rushed over the poet; he saw those bound who should conquer; he saw
that men were slaves who should be kings. Then, with a rush, an
immeasurable longing shivers through him like a trumpet call. Oh, to
save them! To perish for their saving! To die for their life, to be
offered for them all! In an abandon of grief and sympathy, he began
to speak to them in words of comfort and hope. At first these exiles,
dumb with pain and grief, listened, but listened with no light
quivering in the eye, and no hope flitting like sunshine across the
face. Their yesterdays held bondage, blows and degradation; their
tomorrow held only the desert and the return to a ruined land. Then
the word of the Lord came upon the poet. What if the night winds did
go mourning through the deserted streets of their capital! What if
their language had decayed and their institutions had perished? What
if the farmer's field was only a waste of thorns and thickets, and the
towns become heaps and ruins! What if the king of Babylon and his
army has trampled them under foot, as slaves trample the shellfish,
crushing out the purple dye that lends rich color to a royal robe?
"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people." Is the way long and through a
desert? "Every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill shall
be made low." Has slavery worn man's strength to nothingness until he
is as weak as the broken reed and the withered grass? The spirit of
the Lord will revive the grass, trampled down by the hoofs of war
horses. Soon the bruised root shall redden into the rose and the
fluted stem climb into the tree. And think you if God's winds can
transform a spray and twig into a trunk fit for foundation of house or
mast of ship, that eternal arms can not equip with strength the hand
of patriot?
Is the Shepherd and Leader of His little flock unequal to their
guidance across the desert? "Behold the Lord will come with a strong
arm; he shall feed his flock like a shepherd and he shall gather the
lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom." What! Man's hand
unequal to the task of rebuilding Jerusalem? Hath not God pledged His
strength to the worker, that God whose arm strikes out worlds as the
smith strikes out sparks upon the anvil? Is not man's helper that God
who dippeth up the seas in the hollow of His hand? Who weighs the
mountains with scales and the hills in the balance? What! Thine
enemies too strong for thee? Why, God looketh upon all the nations and
enemies of the earth as but a drop in the bucket. He sendeth forth His
breath, and the tribes disappear as dust is blown from the balance.
Then the trumpet call shivered through these exiles. "Hast thou not
known? Have the sons of the fathers never heard of the everlasting
God, the Lord, Creator of the ends of the earth? Fainteth not, neither
is weary!" Heavy is the task, but the Eternal giveth power and
strength. Even tho young patriots and heroes faint and fall, they that
wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. While fulfilling their
task of rebuilding they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they
shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Oh, what a
word is this! What page in literature is comparable to it for comfort!
Wonderful the strength of the warrior! Mighty the influence of the
statesman! All powerful seems the inventor, but greater still the poet
who dwells above the clang and dust of time, with the world's secret
trembling on his lips.
He needs no converse nor companionship,
In cold starlight, whence thou can not come,
The undelivered tidings in his breast,
Will not let him rest.
He who looks down upon the immemorable throng,
And binds the ages with a song.
And through the accents of our time,
There throbs the message of eternity.
And so the unwearied God comforted the fainting strength of man.
Primarily, this glorious outburst was addrest to the exiles as heads
of families. The father's strength was broken and his children had
been crusht and ground to earth. The ancient patrimony was gone; he
had gathered his little ones in from the huts where slaves dwelt. He
was leading his little band of pilgrims into a desert. But the prophet
spoke to the exiles as to men who believed that the family was the
great national institution. With us, the family is important, but with
these Hebrew exiles the family was everything. For them the home was
the spring from whence the mighty river rolled forth. The family was
the headwaters of national, industrial, social and religious life.
Every father was revered as the architect of the family fortune. The
first ambition of every young Hebrew was to found a family. Just as
abroad, a patrician gentleman builds a baronial mansion, fills it with
art treasures, hangs the shields and portraits of his ancestors upon
the walls, hoping to hand the mansion forward to generations yet
unborn, so every worthy Hebrew longed to found a noble family. How
keen the anguish, therefore, of this exile in the desert! What a scene
is that of the exiles upon the edge of the desert. Darkness is upon
the land and the fire burns low into coals. Worn and exhausted,
children are sleeping beside the mother. Here is an old man, lying
apart, broken and bitter in spirit--one son stands forth a dim
figure--looking down upon his aged parents, upon the wife of his
bosom and upon his little children. Standing under the stars, he
meditates his plans. How shall he care for these, when he returns to
his ruined estate? In the event of death, what arm shall lift a shield
above these little ones? What if sickness or death pounce upon a home
as an eagle upon a dove, as wolves upon lambs, or as brigands descend
from the mountains upon sleeping herdsmen!
