T There came to my office one day an old lady with white hair, starved features, and tottering steps, leaning upon a cane. There was a scared, timid look on her careworn face as she sank heavily into a chair and told me her pathetic story. It was very simple. An utterly debauched and worthless son, who for thirty years had brought nothing but sorrow to the heart of his mother, had been arrested for an assault from which his victim had died. He was lying in jail awaiting trial. The bruised heart of the aged mother yearned for her boy, for he was still a boy to her. In a moment of indignation at what seemed to me outraged affection, I asked, " Why do you not leave him alone ? He does not care for you." Her eyes filled afresh with tears, her head sank lower, as she answered with infinite tenderness, " No, I know he does not care for me, but I care for him, and he cannot have a mother long." ^
(2) Universality means a cure for every form of sin, and for all the sin of the world. It does not believe in a defeated God. It is a victorious Gospel. One cannot help feeling sorry for the God whom some people believe in. He is a kind- hearted, benevolent God, who means well, but His world is too big. It has slipped away from His control and it is going to ruin at breakneck speed.
Christ, when He died, Deceived the cross, And on death's side Threw all the loss: The captive world awaked and found The prisoners loose, the jailor bound. * G. L. Perin in Good Tidings, 139.
492 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
0 dear and sweet dispute
'Twixt death's and love's far different fruit,
Different as far
As antidotes and poisons are: By the first fatal tree Both life and Uberty
Were sold and slain;
By this they both look up and live again,
0 strange mysterious strife, Of open death and hidden life ! When on the cross my King did bleed, Life seemed to die, death died indeed.^
2. " Preach the gospel to the whole creation" The commission according to St. Mark is all too superficially read by Christian people, " Go ye into all the world," does not merely mean, Travel over the surface of the earth and speak to men ; the term " world " (kosmos) includes man and everything beneath him. The preaching of the Gospel to individual men is the beginning of the work, but the Gospel is to be proclaimed to the whole creation. We can reach the kosmos and the whole creation with the evangel only through men. In the pro- portion in which men hear the evangel, and, yielding to it, are remade by the healing ministry of the Servant of God, they become instruments through which He is able to reconstruct the order of the whole creation.
1 Chaos created the agony of the Cross. Wherever Christ came into the midst of disorder, He suffered. He, before whose vision there flamed perpetually the glory of the Divine ideal, felt the anguish of God in the presence of the degradation of that ideal All wounds and weariness, all sin and sorrow, not only of man, but through man in creation, surged upon His heart in waves of anguish. He called His disciples into fellowship with Himself in this suffering. The suffering of the flowers can never be cured if we do not touch them. The agony of the birds can never be ended save as we care for them. The earth can never be lifted from its dulness and deadness, and made to blossom into glorious harvest, save as it is touched by the life of renewed humanity. That is the story of the sufferings of Christ. He came into the world. Himself of the eternal Order, full of grace and truth, and in the consciousness of chaos and disorder He suffered.^
* Richard Craahaw. ■ G. Campbell Morgan.
ST. MARK 493
T The garden of a truly Christian man ought to be the most beautiful in the whole district. When it is not so, it is because he is not living in the full power of the risen Christ. I some- times think that if I am to judge the Christianity of London by looking at its gardens, it is an extremely poor thing. Let us keep hold of the philosophy of the simple illustration. That conception of Christian responsibility which aims at the saving of individual men, while it is utterly careless of the groaning of creation, is entirely out of harmony with the meaning of this commission. The home of the Christian man ought to be a microcosm of the Millennial Kingdom; and all the things of God's dear world — and how He loves it, flowers, and birds, and forces — ought to feel the touch of redeemed humanity, and be lifted into fuller life thereby.^
There was a Power in this sweet place,
An Eve in this Eden ; a ruling Grace
Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,
Was as God is to the starry scheme.
I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet Kejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet; I doubt not they felt the spirit that came From her glowing fingers through all their frame.