^| In the physical domain itself, what is man's power compared with the awful exhibitions of the power of God, the power that lies behind the hurricane, that rocks the mountains in the earth- quake, that strikes with the lightning and speaks in the roar of the thunder? Napoleon, the last of the aspirants to universal empire built on physical force, when he marched his great army against Moscow, was not defeated by the Russians. The Muscovites burnt their city and withdrew. Then there appeared a different foe. General Winter came into the field and marshalled his forces, hail and snow, and the north wind. The French sentries in the morning were found standing white and frozen at their 1 posts — like Lot's wife — warning the Corsican to flee before the
vengeance of the forces of nature. And all along the line of his retreat the elements carried on a guerilla warfare. From Moscow to the Baltic the track of the discomfited army was marked by the dead.
Wb»+ ^oca the Gospel possess that makes it a demonstration of the power of God ? Two things especially.
(].) The first element of the dynamic content of the Gospel is the love of God. In this, salvation had its originating motive and cause. In this is the spring and source of the Gospel's power on the human heart. The very conception of salvation originated in God's love.
1 W. Pierce.
ROMANS i. 16 249
^f A missionary from India once told this story to a meeting at which I was present. She said, " I went with another missionary out into one of the Hindu villages to preach. It was a low-caste village, and the low-caste women were sitting on the ground. My sister began her sermon, and she said to them, " God is love, and God loves you." One of the women asked, "What is love?" Just think of that, a woman asking what is love ! The poor missionary turned to her friend and said, " What can I do when a woman does not know what love is ? " And she replied, " Ask these mothers how they feel towards their children." The preacher turned to one poor woman sitting there half-naked, rocking her half -naked baby in her arms, and said, " How do you feel towards your babies?" And the woman said, "I am a poor, low-caste woman, how can I tell how I feel towards my baby?" The missionary answered, " Oh yes, you can ; you do know " ; and the mother replied, " I do not know ; I feel a kind of going out of my heart towards my baby." " Yes," said the missionary, " that is it, and God feels a kind of going out of His heart to you." Is not that " good news ? " You have come in here, out of sorrow, out of sin, out of a wrestling and tugging with life — is not this " good news " you can really take to your heart, that the Eternal and the Infinite has a kind of going out of His heart to you ? x
(2) The second element of the dynamic content of the Gospel is the righteousness of God which it reveals. Whenever men awaken to a consciousness of guilt, they wish to work out a righteousness of their own ; they think they can accomplish it by keeping the law. We are taught in this Epistle and elsewhere that we cannot achieve this, but that another righteousness is needed and is provided. In the verse following the text, we are instructed that in the Gospel, " The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith." The righteousness of God does not here mean the moral rectitude which inheres in His nature as one of its attributes ; it means the justifying righteousness which He bestows on every one who believes on His Son. .
T| Buskin says that the root of almost every heresy from which the Church of Eome has ever suffered has been the effort of man to earn, rather than to receive, his salvation. It is very humbling to have to owe everything to the mercy of God ; we would fain have something of our own, to commend us to ourselves, if not to Him. Nothing can meet this need or melt our pride, save the persuasion that sinners though we are, God
1 Lyman Abbott.
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250 NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL
loves us ; for at the hand of love we can accept what we have not earned. And this persuasion the Gospel works in the heart of those who with meekness receive it. When we yield ourselves to the influence of Jesus, and let the message He brings of the love of God be illumined for us by the life He lived, and the death He died, faith is born. The love of God is shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Spirit.1
1j A quaint Scotch preacher said that the needle of the law opens the way for and carries the thread of the Gospel. I once quoted this saying in a tent-meeting and a hearer remarked to me afterwards : " Yes, you're right ; but the needle should be pulled out and not left behind." 2