Every founder of a family knows the agony of such an hour! We are in a
world where men are never more than a few weeks from, possible poverty
and want; little wonder then that all men seek to provide for the
future of the home and the children. But to the exile standing in the
darkness, with love that broods above his babes, there comes this
word of comfort: God's solicitude for you and yours will not let Him
slumber or sleep! God will lift up a highway for the feet of the
little band of pilgrims. The eternal God shall be thy guide in the
march through the desert. His pillar of cloud by day and of fire by
night shall stand in the sky; He shall lead the flock like a shepherd;
He shall gather the little ones in His arms, and carry the children
in His bosom. And if the father fall on the march, the wings of the
Eternal shall brood the babes that are left. His right arm shall be a
sword and His left arm a shield. The eternal God fainteth not, neither
is weary. Having time to care for the stars, and to lead them forth by
name, He hath time and thought also for His children. What a word is
this for the home! What comfort for all whose hearts turn toward their
children! What a pledge to fathers for generations yet unborn! This
truth arms every parent for any emergency. For God is round about
every home as the mountains are round about Jerusalem, for bounty and
protection.
But the sage was also thinking of men whose hopes were broken, and
whose lives were baffled and beaten. These exiles, crossing the
desert, might have claimed for themselves the poet's phrase, "Lo,
henceforth I am a prisoner of hope." Like Dante, they might have
cried, "For years my pillow by night has been wet with tears, and all
day long have I held heartbreak at bay." For these whose glorious
youth had been exhausted by bondage, life had run to its very dregs.
Gone the days of glorious strength! Gone all the opportunities that
belong to the era when the heart is young, the limitations of life had
become severe! Environment often is a cage against whose iron bars the
soul beats bloody wings in vain!
How many men are held back by one weak nerve, or organ! How many are
shut in, and limited, and just fall short of supreme success because
of an hereditary weakness, handed on by the fathers! How many made one
mistake in youth in choosing the occupation and discovered the error
when it was too late! How many erred in judgment in their youth,
through one critical blunder, that has been irretrievable, and whose
burden is henceforth lasht to the back! In such an hour of depression,
Isaiah assembles the exiles, and exclaims, "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my
people. Tho your young men faint and be weary, tho the strong utterly
fail, yet God is the unwearied one; with his help thou shalt take thy
burden, and mount up with wings as eagles; with his unwearied strength
thou shalt run with thy load and not be weary, and walk and not
faint." For this is the experience of persecution and the reward
of sorrow, bravely borne that the fainting strength of man is
supplemented by the sure help of the unwearied God.
Therefore, in retrospect, exiles, prisoners, martyrs, who have
believed in God seem fortunate. The endungeoned heroes often seem the
children of careful good fortune and happiness. The saints, walking
through the fire, stand forth as those who are dear unto God. How the
point of view changes events. Kitto was deaf, and in his youth his
deafness broke his heart, but because his ears were closed to the
din of life, he became the great scholar of his time, and swept the
treasures of the world into a single volume, an armory of intellectual
weapons. Fawcett was blind, but through that blindness became a great
analytic student, a master of organization, and served all England in
her commerce. John Bright was broken-hearted, standing above the bier,
but Richard Cobden called him from his sorrow to become a voice for
the poor, to plead the cause of the opprest, and bring about the Corn
Laws for the hungry workers in the factories and shops. Comfort ye,
comfort ye, my people.
Let the exile say unto himself: "Your warfare is accomplished; your
iniquity is pardoned; the Lord's hand will give unto thee double for
all thy sins that are forgiven." The great faiths and convictions of
the prophets and law-givers, your language and your laws and your
liberties, have not been destroyed by captivity; rather slavery
has saved them. At last you know their value; in contrast with the
idolatry of the Euphrates, the jargon of tongues, the inequality of
rights, the organization of justice and oppression, how wonderful the
equity of the laws of Moses! How beautiful the faith of the fathers!
How surely founded the laws of God. Henceforth idolatry, injustice and
sin became as monstrous in their ugliness as they were wicked in their
essence. Everything else might go, but not the faith of the fathers.
Persecution was like fire on the vase; it burned the colors in. Little
wonder that the tradition tells us that for the next hundred years,
at stated periods, all the people in the land came together, while a
reader repeated this chapter on the unwearied God and the fainting
strength of man that had recovered unto hope, men whose hopes had been
baffled and beaten.
