LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 IVIrs, Johm JJ. lJ^v<5. 
 
 BX 6826 .V959g ) 
 
 Vos, Geerhardus, 1862-1949 
 Grace and glory i 
 
JAK : - 132/ 
 
 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 Sermons Preached in the Chapel 
 
 ===== OF ==^= 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary 
 
 BY 
 
 GEERHARDUS VOS 
 
 
 THE REFORMED PRESS 
 
 GRAND RAPIDS. MICH. 
 
 1922 
 
Copyrighted 
 
 THE REFORMED PRESS 
 1922 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Wonderful Tree 7 
 
 II. Hungering and Thirsting after 
 
 Righteousness 37 
 
 III. Seeking and Saving the Lost 61 
 
 IV. "Rabboni" 89 
 
 V. The More Excellent Ministry 107 
 
 VI. Heavenly- Mindedness 133 
 
I. The Wonderful Tree 
 
Hosea XIV, 8: "1 am like a green 
 fir-tree; from me is thy fruit 
 found." 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE 
 
 HHHIS prophetic utterance represents one of 
 the two inseparable sides in the make-up of 
 religion. If we say that religion consists of 
 what God is for man, and of what man is for 
 God, then our text in the divine statement, 
 "From me is thy fruit found," stands for the 
 former. To balance it with the other side some 
 such word as that of Isaiah might be taken, "The 
 vineyard of Jehovah of Hosts is the house of 
 Israel." Nor would it be an arbitrary combina- 
 tion of disconnected passages thus pointedly to 
 place the one over against the other. In each 
 case a careful study of the prophet would re- 
 veal that not some incidental turn of thought, 
 but an habitual point of view, imparting tone 
 and color to the entire religious experience, had 
 found expression in a characteristic form of 
 statement. The two points of view are sup- 
 plementary, and, taken together, exhaustive 
 of what the normal relation between God and 
 man involves. Until we learn to unite the Isaiah- 
 type of piety with that of Hosea, we shall not at- 
 tain a full and harmonious development of our 
 religious life. 
 
 Let us this time look at the half-circle of 
 truth expressed by the older prophet. The text 
 stands in the most beautiful surroundings, 
 not merely within Hosea's own prophecy, 
 but in the entire Old Testament. There is a 
 charm about this chapter more easily felt than 
 described. It is like the clear shining after rain, 
 
8 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 when the sun riseth, a morning without clouds. 
 In what precedes there is much that is hard to 
 understand. Hosea's style is abrupt, full of 
 strange leaps from vision to vision. But here we 
 suddenly pass out of the labyrinth of involved 
 oracles into the clear open. It is a prophecy 
 suffused with deep feeling. All the native 
 tenderness of the prophet, the acute sensitive- 
 ness and responsiveness of his emotional nature, 
 rendering him, as it were, a musical instrument 
 expectant of the Spirit's touch, are here in 
 striking evidence; the dissonances of the many 
 prophecies of woe resolve themselves in the 
 sweet harmony of a closing prophecy of promise. 
 And besides, the incomparable light of the 
 future shines upon this chapter. It is bathed in 
 the glory of the latter days, those glories which 
 no prophet could describe without giving forth 
 the finest notes of which his organ was capable. 
 In the repertoire of the prophets the choicest 
 always belongs to the farthest. When their eye 
 rests on the world to come, a miracle is wrought 
 in their speech, so that, in accord with the things 
 described, it borrows from the melodies of the 
 other world. 
 
 Still the spell thrown upon our minds by this 
 piece is by no means wholly, or even chiefly, due 
 to its form. It is the peculiar content that capti- 
 vates the heart as the music captivates the ear. 
 It is not to be expected of any prophet that he 
 shall put into his prophecies relating to the end 
 indiscriminately of his treasure, but chiefly what 
 is to him its most precious part, that which the 
 Spirit of revelation had led him, and him above 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE 9 
 
 others, to apprehend and appreciate. From ut- 
 terances of this kind, therefore, we get our best 
 perception of what lay nearest to the prophet's 
 heart. So, certainly, it is here with Hosea. In 
 its last analysis, the charm of this chapter is 
 none other than the innate charm of the 
 prophet's most cherished acquaintance with 
 Jehovah. And, applied to the future, this may 
 be summed up in the idea that the possession of 
 Jehovah Himself by his people will be of all the 
 delights of the world to come the chief and most 
 satisfying, the paradise within the paradise of 
 God. The whole description leads up to this and 
 revolves around it. As preparing for it, the re- 
 turn to Jehovah is mentioned first. The end of 
 the great change is that the people may once 
 more live in the presence of God. The prayer 
 the prophet puts upon their lips is, "Take away 
 all iniquity," with the emphasis upon the all, so 
 as to indicate that not x)therwise than by the 
 absolute removal of all sin can the cloudless 
 atmosphere be created for the supreme enjoy- 
 m.ent of God. And the people pledge that 
 their eyes and hearts henceforth shall be 
 closed to the lure of idols. As a helpless 
 orphan Israel casts herself upon Jehovah's 
 grace: "We will not say anymore to the 
 work of our hands, ye are our gods, for in 
 Thee the fatherless findeth mercy." But clear- 
 est of all the idea appears in the direct speech 
 Jehovah is represented as in that day address- 
 ing the people, to the effect that He Himself 
 is eagerly desirous to pour out the riches of his 
 affection upon the heart of Israel and meet her 
 
10 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 desire for Him to the utmost measure of its 
 capacity: "I have answered and will regard 
 him ; I will be as the dew to Israel : he shall blos- 
 som as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Leba- 
 non. His branches shall spread, and his beauty 
 shall be as the olive-tree, and his smell as Leba- 
 non. They shall revive as the grain, and blos- 
 som as the vine ; I am like a green fir-tree ; from 
 me is thy fruit found." 
 
 It will be seen from this that our text is really 
 the climax of this speech of Jehovah. Through 
 the addition of image to image the divine pur- 
 pose of giving Himself gathers intensity, till at 
 last God appears as a green tree, bearing fruit 
 for his people. This is truly a marvelous repre- 
 sentation, well adapted to startle us, when we 
 think ourselves into it. It seems to imply some- 
 thing in God that, in the desire for self-commu- 
 nication exceeds even the strongest affection of 
 a human parent for his children. And yet, my 
 hearers, when reflecting upon it for a moment, 
 can we fail to observe that the marvel in it is 
 nothing else than the heart-miracle of all true 
 religion, the great paradox underlying all God's 
 concern with us. That He, the all-sufficient One, 
 forever rich and blessed in Himself, should, as it 
 were, take Himself in His own hands, making of 
 Himself an object to be bestowed upon a crea- 
 ture, so as to change before the eyes of the 
 prophet into a tree, showering its fruit upon 
 Israel, lavish as nothing in all nature but a 
 tree can be, this surely is something to be 
 wondered at, and something which, though 
 it recurs a thousand times, no experience 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE n 
 
 or enjoyment ought to be able to rob of its 
 wonder. There is in it more than we convey by 
 the term "communion with God." That admits of 
 relativity, there are degrees in it, but this figure 
 depicts the thing in its highest and deepest pos- 
 sibility, as flowing from the divine desire so to 
 take us into the immediate, intimate circle of his 
 own life and blessedness, as to make all its re- 
 sources serve our delight, a river of pleasures 
 from his right hand. It might almost seem as if 
 there were here a reversal of the process of re- 
 ligion itself, inasmuch as God appears putting 
 Himself at the service of man, and that with the 
 absolute generosity born of supreme love. This 
 relation into which it pleases God to receive 
 Israel with Himself has in it a sublime abandon ; 
 it knows neither restraint nor reserve. Using 
 human language one might say that God enters 
 into this heart and soul and mind and strength. 
 Since God thus gives Himself to his people for 
 fruition, and his resources are infinite, there is 
 no possibility of their ever craving more or seek- 
 ing more of Him than it is good for them to re- 
 ceive. To deprive religion of this, by putting it 
 upon the barren basis of pure disinterestedness, 
 is not merely a pretense to be wiser than God; 
 it is also an act of robbing God of His own joy 
 through refusing the joy into which He has, as 
 it were, resolved Himself for us. So far from 
 being a matter of gloom and depression, religion 
 in its true concept is an exultant state, the 
 supreme feast and sabbath of the soul. 
 
 Of course, in saying this, we do not forget 
 that such religion in its absoluteness can be for a 
 
12 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 fallen race but a memory and a hope. The pain- 
 ful and distressing elements that enter into our 
 Christian experience are by no means the prod- 
 uct of a perverted and bigoted imagination. Re- 
 ligion need not be in error or insincere when it 
 makes man put ashes on his head, instead of 
 every day anointing his countenance with the 
 oil of gladness. In order to be of any use what- 
 ever to us in a state of sin it must assume the 
 form of redemption, and from redemption the 
 elements of penitence and pain are inseparable. 
 Here lies the one source of all the discomfort 
 and self-repression entering into the occupation 
 of man with God, of the sad litany which re- 
 vealed religion, and to some extent even natural 
 religion, has chanted through the ages. Let no 
 one in a spirit of superficial light-heartedness 
 ridicule it, for, though it may have its excres- 
 cences and hypocrisies, in itself it is as inevitable 
 as the joy of religion itself. There is as much rea- 
 son to pity the man to whom religion has brought 
 no sorrow as the one to whom it has brought no 
 joy. The bitter herbs may not be omitted from 
 the Paschal feast of deliverance. Perhaps the 
 saddest thing to be said of sin is that it has thus 
 been able to invade religion at its very core of 
 joy, injecting into it the opposite of its nature. 
 And yet it is equally true that there is no re- 
 ligious joy like the joy engendered by redemp- 
 tion. Nor is this simply due to the law of con- 
 trast which makes the relief of deliverance pro- 
 portionate to the pain which it succeeds. A 
 more particular cause is at work here. In re- 
 demption God opens up Himself to us and sur- 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE 13 
 
 renders his inner life to our possession in a 
 wholly unprecedented manner of which the re- 
 ligion of nature can have neither dream nor an- 
 ticipation. It is more clearly in saving us than 
 in creating us that God shows Himself God. To 
 taste and feel the riches of his Godhead, as freely 
 given unto us, one must have passed not only 
 through the abjectness and poverty and despair 
 of sin but through the overwhelming experience 
 of salvation. He who is saved explores and re- 
 ceives more of God than unfallen man or even 
 the unfallen angel can. The song of Moses and 
 of the Lamb has in it a deeper exultation than 
 that which the sons of God and the morning- 
 stars sang together for joy in the Creator. 
 
 This redemptive self-communication of God 
 is what the prophet has particularly in mind in 
 recording the promise of our text. As already 
 stated, it is a gift of the future, and, of course, 
 the entire future stands to him, as to every 
 prophet, in the sign of redemption. Not as if 
 the future meant only redemption. There is no 
 more characteristic trait in prophecy than that 
 it never makes the crisis of judgment a road to 
 mere restoration of what existed before, but the 
 occasion for the bringing in of something wholly 
 new and unexperienced in the past, so that 
 Jehovah comes out of the conflict, not as one 
 who has barely snatched his work from destruc- 
 tion, but as the great Victor who has made the 
 forces of sin and evil his servants for the ac- 
 complishment of a higher and wider purpose. 
 There is an exact correspondence in this respect 
 between the large movement of redemption, 
 
14 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 taken as a whole, and the enactment of its prin- 
 ciples on a smaller scale within the history of 
 Israel. As the second Adam is greater than the 
 first, and the paradise of the future fairer than 
 that of the past, so the new-born Israel to the 
 prophet's vision is a nobler figure and exists 
 under far more favorable conditions than the 
 empirical Israel of before. Once its Peniel-night 
 is over, it will live in the light and feed upon the 
 goodness of God, and be beautified through its 
 religious embrace of Him. This thought is not 
 unclearly suggested by the very figure of our 
 text. Whatever may be the precise tree species 
 designated by the word "berosh," here ren- 
 dered as fir-tree, at any rate an evergreen is 
 meant, a tree retaining its verdure in all seasons 
 of the year, never failing in its power to shade 
 and to refresh. The reason is none other than 
 that for which in vs. 6 Israel in its beauty is 
 compared to the olive-tree, a tree likewise peren- 
 nially clothed with foliage. But there is still 
 something else and far more wonderful about 
 this tree. While by nature not a fruit-bearing 
 tree in the ordinary sense, it changes itself into 
 one before the eyes of the prophet. If nothing 
 more than the idea of fruitfulness were in- 
 tended, the figure of the olive-tree would have 
 lain closer at hand. But the labor of the olive 
 is a process of nature and bound to the sea- 
 sons, and evidently what Hosea wishes to 
 express is the concurrence in the same tree 
 of miraculous fruitage, perennial yield, and 
 never-failing shade, for the context empha- 
 sizes all three. It is evident that we are 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE 15 
 
 here in another tree-world than that of Pales- 
 tine; it is the neighborhood of the tree of life 
 of which we read elsewhere that it yields its 
 fruit every month. Plainly Jehovah is thus rep- 
 resented on account of his specific redemptive 
 productiveness, and that in its heightened future 
 form, when new unheard of influences shall pro- 
 ceed from Him for the nourishing and enjoy- 
 ment of his people. Surely here is something 
 that nature, even God's goodness in nature, 
 could never yield. Perhaps we are not assum- 
 ing too much by finding still another element 
 in the comparison. In emphasizing the verdant, 
 living character of Jehovah with reference to 
 Israel, the prophet may have had in mind, by 
 way of contrast, the pagan deity from which 
 these qualities of life and fruitfulness and 
 miraculous provision are utterly absent. There 
 used to stand beside the altar of idolatry a pole 
 rudely fashioned in the image of Asherah, the 
 spouse of Baal and goddess of fruitfulness. 
 Nothing could have more strikingly symbolized 
 the barrenness and hopelessness of nature wor- 
 ship than this dead stump in which no bud could 
 sprout, and on which no bird would alight, and 
 of which no fruit was to be found forever. How 
 desperate is the plight of those Canaanites, 
 modern no less than ancient, who must look for 
 the satisfaction of their hunger to the dead wood 
 of the Asherah of nature, because they have no 
 faith in the perpetual miracle of the fruit-bear- 
 ing fir-tree of redemption. 
 
 But let us endeavor to ascertain what con- 
 crete meaning the prophet attaches to the image 
 
16 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 of the text. What is the fruit that is promised 
 to Israel? To answer this we shall have to 
 go beyond the confines of the text and look 
 around us in the preceding prophecy. The study 
 of this will teach that there are four outstand- 
 ing features to Jehovah's gift to Israel of the 
 fruition of Himself. We find that it is eminently 
 personal, exclusive, individual, and transform- 
 ing in its influence. 
 
