Days of Heaven Upon Earth Part 20

"Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die" (John xii. 24).

Death and resurrection are the central ideas of nature and Christianity.

We see them in the transformation of the chrysalis, in the buried seed bursting into the bud and blossom of the spring, in the transformation of the winding sheet of winter to the many tinted robes of spring. We see it all through the Bible in the symbol of circ.u.mcision, with its significance of death and life, in the pa.s.sage of the Red Sea and the Jordan leading out and leading in, and in the Cross of Calvary and the open grave of the Easter morning. We see it in every deep spiritual life. Every true life is death-born, and the deeper the dying the truer the living. We doubt not the months that have been pa.s.sing have shown us all many a place where there ought to be a grave, and many a lingering shred of the natural and sinful which we would gladly lay down in a bottomless grave. G.o.d help us to pa.s.s the irrevocable sentence of death and to let the Holy Ghost, the great undertaker, make the interment eternal. Then our life shall be ever budding and blossoming and shedding fragrance over all.

MAY 9.

"All hail" (Matt. xxviii. 9).

It was a stirring greeting which the Lord of Life spake to His first disciples on the morning of the resurrection. It is a bright and radiant word which in His name we would speak to His beloved children at the commencement of another day. It means a good deal more than appears on the surface. It is really a prayer for our health, but which none but those who believe in the healing of the body can fully understand. A thoughtful friend suggested once that the word "hail" really means health, and it is just the old Saxon form of the word. We all know that a hale person is a healthy person. Our Lord's message, therefore, was substantially that greeting which from time immemorial we give to one another when we meet.

"How is your health?" "How are you?" or, better still, "I wish you health." Christ's wish is tantamount to a promise and command. It is very similar to the Apostle John's benediction to his dear friend Gaius, and we would re-echo it to our beloved friends according to the fulness of the Master's will.

MAY 10.

"I am alive forevermore" (Rev. i. 18).

Here is the message of the Christ of the cross and the still more glorious and precious Christ of the resurrection. It is beautiful and inspiring to note the touch of light and glory with which these simple words invest the cross. It is not said I am He that was dead and liveth, but "I am He that liveth and was dead, but am alive forevermore." Life is mentioned before the death. There are two ways of looking at the cross. One is from the death side and the other from the life side. One is the Ecce h.o.m.o and the other is the glorified Jesus with only the marks of the nails and the spear. It is thus we are to look at the cross. We are not to carry about with us the mould of the sepulchre, but the glory of the resurrection. It is not the Ecce h.o.m.o, but the Living Christ. And so our crucifixion is to be so complete that it shall be lost in our resurrection and we shall even forget our sorrow and carry with us the light and glory of the eternal morning. So let us live the death-born life, ever new and full of a life that can never die, because it is "dead and alive forevermore."

MAY 11.

"Whosoever will save his life shall lose it" (Luke ix. 24).

First and foremost Christ teaches resurrection and life. The power of Christianity is life. It brings us not merely law, duty, example, with high and holy teaching and admonition. It brings us the power to follow the higher ideal and the life that spontaneously does the things commanded. But it is not only life, but resurrection life.

And it begins with a real crisis, a definite transaction, a point of time as clear as the morning dawn. It is not an everlasting dying and an eternal struggle to live. But it is all expressed in a tense that denotes definiteness, fixedness and finished action. We actually died at a certain point and as actually began to live the resurrection life.

Let us reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto G.o.d through Jesus Christ.

And death is only the pathway and portal, To the life that shall die nevermore; And the cross leadeth up to the crown everlasting, The Jordan to Canaan's bright sh.o.r.e.

MAY 12.

"Tell me where Thou makest Thy flock to rest at noon" (Song of Solomon i.

7).

Beloved, do you not long for G.o.d's quiet, the inner chambers, the shadow of the Almighty, the secret of His presence? Your life has been, perhaps, all driving and doing, or perhaps straining, struggling, longing and not obtaining. Oh, for rest! to lie down upon His bosom and know that you have all in Him, that every question is answered, every doubt settled, every interest safe, every prayer answered, every desire satisfied. Lift up the cry, "Tell me, O Thou whom my soul loveth, where Thou feedest, where Thou makest Thy flock to rest at noon"!

Blessed be His name! He has this for us, His exclusive love-a love which each individual somehow feels is all for himself, in which he can lie alone upon His breast and have a place which none other can dispute; and yet His heart is so great that He can hold a thousand millions just as near, and each heart seem to possess Him just as exclusively for his own, even as the thousand little pools of water upon the beach can reflect the sun, and each little pool seems to have the whole sun embosomed in its beautiful depths. And Christ can teach us this secret of His inmost love.

MAY 13.

"Abide in Me" (John xv. 4).

Christianity may mean nothing more than a religious system. Christian life may mean nothing more than an earnest and honest attempt to follow and imitate Christ.

Christ life is more than these, and expresses our actual union with the Lord Jesus Christ, and He is undoubtedly in us as the life and source of all our experience and work.

This conception of the highest Christian life is at once simpler and sublimer than any other. We do not teach in these pages, that the purpose of Christ's redemption is to restore us to Adamic perfection, for if we had it we should lose it to-morrow; but rather to unite us with the Second Adam, and lift us up to a higher plane than our first parents ever knew.

This is the only thing that can reconcile the warring elements of diverse schools of teaching with respect to Christian life.

The Spirit of G.o.d will lead us to have no controversy respecting mere theories, but simply hold to the person and life of Jesus Christ Himself, and the privilege of being united to Him, and living in constant dependence upon His keeping power and grace.

MAY 14.

"But G.o.d" (Luke xii. 20).

What else do we really need? What else is He trying to make us understand?

The religion of the Bible is wholly supernatural. The one resource of faith has always been the living G.o.d, and Him alone. The children of Israel were utterly dependent upon Jehovah as they marched through the wilderness, and the one reason their foes feared them and hastened to submit themselves was that they recognized among them the shout of a King, and the presence of One compared with whom all their strength was vain.

"Wherein," asked Moses, "shall we be separated from all other peoples of the earth, except it be in this that Thou goest before us."

A church relying on human wisdom, wealth or resources, ceases to be the body of Christ and becomes an earthly society. When we dare to depend entirely upon G.o.d and without doubt, the humblest and feeblest agencies will become "mighty through G.o.d, to the pulling down of strongholds." May the Holy Spirit give to us at all times, His own conception of these two great words, "But G.o.d."

MAY 15.