The Work and Glory of the Saviour

A MONG other objections which infidels have taken but vainly taken, to the divinity of the Bible, one has been the mysteries it contained. Here, driven from one post to another, some have taken their last stand; entrenching themselves in that as in a strong and impregnable position. The Bible, they affirm, cannot be a revelation from God, because it contains unintelligible statements; doctrines which man finds it impossible to comprehend. To such an objection it would not be easy to find a more conclusive reply than the answer of a plain, humble Christian. Dexterously turning the infidePs artillery against himself he converted his objection to the Scriptures into an argument for their truth. Not comprehend? he repHed; I would not believe the Bible to be the word of God if it contained nothing but what I could fully comprehend! ’

There is great force in this remark. For the Bible were unlike the other works of God, if it came in all respects within the grasp of our limited understandings. There are mysteries in God’s works as great as any to be found in His word. Take an example. In reproaching the children of Israel for their wilful and wicked ignorance, Jeremiah exclaim s, ‘The stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed times, and the turtle and the crane and the swallow know the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the Lord.’ In birds of passage, which always travel with the sun, every summer brings us visitors from southern climes; and, as they roost amid the palm-groves of Asia, or sport on the banks of the Nile, how do they know that, in a few more days or weeks, the snows shall have melted from our fields, and ice-bound streams, set loose, will be rushing merrily to the sea and the sun shining through long summer days on our distant isle? By what means do they know, not only when to come, but how to come? What a mystery is there! In sailing to a remote foreign land, man has to provide himself with chart and compass. Now he takes observations in the heavens, and now sounds the ocean with deep-sea lead; by day and night the steersman stands silent by the helm, and the watch tread the deck; and yet, notwithstanding all their science, and skill, and care, men often miss the desired haven, and perish wrecked amid the angry breakers of an unknown shore. Look now at the voyage of a bird of passage! For many hundred or thousand miles it cleaves its course through the pathless air, without compass, or chart, or pilot to guide its flight; onward it goes through the wildest storms, through densest fogs, and the darkness of starless nights; yet — a fact well ascertained, but a mystery inexplicable — it returns over seas and lands and rivers and mountains to the very spot and home of its birth! What more inexpUcable in the word of God than we have here? It is past finding out. How absurd, then, to make its mysteries an objection to the divinity of the Bible! If not in these things only, but in the painting of every flower, in the shaping of every leaf, in the shooting of every blade of grass —

‘God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform,’

need we start at finding mysteries in the great work of Redemption? — at an Apostle, as he contemplates it, holding up his hands in wonder to exclaim, Great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh? This grand mystery, the person of Him who was both God and man, we have had already under consideration; and we would now turn with believing, loving, adoring eyes to contemplate His Work and Glory.

In the cell where a captive had lain long immured, I have seen the successive days of his imprisonment scored with a nail on the naked walls — as each passed, and brought his sentence nearer to a close, he marked it off; giving God thanks that another day was gone. Alas for them whoj rejecting the mercy of a gracious God, are cast into outer darkness! No such employment occupies their attention, or alleviates the misery of their lot. The crown never fades on the brow of saints — the joys at Gods right hand are for evermore; and for evermore also is their doom, who, preferring their sins to Jesus, resist alike the sweet attractions of His cross and the awful terrors of His law — their worm never dieth, and their fire is never quenched,

In eternity there are neither years, nor days, nor hours; yet there have been two hours in time which are drawn out, if I may say so, over the length of eternal ages. One, that hour, pregnant of evil, when Eve, tempted of the devil, plucked the forbidden fruit, and the fall ensued. The sea wastes its fury on the shore, and after raging for a while, falls asleep like a fretful child; continents limit the range and ravages of earthquakes; the grave, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest, sets bounds to the power of the oppressor; but limited in its influence to no place, or age, or race of men, the shock of that fall was felt throughout all the world. Nor shall its consequences cease with the world, and with time. When this old world shall be no more, and time shall be lost in eternity, and death itself shall die, that unhappy hour shall live in the memory, and be felt in the misery of the lost.

The other hour, pregnant with greatest good, as the first was with greatest evil, to the world, one which, more than any in the whole course of ages, has occupied the attention and excited the expectations of earth, and hell, and heaven too, was that our Lord pointed at when He said, The hour is come when the Son of Man should be glorified.’ There, as is plain from the words that follow, Verily, verily, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit,^ Jesus refers to His approaching death. In that hour.

His great work, to use His own last words, was ’ finished, and the head He bowed in death was crowned with its brightest glory.

