Gloria Crucis Part 8

And thus we come in sight of a great law, "perfection through suffering."

And the revelation of the Cross is the exhibition to us of this law acting in the higher reaches of man's existence, in the moral and spiritual regions of his life. As the animal has gained its victories in the past, so the spiritual is advancing towards the final triumph of man, along the same path, of healthy reaction stimulated and necessitated by pain.

For wherein lies the triumph of the spiritual nature, save in its complete and sovereign control over all the other elements in our complex being? The spiritual man is not the man who has starved his physical or intellectual being; but the man whose whole nature, harmoniously developed in the whole range of its varied gifts and powers and faculties, is altogether brought under the mastery of that which is highest in him, that spirit in which he is akin to G.o.d, the wearer of the Divine Image. The saintliest, loftiest characters of men and women have been the fruits of this discipline.

We see the final demonstration of the purpose of pain in Him Who "learnt obedience by the things which He suffered." This one word which tells of physical suffering, tells also, as we have already seen, of the victory gained over it by His human Spirit. It was by the reaction of that Spirit under sharpest bodily pain, that the moral perfection of the Son of man ceased to be potential, and became actual. So it is with us, so at least it may be in ever-increasing measure, when pain is accepted and met in the way in which Christ accepted and met His pain, not in the spirit of useless and wild rebellion against the laws of the universe, nor in that of a blind, fatalistic, and unintelligent fatalism, which calls itself resignation. We may, hence, learn to look beyond and behind pain to that great law of perfection through suffering which takes effect, as it were, spontaneously in lower forms of life; but which, in the realm of the moral and the spiritual, demands the co-operation of the human mind and will.

2. We may see also, in the fifth word, the revelation of the att.i.tude of the Son of G.o.d towards His own body. That att.i.tude, and hence the only genuinely and characteristically Christian att.i.tude, may be best described as the mean between the pampering of the body, and its savage neglect in the interests of a _false_ asceticism.

As at first He put aside "the slumberous potion bland" and willed "to feel all, that He might pity all," so, now His task is over, He craves, and accepts, alleviation of His bodily pain. It is a wonderful ill.u.s.tration of the true, the Christian way of regarding the body. The human body is essentially a good and holy thing. Those sins which we call "bodily," like all sins, have their origin in the rebellious will.

They are only distinguished from other sins, because in them the will uses the body, and in other sins other G.o.d-given endowments of our nature, in opposition to the eternal goodness which is the Will of G.o.d.

We cannot too often remember, that "good" and "evil" are terms applicable to the will alone.

That splendid gift of the body has been given to us, in order that in it, and through it, we might "glorify G.o.d"; that is, do His Will, the only thing utterly worth doing. _Therefore_, we have to keep our bodies "fit," fit in all ways for their high and holy purpose. There is the law, the standard of all Christian self-discipline. Think of the glory of the prospect which it holds out to us, of the development and destiny of the body. Think of the care which we should bestow upon it, of the awful reverence with which we should regard this (in the Divine intention) splendid and perfect instrument for the fulfilment of the Will of G.o.d. For what reverence can be too great for that which the Eternal G.o.d chose as the tabernacle in which He should dwell among men, as the instrument by which He should do the Father's Will on earth?

Of all the religions of the world it is the religion of Jesus Christ alone which bids us "glorify G.o.d" in the body, that is, do His Will in and by that glorious instrument which He has created and redeemed for His service.

3. Finally, we may remind ourselves, very briefly, that we, in our own day, may share the blessedness of the Roman soldier who relieved the sufferings of Christ. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

As Christians, we _must_ have _some_ ministry to fulfil towards the suffering members of Christ's Body. In the parable of the sheep and the goats, the eternal destiny of men is shown to depend, in the last resort, upon the manner in which they have performed, or failed to perform, this ministry. The complexities of modern life call for careful thought in regard to the manner in which we are to fulfil this duty, but they cannot relieve us of it. Somewhere or other in our lives we must be diligently relieving the necessities of others, ministering to their needs of body, mind, or spirit. Else--there is no shirking this conclusion--we are simply failing in the most characteristic of all Christian virtues; we are far removed from the Mind of Him Who "went about doing good"; we are on the way to hear that final condemnation, "Because ye did it not to the least of these My brethren, ye did it not to Me."

VII THE SIXTH WORD

"It is accomplished."--ST. JOHN XIX. 30.

1. What had been accomplished? In the first place, that work which Christ had come into the world to do. All that work may be resumed in a single word, "sacrifice." The Son of G.o.d had come for this one purpose, to offer a sacrifice. Here is room for serious misunderstanding. The blood, the pain, the death, were not the sacrifice. Nothing visible was the sacrifice, least of all the physical surroundings of its culminating act. There is only one thing which can rightly be called sacrifice--or, to put it otherwise, one sacrifice which alone has any worth, alone can win any acceptance in the sight of G.o.d--and that is, the obedience of the human will, the will of man brought into perfect union with that Divine Will which is its own highest moral ideal.