 In the first place, then, Israel's fruition of 
 Jehovah is eminently personal. One might 
 truthfully say that the idea of the possession of 
 one's God in this pointedly personal sense is an 
 idea grown on the soil of revelation, nurtured 
 by the age-long self-communication of God to 
 his own. To be sure, the thought that the for- 
 tunes of life must be related to the deity is a 
 common one in Semitic religion. Edom and 
 Moab and Ammon also have joy before their 
 gods. But this is still something far different 
 from having joy in one's God. The latter is 
 Israel's distinction. To have a god and to have 
 God are two things. The difference can be 
 measured by the presence and the absence of 
 the covenant idea in the two different circles. 
 When Jehovah, entering into covenant with 
 Israel says, "I will be unto you a God, and ye 
 shall be unto me a people," this means infinitely 
 more than the trite idea: henceforth ye shall 
 worship me and I will cultivate you. It is the 
 mutual surrender of person to person. Jehovah 
 throws in his lot with Israel, no less truly than 
 Israel's lot is bound up with Jehovah. To ex- 
 press it in terms of the text one would have to 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE 17 
 
 force the figure and say that not merely the 
 fruit, nor merely the tree for its fruit, but the 
 tree itself, as a glorious living being, is the cher- 
 ished treasure of the owner. The sense of this 
 is so vivid that it has given rise to the phrase 
 "Portion of Israel" as a personal name of God. 
 To the mind of Hosea the most forcible, indeed 
 final and absolute, expression of this precious 
 truth had been reached in the form of the mar- 
 riage-union between God and Israel. That is 
 simply a closer specification of the covenant idea, 
 and it brings out precisely that side of it on 
 which we are dwelling, the personal aspect of the 
 union involved. While this is from the nature of 
 the case conceived of as mutual, yet the emphasis 
 rests perceptibly on the divine side of it. To be 
 sure, Israel also personally surrendered herself 
 to Jehovah, for we read that she made answer in 
 the days of her youth, and through Jeremiah 
 God declares: "I remember thee for the kind- 
 ness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, 
 how thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in 
 a land that was not sown." But that was in 
 the beginning; in the sequel Israel soon proved 
 indifferent and faithless. The burden of the 
 message lies in the ascription of this to Jehovah 
 as a permanent, unchangeable disposition. He 
 had not for one moment ceased to be the per- 
 sonal and intimate life companion of Israel. The 
 covenant might be suspended, but so long as it 
 lasted, it could have no other meaning than this, 
 for this lay at its heart. In a number of deli- 
 cate little touches the prophet reveals his con- 
 sciousness of it. After the dire calamities of 
 
18 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 the judgment have overwhelmed the people and 
 seemingly left nothing further to be swept away, 
 then, as a climax, by the side of which all else 
 shrinks into insignificance, Jehovah announces 
 that He will now personally withdraw from 
 Israel. And corresponding to this, after they 
 have sat many days in the desolation of exile, 
 all but divorced from God, the first and 
 supremely important step in their conversion is 
 that they come trembling unto Jehovah and 
 unto his goodliness in the latter days. Even 
 in the Messianic outlook this strongly personal 
 view-point appears. With a peculiarly affec- 
 tionate turn to the thought the prophet repre- 
 sents the people as in the end seeking David 
 their king, through remembrance of the sure 
 covenant mercies attaching to the name of one 
 who was the man after God's heart, and thus 
 in himself a pledge of the divine love towards 
 the people. In the sphere of external, terrestrial 
 gifts the same principle applies. Here, of 
 course, revealed religion comes nearest to the 
 circle of ideas of paganism. Baal, no less than 
 Jehovah, is supposed to give to his servants the 
 produce of the soil. But what a principle dif- 
 ference between the attitude in which paganism 
 entertains this idea and the spirit in which the 
 prophet expects Israel to cherish it ! The pagan 
 cult cleaves to the sod, and buries itself in the 
 heaps of grain and the rivers of oil, and remem- 
 bers not, except in the most external way, the 
 god who gave. The worship sits loosely upon 
 the life; it is a habit rather than an organic 
 function, and subject to change, if the turn of 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE 19 
 
 fortune requires. Paganized Israel herself is 
 introduced as speaking in the distress of har- 
 vest failure, "I will go after my lovers, that 
 give me my bread and my water, my wool and 
 my flax, mine oil and my drink." "But," says 
 Jehovah, "she knew not that I gave her the grain 
 and the must and the oil and multiplied unto 
 her silver and gold." To Hosea the main prin- 
 ciple is that the gifts shall come to the people 
 with the dew of Jehovah's love upon them, de- 
 riving their value not so much from what they 
 are intrinsically but from the fact of their being 
 tokens of affection, to each one of which clings 
 something of the personality of the giver. And 
 Jehovah knows such a special art of putting 
 Himself into these favors ; He is not imprisoned 
 in them as are the Baals, but freely lives in and 
 loves through them, so as to make them touch 
 the heart of Israel. When the time of her new 
 betrothal comes, and she sees the gifts for her 
 adornment, she exclaims, "Ishi, my husband!" 
 and no longer "Baali, my lord !" Notice the role 
 that nature plays in effecting this ; the externals 
 are by no means despised; they have simply 
 ceased to be externals, and been turned into one 
 great sacramental vehicle of spiritual favor. 
 Jehovah sets in motion the whole circuit of na- 
 ture for the service of his people : "It shall come 
 to pass in that day, I will answer the heavens 
 and they shall answer the earth, and the earth 
 shall answer the grain and the new wine and 
 the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel." The 
 things do not mutely grow, they speak, they 
 answer, they sing, and the voice that travels 
 
20 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 through them is the voice of Jehovah. Nature 
 becomes the instrument of grace. That in the 
 spiritual sphere proper everything proceeds 
 along the same line need hardly be pointed out. 
 God speaks comfortably unto Israel to call her 
 back to repentance. He loves her freely, and it 
 is through making her realize this fact that He 
 effects her return. His bridal gifts to Israel 
 are righteousness and mercy and faithfulness 
 and lovingkindness. The mercy that He shows 
 them in their distress is at bottom something 
 far deeper and finer and more spiritualized than 
 the generic sense of pity. It is chesed, loving- 
 kindness, that is, mercy intensified a thou- 
 sand times by the tenderness of an antecedent 
 love. It is not compassion that saves Israel, for 
 compassion, though truly spiritual in itself, lies 
 but on the circumference of that mysterious 
 saving movement that springs in the divine 
 heart from love and grace as its center. 
 
 In the second place the possession and enjoy- 
 ment for which Jehovah offers Himself to Israel 
 are an exclusive relationship. Here the figure of 
 marriage comes into play. Hosea has greatly 
 idealized this figure, at least as compared with 
 the customs of his time. No matter which side 
 we choose in the exegetical dispute as to whether 
 the first three chapters are allegory or recite 
 facts, in either case, be it by a unique experi- 
 ence or through a unique vision, the prophet has 
 produced a marriage ideal fit to be the parable 
 of the covenant. In this idealized form it ren- 
 ders most faithfully the latter's essential fea- 
 tures. For emphasizing the pure spirituality of 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE 21 
 
 the relation nothing could be more suitable. In 
 this respect it excels even the figure of father- 
 hood and sonship. For these originate in nature 
 without free choice. The bond of marriage, as 
 conceived by Hosea, was established through a 
 spiritual process. God, after having created 
 Israel, sought and cultivated her affection. He 
 did this in the beginning and will do it again in 
 the future. So intent is the prophet upon guard- 
 ing the ideal, ethereal perfection of the union 
 that he studiously avoids representing the com- 
 ing state of blessedness as a restoration of the 
 previous bond, lest the sin-clouds of the past 
 should project their shadows into it. There- 
 fore the consistency of the figure is disregarded ; 
 no reparation, no remarriage is mentioned; the 
 past is blotted out; the sin loses both stain and 
 sting; the future arises as a fresh creation out 
 of the waters of oblivion beneath which Israel's 
 guilt has been buried. It is the new, otherwise 
 unrepeatable, love of the first bloom of youth 
 shedding its fragrance over all : "I will betroth 
 thee unto me in faithfulness, and I will say, 
 Thou art my people, and they shall say, Thou 
 art our God." Now this same idealization also 
 appears in regard to the mutual exclusiveness of 
 the covenant attachment. For we must remem- 
 ber that the prophet affirms this with equal 
 absoluteness with reference to the covenant 
 husband as to the wife, and in this respect cus- 
 tom in his day fell far short of the ideal. When 
 God gives Himself to Israel it is with the clear 
 understanding and promise that He does not 
 do so to any other people. And the exclusive- 
 
22 GRACEANDGLORY ^ 
 
 ness on the part of God demands an equally ex- 
 clusive return of love and service such as shall 
 leave no room for strange devotion. Still at 
 this point the reality somehow again transcends 
 the figure. Not that God is husband, but the 
 kind of husband He is, comes under considera- 
 tion. It is not merely his general honor that is 
 at stake, as would be the case in ordinary human 
 marriage; apart from all else the specifically 
 divine character of his Person and love renders 
 exclusiveness imperative. Even in giving Him- 
 self God remains God and requires from Israel 
 the acknowledgment of this. The gift is divine 
 and desires for itself a temple where no other 
 presence shall be tolerated. If we feel God to 
 be ours, then we also feel that no one but God 
 can ever be ours in the same exclusive ineffable 
 sense and that every similar absorption by any 
 purely human relationship would partake of the 
 idolatrous. The only thing that can give a faint 
 suggestion of the engrossing character of the 
 divine hold upon His people is the first awaken- 
 ing of what we call romantic love in the youth- 
 ful heart with its concentration of all the inten- 
 sified impulses and forces and desires upon one 
 object and its utter obliviousness to all other 
 interests. This actually in some measure re- 
 sembles the single-minded, world-forgetful af- 
 fection we owe to God, and for that very reason 
 is called worship. But it is a state of momen- 
 tary, supernormal exaltation, which cannot last, 
 because in the creature there is not that which 
 will justify and sustain it. Eternalize this and 
 put into it the divine instead of the human, and 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE 23 
 
 you will have a dim image of what the mutual 
 exclusiveness of devotion between God and man 
 in the covenant bond implies. Here lies the in- 
 fallible test of what is truly religious in our so- 
 called religion. Everything that lacks the 
 unique reference to God, as its supreme owner 
 and end, is automatically ruled out from that 
 sphere. Yea, anything that is cherished and cul- 
 tivated apart from God in such a sense that we 
 cannot carry it with us in the Godward move- 
 ment of our life, becomes necessarily a hin- 
 drance, a profanation, and at last a source of 
 idolatry. Man's nature is so built that he must 
 be religious either in a good or in a bad sense. 
 Ill-religious he may, but simply non-religious he 
 cannot be. What he fails to bring into the tem- 
 ple of God, he is sure to set up on the outside, 
 and not seldom at the very gate, as a rival ob- 
 ject of worship. And often the more ostensibly 
 spiritual and refined these things are, the more 
 potent and treacherous their lure. The modern 
 man who seeks to save and perfect himself has 
 a whole pantheon of ideals, each of them a veri- 
 table god sapping the vitals of his religion. Nay, 
 the prophet goes even farther than this : Jehovah 
 Himself can be made an object of idolatry. If 
 one fails to form a true conception of his char- 
 acter and weaves into the mental image formed 
 of Him the false features gathered from other 
 quasi-divine beings, then, whatever the name 
 employed, be it God or Jehovah or even "the 
 Father," the reality of the divine life is not in it. 
 In such a case it is the perverted image that 
 evokes the worship, instead of the true God. 
 
24 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 Hence the prophet does not hesitate to place the 
 calf of Bethel, in which all Israel meant to serve 
 Jehovah, on a line with the idols of the Canaan- 
 ites, and to call it outright by the name of Baal. 
 This may remind us that the rival interest 
 which interferes with the exclusiveness of our 
 devotion to God is not seldom taken from the 
 sphere of religion itself. Where that happens, 
 the most insidious form of adultery ensues, be- 
 cause it permits the delusion to remain that 
 with an undivided heart we are cleaving to the 
 Lord. Our outgoing activities, our good works 
 of service, our concern with the externals of 
 religion, all this, unless kept in the closest, most 
 vital contact with God Himself, will inevitably 
 tend to acquire a degree of detachment and in- 
 dependence in which it may easily withdraw 
 from God the consecration that ought to go to 
 and the satisfaction that ought to come from 
 Him alone. There is even such a thing as wor- 
 shipping one's religion instead of one^s God. 
 How easily the mind falls into the habit of 
 merely enlisting God as an ally in the fight for 
 creature-betterment, almost oblivious to the 
 fact that He is the King of glory for whose sake 
 the whole world exists and the entire battle is 
 waged ! Sometimes it is difficult not to feel that 
 God is reckoned with, chiefly because his name 
 and prestige and resources are indispensable 
 for success in a cause that really transcends 
 Him, and that the time may yet come when as a 
 supernumerary He will be set aside. Is it not 
 precisely this that often makes the atmosphere 
 of Christian work so chill and uninspiring? 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE 25 
 
 Though we compel the feet to move to the accel- 
 erated pace of our modern religious machinery, 
 the heart is atrophied and the luke-warm blood 
 flows sluggishly through our veins. Let each 
 one examine himself whether to any extent he 
 is caught in the whirl of this centrifugal move- 
 ment. The question, though searching, is an 
 extremely simple one: Do we love God for his 
 own sake, and find in this love the inspiration 
 of service, or do we patronize Him as an influ- 
 ential partner under whose auspices we can bet- 
 ter conduct our manifold activities in the ser- 
 vice of the world ? It was not said with a man- 
 ward reference alone, that if one should bestow 
 all his goods to feed the poor, and give his body 
 to be burned, and not have love, it would profit 
 him nothing. That which is necessary to hallow 
 an act towards our neighbor must be certainly 
 indispensable in any service for rendering it 
 sacrifice well-pleasing unto God. 
 
 In the third place the fruition of Himself 
 granted by God to us is individual. There can 
 be no division to it; each must of necessity re- 
 ceive the whole, if he is to receive it at all. This 
 follows from the nature of the gift itself. If 
 the gift consisted of impersonal values, either 
 material or spiritual, the supply might be quan- 
 titatively distributed over many persons. But 
 being, as it is, the personal favor of God, it must 
 be poured as a whole into the receptacle of the 
 human heart. The parable of marriage not only 
 teaches that the covenant relation is a mono- 
 gamic one, but implies besides that it is a bond 
 binding unitary soul to soul. There is an inner 
 
26 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 sanctuary of communion, where all else disap- 
 pears from sight, and the believer shut in with 
 God gazes upon his loveliness, and appropriates 
 Him, as though outside of Him nothing mat- 
 tered or existed. These may be fugitive mo- 
 ments, and they may be rare in our experience, 
 but we surely must know them, if God's fruit- 
 bearing for us is to be a reality in our lives. The 
 prophet evidently had a feeling for this, al- 
 though the dispensation of the covenant under 
 which he lived made it far more difficult to at- 
 tain than in our time. The collective method of 
 procedure pursued at that stage related every- 
 thing in the first instance to the nation of Israel. 
 To it belong the election, the love, the union with 
 God, the future. It is quite in accordance with 
 this that Israel as a body appears as the bride 
 and wife of Jehovah, or in the terms of a differ- 
 ent figure as the son He has called out of Egypt. 
 None the less it yields a pure abstraction, when 
 this is carried to the extreme of a denial of every 
 individual bond between the single Israelite and 
 Jehovah. On the basis of the collective relation- 
 ship, in which the many unite as one, there must 
 of necessity have sprung up an individual at- 
 tachment, in which the single believer and 
 Jehovah directly touched each other. As there 
 was private sacrifice alongside of the public 
 ritual service, so there must have flourished per- 
 sonal worship and affection for God in the hearts 
 of the pious. The devotional fragrance wafted 
 to us from so many a page in the Old Testament 
 bears abundant witness to this. But, while no 
 true Israelite could be entirely without this, 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE 27 
 
 there existed doubtless many degrees in the in- 
 dividualizing of what was so largely a common 
 possession. The nature of the prophetic office 
 brought with it a certain detachment from the 
 mass and a peculiar intimacy with Jehovah. 
 And yet the note of individualism is not equally 
 strong in all the prophets. It is interesting to 
 observe where and when and how it emerges. 
 Its two great exponents before the exile are 
 Hosea and Jeremiah. These two speak not only 
 from and for Jehovah but also to Jehovah. They 
 are pre-eminently the prophets of prayer. In 
 the case of each there appears to be some con- 
 nection between the temperament of the prophet 
 and the cultivation of this element. Both ex- 
 ceptionally endowed in their emotional nature, 
 they instinctively sought, and under the influ- 
 ence of the Spirit were enabled to find, what 
 could satisfy this deep instinct. Religion as 
 centered in the heart cannot but incline towards 
 individualism, for the heart with its hidden feel- 
 ings is the most incapable of duplication of all 
 the factors that enter into it. Belief and intent 
 of will may be standardized; the emotional re- 
 action is like the wind of heaven : we hear the 
 sound thereof, yet know not whence it cometh 
 nor whither it goeth ; so it is vnth the world of 
 religious feeling; it has a coloring an'd tone of 
 its own in each individual child of God. Hosea 
 being of a most tender and impressionable tem- 
 perament was on that account chosen to secure 
 for the covenant-bond in his own life, and 
 through his influence in the life of others, that 
 sweet privacy and inwardness which forms the 
 
28 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 most precious possession of every pious soul. 
 Here lies the cause of that vivid, life-like per- 
 sonification to which the prophet subjects the 
 people of Israel, putting words upon their lips 
 expressing a mode of feeling such as, strictly- 
 speaking, only an individual can experience. It 
 is his own heart that the prophet has put into 
 the body of Israel. The construction is in the 
 plural, but the spirit is in the singular, and it 
 needs only to be translated back into the sing- 
 ular, to render it a most appropriate speech for 
 every believer in addressing Jehovah: "Come 
 and let us return unto Jehovah; for He hath 
 torn, and He will heal us ; He hath smitten and 
 He will bind us up. After two days will He 
 revive us ; on the third day He will raise us up, 
 and we shall live before Him. And let us know, 
 let us follow on to know Jehovah: His going 
 forth is sure as the morning ; and He will come 
 unto us as the rain, as the latter rain that water- 
 eth the earth." And thus the prophet, and 
 through him doubtless others, had the wonder- 
 ful experience that the God of Israel could give 
 Himself to a single person with the same indi- 
 vidual interest and undivided devotion, as if 
 that person were the only one to whom His 
 favor extended. This is necessary to complete 
 the fruition of God. Every child of God, no 
 matter how broad his vision and enlarged his 
 sympathies, is conscious of carrying within him- 
 self a private sanctuary, an inner guest-cham- 
 ber of the heart, where he desires to be at times 
 alone with God and have his Savior to himself. 
 So instinctive and irrepressible is the craving 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE 29 
 
 for this, that it may easily give rise to a sort of 
 spiritual jealousy, making it difficult to believe 
 that the God who has given Himself to millions 
 of others should receive us alone into absolute 
 intimacy and show us the secret of His cove- 
 nant. Does it seem improper to pray, "Come 
 Lord to me alone, and close the door, that I may 
 have Thee to myself for a day and an hour?" 
 Should this feeling come to us and perplex us, 
 the best way to meet it is to consider the exist- 
 ence of the same mystery in the relation of 
 earthly parents to their children. It matters not 
 whether there be one or ten, each child has the 
 full affection of the father's and mother's heart. 
 If we that are creatures can experience the 
 working of this miracle in our finite lives, how 
 much more can the infinite God be present to a 
 countless number of souls and give to each one 
 of them the same ineffable gift? He is God and 
 not man, the Holy One, both in our midst and in 
 our hearts. 
 
