Three Portraits
Pilgrim! burden’ d with thy sin,
Come the way to Zion’s j. ate;
There, till mercy shut thee in,
Knock, and weep, and watch, and wait.
Knock — He knows the sinner’s cry;
Weep — He loves the mourner’s tears;
Watch — for saving grace is nigh;
Wait — till heavenly light appears.
Hark! it is the Bridegroom’s voice —
Welcome, pilgrim! to thy rest;
Now within the gate rejoice,
Safe, and seal’d, and bought, and blest.
“And one of the Pharisees desired Him that he would eat with him. And He went into the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to meat. And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster-box of ointment, and stood at H s feet behind Him weeping, and began to wash His feet with tears, and did wipe them with the aairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.” -LutK vii. 36-50.
IN our last scene of busy life on the Shores of Gennesaret, we visited in thought the house of a Gentile officer in Capernaum, and were there taught the hallowed relation which ought ever to subsist between Master and Servant, rich and poor.
We have now a change of incident within the walls of the same city; where Hebrew synagogues and Hebrew dwellings mingled with the villas and mansions of Roman courtiers, and the palaces of Herodian princes.
In one of these Jewish houses the scene of our present narrative is laid. It is a Parable in real life. New phases of humanity here meet us, with which Jesus dealt; and in dealing with which, He has left behind important lessons for our guidance and instruction.
Of the many graphic Scenes, indeed, in Sacred story, we know not one more striking than that which is at present to engage our attention. It is a Picture amid Gospel Pictures. One ceases to wonder that the great Painters of the middle ages clung to it as a favourite subject for delineation. We have in the group itself — its lights and shadows — the individuality of its unique and contrasted characters — all that contributes to make a striking and powerful composition. Proceeding rapidly, as we are doing, through this portion of the gospel Picture-gallery, we dare not pass it by in silence. Other minor figures crowd the background, but there are Three which stand out from the inspired canvass in siguifi-
94 MEMORIES OF GENNESAftE’i’.
cant prominence: — three impersonations of vastly diverse character.
In the foreground of all, and arresting first our attention, is the impersonation of lowly Penitence and Humility; close by, in bold contrast and antagonism, is the type of haughty supercilious Pride and Religious Formalism; and, thirdly, to complete the triad, and in still greater contrast, there is the Godlike Impersonation and essence of ineffable Tenderness, Compassion, Love.
The Weeping sinner, the Self-righteous Pharisee, the Great and Gracious Redeemer.
Let us for a little, with God’s blessing, dwell on each of the three in their order.
(I.) TiliQ first figure which meets our eye in the picture is
that of THE LOWLY PENITENT.
Her history is a brief one — soon told: “A woman in the city, which was a sinner.” “THE sinner” was her opprobrious epithet! The guilt of a life of reprobacy and shame was branded on her brow. She was probably a Gentile — one of those unhappy outcasts from virtue and peace that had been imported to the Jewish lake by the loathsome corruption of Roman manners. The lawless vices of the capital being (as we know from contemporary history) too terribly let loose on her subject provinces.
All at once, however, her life has become changed. How she may have been prepared to undergo so vast a revolution in her history, we cannot tell. For years, it may be, her soul may have been struggling in vain to get free. Her heart may have been torn and tortured with the memories of a blighted past, and a miserable and abandoned present; and yet she might know no faithful ear, perhaps, to which she might reveal the reality of her wretchedness. The sunny recollections of joyous and innocent childhood, and a happy home, may have mingled sadly with the thought of the agonised and broken hear’ s there left, from which she had torn herself for ever. A future of terrible and untold desolation rose before her. No Gadarene demoniac, more truly than she, went about” seeking rest and finding none/7
But Rest she has found. Her base betrayers have crushed that bleeding heart under their feet — they mock her tears and scorn her self-reproaches. But One voice she has heard which has spoken peace to her troubled soul!