I. There were circumstances of visible glory attending our Lord’s death. Apart from the spiritual blessings which flow to us from it, and apart also from the revenue of glory Christ derives from the Church, both in earth and heaven, which He has redeemed by His blood, there never was a death like His. It is as true that never man died as He died, as that never man spake as He spake. Rays of Godhead streamed through the darkest scenes of His humiliation; or lent these such splendour as the sun imparts to the edges of the murky cloud that conceals His face. Jesus was born, like any other child, but the fruit of a virgin’s womb. Angels attended and celebrated with songs the great event. Humble as was His birth-place, a new star rested above the stable; and divine worship, offered by the manger where He lay, gave dignity to the lowly scene. His hands were rough with labour; but

Sit their touch eyes received their sight,, and the dead were restored to life. His voice had been heard in the wails of infancy, and also in dying groans; but it quelled the roaring storm and burst the ancient fetters of the tomb. His eye was quenched in darkness fixed and filmy as He hung on the tree; but it had read the secrets of mans heart, and penetrated the veil of futurity. He did not walk the world in costly robes, or in imperial purple; but the hem of his garment, at the touch of faith, cured inveterate disease. He did not tread on luxurious carpets; but His step was on the billows of the sea. Unaccustomed to luxuries. His simple drink was water from the well; but water changed to wine at His bidding. No lordly halls received, or sumptuous banquets entertained. His guests; but the few fishes and five barley loaves of the mountain-feast were sufficient, in His hands, to satisfy the wants of thousands, and leave, of fragments, twelve baskets over.

The glory that shone through many of the most humiliating scenes of His life was still more apparent in its closing hours. Men had left nothing undone to heap shame on His dying headj and aggravate by disgrace the bitterness of death. To pour contempt on His kingly claims they crowned His brows with thorns; in mockery of His omniscience when they had blindfolded, they buffeted Him — asking whose was the hand that struck Him; in ridicule of His omnipotence, when they had nailed Him to the cross, they challenged Him to leave it — crying, with gibes and insults, and a cruelty His dying face had no power to soften, If thou be the Son of God, come down! He saved others; himself he cannot save.-* Yet even in this dark hour, when He was sinking into death under a cloud of shame and ignominy, see how the Son of man was glorified! To the Pharisees who, as He approached Jerusalem amid a gleam of passing popularity, and attended by a mighty crowd that hailed Him as their King, had asked Him to silence the hosannas of the people. He had said, ‘If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out, No empty boast! By-and-by that multitude melted away like a snow-wreath — like a flock of sheep when crouching to the spring, the lion, with a bound and roar, leaps into the fold, the disciples have fled; and, save a dying robber that confesses our Lord, all men hold their peace. But now events happen more wonderful than ancient story relates of a dumb son who had followed his father to battle. Seeing him struck down, lying on the ground with a sword pointed at his breast, they tell how, under the sudden impulse of aflfection and of alarm for his fathers life, he burst the string that tied his tongue, and cried out in terror. So when at Jesuss death all men held their peace, dumb nature spake. The rocks, whose bosoms, less hard than mans, were rent, cried out on earth; the sun, veilincr his face from a scene on which insensate men looked without emotion, cried out in heaven; the dead, disturbed in their graves by so great a crime, cried out from their open tombs; and the temple, with its veil though touched by no mortal hands, rent in twain from top to bottom, added its solemn testimony to theirs; and dying amid these strange, impressive, and transcendent wonders, in that of His death the hour had come when the Son of man was glorified.

2. Christs death afforded the fullest display of His mercy, grace, and truth.

Not that they had not been displayed before — as in the wilderness, through which the pillar, symbol of His presence, their grateful shade by day and their light by night, guided and guarded the wandering host — as by the sea, whose waves rushed foaming and thundering together at His word to engulf beneath their waters the pride and power of Egypt — as on that desert with its barren sands covered day by day, for forty years, with corn dropped from dewy skies — as beside that gray rock which poured streams from its flinty bosom — as on that awful mountain which flamed like a volcano at His touch, and, striking the boldest with awe, shook with His thunders and trembled beneath His feet. In these, and in many other events, the forefathers of those who rejected our Lord had been the witnesses of His glory. He was the God of Sinai — the Captain of the host — the Angel of the Covenant; and for ages they had read in the Bible, and celebrated in the songs of the sanctuary, the wonders He had done in the days of their fathers, and in the old times before them.

Yet not till, veiling His divine splendours, the Son of God appeared in the form of a man, and, giving Himself up to death, expired amid the agonies of a cross, were His love and mercy, His pity. His purpose and His power to save, fully disclosed. It was when Moses smote the rock that its hidden treasures were unsealed; and the people, pressing eagerly forward — sons bearing aged parents on their shoulders, and mothers infants in their happy arms — heard the sweetest music in its liquid murmurs, and drank life in its cold gushing stream. It was when the alabaster box was broken that its value became known, and its aroma, rising from the head and feet of Jesus, was diffused throughout all the house. It is when the clusters of the grape, borne with songs from the vineyard by bright and happy maidens, are crushed in the wine-press, and trodden under foot, that they yield the wdne which, used for sacred and also common purposes, was said to make glad the heart both of God and man, Nor were Christs gracious attributes. His love to poor sinners and His power to save them, fully disclosed till His dying hour; till He entered the garden where, sinking under the load of a worlds guilt, He cried, ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death y till He hung on that cross where He poured out His precious blood a sacrifice for sin — dying the just for the unjust.

