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THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS

THE

I

HE cross speaks silently but surely of God's great love for sinners. For this reason it has become the sign under which Christianity has won its way in a world of sin. This is not a dogma of theology. It is a fact of history. Wherever the religion of Christ has advanced, its song of victory has been the burden of the ancient Latin hymn:

"Forward the royal banners fly,

The sacred cross shines out on high,
Where man's Creator stooped to die
In human flesh, to draw man nigh."

The same burden is repeated in the music of the modern church:

"Onward, Christian soldiers,

Marching as to war,

With the cross of Jesus
Going on before."

Nothing could appear more strange, if we leave out of view that interpretation of the death of Jesus which comes from the faith of

the atonement, than that the cross, the emblem of the world's shame and reproach, should become the symbol of Christian faith, the treasure of Christian hope, the banner of Christian victory. How came it to be thus transformed? What miracle has exalted the instrument of death to the place of glory?

When Christianity came to China under this banner, the Chinese wondered at it, mocked at it, issued an edict against it. This edict said: "Why should the worshippers of Jesus reverence the instrument of his punishment, and consider it so to represent him as not to venture to tread upon it? Would it be common sense, if the father or ancestor of a house had been killed by a shot from a gun, or by a wound from a sword, that his sons or grandsons should reverence the gun or the sword as their father or ancestor?" It is a searching question; and the only answer to it is in the inner life, where the cross of Jesus has been planted as the tree of peace and blessing, the sign of divine forgiveness and redeeming love; so that the first cry of faith is

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Simply to Thy cross I cling,"

and the last breath of prayer is

"Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes."

There is a passage in Goethe's Confessions of a Beautiful Soul which tells the story of human experience before the cross.

'Now, Almighty God, grant me the gift of faith!' This was the prayer that came out of the deepest need of my heart. I leaned upon the little table beside me, and hid my tearstained face in my hands. At last I was in the state in which we must be, if God is to hear our prayers, but in which we so seldom are.

"Yes, but who could ever express, even in the dimmest way, the experience that came to me then? A secret influence drew my soul away to the cross, where Jesus once expired. It was an inward leading, I cannot give it any other name, like that which draws the heart to its beloved one in absence, a spiritual approach doubtless far truer and more real than a dream. So my soul drew near to him who became man and died upon the cross, and in that moment I knew what faith was.

""This is faith!' I cried, and sprang up as if half frightened. I tried to make sure of my experience, to verify my vision, and soon I was convinced that my spirit had received a wholly new power to uplift itself.

"In these feelings words forsake us. I could distinguish clearly between my experience and

all fantasy. It was entirely free from fantasy. It was not a dream-picture. And yet it gave me the sense of reality in the object which it brought before me, just as imagination does when it recalls the features of a dear friend far away."

Many are the souls that have passed through that indescribable experience. Millions of men who have been unmoved by philosophy and unconvinced by argument, have yielded to the mystic attractions of the cross of Jesus. The story of this divine charm runs like a thread of gold through all the many-coloured literature of Christianity.

If I were asked to name the three books outside of the New Testament which lie closest to the Christian heart, and are entitled to be called the classics of Christian faith, I should choose The Imitation of Christ and The Pilgrim's Progress and The Christian Year. There is no difference among them in their testimony to the power of the cross of Jesus to draw men to him.

"Take up, therefore, thy cross," says Thomas à Kempis, "and follow Jesus, and thou shalt go into life everlasting. He went before bearing his cross, and died for thee on the cross, that thou mightest also bear thy cross and die on the cross with him."

John Bunyan,

"So I saw in my dream," says "that just as Christian came up with the Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, he hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death."

"Is it not strange," says John Keble in his poem on the Crucifixion,

"Is it not strange, the darkest hour

That ever dawned on sinful earth,
Should touch the heart with softer power
For comfort than an angel's mirth?

That to the cross the mourner's eye should turn,
Sooner than where the stars of Christmas burn?

Lord of my heart, by Thy last cry,

Let not Thy blood on earth be spent: Lo, at Thy feet I fainting lie,

Mine eyes upon Thy wounds are bent; Upon Thy streaming wounds my weary eyes Wait, like the parched earth on April skies.

Wash me, and dry these bitter tears;

Oh, let my heart no farther roam,—

'Tis Thine by vows and hopes and fears,

Long since. Oh, call Thy wanderer home,

To that dear home, safe in Thy wounded side,

Where only broken hearts their sin and shame may hide."