Where she first saw Jesus, we cannot tell. Where she first listened to those gracious balm-words which stanched her bleeding wounds, we know not. Could she have been in the crowd that day by the Lake- side, when the Lord of nature and grace spake so tenderly from the fisher’s bark? Could she have lingered, on that more recent occasion, in the skirts of the multitude as, in the plain of Hattin, or from the Mount of Beatitudes, wondrous words of power, and wrath, and mercy, fell on her ears? Might she not have heard the stern utterance there pronounced in connexion with such sins as hers, “The whole body shall be cast into hell?” Might not she also have listened there to the blessing in reserve for the “poor in spirit,” the “persecuted,” the “mourner?” Might she not have heard that Great Eestorer who had healed lepers and sick, rich and poor, ncble and despised, say without reserve or condition — “Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened?” Or, is it not more probable still, that she may have listened in Capernaum to that briefest but loveliest of all the Saviour’s utterances spoken shortly before,* and which has for eighteen hundred years calmed the tempests in many storm-swept bosoms, “Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy Jaden, and I will give you rest? Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me: for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls? For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light?” “Are not these words, these golden words,” she might say, “just for ME? They are all I require — all I have been seeking for! I am a ‘WEARY one;’ none but God in Heaven knows how weary! This heart of mine for years has been torn and broken. The burden of crimson sin has been weighing me down. Did I not hear Him say, ‘Come to Me, I will give you rest? Ye shall find rest to your souls?’”
Might there not thus have been one echo at least to these soul-soothing words in that crowd? One ear listening which drank them in? One bosom sighing for that to which it had been ever before a stranger — a yoke which was easy, and a burden which wras light?
But whatever were the occasion — wherever the scene, and the place, and the manner of her awaking from her sleep of death — she had been arrested, convicted, humbled, comforted; her conscience had been struck, her life of profligacy was loathed and abandoned for ever. Now, all her thoughts are about coming into personal converse with that Great Being who had brought her up out of the horrible pit, and out of the miry clay, and set her feet upon a Rock, and established her goings!
* Stier, in loco.
Who can picture all the reality of that season of deep conviction: — the tears she wept in secret over her life of infamy? — and if she now cherishes the humble hope that that terrible past is wondrously forgiven, how full is she still of trembling apprehensions! The scene in the text discloses to us the turning-point in her history. It is the struggle between life and death In the anguish of her newly-awakened and deeply-stricken heart, she has long been making the patriarch’s prayer her own — “Oh! that I knew where I might find HIM, that I might come even to His seat!”
Her cherished wish is now to be gratified. Such an opportunity for seeing the Saviour does now occur. She had heard that He was guest that afternoon in a rich Pharisee’s house. The doors of the dining-hall (according to Easttern custom) were open. Could she not creep unbidden behind where He was, and weep at His feet the tale of her sorrows? Yet manifold, and diverse too, are the straggles before she dare venture thither. Two impediments, especially, must have powerfully deterred her.
There was, first, that which many a penitent transgressor still feels — the fear of others. The dread of cruel censure, contempt, and scorn. She seems to have had the curse of an unenviable notoriety resting upon her. May she not be spurned away? May not that drooping heart, opening to the gladsome sunlight, be trodden under foot by merciless man?
Then add to this the torturing thought — how can she face the infinitely PURE ONE? She seems to say,” Can I, dare I, venture into the presence of Incarnate holiness? Can He endure my defiling touch? Will He deign to receive me;
G to cast on me one lock of pity — to utter one word of compassion? May I not only aggravate the tortures of tins heart by listening to merited upbraidings, by hearing that ‘Rest’ there is for the ‘weary, for every weary head, but mine, and such as mine!”
But what will a soul in earnest not do? What barriers can restrain it? Frown who may, she resolves to repair to that “fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness;” and to tell her story by those tears which had been “her meat, day and night,” since she first listened to her Saviour’s words.
She enters the house. Silently she steals behind the couch where the Lord reclined. If the other guests have been observing her — if the whisper and comment of indignation is passing round from lip to lip — it matters not to her. She hears it not, and cares not though she hears. JESUS is THERE! She thinks of no one in the assembly but the Refuge of the weary, the Help of the helpless, the Friend of the friendless. Her eye rests on Him alone. She has found “Him whom her soul loveth.” “He is all her salvation, and all her desire,”
See her now, in her lowly lurking-place. Not a word is spoken. Her burning tear-drops (what Augustine calls “the blood of her heart”)* are left to speak for her. They fall on her Saviour’s unsandalled feet. On these feet she imprints her kisses, and dries them with the dishevelled hair of her head. An act, it is worthy of observation, which was performed only by the meanest female slaves in Rome to their masters. In this poor sinner’s case, therefore, it was significant. Branded with contumely by man, she fled to * Quoted by Trench.
the God-M.m, That trembling Penitent casting herself at her heavenly Master’s feet, seems rejoicingly to say, “0 Lord, truly I am Thy SLAVE, I am Thy SLAVE; Thou hast loosed my bonds.”
