^ It is still the evident and immediate duty of many people living in Christian lands to set themselves at once to know God as He has been revealed to the world by Jesus Christ. To know Him is to have an untroubled and unlimited confidence in Him, and their want of confidence shows that they do not know Him. Eight knowledge of God is everything for strength and peace. It is told of one of our Scottish martyrs, that, looking up to the hills of his native vNithsdale, he cried out, " I could pass through these mountains were they clothed in flame if I could only be sure that God loves me." ^
^ One Sunday night, as I was preaching in my own place, I had finished the sermon, as I thought, with the declaration of the sufficiency of Christ. I had closed the sermon, and had passed
* J, Hontcr.
i66 AN INSEPARABLE LOVE
down to the vestry, when a plain working man followed me in. He said, " Did you finish your sermon just now ? " I said, " Yea, I think so ; I meant to." " I think," he said, " there is something you did not say ; you spoke about the forgiveness of sins, and the sufficiency of Christ, and the love of God in Redemption ; but there is something else you did not say, and it is a part I never like to be left out." I said, " What is it ? " " Why," he said, " years ago I was brought to Christ ; and a terrible load I took to Him. I placed it down at the Cross, and I thought all was right. But the next morning my skies were grey. The next day I was beaten in the Valley of Humiliation fighting with Apollyon. He won. My temptation was too strong, I failed and I fell, I failed again, till everybody ceased to believe in me ; and I ceased to believe in myself, and held myself in contempt. At last, one day, in desperation, I raised my hands to heaven and said, ' Lord Jesus, I claim Thy promise, I claim Thy power, look at me to-night.' " The man, continuing, said, "For five years He has kept me as I am, and I am amongst the living to praise Him. Preach, I beseech you, next time you approach this subject, preach that Christ is able to save to the uttermost. The Saviour can battle with temptation, and make us sufficient, every time the assault comes, to win the victory for the glory of God." ^
^ The motto of the order of knighthood called St. Patrick is " Quis separabit " : " Who shall separate ? "
Yea, of this I am persuaded — Neither Death, nor Life, nor Angels- No, not the Celestial Hierarchy, Not " they that excel in strength " — Nor the present world, nor the world to come;
Nor the height of Heaven,
Nor the abyss of Hades, Nor aught else in God's creation, Shall avail to sever us from the love of God, The love incarnated in the Messiah, in Jesus,
Our Lord — ours ! * 1 B. J. CampbeU,. ' A. S. Way.
Anathema from Christ.
Literature.
Clapperton (J. A.), Culture of the Christian Heart, 65. Hall (C. C), The Gospel of Diviiie Sacrifice, 131. Jackson (G.), Memoranda Paulina, 154. Kendrick (A. C), The Moral Conflict of Humaniti/, 211. Morrison (G. H.), The Unlighted Lustre, 96. Paget (F.), Studies in the Christian Character, 199. Plumptre (E. H.), Theology and Life, 30. Pusey (E. B.), Parochial and Cathedral Sermons, 257. Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxiv. (1878), No. 1425. Wakefield (H. R), in A Lent in London, 51. Wright (W. B.), The World to Come, 209.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxi. 409 (Wickham) ; li. 273 (Fairbairn). Preacher's Magazine, v. (1894), 115 (Gregory); xii. (1901), 539 (Champness).
l68
Anathema from Christ.
For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for m; brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh. — Rom. ix. 3.
1. Those who have ever thought of these words at all must have thought of them with amazement, " I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ." Anathema — that which is put under the ban and irrevocably devoted to destruction. Terrible enough would have been that word anathema, " accursed from Christ," if it had brought with it only the thoughts which a Jewish reader would have associated with it. To come imder all the curses, dark and dread, which were written in the Book of the Law ; to be cursed in waking and sleeping, going out and coming in, in buying and selling, in the city and in the field; to be shunned as a leper was shunned, hated as a Samaritan was hated, shut out from fellowship with all human society that had been most prized, from all kindly greeting of friends and neighbours — this was what he would have connected with the words as their least and lowest meaning.
The Christian reader, possibly the Jewish also, would have gone yet further. The Apostle's own words would have taught him to see more. To be delivered " unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh " ; to come under sharp pain of body, supernaturally inflicted, and to feel that excruciating agony, or loathsome plague, was the deserved chastisement of a sin against truth and light ; to be shut out from all \asible fellowship with the body of Christ, and therefore from all communion with Christ Himself; to be as in the outer darkness while the guests were feasting in the illumined chamber, here too to be shunned by those who had been friends and brothers — this would have been the Christian thought as to excommunication in the apostolic age.