The Precious Blood of Christ
1 Peter i. 19
ALMIGHTY GOD, we have come up out of the world into the church, a holy and chosen place, to make mention of thy goodness, to recall thy mercies, to meditate upon thy word and to have our spiritual strength renewed. We have also come up to the Cross that we may have our sins taken away, not by ministry of man, nor by ceremonial of church, but by the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. We bless thee that the Cross is more than our guilt —
* that the blood of Christ abounds where our sin abounded once, and that
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the King, is able to destroy our sin and to cause it to be remembered no more for ever. We love the Saviour — we love him most when our torment is intolerable: it is then we see what he really did as the atonement and the propitiation for the sins of the world. We love his words — we love the tones of his voice, we love the smiling of his gentle face: but oh what words can tell the depth and passion of our love when we see our sin as it really is, and we feel our helplessness, and then behold the outstretched Priest, the dying Sacrifice. It is then our hope returns, and then doth our heart glow with fire from Heaven.
We rejoice that we care for thy word and for thy worship: this feeling elevates our whole nature, brings up our entire strength to its finest energy, and enables us with triumph, with holy scorn, to stand above the temptations and the lures of this world and all that is lowest in our own life, and to seize the enjoyments and securities of heaven. Thy- word clears the future — it levels the hill that keeps away from our vision the delights and the beauties of the Coming Land. It levels up the deep places and overbridges the yawning chasms and gulfs, that we may reach towards the heavenly and eternal. Lord, evermore show us the meaning of thy word — may it be to us a word of ever-enlarging significance. We can never fully realise all its purpose — its sacredness will be an eternal mystery; still may we be drawn forward by that great, kind, loving word to some deeper knowledge and some higher excellence.
We are tired of ourselves — the world is a weariness to us — its prizes are deceits, its delights are mockeries: it draws us forward by many a fascination only that it may sting us with many a disappointment. Behold the earth under our feet is hollow as a tomb that is waiting to enclose the living. There is nothing true but God: there is nothing lasting but thy light — there is nothing sufficient but thy grace. Thou hast placed us in this world of beginnings and shadows and alphabets — forbid that we should regard it as the only world; help us to look upon it as a porch to the universe, the opening of the infinite spaces and liberties of thy kingdom. And thus seizing the present, we shall hold it with a light hand, and reserve our veneration and our loyalty for things eternal and complete.
We desire as heads of houses to bless thee: bread has been upon our table and our cup has overrun. Thou hast defended our habitations, thou hast been merciful to every member of the household; the master and the servant bless thee, the old man and his grandchild thank the same God. Receive therefore our homage as heads of houses, members of families, fathers, mothers, children, servants — may we unite in singing high psalms, may our hearts find an outgoing in the same hallowed supplication. Wherein we have suffered, help us to see the Lord’s hand in it: suffer us not to look upon our disappointments as complete in themselves: may we look upon life as a whole, see the relation of its various parts, feel that no one member of it is complete in itself — may we measure all things by the eternal, may we desire the decisions and judgments of God, and not the conclusions of our own false understanding. Help us in all things to resign our life, our will, our work into thy hands, thou King of kings, thou Lord of lords.;
Whether our days be few or many we cannot tell — we would not know. The Son of Man must come when he pleases, not when we desire: may we be ready for his coming with welcomes, with the entire hospitality and bounding delights and desires of our expectant souls, so that he may have a full incoming into the habitations of our hearts. We put all our concerns into thine hands — the letter difficult to answer, the appeal for which we have no present response, the sorrow for which we have not yet found a balm, the tears that scald us in their running, the life that is ebbing away, the business that seems to be receding from us notwithstanding our patience and industry — we put our whole case into thine hands, saying, ‘‘ Undertake for us, lead us as thou wilt.”’
Now let us continue thy praise with increasing delight, search into the mysteries of thy word as men search in fields in which pearls are hidden, in which silver is to be found, — and thus may the morning worship and meditation make us strong for the contests and the endurances of the coming week. Amen.
THE PRECIOUS BLOOD OF CHRIST.
‘ The precious blood of Christ.”’ — 1 PETER i. I9.