 Finally, the possession and enjoyment of 
 Jehovah by Israel has according to the prophet 
 a transforming effect. Here we touch upon the 
 greatest wonder in our fruition of God. This 
 tree, unlike the probation-tree of paradise, has 
 the veritable power of making manJike unto 
 God. Those who dwell together in the holy com- 
 panionship of the covenant grow like unto each 
 other. There is a magic assimilative influence 
 in all the spiritual intimacies of life. But here 
 the mystery is deepest, because it plays between 
 God and man. It works in both directions: as 
 it has caused God's gift of Himself to us to as- 
 
30 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 sume even the form of the incarnation, in which 
 He became flesh of our flesh and bone of our 
 bones, so in the opposite direction it makes us 
 partakers of the divine nature, putting upon 
 our souls God's image and superscription. This 
 is not, of course, the fusing of two entities ; such 
 a thought lay far from Hosea's mind. It is the 
 interpenetration of the two conscious lives of 
 God and man, each holding the other in the close 
 embrace of a perfect sympathy. The prophet 
 has developed this thought also in connection 
 with the marriage idea. As the wife becomes 
 like unto the husband, and the husband unto the 
 wife, through the daily association of years, so 
 Israel, the wife of Jehovah, is bound to undergo 
 an inner change through which the features of 
 God are slowly but surely wrought out in her 
 character. The beauty of the Lord God is put 
 upon her. This law works with absolute neces- 
 sity. The prophet traces it even in the shame- 
 ful pagan cult, which in other respects is the 
 caricature of the true religion of Israel. Those 
 who come to Baal-Peor and consecrate them- 
 selves to the shameful thing become abominable 
 like that which they love. The principle laid 
 down applies to all idolatry, open or disguised; 
 whatever man substitutes for the living God as 
 an object of his supreme devotion not only turns 
 into his master, but ends with becoming a super- 
 imposed character fashioning him irresistibly 
 into likeness with itself. There is no worship- 
 per but bears the image of his God. The self- 
 sovereignty and independence affected by sin 
 are not allowed to exist. With a sure nemesis 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE 31 
 
 religion reclaims its own and in each one of its 
 pseudo-forms thrusts man back into the attitude 
 of worship. Likeness to God, however, is not 
 merely the effect of his giving Himself to us, it 
 is also the condition on which the reality of such 
 divine self-communication is suspended. To 
 have God and to be owned by God in the pro- 
 found covenant sense would be impossible and 
 result in doing violence to the nature of God and 
 man alike, if the character of man could not be 
 made to fit into the nature and will of God. The 
 basis of all religion is that man must exist in the 
 image of God. Only on this basis can the fur- 
 ther assimilation proceed. But the prophet has 
 given this thought the warm baptism of affec- 
 tion. A power of conscious love is at work in 
 the process. To bring out his own image in 
 Israel is the delight of Israelis lover and hus- 
 band. This is the reason why the likeness is 
 represented as beginning with the day of be- 
 trothal, and the chief qualities entering into it 
 appear as a bridal gift from God to Israel, God 
 giving her, as it were, of his own attributes: 
 "I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness 
 and in justice, in lovingkindness and in mercies, 
 and thou shalt know Jehovah." That the gift is 
 a gift of likeness appears also in this, that it is 
 equivalent to the knowledge of Jehovah. Hence 
 the emphasis thrown on the need of knowledge 
 in Hosea's prophecy. God is declared to have 
 known Israel in the wilderness, in the land of 
 great drought. And of Israel it is required, 
 "Thou shalt know no God but me." In both cases 
 the meaning of the word goes far beyond the 
 
32 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 intellectual sphere ; to know is not a mere act or 
 process of becoming informed, but an act of 
 sympathetic absorption in the other's character. 
 It describes Jehovah's original choice of Israel 
 as a most affectionate determination of what 
 Israel was to be, and the attitude of the people 
 as a passionate searching after the perfec- 
 tions of the divine nature. It is that self-pro- 
 jection of the lover into the beloved which is 
 more than knowledge through the understand- 
 ing. Hence also the trait of eagerness which 
 the prophet ascribes to it. It is not a state of 
 contentment, but partakes of the extreme rest- 
 lessness of love in motion : "0 let us know, let 
 us follow on to know Jehovah !" This is to such 
 an extent the heart and soul of the marriage, 
 that the one great adultery consists in this : that 
 Israel does not know, and does not care to know 
 Jehovah. For that is to fail of the end for which 
 the covenant exists ; it makes the marriage idle 
 and fruitless. And finally, my hearers, from 
 this falls some light upon the mystery that a 
 finite creature can receive and possess the infi- 
 nite God. To speak of giving and possession 
 and enjoyment is after all but speaking in fig- 
 ures. When we try to resolve the figure into the 
 thing itself, the reality grows so great and deep 
 that it transcends our minds, and we must re- 
 sign ourselves to an experience without under- 
 standing. But here is something that we can at 
 least make relatively clear to ourselves: the 
 fruition of God consists in the reception by us 
 of his likeness into ourselves, so that his beauty 
 of character becomes literally our own. So 
 
THE WONDERFUL TREE 33 
 
 close and so precious an identification no other 
 love can dream of and no other union attain. In 
 it the fruit and the tree become one ; we feel and 
 taste that the Lord is for our delight. And when 
 that picture, which Hosea saw as in a glass 
 darkly through the tracings of the imagery of 
 lily and olive-tree and grain and wine, when that 
 picture shall have resolved itself for us into the 
 spiritual realities of the life to come, then also 
 the covenant climax will have been reached, 
 every sacrament shall fall away, and our frui- 
 tion shall be of God within God ; we shall at last 
 be like Him, because we know Him as He is. 
 
II. Hungering and Thirsting After 
 Righteousness 
 
The Gospel according to Mat- 
 thew, V, 6: "Blessed are they that 
 hunger and thirst after righteous- 
 ness, for they shall he filled" 
 
HUNGERING AND THIRSTING 37 
 
 T^HE Sermon on the Mount is rightly accorded 
 a chief place in the teaching of our Lord. It 
 carries a weight of authority, sets an ethical 
 standard, and reveals heights and depths of the 
 religious life, nowhere surpassed in the Gospels. 
 The Evangelists in recording it seem to have 
 been aware of this. Matthew does not, as on 
 other occasions, introduce the discourse with 
 the conventional phrase "Jesus said," but with 
 the quite solemn statement "And He opened his 
 mouth," thus giving us to understand that the 
 utterance of these words was to Jesus' own 
 mind an act to which He deliberately proceeded. 
 And Luke conveys somewhat of the same im- 
 pression by the introductory statement, "And 
 He lifted up his eyes on the disciples and said." 
 Jesus never spoke without a clear sense of the 
 consequence with which his words were fraught. 
 And blessed is the preacher of whom it can be 
 truly said that ministering the Word of God is 
 to him an holy task. But, while the sense of this 
 was always present with our Lord, it was height- 
 ened on this occasion. This was the first time 
 that He set Himself to teach His disciples. Here 
 He assumes that peculiar ministry of breaking 
 the bread of life for his own, which He has ever 
 since unceasingly performed through the ages, 
 and even now performs for us, as in these mo- 
 ments we gather round his feet to receive his 
 teaching. In fact it is here for the first time that 
 
38 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 the term "disciples" occurs in Matthew's Gos- 
 pel. Hence also the statement that our Lord 
 "sat down," and, having made the disciples draw 
 near, so taught them. The sitting posture, with 
 the hearers standing around, was characteris- 
 tic of the relation between teacher and pupils, in 
 distinction from the standing position, marking 
 the prophet or gospel-herald. 
 
 To note these details of description is not 
 of merely historical interest, but also of prac- 
 tical religious importance, because it may warn 
 us at the outset against a view all too commonly 
 prevailing concerning the purpose of this "Ser- 
 mon on the Mount." The sermon is often rep- 
 resented as a succinct summary of Jesus' mes- 
 sage. It passes for an epitome of Christianity, 
 the teststone of what is essential to our religion. 
 All that is not here, we are told, can without 
 detriment be neglected. Every later type of 
 Christian life and teaching is to be judged, not 
 by the standard of Scripture as a whole, nor 
 even by the authority of the words of Christ as a 
 whole, but by the content of this one discourse. 
 This deplorable error is due to more than one 
 cause. The beauty and glory of truth concen- 
 trated here may easily beget a feeling that all 
 else in the New Testament is in comparison of 
 minor value. A second motive coming into play 
 is that many people in the matter of religious 
 belief wholly abandon themselves to their un- 
 governed tastes and feelings. They scorn every 
 hard and fast rule of faith and practice. Even 
 submission to the indiscriminate teaching of 
 Jesus they find distasteful. At the same time, 
 
HUNGERING AND THIRSTING 39 
 
 unwilling to appear entirely emancipated from 
 all historical bonds of faith, they fall back upon 
 some choice portion of the Gospel, preferably 
 the Sermon on the Mount, and cling to it as to 
 the last remaining shreds of the garment of 
 creed, barely sufficient to cover the nakedness of 
 their subjectivity. It is thus that the Sermon 
 on the Mount has become the creed of the creed- 
 less. But by far the most influential force driv- 
 ing people to such a view comes from the flat- 
 tery it supplies to the natural man. It flatters 
 him by taking for granted that he needs no more 
 than the presentation of this high ideal, and 
 that Jesus does him the honor of thinking him 
 capable of realizing it by his own natural good- 
 ness. And, last of all, it is not so much what 
 people find in the Sermon on the Mount, it is 
 what they congratulate themselves upon not 
 finding there, that renders them thus enamored 
 of its excellence. It is because they dislike the 
 story of the helplessness of sin, of man^s utter 
 condemnation in the sight of God, and the insist- 
 ence upon the necessity of the cross, it is because 
 of all this that they evince such eagerness to 
 adopt as their exclusive creed a portion of the 
 Gospel from which in their opinion these offen- 
 sive things are absent. Now all such forget that 
 both Jesus and the Evangelist expressly relate 
 the Sermon on the Mount to the disciples, and 
 consequently place back of what is described in 
 it the process of becoming a disciple, the whole 
 rich relationship of saving approach and re- 
 sponsive faith, of calling and repentance and 
 pardon and acceptance and the following of 
 
40 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 Jesus, all that makes the men and women of the 
 Gospel such disciples and Jesus such a Lord and 
 Savior as this and other records of his teach- 
 ing imply. It is therefore folly to insist that no 
 specific doctrine of salvation is here. It is pres- 
 ent as a living doctrine incarnate in the Person 
 of Jesus. We are apt to forget that in the days 
 of our Lord's flesh there was no need for that 
 explicit teaching about the Christ found in the 
 Epistles of the New Testament. At that time 
 He, the real Christ, walked among men and ex- 
 hibited in his intercourse with sinners more im- 
 pressively than any abstract doctrine could have 
 done the principles and the process of salvation. 
 If we have but eyes to see, we shall find our 
 Savior in the out-door scenes of the Gospels no 
 less than within the walls of the school of the 
 Epistle to the Romans. And we shall find Him 
 too in the Sermon on the Mount. For this dis- 
 course throughout pre-supposes that the dis- 
 ciples here instructed became associated with 
 Jesus as sinners needing salvation, and that 
 their whole life in continuance is lived on the 
 basis of grace. At the beginning stand the 
 beatitudes, engraven in golden script upon its 
 portal, reminding us that we are not received by 
 Jesus into a school of ethics but into a kingdom 
 of redemption. It is blessedness that is prom- 
 ised here, and the word does not so much signify 
 a state of mind, as that great realm of consum- 
 mation and satisfaction, which renders man's 
 existence, once he has entered into it, serene and 
 secure for evermore. And again, foremost 
 among the beatitudes stand those that empha- 
 
HUNGERING AND THIRSTING 41 
 
 size the emptiness, the absolute dependence of 
 man upon divine grace. As at the dawn of the 
 gospel Mary sang: "He has put down princes 
 from their thrones, and has exalted them of low 
 degree; the hungry He has filled with good 
 things and the rich He has sent empty away," 
 so here those pronounced blessed are the poor 
 in spirit, the mourners, the meek, and they 
 that hunger and thirst after righteousness. 
 It is in no wise to the self-satisfied mind that 
 the Lord addresses Himself; his call is not a call 
 to exertion, not even to exertion in holiness; it 
 were too little to say that it is an invitation to 
 receive; it goes farther than that; it amounts 
 to the declaration that the consciousness of hav- 
 ing nothing, absolutely nothing, is the certain 
 pledge of untold enrichment. So much is salva- 
 tion a matter of giving on God's part that its 
 best subjects are those in whom his grace of 
 giving can have its perfect work. The poor in 
 spirit, those that mourn, the meek and the hun- 
 gry, these are made to pass before our eyes as so 
 many typical forms of its embodiment. And be- 
 cause this is so, they are here also introduced 
 as having the promise of the infinite. To be a 
 child of God and a disciple of Jesus means to 
 hold in one's hand the treasures of eternity. 
 Look for a moment at the second clauses of these 
 beatitudes. Some of the things spoken of may, 
 in a relative sense, be obtained in the present 
 life. Comfort and mercy and the vision of God 
 and sonship are bestowed during our pilgrim- 
 age on earth. As a matter of fact, however, 
 these things are here held in prospect not in 
 
42 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 relative but in absolute measure. In the con- 
 summate life only can it become true that the 
 meek inherit the earth, that the eyes of the pure 
 behold the beatific vision of God, that the hun- 
 gry and thirsty are satisfied with righteousness. 
 This absolute character of the promise writes 
 the principle of redemption large on the face of 
 the Sermon on the Mount. To join together 
 after this manner creature-emptiness and the 
 riches of divine benediction is the prerogative of 
 God the Savior. So long as this voice of the 
 beatitudes is distinctly heard, it will not be pos- 
 sible to find any other religion here than the 
 religion of salvation through the grace of God 
 in Christ. 
 
