^ G. Campbell Morgan. * R. L. Stevenson, Lay Morals.
ST. JOHN (2) — 23
354 CHRIST'S MISSION AND OURS
they were His children who were groaning in bondage, and the meaning of their anguish reached and touched His heart. And God gave His only begotten Son, that the world should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Now as the Father required for the expression of His own mind and will and love to the world, and by the very nature of the case, a sufficient and adequate image, organ, hand, word, and mediatorial ambassador ; so Christ required — when He was about to return clothed in our humanity to the bosom of the Father, to the midst of the throne — a corresponding agency. We are not the direct representatives of the Invisible God, of Him who fills eternity and space with His glory ; but we are sent by Christ to be the image, the messengers, the hands, the mediatorial repre- sentatives of His Divine humanity to the world in which we live. Therefore, first of all, in order to realize the grandeur of our calling, let us keep ever in mind that Christ sends us to men, that by our character, by our growing sanctification, by our holy living, by our entire walk, by our habits, our spirit, we may make Him known ; He was and is the light of the world, but light itself is invisible unless reflected or refracted by the medium on or through which it vibrates. We may be able to reflect some one ray of the perfect beam of unsullied light.
^ I am very glad that you asked me your question. May T put it this way ? The contents of the Christian revelation is the Person of the Lord Jesus. Scripture is the record of that revela- tion. The Church is the witness of that revelation.
In early times, amongst a rude and semi-barbarous people, the Church was greatly engaged in considering how she was to discharge her function as a witness. But this process was largely concerned with mechanism. Just as the State was striving at the same time to embody the idea of justice ; the method was imperfect, but the idea existed nowhere else. Still, at the present day, the State embodies that idea imperfectly ; but we do not doubt about the idea itself. So with the revelation of which the Church is the guardian. That revelation is immediate to each human soul; and the attempts to express it in the forms of outward organisation — their partial success, their conspicuous failure — only make the eternal meaning of the revelation itself clearer and more precious.^
' TAc Life and Letters of Mandell Cra'ghton, i. 416.
ST. JOHN XX. 21 355
^ One of the last acts of Henry Ward Beecher showed the true greatness of that great man. He was leaving Plymouth Church on the last Sabbath evening of his ministry, just as the strains of the organ were dying away, when he saw two little pauper children, who had come inside from the storm to listen to the music, startled with childish fright as he drew near, as though detected in some wrong; but the warm-hearted preacher spoke lovingly to them, and, kissing them, soothed away their fears, as he went out with them into the wintry cold and sleet, with his arms thrown around them to shelter and shield. And, doing this act of lowly love, he went home to die.^
2. It is a mission of Redemption.
(1) Christ came into the world to express God's absolute hatred of sin, and to extirpate it from the heart of man, by taking upon Himself all its curse and shame, bearing these to the bitter end. He came on a sacrificial and redeeming mission, to do what no angel or man could accomplish. He came to set forth what was eternally present in the Father's heart, to bring to a climax the expression of perfect holiness and boundless mercy, to bring righteousness and love with infinite travail and peerless joy into absolute unity, to justify by remission of sins past, present, and to come, and to prove that when men realize this awful and glorious fact, when little children can sob themselves to rest in the arms of Jesus, then full reconciliation, repentance, submission to the will of the Father supervene, and there is the beginning of a new and eternal life.
My blood so red
For thee was shed,
Come home again, come home again !
My own sweet heart, come home again!
You've gone astray
Out of your way —
Come home again, come home again !
(2) Now if we are sent at all, we are sent to take a share in the very ministry of our Lord Himself. Our service represents and continues His service. Our labour is indissolubly joined to His. We are actually brought into a partnership with Him who " came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his
^ T. F. Lockyer, The Inspirations of the Christian Life, 121.
356 CHRIST'S MISSION AND OURS
life a ransom for many." And what a tremendous obligation does that fellowship lay upon us ! We remember, with shame for ourselves, how utterly Christ gave Himself. Of Tissot's 365 drawings of His life, no less than 310 are concerned with the ministry and Passion : and yet even that proportion is inadequate to express the place which service occupied in the life of the Great Pastor. Why, surely His every act, His every word and thought, was service. The whole of His life was one long sacri- ficing of Himself for others. And when there was nothing further that His life could give. He gave the life itself a willing sacrifice in death. Well might our Lord, looking into the eager faces of His Apostles, ask, " Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of ? " Well may He put to us that question now !