^ In all art and literature, in every great and new creation, the impulse seems to lie in a new and vivid experience which makes a new knowledge. The man who was branded " FVG.," like the woman in Hawthorne's novel who wore the scarlet letter or the man who did not, knew something of those letters of the alphabet in quite a different way from all the rest. A burning experience and a burning memory indelible from flesh and spirit gave him those. It is somehow so that the poet learns his peculiar alphabet — something is burnt in upon him, perhaps in pain, perhaps in joy, for the joy of insight may go with pain and overwhelm it — and you get a new man, a " God-intoxicated man," like Spinoza, perhaps — or a Jacob Behmen. All knowledge is changed for him ; he knew before ; — no, he thought he did ; but he knows now — not so many things, but the one thing in a new way that alters all. " If any man be in Christ," said Paul, " it is a new creation." All things are made new — they have new values in the new light, and none is ever again what it was before ; it cannot be. Life has a new intensity, a new direction a new purpose. It becomes a vocation.^
I saw in Siena pictures.
Wandering wearily ; I sought not the names of the masters,
Nor the works men care to see; But once in a low-ceiled passage
I came on a place of gloom, Lit here and there with halos
Like saints within the roouL The pure, serene, mild colours
The early artists used Had made my heart grow softer,
And still on peace I mused.
1 T. R. Glover, Vocation, 45.
GAL. VI. 17 49:
Sudden I saw the Sufferer,
And my frame was clenched with pain ; Perchance no throe so noble
Visits my soul again. Mine were the stripes of the scourging ;
On my thorn-pierced brow blood ran; In my breast the deep compassion
Breaking the heart for man. I drooped with heavy eyelids,
Till evil should have its will; On my lips was silence gathered;
My waiting soul stood still. I gazed, nor knew I was gazing;
I trembled, and woke to know Him whom they worship in heaven
Still walking on earth below. Once have I borne His sorrows
Beneath the flail of fate ! Once in the woe of His passion,
I felt the soul grow great! I turned from my dead Leader;
I passed the silent door; The grey- walled street received me:
On peace I mused no more."^
IV.
Chkist's Ownership.
The ownership of Christ is one of the great realities of the Christian life. We speak of Christ as our Saviour, our Friend, our Example, our Teacher, but how seldom do we think and speak of Him as our Owner ! And yet He is. We belong not to ourselves, but to Him. Our time, our talents, our money, our business, our home — all that we call our own is not so much ours as His. We were " bought with a price," and we belong to Him who bought us.
That which is abject degradation when it is rendered to a man, that which is blasphemous presumption when it is required by a
» G. E. Woodberry.
492 THE MARKS OF JESUS
man, that which is impossible, in its deepest reality, as between man and man, is possible, is blessed, is joyful and strong when it is required by, and rendered to, Jesus Christ. We are His slaves if we have any living relationship to Him at all. Where, then, in the Christian life, is there a place for self-will ; where a place for self-indulgence; where for murmuring or reluctance; where for the assertion of any rights of our own as against that Master? We owe absolute obedience and submission to Jesus Christ. The Christian slavery, with its abject submission, with its utter surrender and suppression of our own will, with its com- plete yielding up of self to the control of Jesus, who died for us ; because it is based upon His surrender of Himself to us, and in its inmost essence it is the operation of love, is therefore co- existent with the noblest freedom.
^ The Hebrews had a scheme of qualified slavery. A man might sell his service for six years, but at the end of that time he was scot-free. On the New Year's morning of the seventh year he was granted his full liberty, and given some grain and oil to begin life with anew. But if on that morning he found him- self reluctant to leave all his ties binding him to his master's home, this was the custom among them. He would say to his master, " I don't want to leave you. This is home to me. I love you and the mistress. I love the place. All my ties and affec- tions are here. I want to stay with you always." His master would say, " Do you mean this ? " " Yes," the man would reply, " I want to belong to you forever." Then his master would call in the leading men of the village or neighbourhood to witness the occurrence. And he would take his servant out to the door of the home, and standing him up against the door-jamb, would pierce the lobe of his ear through with an awl. Then the man became, not his slave, but his bond-slave, forever. It was a personal surrender of himself to his master ; it was voluntary ; it was for love's sake ; it was for service ; it was after a trial ; it was for life. Now, that was what Jesus did. The scar -mark of Jesus' surrender was not in His ear, as with the old Hebrew slave. It was on His cheek, and brow, on His back, in His side and hands and feet. The scar-marks of His surrender were — are — all over His face and form. Everybody who surrenders bears some scar of it because of sin, his own or somebody else's. Eeferring to the suffering endured in service, Paul tenderly reckons it as a mark of Jesus' ownership — " I bear the scars, the stigmata, of the Lord Jesus." Even of the Master Himself is this so. And that scarred