USA > West Virginia > The West Virginia pulpit of the Methodist Episcopal church. Sermons from living ministers. With personal sketches of the authors > Part 28
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When Cyrus, the Persian, by a raid into Armenia, captured the royal family, he demanded of both the king and his son at what price each would be willing to ransom his wife. "At the price," said Tigranes, " of a thousand lives, if I had them." Afterward, when Tigranes asked his wife what she thought of Cyrus. the noble woman replied, "I did not observe him." " You did not observe him ?" exclaimed the astonish- ed husband, "upon what object, then, did you fix your eyes ?" "I could only see the man," was the re- ply, "who was willing to give a thousand lives as the price of my liberty." It is this that lifts the Ida Lerves, the Florence Nightingales, steamboat pilots,
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bridge tenders and miners into world-wide renown. It is this that in all ages and lands has freighted the name mother with all that is sacred and tender and noble and pure; and it is this that has lifted the name of Jesus above every name, that at his name every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Christ is God to the glory of God the Father. This, · I take it, is the secret of the attractive power of Jesus. He reveals to me the fact that God loves me. If it thrills me to know that I am the ob- ject of a creature's love, what must be the emotion when I awake to the fact that the infinite God stoops to love, and yearns to embrace me ? Can you wonder if, while memory is true to her trust, and the human heart capable of a sensation, the thought of that hour quickens and fires the soul as by a divine afflatus. Can you wonder if the soul be well nigh beside itself with joy when it feels itself encircled by the Divine arms and from sin and ruin it emerges into Divine likeness ?
Now, this attraction increases as the evidences of the intensity of this love are multiplied. Love is a discerner. It may not create; its office is to reveal. The world is new-made to the Christian. Providence has a new meaning to the child of God. Nature is written all over, in every stone and brooklet, and mead and mountain, with the evidences of a Father's love. Earth is a mansion fitted up and garnished for his children by a Father's hand. Through ages be- fore which the imagination staggers, God was prepar- ing the earth for the home of man ; rearing its moun- tains, spreading its plains, mixing the gases for its air and water, threading its rocks and silver, sowing its sands with gold, and foreseeing the coming frosts. He stored away in yonder valleys the fuel for a hem- isphere. Behold its garniture of clouds, its enamel of flowers ; hark to its music of birds. Behold crea- tion at the Christian's feet and for his use. See, too, how every providence proclaims this love. The world's history, its joys and sorrows, its trials and triumphs, successes and failures all come with their instruc- tion and warning, and conspire to lift me to the pin-
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nacle of the world's glory and power. Science reveals to me the mysteries of nature, but between the lines I read the sentence. "My Father loves me." Philoso- phy may explain to me the laws of matter and of mind, but behind them I see my Father's plans for the world's government, and the minds unfolding. His- tory may tell me of the rise and fall of nations, but amid it all I see my Father's finger pointing me to the only path way of prosperity and power.
But this truth finds its culmination and highest ex- emplification in the Cross. Love finds its climax of power in the degree of its manifestation. But how shall I speak of that which defies description ? Who can portray the passing of the infinite to the finite -the stooping of God to man-that act by which the Creator comes between the creature and his sins and lifts the sinner out of his sin into the joy and blessedness of a new and holy life-the act by which God becomes man to save man,-the love so fathom- less that it led the Father to give his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not per- ish but have everlasting life-that constrained Jesus, the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person, to lay aside the glory he had with the Father before the worlds were; to stoop to our vileness, to bear our burdens and to share our sorrows ; to descend to the lowest and weakest, and worst of our kind ; to shame the harlot into chastity, and to lift the thief into generous nobleness. The love that made him a homeless wanderer in the world of his own crea- tion, that he might lead the homeless and hopeless back to his Father's house ; the love that led him as a lamb to the slaughter; that, when he was nailed to the Cross breathed a prayer for his persecutors; the love that seized the Cross as the leverage of the world's uplifting, that mounted it as a throne of power and from its summit of agony shouted, "It is finished " to a dying world ? This is beyond description. Be- hold at once the shame and the glory of the Cross! Behold how love transmutes the Cross into a throne of power, and the crown of thorns into an aureole of glory whose flashing splendors send light, and life, and
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hope, and happiness, and heaven to the remotest verge of earth and to the last remnant of our shipwrecked tribes.
