Sermons Part 6

Who would not shrink from the responsibility of addressing you at such a crisis? And yet I speak boldly to you. Do I not know that though the hand of the swordsman is feeble, yet the weapon itself is powerful--keener than any two-edged sword? Am I not a.s.sured that though the preacher's words may be feeble, faltering, desultory, without force and without point, yet G.o.d may barb the ill-fledged, ill-aimed shaft, and drive it home to the heart? It is possible that even now the live coal from the altar may be brought by the winged seraph's hand, and laid on the sinful lips. I have undertaken to glorify the power of G.o.d, and to hold it up to you as your truest goal. How can I hope for a hearing, if I begin by distrusting it where I myself am concerned?

It is here, then, that I bid you seek and find the true aim of your ambition--in realising, appropriating, absorbing into yourselves, identifying yourselves with this power of G.o.d. It alone is inexhaustible in its resources and infinite in its potency. There is no fear here lest the conqueror of a world should sigh and fret because nothing remains beyond to conquer. If the craving is infinite, the satisfaction is infinite also. Star beyond star, world beyond world, will start out into view as your vision grows clearer, spangling the moral heavens with their glows. +Panta ischuo+, "I can do all things." +Panta humon+, "All things are yours."

Yes, but this promise of limitless strength has its condition attached--+en to endunamounti me+, "In Him that empowereth me;"

yes, but this pledge of universal dominion is qualified by the sequel +humeis de Christou+, "Ye are Christ's."

How can we better realise this power of G.o.d than by taking St. Paul's statement as our starting-point? The Cross of Christ is "the power of G.o.d." The Cross is the central revelation of G.o.d. The Cross has not unfrequently been preached as a narrow technicality which shocks the conscience and freezes the heart. It thus becomes a mere forensic subtlety. But the Cross of Christ, taught in all its length and breadth and height and depth--the Cross of Christ taught as St. Paul taught it--the Cross of Christ, starting from the Incarnation on the one side, and leading up to the Resurrection and Ascension on the other, contains all the elements of moral regeneration and of spiritual life.

(1) It is first of all a lesson of _righteousness_. It is the great rebuke of sin, the great a.s.surance of judgment, the great call to repentance. Think--no, you cannot think, it defies all thinking--yet strive to think, what is implied in the human birth, the human life, the human suffering, the human death of the Eternal Word.

Ask yourselves what condescension, what sacrifice, what humiliation is involved in this. Summon to your aid all a.n.a.logies of self-renunciation which history records or imagination suggests. They will all fail you. No reiteration of the finite can compa.s.s the infinite. You are lost in awe at the contemplation. And while your brain is reeling with the effort, try and imagine the awe, the majesty, the glory of a righteousness which could only thus be vindicated. Then, after looking upward to G.o.d, look inward into your own heart, and see how heinous, how loathsome, how guilty your guilt must be, which has cost such a sacrifice as this. G.o.d's righteousness--your sin,--these are brought face to face in the Cross of Christ.

(2) But, secondly, while it is a denunciation of sin, it is likewise an a.s.surance of pardon. If the infinity of the sacrifice has taught you the majesty of G.o.d's righteousness, it teaches you no less the glory of His mercy. What may you not look for, what may you not hope for from a Father who has vouchsafed to you this transcendent manifestation of His loving-kindness? "He that spared not His own Son ... how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" Is any one here burdened with the consciousness of a shameful past? Does the memory of some ugly school-boy sin dog your path, haunting and paralysing you with its importunity? You feel sometimes as if your whole life were poisoned by that one cruel retrospect. Brother, be bold, and dare to look up. I would not have you think your sins one whit less heinous. But if G.o.d's righteousness is infinite, so also is His mercy. The Cross is reared before your eyes in this moral wilderness, where you are dying, where all are dying around you. Dare to look up. The bite of the serpent's fang is healed; the venom coursing through your veins is quelled; and health returns to the poisoned soul. Yes, and by G.o.d's grace it may happen that through your very fall you will rise to a higher life; that the thanksgiving for the sin forgiven will consecrate you with fuller consecration; and that the acute moral agony through which you have pa.s.sed will endow you with a more helpful, more sympathetic, more loving spirit, than if you had never fallen.

(3) But again, the Cross of Christ is not only a condemnation of sin, not only a pledge of forgiveness; it is likewise an obligation of self-sacrifice. "G.o.d forbid," says St. Paul, "that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." But what next? Not "whereby I am saved in spite of myself," not "whereby I am spared all personal exertion," but "whereby the world is crucified unto me, and I to the world." This conformity to Christ's death, this crucifixion of self with Christ, always forms part of the doctrine of the Cross in St.