And as if this were not all, a Box of fragrant perfume, which she had procured, probably to lavish on her own person in the days of her shame, she now breaks, and pours on the feet she had moistened with weeping. As we behold the loosened tresses (what Paul speaks of as “the glory of woman”), now spurning all adornment, and the fragments of the alabaster-box scattered around, this Niobe of Holy Writ seems to have anticipated the same apostle’s injunction to other similar penitents, and to be acting upon it — “As ye have yielded your members servants to un cleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.”*
Oh, beautiful type! Marvellous picture of broken-hearted sorrow! A poor outcast of wretchedness lying low at the cross; her footpath thither saturated with dewy tears. A miserable wreck of humanity who had broken loose from her moorings, drifting helpless, hopeless, ruined, lost, to the bleak winds and howling sea of eternity, now moored to the Great Living Rock. There was joy in Heaven that day, among the angels of God, over that one sinner that repented!
Pass we on now to the second Portrait in this Gospelpicture.
Can there be conceived a greater contrast and transition? From one low in the dust of self-abasement, confessing her-
* Horn. vi. 19.
self the chief of sinners, to one who is the type and portraiture of haughty self-righteous formalism! The host at this entertainment was a PHAKISEE.
Little or nothing is said of him in the narrative, to throw any distinctive light on his history. We have no reason to believe that he was, by any means, a disreputable specimen of his class. Had he been so, our blessed Lord would have been more unqualified in His condemnation. He was no Sceptic. Neither profanity nor immorality probably could be laid to his charge. Multitudes of such were round about that Lake; profligate Gentiles, scoffing Romans, rationalistic Sadducees. But he was very different. He was, for aught we know, a good Moral man. He was a Synagogue attender. The very fact of having Jesus as his guest intimated a respect for religious Teaching. He was punctilious in Synagogue services and Ceremonial rites. The only incidental glimpse, indeed, the narrative gives of his character, indicates this much — he marvelled that if Christ were truly a prophet, gifted with the discernment of spirits, He did not shrink from the unclean touch of the sinner at His feet. He spake within himself, “This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who, and what manner of woman this is, that toucheth him.” He speaks not of the Magdalene as the woman who “weepeth,” or “kisseth,” or “anointeth,” or “loveth,”butftfl the woman that “toucheth.”*
He was then, externally to a Jew, all that could be wished. He ‘’ thanked God that he was not as others.” He tithed all he possessed lritli scrupulous nicety. He could boast, it maybe, ol the brojclest phylactery in Capernaum. He was a pupil of
* See Alford and Stier, in loco.
Hillels, or, perhaps, made it matter of thankfulness that it was not Hillel, but Shammai, at whose feet he had sat, and whose spirit he had imbibed. He made it his boast that he never had any dealings with the Samaritans; that far off as Mount Zion was, he had ever shunned, as defiled, their temple on Gerizim; and in going up to the annual feasts, rather than run the risk of contamination, he would take the circuit of the Jordan route to avoid it. No, no; other Jews might shew a latitudinarian spirit and have dealings with Samaritans; never would he! Others might believe in the sincerity of a Publican smiting on his breast and confessing himself a sinner, and God hearing that prayer; never could he 3 And as for condescending so much as to touch this Gentile Sinner, this wretched offscouring of Roman profligacy, it would defile and contaminate him — it would be a blot on his pedigree as the child of Abraham. He had conscientious objections to take the Jewish children’s bread and cast it to Gentile dogs!
Jesus saw what was passing in the narrow, shrivelled soul of this turbaned Religionist; indeed, but for a brief and sententious parable, which the merciful Philanthropist interposed, the Pharisee-host might have bid away the poor suppliant from his home and table. “0 Simon!” says a learned commentator, “wert thou not a poor sinner, Jesus would not have come to thy table; had not this woman been a penitent sinner, she would not have sought Him in thy house. Oh, that thou knewest what a Saviour He is — how He knows thee and her: her repentance — thy pride!”
Is not this Jewish Pharisee a “Representative man” — 3 type still of his Class? In him we have one of those cold.
heartless spirits who have an outward respect for conventional Religious Forms, but have no corresponding realisation of the exceeding breadth of God’s law, and the exceeding siufulness of their own hearts. They see sin in others, but they are all as they should be; they can pull out the mote in their brother’s eye, but they have no thought of a beam in their own. Champions for sect and party — orthodox, as they firmly believe, in their own creed — all the world are wrong, or may be wrong, but they are sure they are right. Their Church is the pure one. They can trace their pedigree to apostles. Others have altered their rubrics; they never have. Others seem to live on enthusiasm; they can take Religion easy, and get into Heaven notwithstanding. There are poor at their doors, why not let the Law or Police look after them? If a miserable transgressor comes in their path, they hold it would not be respectable to have dealings with him; if a brother, overtaken in a fault, comes with the hot tears of grief pleading for forgiveness, they think it best to have nothing to say to him. It may do for a good Samaritan to pick up that wounded man; but, being Jews, they would contract defilement by touching him. They are sorry for him; but, shaking their heads and sighing, they leave him to the tender mercies of others, and “pass by on the other side!”
