Preach Christ by living Christ. "All men," says the Koran, "are commanded by the Saint." And no man ever casts the wealth of his life and the crown of his devotion at the feet of Jesus without "quickening the earth with a diviner life, and uplifting it with a new courage." One of the most brilliant of the eighteenth-century poets said: "The lapse of time changes all but man, who ever has been, and ever will be, just what he is." Which means that man is by make incurably selfish. This is a lie. And it is the worst kind of lying, for it represents not only the inability to find good in man, but the inability to believe that there is good to be found. My own stand is where thought and experience have forced me. From human nature left to itself I hope for nothing; with that nature remade in Christ I despair of nothing. It all turns on the remake. And it can be remade: "As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become sons of God: who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."
Let us, therefore, by divine grace, refashion our lives on the mighty principle of divine love. And let us settle it as one of the truths never to be questioned, that nothing is worthy to be called love that cannot be affirmed of God. We know what God loves; or we know enough for the practical ordering of our daily life. Let us love in ourselves what God loves in us. This will include for ourselves and others all things which are good for us to have and enjoy; and because it will exclude all things that are narrow, mean, and selfish, it will go far to raise the world to a power of a new day. Then, through hearts and homes, through Churches and societies, the Royal Law, made royal life, will solve the problem of the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. It will become the touch of omnipotence that casts out of our life the unworthy, by bringing in the opposite virtues, resolving all into character which shall transform mankind into one realm over which the right and the might of Christ shall at last prevail—
"From creed and scheme the light goes out,
The saintly fact survives,
The Blessed Master who can doubt,
Revealed in human lives?"
[1] Two or three sentences in this chapter are memorized from a sermon I heard years ago, preached by Rev. H. E. Michie, M.A., of Stonehaven.
'HE WAS DESPISED AND REJECTED'
"He is despised and rejected of men."—Isaiah liii. 3.
VIII
'HE WAS DESPISED AND REJECTED'
Some two or three years ago the picture, "He was despised and rejected," by Sigismund Göetze, was on view in Glasgow. In this address I shall try to tell you something about the impression it made on me; and the reason will be given at the end why I include it in this series. Some of you may have seen the picture; others may have read or heard about it.
The conception of it appears to have formed itself in the mind of the artist out of what ordinarily is a very commonplace circumstance. He had attended a Sunday service at St. Paul's Cathedral, and heard a sermon that made a deep impression upon him; which found his higher being with something like the touch of an immortal influence. He thought within himself: "What a real difference a word like this must make in the thoughts and life of those who have been privileged to listen to it. Never again, surely, can they be as though they had not heard it." It was a message, so he felt, to shake men, to arouse them, and make them turn on one another and cry: "Men and brethren, what must we do?"