I was going to use an inappropriate word, and say, the _superb_ ease
with which He grappled with, and overcame, all types of disease is a
revelation on a lower level of the inexhaustible and all-sufficient
fullness of His healing power. He can cope with all sin-the world's
sin, and the individual's. And, as I believe, He alone can do it.
Just look at the problem that lies before any one who attempts to
stanch these wounds of humanity. What is needed in order to deliver
men from the sickness of sin? Well! that evil thing, like the fabled
dog that sits at the gate of the infernal regions, is three-headed.
And you have to do something with each of these heads if you are to
deliver men from that power.
There is first the awful power that evil once done has over us of
repeating itself on and on. There is nothing more dreadful to a
reflective mind than the damning influence of habit. The man that
has done some wrong thing once is a _rara avis_ indeed. If
once, then twice; if twice, then onward and onward through all the
numbers. And the intervals between will grow less, and what were
isolated points will coalesce into a line; and impulses wax as
motives wane, and the less delight a man has in his habitual form of
evil the more is its dominion over him, and he does it at last not
because the doing of it is any delight, but because the _not_
doing of it is a misery. If you are to get rid of sin, and to eject
the disease from a man, you have to deal with that awful degradation
of character, and the tremendous chains of custom. That is one of
the heads of the monster.
But, as I said, sin has reference to God, and there is another of
the heads, for with sin comes guilt. The relation to God is
perverted, and the man that has transgressed stands before Him as
guilty, with all the dolefulness that that solemn word means; and
that is another of the heads.
The third is this--the consequences that follow in the nature of
penalty. 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' So long
as there is a universal rule by God, in which all things are
concatenated by cause and effect, it is impossible but that 'Evil
shall slay the wicked.' And that is the third head. These three,
habit, guilt, and penalty, have all to be dealt with if you are
going to make a thorough job of the surgery.
And here, brethren, I want not to argue but to preach. Jesus Christ
died on the Cross for you, and your sin was in His heart and mind
when He died, and His atoning sacrifice cancels the guilt, and
suspends all that is dreadful in the penalty of the sin. Nothing
else--nothing else will do that. Who can deal with guilt but the
offended Ruler and Judge? Who can trammel up consequences but the
Lord of the Universe? The blood of Jesus Christ is the sole and
sufficient oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole
world.
That disposes of two of the monster's heads. What about the third?
Who will take the venom out of my nature? What will express the
black drop from my heart? How shall the Ethiopian change his skin or
the leopard his spots? How can the man that has become habituated to
evil 'learn to do well'? Superficially there may be much
reformation. God forbid that I should forget that, or seem to
minimise it. But for the thorough ejection from your nature of the
corruption that you have yourselves brought into it, I believe--and
that is why I am here, for I should have nothing to say if I did not
believe it--I believe that there is only one remedy, and that is
that into the sinful heart there should come, rejoicing and
flashing, and bearing on its broad bosom before it all the rubbish
and filth of that dunghill, the great stream of the new life that is
given by Jesus Christ. He was crucified for our offences, and He
lives to bestow upon us the fullness of His own holiness. So the
monster's heads are smitten off. Our disease and the tendency to it,
and the weakness consequent upon it, are all cast out from us, and
He reveals Himself as 'the Lord who healeth thee.'
Now, dear brethren, you may say 'That is all very fine talking.'
Yes! but it is something a great deal more than fine talking. For
nineteen centuries have established the fact that it is so; and with
all their imperfections there have been millions, and there are
millions to-day, who are ready to say, 'Behold! it is not a
delusion; it is not rhetoric, _I_ have trusted in Him and He
has made _me_ whole.'
Now, if these things that I have been saying do fairly represent the
gravity of the problem which has to be dealt with in order to heal
the sicknesses of the world, then there is no need to dwell upon the
thought of how absolutely confined to Jesus Christ is the power of
thus dealing. God forbid that I should not give full weight to all
other methods for partial reformation and bettering of humanity. I
would wish them all God-speed. But, brethren, there is nothing else
that will deal either with my sin in its relation to God, or in its
relation to my character, or in its relation to my future, except
the message of the Gospel. There are plenty of other things, very
helpful and good in their places, but I do want to say, in one word,
that there is nothing else that goes deep enough.
Education? Yes! it will do a great deal, but it will do nothing in
regard to sin. It will alter the type of the disease, because the
cultured man's transgressions will be very different from those of
the illiterate boor. But wise or foolish, professor, student,
thinker, or savage with narrow forehead and all but dead brain, are
alike in this, that they are sinners in God's sight. I would that I
could get through the fence that some of you have reared round you,
on the ground of your superior enlightenment and education and
refinement, and make you feel that there is something deeper than
all that, and that you may be a very clever, and a very well
educated, a very highly cultured, an extremely thoughtful and
philosophical sinner, but you are a sinner all the same.
And again, we hear a great deal at present, and I do not desire that
we should hear less, about social and economic and political
changes, which some eager enthusiasts suppose will bring the
millennium. Well, if the land were nationalised, and all 'the means
of production and distribution' were nationalised, and everybody got
his share, and we were all brought to the communistic condition,
what then? That would not make men better, in the deepest sense of
the word. The fact is, these people are beginning at the wrong end.
You cannot better humanity merely by altering its environment for
the better. Christianity reverses the process. It begins with the
inmost man, and it works outwards to the circumference, and that is
the thorough way. Why! suppose you took a company of people out of
the slums, for instance, and put them into a model lodging-house,
how long will it continue a model? They will take their dirty habits
with them, and pull down the woodwork for firing, and in a very
short time make the place where they are as like as possible to the
hovel whence they came. You must change the men, and then you can
change their circumstances, or rather they will change them for
themselves. Now, all this is not to be taken as casting cold water
on any such efforts to improve matters, but only as a protest
against its being supposed that these _alone_ are sufficient to
rectify the ills and cure the sorrows of humanity. 'Ye have healed
the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly.' The patient is
dying of cancer, and you are treating him for a skin disease. It is
Jesus Christ alone who can cure the sins, and therein the sorrows,
of humanity.