U " Eeason cries, ' if God were good, He could not look upon the sin and misery of man and live; His heart would break.' The Church points to the Crucifixion and says, ' God's heart did
1 0. Siiy§stwr Home, Relationships of Life, 139.
16 POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD
break.' Eeason cries, ' Born and reared in sin and pain as we are, how can we keep from sin? It is the Creator who is responsible ; it is God who deserves to be punished.' The Church kneels by the cross and whispers, ' God accepts the responsibility and bears the punishment.' Eeason cries, ' Who is God ? What is God ? The name stands for the unknown. It is blasphemy to say we know Him.' The Church kisses the feet of the dying Christ and says, ' We must worship the majesty we see.' "
O that Thy Name may be sounded
Afar over earth and sea, Till the dead awaken and praise Thee,
And the dumb lips sing to Thee!
Sound forth as a song of triumph
Wherever man's foot has trod, The despised, the derided message,
The foolishness of God.
Jesus, dishonoured and dying,
A felon on either side — Jesus, the song of the drunkards,
Jesus the Crucified !
Name of God's tender comfort,
Name of His glorious power, Name that is song and sweetness,
The strong everlasting tower,
Jesus the Lamb accepted,
Jesus the Priest on His throne —
Jesus the King who is coming — Jesus Thy Name alone!
III.
The Eeception of the Message.
No two races, no two types of the human mind, could have been more widely different, more directly the opposite of each other, than the Jew and the Greek. The very fact that the Gospel was displeasing to the one might therefore have led us to expect that it would be sure to please the other. And yet Jews and Greeks, who agreed in nothing else, agreed in rejecting Christ.
i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 17
^J Widely different as the demands of the Jew and the Greek seemed at first, they were really asking one and the same thing; they were asking for an unspiritual religion; a revelation that should not deal with the heart at all in the way of trial or discipline, that would spare them the great tiial of being called on to trust and to love, in spite of doubt and difficulty. What they sought for, in one word, was knowledge without belief. The Jew demanded a demonstration of God to his senses ; the Greek demanded a demonstration of God to his intellect. The Jew required a revelation . that should compel assent; the Greek required one that should give no occasion for doubt. Both demanded a religion without faith, both asked to see, both refused to believe in an invisible God, and, therefore, both rejected a crucified Christ.1
1. To the Jews, the death upon the Cross was a stumbling- block, i.e. it was something which they could not get over, because it was so utterly contrary and so entirely repugnant to their religious ideas. It was a "stumblingblock" ; literally a trap, something that arrests the foot suddenly in walking and causes a fall. Here, in the very forefront of the Gospel, was the stumbling-block, which they could not get over, and which pre- vented them from making any effort to weigh the evidences and the claims of Christianity.
(1) To the Jew, the Cross meant failure of the most evident and pitiful kind ; it meant impotence and weakness ; it meant a life of great apparent promise, a career of great and wide-felt influence, ending in the most disastrous, the most humiliating acknowledgment of helplessness.
% It was not only incredible, it was disgusting and abominable, this "word of the Cross." That men should dare to speak of One crucified, of One hung upon a tree, of One who had suffered the death of the accursed as the Messiah of Israel, the Saviour of the world, the chosen Servant of Jehovah — their faces reddened with shame or gathered blackness with rage when they heard of it. In the Jewish writings of those ages our Lord is never directly spoken of. His name was to them a thing of nameless horror ; He was a thing of darkness so fearful, so shocking, that to speak or write of Him was by tacit consent forbidden. Only in far-fetched figures and suggestions was that object of loathing dimly alluded to as the arch enemy of Israel.2
1 W. C. Magce. * R. Winterbotham.
I COR. — 2
i* POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD
(2) There are multitudes of Christians who worship success ; and these would reject and repudiate Christ as emphatically as the Jews if it were open to them, if they were really free to be consistent. Christ represents failure, weakness, humiliation ; and they admire only what is successful in this world, what is strong in mere physical might, what is glorified by itself.
If They tell us that there are men of science who stumble at the Cross. There are young men and middle-aged men, and old men, so we are told, who follow us sympathetically until we come to the proclamation of the sacrifice of Christ as the atone- ment for sin, and there they stumble. Shall we remove the cross that these people may not stumble? If we do we remove the world's redemption at the same time. Even though it be a stumbling-block to some, we must preach Christ crucified.1