 But is it not true, you are perhaps inclined to 
 ask, that at least from the words of our text the 
 opposite view receives a measure of support? 
 "Righteousness" — in this word certainly the 
 stress seems to be laid on ethical conduct with- 
 out any particular admixture of the redemptive 
 element. Men are willing to admit that, so far 
 as the specifically religious qualities are con- 
 cerned, our attitude must be a receptive one, 
 leaving all the energizing to God. When, how- 
 ever, the sphere of the moral life is reached, the 
 principle seems no longer to apply, this being 
 the field of co-operation between the divine and 
 the human. That people are rash to draw such 
 a conclusion is partly due to the modish social 
 coloring which the term "righteousness" re- 
 ceives at the present day. But we may not de- 
 termine its meaning for our text in the light of 
 this modern association. The important ques- 
 
HUNGERING AND THIRSTING 43 
 
 tion to answer is what meaning the word car- 
 ried to the mind of Jesus. As soon as this is 
 done, we shall soon discover that no greater mis- 
 take could be made from Jesus' point of view 
 than to assume that in the matter of righteous- 
 ness the divine is less and the human more than 
 in other relations. It would be crude, to be sure, 
 straightway to inject into our text the doctrine 
 of Paul according to which righteousness is 
 something wrought out in Christ and trans- 
 ferred to us by imputation. And yet, it would 
 be a far more serious mistake to suppose that 
 our Lord's idea of righteousness and that of 
 Paul differed in principle and did not grow from 
 the same root. There need be no difficulty in 
 showing that Jesus, and in fact all preceding 
 revelation, carefully laid the basis for this 
 crowning structure of Apostolic revelation. In 
 order to do this let us note in the first place that 
 righteousness is in Scripture an idea saturated 
 with the thought of God. Throughout the Old 
 Testament this is so. It is a commonplace of its 
 teaching, especially in the prophets, that there 
 can be no true obedience of heart and life with- 
 out the constant presence to the mind of man of 
 the thought of Jehovah. Not only is ethics with- 
 out religion a fragmentary thing; even more 
 important is the principle that in such a case it 
 lacks the true quality of right, the inner essence 
 of what renders it conformable to its very idea. 
 Righteousness is the opposite of sin, and as the 
 reference to God is inseparable from the con- 
 ception of sin, so the reference to God is in pre- 
 cisely the same manner inherent in the idea of 
 righteousness. To put it very plainly: If there 
 
44 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 were no God to see and judge and punish, one 
 might perhaps still continue to speak of good 
 and evil, meaning thereby what is beneficial or 
 injurious, subject to the approval or disapproval 
 of men, but it would be meaningless to speak of 
 sin on such a supposition. And so, by equal rea- 
 soning, while what is commonly called good 
 might without the existence of God be conceiv- 
 able in the world, yet it could not properly bear 
 the name of righteousness, for the simple reason 
 that, in order to deserve this name, according to 
 the Biblical way of thinking, it needs first to be 
 placed in the light of the divine nature, the 
 divine will, the divine judgment. At the very 
 birth of the people of God this principle was 
 embedded deep in their life, when God said to 
 Abraham : "I am El-Shaddai, walk thou before 
 me, then shalt thou be blameless." To walk be- 
 fore God means so to walk as to have the thought 
 of God's presence and supervision constantly in 
 mind, and to shape one's conduct accordingly. 
 Our Lord's whole teaching on the subject of 
 righteousness is but one emphatic re-afl[irmation 
 and further development of the same principle. 
 Although the religious atmosphere in his day 
 was surcharged with the notions of law-keeping 
 and merit and retribution, there was lacking the 
 vivid consciousness of God as a perpetual wit- 
 ness and interested participant in every moral 
 transaction. The automaton of the law had 
 taken the place of the living God. Well might 
 our Lord quote the words of the prophet Isaiah : 
 "This people honoreth me with their lips, but 
 their heart is far from me." Alas, this fault 
 with which Jesus had to contend is not so ex- 
 
HUNGERING AND THIRSTING 45 
 
 clusively peculiar to the spirit of that age as we 
 might perhaps be inclined to assume. A Jew 
 lives in you and me and in every human 
 heart by nature. If we ever were tempted to 
 think ourselves able to fulfill the law of God, was 
 it not perhaps for this reason — that the sense of 
 God's absolute claim upon us and knowledge of 
 us had become dim to our conscience? Since, 
 then, this fault reappears in every sinner, the 
 Preacher of the Mount repeats his sermon in 
 the ears of each generation. He stands to plead 
 the right of God, no matter what substitutes for 
 Him we may have put up in our lives, nay not 
 even though it were, as in the case of Judaism, 
 a counterfeit of God's own law. And, great 
 physician that He is. He directs his probe 
 straight to the root of the disease. Christ drives 
 us back into the inner chambers of our con- 
 sciousness, where God and we are alone, and 
 good and evil assume a proportion and signifi- 
 cance never dreamt of before. The law in the 
 hands of Jesus becomes alive with God's own 
 personality. Majestic and authoritative. He is 
 present in every commandment, so absolute in 
 his demands, so observant of our conduct, so in- 
 tent upon the outcome, that the thought of giv- 
 ing to Him less than heart and soul and mind 
 and strength in the product of our moral life 
 ceases to be tolerable to ourselves. Much has 
 been preached and written about the internal 
 character of the law-observance which the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount requires. Truly, it does teach 
 with powerful emphasis that the righteousness 
 is in the intent and disposition, not first in the 
 
46 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 outward act, just as the sin is not committed 
 first when the hand reaches out to strike, but 
 when anger surges up in the heart. But we 
 do not, I am afraid, realize with sufficient clear- 
 ness what is the ultimate reason for this inter- 
 nalizing emphasis. Why are evil and good with 
 such insistency pushed back into the region of 
 the heart? The reason is none other than that 
 in the heart man confronts God. In the recesses 
 of the inner man, where deep calls unto deep, 
 where the Lawgiver and the creature are face 
 to face, there and there alone the issue of 
 righteousness and of sin can be decided. Nor 
 does this merely mean that the conscience is 
 brought under the direct gaze and control of the 
 will of God. It is the divine nature lying back 
 of the divine will in the light of which the 
 creature is led to place itself. The inner 
 man enters, if we may so speak, into the inner 
 forum of the Most High. There God, besides re- 
 quiring obedience to his will, is heard to ask con- 
 formity to his moral nature. The law is per- 
 ceived to coincide with what He is. The majesty, 
 the inevitableness, the self-evidencing and self- 
 enforcing power of the eternal are put into 
 it. To fulfill the law becomes but an- 
 other form of the imperative, to be like unto 
 God. It is God's inalienable right as God to im- 
 press his character upon us, to make and keep 
 us reflectors of his infinite glory. But in a state 
 of sin this can only intensify a thousand times 
 the consciousness of man's utter inability even 
 to begin to realize what nevertheless is the very 
 core of his end in life, the sole ultimate reason 
 
HUNGERING AND THIRSTING 47 
 
 for his existence. Thus apprehended the range 
 and scope of the moral circle drawn around our 
 being become enormous, so much so indeed that 
 they would almost seem to exceed the possibili- 
 ties of frail human nature. So long as man^s 
 moral life is not illumined by this central glory 
 of the nature of God, it may remain possible for 
 the illusion to spring up that the sinner can at 
 least aspire towards fulfilment of the law. 
 He then imagines that the command is 
 relaxed and lowered to the limitations of his 
 abnormal state. The limitless perspective, 
 all that makes for the eternal seriousness and 
 solemnity of the values of righteousness and sin, 
 are forgotten. "To be righteous" acquires the 
 restricted meaning of being law-like, instead of 
 God-like. Sin also loses its absolute character 
 of disharmony with the divine nature. It ap- 
 pears a mere shortness in one^s account, easily 
 rectifiable by future extra-payments. To all this 
 delusion Jesus puts an end by the simple word : 
 "Ye shall be perfect as your Father in heaven is 
 perfect," and : "Thus shall ye pray : Thy will be 
 done, as in heaven so on earth." And, still fur- 
 ther, the purpose of this demand of God-like- 
 ness is not to be primarily sought in the desir- 
 ability for man of patterning himself after the 
 highest example ; it has its deeper ground in the 
 right of God to possess and use us as instru- 
 ments for the revelation of his supreme glory. 
 If God desires to mirror Himself in us, can it 
 behoove man to offer Him less than a perfect re- 
 flection? Shall we say, that He must overlook 
 the little blemishes, the minor sins, the mixed 
 
48 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 aspirations, the half-hearted efforts, must take 
 the will for the deed, and an imperfect will at 
 that? Or shall we confess with the speaker in 
 Job that the heavens are not clean in his sight? 
 Once this point of view is adopted, our whole 
 estimate of sin and righteousness undergoes a 
 radical change. We then begin to measure and 
 appraise them in their bearing on God and their 
 value for Him. Obedience becomes sacrifice ; the 
 light that is in us no longer shines for our own 
 delectation, but in order that through the per- 
 ception of our good works by men glory may 
 come to our Father in heaven. Here lies also the 
 reason why, notwithstanding all the emphasis 
 placed on the secretness and inwardness of right- 
 eousness, our Lord none the less insists upon the 
 necessity of works as essential to the issue of 
 the moral process. Because it does not exist 
 for itself, therefore the right must leap to the 
 light of day. Jesus, no more than Paul, would 
 have assented to the view that in sanctification 
 the good will or intention is the sole thing re- 
 quired. The tree of righteousness is planted in 
 us by God for his own sake, and consequently 
 He delights in its blossoms and desires to eat of 
 its fruit. 
 
 We have now explored a little of the length 
 and breadth and height and depth of what the 
 Sermon on the Mount proclaims as the whole 
 duty of man. The task of fulfilling this is so 
 stupendous that a sinless being might almost 
 contemplate it with misgiving. Where, then, shall 
 the ungodly and sinner appear? Can our Lord 
 have meant that it is even remotely possible for 
 
HUNGERING AND THIRSTING 49 
 
 the disciple by his own strength to attain unto 
 this? Our text implies the very opposite. No, 
 not the possession of such a righteousness is 
 characteristic of the members of the kingdom, 
 but that they hunger and thirst after it. Notice 
 sharply the implications of the striking figure 
 employed. It implies, of course, in the first place 
 that the disciple has not in himself, and is con- 
 scious of not having, the thing described. That, 
 hov^ever, is only the negative side ; to the absence 
 there corresponds the desire for its presence. 
 And a very specific kind of desire is referred to. 
 Its strength is emphasized, and that not merely 
 in general, but in the very particular sense of 
 its being an elemental desire, a life-craving, in 
 which the deepest instincts of the disciple as- 
 sert themselves. To hunger and thirst after a 
 thing means the recognition that without that 
 thing there can be no life. It involves that in 
 this one desire and its satisfaction the whole 
 meaning of life is centered, that the whole 
 energy of life is directed towards it, that 
 the goal of life is identified with it. To the 
 sense of this fundamental spiritual craving 
 all other things are obliterated. As to the 
 hungry and thirsty gold and silver become 
 worthless, so to the disciple in whom this 
 desire has awakened, the wealth of the universe, 
 were he offered it, would have no attraction. 
 And let us remember that this intensified desire 
 has for its object the righteousness of God as 
 previously described. What renders this thing 
 desirable is the vision of it as associated with 
 God. In its ultimate analysis it is the passion 
 
50 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 for God Himself. Here is the cry of the Psalm- 
 ist : "Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there 
 is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee," 
 translated into terms of ethics. Still further, 
 the form of hunger and thirst which the desire 
 assumes presupposes the clearest conceivable 
 perception of the nature of its object. As there 
 is no more vivid picture of the nourishing and 
 refreshing power of food and drink than that 
 which stands before the imagination of a hun- 
 gry and thirsty person, so there is no truer, no 
 more adequate reproduction of God's own idea 
 of righteousness than that which exists in the 
 mind that hungers and thirsts after the manner 
 here portrayed. Herein lies one of the chief 
 glories of the work of redemption, that it pro- 
 duces in the heart and mind of the sinner such 
 a profound, ineffaceable impression of the reali- 
 ties in God. Nothing will lay so bare the foun- 
 dations of our relationship to Him as the ex- 
 perience of salvation. The thing spoken of in 
 the text appears nowhere else in such an in- 
 tense form as it does through its connection 
 with sin. The beginning of hungering and 
 thirsting after righteousness lies in the birth of 
 conviction of sin. In fact the presence of this 
 element in it is what distinguishes true, deep re- 
 pentance from every kind of superficial regret 
 for the secondary consequences of sin. True re- 
 pentance strips sin of all that is accidental. It 
 resembles an inner chamber where no one and 
 nothing else is admitted except God and the sin- 
 ner and his sin. Into that chamber all the great 
 penitents like David and Paul and Augustine 
 
HUNGERING AND THIRSTING 51 
 
 and Luther have entered, and each one in the 
 bitter anguish of his soul has borrowed the 
 words of the Psalmist: "Against Thee, Thee 
 only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy 
 sight, that Thou mightest be justified when Thou 
 speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest." A 
 repentant sinner acquits God and condemns him- 
 self. And for the very reason that his conscious- 
 ness of sin is God-centered, he is also alive to its 
 inward seriousness. He learns to trace it 
 in the recesses and abysses of his inmost life, 
 where even the eye of self -scrutiny would other- 
 wise scarcely penetrate, but in which the eyes of 
 God are at home, where all our iniquities stand 
 naked before Him and our secret sins in the 
 light of his countenance. If it is characteristic 
 of sin to excuse itself, it is no less characteristic 
 of repentance to scorn all subterfuge and to 
 judge of itself, as it were, with the very veracity 
 of God. Herein indeed is shown the first grace 
 of God to an awakened sinner that He lets in 
 upon the soul this cleansing flood of moral truth. 
 It is a painful experience, but even through the 
 pain the penitent feels that his relation towards 
 God has been in principle rectified, that the sor- 
 row of repentance is a sorrow after God Him- 
 self. Without that much of faith there is no re- 
 pentance, by that much of faith gracious re- 
 pentance differs from the remorse of the 
 hopelessly lost. And from such saving peni- 
 tence there is but one more step to the recogni- 
 tion that the claims of the divine righteousness 
 in their widest extent must be satisfied. To a 
 mind thus disposed the thought of atonement is 
 
52 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 no longer an offense or foolishness, but some- 
 thing commending itself by its inherent justice. 
 The doctrine of satisfaction ages before it was 
 elaborated by religious thinkers had vindicated 
 itself, as it still continues to do, to thousands of 
 hearts in the bitter theology of repentance. The 
 fact of sin, while as such irrevocably accom- 
 plished, yet so far as the guilt is concerned must 
 be undone, if God is to remain the God of sin- 
 ners. Here the truth taught by- Jesus leads 
 directly to Paul's doctrine of atonement and 
 justification. To the heart that has had the 
 Sermon on the Mount interpreted to itself by the 
 Holy Spirit there is no other solution and refuge 
 than the cross underneath which Paul found 
 shelter. To such as hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness the flesh of the Son of Man is 
 meat and his blood is drink, indeed. 
 
