As in the Christ, though men beheld no beauty — Only the marks of suffering and care, God, from the first, beheld His own bright image Eejoicing in the revelation fair.
So, where His children, looking on each other. See forms and faces marred by pain and woe, God, looking on the depths and not the surface, Sees oftentimes His likeness formed below.^
> J. D. Jones, The Gospel of Grace, 249. ' Edith H. Divall, A Believer's Eest, 35.
488 THE MARKS OF JESUS
2. The " stigmata," the marks of Christ their Master, cannot be mistaken. His followers have His marks on their body, as signs that they are members of His Body, in all purity and chastity and holiness, as being " temples of the Holy Ghost." But they also have His marks on their temper, as those who have taken up their cross and borne it after Him in self-denial and mortification, in patience, in forgiveness, in humility, in cheerfulness ; His marks on their soul, as being set free from condemnation by the atoning mercy of the Saviour, as being made partakers of the precious fruits of His sacrifice upon the Cross — the mark of justification, and the mark of sanctification, the imputed righteousness of Christ, the imparted and inherent righteousness wrought in them by the Holy Ghost ; His marks on their spirit ; being full of all spiritual affections — love, joy, peace, patience amid the trials of earth, longing for the security of Heaven, the present enjoyment of an almost perfect rest in the arms of God ; in short, " a life hid with Christ in God."
I would not miss one sigh or tear,
Heart-pang, or throbbing brow ; Sweet was the chastisement severe,
And sweet its memory now.
Yes ! let the fragrant scars abide.
Love-tokens in Thy stead. Faint shadows of the spear-pierced side
And thorn-encompass'd head.
And such Thy tender force be still. When self would swerve or stray,
Shaping to truth the froward will Along Thy narrow way.
Deny me wealth ; far, far remove
The lure of power or name ; Hope thrives in straits, in weakness love,
And faith in this world's shame.^
III.
Stigmata of the Saints.
1. The Apostle, it may be added, may have used the word " stigmata " with special reference to those marks in the body of his
* J. H. Newman, Verses on Various Occasions.
GAL. VI. 17 489
blessed Lord which were in the eyes of faith the symbol of salva- tion, and which love imagined to be reproduced in the disciple ; those marks on which Thomas looked, and cried aloud, " My Lord, and my God." For in the heat of his love of Christ, and in the certainty of his oneness with Him, what image was more natural than that of his own heart bearing the traces of the wounds of Christ? Such a thought must have passed into the minds of many saints of God ; and where legendary fancy has expressed it •outwardly, in the figures of holy men receiving actually in their bodies the print of their Saviour's wounds, can we not read in the painter's art the spiritual truth, " I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus " ?
^ St. Francis of Assisi in the year 1224 a.d. received in a trance the wound-prints of the Saviour on his body; and from that time to his death, it is reported, the saint had the physical appearance of one who had suffered crucifixion. Other instances, to the number of eighty, have been recorded in the Eoman Catholic Church of the reproduction, in more or less complete form, of the five wounds of Jesus and the agonies of the cross ; chiefly in the case of nuns. The last was that of Louise Lateau, who died in Belgium in the year 1883. That such phenomena have occurred there is no sujB&cient reason to doubt. It is difficult to assign any limits to the power of the human mind over the body in the way of sympathetic imitation. Since St. Francis' day many Eomanist divines have read the Apostle's language in this sense ; but the interpretation has followed rather than given rise to this fulfilment. In whatever light these manifestations may be regarded, they are a striking witness to the power of the cross over human nature. Protracted meditation on the sufferings of our Lord, aided by a lively imagination and a susceptible physique, has actually produced a rehearsal of the bodily pangs and the wound-marks of Calvary.*
^ The name of a well-known scientific man having been mentioned, who, forbidden to work, occupies himself in closely watching his own case, Sir James Paget said, "It is a most dangerous thing to do that ; people, by dwelling upon symptoms whi6h they have not got, are very apt to produce them." I said : *' I have been told that the stigmata might quite well be produced in that way." " Undoubtedly," he replied.^
J G. G. Findlay, The Epistle to the Oalaiians, 457. " M. E. Grant-Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1892-95, 44.
490 THE MARKS OF JESUS
2. There is something far better for us to do than so to con- template the sufferings of our Lord as depicted by human art, that the stigmata may literally appear on our hands and feet. It is so to contemplate our Lord in the whole spirit of His life and service and sacrifice, and so to come under His influence, that the spirit of His life and cross shall enter into us, and we shall go away from the secret place of contemplation to reproduce His image and likeness in conduct and character — that we, " beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord," may be " changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."