6S A TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER
disavow any knowledge of the inner mysteries of science. In your knowledge or ignorance you accept the fact you cannot alter, the fact that this world owes light and heat and colour and beauty to the sun which God has set to rule our day and night. Jesus Christ is as obtrusive and fixed a fact.
God " prepared " Him : pre-arranged, fore-ordained, and took steps beforehand for His coming ; made ready the way before Him by His Law and by His prophets, by a gradual education of the world to desire Him and to find its need of Him; and at last brought Him into it " before the face " — in the sight — " of all the peoples," of all the races and nations of mankind, so as to be as much " a light to lighten the Gentiles " — a light (more literally) unto the unveiling of the Gentiles; that is, for the purpose of taking off from the Gentiles that " veil " of which Isaiah speaks as "spread over all nations," the veil of indifference and blind- ness and hardness of heart — as " the glory of God's own people Israel." The eye of the faithful old man was opened to see beyond the confines of his own nation ; to embrace in one glance all the kingdoms of the earth in all time and in every place ; and to declare that to each and to all Christ comes — comes to take off fiom them the veil of sin ; and to fulfil at last the glorious pre- diction, " All flesh shall see the salvation of God."
^ Freeman, the historian, in speaking about the fall of the Roman Empire and the overturning of the throne of Csesar Augustus by the triumph of Christianity, finds in that event something which he calls more miraculous even than the resur- rection of Christ. And certainly it was an extraordinary triumph. Within eighty years of the day Jesus was put to death as a common malefactor, a governor of one of the Provinces of the Roman Empire writes to his Imperial master, and asks, " What in the world am I to do ? People are deserting the pagan temple, and are gathering in illegal conventicles to worship somebody who, it was always understood, had a name of infamy — one Christus who had been put to an ignominious death years before." Would you believe that before another three hundred years had passed, sitting in the seat of Caesar was a Christian Emperor, and surrounding him a body-guard of Christian stalwarts, men bearing the stigma of Jesus, for they had been tortured and mutilated for their faith. Before another hundred years had gone, the throne had vanished altogether, and in the seat of Caesar there sat one, and there still sits one, whose only right to be there is that he
i
ST. LUKE II. 34, 35 69
claims to be there as the Vicar and Vicegerent of Jesus Christ. That was the historic triumph in the early ages. It is a triumph that is repeated every day. Through storm and earthquake and eclipse, through the coming and the going of the generations of men, through the founding and the overturning of Empires, through the migrations of the peoples, Jesus Christ moves steadily on.^
2. Christ's influence on men corresponds to their attitude towards Him. This is only to say that the spiritual world is not ruled mechanically. If Christ had come from heaven as a resist- less influence for good, so that men could not but be bettered by Him, the result would have been mechanical — ^just as mechanical as anything which is set going by steam-power or by water-power. And yet, even in vegetable or brute nature, some conditions are requisite if physical reinforcements of vital power are to be of real use. The sun and the rain can do little for the sickly or withered tree. The greenest pasturage cannot tempt the dying hind. There must be an existing capacity for being nourished, in the tree and in the animal, if there is to be improvement. Much more does this law obtain in the spiritual world. For, being a spirit, man is free ; he can accept or reject even the highest gifts of God. He is never coerced into excellence, any more than he is coerced into wickedness ; he is, in the highest sense, master of his destiny. The truth and grace of God act upon him with good results only so far as he is willing that they should do so. God has made man free. He does not withdraw this prerogative of freedom, even when it is used against Himself ; and the exercise of this freedom by man to accept or reject even his own highest good, explains the different results of Christ's coming in different souls.
T[ A departure from the perfect will of God was an absolute necessity if God wished to make a perfect or a good race of men. It is true God could have made men who would have had no choice but to serve Him, whose love would have been the result of law, whose worship a necessity of their condition ; but would you care for a man who was made to love you, compelled to serve you ? How then could God be satisfied with service that would not even satisfy the wants of our human nature ? If love is to be real love, service real service, it must be voluntary and spon- taneous; men must be free to give or withhold it. Now even