 But the principle expressed in our text 
 reaches still farther out. The hungering and 
 thirsting most assuredly also include a desire to 
 exhibit the righteousness of discipleship in a 
 sanctified life. And this Christian pursuit of 
 holiness likewise is centered in God. It is not 
 as if in justification the divine grace, and in 
 sanctification human endeavor, were the sole 
 factor to be reckoned with. Much rather in 
 sanctification itself the old alternative again pre- 
 sents itself, whether in all its parts, in the acting 
 upon by God and in the being moved to re- 
 sponsive action of the believer, the divine glory 
 or human merit shall be the principal concern. 
 There is a striving after moral excellence in 
 which the selfish sinful nature most vigorously 
 
HUNGERING AND THIRSTING 53 
 
 reasserts itself, involving merely a transition 
 from the gross and carnal to the more refined 
 and elusive type of sin. The true disciple does 
 not seek to be made better for his own glory but 
 in the interest and for the glory of God. He 
 feels with Paul that he must apprehend, because 
 he was apprehended for that very purpose. The 
 image of God restored in the soul cannot help 
 turning back towards its original. The new man 
 is created after God in righteousness and holi- 
 ness of truth. The believer, therefore, sancti- 
 fies himself, that God's purpose may not be frus- 
 trated in him, but find glorious fruition. Only 
 he does so in constant reliance on divine grace. 
 It were a mistake to confine the province of faith 
 to justification. All progress in holiness depends 
 on it. It is the element, the atmosphere in which 
 the Christian lives, that which imparts to his 
 works their sacrificial character and makes them 
 pleasing to God. And, because, thanks to God, 
 it is deeper in him than his deepest sin, even 
 when he fails and falls, he does not despair, nor 
 is utterly forsaken. God's witness remains in 
 him ; he can say with Peter : "Lord, Thou know- 
 est all things. Thou knowest that I love Thee!" 
 Finally, the Lord here assures the hungry 
 and thirsty ones, that they shall be satisfied. 
 Every instinctive desire, when normal, carries 
 in itself the knowledge that there is that which 
 can satisfy it. The great gifts of God and the 
 great desires of life have been created for each 
 other, and call for each other. If this be true in 
 the natural world, it is equally true in the spirit- 
 ual world, in the sphere of redemption. The 
 
54 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 craving described in our text is a prophecy; it 
 tells of a law in the kingdom of God, a sure 
 creative appointment, out of which, twin-chil- 
 dren of the divine grace, the hunger after 
 righteousness and the righteousness itself are 
 born. It is God, and God alone, who can produce 
 in the deepest heart of man a thing so instinctive 
 as what is here spoken of. No sinner can give 
 this to himself. If we feel it at all, to however 
 slight a degree, it is from no other cause than 
 that the love of God has found us, and the breath 
 of the Spirit Creator has blown upon us, quick- 
 ening us into newness of life. If this were a de- 
 sire artificially awakened or stimulated by man, 
 there could be no assurance of either the exist- 
 ence or the satisfying character of its object. 
 Even in the case of our noblest and most ele- 
 vating desires after the creature, we too often 
 make sad experience of the failure of our ideals 
 to meet the expectation. The reason is that in 
 our dreams we ourselves are the creators of the 
 excellence we crave, and because we cannot also 
 create the satisfaction, we hunger in vain. But 
 it is different here. He that gave the thirst like- 
 wise provides the water, and the one exactly 
 meets the other. It is not the will of our Heaven- 
 ly Father that any longing in our hearts, 
 prompted by Himself, and therefore sincerely 
 seeking Him, shall perish unsatisfied. A satisfy- 
 ing righteousness therefore must be provided 
 for the people of God. And it must be provided 
 outside of us. To eat means to be nourished 
 from without. Since the sinner is devoid of all 
 righteousness, it is self-evident, that the source 
 
HUNGERING AND THIRSTING 55 
 
 of his supply must be sought beyond the confines 
 of his own evil and empty nature. For it to be 
 otherwise would mean that hunger could be 
 stilled with hunger. Our Lord's meaning ob- 
 viously is that the coming order of things, the 
 new kingdom of God, brings with itself, chief of 
 all blessings, a perfect righteousness, as truly 
 and absolutely the gift of God to man as is the 
 entire kingdom. What is true of the kingdom, 
 that no human merit can deserve, no human 
 effort call it into being, applies with equal force 
 to the righteousness that forms its center. It is 
 God's creation, not man's. The prophet recog- 
 nized it as such when, despairing of sinful Israel, 
 he promised that in the future, in the new cove- 
 nant, God would remember the sin no more, and 
 would write his law upon the tablets of the heart. 
 Our Lord here simply declares that what proph- 
 ets and psalmists saw from afar is on the point 
 of becoming real. The acceptable year of 
 Jehovah is about to begin. His beatitudes are 
 the evangel, giving answer across the ages to the 
 prophesies of old. It means that with comfort 
 and riches and mercy and sonship and the vision 
 of God, righteousness will be given in abundance 
 to a destitute people. True, Jesus does not enter 
 here upon any description of the method by 
 which this is to be accomplished. As little as 
 He specifies what will bring comfort in the place 
 of mourning, does He tell how righteousness will 
 banish sin. But does not the very fact of his 
 foregoing to tell this afford a presumption that 
 He is conscious of carrying the source and sub- 
 stance of all these things in his own Person? The 
 
56 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 same Jesus who immediately afterwards in in- 
 terpreting the law puts side by side with the 
 commandment of God his sovereign, "I say unto 
 you," the same Jesus here takes into his hands 
 all the riches of prophecy, as only the God of 
 prophecy can take them, and disposes of them as 
 his own sovereign gift: "Theirs is the king- 
 dom," and "They shall be filled." What gives 
 Him the right to speak thus, not merely in the 
 sphere of power, but also in the sphere of 
 righteousness? As God He could change sick- 
 ness into health, and mourning into joy, but even 
 as God He cannot change sin and guilt into 
 righteousness by a mere fiat of his will. When, 
 nevertheless, He here declares that this will be 
 done, the reason is that in his own life, his life of 
 a servant, this greatest of all tasks is being ac- 
 complished. In one sense the Sermon on the 
 Mount was a sermon preached out of his own 
 personal experience. The righteousness He de- 
 scribed was not a distant ideal, it was an in- 
 carnate reality- in Himself. He alone of all man- 
 kind fulfilled the law in its deepest purport and 
 widest extent. His keeping of it proceeded from 
 that sanctuary of his inner life where He and 
 the Father always beheld each other*s face. He 
 made it his meat and drink to do the will of God. 
 His human nature was an altar from which the 
 incense of perfect consecration rose ceaselessly 
 day and night. He submitted to the cross and 
 endured the shame, not merely on our behalf, but 
 first of all in order that not one jot or one tittle 
 of the divine justice should fall to the ground. 
 He not only hungered and thirsted but was sat- 
 
HUNGERING AND THIRSTING 57 
 
 isfied with the travail of his soul. And now you 
 and I can come and take of the bread and water 
 of life freely. Through justification we are 
 even in this life filled with the fulness of his 
 merit, and appear to God as spotless and blame- 
 less as though sin had never touched us. Through 
 sanctification his holy character is impressed 
 upon our souls, so that, notwithstanding our im- 
 perfections, God takes a true delight in us, see- 
 ing that the inner man is changed from 
 day to day after the likeness of Christ. 
 And the full meaning of our Lord's promise 
 we shall know in the last day, when He 
 shall satisfy Himself in us by presenting us 
 to God perfect in body, soul and Spirit. 
 Then shall come to pass the word that is written : 
 "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any 
 more." For we shall behold God's face in 
 righteousness and be satisfied, when we awake, 
 with his image. 
 
III. Seeking and Saving the Lost 
 
The Gospel according to Luke, 
 XIX, 10: "For the Son of Man 
 came to seek and to save that 
 which was lost." 
 
SEEKING AND SAVING THE LOST 61 
 
 HTHE words of our text are Jesus' own com- 
 mentary on the event described in the preced- 
 ing verses. His meeting with Zacchaeus and, as 
 a result of this, the publican's salvation, were in 
 the last analysis due to the fact, that the Son of 
 Man came to seek and to save that which was 
 lost. And in the light of this interpretation the 
 event itself in turn becomes a commentary upon 
 the Savior's ministry in the largest sense, both 
 upon that which He served while on earth and 
 upon that which He now fulfills, walking 
 through the lands and the ages, as He once 
 walked through the fields and cities of Palestine. 
 Neither this nor any other occurrence in the 
 Gospel-history was a casual thing. It is true, 
 these days of our Lord's flesh which He lived 
 among his countrymen, acting and acted upon, 
 were a real concrete piece of life interwoven with 
 the life of Israel. They belong to that age and 
 generation as truly as any section of human his- 
 tory can be said to belong to the times in which 
 it happened. But it is also true that this is not 
 common history, but sacred, redemptive history, 
 which means that there runs through it, from 
 beginning to end, a special design, ordering its 
 course, shaping its frame, and fixing its issues, 
 so as to make of it a proper stage for the enact- 
 ment of the great mystery of redemption, whose 
 spectators and participants were not merely the 
 Jews of that age but the inhabitants of all sub- 
 sequent ages. Nothing is casual here; every 
 
$2 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 moment, every circumstance, every person that 
 our Lord touched became fraught by that touch 
 with a profound actuality and an eternal signifi- 
 cance. How marvelously adapted was the setting 
 of these scenes to serve their unique purpose! 
 What sharp contrasts of human state and con- 
 dition were here brought together ! What pro- 
 nounced types of sin, exhibiting in their develop- 
 ment the root-principles of all evil, appear side 
 by side! The Pharisee and the Publican come 
 together to the temple of God! Truly, in this 
 world of the Jewish land a microcosmic picture 
 was presented of the realms of sin and suffering 
 and sorrow and death. And because this is so, 
 you and I can come to the story of two thousand 
 years ago and find a present salvation there, an 
 ever open door to the house of peace and hope. 
 These are not strange, outlandish scenes and 
 surroundings we are invited to ; it is the familiar 
 ground of sin and salvation ; those who people it 
 are flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, and 
 the Savior, who comes to meet them, in their 
 persons meets us and transacts his business with 
 us individually about matters of eternal im- 
 portance. 
 
 For a few moments with the statement of our 
 text in mind let us look at what passed between 
 Zacchaeus and the Savior. The time is that 
 of Jesus' last journey to Jerusalem shortly be- 
 fore the great Passover in which all things were 
 to be fulfilled. These were the last hours of the 
 day during which it is possible to work; closer 
 and closer drew near for Him that night of suf- 
 fering and death in which it is not given to any 
 
SEEKING AND SAVING THE LOST 53 
 
 man to work. Could one have wondered, if in 
 this critical hour our Lord's thoughts had been 
 wholly turned forward and inward, if, oblivious 
 to his surroundings, He had been intent upon the 
 tremendous experience of his passion with 
 Avhich He was now almost face to face? We do 
 find Him faithful and busy in the outward duty 
 until the last moment. As He loved his own until 
 the end, so it may be said that He sought his own 
 until the darkness of death closed in upon Him. 
 But a moment ago He had helped the blind beg- 
 gar at the entrance to Jericho, and, scarcely 
 within the city, a publican becomes the object of 
 his quest. Notice how vividly the sense of a spe- 
 cific duty, here and now to be performed, is pres- 
 ent to the Savior's mind, for He announces to 
 Zacchaeus : "Today I must abide at thine house." 
 His times and ways and works were not his own - 
 but the Father's who had sent Him. But let us 
 further notice the precise expression that prin- 
 ciple receives in the statement: "The Son of 
 Man came to seek and to save that which was 
 lost." There is no need of asking for the mo- 
 ment, whence He came; the fact of his coming 
 in itself sufficiently claims our attention. For 
 this "coming" means his coming into the world ; 
 it covers his entire earthly life ; He was born for 
 this purpose, and this purpose only, to seek and 
 save the lost. Never in all human history was 
 there such an absolute concentration of life upon 
 a single specific task as that which our Lord here 
 affirms of Himself. Every man comes into the 
 world to work out a design of God in his exist- 
 ence. But in the case of each one of us this design 
 
64 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 embraces a number of various ends, all of which 
 we legitimately pursue, and in all of which we 
 serve the will of God. Our Lord's life was a 
 human life which derived its meaning from be- 
 ginning to end from his vocation as a Savior; 
 in seeking and saving its significance exhausted 
 itself. To that even the most sacred and private 
 concerns of his soul with God, his prayer, his 
 trust, all his intercourse with the Father, were 
 wholly subservient. The personal was swallowed 
 up in the one great devotion to the work of God. 
 Into this the full stream of his strength flowed, 
 from this its hidden sources were nourished : He 
 made it his meat and his drink to do the will of 
 his Father in heaven. He lived for this will and 
 He lived on it. Thus only can we explain to our- 
 selves the sensitiveness of our Lord, where his 
 right to prosecute this task was called into ques- 
 tion, for then He felt Himself assailed in the 
 center and sanctuary of his being. Hence on this 
 very occasion, when after his entrance of the 
 house of Zacchaeus the people murmured, say- 
 ing, "He is gone in to lodge with a man that is a 
 sinner," our Lord did not content Himself with 
 pointing out the propriety and beneficence of the 
 act, but vindicated his conduct by an appeal to 
 the supreme law of life under which He stood 
 and from which He could not free Himself with- 
 out ceasing to be what He was. With what sub- 
 lime simplicity He takes for granted, that his en- 
 tering into a house could be for no other purpose 
 than to introduce salvation there! Of course, 
 there is in this something unique, incapable of 
 reproduction in precisely that sense by even the 
 
SEEKING AND SAVING THE LOST 65 
 
 most consecrated servant of God. He was made 
 incarnate for the work of salvation, and we are 
 dedicated to our ministry on the basis of a 
 natural life we already possess. Paul perhaps in 
 this respect approached nearest to the example 
 of the Lord, having been separated from his 
 mother's womb for the Apostleship. In his 
 words, "Woe is me, if I preach not the Gospel" 
 we imagine to hear an echo of our text and other 
 similar declarations of our Lord. But surely, 
 though with an almost equal distance between, 
 we likewise ought to possess some reproduction 
 of this mind of Christ within us. Pitiable indeed 
 is the plight of the steward of Christ, who can- 
 not say from a conviction as profound as the 
 roots of his spiritual life itself, that he came into 
 the kingdom for the very purpose of seeking 
 and of saving that which was lost. 
 
 The Lord's statement, however, obtains a 
 still richer and more forceful meaning by our en- 
 quiring whence and out of what state He came to 
 enter upon this life-task. It may be in a certain 
 sense true that in the Synoptical Gospels there 
 is not that emphatic expression of his eternal 
 pre-existence in the world of heaven, not that 
 sublime consciousness of transcending the 
 sphere of time, as are met with in the discourses 
 recorded by John. But, surely, if we will only 
 come to them with believing minds, we shall not 
 fail to find even in these simpler narratives indi- 
 cations of the great mystery of godliness suffi- 
 ciently clear to satisfy us, when in the helpless- 
 ness of our sins we cry out for a divine, an 
 eternal Savior. Such a message our text 
 
66 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 brings us, when it declares that "the Son of 
 Man came to seek and to save that which was 
 lost." The word "came" is in itself suggestive of 
 a previous sphere and state which He exchanged 
 for our world, a sphere and state wherein no 
 seeking nor saving was required, because there 
 all live secure and blessed in God. But much 
 more suggestive is this word when coupled with 
 the name "Son of Man." It is not accidental that 
 our Lord makes use of this self-designation in 
 a connection like this. Elsewhere. also we read 
 that "The Son of Man came not to be ministered 
 unto but to minister and to give his life a 
 ransom." And in a number of other passages 
 the title is associated with his abode in the world 
 of heaven, whence He descended to these lower 
 regions of ours. In the prophecy of Daniel, where 
 first the phrase "Son of Man" is used to describe 
 the Messiah, twice a "coming" is affirmed of the 
 Person so designated: "There came with the 
 clouds of heaven One like unto a son of man, and 
 He came even to the Ancient of Days." Now, 
 while our Lord often identifies the "coming" 
 thus described with his return to judgment, yet 
 He likewise once and again retrospectively asso- 
 ciates it with his first advent, when He came out 
 of the glory He had with the Father before the 
 world was. Being told, therefore, that it was 
 the "Son of Man," who came to seek and to save, 
 our first thought surely should be of that un- 
 speakable grace of our Lord, who, being rich as 
 God alone can be rich, yet for our sake became 
 poor as sinful man only can be poor, that by his 
 poverty we might be made rich. The depth to 
 
SEEKING AND SAVING THE LOST 67 
 
 which this seeking and saving brings Him down 
 should be measured by the distance there is be- 
 tween the highest in God and the lowest in man. 
 To lodge with publicans and sinners might be 
 condescension for a high-placed personage — 
 what language will express its meaning in the 
 case of the infinite God? The "Son of Man," 
 who unites in Himself all that Deity and human- 
 ity together can lend of glory to the Messianic 
 state, He it is who came to seek and to save the 
 lost. It was such a glorious life that was wholly 
 given up to its very last thought, poured out to 
 the very last residue of its strength, and that 
 for the task of helping us, the lowest of us, who 
 would have turned away from one another, be- 
 cause the sinful felt it a degradation to stoop to 
 such as were a degree more sinful than they ac- 
 knowledged themselves to be. When we combine 
 this consciousness of ineffable glory sacrificed 
 with the consciousness of absolute surrender to 
 the service of the most despised, then, and only 
 then, do we begin to understand somewhat of the 
 indignation with which Jesus repudiated the 
 charge, brought by sinful men, that it was un- 
 w^orthy of Him to associate with publicans and 
 sinners. With superhuman dignity the one word 
 "Son of Man" silences that voice of murmuring 
 in the streets of Jericho, and every echo, we may 
 add, of that same voice from any quarter, or any 
 age, when it presumes to criticize the Gospel of 
 Christ on the ground that it speaks in accents of 
 the sovereign grace of God. 
 