Let us beware of this cold, selfish, proud spirit. If there be anything more obnoxious to God, more withering to all that is noble in the human soul, it is this — the gilding of the outside of the cup and platter — the whitewash of the moral sepulchre — the Religion which begins and centres and terminates in self, and whose culminating glory is the complacent thought, “I am better than others. Stand back. I am holier than thou”
The Omniscient Saviour sent the arrow of conviction to this Pharisee’s conscience. Like another Nathan, self-judged and self-condemned, he brought home the verdict, “thou art the man.” He would do the same to every one of us, who in the shadings of this picture may see any dim reflection of himself. He who knew all the deep labyrinths of the human heart thus gives in another place His estimate of self-righteous, Pharisaic formalism, “Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven,”
But let us pass on to the third and last principal figure in our Picture. In the centre of the group (between the two we have described), is the Living and All-glorious type of human Tenderness and Love — an exalted SAVIOUR GOD.
Ve wait anxiously to mark how He receives the trembling Transgressor. Are her fears well founded? Are her sobs to die away in empty echoes within these walls? Ah! if it had been man — selfish, haughty, unfeeling man — away, spurned and broken-hearted, she would have been sent; but “My ways are not as your ways, nor Lly thoughts as your thoughts, saith the Lord!”
At first He speaks not — He leaves her in silence to exhaust her tribute of sorrow and love. The sluices of her heart being only opened, He lets the flood of tears rush on unchecked. But He does break silence — He can bear and brook no longer the cruel frowns and taunting looks of t hose around. With what feelings must the broken-hearted one have listened to the tones of ever-living love, as thus He (yes, HE the Lord of glory] spake in behalf of the vilest of sinners.
104 MEMOK1ES OF GENNEbAEET.
“Simon,” said he, addressing the Pharisee, “I have somewhat to say unto thee. There was a certain creditor which had two debtors; the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most? Simon answered, I suppose that he to whom he forgave most. And He said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged.” He turns then round in meek majesty to the Penitent, and applies the simple but expressive rebuke. “Seest thou,” he continued to Simon, “this woman? I entered, a weary Stranger, into thy house. In accordance with customary wont — the rites of ancient hospitality — thou or thy servants should have afforded Me water for My feet: this was denied Me: but thy neglect or inconsideration was more than supplied by her. From the welling fountains of her grief she has bathed My feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head. Thou gavest Me no kiss — this wonted courtesy to a Jewish Rabbi thou hast, from motives of calculating prudence, withheld from Me; but she, ever since she crept behind this table, has not ceased to kiss My feet. My head even with common olive oil thou didst not anoint; but this woman hath anointed not My head, but My very feet, and that, too, with costliest spikenard. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.”
And now follows the gracious, longed-for word to the listening Penitent. Now comes her own assurance of comfort and joy — “THY SINS ARE FOEGIVEN.”.. “Thy faith hath, saved tnee; go in peace.” Her Lord has received her, looked upon her, defended her, assured her, forgiven her, and now He sends her away with the coveted benediction. She came weary to Him, and He has not belied His own sure word, for she has received “BEST” for her burdened soul.
Most lovely picture, we again say, this of the Saviour of the world, with that despised, down-trodden, forlorn FEMALE at His feet! We have here a living type and embodiment of what Christianity has done to wipe the tears from degraded womanhood, and raise her from the dust to which paganism had doomed her. What is the boasted Chivalry of the middle ages, but the legitimate effect of the elevating spirit of Christianity? Wherever Christianity is not, there is woman found with the curse of bondage and degradation resting upon her — the drudge and menial slave, instead of the helpmeet and companion of man. The first words that our Lord uttered when He rose from the grave were addressed to a whole world in tears — “WOMAN! why weepest thou?” And He could point to that vacant sepulchre He had just left as the certain pledge, amid higher blessings, that ere long these tears would be dried. 0 Jesus! Woman (personated by that poor Penitent in the text) may well come and lie adoring at Thy feet. Thy religion has been the breaker of her chains and the balm of her sorrows: we cease now to wonder that she was last at Thy cross and first at Thy tomb!
