SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 March 1921, Page 11

SUNDAY READING.

THE ETERNAL SACRIFICE. “The Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world.” —Rev. XIII. 8. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) The fact of the atonement through Jesus Christ is vital to the Christian, faith. It is “the article of a standing or falling church.” Wherever this cardinal truth has been preached it has demonstrated its Divine authority over the conscience and the heart of men. Wherever it has been obscured or denied it has been the swift pursuer of spiritual decadence and death. But the atonement is a delicate doctrine, and no man should speak of it save with awe and wonder, and even when he does so speak, he should distinguish between the eternal fact and the changing interpretations of the fact. He should keep m mind the golden words of Dr. R. W. Dale, when he says: “It is the atonement itself, and not any doctrine or theory that is vital.” The distinction is important, and unmindfulness of it has resulted in endless confusion and endless controversy. “Christ died for our sins.” That is the eternal fact, the vital truth, but in what way the death of Christ avails for the sin of the world is capable of divers interpretations, as the history of Christian doctrine abundantly shows. I would have you keep that fact in mind now, for although my subject is not the atonement, it is so closely related as to inevitably suggest it.

I want to remind you that sacrifice is the law of life—God’s life and ours. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ was not an experiment designed to meet an unforseen emergency; it was part of the Divine order of the world. Vicarious suffering is not an arbitrary contrivance by which Christ bought a formal pardon for the world; it is the universal law of which Calvary is the most glorious example. It is the price someone must pay for every step of progress and every moral conquest the world has ever witnessed.

There is a popular and widespread misconception of the love of God, and the terms of its bestowal. It is sometimes said that God loves the world because Jesus Christ died. To say this is to set the mind in the wrong direction, and convey a false impression. It is an inversion of the true order. God does not love the »world because Christ died. Christ died because God loveci the world already. The death of Christ is not the cause, but the expression of God’s love. Redemption is not an afterthought; it is part of an eternal purpose. As a fact in the history of the race the crucifixion took place two thousand years ago, but in the purpose of God, it occurred before all time. is eternal, and all love is sacrifical and redemptive. On your child’s natal day you bring forth your gift and lay it in the lap of your darling; and that temporary gift is an expression of your abiding affection, and not simply a monetary impulse. Once in the history of the world the Divine Father bestowed on us “His unspeakable gift,” but the love that prompted the gift did not begin or end with Christ’s earthly life. Just as your birthday gift affords a glimpse into earthly fatherhood, so the gift of God I reveals the abiding spirit of the eter- ! nal Father. The sunlight which falls ion the earth to-day will fall in pale reflected moonbeams /to-night, and this, not because of any waning of the sun, but because the earth in its circuit will have turned its .face away from the face of the sun. Once in the story of the world “the light of the knowledge of the glory/ of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” rose full-orbed on the sons of men, but the Divine grace out of which that manifestation arose did not change and pass away. Sunlike it shines on and on, glowing with all the warmth and light of God’s holy love. God did not begin to love at Bethlehem and cease to love at Calvary. Love that changes is not love, as Mrs. Barratt Browning passionately protests. Calvary was an event; sacrifice is a law of life. This, then, is the teaching of our text, but not of this pa-ssage alone. It is the teaching of the physical universe, the teaching of human history and experience, no less than holy writ. Vicarious suffering is the law of the universe, the law of social progress, the principle that supports and underpins human society, and if we think of love and surrender as eare and strange, it is qnly so because we have fallen out of the eternal order. That we who sing the praises of the Cross should murmer when called to suffer, is proof how imperfectly we have understood the mind of Christ and the meaning of redemption. The whole creation is bestowed with blood. So are the pages of history. The New Testament is crimsoned. THE LAW OF SACRIFICE. The law of sacrifice is the law of the physical universe. Creation itself is love giving forth gifts and sacrifices. Every living thing that breathes on this planet, every flower that blooms, every seed that ripens, every star that shines, every river that runs spends itself in giving, and none of these things exist for themselves alone. They live to serve others. In the several kingdoms of Nature each depends on the other, and each helps all. The mineral is the solid basis on which is spread the vegetable, the vegetable nourishes the animal, the lower animal supports the higher. Trees do not grow for themselves; they feed and cradle the birds; they shade the traveller till he blesses them. Of all the thousands of plants that botany has classified and catalogued, there is not a plant which does not take its place in the ministry of sacrificial service. The air we breathe depends on the salt and surging sea. The soil draws its fertility from the gracious and timely shower. The wine costs the cluster. The linen costs the flax. The fire in the grate costs the fuel in the mine. Flowers wait the falling of the sunbeams ere they unfold their fairest beauty. Coral islands where the fronded palms toss and wave, and where men build homes amid tropical profusion, are raised above sea level by countless myriads of living things that died vicariously that men may live. All living things are fed and buttressed by the granite rocks that sleep in sunless caves. The valleys wave because the mountains waste. All things serve all things. “Except a corn of wheat fall in the ground and die it abideth alone.”