 But the fact that He came as the "Son of 
 Man" is important for our Lord's seeking and 
 
68 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 saving of the lost in still another respect. By 
 reason of it He retains even on earth the exer- 
 cise of that divine knowledge and power which 
 such a task calls into requisition. Love is far- 
 sighted and wields great influence, but love 
 alone, even divine love alone, would not be suffi- 
 cient to find and save the sinner. Seeking and 
 saving are acts in which God puts forth his 
 omniscience and omnipotence, as the searcher of 
 hearts and the Lord of spirits. To these divine 
 prerogatives the "Son of Man" lays claim in the 
 pursuit of his task. He brings to it all the quali- 
 fications which its character as a strictly divine 
 work requires. When making to Nathanael the 
 marvelous disclosure of his supernatural knowl- 
 edge, He declares, "Ye shall see thie heaven 
 opened and the Angels of God ascending and 
 descending upon the Son of Man." It is in the 
 "Son of Man" that the mystic ladder, which 
 Jacob saw at Bethel, has been truly set up, so 
 that God visits man, and man is made aware of 
 the saving presence of God. In healing the sick 
 of the palsy He demonstrated the authority of 
 the "Son of Man" to forgive sins on earth by 
 bidding him arise, take up his bed and go to his 
 house. Here the very point in question was, 
 whether during his sojourn on earth such power 
 belonged to the "Son of Man." That He pos- 
 sessed it in his heavenly state even the Scribes 
 would scarcely have doubted; what they dis- 
 puted was that any person on earth should pre- 
 tend to share this right with God. But Jesus 
 claims, and by the miracle proves his claim, that 
 He is on earth invested with the power of saying 
 
SEEKING AND SAVING THE LOST 69 
 
 to a guilty soul, "Thy sins are forgiven thee," 
 and to say it so that the conscience, which obeys - 
 no other voice than the voice of God Himself, 
 will acknowledge Him as its Sovereign and be 
 silent at his behest. But what need to look for 
 illustrations elsewhere, when the connection of 
 our text itself gives the most striking example 
 of how our Lord places these divine attributes 
 in the service of his seeking and saving love? 
 When Jesus came to the spot where Zacchaeus 
 had stationed himself for observation, it was 
 surely not by accident that his eye discovered 
 the publican amidst the branches of the tree. 
 His looking up precisely at that point may con- 
 vince us that He acted deliberately ; it was a step 
 in that process of seeking for which He had 
 come. He calls the publican by name, though to . 
 all appearance the two had never met before. 
 Yea before that spot on the roadside was 
 reached. He had not only discovered his per- 
 son, but had read with omniscience the inner- 
 most thoughts of his heart. He who could say, 
 "Before Philip called thee, when thou wast un- 
 der the fig-tree, I saw thee," He had likewise seen 
 Zacchaeus in advance of the latter's seeing Him. 
 Here is a look from which no man can hide him- 
 self, the same that saw our first parents behind 
 the branches of the fateful trees, and has since 
 that hour, wherever sinners seek to conceal 
 themselves, penetrated into the recesses of their 
 guilt and shame, called them up from their 
 depths of despair and brought them down from 
 their heights of pride, a look from the eyes of 
 the Lord which are in all places and see the small 
 
70 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 no less than the great. More than this, we need 
 not hesitate to affirm that the publican, though 
 unaware of the fact, was there at his station by 
 the appointment of Jesus. In all probability 
 Zacchaeus in his desire to see Jesus, who He was, 
 was not so exclusively actuated by curiosity as 
 is usually assumed. But suppose it to have been 
 curiosity and nothing more, even that was in no 
 wise exempt from the Lord's control. Open to 
 Him are a thousand ways to bring you and me to 
 the very place and point where He desires to 
 meet us. How many of us would have been 
 saved, if the Lord had waited till we sought Him 
 out? Thanks be to God, He is a Savior who 
 seeks the lost, who with eyes supernaturally far- 
 sighted discerns us a long way off, and draws our 
 interest to Himself by the sweet constraint of his 
 grace, till we are face to face with Him and our 
 soul is saved. As once, in the incarnation, He 
 came down from heaven to seek mankind, so 
 He still comes down silently from heaven in the 
 case of each sinner, and pursues his search for 
 that individual soul following it through all the 
 mazes of its waywardness and the devious paths 
 of its folly, sometimes unto the very brink of de- 
 struction, till at last his grace overtakes it and 
 says, "I must lodge at thy house." For, besides 
 the divine omniscience here manifested, we are 
 made witnesses of the Lord's sovereign and al- 
 mighty power. Having found Zacchaeus He ad- 
 dresses to him that call, which makes the lame to 
 leap, the blind to see, the deaf to hear, nay the 
 dead to arise, a call like the voice of God at the 
 first creation, "Let there be light, and there was 
 
SEEKING AND SAVING THE LOST 71 
 
 light" : "Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, 
 for today I must abide at thine house." Note 
 the instantaneous effect. Behold here Zacchaeus, 
 who perhaps never before had encountered the 
 Savior, who would have hardly ventured to ap- 
 proach Jesus, behold him at a single word trans- 
 formed into a disciple of the Lord. He knows 
 the voice of the Shepherd immediately, makes 
 haste to come down and receives him with joy. 
 This is that wonderful effectual calling by name, 
 which takes place wherever a sinner is saved, 
 and which, while it may not always take place 
 with such suddenness and under such striking 
 circumstances as happened here, yet is in sub- 
 stance everywhere equally supernatural and 
 immediate. The use of the divine word, not only 
 does not detract from its immediacy, but serves 
 the very purpose of expressing the fact that 
 nothing but the omnipotent volition of God 
 is at work in it. For it is characteristic 
 of God, and of God alone, thus to produce 
 effects by a mere word. He gives life to 
 the dead and calls the things that are not, as 
 though they were. Thus Lazarus was summoned 
 from the grave, and thus Zacchaeus was brought 
 into the Shepherd's fold. Of course, there is no 
 cause for denying that as the result of, and sim- 
 ultaneously with, this call, many thoughts and 
 convictions may be released and spring into 
 action that were previously latent. Images may 
 have floated before Zacchaeus' mind picturing 
 Jesus in his ways and works. The Gospel sum- 
 mons may have come to him through rumor or 
 report of the Savior's life, for even in regard to 
 
72 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 these outward instrumentalities for conveying 
 the knowledge of Christ it is sometimes true 
 which is written elsewhere concerning the in- 
 ward birth itself, "The wind bloweth where it 
 listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but 
 knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it go- 
 eth." The Spirit of God which makes all things 
 new, can so baptize an ancient fragment of truth, 
 a dimly remembered shadow of knowledge, as to 
 give it in our apperception all the radiant new- 
 ness of a flash of light fresh from the womb of 
 revelation. But, while all these old elements 
 of consciousness may work, as out of the past, 
 they are in no case the actual producers of the 
 new creature. On the contrary it is only through 
 the immediate impartation of the higher life 
 that they can^ be roused from their dormant 
 state to the active vitality of a heartfelt experi- 
 ence. Whatever antecedently dwells in our 
 souls of religious knowledge, of reasonable 
 persuasion of the truth, of recognition of God's 
 claim upon us, of stirrings of conscience — it all 
 needs to be regenerated and quickened by the 
 touch of Christ, before it can blossom into sav- 
 ing faith. We speak of our saving men, but this, 
 while conveying a legitimate idea, is a metaphor. 
 At bottom it signifies no more than that through 
 the means of grace we arrange and prepare the 
 situation in which it pleases God to perform the 
 unique saving act. It is ours to let in the light 
 and lay ready the garments which afterwards 
 Lazarus will need, but we cannot wake the 
 sleeper under the stone. Let us rejoice that this 
 is so. Precisely that at the center there lies 
 
SEEKING AND SAVING THE LOST 73 
 
 something that we cannot do constitutes the 
 glory of our message. If the gospel-dispensa- 
 tion were a matter of mere intellectual enlight- 
 enment and moral suasion, such as fall within the 
 limits of human power to produce, then indeed 
 it might be urged, that what is reserved for the 
 divine action is subtracted from the scope of 
 human opportunity, the intrusion of God, as it 
 were, diminishing our glory. But on such a view 
 of the gospel ministry its distinction is reduced 
 to a level, where it matters little, whether the 
 minister accomplishes more or less of it. If, on 
 the other hand, the gospel service is incorpor- 
 ated in a creative movement of supernatural 
 character, involving at its core what lies abso- 
 lutely beyond human power, then to feel this 
 inevitable limitation as a drawback would 
 evince a strange blindness to the most glorious 
 aspect of the preacher's office. To move on the 
 outermost fringe of a process of that kind, to 
 have even the slightest connection with it, con- 
 fers an unspeakable distinction, because it asso- 
 ciates one with what is specifically divine. How 
 much greater still is the grace, if we are per- 
 mitted not a minimum but the highest conceiv- 
 able degree of proximity to the wonder-world 
 of God ! Is not the underlying cause of the fail- 
 ure to perceive this, that we too much individ- 
 ualize and isolate ourselves, instead of feeling 
 strongly our organic appurtenance to the 
 mighty, supernaturalizing movement introduced 
 by God into this world? If we could only more 
 adequately realize the irresistible omnipotence 
 of its momentum and the robe of splendor it 
 
74 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 casts around the smallest of its servants, we 
 would exult with Paul and give thanks to God 
 "who always leadeth us in triumph in Christ." 
 But let us return to Zacchaeus and note how 
 our Lord further illustrates the nature of the 
 saving act for which as "Son of Man" he claims 
 to possess the full qualifications. It is an act of 
 seeking and saving the "lost." What it implies 
 can be ascertained from the state aflfirmed of its 
 objects. There is a sure correlation between 
 these two, and, if at any time we are apt to lose 
 the proper perspective in regard to either of 
 them, we should immediately rectify our view by 
 reflecting upon the inherent significance of the 
 other term. The "lost" are such as require a 
 "Seeker" and "Savior" ; when tempted to dilute 
 or tone down the meaning of this word, it should 
 suffice to remember, that in the same proportion 
 as this is done we also detract from the Savior- 
 title of our Lord a substantial part of its signifi- 
 cance. And conversely, if we allow ourselves to 
 lose sight of even the smallest part of what the 
 words "to save" and "Savior" connote, it neces- 
 sarily modifies the sound which the word "lost" 
 carries to our ear. There is no escape from 
 this ; it is the inherent logic of the structure of 
 the Gospel. To refuse to be bound by it puts 
 one beyond the pale of consistent Christianity. It 
 will therefore well repay us to scan most closely 
 the exact correspondence of these two ideas in 
 our text. There is perhaps no passage that en- 
 ables us to do so to the same degree of definite- 
 ness and clearness as this saying of our Lord's. 
 The reason is that here He has, in response to 
 
SEEKING AND SAVING THE LOST 75 
 
 the peculiar situation of Zacchaeus, taken pains 
 to resolve the Savior-function in its two compo- 
 nent parts, so as to give us a double light for the 
 purpose. The "Son of Man" came not merely to 
 seek, but "to seek and to save." Nor is this in 
 the nature of a mere addition of a second thing 
 to a first: these two likewise mutually illumine 
 each other; the seeking determines the saving, 
 and the saving in turn the seeking, and both as 
 thus joined together receive their interwoven 
 significance from the "being lost." Now it is 
 not difficult to ascertain what the word "lost" 
 expresses in the vocabulary of Jesus. "To be 
 lost" in its simple, primary sense, which it 
 scarcely needs knowledge of the original to un- 
 derstand, is "to be missing," to have passed out 
 of the active possession and use of one's owner. 
 The word, of course, in order to be intelligible, 
 requires the supplementary thought of a defi- 
 nite possessor. It is not the vague general no- 
 tion of forsakenness and misery Jesus has in 
 mind when using it, but very particularly the 
 fact of the sinner's being missing to God, that 
 is missing to the normal relations man sustains 
 to God. Because these relations to God consti- 
 tute in our Lord's opinion the fundamental thing 
 in human life, the state of "being lost" acquires 
 that sad connotation of total derangement and 
 dissolution of all the factors and forces of spir- 
 itual existence; the word has about it the sol- 
 emn, ominous sound of darkness and chaos. The 
 light and health of life, which are religion, have 
 departed with the departure from Him who is 
 the one source of both. The lost sinner is swung 
 
76 GKACE AND GLORY 
 
 out of the orbit appointed for him by the central 
 position of God, deprived of all the attractions 
 of fellowship and trust and obedience and bless- 
 edness that were his birthright ever since God 
 in infinite grace constructed the circle of religion 
 around Himself. Furthermore, being out of 
 harmony with God, man, as a sinner, has lost 
 the rhythm of his own spiritual life; he is full 
 of discords and inner conflicts, law clashing 
 with law and in consequence the deepest self 
 falling a prey to these disruptive forces which 
 attack it at its core. The very moment the prodi- 
 gal leaves the Father's house he carries this fatal 
 disorder within him, he is beside himself in prin- 
 ciple, so that, when in bitter repentance he be- 
 gins to realize his desperate condition, this is 
 described as a "coming to himself." This, then, 
 in the first place is "being lost," and to this in 
 the first place addresses itself the task of the 
 Son of Man. Hence its first part must of neces- 
 sity be a "seeking" of the sinner. And the 
 "seeking" must be such an act as will be able to 
 undo the "being lost." We should, therefore, 
 take a far too superficial view of it, were we to 
 confine it to the bare effort at approach, or per- 
 haps even to the search for locating the sinner, 
 as the figure, taken by itself, might tempt us to 
 do. No, the finding is not the mere discovery, 
 it is the actual bringing back to God, something 
 by which the sinner is restored to the blessed 
 reality of what God is to him and he is to God: 
 "And when he came to himself he said, I will 
 arise and go to my Father." Are we not made 
 to feel by this, that not first in the saving but al- 
 
SEEKING AND SAVING THE LOST 77 
 
 ready in the finding begins the uniqueness of the 
 Savior's work, that which differentiates it from 
 any finding that we can do, however glorious 
 the latter may be in itself. For, after all, our 
 finding of a man can be only preparatory to his 
 becoming partaker of salvation. In the case of 
 Christ it is identical with the saving act itself. 
 Yea already the seeking is a part of the finding, 
 because with unfailing certainty and directness 
 the feet and the arms of the Savior move to the 
 point where the saving embrace is accomplished. 
 In the last analysis the difference between this 
 and our part appears due to the difference be- 
 tween Christ as God and ourselves as mere 
 human instrumentalities. To be found by Jesus 
 is to be saved for the simple reason that in his 
 Person God Himself restores the lost contact, 
 gathers up the cords of life into His own bosom, 
 and throws about us the circle of his divine 
 beatitude, so that our soul, like a star in its 
 native course, once more moves around Him, and 
 knows no other law or center. So far as Christ 
 was a preacher He preached with the voice of 
 God, and in his message salvation was not 
 merely potential but incarnate. He silently 
 takes this for granted in his whole treatment of 
 sinners, when He deals with them sovereignly 
 in the supreme issues of life and death. In a 
 word He saves as God saves. On this ground, 
 and on this ground only, can we understand why 
 so seldom in the matter of salvation He points 
 beyond Himself to God, but constantly places his 
 own Person in the center of the sinner's field of 
 vision, so as to focus belief and trust and hope 
 
78 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 and surrender and attachment in Himself. Con- 
 sequently it is true not only in the abstractly 
 logical, but in the most realistic, one might al- 
 most say in the local sense, that where Jesus is, 
 there is salvation, and away from Him there is 
 none. As He rebuked the disciples in the storm, 
 because they forgot this fact, and feared that 
 with Him on board they still might perish, even 
 so He requires of us that in every tempest of 
 life we shall be tranquil, because our ship car- 
 ries Him. Was it not so in this very case of 
 Zacchaeus? Because He had entered, salvation 
 in Him and through Him had entered into the 
 publican's house. 
 
