* Christina G. Roasetti, Verses, 27.
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That was His revelation, His new, world-changing revelation of God. Himself, His Person, His character. His conduct — you know that ; such is God, The one word which declares God is Christ. Christlikeness is what God is.
o. Man is new. — As man is discovered to us in Christ, he is found to be a new creature. Man is in Christ another man. It will make a vast difference with us whether we habitually look upon man as created in Christ, or without Christ. You go down the street, and pass some one who is to you only another of the multitude of human beings of whom there seem sometimes to be already many more than there is any use for on this earth. You do not know that man, and do not want to know him. He may be only some worthless creature who hives, with other miserables, in some tenement house which was built by the devil of greed, and has been rented to demons of vice and squalor. Only some Board of Health, or the police, have occasion to know the habitats of so much swarming and festering humanity ! Or the man you meet may be respectable and honest enough, for all you know, only he exists, and must live his life, whatever it may be, in some one of those worlds which lie below the one into which you were born, and, probably enough, his name is not to be found written in your book of life. You owe him, you will admit, "equal rights," " liberty to make contracts," a certain humanity, and, if he should ever happen to come to your church, a seat in some- body else's pew. Something like that, in spirit, was the old-world view of man before the birth of Christ. That is the view of him which you might take, had you not been baptized into the name of Christ, in whom our whole common humanity exists, redeemed and capable of a great salvation. But what thought Jesus Christ of humanity as He came from the Father, and met that publican in Jericho ? As He went to God what said the Lord Jesus to that thief upon a cross ? As Jesus' revelation of God was vivify- ing, and is potential with blessing for the whole world, so also His revelation of man is wonderfully ennobling and transfiguring. Jesus brought out, perfected, and showed in His own Divine Person, the true image of humanity. Man is made to become Christlike. Man may be saved to Christlikenfiss.*
* Newman Smyth.
2 COR. V. 17 183
4. Lift is new. — Examine the average life which is being led in a society (we will say) like our own ; what is there about it that is noble or exalted ? To get along comfortably ; to make money ; perhaps, in some cases, to make a great deal of money ; to keep trouble at a distance, if possible ; and to surround oneself with everything that is pleasant and agreeable ; does not this — or something like this — seem to be the condition of hundreds and hundreds of the ordinary men and women with whom we are acquainted ? They are respectable ! They are blameless ! They are kind ! No one can lay any grave fault to their charge. But to say that there is anything lofty or noble or aspiring about them would be a simple misuse of language. But let Christ enter the life, and all this is changed. The commonest act is ennobled by being done for Him. Let Christ into all life ; and the present — no matter what it is — reaches out and fastens itself on to the distant eternity, and becomes the germ of a never- ending existence.
Old sorrows that sat at the heart's sealed gate
Like sentinels grim and sad, While out in the night damp, weary and late, The King, with a gift divinely great.
Waited to make me glad :
Old fears that hung like a changing cloud
Over a sunless day, Old burdens that kept the spirit bowed, Old wrongs that rankled and clamoured loud —
They have passed like a dream away.
In the world without and the world within
He maketh the old things new ; The touch of sorrow, the stain of sin, Have fled from the gate where the King came in,
From the chill night's damp and dew.
Anew in the heavens the sweet stars shine,
On earth new blossoms spring; The old life lost in the Life Divine, " Thy will be mine, my will is Thine,"
Is the new song the hearts sing.
i84 IN CHRIST A NEW CREATION
5. And the whole universe is neio. — For when the great change takes place, even the face of nature has a different look : there is a new glory in the heavens and a new beauty on the earth ; the light that never was on sea or land begins to dawn.
The revolution in science which is associated with the name of Copernicus, was a similar shifting of the centre from earth to heaven; and the result of it was a new creation, a universe totally different from what had been known, or even imagined, before. Up to this time, it had been taken for granted that the earth was the centre of the universe, and on that false assumption there had been built up a vast science of astronomy (which, be it remembered, the scientific men of the time accepted as correct), a science which was no mere guess-work, for it was based on observations which had been most carefully made and diligently recorded for centuries. The intricacies of that old Ptolemaic system of the universe seem absurd enough to us now ; but all its spheres, and cycles, and epicycles, and deferents had a strong foundation on exceedingly patient and careful observations of the motions of the heavenly bodies as taken from the earth. As taken from the earth — there lay the whole fallacy. But one might ask. Where else can you take them from ? Erect the highest Eiffel Tower on the top of the loftiest mountain, and still you take your observations from the earth. To which Copernicus replied : Nevertheless, so long as you take your observations from the earth, you are all wrong; for it is not the centre. The true centre is the sun, and though you cannot put your observatory in the sun, you can go there by faith ; you can take your station there mentally even if you cannot bodily, and then out of old chaos will at once come new order.