Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation Part 6

But while man was yet young, sin looked him in the face. And the man looked at sin with an evil longing look. And in that look he took in some of what he saw. He was marred. The G.o.d image was hurt. He was not the same man. And he knew it. He felt it. His eyes were never the same after that exchange of looks with sin.

But G.o.d helped him. He didn't go away. He came closer for the sake of the sin-hurt eyes. And whenever man has looked into that wondrous G.o.d-face, even though seeing dimly and indistinctly, something within him makes a great bound. He recognizes the original of his own natural self. And he catches fire at the sight. A holy discontent springs up within.

"Couldst thou in vision see Thyself the man G.o.d meant, Thou never more couldst be The man thou art--content."

But you have to see Jesus as He was in His humanity to see yourself the man G.o.d meant. And you have to see Jesus as He is now to see the G.o.d who meant you to be like Himself.

It has always been so. This has been G.o.d's simple method with men He would use. He has wooed and then wooed more, and a bit longer, gently, persistently, up and away and apart until at last the man's eyes were trained away from the lower glare enough to see the real things.

Then in some vision of the night, whose darkness helped hold back the lower earth lights, G.o.d has looked a man in the face once again. Or, perhaps in open day there came to him that which he could not describe.

But in his inner spirit he knew there was One with him whom yet his outer eyes could not see, but who _could_ not be more real if his outer eyes did see.

And in that presence there was a mingling of exquisite tenderness and of limitless power that was overawing. Inconceivable purity and yet such an unspeakable graciousness seemed blended in this presence. And the man seeing was melted in his innermost being with the sense of tenderness, and bowed in awe to the lowest dust in the sense of overwhelming power.

Those who have seen will understand how poor the words are to tell the story. And those who have not may wonder a bit until they, too, have seen.

Some Transfigured Men.

This it was that transformed that man of the early dawnlight named Enoch, the seventh from Adam. He was the head of the leading family of the race, the racial leader. He had lived well on into the seventh decade of his life.

Then the change came. He recognized a Presence with him, one day. That One unseen by unseeing eyes became real to him and then more real. He yielded to His wooing. He companioned with Him daily. This came to be the realest thing. And he was transformed by it. He grew constantly less like what he had been, and more like what he was originally meant to be, like his Companion. Constant contact restored the original likeness. He was transformed before men's eyes, changed over from within.

Then one day the transforming forces had gone so far that he was transferred to the upper levels, where all _see His face_, and his likeness shines out of all faces. He never got over the sight that came to him that early day.

It was this that wooed the man of Ur away from his ancestral home to be a lonely pilgrim, a stranger among strangers. Nothing less or else could have broken the early attachments, the strongest of the East. That winsome wooing Presence became to him stronger than the strongest human attachments of his family and home land.

This it was that steadied him through the loneliness, the homelessness, the disappointments, the long delays, until it was the image of a new man, a transformed man, a faith-begotten man, that at length looked at him out of the eyes of his only begotten. This it was that steadied him through the hardest test of all with that only begotten, the fire test on Moriah. And that made the transformation yet fuller. For so he grew the liker him to whose presence he insisted on yielding as each test came.

So it was with that rare student of Egypt and Arabia. Trained in the best that man could give in the University of the Nile, and then further trained by absence from man in the University of the Desert, alone with sheep and stars, shifting sand and immovable rock, he wasn't ready for his task yet. He was well trained but not yet transformed.

The fires had to be kindled, purifying, melting, fusing fires. And only fire kindles fire. The fire of the unburnt bush told him first of a new kind of fire, uncatalogued on the Nile. The fire of a Presence burned daily, not consuming him, but only the dross _in_ him, as he led his race from Egypt to Sinai, out from the slavery of men up to the freedom of the presence of G.o.d. And then for six weeks, twice over, he was in the Presence of Flame on the Mount.

This it was that utterly changed him into the strongly gentle, patient, tender-hearted, wise man who taught and trained, lived with and led, the immature men and women whom G.o.d would weld into a nation, a G.o.d-nation.

