^ A comet — these vagrants of the skies — has liberty to roam, and what does it make of it ? It plunges away out into depths of darkness and infernos of ice and cold. But if it came within the attraction of some great blazing sun, and subsided into a planet, it would have lost nothing of its true liberty, and would move in music and light around the source of blessedness and life. And so you and I, as long as we make ourselves the " sinful centres of our rebel powers," so long do we subject ourselves to alterations of temperature almost too great to bear. Let us come back to the light, and move round the Christ ; satellites of that Sun, and therefore illumined by His light and warmed by His life-produc- ing heat.*
2. Next, the dynamic of the cross becomes the inspiration of a sacrificial life. — " One died for all, therefore all died ; and he died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto them- selves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again." The idea here expressed is a favourite one with the Apostle. Often he speaks of Christians as " dead with Christ," as " made conformable to his death," as " planted together in the likeness of his death." And in one very striking passage in particular, which occurs in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians, at the twentieth verse, he thus writes : " I am crucified with Christ : nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me : and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." In this striking passage the very same idea is expressed in nearly the same language as in the text, namely, that, in the practical judgment of the faithful Christian, his own life, as to all selfish purposes, is held by him to have expired upon his Saviour's cross, so that in his prevailing disposition he is now dead to everything that inter- feres with his devotedness to the Son of God, who gave Himself for him. So closely does his fate unite him to the Saviour that he views himself as having fellowship with that Saviour alike in His crucifixion and in His resurrection, and " reckons himself " to be " dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ." He lives no more himself, but Christ liveth in him; the whole
' J. E. Maolean, Dr. Pierton and his Message^ 278. ' A. Maclaren.
2 COR. V. 14, 15 159
life which he now leads, as a Christian, being one of conformity to the example, and subserviency to the will of Christ.
He dwelt within the wilderness
Disdaining Mammon's lure : He walked among the thorns of pain,
And yet His step was sure.
He saw the vine-deck't homes of men.
And gazed with quiet eyes; He turned away: "Not here," He said,
"Is found My Paradise."
He saw the gilded chariots pass,
The conqueror's array: They held to Him a laurel crown,
And still He turned away.
Back to the wilderness He went
Without a thought of loss : He hewed out of the wood two beams
And made Himself a Cross.
" If I would save them I must die ! "
(This was the thing He said); "Perchance the hearts that hate Me now
Will learn to love Me dead."
He died upon the Cross He made.
Without a lip to bless: He rose into a million hearts.
And this was His success.^
3. It is a glad ministry. — Por the yoke of Christ is not a despotic constraint, like the law with its " shalt " and " shalt not," spoken in thunder from Sinai: not an unreasonable constraint, like that of self and Satan, chaining men to compliances which they know to be unlawful and fatal to truth and peace ; not an arbitrary constraint, like the shifting fashions of this vain world, which men follow blindly about, not knowing whither they may lead them. It is none of these; its law is generated in the soul itself, and in its best and highest portion. Its cord that binds 1 W. J. Dawson, The Book of Courage, 26.
i6o THE CONSTRAINT OF LOVE
men is woven out of the noblest of human motives — faith, grati- tude, adoration. " The Son of God loved me " — this is its first principle, graven deeply on the heart. This is no vague admira- tion of His love; this goes beyond the orator and the poet; this is the guilty sinner grasping his Saviour, the drowning mariner reaching at his plank ; a fact not only consented to by the under- standing, not only uttered by the lips, not only overflowing at the fountain of tears, but fixed in the central depths of the personal being, resident, and paramount, in the council chamber . of the heart. " The Son of God loved me." Am I convinced of this ? Then He is bound to me, and I to Him ; wherever He is, there am I ; wherever I am, there is He.
^ When the long absent sun once more revisits the Polar seas, and the weary adventurer, close captive of the cold, with his bark anchored to an ice-floe, becomes conscious of the universal thaw, and feels himself borne outward by the resistless pressure of the liberated waters ; right joyously does he loose his moorings and commit himself to the gladsome flush, and steers full gallantly through the melting masses which are speeding southward with himself. Thus eagerly does the soul, long frozen up in selfishness, obey the mighty influence of the Sun of Righteousness, and sur- render itself to the onflow of the love of Christ. " For the love of Christ constraineth us." ^