My brother, can you wonder that the Cross becomes an evangel in all lands and an attraction to all hearts? Can you wonder that men lifted by it into newness of life exclaim, " God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ ?" Oh ! I have seen the sun looking down upon the stagnant pool and lifting the putrid waters toward itself that they might come back in blessings on the land and pearls on the sea ; but here, I see the Sun of Righteousness, from the Cross on Calvary, lifting the hearts of a blighted and ruined race to himself, that he may send them forth in his own image, at once the evidences of his power, and the demonstration of his love. I have seen the early spring coaxing the dried roots and tiny seèds of earth until, obedient to his voice they came forth to robe the earth with vernal splendors, and to scatter o'er lonely heath and rocky wild the fragrance of a thousand flowers. And the old oak, bleak and bare by the winter's blast, heard the summons, and from tiny rootlet to farthest twig, along every avenue, the life current has leaped and danced until every fibre was animate with life and every branch was crowned with summer glory. But here is a mightier marvel. Men, dead in trespasses and in sins, are drawn by this new power of the Cross out of the char- nel house of vice, and every fibre becomes instinct with life. The entire manhood grows radiant with every virtue, and aglow with every splendor, that flashes in undying lustre from saint and seraph on the plains of light. I pass to notice
II. THE POWER OF THIS ATTRACTION.
We have seen the power of this attraction in mat- ter. It binds worlds into systems and whirls them in unvarying harmony about their central sun. But the sun itself has a centre, and is flying through space with incredible velocity, dragging with it the planets and worlds that compose the system. Other suns and systems are swung by the same power.
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Somewhere there must be a common centre-a world so vast, that it seizes every atom, and world, and sun, and system in the universe, binds all to itself, and preserves the harmony of the whole without a jar through the centuries. This power is beyond com- putation. The mind wanders across the illimitable fields of space until it is lost and bewildered by the rush of countless worlds. The imagination essays to explore and fathom the star depths, but it comes back on weary wing with the astonished cry, "Lo! these are but parts of his ways, but what a whisper of a word is heard of him, but the thunder of his power who can understand." And yet, this is but a feeble illustration of that power that has its centre in the Cross of Christ. If those worlds had broken away from the central orb, and, with fearful velocity had gone crashing through space, wrecking all of life and beauty that lay along their destructive paths, and, if then, that central world had reached down across the vast abysses, and seizing those wandering constella- tions, had tied them to itself, and restored the har- mony of the universe, then there had been some an- alogy, but even then the analogy had been incom- plete. That binds matter, this binds souls ; every one of whom is perverse, rebellious, depraved ; every one of whom is, in the very centre of his being, opposed ' to God.
He has not only broken away from the true soul centre, God, but he has formed for himself a new cen- tre, selfish, sinful, degraded. About this centre twine every affection and power of the soul. To this new deity bows every attribute of the being in abject sub- mission. How wonderful the power that untwines the souls tendrils from the sensuous and sinful, and lifts them to clasp the Cross with its ruggedness and shame-that turns back the flood of our depraved nature and bids the stream of our desires and yearn- ings flow upward to its God-that lifts the will, the ally and slave of sin, to be, amid trials, temptations, persecutions, death, the unchanging champion of truth and right. We measure force by the nature of the resistance it overcomes. Make this the test. Let
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us see how the Cross overcomes in man all the forces of our depraved nature.
1. There is the love of ease. How men sigh for re- pose. They seek the clear sky, the thornless path, the unruffled stream : life without its conflicts, pleas- ure without pain, honor without its struggles; the Alpine heights without its glacier, its precipice or its avalanche. How the mass of men, rather than en- dure the conflict, place the reins upon the neck of their desires, until, bound hand and foot, like Mazeppa to his wild steed, they are borne to destruction and death.
The Cross lifts us out of our love of ease. It puts within us the " impulse of a new affection." It sways us with heavenly passion. We ask not for ease, but duty. We are freighted with responsibility. We are enamored with visions of usefulness. Our breath is devotion. We shake from us the nightmare of indo- lence. We spurn the couch of ease. We ask a place to toil. At home or abroad we are apostles, and pil- grims, and missionaries. His word is our law. His smile our heaven. His nod sends us to the ends of the earth. Our most earnest prayer is that we may cease at once to work and live.