 Salvation, however, according to our Lord's 
 teaching is not exhausted by restoring the sin- 
 ner to a sense of the realities of his appurte- 
 nance to God. There is another equally indis- 
 pensable side to it. What this is we may learn 
 by considering the second element that enters 
 into the state of "being lost." "To be lost" is 
 more than to be missing to God. It has also the 
 passive, even more terrible sense of "being 
 ruined," "given up to destruction." The former 
 sense remains within the sphere of the negative ; 
 it describes what is absent from the sinner's 
 state; this other sense is positive, denoting the 
 presence of something dreadful there. If 
 our Lord's discourse dwells chiefly, and with 
 a noticeable predilection, on the first aspect of 
 the matter, this is perhaps due to the vividness 
 with which by very reason of the concrete, de- 
 tailed picture of what is wanting, the glorious 
 realities of religion are brought out. The rule 
 
SEEKING AND SAVING THE LOST 79 
 
 that we do not clearly visualize a thing until 
 through its departure and its consequent fail- 
 ure to function it recalls its image to our mind, 
 is here put to practical use. Strange to say, the 
 face of religion appears in our Lord's teaching 
 most clearly in the form of a description of its 
 opposite. "In my father's house there is bread 
 enough and to spare, while I perish with hun- 
 ger" — what glowing words could have more pow- 
 erfully expressed the blessedness of spiritual 
 satisfaction near the heart of God than this piti- 
 ful cry of want ! There is a lesson for us in this. 
 We shall never succeed in impressing men, un- 
 touched by grace, with the riches and glory of 
 religion, until we learn from Jesus to hold 
 up to them the mirror of their sin and 
 destitution. To say that there is no experience of 
 redemption without the knowledge of sin sounds 
 like a truism ; perhaps it will appear less so, if we 
 go one step farther and add, that there is, as 
 things are, no proper, no deep knowledge either 
 of religion or of redemption than through the 
 sorrowful journey into the far country of famine 
 and husks. But, while for this obvious reason 
 the greater part of Jesus' teaching on the lost is 
 concerned with the first aspect of their state, it 
 would be wrong to infer that the other side only 
 slightly or perfunctorily figured in his mind. 
 The contrary is true. The subject possessed for 
 Him such a fearful reality, that, except on the 
 most solemn and imperative occasions. He hesi- 
 tated to contemplate or draw it into the glare of 
 open speech. It is none the less there with the 
 ominous darkness of untold, nay unspeakable 
 
80 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 things spread over it like a semi-opaque 
 curtain. To be sure, it is something future, but 
 this only deepens the gloom that covers it. It is 
 born of the womb of the judgment. "Broad is 
 the way that leads to perdition" and the lost are 
 those walking on it. Only this should not be 
 taken to mean that the loss contemplated is 
 purely future. It overhangs and envelops the 
 sinner even in this life. As the narrow path to 
 the city of God, notwithstanding its straight- 
 ness, is already bordered with some of the flow- 
 ers and fruits of paradise, so the highway to the 
 land of destruction, in spite of its seeming de- 
 lights, has long stretches of shadow from the 
 storm-cloud that is seen to thicken at the end. 
 Even in this ultimate, more perilous, sense it is 
 not sufficient to say that the sinner will suffer 
 loss in the last day ; according to the conception 
 of Jesus he in principle is already lost. We feel 
 something of the awful import conveyed, when 
 in his high-priestly prayer the Savior declares: 
 "Holy Father, I kept them in thy name which 
 Thou hast given me; and I guarded them, and 
 none of them was lost except the son of perdi- 
 tion." For, although Judas' sin in degree was 
 altogether beyond comparison, it was not in sub- 
 stance different from each sin of every one of 
 us. Except for the intervention of God no one 
 has ever turned back on the broad way to perdi- 
 tion. Herein verily is seen the uttermost divine 
 grace, that Christ seeks and saves from the plight 
 of that despair. If our eyes delight to see Him 
 as the friendly Shepherd on the trail of the lost 
 sheep, let us not turn our looks away from Him 
 
SEEKING AND SAVING THE LOST 81 
 
 in this more solemn occupation of rescuing the 
 lost from the judgment. Yea let us see Him in 
 the darkness of the cross. For this part of the 
 saving also takes place in no other way than the 
 more gentle one we have already considered. 
 Here too He not merely announces or promises 
 the salvation, but carries it in his own Person. 
 He is the impersonation of the God who pro- 
 nounces the judgment and of the God who sov- 
 ereignly takes it away, the one who bears our 
 curse, and, while bearing it, speaks peace to our 
 souls. For this cause He came to the cross, that 
 He might be able to act for God in this solemn, 
 anticipated judgment through which every sin- 
 ner passes. When He speaks of sin and pardon 
 and escape, the voice is the voice of God and the 
 arms stretched underneath us are the everlast- 
 ing arms of the Almighty Himself. 
 
 There is one other point on which we must 
 briefly touch before closing. The text represents 
 the object of the saving in the impersonal form 
 as "that which was lost." The impersonal form 
 of expression carries with it a generalizing ef- 
 fect. It amounts practically to "whatsoever is 
 lost." The motive in our Lord's mind for this 
 is not difficult to discover. A murmuring pop- 
 ulace had excluded the class of publicans from 
 the sphere that was worthy of his attention. To 
 this Jesus replies with the emphatic declaration, 
 that all that is lost falls under the legitimate 
 scope of his task, that, since the very fact of 
 salvation is evoked by there being lost ones, no 
 exception can be allowed from its grace on the 
 mere ground that the object appears lost. With- 
 
82 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 in the realm of sin distinctions between class 
 and class or degree and degree of sinners be- 
 come obliterated. In comparison with the one 
 tremendous fact of sin as such they dwindle into 
 insignificance, or if there is any differentiation 
 observable it assumes rather the opposite, para- 
 doxical form of those taking the precedence, in 
 whom, by reason of excessive sinfulness and 
 most poignant sense of guilt, salvation's oppor- 
 tunity for magnifying itself is increased. The 
 harlots and publicans enter first into the king- 
 dom of God. But we should surely misinterpret 
 this, if we took it to mean that Jesus, 
 after precisely the same fashion seeks and 
 saves each single one that is lost. Grace 
 knows no jealousy except for the honor 
 of God. With wide generousness, such as 
 only a renewal of heart can give, it yearns 
 and prays for the ingathering of many. 
 None the less, when as saved sinners we place 
 ourselves individually before God, who would 
 not feel it as a denial of salvation itself to for- 
 get that pointedly and with a special mysterious 
 determination the search, which in its issue 
 placed him among the saved, was instituted and 
 pursued for him on the part of God and Christ? 
 Let us not from hyper-altruistic sqeamishness 
 allow ourselves to gloss this over, for, besides 
 withholding from God the glory which is his 
 due in it, we should lose for ourselves the most 
 precious portion of God's saving grace. It is not 
 as if Christ at random wandered through this 
 world on the chance of finding some one upon 
 whom to exercise his power of salvation. With 
 
SEEKING AND SAVING THE LOST 83 
 
 reference to each one of the children of God 
 there was with Him from the beginning a unique 
 compassion, a personalized love, and in result of 
 this a singleness and determination of purpose, 
 that imparted to his seeking of the least one of 
 us the glory of a private inclusion in the intimate 
 circle of God's saved ones. Of such seeking 
 Jesus was conscious, and with all the wideness 
 of his compassionate heart, which no world of 
 sinners could overcrowd, He was not ashamed 
 to acknowledge the gracious privileges and 
 distinctions that pertained to the Lord's 
 people or to any individual child of God. On 
 this very occasion He gave expression to them in 
 the words : "Inasmuch as he also is a son of Abra- 
 ham," words which trace back the blessed issue 
 of Zacchaeus' encounter with Jesus to the cove- 
 nantal promise made ages before to the patri- 
 arch, and ultimately to the sovereign election of 
 which this promise was the outcome. It is with 
 this as it is with the Pauline statement : no more 
 than one can say, "Who loved me and gave 
 Himself for me," is itj possible to say. Who 
 sought me and saved me, except by a profound 
 faith in the elective purpose as the ultimate 
 cause of the personal inheritance of salvation. 
 Now what in conclusion" are the lessons that 
 we, seekers of the salvation of others, ought to 
 draw from this episode in our Lord's life? They 
 are chiefly two, and I shall indicate them with the 
 briefest of words. The first relates to the spe- 
 cialized character we as servants of Christ ought 
 to make our work to bear. If his procedure is 
 
84 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 normative for us — and who would deny this? — 
 then all our seeking and saving, that is, all 
 our religious endeavor, ought to carry the image 
 and superscription of Christ's. And here the 
 salient point is undoubtedly this, that the pur- 
 pose, the goal of seeking and saving were for 
 our Lord pronouncedly religious. Seeking and 
 saving meant for Him, before aught else, seek- 
 ing and saving for God. It had no humanitarian 
 or world-improving purpose apart from this. It 
 began with the thought of God and ended there. 
 For that He came. And at that we should aim. 
 This conception will not narrow our work any 
 more than it did his, it will only centralize it. 
 Beginning there we shall find that everything 
 else will follow that ought to follow. Was it not 
 so in the case of Zacchaeus? Once Jesus had 
 entered his house with salvation, he could not 
 help taking his stand as one morally and soci- 
 ally reconstructed before the crowd of detrac- 
 tors : "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give 
 to the poor; and if I have wrongfully exacted 
 aught of any man, I restore fourfold." Pro- 
 vided the precious nard of religion be poured 
 into it, no vessel is unworthy. But, on the other 
 hand, the finest flagon of the world, when bear- 
 ing a false trademark, and under the guise of 
 religion offering some inferior substitute, has 
 no proper place in the service of Christ. It be- 
 longs to the hidden things of shame which Paul 
 had discarded. No servant of Christ should 
 touch it. And even though other things be not 
 positively deceitful or harmful in themselves, our 
 duty of bringing salvation is so transcendently 
 important and exacting that the Christian min- 
 
SEEKING AND SAVING THE LOST 85 
 
 ister cannot afford to lose time or energy over 
 them. 
 
 The second lesson relates to what our speci- 
 fically religious task of saving should centrally 
 consist in. It may all be summed up in the sim- 
 ple formula, to bring Christ to men and men to 
 Christ. It sounds simple, but is in reality a most 
 difficult and most delicate task. No painter por- 
 traying face upon canvass ever used more ex- 
 quisite art than is his who is preaching the gospel 
 succeeds in so delineating the face of Christ as 
 to make Him look out with his immortal Savior- 
 eyes straight and deep into the hearts of sinners. 
 Let your one concern be to bring the two to- 
 gether in the house where salvation is needed, 
 and having led the Savior in, go thou out and 
 shut the door silently behind thee. I tell you 
 they shall not come out thence until salvation 
 has done its perfect work. 
 
IV. "Rabboni!" 
 
The Gospel according to John, 
 XX, 16: "Jesus saith unto her, 
 Mary. She turneth herself and 
 saith unto Him in Hebrew, Rab- 
 boni; which is to say. Master." 
 
R A B B N I 89 
 
 r^UR text takes us to the tomb of the risen 
 ^ Lord, on the first Sabbath-morning of the 
 New Covenant. It is impossible for us to im- 
 agine a spot more radiant with light and joy 
 than was this immediately after the resurrec- 
 tion. Even when thinking ourselves back into 
 the preceding moments, while as yet to the ex- 
 ternal eye there was nothing but the darkness of 
 death, our anticipation of what we know to be 
 about to happen floods the scene with a twilight 
 of supernatural splendor. The sepulchre itself 
 has become to us prophetic of victory ; we seem 
 to hear in the expectant air the wingbeat 
 of the descending angels, come to roll away the 
 stone and announce to us: "The Lord is risen 
 indeed !" Besides this, we have learned to read 
 the story of our Lord's life and death so as to 
 consider the resurrection its only possible out- 
 come, and this has to some extent dulled our 
 sense for the startling character of what took 
 place. We interpret the resurrection in terms 
 of the atoning cross, and easily forget how little 
 the disciples were as yet prepared for doing the 
 same. And so it requires an effort on our part 
 to understand sympathetically the state of mind 
 they brought to the morning of this day. Never- 
 theless we must try to enter into their thoughts 
 and feelings, if for no other reason, for this, 
 that something of the same fresh marvel and 
 gladness that subsequently came to them may 
 fill our hearts also. Whether we mav be able to 
 
90 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 explain it or not, the Gospel tells us, that, not- 
 withstanding the emphatic prediction by the 
 Savior of his death and resurrection, they had 
 but little remembrance of these words, and drew 
 from them no practical support or comfort in 
 the sorrow that overwhelmed them. In part this 
 may have been due to the fact of our Lord's 
 having only predicted and not fully explained 
 these tremendous events. At any rate the cir- 
 cumstance shows that there is need of a deeper 
 faith than that of mere acquaintance with and 
 consent to external statements of truth, when 
 the dread realities of life and death assail us. 
 Dare we say that we ourselves should have 
 proved stronger in such a trial, if over against 
 all that mocked our hope we had been able to 
 place no more than a dimly remembered prom- 
 ise? Let us thank God that, when we ourselves 
 enter into the valley of the shadow of death, we 
 have infinitely more than a promise to stay our 
 hearts upon, that ours is the fulfilment of the 
 promise, the fact of the resurrection, nay the 
 risen Lord Himself present with rod and staff 
 beside us. 
 
 Supplementing the account of John with the 
 statements of the other Evangelists, we gain the 
 following conception of the course of events pre- 
 vious to what the text relates. A small com- 
 pany of women went out at early dawn towards 
 the garden, carrying the spices prepared as a 
 last offering to honor Jesus. From among these 
 Mary Magdalene in the eagerness of her desire 
 to reach the place, ran forward, and discovered 
 before the others that the stone had been rolled 
 away. Without awaiting the arrival of her 
 
RABBONI 91 
 
 companions she hastens back to tell Peter and 
 John what she supposed to be true : "They have 
 taken away the Lord out of the tomb." Roused 
 from the lethargy of their grief by this startling 
 announcement the Apostles immediately went to 
 the place, and by their own observation verified 
 Mary's report. John came first, but merely 
 looked into the tomb. Peter, who followed, en- 
 tered in, and beheld the linen cloths lying and 
 the napkin that was upon the Savior's head 
 rolled up and put by itself. Then entered in 
 John also and saw and believed. For as yet they 
 knew not the Scripture that He must rise again 
 from the dead. Their eyes were so holden that 
 the true explanation never occurred to them. 
 Perplexed, but not moved from a despairing 
 state of mind, they returned to their abode. 
 
 Mary must have followed the Apostles at a 
 distance when these came in haste to see for 
 themselves. We find her standing without 
 the tomb weeping. Is it not remarkable that, 
 while both John and Peter departed, Mary re- 
 mained? Although the same hopeless conclu- 
 sion had forced itself upon her, yet it could not 
 induce her to leave. In her mind it only intensi- 
 fied a thousand times the purpose with which 
 she had come. How striking an illustration of 
 the Savior's word that much forgiveness creates 
 abounding love! But may we not believe that 
 still something else reveals itself in this? Mary's 
 attitude towards Jesus, more perhaps than any 
 other disciple's seems to have been character- 
 ized by that simple dependence, which is but the 
 consciousness of an ever present need. It was a 
 
92 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 matter of faith, as much as of love, that made 
 her differ at this time from the others. Unmixed 
 with further motives, the recognition of Jesus 
 as the only refuge from sin and death filled her 
 heart. In a measure, of course. He had been 
 this to the others also. But whilst to them He 
 stood for many other things in addition, the cir- 
 cumstances under which she had become at- 
 tached to Him made Mary's soul the mirror of 
 saving faith pure and simple. And because she 
 was animated by this fundamental spiritual im- 
 pulse, drawing her to the Savior more irresist- 
 ibly than affection or sorrow could have done, 
 therefore she could not but continue seeking 
 Him, even though unable for the moment to do 
 aught else than weep near his empty tomb. In 
 vain does Calvary proclaim that the Lord is 
 dead, in vain does the tomb declare that He has 
 been buried, in vain does the absent stone suggest 
 that they have taken Him away — this threefold 
 witness will not convince Mary that He has gone 
 out of her life forever. And why? Because in 
 the depth of her being there was an even more 
 emphatic witness which would not be silenced 
 but continued to protest that she must receive 
 Him back, since He is her Savior. Contact, com- 
 munion with Christ had become to her the vital 
 breath of her spiritual life; to admit that the 
 conditions rendering this possible had ceased to 
 exist would have meant for her to deny salva- 
 tion itself. There is, it is true, a pathetic incon- 
 gruousness between the absoluteness of this de- 
 sire and the futile form in which for the moment 
 she thought it could be satisfied. In the last 
 
R A B B O N I 93 
 
 analysis what was she doing but seeking a life- 
 less body, in order that by caring for it and feel- 
 ing near it she might still the longing of a living 
 faith? Suppose she had received what she 
 sought, would not in the next moment the other 
 deeper desire have reasserted itself for that in 
 Him which it was absolutely beyond the power 
 of a dead Jesus to give her? Still, however in- 
 congrous the form of expression, it was an in- 
 stinct to which an outward reality could not fail 
 to correspond. It arose out of a primary need, 
 for which provision must exist somewhere, if 
 redemption exists at all. Though unaware of 
 the resurrection as a fact, she had laid hold upon 
 the supreme principle from which its necessity 
 flows. Once given the intimate bond of faith be- 
 tween a sinner and his Savior, there can be no 
 death to such a relationship. Mary, in her simple 
 dependence on Jesus, had risen to the point 
 where she sought in Him life and sought it ever 
 more abundantly. To her faith He was Con- 
 queror over death long before He issued from 
 the grave. She was in rapport with that spiritual 
 aspect, that quickening quality of his Person, of 
 which the resurrection is the sure consequenca 
 Here at bottom lies the decisive issue for every- 
 one as regards the attitude to be assumed 
 towards this great fact. Ultimately, stripped of 
 all accidentals, the question resolves itself into 
 this: What means Christ for us? For what do 
 we need Him? If we have learned to know our- 
 selves guilty sinners, destitute of all hope and 
 life in ourselves, and if we have experienced that 
 from Him came to us pardon, peace and 
 
 y 
 
94 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 strength, will it not sound like mockery in our 
 ears, if somebody tells us, that it does not mat- 
 ter, whether Jesus rose from the dead on the 
 third day? It is of the very essence of saving 
 faith that it clamors for facts, facts to show that 
 the heavens have opened, that the tide of sinful 
 nature has been reversed, the guilt of sin ex- 
 piated, the reign of death destroyed and life and 
 immortality brought to light. And because this 
 is the insuppressible cry of faith, what else 
 should faith do, when it sees doubt and unbelief 
 emptying the Gospel of the living Christ, what 
 else should it do but stand outside weeping and 
 repeating the plaint: They have taken away 
 my Lord and I know not where they have laid 
 Him? 
 
