' D. 0. A. Agnew, Tfis Theology of Consolation, 234.
2 COR. V. 21 235
and who, having sinned, have been redeemed ; in such a society all that is good and beautiful in our present human life is secured and made permanent, all that is base and vile is excluded ; death has lost its meaning, because it is understood that these beings are immortal, and if they pass from world to world, gently translated they may fade out of sight, but, no longer identified with a material and earthly organism, they are no longer subjected to the law of decay. Thrilled through and through with the un- impeded life of God, moving in the faultless harmony of that one holy and loving will, they range through the endless spheres and systems of existence, ever learning, ever wondering, ever wor- shipping, blessed infinitely as in brief and vanishing moments of the present life some of us have been blessed. The yearning which this order of things can create but never satisfy is pro- gressively satisfied. The dreams of the good are realized —
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky.
Now this dream of a sinless humanity, made out of this sinful humanity redeemed, this dream which haunts the imagination of Plato, Sir Thomas More, and the Utopian prophets of all ages, this dream which, materialized, inspires all Socialist reformers, this dream which evolutionists retain in the cold and comfortless form of a distant and vastly improved humanity in which we have no part except that of dying for it, this dream is the sober expectation of the Apostles. They are convinced that it will be ; they are also convinced that they hold in their hands the truth and the power which will ultimately, however slowly, realize it.
^ How far off the final triumph of Christ may be when sin shall be destroyed for ever and death itself shall die, it is not ours to know. Long has been the strife, intense the agony, and the whole creation is groaning and travailing in pain together until now ; and so will continue till Christ be formed in every human soul, and in Him all are made alive. Then will the prayer of ages be answered and God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Towards this sublime consummation, the unchallenged reign of God the Father, and the uninterrupted harmony of the human race with its Creator, all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, unceasingly conspire. We have seen how far from primeval fire vapour and stellar dust, through immeasur-
236 THE SINLESS MADE SIN
able geologic eras this process swept forward till the earth be- came prepared for that august, mysterious guest called Life, and on through that endless kaleidoscopic succession of ever rising organisms till God-like man appeared, and still on through man's chequered career till Christ Himself became incarnate to remake Mankind, to save that which was lost, and to turn this sin- blighted earth into Heaven. For this He is now energizing in the souls of men, and we cannot doubt that the ultimate survival of the Christ-type is assured. By Divine right of the fittest it must prevail. Thus, at long last, shall the Divine heart be satisfied, and a saved and wondering universe behold — no longer in a mirror darkly, but face to face — the Unveiled Glory.^
With this ambiguous earth His dealings have been told us. These abide: The signal to a maid, the human birth, The lesson, and the young Man crucified.
But not a star of all The innumerable host of stars has heard How He administered this terrestrial ball. Our race have kept their Lord's entrusted Word.
Of His earth-visiting feet N"one knows the secret, cherished, perilous. The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet, Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.
No planet knows that this Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave, Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss, Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.
Nor, in our little day, May His devices with the heavens be guessed, His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way Or His bestowals there be manifest.
But in the eternities. Doubtless we shall compare together, hear A million alien Gospels, in what guise He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.
^ L. W. Caws, The Unveiled Olory, 205.
2 COR. V. 21 237
O, be prepared, my soul ! To read the inconceivable, to scan The million forms of God those stars unroll When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.*
4. Now out of all this two great lights flash forth — one upon God, and one upon ourselves.
(1) Here is a great light upon God. For it is God who does it all : He hath made Him to be sin. There used to be a way of stating the sacrifice of Christ as if it were something flung at the feet of an angry God to persuade Him to change His mind. But God did not need to change His mind. The ministry of recon- ciliation began in His own heart before ever it expressed itself in the perfect Life or the wondrous Death. It was necessary that the world should be redeemed by sacrifice ; but the sacrifice that redeemed us was the sacrifice of God, and the price that bought us was the gift of God. "He hath made him to be sin"; and when we see Christ identifying Himself with our sinful race, even to the uttermost of all that was involved in that, we know that the heart of God is thus entangled in our sorrow, and the hands of God are stretched out to save us from our sin. That is why this message is so melting, so subduing, so morally magnificent. It was of the message of this verse that Goethe said, " There is nothing diviner than this." And there is indeed nothing diviner than this — that Gt)d Himself should stoop to share the lot of His creatures, even to the deepest that was involved in their sin, and should raise them to His own glory and immortality. This is a God we can worship. His nature and His name is Love.