2. There is the love of the world. Now, by the world I do not mean nature. This is God's world. Nor do I mean the duties and avocations of life. I mean that spirit of the world, or that pursuit of it, which, however innocent in itself, may come in be- tween the soul and its God, and so cause an eclipse of the Sun of Righteousness. That world of which the apostle spake, when he said, "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." We speak of it as the love of the pleasures, the honors, the wealth of the world. We know the strength of this love. For pleasure men have sacrificed wealth, and honor, and home, and health ; for honor, riches and friends, principle and manhood ; for wealth, ease and comfort, and truth and right. But what a meta- morphosis is wrought by the Cross. And yet, the Chris- tian is neither stoic nor ascetic. He is in the world, but not of it. Its pleasures are purified, its honors enno-
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bled, its wealth consecrated to holy uses. Pleasure consists in the possession of our ideal. We sacrifice all things for that which to us is most lovely. But the Cross has lifted the veil from the face of God, and the Root out of dry ground has become the "chiefest of ten thousand and the one altogether lovely."
This vision of God explains the impassioned utter- ance of the old worthies : " Whom have I in heaven but thee and there is none on earth that I desire be- side thee:" " As the hart panteth after the water brooks so panteth my soul after thee, O God." This explains how men offer in one holocaust all that they hold dear, dashing to the earth every cup of sordid pleasure with the shout-
" All thy pleasures I forego, I trample on thy wealth and pride ; Only Jesus will 1 know And Jesus crucified,"
Not that the Christian is indifferent to place or power, or wealth ; but he wins laurels to lay them at the feet of Jesus; he attains power that he may wield it for God ; he gains wealth that with it he may push forward the interests of the Redeemer's kingdom. He exemplifies the aphorism of Wesley, which is to "get all you can, to save all you can and to give all you can." The mean has become generous, the base mag- nanimous, the avaricious liberal. He is like yon res- ervoir, that turns upon itself a score of mountain streams, and then, rushing through all avenues, and streets, and lanes, and alleys, waits and yearns to slake the thirst of all, from the prince to the beggar. Oh it is being filled with God and overflowing as does he upon all about us.
Did it ever occur to you that all of beauty, of glory and of life is simply the overflowing of God? What is the glory of the morning but the overflowing of his light; what the beauty of the spring, the fragrance of the flower, the song of the bird but the overflowing of God in beauty, in fragrance and in song? What the enamelled cloud, the bursting bud, the waving grain and trembling leaf, but channels through which God is pouring his thought and love ? The laughter
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of childhood is the exuberance of his joy, and the ten- derness of a mother's love, the outgushing of his sym- pathy. And it is to this height that the Cross uplifts us, and into this image it transforms us.
3. It is stronger than the love of friends. Jesus said if any man will come to me and hate not, i. e. love not less, father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and children, he cannot be my disciple. The other day there stood at my door a young man whose appearance indicated early comfort and culture. He said, " My father is rich, but he is an atheist. I went to a camp meeting and heard of Jesus. They told me of his love; that he loved me. I resolved to test it. I offered him my heart and he saved me, The story flew. It reached my father's ears. When I returned home he met me at the door and said, 'Give up your religion, or, leave my house forever.' And from that time, (two years had passed) I have been a homeless wanderer for the love of Jesus." I know not my brethren, whether he spoke truth; but I do know that it has been true of thousands. The love of Jesus has proved stronger than the love of country and home and friends and wealth. For his sake they have become homeless wanderers. They have taken joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and have " counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, the Lord."
4. And once more it is stronger than the love of life. " All that a man hath," said Satan, " will he give for his life." " He that hateth not hisown life," said Jesus, " is not worthy of me." Satan lied. Many a soldier, thirsting for fame, has, amid the excitements of the charge, been reckless of life, and willing to die, if, thereby, he might go down to posterity wreathed with the immortelle of earthly glory, and numbered with the greatest of his country's heroes. The de- graded Celt, lacking both culture and courage, mad- dened by passion and stimulated by numbers, has en- gaged in the riot regardless of life. But the Chris- tian has neither the excitement of the charge, nor the stimulant of numbers, nor the hope of earthly glory. His battles are fought alone. His decisions
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are made in the quiet of his chamber, and in the se- clusion of his closet. They are made in the face of every allurement that wealth can offer and sophistry invent. Look at Daniel. He sees the plot of his ene- mies. On the one side are life, and wealth, and fame; on the other, the lion's den and the triumph of his foes. Did he hesitate ? No. With his windows open towards Jerusalem, and his heart open toward God, he walked straight into the den of lions.
