The Design of Christian Sacrifice

‘When the burnt-offering began, the song of the Lord began also.” — 2 CHRon. xxix. 27.

IT is not often that a sense of joy co-exists with a sense of pain. The soldier frequently hears music on his march to battle and feels himself inspired by the sound. Yet I would not call this a co-existence of joy with the horrors of war. For, what the music really does is to divert the mind from that horror. It does not blot out the terrors of the battlefield; it rather fixes the eye, as if by an act of hypnotism, upon something outside the field. But in the passage before us there is symbolised a peculiar experience. A sacrifice and a joy run together contemporaneously, “When the burnt-offering began, the song of the Lord began.” There is only one sphere in which pain weds joy — the sphere of the Lord’s song. The song of the Lord is always heard at the sacrificial 12 oe moment, the moment when self is crucified. Do not imagine I am speaking of church services. God’s altars are not limited to churches. That the joy comes with the burnt-offering is as true of the market-place as of the mission-field, of the social hour as of the sacrament. How many joys are lost to me for want of the altar of self-sacrifice! How often do I miss the beauties of a book because I am jealous of the writer! How often do I lose the pleasure of a song because I am thinking of my receipt of custom! How often does the murmur of my heart drown the murmur of the stream! My burden arrests the brook; my heaviness obscures the hill; my tremor strips the trees; my worry bares the woods; my nervous flutter withers the flowers. Can anything restore the music and the dancing, can anything give back to these objects their native joy? Yes — the altar of self-sacrifice; the song will begin where the offering begins. It is not freedom from the world I need; it is freedom from myself. The world is as defrauded as God is, by the absence of an altar in my soul. The creation groaneth and travaileth because its beauties are unappreciated; my care will not let them enter my heart. I must sacrifice if I would sing. I must bury myself if I would bloom. I must forget my fortunes if I would flower. I must smite self-love if I would smile. I must lose my life if I would learn full joy.

Lord, I come to Thine altar not as other faiths come to their altar. All other masters tell me to come that I may immolate myself; Thou biddest me come that I may replenish myself. As long as I do not come I am immolated already — robbed of half my joy. The pleasures of the world are unappropriated till I surrender my soul. My discontent sees not the daisy; my care beholds not the cowslip; my sullenness marks not the sunbeam. Envy dims my eye to human loveliness. Sordidness kills my sympathy with the festive hour. Pride stills my pulses to earthly brotherhood. I come to Thine altar not to lose but to get back my world. That moment of sacrifice which makes the Buddhist poor, makes me rich. Not to unrobe myself do I pour out my libation. Not to bury the sights and sounds of earth do I seek Thine altar. I seek it to see them better, to hear them better. I seek it because without it I have been secluded from my world — Thy world. I seek it that I may be less a hermit, less a monk, less a recluse. I seek it that I may be more fit for the work of life — for the meeting with the busy crowd, for the conflict in the field of commerce, for the duties of the day and hour, for the vicissitudes of the dance and the drawing-room, for the pleasures of the gay and the sorrows of the sad, for the moments of my victory and the scenes of my defeat. For all these things what I need is a song in the heart; and the song in the heart will begin when I have offered

up my soul.;