The perfect obedience of the human will of Christ to the Divine Will, could only be realised--such were the circ.u.mstances under which the mission received of the Father was to be fulfilled by Him for the good of man--by His faithfulness unto death. "He became obedient unto death,"

because in such a world perfect faithfulness must lead to death. But the death of Christ was no isolated fact, standing out solitary and alone from the rest of His ministry. It was not merely of one piece with, but the natural and fitting close of the whole. The death of uttermost obedience was the crown and consummation of the obedient life. On the Cross, He was carrying His life's work to its triumphant close. His Death was, itself, His victory.

This victorious aspect of the Pa.s.sion is that on which St. John chiefly dwells. The "glorification" of the Son of man, His "lifting up," was the whole series of events extending from the Pa.s.sion to the Ascension. So the first Christians loved to think of the Cross, not as the instrument of unutterable pain, but as the symbol of their Master's triumph. It is this feeling, this apprehension of the Johannine teaching on the Pa.s.sion, which accounts for the late appearance of the crucifix. Even when, at last, the actual sufferings of the Saviour are depicted, we are still far removed from medieval realism. There are no nails--the Saviour is outstretched on the Cross by the moral power of His own will, steadfast and victorious in its obedience. The Sacred Face is not convulsed with agony, but is turned, with calm and benignant aspect, towards men whom He blesses. The earliest representations of the Pa.s.sion, as we have noticed before, are far nearer to the spirit of the gospels, that of St. John above all, than those of the Middle Ages.

2. But the ministry itself was but the consummation of the age-long work now "accomplished." Throughout the whole course of man's history, in the entire spiritual evolution, whose first steps and rude beginnings we trace in the burial mounds of prehistoric races, He Whose lips now uttered that great "It is accomplished" had been the light of men, never amid thick clouds of error and cruelty and superst.i.tion wholly extinguished. In every approach of man to G.o.d however dimly conceived of, the Word, the Eternal Son, had been offering Himself in sacrifice to the Father.

So here, in the perfect act of the moral obedience of a human will, is that to which all sacrifices not only pointed forward but, all the time, meant, and aimed at, and symbolised, as men so slowly and so painfully groped after, felt their way to G.o.d, "if haply they might find Him."

"It is accomplished"--the true meaning of sacrifice, of all religion, heathen and Jewish, is attained and laid bare.

Thousands of years of human development reach their climax, find their issue and their explanation in these words.

3. In its teaching, this sixth word ascends to the heights, to the mysterious and ineffable relationships of the G.o.dhead--which are the inner reality and meaning of all morality and religion--and it descends to the depths, to the lowliest details of the most commonplace life.

All work, for the Christian, is raised to the level, to the dignity of sacrifice. Once and for all we must rid ourselves of that idea which has wrought so much mischief, that sacrifice necessarily connotes pain, loss, death. Essentially our sacrifice is what essentially Christ's sacrifice was, the joyous dedication of the will to G.o.d, the Source and Light of all our being.

The daily round, the common task, Will furnish all we need to ask.

All work is sacred, or may be so, if we will. For all work has been consecrated for evermore by the perfect obedience, that is, the perfect sacrifice of the Son of man, the Head of our race. There is no task which any Christian, anywhere, can be called upon to do, which cannot be made part of that joyous service, that glad sacrifice, which, in union with that of Jesus Christ our Lord, we, one with Him in sacramental union, "offer and present" to the Father.

VIII THE SEVENTH WORD

"Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." ST. LUKE XXIII. 46.

The consummation of sacrifice, the union of the human will with the Divine, leads to the perfect rest in G.o.d.

1. We have tried to deal with the Seven Words as const.i.tuting a revelation of the Divine Sonship of humanity. From this point of view it is significant that the first and the last begin, like the Lord's Prayer, with a direct address to the Father.

The service of the Christian man is that of a son in his father's house, of a free man, not of a slave. The Fatherhood of G.o.d is the very key- note of the Christian view of life and of death. In both alike we are the objects of the Father's individual care and love; in both we bear the supreme dignity of "the sons of the Most High."

That dignity belongs inalienably to our human nature as such. Baptism conveys no gift alien and extraneous to our manhood. Rather, that union with the Only Begotten Son is not an addition to, but the restoration of our nature by Him in Whose Image it was created. United thus to the Eternal Son, we are placed in a position to realise the possibilities of our being, to become that which we are const.i.tuted capable of becoming.

That is the true answer to the question, how can we be made children of G.o.d by Baptism?