The thought of an unwearied God is also the true antidote to
despondency. The ground of optimism is in God. When that great thinker
described certain people as without God and without hope, there was
sure logic in his phrase, for the Godless man is always the hopeless
man. Between no God anywhere and the one God who is everywhere, there
is no middle ground. Either we are children, buffeted about by fate
and circumstances, with events tossing souls about in an eternal game
of battledore and shuttlecock, or else the world is our Father's
house, and God standeth within the shadow, keeping watch above His
own. For the man who believes in God, who allies himself to nature,
who makes the universe his partner, there is no defeat, and no death,
and no interruption of his prosperity. Concede that there is a God,
and it follows as a logical necessity that He will not permit any
enemy to ruin your life and His plans. For a man who holds this faith
it follows that there can be no defeat, or failure. Indeed, the
essential difference between men is the difference in their relation
toward God. Here are the biographies of two great men. Both are men
of genius, both are marvelously equipped, but their end was, oh, how
different. One is Martin Luther, who stood forth alone, affirming his
religious freedom, in the face of enemies and devils thick as the
tiles on the roofs of the houses. The few friends Luther had shut him
up in a fortress to save his life, but Luther mightily believed in
God. With the full consent of his marvelous gifts, he surrendered his
life to the will of God. Knowing that his days were as brief as
the withering grass, he allied himself with the Eternal. In his
discouragement he read these words, "The Everlasting God fainteth not,
neither is weary." In that hour Martin Luther shouted for joy. The
beetling walls of the fortress were as tho they were not. Victorious
he went forth, in thought, ranging throughout all Germany. And going
out, he went up and down the land telling the people that God would
protect him, and soon Germany was free.
Goethe tells us that Luther was the architect of modern German
language and literature, and stamped himself into the whole national
life. The Germany of the Kaiser is simply Martin Luther written large
in fifty millions of men. But what made Luther? There was some hidden
energy and spirit within him! What was this spirit in him? The spirit
of beauty turned a lump of mud into that Grecian face about which
Keats wrote his poem. The spirit of truth changes a little ink into
a beautiful song. The spirit of strength and beauty in an architect
changes a pile of bricks into a house or cathedral or gallery. And the
thought of our unwearied God changed the collier's son into the
great German emancipator. But over against this man, who never knew
despondency, after his vision hour, stands another German. He,
too, was a philosopher, clothed with ample power, and blest with
opportunity. But he did evil in his life, and then the heart lost
its faith, and hope utterly perished. The more he loved pleasure and
pursued self, the more cynical and bitter he became. Pessimism set a
cold, hard stamp upon his face, and marred his beauty. Cynicism lies
like a black mark across his pages. At last, in his bitterness, the
philosopher tells us the whole universe is a mirage, and that yonder
summer-making sun is a bubble that repeats its iridescent tints in the
colors of the rainbow. Despair ate out his heart. He became the most
miserable of men, and knew no freedom from sorrow and pain. And lo,
now the man's philosophy has perished like a bubble, his influence
has utterly disappeared, for his books are unread, while only an
occasional scholar chances upon his name, tho the great summer-making
sun still shines on and Luther's eternal God fainteth not, neither is
weary.
Are you weak, oh, patriot? Remember God is strong. Do your days of
service seem short, until your life is scarcely longer than the flower
that blooms to-day and is gone tomorrow? God is eternal, and He will
take care of your work. Are you sick with hope long deferred? Hope
thou in God; He shall yet send succor. Have troubles driven happiness
from thee, as the hawk drives the young lark or nightingale from its
nest? Return unto thy rest, troubled heart, for the Lord will deal
bountifully with thee. Are you anxious for your children? God will
bring the child back from the far country. For the child hath wandered
far, the golden thread spun in a mother's heart is an unbroken thread
that will draw him home! For things that distress you to-day, you
shall thank God to-morrow. Nothing shall break the golden chain that
binds you to God's throne. Are you hopeless and despondent because of
your fainting strength? Remember that the antidote for despondency is
the thought of the unwearied God who is doing the best He can for you,
and whose ceaseless care neither slumbers nor sleeps.