Had Jesus never died, nor heaven, nor hell, nor earth had ever known how He loved: nor had we, unable to imagine the degree and extent of His divine compassion, been constrained to exclaim, O the height and depth the breadth and lengthy of the love of God! — it passeth knowledge, No exaggeration this! Allying us more closely to God than the angels are — since His Son took not on Him the nature of angels, but the nature of man — and making these heavenly spirits our ministering servants this love is ’ higher than heaven:’ saving; in us those more guilty than devils are — since the devils never once rejected the Son of God, nor turned a deaf ear to the voice of mercy — this love is deeper than hell, and infinitely surpassing any earthly affection, the measure thereof is Monger than the earth, and broader than the sea.’

The full and crowning expression of the love wherewith God loved us in that, while we were enemies. He gave up His Son to die for us, and wherewith also His Son loved us in beins; willino; to be given, at Jesus’ death the hour arrived when, completing the great work of atonement, He was most fully glorified. He had been despised and rejected of men: He had been called

CHRISTS WORK AND GLORY. 16i

ail impostor a blasphemer a glutton and a winebibber; neglected of His own creatures He had seen their doors shut in His face, and been left, when the fox sought his hole and the bird dropt into her nest, to find a bed on the cold ground; persecuted in His cradle. He had been persecuted to His grave. But now His sorrows are past, and His shame rolled away for ever. He dies, but as a conqueror — crowned with the rich spoils of victory; a victim, but a victor also — crushing the head of the serpent that had bit His heel, and in the penitent thief whom He bears aloft to heaven, giving us a proof of His pity for the guilty, and of His willingness and power to save even the chief of sinners.

3. By His death, our Lord conquered hell, and death, and the grave.

It was the curse of Canaan, the descendant and representative of Ham, that he should be the servant of servants; but it is the crowning glory of Jesus that He became the conqueror of conquerors: spoiling principalities and powers, like a victor returning from the wars with monarchs and princes and captains bound to his chariot. He made a show of them openly. For forty days the haucrhtv Phihstine came forth to challeno-e the armies of the living God; crying, as he stalked out into the intervening meadow, and shook his plumes and spear in triumph, I defy Israel! Give me a man that we may fight together! And since the fall, when Satan worsted our first parents, and laid their honour in the dust, for forty long centuries he had proudly held the field. No man had proved a match for him. In Noah, and Abraham, and Moses, and David, the very chiefs and standard-bearers of Gods host had fallen; before his power and devilish subtlety, one after another bit the dust: nor had anv been delivered from his cruel hand, but as Israel, when God, making a way of escape for His people, opened the gates of the sea, and snatched them from the grasp of Egypt.

But now the hour has come when this proud adversary of God and man has his challenge accepted. Davids Son is buckling for the fight; angels are gathered on the battlements of heaven to watch its fortunes, and see the issue; each advancing from his own ranks, the Prince of Light and the Prince of Darkness meet. Foiled at all points, met with his match now, and more than his match, Satan is baffled and borne back: and yet — for such was the divine decree, the claims of justice, the price of victory — our Champion falls; but falls like Samson. He bows Himself on the pillars of His adversary’s kingdom — by His own death destroying Death, and him that had the power of death, that is, the Devil. The Devil! — he had seduced angels from their loyalty, and had raised the shout of victory within the gates of Eden. Death [ — he had plucked the crown from the brows of kings, and darkened the eyes of seers, and sealed the lips of prophets, and mocked the skill of man, and crushed the strength of giants: and, as Solomon says, in the war with him, men had found no discharge.^ But how do the fortunes of battle chano;e when Christ, our champion, the Captain of our salvation, coires into the field! Calling out, O death, I will be thy plagues! O grave, I will be thy destruction! He takes the prey from the spoiler; and not only in our souls, washed in His blood and sanctified by His Spirit, redeems the jewel, but the casket too — for that purpose descending into the realms of the grave, with garments rolled in blood. The brow that bled beneath a crown of thorns now wears the diadem of victory; and now, where the eyes of men saw but a ghastly spectacle, a mangled body suspended on a tree, with the setting sun lighting up its dead, defaced, and pallid countenance faith beholds the triumph of redeeming love — the crowning work and glory of the Son of God; and pointing to that sacred form which has death and the serpent lying crushed beneath its feet, she addresses men and angels, saying, ‘Sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed the enemy in pieces/

