sin is death." It
matters not how noble your aspirations, how lofty your ideals of life and
conduct, how faithful your labour to raise the standard of your own
life--unless you accept the Cross, all must go into the grave. Your
highest aims, together with your lowest, your most cherished conceptions,
your most deeply-loved ambitions, all must be entombed. "Whosoever shall
fall on this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall it
will grind him to powder."
If His death-sacrifice be not a savour of life unto life it must be a
savour of death unto death. This is the single alternative. Jesus Christ
in life and death is working in you, in us all, toward one of these
ends--either by love and tears and the overflowing fountain of His passion
to gather us into the union of eternal life with Him and with the Father;
or to entomb us--all that we have and all that we are--in the death and
oblivion of the grave He has prepared.