Let us pass on to one or two practical Lessons which this narrative suggests. We may take three which have reference to Great Sinners.
I. We learn that/or Great Sinners there is a Great Saviour. Here is THE Lesson of all lessons. We have been studying this Picture figure by figure, but like the ancient Painters we must be jealous of detracting from what, after all, is the Central glory of it. All the other parts must be subordinated to One — all other figures must only be brought in as helps to tell the story of His exceeding love.
Yes! JESUS is the Chief Speaker here; and, “chief of sinners,” He speaks to you! He tells you in words and deeds of unutterable tenderness, that you never need despair of His mercy! — that for “scarlet sins” and “crimson sins” there is an ever opened fountain. “This man receiveth sinners,” was the ironical taunt of proud and haughty Pharisees. “This man receiveth sinners” is the Saviour’s own motto — the glorious peculiarity of His great salvation! Hear it, ye who are bowed down with an overwhelming sense of some heinous sins! there may be one such whose eye is falling on these pages; some troubled miserable being — shivering on the verge of despair — an awful past frowning upon you — spectres of guilt haunting you by night, and the scorpion sting of conscience goading you by day; — hiding your fears from those nearest and dearest to you; your heart alone knowing its own bitterness — the awful unrest of unforgiven and unmortified sin! I am commissioned this day to lead you to this Picture in the great gallery of Truth — to point to that vicious Profligate with the blood of souls on her head, and to tell you she trembled and wept, and believed and rejoiced! Hers was the worst supposable case. No sheep in all the Galilee fold more outcast, worthless; self-condemned than she; and yet — see the kind Shepherd! He had followed after her (it may be for years on years), tracking her guilty steps as she rushed farther and farther from the fold, but He ceased not “until He found her;” and when He had found her, He laid her on His shoulders rejoicing, saying “Rejoice with me, for I have found the sheep which was lost!”
The Pharisees’ axiom (and still the creed and verdict of many) is — “God can have no dealing with such vile sinners,” He can — He does! Remember, it is not the Sinner He hates, but Sin. He loves the sinner. He gave His Son to die for the sinner, to shew how He loves him! What other proof of this do we need when we have the Cross of Calvary? “He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to Him and live,” If you are saying now, as you contemplate that picture of anguished Penitence and Redeeming Love, “Would it were the same with me!” I answer unhesitatingly, “It may be the same; with God’s grace it shall be the same Come! ye whose sins are of the deepest dye — the memories of the past, memories of guilt and loathing and self-reproach — your hearts restless and anguished as you stoop over the dark abyss; put this picture before your mental eye — keep it there — hang it upon your heart-walls — ponder it in your hours of conviction and your hours of despair — suspend it above your death-pillows, and write under it as its name and inscription — “Where sin abounded GRACE did much more abound!’”
I. Learn that toward Great Sinners there ought to be shewn great tenderness.
It is often not so with man. There is often a mean pleasure in spurning the transgressor from our presence — recalling the memory of sin — loading with cutting rebuke and upbraidings — when a kind word and kind act might reclaim from the paths of vice and soothe a shattered and a broken heart!
Yes, I fearlessly say it, there is often a harsh unwillingness to make allowance for circumstances — for the power of temptation and the seductions of a guilty world. How often is this the case with the wretched outcasts of whom the woman in the text is the type! Society frowns on them (that we dare not blame); but is there to be left no room for repentance and for tears? If another such weeping Magdalene, as in the text, is to implore a kind look, after years of anguished penitence, are these tears to be cruelly mocked, and is she to turn her head to the grave as the only rest and resting-place for her woe? Is a brother to turn an erring sister from his gates? Can a parent read this story of redeeming mercy, and let the iron enter deeper into the heart of his penitent and exiled child? Yet how often is it so, and this all the while (oh! the cruel and base injustice of public morality) — while man — the base seducer — who murdered the peace of innocent households, and brought a father and mothers’ gray hairs in sorrow to the grave — while he is permitted to strut unbranded on the world’s highway! The world’s doors are open to him — the lounges of fashion he can frequent — he can clasp still the young hand of virtue, and whirl with it in the giddy dance; the victims of his sin meanwhile left to pine in broken-hearted misery — unwept for — unsolaced! One’? heart burns with indignation at the hollow baseness of this too truthful picture of what is called “fashionable life.” I ask you whether should that deserted woman, shivering in the ragged tatters of penury in her wretched garret, or her destroyer, moving amid the lights and halls of luxury — whether is that poor, broken-down, battered flower, with its soiled and withered leaves, or he that has crushed its young tendrils under foot, and left it to rot and consume in the delirium of despair — which of these two is most hated in the sight of God — which of these two ought to be most branded in the eye of man?