The work of our Saviour was essentially and pre-eminently that of a surety or substitute. Some affirm that Jesus died merely as an example, to teach us how to die. Others, repudiating the proper idea of an atonement, and emasculating a doctrine which they profess to hold, regard his death as nothing more than an expression of the love of God to a fallen world. But unless our blessed Lord assumed our nature that He might, besides fulfilling the requirements of the law, bear in some proper sense, and in our room and stead, the punishment due to sin, by what rule are we to interpret the language of Scripture? Were it otherwise, what language more misleading, more calculated to mislead, than these declarations? — I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep; I lay down my life for the sheep — ‘God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us — ^If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life’ — ‘Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised, for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed/

As is plain from these words, Jesus had to endure in our stead the penalty due to sin, and die for us, as the bleeding victim of old for him who offered it on the altar. Therefore it was, that they who knew not what they did when they crucified the Lord of glory, knew not what they said when they cast this cruel taunt in his face, * He saved others, himself he cannot save! This was true; but not for the reason they supposed. He could have saved Himself — descending from the cross to take summary vengeance on His foes; or as Samson did with the ponderous gates of Gaza, carry it away — rise before their astonished eyes, and bear it to heaven as a trophy of His power. What then? Alas! we had been left to perish.

The case may be in some measure illustrated by what happened in the terrible dilemma in which two miners once found themselves. They were engaged blasting a rock in the bowels of the earth. I’he chamber for the powder bored they charge it; and having lighted the hissing match they take to flighty hurrying to the bottom of the shaft, to throw themselves into the basket, and give the signal to be drawn up out of reach, not of danger only, but of death. Alas, the wheel turns not. The man at the top of the shaft is able to raise one, but not both. Every moment the fire may reach the powder, and blow them into eternity. There they sit; pale speechless, helpless, looking each other in the face; and death staring grimly at them both. Both must die, unless one, sacrificing himself to save his comrade, leap from the basket. It was done — promptly, nobly done. They were, and yet were not, in equal danger. One is a man of God; the other a graceless, prayerless profligate. Calmly addressing his wicked companion, ‘I know,’ said the first, ’ if you die, you go to hell; but knowing in whom I have believed, death shall be gain to me.’ So bidding the other farewell, a Christian hero, he le.ips from the basket; and leaving it to rise, sits down to pray and die. Here, though I may remark that this man himself escaped death by a singular providence, he saved the other, but himself also he could not save; and as there was there a physical impossibility of saving both, there is here a moral one. The justice of God which awarded the penalty of death to sin must be satisfied: the law of God which required perfect obedience must be magnified: the substitute or the sinner therefore must die; and Jesus died, the just for the unjust, that we might be saved — that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish, but have everlasting life.

The object of our faith, to whose righteousness, rejecting all confidence in our own, we trust, Jesus is also to be the object of our imitatioa — our pattern as well as our propitiation. Therefore they that are Christ’s live not lo, any more than they live through, themselves; the rule of their life, the motto blazoned on their banner, not self-indulgence, but self-denial. The spectators who, drawn to roof and window by the roar and tumult, looked down on the passing crowd as it hurried on to Calvary, knew Jesus by the cross on His shoulder, and the thorns on His bleedinir brow. One eagerly pointing Him out to another — some with scorn on their lips, others with a tear in their eye — Yon is He, they cried, who looks so meek, and patient, and gentle, with a cross on his back and a crown of thorns on his brow! And still we may know the servant by the Master’s livery. W ho is mocked by an ungodly world? who blesses them that curse Him? who returns good for evil? who is patient with the bad? who toils and labours, spends and is spent, lives and perhaps dies for others, forgetful of himself? By the tokens whereby they recognized the Master, I recognize the man. If we can sit at ease while others are perishing around us — if we can lie on a flowery bank, basking in the gladsome sunshine, without taking any interest in others, or stretching out a hand to pluck them from the torrent that sweeps them on to ruin it matters not to what church we belon”-. We belong not to Christ — we are none of His. As much as to murderers, adulterers, drunkards, and thieves, Depart from me, I have never known you,^ is the language He shall hold to all whose hfe-maxim is expressed in such words as these, Am I my brother’s keeper?^ — let souls perish, so I be rich — let others suffer, so I enjoy myself — ‘^ Soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.’ Unless the same mind be in you that was in Jesus Christ, ye are none of His. Paul said, Christ liveth in me — language which His humblest, weakest follower can hold as well as that great apostle. The beautiful incarnation of all that was lofty in aim, tender in sympathy, generous in heart, pure in life, self- forgetful, and self-denying, Jesus Himself is the fair copy which Christians, through the aids of the Holy Spirit,

are to attempt to imitate. If any man,^ He said, ’ would be my disciple, let him take up his cross, deny himself daily, and follow me.’