And through work, and prayer, and suffering, we are to grow into, and perfectly realise, our Divine sonship.

2. These dying words of the Son of G.o.d breathe no spirit of mere pa.s.sive resignation. That is the spirit of the Oriental fatalist, not of the son conscious of his sonship, of his heirship. Even the Lord's Death was not the yielding to inexorable necessity, to the inevitable working of the laws of nature. It was, if anything in His Life was, the deliberate act of His conscious Will. "I commend," rather, "I commit My Spirit." "I lay down My life . . . therefore the Father loveth Me."

Submission to the Will of G.o.d is not necessarily a Christian virtue at all. What is Christian is the glad recognition of what manner of will the Divine Will is, how altogether "good, perfect, and acceptable," how infinitely righteous, and holy, and loving; the doing of that glorious Will with mind, and heart, and will, and body; the praying with all sincerity and intention that that Will, which is the happiness and joy and life of all creatures, may increasingly "be done, as in heaven, so on earth"; the free and glad surrender, in life and death, to that Will which is the perfection and consummation of our manhood.

3. Such an att.i.tude of our whole being, which is what is meant by being a Christian, can only be ours by virtue of the Spirit of the Son of G.o.d dwelling and working within us, and moulding us into His perfect Likeness. In Him alone we can come to our sonship, to that which is from the first, potentially, our own. "Ye are all sons of G.o.d, through faith, in Christ Jesus; for as many of you as were baptised into Christ did put on Christ." Work and suffering, life and death, can only be borne, and lived, and endured by us in the spirit of sonship, so far as we are actually "in Christ."

Let us pray that the Mind and Will of the Son of G.o.d, disclosed to us in these Seven Words, may be ours in ever-increasing measure. They can be ours, if we are in Him, and He in us.

The foundation fact of the Christian life, that which alone makes it possible, is our union, through sacraments and faith, with Christ; our actual sharing in His Life, imparted by His Spirit to the members of His Body. We are meant to be ever drawing upon the infinite moral resources of that Life by repeated acts of faith. For, as with all other gifts of G.o.d, so it is with this, His supreme gift; we only know it as ours--it is, in a real sense, only truly our own--in proportion as we are using it.

X ADDRESS ON EASTER EVE

"We were buried, therefore, with Him through baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life."--ROM. VI. 4.

"I delivered unto you, among the first things, that . . . He was buried."--I COR. XV. 3, 4.

St. Paul lays extraordinary and, at first sight, inexplicable stress, on the fact of our Lord's Burial. It is certainly strange that, in the second of these two texts, he mentions it as const.i.tuting, along with the Death of Jesus Christ for our sins, and His Resurrection on the third day according to the Scriptures, the foundation truths of the apostolic gospel, as being one of those "first things" of the Christian religion which, as he had "received," so had he "delivered" to the Corinthians.

This extreme importance attached by St. Paul to the Burial of Christ, can only be explained by the mysticism of the great apostle. To him the outward facts, however wonderful and striking in themselves, are of value only as "signs," as representing great moral and spiritual realities. To him, as to every man who thinks soberly and steadily, the internal is "real" in a sense in which the external is not: thought has a reality denied to "things."

The real meaning of Christ's Burial is the mystical meaning, that meaning which was brought home to the minds of the early Christians by the picturesque and symbolic ritual of baptism. The man who had, by faith, accepted Christ as his Lord and Master, was baptised into His Death; that is, in Him he died to the old life. His submergence beneath the baptismal waters, the very likeness of the Burial, was the a.s.surance and the sealing of that death. As truly as the man who is dead and buried is cut off for ever from the life of this world, so was the baptised separated, once and for all, from the old heathen life with all its a.s.sociations. As clearly did his emergence from those waters show forth his actual partic.i.p.ation in the Lord's Resurrection. He had not merely left the old life behind, he had from that moment entered upon the new life, the "life of G.o.d"; that is, the life which henceforth had G.o.d for its foundation, its centre, and its goal; the life of moral health and sanity; the life which was to be, in all its relations, open and clear and undismayed; the life "in the Light."

1. The first thought, then, of Easter Eve must surely be one of profound sorrow and humiliation. We ought to be bowed to the very earth with self- abas.e.m.e.nt by the thought that we have been, so many times in the past, untrue to our baptism.

Soldiers of Christ, we have denied our Lord. More, ours has been the guilt, not of Peter only, but of Judas. Too often we have betrayed Him for the veriest pittance of this world's good.

We have missed the glory of the Risen Life. All the magnificent language of the Epistle to the Ephesians, the quickening with Christ, the raising together with Him from the dead, the enthronement in Him in the heavenly places--all this was written of Christians in this life. All this might have been true of us, and is not; for, worse than Esau, we have bartered away an incomparably more magnificent heritage.