Y heart’s desire, ever since I became a preacher of the
Holy Word, has been to make known to men that there
is no salvation but by blood, and not by blood only, but by the particular blood named in the text — even the precious blood of
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Christ. I am afraid that in these latter days some of us have tried to find out some other word to use instead of this word dlood. We shrink from it. A dainty piety has forced upon us a dainty vocabulary. As the intensity of our love has gone down, the intensity of our speech has gone down along with it. We speak of the 4 of Christ and the love of Christ, but we too seldom speak of the precious é/cod of Christ; that would seem to our frigid piety ’ to be an exaggeration, and our frigid piety is encouraged by our deceitful fancy, that tells us that love is a larger term than blood, and should always be used instead of it. Beware of the temptations of a worldly fancy. If your piety become the creature or the plaything of your imagination, you will commit the keeping of your soul to the most capricious and the most irresponsible of all powers. We need some term that lies away infinitely beyond the airy and cloudy region of fancy; a broad and emphatic word — a word that carries its own single and definite meaning so plainly that mistake is impossible, and that sacred and inviolable term is blood. ‘The world over, that word has but one meaning. Even the word dove may be tortured into ambiguity by men skilful in definition, but the word Jdlood is too simple, too energetic, too solemn, to take upon it the faintest gloss of the most reluctant expositor. It is blood; it is precious blood; it is the blood of Christ; it is the blood that cleanseth from all sin; and to attemper its passion by the use of supposed equivalents, is to trifle with the supreme purpose of God in seeking the salvation of mankind. In a case like this, even reverent paraphrase is in danger of becoming almost profane. What other word can take the place of the word blood P Even Jove itself isa word with many aliases, or a word which admits of many changes and partial substitutes: it is regard, it is affection, it is sympathy, it is forbearance, it is friendship, it is trust — but how will you replace the word é/ood P It stands alone. It will not clothe itself in the disguises of various terms. Its unquenchable ardour burns through the snow which you scatter upon its summit. No winter can loiter upon those ardent slopes. If you mean to tax your fancy for the production of equal terms, you must go elsewhere, for the term dood can accept no humilia — tion and pander to no disguise. 1. We are sometimes asked to admit that it cannot be what is called real, literal, or merely physical blood. Why should it not be real blood, the actual blood of the actual body? Let us take care lest our vulgar conceptions deprive us of gracious meanings and privileges. It may be our notion that is at fault, and not the Word of God. ‘The reference is unquestionably to the real blood of Jesus Christ, “‘ who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.’’ Who shall say that his bodily blood was limited, and could therefore have but limited application? Verily herein we are straitened, not in Christ, but in ourselves; yes, even in the very imagination which is supposed to create for itself such wide liberty! If the people could find no limit in the handful of bread with which Christ satisfied the. throng, as the poor woman could find no limit to-the oil blessed by the prophet, who shall take upon him to say that it was a shallow and measurable stream that flowed from the heart of Christ? Did he not work miracles upon his own body? Did he not conceal it? Did he not cause it to pass untouched and unhurt through the angry host upon the hill? Did he not keep it from sinking in the sea? And can he not crown these wonders by giving us his blood to drink? ‘*‘ How can this man give us his blood to drink?’’ We never could tell how Christ did his mighty works, but, praised be his sweet and
tender name, dear Jesus, Heart of God, he ad them, and therein is our joy satisfied! Oh, my brethren, to me the controversy is mean which’ contends that Christ does not give us his flesh to eat and his blood to drink, in the sacred ordinance of the Supper. He who maintains the contrary can make the vulgar stare by his tricks in the use of words, and can impale on harmless horns the argument which he opposes, but he has never plumbed the depths of Christ’s power, he has never known what alone can appease the heart’s violence of grief, nor has he entered into the holiest of all, wherein the corruptible letter clothes itself with the incorruptible spirit. When my heart is stung to death by its own remorse on account of sin, when hell is moved from beneath to receive me as fit only for its devouring flames, I am in no mood to be satisfied with types and symbols; a real want demands a real remedy, a real sinner calls for a real Saviour, and real sin can be met only by real blood: in that infinite distress you must not meet me with etymologies and verbal dexterities, you must let the tormented soul have free access to the precious blood of Christ. I know well that the literalist can vex me with truisms, and confound my poor
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learning by his brilliant ignorance; he can tauntingly ask me, How can this man give you his blood to drink? and I have no answer in words; he entangles me in the thicket of his alphabet and holds me as his prey, but deep down in the contrite heart, in the solemn sanctuaries never defiled by common speech, I know that Christ’s word is better than man’s, when he says, *‘ Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.’’ If you ask me whether a morsel of sacramental bread is the actual body of Christ, my senses combine in a unanimous protest against an absurdity so manifest; but in this holy exercise I do not walk by sight, but by faith; my senses have slain me aforetime, so that I cannot allow them to usurp a function they have so disastrously abused; I will not allow them to speak in this sanctuary; they can but degrade its sacredness; they have been liars from the beginning, and in all heavenly mysteries they are liars still, — I will listen only to the voice of the dying, mighty, holy, infinite Saviour — ‘‘ Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; for my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed; he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him.”’