He never got over those two long visits to the Mount, nor has the world.

It was nothing else than this, long years later, that made the rugged man of the deserts brave the traitorous Ahab in his luxurious, licentious court. Without it, the sight obscured, the vision lost, he is a coward fleeing like a whipped dog before a bad woman, thinking only of saving his own skin. It showed himself, his weak, cowardly self, to himself.

A fresh vision that early morning in the mouth of the desert cave made the yet deeper more radical transformation. That unutterably gentle sound of stillness, too exquisite to be told, only to be felt by a spirit in tune, _that_ left him not a whit less willing to brave danger than before, but made over now into another sort, like him whose Presence in the cave so melted him down.

This new, gentled, mellowed, strengthened Elijah reappears in the man who received the birthright portion of his spirit. We know the new Elijah by the spirit that swayed Elisha. The old spirit, fiercely denouncing, calling down fire, slaying the priests, but with no grief-broken heart under these stern needful things,--this we think of familiarly as the Elijah spirit.

The new spirit, healing, teaching, sympathizing, leading, feeding, fathering, the greatness of gentleness and patience, these characteristics of Elijah's prophetic heir tell of the deep radical transformation by the wondrous unseen Presence that early morning in the mouth of the cave. This is the birthright gift of Elijah to Elisha.

Elijah had a spirit-sight of G.o.d, and he never got over it. He became like Him into whose face he looked.

Heart Stimulant for the Brain.

But time fails, and words fail immensely more, to tell this thing. Let him who would know that transforming sight get quietly alone with Isaiah in the temple, and on bent knees linger unhurriedly, and listen, and watch, and breathe out his prayer, and strongly wait until something of the same brooding Presence be discerned that transformed this young Hebrew messenger of G.o.d.

Then let him get alone with the Moses of the New Testament. For there is no man who was so utterly transformed, and so quickly, as the man on the Damascus road. The whole course of his character and life was radically changed as by a lightning touch. This is the most striking ill.u.s.tration of all. No man so reveals in himself the tremendous transforming power there is in the sight of the Christ as does this high-strung son of the Hebrew race.

But--words are such lame things. They cannot tell the story here. They are all one has to use. Yet they'll never be understood except as the light of experience shines upon them. When any one attempts to talk of such a thing as this of seeing G.o.d or Christ, his words seem so poor and lame and under the mark by the man who has had something of the vision.

And they either are meaningless and uninteresting, or else they seem overstated, and quite beyond the mark to one who has had no inkling in experience of the thing itself.

I recall distinctly the experience of a Danish friend in Copenhagen. She had been trying to read in English a certain devotional book, but said she couldn't seem to grasp the meaning of the English words. They eluded her, and so the book didn't help her much.

Then she went through a time of sore stress of spirit in the sickness and death of her mother. A new experience of the nearness of G.o.d came to her. And then happening--as it seemed--to pick up the English book again she was amazed and delighted to find how much better and more quickly she knew the words and sensed the meaning.

It is only as the heart is fired that the brain awakens. Experience gives the meaning to language. Without experience it is a dead language in meaning even though it be one's own mother tongue. Only the man who has caught something of the vision of Christ's face can understand the strong words used in talking of such a vision.

It is most striking to notice that even when the glory of G.o.d's presence was hidden beneath human wrappings in Jesus it still could be _felt_.

Men felt that presence though they knew not just what it was they felt, nor why. When the glory came yet closer in the coming of Jesus, it must be well covered up for the sake of men's eyes, that they might not go blind at once; but its power of attraction could not be wholly hid.

So really human was Jesus in the outer circ.u.mstance of His life that His brothers of the home couldn't believe he was essentially different from themselves. But the attraction of that presence was felt constantly even through the human hiding of it.

John of the Wilderness instinctively recognized that here was more than the man he saw, and so obeyed His word. The crowds gathered eagerly in the Jordan bottoms in even greater numbers than to hear John, drawn by a power they felt they must yield to, and did yield to gladly.

