The Cross, the Great Crisis of the World’s History

The Son of God has died by the hands of men. Every claim which man had upon God has thus been forfeited. Promises there were, and covenants, but Christ was to be the Fulfiller of them all. He laid aside His glory and came down to earth. At His own door He stood and knocked, but it was shut in His face.* Turning thence He wandered into the world — the world that He Himself had made — but wandered there an outcast. “His own received Him not;” “the world knew Him not.” In return for pity He earned but scorn and hate. Sowing kindness with a lavish hand,

* John i. 11. The French idiom here is nearer to the Greek than the English: “Il est venu chez soi, et les siens ne l’ont point recu.”’

Christianized tationalism

He reaped but cruelty and outrage. Come to give life to men, He was seized by men and “crucified and slain.”

With the Rationalist that death was no more than the martydom of the greatest of religious teachers. And with half Christendom it was but a step in God’s progressive revelation to mankind, and in man’s upward progress toward the goal of his high destiny. But with God it is the most stupendous of all the events of time, an event of which the echoes reach back to a past eternity,* and the results shall endure throughout an eternity to come. In truth, it was the supreme crisis of this world’s history.