By no priestly incantation is common bread transformed inte the body of Christ. JI know nothing of sacerdotal magic. My soul resents with horror too solemn to be merely contemptuous the suggestion that priestly wizardry is needful to my participation in the blood of Christ. But this is my faith, the faith that brings things of heaven near, the faith that consecrates the very dust of earth, that if in the burning agony of my contrition, shame, and helplessness I put forth a trembling hand, and seize the common bread which makes the body live, and eat it for love of Christ, it will be to me the very flesh of the Son of God, a real appropriation, a holy sacrament, foolishness to the cold low world, but wisdom divine and comfort infinite to the hungering and dying heart. I will then know, not by some intellectual feat, the deep meaning of Christ’s words: ‘‘ This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am the living bread which cometh down from heaven; if a man eat of this bread he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.’’
2. We need what is truly called a realising faith as well asa spiritualising power. We are sometimes under the spell of two voices, and hardly know to which to yield. The one voice says, Spiritualise everything; clothe the stones of the field with mystic meanings; fill the winds with voices from worlds unknown; and turn the stars into eyes of holy watchers not yet named of man. The other voice says, Beware of making the simple mysterious; avoid the attenuation which destroys solid meanings; take the very first signification that occurs to the earnest mind, and suspect all explanations that are far to seek, These contrary voices make themselves distinctly heard in the interpretation of this text: the one voice exhorts us to escape the narrowness of a literal meaning, and the other exhorts us not to lose the real and the true in some vain search for the speculative and the doubtful. A realising faith does not make things less, it makes them more vivid, it sets them before the eyes with true naturalness, and constrains their hidden meaning into bold and noble expression. I would, then, pray to have a realising faith when I think of the blood of Christ; the life-blood; the blood that cleanses from all sin; the blood of sprinkling; the blood of atonement; the blood of the everlasting covenant. I would see it as blood. The grossness is not in the blood, it is in myself. The blood is holy. Is there aught in the great universe so holy as the blood of Christ? But we cannot realise the blood until we have realised the sin. Where there is no conviction of sin — conviction amounting to the very anguish of the lost in hell — there can be no felt need of so extreme a remedy as is offered by the outpouring of the blood of Christ. A self-palliating iniquity may be cleansed by water. The light dust which bespots the outer garment may be removed by gentle means. When a man feels that he has not sinned deeply he is in no mood to receive what he considers the tragic appeals of the gospel; they exceed the case; they destroy themselves by exaggeration; they speak with self-defeating violence. But let another kind of action be set up in the heart; let the man be brought to talk thus with himself — ‘‘I have sinned until my very soul is thrust down into hell; my sins have clouded out the mercy of God, so that I see it no longer; I have wounded the Almighty, I have cut myself off from the fountain of life, I have blown out every light that was meant to help me upward, I am undone, lost, damned,’’ — and “hen, he needs no painted cross, no typical sacra-
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ment, no ceremonial attitude, no priestly enchantment, he can be met by nothing but the sacrificial blood, the personal blood, the living blood, the precious blood of Christ.