From the first the crowds gathered thick about Him, Jewish aristocrat, Samaritan half-breed and sinful outcast jostling elbows in their eagerness to hear, drawn by a power they could feel, but could not understand any more than they could withstand it. The children loved his presence and touch.

The bad in life were as resistlessly drawn up to a new life as the Greeks were drawn from clear beyond the blue waters of the h.e.l.lespont into His presence. The crowds were irresistibly drawn to follow on that last eventful journey to Jerusalem even while they felt "afraid."

It was the sight of the glory on the Mount that drew faithful John in _with_ Jesus, and held him steady that awful night in palace and courtyard, and that later brought poor blasphemous Peter back for forgiveness. The two walking to Emmaus found their hearts all aflame, though they supposed it was only the chance stranger of the roadway they listened to.

Even those who hated Him were compelled to recognize the wondrous power of His presence. The Nazareth hands that itched to seize Him were restrained by His presence as He pa.s.sed through their midst. Ten times did the Jerusalem crowds attempt his life, and ten times were they restrained by a power in Him that they could neither understand nor withstand.

The men officially empowered to arrest Him return empty-handed, confessing the overawing power of His words. That last week the leaders that were hotly plotting His death felt the strange restraint of His presence while He quietly sat in their very midst, and swayed the crowds.

In the garden soldiers and priests alike were felled to the ground by the power of His presence. So it always has been. No one has ever had a sight of that Face, and gotten used to it, or gotten over it.

A Fresh Vision Needed.

But the thing we are specially needing to-day is a sight of Christ _as He is now_. It seems a bit strange that we don't get this more. One historic Church has Him fastened to a cross, never freed from the old fastenings. Another has Him set in picture frame, behind gla.s.s. And the mult.i.tudes prostrate themselves and reverently kiss the gla.s.s.

In widely differing Churches He seems quite covered up out of sight by cla.s.sical ritual, beautiful music, and impressive stately service. The crowds gather and listen and bow low in hushed stillness. But, apparently, _Him they see not_, else how different their conduct as they come out, and their lives.

And yet as I have mingled with the worshippers in Catholic Churches in the south of Europe, in Greek Churches in Russia, and in congregations of the Church of England cla.s.sed as "high," I have been caught by faces here and there in the crowd that clearly were reaching out hungrily for _Him_, and were having some sort, some real sort, of touch with Him, too. Yet it seemed to be in spite of surroundings. The insistence of their hunger pierces through these to Him. He seems hidden from the crowd by them.

Scholarly orthodox theologians talk learnedly about Him, but Himself as He walked among us and as He is now, Him it would seem that they see not, at least not enough to burn through and burn out and burn up and send men out aflame with the Jesus-pa.s.sion. Philosophies about Him that are cla.s.sed as "liberal" and put attractively, yet have nothing of the burn in them that reveals Himself.

The more modern Church of the more western world seems to have gotten a new lease of aggressiveness in service, a new intensity in activities so numerous as to be a bit bewildering sometimes. The wheels whir busily and noisily. You feel them. But Him, the unseen presence that makes you reverently wrap your face up out of sight, and stand with awed heart to listen, _Him_ we seem not to see.

The wondrous quiet Voice that makes your heart burn within you with a burning that cleanses and mellows and melts down, _that_ we seem to hear only by getting away from the noise of the whirring wheels into some quiet corner.

There are in every Church and nation those who seem to have the close personal touch with Himself. Their faces and daily lives show the marks.

Their lips may not say so much, for they who see most can say least of what they see. But the marks in the life are unmistakable.

Yet even here the sight of Christ emphasizes chiefly the personal side, what He is personally to them. And what a blessed side that is only they who know it know. They think of Him as a personal Saviour, and the heart glows. They see Him at the Father's right hand interceding, and gratefully remember that He will forget no name where there is a trusting heart. They think of the Holy Spirit, the other Jesus, Jesus'

other self, always "alongside to help," alongside _in_side. And they practise letting Him work out the Christ-likeness within themselves.