^ Natural and supernatural constitute a universal order and an everyday process. It is by such a path, beginning in the lowest forms of nature, that Bushnell finds his way up to holiness as God's last end ; and when that is gained, it will be seen that it is the culmination of a process that embraces all the stages of creation. The redeeming work of Christ will not appear as an intrusion into a continuous order, but only as another and a supreme instance of the supernatural entering into the natural. "The cross of redemption is no after-thought, but is itself the grand all-dominating idea around which the eternal Bystem of God crystallizes." ^
1 W. Benny, in Life, by A. B. Bruce, 439. ' T. T. Hunger, Hmace Bushnell, 216.
476 GLORYING IN THE CROSS
Thee such loveliness adorns On Thy Cross, 0 my Desire — As a lily Thou art among thorns, As a rose lies back against his briar.
Thou art as a fair, green shoot, That along the wall doth run; Thou art as a welcoming open fruit, Stretched forth to the glory of the sun.
Thou art still as one in sleep,
As the blood that Thou dost shed;
Thou art as a precious coral-reef
That scarce lifteth himself from his bed.
Thy limbs are so fine, so long, 'Mid the cords and nails that bind, Thy body maketh a solemn song, As a stream in a gorge confined.^
II.
The Cross and the World.
The Apostle rationalizes his boasting, and therefore gives it weight and value, by defining clearly to himself and to his friends the meaning, the inwardness of the cross : " Through which," he says, " the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."
) 1. The " world " here does not mean simply the ordinary occupa- tions and interests of human life. St. Paul was by no means dead to these things. On the contrary, he was a particularly active member of society, and succeeded in profoundly influencing the world. And in this respect at least he would have all Christians follow his example. What he is thinking of here is not so much the life as the thought, the spirit, the ambitions of this present world. It is the whole sensuous and material aspect of things that he here sees in contradiction to the spiritual. St. Paul's " Cosmos " is the material universe, the sphere of external ordinances. He has ever in his view the evil influence of certain teachers who, afraid of the ^ Michael Field, Mystic Trees, 35.
GAL. VI. 14 477
offence of the cross, sought to belittle it, and to hold up the old ceremonialism of the Jewish law as of equal account.
2. St. Paul himself could have gloried in his Jewish nationality — " an Hebrew of the Hebrews." In those old days he had gloried in the law and the covenant and the promises. He had felt him- self specially favoured of Heaven in having received, as he thought, a mandate to defend the faith of Israel and punish her enemies. He threw himself with vigour into the crusade against Christians ; he was eager to obey the law to the last letter ; he revelled in the esteem of his elders, and strove eagerly to win new laurels of praise.
But he forsook that career when he heard the words, " Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ? " Up to the point of his meeting with Jesus his whole life had been one long effort to obtain a sure sense of freedom and of the favour of God. For this he had toiled and fought and prayed. And when he foxmd in the cross of Jesus Christ his highest hopes realized, and that which he had striven so desperately to earn offered to him as a free gift and won for him at the price of an infinite sacrifice, his joy and wonder, his gratitude and adoration, knew no bounds.
3. This new relationship between St. Paul and God involved necessarily a new relation between himself and the world around him. The gospel of the cross the Apostle had to preach not by words only but also by his life. We may be sure that his preach- ing would have been in vain if his way through life had not been beset with difficulties and hindrances. He has himself told us of the troubles which beset him on every hand — of the thirst and weariness, of the stripes and imprisonments, of the watchings and fastings, which he had to endure, as he was going about doing His Master's work. St. Paul's life was one long life of crucifixion. All that he loved, desired, and wished to attain was cast down, until at last he lay in the dark dungeon at Eome, waiting for the executioner that should lead him to his Lord, And all this he found to be a daily uplifting into a diviner life. The very sub- mission to the cross of suffering brought him into such closer and closer union with Christ that the Divine life of Christ became incarnate in him. Conscious that his inner life was sustained by the Divine Spirit of Jesus, he could say, " It is not I that live, but
478 GLORYING IN THE CROSS