How far it is possible to sustain in constant experience those keen and vivid realisations of the blood of Christ is known to us all. Considering the infirmities of the flesh, the deceitfulness of the world, the subtle and persistent temptations of the enemy, the continual vexations, anxieties, frets, and chafings of a life that is one daily struggle, it is not too much to say that we could not bear the incessant realisation of all that is suggested by the expression ‘‘ the blood of Christ.’’ But if this is our weakness, and it surely is, what shall we say of the strengthening might that is stored up for us in Christ? We can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth us! For observe, that though the painful sacrifice of Christ makes an unendurable strain upon our feelings at one period of our spiritual -history, it becomes to us the tenderest solace, the richest grace, the sweetest reflection, and the serenest rest, as we advance in our holy course. No longer are our sensibilities torn by it. No more do we see the wild but passing cruelty of man; the crucifixion becomes an Atonement, and then on the divine side we see the pity, the righteousness, the wisdom, and the love of God, and then can we say —
‘« For ever here my rest shall be
Close to his bleeding side,
This all my hope and all my plea,
For me the Saviour died.”’
3. The practical effects of realising all that is meant by ‘‘ the blood of Christ’’ are most useful. The text ceases to be a mere expression, and becomes a most solemn and all-determining fact. It becomes indeed the regulative power of our whole life. See, for example, how it reduces us to a state of most utter and abject helplessness in the matter of self-salvation! If we could be saved by the shedding of blood only, how could we save ourselves? — If Christ had saved us by some lower method, we might have been tempted to think that our redemption lay within our own power. But when it required the outpouring of every drop of blood that was in the fountain of his great heart, either he made a fatal mistake in his method or we make a fatal mistake in supposing that we could have redeemed ourselves. Immediately following this reflection is the thought that if so much was done for us, what is there that we can do in return? ‘*‘ How much owest thou my Lord?”’
“Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.”
We are not our own; we are bought with a price; therefore we are to glorify God in our bodies and in our spirits, which are God’s. ‘‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”’ My soul, canst thou reckon a debt so immense? Hast thou a pen that can be dipped in a sea of ink and a hand that can wield it until the day of death, that the sum may be set down in the face of heaven? My tongue refuses the intolerable burden of complete acknowledgment. My age would wither away before the growing tale was well begun. I owe all to Christ. There is nothing mine but my hateful sin. He found me; he loosed my bonds; he paid my debt; he sounded the depths of all thy woe; he ransomed me with blood! ‘‘I will offer to him the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and call upon the name of the Lord.’’ How poor my best return! How mean my gifts! How weak my service! But as he met me in the helplessness of my sin, so will he meet me in the imperfection of my work. He will make it worthy with his own merit; he will complete it by his own might; he will sanctify it by his own holiness. The blood of Christ! It did not flow on one day, it flows evermore! My soul, is thine but a geographical Calvary; or is it a Golgotha of the spirit, the place where thy church is founded and where thy heaven begins? Have we outlived the efficacy of the blood of Christ, and is the tale of his Cross a sound from which all the music has gone for ever? We need the sun to-day as we have ever needed it; the wind is still the breath of health to our dying bodies; still we find in the earth the bread without which we cannot live; these are our friends of whom we never tire; can it be that the only thing of which we are weary is God’s answer to our soul’s deepest need? Shall we keep everything but the blood of Christ? Shall the Cross go, and the sun be left? Verily, as the sun withdrew at sight of that - Cross and for the moment fled away, he would shine never more were that sacred tree hewn down by furious Man. The blood of
348 if PATI a Th, Nike)
Christ is the fountain of immortality! The blood of Christ, — it makes the soul’s summer warm and beauteous! The blood of Christ, it binds all heaven, with its many mansions and throngs without number, in holy and indissoluble security! My soul, seek no other stream in which to drown thy leprosy. My lips, seek no other song with which to charge your music. My hands, seek no other task with which to prove your energy. I would be swallowed up in Christ. I would be nailed to his Cross. I would be baptized with his baptism. I would quail under the agony of his pain that I might triumph with him in the glory of his resurrection. O my Jesus! My Saviour! Thine heart did burst for me, and all its sacred blood flowed for the cleansing of my sin. Ineeditall. I need it every day. I need it more and more. O search out the inmost recesses of my poor wild heart, and let thy blood remove every stain of evil.
““F’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.’’
Mighty Saviour! repeat all thy miracles by taking away the guilt and torment of my infinite sin!