2. To know Christ crucified is to know how to live and how to die.
(1) St. Paul wanted to find a power that should be adequate to cope with men's dispositions and reach down to the very centre of feeling, and that should take hold of men's wills. And he found that power in Christ. They who long after better things find their ideal in Him ; He lives on by the cords of love, He bids them live righteously and holily in this present world ; and with the command comes the power. There is power in Christ to transform the nature and to renew the life ; and because the Apostle knew this, he made Him the theme of his preaching, and uplifted Him before the longing eyes of Jew and Gentile.
T[ Does God have no heroes but those who lead on a great battlefield? Has He no saints but those in pictures, with a halo about their head? Heroism in the common life, that is what the world needs ; men and women who in common places will do everyday duties without noise or glitter, just because the heart and conscience say, " This is the way, walk ye in it."
(2) There is one study, the deepest, hardest of all, which is equally and supremely necessary for every one to make some progress in before the application of it comes. It is the study of how to die. We cannot think how ever it will be possible for .us to go through that. One thing we hope. We hope that we may not die reluctant, as if under doom, but with life's onward action and life's hopefulness still present in us ; looking tenderly back, but looking calmly, earnestly, before us. If that is our hope, on what can it rest ? It is assured to us as soon as Christ
1 J. Hunter,
i CORINTHIANS n. 2 43
crucified is assured to us. The saints of all time, in proportion to the measure of their faith and of their self-sacrifice, have found death robbed of its terrors.
Pausing a moment ere the day was done, While yet the earth was scintillant with light, I backward glanced. From valley, plain, and height, At intervals, where my life-path had run, Eose cross on cross ; and nailed upon each one Was my dead self. And yet that gruesome sight Lent sudden splendour to the falling night, Showing the conquests that my soul had won.
Up to the rising stars I looked and cried,
" There is no death ! for year on year, re-born
I wake to larger life: to joy more great,
So many times have I been crucified,
So often seen the resurrection morn,
I go triumphant, though new Calvaries wait."1
1 Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Poems of Experience, 31.
Things Prepared for Love.
Literature.
Blake (R. E.), Good News from Heaven, 18.
Brown (A. G.), God's Full-orbed Gospel, 110.
Davies (J. LI.), The Purpose of God, 55.
Dewhurst (E. M.), The King and His Servants, 173.
Drummond (J.), Spiritual Religion, 78.
Gibson (J. M.), A Strong City, 181.
Greenhough (J. G.), The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, 77.
Hodge (C.), Princeton Sermons, 358.
Hopkins (E. H.), Hidden yet Possessed, 1.
Horton (R. F.), The Trinity, 21.
Houchin (J. TV.), The Vision of God, 132.
Inge (TV. R.), All Saints' Sermons, 92.
Lockyer (T. F.), Inspirations of the Christian Life, 44.
Matheson (G.), Thoughts for Life's Journey, 34.
„ Voices of the Spirit, 158.
Moore (E. TV.), Life Transfigured, 87. Morris (TV.), in The Welsh Pulpit of To-Day, 396. Moule (H. C. G.), Christ is All, 107. Murray (A.), The Spirit of Christ, 214. Paget (E. C.), Silence, 130. Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, iv. 249. Robertson (F. TV.), Sermons, i. 1 ; iii. 26. Shedd (TV. G. T.), Sermons to the Spiritual Man, 315. Shelford (L. E.), By Way of Remembrance, 184. Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, ii. (1856), No. 56. Temple (F.), Rugby Sermons, iii. 236. TVestcott (B. F.), The Historic Faith, 142. Cambridge Review, iii., Supplement No. 56 (Moule). Christian World Pulpit, xii. 273 (Chown) ; xxix. 360 (TVickham) ; xxxii.
193 (TVestcott); xxxviii. 424 (Ferrier) ; lxii. 12 (Hall); lxxx. 150
(Hanson). Churchman's Pulpit, Sixth Sunday after Trinity ; x. 430 (Shelford). Homiletic Review^ xlvii. 189 (Hillis).
Things Prepared for Love.
But as it is written,
Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, And which entered not into the heart of man, Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him.
i Cor. ii. 9.
Nowhere in the Old Testament are these words literally found. But the source of the quotation is undoubtedly the passage, Isa. lxiv. 4 combined with lxv. 17: "Men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen a God beside thee, which worketh for him that waiteth for him . . . " ; and, " The former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind." Similar combinations of several prophetic quotations are not rare in St. Paul's writings.
The context of the verse is the assertion of the Apostle that there is about the Gospel a hidden wisdom, an inner truth ; and that this truth was invisible to the minds of those who rejected and crucified the Saviour ; for, had they seen it, they would not have crucified Him. And then comes in the text, to prove that such blindness of the soul was recognized long before in the Old Testament Scriptures as a mystery and a fact. The blindness of those who slew the Lord did but answer to what " was written " — that solemn formula of final appeal with the Apostles and their Master. Isaiah had spoken of the acts of God in redeeming mercy as things beyond the reach of a priori discovery by human senses, and reason, and imagination. Man could receive them when revealed ; there was that in man which could respond to them when revealed ; but for that revelation there was needed the action of the Divine Spirit on the spirit of man. No record of facts, no witness of phenomena, without the special action of the Holy Spirit, could bring them home to the heart. But to