Look at the Hebrew children, daring the fiery fur- nace rather than deny their God. Look at Paul tramp- ling upon ease and wealth and kindred and fame, saying to bonds and imprisonments and stripes, " None of these things move me." See, as to yon weeping friends he says, " What mean ye, to weep and break my heart, I am ready not only to be bound but to die at Jerusalem for the sake of the Lord Jesus." Look at the long array of martys; the men who kissed the stake and sung praises in the fire. Oh, there is a power in the Cross that lifts us out of sin and self; that makes God all in all. We sing, "give joy or grief, give ease or pain, take life or friends away ;" and " I count not life dear unto me so that I may win Christ and be found of him, not having mine own righteousness, but the righteousness which is in Christ Jesus." Oh, is it not a luxury to live, and labor and die for him who died for me ?
"For me my Lord was crucified, For me, for me the Saviour died."
Such is the power of the Cross.
This is exemplified in the history of all peoples, and in all lands. The victories of the Cross are well nigh universal. It has elevated the degraded ; it has refined the barbarous. It is the pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night, marching in the fore front of culture, civilization, nobleness, manhood. It lifts the world to the Beulah heights of glory, and transfigures dead souls until they shine in a Re- deemer's coronet as " the brightness of the firmament and the stars forever."
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III. LASTLY, SEE THE GLORY OF THIS ATTRACTION.
The Cross attracts, because, as nothing else does, or can, it reveals God. It conceals, while it unveils his glory. We see God only by the rays which converge on Calvary. I go out at noonday, and lifting my eyes to heaven, dare, for five minutes, to gaze upon the un- clouded sun ; and I am smitten with blindness for my temerity : but bye and bye there is seen in the West- ern sky a hand like cloud shooting straight from hor- izon to zenith and spreading its black wings north- ward and southword like an avenging spirit, wrap- ping the earth in a mantel of wrath. And now, from the eastern sky there comes another, black as the ban- ner of night, rushing like a war horse to the charge. They meet in mid-air, with the roar of thunder, and the gleam and flash of forked lightning, that sets the heavens ablaze. Borne on the tempest's breath are rain and hail, that come like a deluge on land and sea ; and anon, when the storm is hushed, when the sun, glowing like a ball of fire, hangs suspended over the western hill, while the hoarse thunder is dying away in the distance, and the cloud, like the banner of a retreating army, is slowly ascending the distant hills, there, on its departing folds the sun has imaged himself in the glory of the rainbow. I gaze upon it with eye undimmed. I drink in its wondrous beauty, I am entranced by its splendor. The noonday glories are diluted and accommodated to my organ of vision.
Brethren, thus is it with God. No man hath seen him at any time. We could not behold him and live. And so, God has shrouded his glories in the person of his incarnate Son. He set him down amid the toils and trials and tears of humanity and bid us see the Godhead shining through. See in the words he spake, in the miracles he wrought, and in the life he lived, the thought and purpose and glory of God. And then, on the Cross of Calvary he gathered up all of beauty and of glory that the human eye could bear or the heart endure, and through its pain, and death, and darkness he has proclaimed that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that
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whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life." Yes, this is the glory of the Cross ; it reveals God, and, revealing him, it saves man. Here is a sun that never sets, a tie that never breaks, a power that never wanes. For eighteen cen- turies it has been scattering the mists of prejudice, lifting the veil of ignorance, crushing the power of hate, and wringing adherents from the ranks of its enemies.
The man! Oh, how it lifts the entire man. How it enlightens the mind, convinces the judgment, pu- rifies the affections, sanctifies the will, consecrates the energies of soul and body, for time, and for eternity, to God.
"All men." How blessed the promise; prince or beggar, sage or savage. Out from that Cross to-day is going a mysterious power that is grappling with all hearts. It claims all souls as his legitimate empire. They are his by right of purchase. He moves upon them now for conquest. Already its victories are marvelous. It has lifted Christians out of their de- nominational littleness and narrowness, and strife into the largeness and broadness of Christian sym- pathy. It has lifted nations out of barbarism, sav- agism and slavery into the culture and liberty of Christian civilization. It is lifting them out of fraud and oppression and wrong into the rights and privil- eges of the highest manhood.
The Cross is revealing the beauty of holiness, the sublimity of truth, the divinity of love, the grandeur of man, and the glory of God. It is attracting the gaze of the world. It is binding to itself the hearts of the nations; until, bye and bye, the last sinner, lifted from his sins and allied to his God, the uni- verse shall swing about the Cross as its centre forever and ever. Amen.
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