Paul's teaching. The dying with Christ, the being buried with Christ, is the absolute accompaniment of the atoning death of Christ. We cannot be at one with Christ unless we conform to Christ. The work done for us necessitates the work done by us. The potentiality of our salvation--of yours and mine--wrought through the Cross of Christ can only then become an actuality, when Christ's death is thus appropriated, realised, translated into action by us--by you and by me. But it remains still the work of G.o.d's grace. Human merit is absolutely excluded still, as absolutely as by the baldest and most unqualified doctrine of subst.i.tution.

(4) Fourthly and lastly, the Cross of Christ is a lesson of the regenerate and sanctified life. Dying and living, burial and resurrection, these in the Christian vocabulary are correlative ideas.

The Crucifixion implies the Resurrection and the Ascension. The raising up on the cross demands the raising up from the grave, the raising up into heaven. The lifting up of the brazen serpent in the wilderness is a symbol alike of the one and the other. And as with Christ, so also with those who are Christ's. "If we died with Christ, we shall also live with him." Those only can be made conformable to Christ's resurrection who have been made conformable to His death. The power of His resurrection is the counterpart to the power of His cross.

Herein, then--in the Cross of Christ--resides this power of G.o.d which is offered to you as the true aim of your ambition, inexhaustible, omnipotent, infinite. Will you close with the offer? Then reverence yourselves; believe in yourselves; consecrate yourselves.

Reverence yourselves. Begin with reverencing this your body. Reverence it as G.o.d's handiwork fearfully and wonderfully made. Contemplate it; yes, contemplate it with awe, if only for its marvellously subtle mechanism. But reverence it still more as the consecrated temple of G.o.d's Spirit. Do not neglect it; do not misuse it; before all things do not defile and desecrate it. Young men, the problem of social purity is thrown down for your generation to solve. Will you accept this challenge? The conscience of England is awakening to the terrible curse. To redress the crying social wrong, to raise womanhood from degradation and shame, to hold up to reverence the idea of a pure, chivalrous, manly manhood,--this is the crusade in which you are invited to enlist. Will you, as consecrated soldiers of the Cross, claim your part in the glory of this campaign? If so, the work must begin now, must begin in yourselves. There can be no success against the foe where there is disaffection and mutiny in the citadel.

Believe in yourselves; yet, not in yourselves as yourselves. Believe not in your strength, but in your weakness. Believe in G.o.d who dwells in you. Give full rein to your ambition. Trust this power of G.o.d. It will not stunt or mar, will not crush, will not annihilate your natural gifts--your social endowments, your political instincts, your intellectual capacities. It will only elevate, harmonize, inspire, purify them. Trust this power. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, which you may not do, if you will only trust it. +Panta ischuo+, "I have strength for everything," everything in heaven and earth. You have youth, health, vigour, enthusiasm, hopefulness, everything on your side now. Seize the great opportunity which can never return.

Consecrate yourselves. Empty yourselves of yourselves, that you may be filled with G.o.d. Yield yourselves to Him, not with a pa.s.sive acquiescence, a sentimental quietism, but with the earnest, energetic direction of all your faculties to this one end. A period must still intervene for most of you before the active independent work of life begins,--a period of discipline and waiting. Only by patience will you win your souls. But the self-dedication must be made at once, and it must be complete. Half-heartedness spoils the sacrifice. Postponement is perilous. The opportunity despised turns its back on you for ever.

Consecrate, consecrate yourselves, body and soul and spirit, to G.o.d now, this night.

FOOTNOTES

[1] _These sermons are printed from reporter's notes._

[2] Preached at Cambridge, Oct. 23rd, 1881.

[3] Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral on Sunday Afternoon, September 6th, 1874.

[4] Mr. Foley, R.A., sculptor.

[5] Sermon preached in St. Paul's Cathedral on Sunday, May 21st, 1876.

[6] Sermon preached in Durham Cathedral on the Occasion of his Enthronement, on Thursday, May 15th, 1879.

[7] Preached in St. Peter's Church, Bishop Auckland.

[8] Delivered at St. Paul's Cathedral, Tuesday evening, November 4th, 1873.

[9] Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral, Tuesday evening, November 11th, 1873.

[10] Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral, Tuesday evening, November 18th, 1873.

[11] Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, Thursday, June 19th, 1884, on the anniversary of the Girls' Friendly Society.

[12] Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, on Sunday Afternoon, May 30th, 1875, before some of Her Majesty's Judges, the Lord Mayor, and members of the Corporation of the City of London.

[13] Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, February 1st, 1884.

[14] Preached at Manchester Cathedral, at annual meeting of Additional Curates Society, on Tuesday, November 1st, 1887.