^ When you speak to me of the love of God, I always feel sure that you mean a love which includes and implies righteous- ness, and I had hoped that you would interpret me in the same way. In fact I would say that, in contrasting the fatherhood of God with His judgeship, I meant the first to represent a right- eousness which seeks to communicatei itself, and the second a righteousness which seeks to vindicate itself, and I intended to say that the second was put in action in subserviency to the first.*
• Alice Meynell, Foems, 114.
' Letters of Thomas JErskme of Linlathen, ii. 183,
238 THE SINLESS MADE SIN
For me, I have my own church equally: And in this church my faith sprang first ! . . . In youth I looked to these very skies, And probing their immensities, I found God there, His visible power;
Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense
Of the power, an equal evidence That His love, there too, was the nobler dower. For the loving worm within its clod Were diviner than a loveless god Amid His worlds, I will dare to say . . . Love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it.
Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it.
The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it;
Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it. And I shall behold Thee, face to face,
0 God, and in Thy light retrace
How in all I loved here, still wast Thou ! Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,
1 shall find as able to satiate
The love. Thy gift, as my spirit's wonder Thou art able to quicken and sublimate.
With this sky of Thine, that I now walk under, And glory in Thee for, as I gaze Thus, thus ! Oh, let men keep their ways Of seeking Thee in a narrow shrine — Be this my way.' And this is mine!^
(2) Here also is a light upon ourselves and our own possibilities. We want to make something of ourselves — What shall it be? Shall we allow God to make us — righteousness ? To make us the righteousness of God ? To give us this Divine standing and hope and victory ? We must bestir our hearts to receive the message, to take the gift, to live the life ; since, because Christ has lived and died, all things are possible. "That we might be made . . ." What hope, what promise, what victory lies there !
^ I have somewhere read of an American statesman who sinned a certain sin. On his death-bed he asked for a dictionary; he wanted, he said, to look up the word " Eemorse." The physician told him there was no dictionary in the room. " Take a card then," said he, "and write on it the word that best symbolizes ' Browning, Christmas Eve.
2 COR. V. 2 1 239
my Boul. Write it in large letters. Underscore it — the word Eemorse." It was done as he desired, and after he had gazed upon it for a time, he handed the card again to the doctor, " What shall I do with it ? " said the puzzled physician. " Put it in your pocket," was the reply ; " and when I am gone, take it out and look at it, and say, ' That is the soul of John Eandolph.' " That is what some men have made of themselves — remorse, living remorse, incarnate remorse. But God desires that we should be made something better than that : He desires that we should he made righteousness. It is possible.
Just and holy is Thy name,
I am all unrighteousness ; False and full of sin I am,
Thou art full of truth and grace.* » J. M. E. Ross.
Sorrow.
2 COR, & GAL. — 1 6
Literature.
Amot (W.), Roots and Fruits of tho Christian Life, SOOl
Blake (W.), Oood Neios from Heaven, 44,
Blunt (J. J.), Plain Sermons, i. 142.
Brooks (P.), Christ the Life and Light, 1.
Candlish (R. S.), Scri'pture Characters, 143.
Cottam (S. E.), New Sermons for a New Century, 41.
Hodge (C), Princeton Sermons, 125.
Maclaren (A.), A Year's Ministry, ii. 113.
Owen (J. W.), Some Australian Sermons, 193.
Paget (F.), The Spirit of Discipline, 51.
Pierson (A. T.), Foundation Truths, 3.
Robertson (F. W.), Expository Lectures on the Corinthians, 372.
Spurgeon (C. H.), My Sermon Notes : Romans to Revelation, 246.
Stevens (H.), Sermon Outlines, 114.
Symonds (A. R.), Sermons, 44.
Christian World Pulpit, Ixi. 152 (G. Body).
Churchman's Pulpit, Lenten Season, v. 49 (J. Jackson), 226 (F. W
Robertson). National Preacher, xxxviii. 111 (J. G. Vose).
Sorrow.
For godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation, a repentance which bringeth no regret : but the sorrow of the world worketh death. — 2 Cor, vii. 10.
St. Paul expresses his satisfaction that the Corinthians had exhibited a genuine sorrow for a fault of which they had been guilty, and for which he had reproved them ; a sorrow that had respect to God and not to man ; a sorrow that resulted in real repentance, as exhibited in their confession of it before God, and in their subsequent anxious endeavours to remove the evil from among them. " Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye were made sorry unto repentance : for ye were made sorry after a godly sort, that ye might suffer loss by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation, a repentance which bringeth no regret : but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold, this selfsame thing, that ye were made sorry after a godly sort, what earnest care it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what longing, yea, what zeal, yea, what avenging. In everything ye approved yourselves to be pure in the matter."