* J. Tulloch, Sundays at Balmoral, 94.
294 TO WHOM SHALL WE GO?
are in His Gospel, and they must impress us with their absolute adequacy.
^ Surprise at first, and afterwards a sense of adequacy, are awakened by a study of the fact of Christ. Then follows in our minds the tribute we instinctively pay to greatness, to simplicity, and power. A good part of the admiration we have for Abraham Lincoln is based upon our perception of his native nobility, his elemental simplicity. He was so free from anything like artificial greatness, from the counterfeit semblance of dignity, and yet so masterful, so completely captain of his soul, and of the Ship of State he guided through the seething sea of war. It is easy to admire a man of our own flesh and blood, so near us that there are those still living who have touched his hand. It is not so easy to admire a personality separated from us by sixty genera- tions. Yet admiration is a feeble word to measure the response in our hearts when we hear the name of Mary's Son. He seems not so far away, after all. "We read the Gospels and rise with a kind of feeling that if we have not seen Him, we have at least heard His footfall on the temple's marble pavement or the street, that we have caught some accent of His voice, or touched the hem of His passing garments. Whittier puts it so —
But warm, sweet, tender, even yet
A present help is He; And faith has still its Olivet,
And love its Galilee.
The healing of His seamless dress
Is by our beds of pain; We touch Him in life's throng and press,
And we are whole again.^
j(l) When we know that we love God and that God loves us, we are healed of the grievous wounds of life. In the infinite flood of Divine and human love our sins and sorrows are drowned, and the ark of joy and peace alone survives. To have the heart full of love, and to feel that we are infinitely loved, is so Divine a passion that it lifts us into a world where we forget our pain and wrong. We feel our pains and sins, but even when we feel them — and many are our days of depression — we feel them only for a time. We know they will come to an end, and all the arguments based on them against the goodness and love of God
* 0. 0. Albertson, College Sermons, 48.
ST. JOHN VI. 68 295
drift away like feeble clouds before the summer wind. The soul is at peace, though life be shipwrecked in the storm. We know, though we have been battered by sin, that through love of Love we are becoming righteous. We know, though sorrows are deep, that out of hunger for righteousness we are attaining joy. We understand, though we are left as lonely often as a mountain peak, that we are not alone, for the Father is with us. This is the first truth as it is in Jesus.
A
Lord, weary of a painful way,
All night our heads we would not lay
Under the naked sky; But ask who worthiest? who will best Entreat a tired and lowly guest
With promptest courtesy ?
And Thou art worthiest; there will not One loving usage be forgot
By Thee; Thy kiss will greet Us entering; Thou wilt not disdain To wash away each guilty stain
From off our soiled feet.
We enter, from this time to prove Thy hospitality and love
Shown tow'rd Thy meanest guest : From house to house we would not stray, For whither should we go away ?
With Thee is perfect rest.^
/ (2) The second declaration Christ made followed on the first. It was the declaration of the forgiveness of sins. The removal of the natural results of wrong-doing, of what we call punishment, is not forgiveness. Forgiveness is to feel at one with love, with ,. our Father's heart ; to feel like a child to God ; to feel the strange delight that we are in union with God and His righteousness, and to do what the feeling urges; to feel the emotion of joy urging us to the act of good. Yes, that is the forgiveness of sins. A new life is open to us. We hear the voice of Jesus: "Go, you will sin no more." For nearly twenty centuries, the words, the character, the life, the teaching, and the death of Jesus,
* Trench, Poems. 145.
/
296 TO WHOM SHALL WE GO?
all they were, and all they mean, have brought healing to this universal misery of man. There are millions of lives to testify to the truth of this. The lost have found themselves; the sinners have ceased to sin, the miserable have become happy; the restless have reached peace ; the dissolute have become pure ; the malicious and envious have learned to love ; the selfish have devoted themselves to others ; the poor of soul have become rich, the useless useful, the fearful brave, and the enslaved free. > Where the secret lies we cannot altogether know, but we shall know hereafter. What we do know is the facts ; the result of the words of Christ. Men are redeemed ; and beneath every form of Christianity that is the permanent thing. The dogmas do not count, the criticism, the discussions are nothing: the healing power, the forgiveness of sins — that is all. It is the power within to lead a new life and to forget the burden of the past — a mighty thing indeed ! And the reason of it all is contained in those words of Jesus, if we could but reach their infinite depth in thought : "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much." That was the second declaration of Jesus, and it followed from His doctrine of a Father of men who, being good, loved them, and could not, consistently with fatherhood, leave His children to be mastered by evil. He was bound to make them, in the end, holy with Himself.