Little wonder therefore that God became all and in all to this feeble
band of captives, journeying across the desert back to their ruined
life and land. God had taken away earthly things from them, that He
might be their all and in all. When the earth is made poor for us,
sometimes the heavens become rich. God closed the eyes of Milton to
the beauty in land and sea and sky, that he might see the companies of
angels marching and countermarching on the hills of God. He closed the
ears of Beethoven, that he might hear the music of St. Cecilia falling
over heaven's battlements. He gave Isaiah a slave's hut, that he might
ponder the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. How is
it that this prophet and poet has become companion of the great ones
of the earth? At the time Isaiah rebelled against his bondage, but
when it was all over, and the fitful fever had passed, and the fleshly
fetters had fallen, he smiled at the things that once alarmed him, as
he recalled his fainting strength and the unwearied God.
Gone--that ancient capital. Babylon is a heap. Jerusalem a ruin! But
this epic of the unwearied Guide still lives! Isaiah, can never die!
Can a chapter die that has cheered the exile in his loneliness, that
has comforted the soldier upon his bivouac, that has braced the martyr
for his execution, that has given songs at midnight to the prisoners
in the dungeon? Out of suffering and captivity came this song of rest
and hope. At last the poet praised the eternal God for his bonds and
his imprisonment. Oh, it is darkness that makes the morning light so
welcome to the weary watcher. It is hunger that makes bread sweet.
It is pain and sickness that gives value to the physician and his
medicine. It is business trouble that makes you honor your lawyer and
counselor, and it is the sense of need that makes God near.
Are there any merchants here who are despondent? Remember the eternal
God and make your appeal to the future. Are there any parents whose
children have wandered far? When they are old, the children will
return to the path of faith and obedience. Are there any in whom the
immortal hope burns low? The smoking flax He will not quench, but will
fan the flame into victory. Look up to-day; be comforted once more.
Work henceforth in hope. Live like a prince. Scatter sunshine. Let
your atmosphere be happiness. If troubles come, let them be the dark
background that shall throw your hope and faith into bolder relief.
God hath set His heart upon you to deliver you. Tho your hand faint,
and the tool fall, the eternal God fainteth not, neither is weary. He
will bring thy judgment unto victory, immortalize thy good deeds, and
crown thy career with everlasting renown.
JEFFERSON
THE RECONCILIATION
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Charles Edward Jefferson was born at Cambridge, Ohio, in 1860. He came
to public attention by the effectiveness of his preaching during a
most successful pastorate in Chelsea, Mass., from which he was called
to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, in 1897. During his New York
pastorate the Tabernacle at 34th Street has been sold and a unique
structure, including an apartment tower ten stories high, has been
built farther up-town. Dr. Jefferson has published several successful
books. He has a mellow, sympathetic voice, of considerable range and
flexibility, and he speaks in an easy, conversational style.
JEFFERSON
Born in 1860
THE RECONCILIATION[1]
[Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission from "Doctrine and Deed,"
Copyright, 1901, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.]
_Christ died for our sins_.--1 Cor. xv., 3.
I want to think with you this morning about the doctrine of the
Atonement. Having used that word atonement once, I now wish to drop
it. It is not a New Testament word, and is apt to lead one into
confusion. You will not find it in your New Testament at all,
providing you use the Revised Version. It is found in the King James
Version only once, and that is in the fifth chapter of Paul's letter
to the Romans; but a few years ago, when the revisers went to work,
they rubbed out the word and would allow it no place whatever in
the entire New Testament. They substituted for it a better
word--reconciliation--and that is the word that will probably be used
in the future theology of the Church. It is my purpose, then, this
morning, to think with you about the doctrine of the reconciliation,
or, to put it in a way that will be intelligible to all the boys and
girls, I want to think with you about the "making up" between God and
man.
Christianity is distinctly a religion of redemption. Its fundamental
purpose is to recover men from the guilt and power of sin. All of
its history and its teachings must be studied in the light of that
dominating purpose. We are told sometimes that Jesus was a great
teacher, and so He was, but the apostles never gloried in that fact.
We are constantly reminded that He was a great reformer, and so He
was, but Peter and John and Paul seemed to be altogether unconscious
of that fact. It is asserted that He was a great philanthropist, a man
intensely interested in the bodies and the homes of men, and so of
course He was, but the New Testament does not seem to care for that.
It has often been declared that He was a great martyr, a man who laid
down His life in devotion to the truth, and so He was and so He did,
but the Bible never looks at Him from that standpoint or regards
Him in that light. It refuses to enroll Him among the teachers or
reformers or philanthropists or the martyrs of our race. According
to the apostolic writers, Jesus is the world's Redeemer, He was
manifested to take away sin. He is the Lamb of God that taketh away
the sin of the world. The vast and awful fact that broke the apostles'
hearts and sent them out into the world to baptize the nations into
His name, was the fact which Paul was all the time asserting, "He died
for our sins."