You may remember another similar Victim of guilt and shame hurried into the presence of Christ. Her cruel-hearted accusers were all loud in her condemnation; till Jesus, by a personal appeal to their consciences silenced their clamour, and pronounced the milder verdict — “Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.” Let us come to this Parablepicture, and learn a lesson of tenderness to the erring. Learn it from Him who is our great Exemplar. “He will not break the bruised reed — He will not quench the smoking flax.” We have often truly reason to say “Let me not fall into the hands of man.” But “ye have seen the end of the Lord, how that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy.” To every weeping, broken-hearted Penitent, lying low at His cross and nailing his or her sins there, He says,” I will be merciful to your unrighteousness; your sins and your iniquities will I remember no more! tj
III. Learn that FROM Great Sinners God expects great gratitude and love.
This Woman’s sins, which were many, were “all forgiven,” and, as a consequence, “she loved much.”
We must not, from aught I have said, be tempted to infer that Christ in any degree winks at sin. The stupendous journey He undertook from the heights of glory to the depths of humiliation refutes at once the thought! If Sin, great or small, were a trivial thing in the eye of God, think ye that He would have exacted a penalty of such untold anguish from the Son of His love? Equally abhorrent must be the thought of continuing in sin because such grace abounds. Would not this be to represent a holy God as the great Patron of iniquity? Would it not be to make the entire Incarnation work one gigantic effort to relax the penalties of the law, and let the transgressor violate it with impunity? We repel the thought, as Paul repelled it, with an indignant “God forbid!”
Let those who have been thus graciously forgiven, and “forgiven much” — who by the free grace and tender mercy of God have had such a full, free, everlasting remission tendered them — let such shew by holy living and holy acting — by contrition and humility, by kindness and gentleness and unselfishness, by love to God and love to man — the depth of their gratitude to Him who has dealt with them as the tenderest earthly father never dealt with his dearest and fondest child. This lowly Penitent in the text, as she crouches tremblingly and lovingly at the feet of Jesus, with the mingled remembrance of great guilt and great forgiveness, lavishes upon Him her best! She may have had nothing else to offer. The sole treasure of a wretched home, she plucked from her bosom and poured its fragrant contents on the feet of her pilgrim Redeemer!
She seems to speak to every crimson and scarlet Transgres-THREE PORTRAITS. Ill
sor, who, heart-sick with sin — stricken down by the terrors of the law — the verities of the second death — the awful other world — has rushed to the only Ark of safety, the sheltering Covert for the weary and heavy laden! She seems to say, “Give Him — oh! give Him — not the crumbs and dregs, not the sweepings and remnants of ’ a worn and withered love, but let your tribute offering be, to the full measure of your ability, commensurate with the magnitude of that forgiving mercy which has borne the mighty load away into a land of oblivion!”
Reader! Is the sweet music of that word now falling on your ear — “Sinner! thy sins are forgiven?” Grace has called thee! — Love has redeemed thee! — Blood has washed thee! — Peace is bequeathed to thee! — Heaven is before thee! Be it yours to reply, “‘Lord! I am Thine! ‘My love to Thee — that cold callous thing which we call love — is but as a drop in the ocean of Thy tenderness. But here I am! Take me, use me for Thy glory! This body, long a dark, desecrated shrine, full of loathsome pollution, sanctify it as a Temple to Thy praise. This soul, that has been long grovelling in the dust, wallowing in the mire of its earthliness and sin, bring back to it the lost image and lineaments of Thy great Self! This Life — this existence reclaimed by Thee from the blank chaos of death and despair — oh! let it be one never-ending Thank-offering of gratitude to Him who hath * loved me with an everlasting love, And Death! — when that solemn moment draws nigh, which I once shuddered to name — ‘MY death!’ — let it be the sweet triumph-hour of a spirit at peace with its Godl As I confront the once dreaded water-floods, let me hear the old word which on earth I loved so well. Let me hear it come floating across the dark billows, glorious with the new impress and meaning of Heaven; yet still spoken by Him who died, that to me and for me He might utter it, as He stands beckoning on the heavenly Shore — ‘COME UNTO ME, THOU WEAEY ONE, AND I WILL GIVE THEE BEST!’”