Man’s life is ruled by the same law. From his birth on, he lives Jjy sacrifices. The mother’s angdish- is the condition. of the child’s existence. Home is motherhood’s altar. We enjoy no

blessing which did not march along the via dolorosa of pain. The foundations of Empire are laid in blood. New Zealand had never been cleared for civilisation; its swamps drained, its forests felled, its roads graded, its fields tilled, its cities built, and its schools and universities established, had not the pioneers paid the price in blood and tears and death. Never was victory won but the conqueror took possession of his conquest over the slain bodies of nameless heroes who died that the flag of freedom might float on some loftier height. The author buys his poem or his song with the burnt up tissue of his brain. To gain his vision of paradise regained John Milton sacrificed his eyesight, A few years ago liberty of thought was a thing unknown. Men’s lips were padlocked. To publicly criticise an English baron meant the sacrifice of the peasant’s land; to criticise the Pope meant the rack, the dungeon, the stake; to criticise the King meant death for disloyalty. Now all are free to think for themselves, to sift all knowledge, to cast away the chaff and garner the grain. But to win this freedom blood has run like rivers and tears have been too cheap to count. Thus, by the very constitution of the world, and the order of human society, God has expressed the everlasting law of which the Cross is highest and Divinest example. Further, this law of sacrifice is written by the finger of God on the moral nature of man. We are so made that we cannot approve of deeds done from selfish motive, and we cannot withhold admiration of actions prompted by selfrenunciation. The conscience of the world commends the world’s saints and condemns the world’s rascals, just because conscience is the bright candle of the Lord.

We shall reach the same conclusion if we keep in mind the perfection of God’s nature. It is a poor and unworthy idea of Christ’s death to think of it as a Divine expedient, designed to repair some unforseen accident in the moral government of the world. No less so in the idea that the greater Creator was compelled to devise a plan of salvation whereby He could harmonise His attributes and be merciful without loss of dignity. As if the Father of Jesus Christ could not do what any earthly father j?an; that is, be gracious and kind without any loss of parental dignity. Such representations i are repugnant to our moral sense, and they misinterpret the Christian gospel. There are no changes in God, for change is the mark of imperfection. The All Perfect One cannot change for better or for worse. There are no rising and falling of tides in the ocean of God’s love. Of that deep and wide sea we say with Whittier:— “Immortal love for ever free, for ever flowing free, “For ever stored, for ever whole, a never ebbing sea.”

The redemption is not an afterthought; it is part of the eternal purpose of Jesus Christ. God’s had purposes from the beginning, and since these thoughts have wrought out on earth, it seems reasonable to say that this purpose ruled the mind of God from the creation of the vast material universe. It is this which makes our planet an object of such absorbing interest to the Angels. Small as the earth is, compared with the shining worlds which roll in splendour under the eye of God, it has this distinction, that its dust formed and its fruits fed the body of the Son of God. It was here Jesus Christ lived, labored, suffered, died. It was here He rose again, and it was here He is still working out the redemption of the world; and we are called to share the sacrifical life and yield ourselves to God. What is true of the past is true also of the future. The love of God, whose richest fruit was seen in Calvary, is still the same. If we would leach the true meaning of the Christian gospel, we must read it not as a message of yesterday, but a message for to-day. We must not only say “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.” God is still in Christ for the sublime end. “The lamb slain from the foundation of the world” is our present, our almighty saviour, as we link opr earthly weakness with His eternal grace.