^ The very Eev. old Ebenezer Brown I have twice heard preach, and a most interesting exhibition it is ; he is a specimen of old Presbyterian eloquence and style. There is something very dignified in his energetic yet subdued manner ; his old broad Scotch, his deep sonorous voice, rendered very inarticulate now from old age, but famed in his youth for reaching a mile at open air preachings ; and oh how fain would he that it reached many and many a mile, if he could but bring poor sinners to his loved
GAL. VI. 14 471
Saviour! Somehow, every word he utters melts me to tears; Christ crucified is all his theme, all his salvation, and all his desire. Humility, simplicity, serene peace, and that single repose in the Saviour which has brought the spirit of Jesus so eminently and so purely into his heart and life, are what characterize this aged saint. The pathos, the spirit, the unction of his preaching, surpasses all eloquence, and is overcoming to an unutterable degree; none could imitate it, none could ever equal it, unless imbued with the same spirit from on high.^
I.
The Cross and Christianity.
Christianity is the religion of the cross. Its subject-matter is called the cross. Its Author and Lord is the incarnate, risen, and exalted Son of God who died upon the cross. Its aim — salvation — is accomplished through the cross. The true instinct of Christen- dom has echoed St. Paul's words, and accepted this his spiritual ultimatum. The cross — not the holy cradle or the broken tomb — has always been its chosen, its prized and beloved emblem. It rises over the Christian Sanctuary, ornamented in richness, and wreathed into forms of beauty. It was once an emblem of shame, all and more than all that the gallows is to us ; but now it is the sacred form which men delight to enrich with their jewels and their gold, or even to mould to lovely shapes, in which its own roughness seems almost lost. Outwardly at least, all Christendom has gloried in the cross. But such glorying, such rejoicing in the cross, marks a joy which has in it an undercurrent of seriousness.
Taking this tone and spirit of glorying for granted as the only one which becomes a Christian, surely we can see very clearly, and feel deeply, why we should glory in the cross. There are grounds upon which every disciple may take his stand in echoing the language of the Apostle — reasons why he should declare his determination to glory in nothing else save the cross, why he should refuse to bring into comparison or competition with it anything, however illustrious it may be, of an earthly or human nature.
* Letters of Thomas Erskine of Limlathen, i. 360.
472 GLORYING IN THE CROSS
^ The more it is pondered, the more the power of Christianity is found to lie in the cross. The incarnate Christ, the risen and exalted Christ, and all His mysterious presence among us and experiences in our midst, become intelligible when we find Him acting for us and upon us by His death on the cross, acting in us and through us, by awakening in us the very spirit that led Him to the cross. Of course the cross does not say all. It is but a symbol, and no symbol can. But " the very power of a symbol lies in the sublime inadequacy and yet practical effectiveness of its suggestion." And this symbol is associated so intimately with the great critical, crucial event in the Saviour's work for the world's salvation that we are not surprised that the gospel is called the word of the cross. The cross symbolizes the service He did for us. It symbolizes the nature of the service He expects of us. And if it reminds us that the ideal life for man is no smooth, easy progress over carpeted tracks, but strenuous, arduous, often wrestling with things repellent and cruel, it tells us, too, that Christ asks nothing of His followers harder than that which He has faced for them of His own gracious will, for
Not in soft speech is told the earthly story,
Love of all Loves ! that showed Thee for an hour ;
Shame was Thy kingdom, and reproach Thy glory, Death Thine eternity, the Cross Thy power.^
1. The cross gives us a new conception of God. — Mankind before Christ went about, in St. Paul's phrase, " groping after " God, as one gropes in the dark for an object suspected to be there yet nowhere to be found. He was not far, to be sure, from any one of them. Yet they had to " seek God, if haply they might feel after him, and find him." And they would hopelessly strive to pierce through the darkness which surrounds the throne of the Almighty, and, even were they successful in finding God, they would not find the Father. But the light streaming from the cross dispels all the mist, and actually lays bare the very heart of the Eternal One in its paternal longings for men. All His revelations in the Old Testament, His ordinances, institutions, [promises, judgments, reach their fulfilment and find their real ' explanation in the cross. More than that, all the hints of truth current among heathen nations — all their sighing and striving after the knowledge of God and communion with Him, all attempts to