 But, although these things were in principle 
 present in Mary's heart, she did not at that mo- 
 ment perceive the pledge of hope contained in 
 them. Her grief was too profound to leave room 
 for introspection. It even hid from her vision 
 the objective evidence of the resurrection that 
 lay around her. Worse than this, she turned 
 what was intended to help her into an additional 
 reason for unbelief. But who of us shall blame 
 her? Have not we ourselves under as favorable 
 circumstances made the mistake of nourishing 
 our unbelief on what was meant to be food for 
 our faith? Do we not all remember occasions 
 when we stood outside the grave of our hopes 
 weeping, and did not perceive the hand stretched 
 out to prepare us by the very thing we inter- 
 preted as sorrow for a higher joy? From Mary's 
 experience let us learn to do better. What the 
 
R A B B N I 95 
 
 Lord expects from us at such seasons is not to 
 abandon ourselves to unreasoning sorrow, but 
 trustingly to look sorrow in the face, to scan its 
 features, to search for the help and hope, which, 
 as surely as God is our Father, must be there. 
 In such trials there can be no comfort for us so 
 long as we stand outside weeping. If only we 
 will take the courage to fix our gaze deliberately 
 upon the stern countenance of grief, and enter 
 unafraid into the darkest recesses of our trouble, 
 we shall find the terror gone, because the Lord 
 has been there before us, and, coming out again, 
 has left the place transfigured, making out of it 
 by the grace of his resurrection a house of life, 
 the very gate of heaven. 
 
 This was just what happened to Mary. Not 
 forever could she stand weeping, forgetful of 
 what went on around her. "As she wept she 
 looked into the tomb, and she beholdeth two 
 angels in white sitting one at the head and one 
 at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain." 
 It was a step in the right direction that she 
 roused herself from her inaction. Still, what 
 strikes us as most characteristic in this state- 
 ment is its implying that even the vision of 
 angels did not sufl^ciently impress her to raise 
 the question, to what the appearance of these 
 celestial messengers might be due. Probably this 
 was the first time she had come in direct contact 
 with the supernatural in that particular form. 
 The place was doubtless charged with the atmos- 
 phere of mystery and wonder angels bring with 
 themselves when entering into our world of 
 sense. And yet no tremor seems to have run 
 
96 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 through her, no feeling of awe to have made her 
 draw back. A greater blindness to fact is here 
 than that which made her miss the sign of the 
 empty grave. What more convincing evidence 
 of the truth of the resurrection could have been 
 offered than the presence of these two angels, 
 silently, reverently, majestically sitting where 
 the body of Jesus had lain? Placed like the 
 Cherubim on the mercy-seat, they covered be- 
 tween themselves the spot where the Lord had 
 reposed, and flooded it with celestial glory. It 
 needed no voice of theirs to proclaim that here 
 death had been swallowed up in victory. Ever 
 since the angels descended into this tomb the 
 symbolism of burial has been radically changed. 
 From this moment onward every last resting- 
 place where the bodies of believers are laid is a 
 furrow in that great harvest field of Christ 
 whence heaven draws upward into light each 
 seed sunk into it, whence Christ himself was 
 raised, the first fruits of them that sleep. 
 
 Let us not overlook, however, that Mary's dis- 
 regard of the angels revealed in a most striking 
 form something good also, to-wit : her intense 
 preoccupation with the one thought of finding 
 the Lord. For Him she had been looking into 
 the tomb. He not being there, it was empty to 
 her view, though filled with angelic glory. She 
 would have turned aside without speaking, had 
 not the angels of their own accord spoken to 
 her: "Woman, why weepest thou?" These 
 words were meant as an expression of sympathy 
 quite natural in beings wont to rejoice over re- 
 penting sinners. But in this question there is at 
 
R A B B O N I - 97 
 
 the same time a note of wonder at the fact that 
 she should be weeping at all. To the mind of the 
 angels the resurrection was so real, so self-evi- 
 dent, that they could scarcely understand how 
 to her it could be otherwise. They felt, as it 
 were, the discord between the songs of joy with 
 which their own world was jubilant, and this 
 sound of weeping coming out of a world of dark- 
 ness and despair. "Woman, why weepest thou?" 
 Tears would be called for indeed, hadst thou 
 found Him in the tomb, but not at a time like 
 this, when heaven and earth unite in announc- 
 ing : He is risen in glory, the King of life ! 
 
 Mary's answer to the angels shows that 
 neither their sympathy nor their wonder had 
 succeeded in piercing her sorrow. "She saith 
 unto them. Because they have taken away my 
 Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." 
 These are almost the identical words in which 
 she had informed Peter and John of her dis- 
 covery of the empty tomb. Still a slight change 
 appears. To the Apostles she had said "the 
 Lord" and "we know not." To the angels it is : 
 "my Lord" and "I know not." In this is revealed 
 once more her intense sense of proprietorship in 
 Jesus. In that sense the angels could not have 
 appropriated Him for themselves. They might 
 hail Him as their matchless King, but to Mary 
 He was even more than this, her Lord, her 
 Savior, the One who had sought and saved and 
 owned her in her sins. 
 
 Having given this answer to the angels she 
 turned herself backward and beheld Jesus stand- 
 ing, and knew not that it was Jesus. No expla- 
 
98 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 nation is added of the cause of this movement. 
 It matters little. Our interest at this stage of 
 the narrative belongs not to what Mary but to 
 what Jesus did. On his part the encounter was 
 surely not accidental but intended. He had wit- 
 nessed her coming once and again, her weeping, 
 her bending over the tomb, her answer to the 
 angels, and had witnessed not only these out- 
 ward acts, but also the inward conflict by which 
 her soul was torn. And He appears precisely at 
 the point where his presence is required, be- 
 cause all other voices for conveying to her the 
 gladsome tidings have failed. He had been hold- 
 ing Himself in readiness to become in his own 
 Person the preacher of the Gospel of life and 
 hope to Mary. There is great comfort for us in 
 this thought that, however dim our conscious 
 faith and the sense of our salvation, on the 
 
 ^ Lord's side the fountain of grace is never closed, 
 its connection with our souls never interrupted ; 
 provided there be the irrepressible demand for 
 his presence. He cannot. He will not deny Him- 
 self to us. The first person to whom He showed 
 Himself alive after the resurrection was a weep- 
 ing woman, who had no greater claim upon Him 
 
 J than any simple penitent sinner has. No eye 
 except that of the angels had as yet rested upon 
 His form. The time was as solemn and majestic 
 as that of the first creation when light burst out 
 of chaos and darkness. Heaven and earth were 
 concerned in this event ; it was the turning-point 
 of the ages. Nor was this merely objectively so : 
 Jesus felt Himself the central figure in this new- 
 born universe, He tasted the exquisite joy of one 
 
R A B B O N I 99 
 
 who had just entered upon an endless life in the 
 possession of new powers and faculties such as 
 human nature had never known before. Would 
 it have been unnatural, had He sought some 
 quiet place to spend the opening hour of this new 
 unexplored state in communion with the 
 Father? Can there be any room in his mind for 
 the humble ministry of consolation required by 
 Mary? He answers these questions Himself. 
 Among all the voices that hailed his triumph no 
 voice appealed to Him like this voice of weeping 
 in the garden. The first appearance of the risen 
 Lord was given to Mary for no other reason than 
 that she needed Him first and needed Him most. 
 And what more appropriate beginning could 
 have been set for his ministry of glory than this 
 very act? Nothing could better convince us, that 
 in his exalted state He retains for us the same 
 tender sympathy, the same individual affection 
 as He showed during the days of his flesh. It is 
 well for us to know this, because otherwise the 
 dread impression of his majesty might tend to 
 hinder our approach to Him. Who of us 
 has not at some time of communion with the 
 Savior felt the overwhelming awe that seized 
 the seer on Patmos, so that we could not utter 
 our prayer, until He laid his hand upon us and 
 said: Fear not. We should be thankful, then, for 
 the grace of Christ which has so arranged it, 
 that between his rising from the dead and his 
 departure for heaven a season of forty days was 
 interposed, a transition period, helping, as it 
 were, the feebleness of our faith in the act of 
 apprehending his glory. Perhaps the Lord for 
 
100 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 the same reason also intentionally placed his 
 meeting with Mary at the threshold of his resur- 
 rection-life. Like other acts recorded in the 
 Fourth Gospel this act rises above the momen- 
 tary situation and acquires a symbolic signific- 
 ance, enlarging before our eyes until it reveals 
 Him in his priestly ministration conducted from 
 the throne of glory. 
 
 However not the fact only of his showing 
 Himself to Mary, but likewise the manner of it 
 claims our attention. When first beholding Him 
 she did not know the Lord, and even after his 
 speech she still supposed Him to be the gardener. 
 The chief cause for this may have lain in the 
 change which had taken place in Him when the 
 mortal put on immortality. Now behold with 
 what exquisite tact the Lord helps her to restore 
 the broken bond between the image her memory 
 retained of Him and that new image in which 
 henceforth He would walk through her life and 
 hold converse with her spirit. Even these first 
 words : "Women why weepest thou ? Whom seek- 
 est thou? "though in form scarcely differing from 
 the question of the angels, go far beyond the 
 latter in their power to reach Mary's heart. In 
 the word "woman" with which He addresses her 
 speaks all the majesty of one who felt Himself 
 the Son of God in power by resurrection from 
 the dead. It is a prelude to the still more majes- 
 tic, "Touch me not" spoken soon afterwards. 
 And yet in the words, "Why weepest thou? 
 Whom seekest thou?" He extends to her that 
 heart-searching sympathy, which at a single 
 glance can read and understand the whole secret 
 
R A B B N I 101 
 
 of her sorrow. He knew that such weeping 
 results only there where one who is more than 
 father or mother has been taken away. And 
 how instantaneous the effect these words pro- 
 duced ! Though she still supposes him the gar- 
 dener, she takes for granted that he at least 
 could not have taken the body with evil intent, 
 that he will not refuse to restore it : "Sir, if thou 
 hast born Him hence, tell me where thou hast 
 laid Him, and I will take Him away." A certain 
 response to his sympathy is also shown in this, 
 that three times she refers to Jesus as "Him," 
 deeming it unnecessary to mention his name. 
 Thus in the way she met the gardener there was 
 already the beginning resumption of the bond 
 of confidence between her and the Lord. And 
 thus Jesus found the way prepared for making 
 Himself known to her in a most intimate man- 
 ner. "Jesus saith unto her 'Mary.' She turneth 
 and saith unto Him, 'Rabboni'." It happened all 
 in a moment, and by a simple word, and yet in 
 this one moment Mary's world was changed for 
 her. She had in that instant made the transi- 
 tion from hopelessness because Jesus was absent, 
 to fullness of joy because Christ was there. We 
 may well despair of conveying by any process of 
 exposition the meaning of these two words. This 
 is speech the force of which can only be felt. 
 And it will be felt by us in proportion as we 
 clearly remember some occasion when the Lord 
 spake a similar word to us and drew from us a 
 similar cry of recognition. Doubtless much of 
 the magical effect of Jesus' word was due to the 
 tone in which He spoke it. It was a tone calling 
 
102 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 to her remembrance the former days of closest 
 fellowship. This was the voice that He alone 
 could use, the same voice that had once com- 
 manded the demons to depart from her, and to 
 which ever since she had been wont to listen for 
 guidance and comfort. By using it He meant to 
 assure her, that, whatever transformation had 
 taken place, there could be and would be no 
 change in the intimate, personal character of 
 their relationship. And Mary was quick to ap- 
 prehend this. The Evangelist takes pains to 
 preserve for us the word she uttered in its origi- 
 nal Aramaic form, because he would have us 
 understand that it meant more at this moment 
 than could be conveyed by the ordinary render- 
 ing of "Teacher" or "Master." "Rabboni" has a 
 special untranslatable significance. It was the 
 personal response to the personal "Mary," to all 
 intents a proper name no less than the other. By 
 speaking it Mary consciously re-entered upon 
 the possession of all that as Rabboni He had 
 meant to her. Only one thing she had yet to 
 learn, for teaching her which the Lord did not 
 deem even this unique moment too joyful or 
 sacred. In the sudden revulsion from her grief 
 Mary would have given some external expres- 
 sion to the tumult within by grasping and hold- 
 ing Him. But He restrained her, saying: "Touch 
 me not, for I am not yet ascended unto the 
 Father; but go unto my brethren and say to 
 them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, 
 and my God and your God." At first sight these 
 words may seem a contrast to those immediately 
 preceding. And yet no mistake could be greater 
 
R ABB ONI 103 
 
 than to suppose that the Lord's sole or chief pur- 
 pose was to remind her of the restrictions which 
 henceforth were to govern the intercourse be- 
 tween Himself and her. His intention was much 
 rather to show that the desire for a real com- 
 munion of life would soon be met in a new and 
 far higher way than was possible under the 
 conditions of local earthly nearness. "Touch me 
 not" does not mean : Touch is too close a contact 
 to be henceforth permissible ; it means : the pro- 
 vision for the highest, the ideal kind of touch 
 has not been completed yet : " I am not yet 
 ascended to my Father." His words are a denial 
 of the privilege she craved only as to the form 
 and moment in which she craved it; in their 
 larger sense they are a pledge, a giving, not a 
 withholding of Himself from her. The great 
 event of which the resurrection is the first step 
 has not yet fulfilled itself; it requires for its 
 completion the ascent to the Father. But when 
 once this is accomplished then all restrictions 
 will fall away, and the desire to touch that made 
 Mary stretch forth her hand shall be gratified to 
 its full capacity. The thought is not different 
 from that expressed in the earlier saying to the 
 disciples : "Ye shall see me because I go to the 
 Father." There is a seeing, a hearing, a touch- 
 ing, first made possible by Jesus' entrance into 
 heaven and by the gift of the Spirit dependent 
 on that entrance. And what He said to Mary He 
 commissioned her to repeat to his brethren, that 
 they also might be taught to view the event in 
 its proper perspective. May we not fitly close 
 our study of the text with reminding ourselves. 
 
104 GRACE AND GLOR\ 
 
 that we too are included among the brethren to 
 whom He desired these tidings to be brought? 
 Before this He had never called the disciples by 
 this name, as He had never until now so sugges- 
 tively identified Himself with them by speaking 
 of "your Father and my Father" and "your God 
 and my God." We are once more assured that 
 the new life of glory, instead of taking Him from 
 us, has made us in a profounder sense his breth- 
 ren and his Father our Father. Though, unlike 
 Mary and the disciples, we have not been privi- 
 leged to behold Him in the body, yet together 
 with the believers of all ages we have an equal 
 share in what is far sweeter and more precious, 
 the touch through faith of his heavenly Person 
 for which the appearances after the resurrec- 
 tion were but a preparation. Let us then not 
 linger at the tomb, but turn our faces and stretch 
 our hands upwards into heaven, where our life is 
 hid with Him in God, and whence He shall also 
 come again to show Himself to us as He did to 
 Mary, to make us speak the last great "Rab- 
 boni," which will spring to the lips of all the re- 
 deemed, when they meet their Savior in the early 
 davm of that eternal Sabbath that awaits the 
 people of God. 
 
V. The More Excellent Ministry 
 
The Second Epistle of Paul to 
 the Corinthians, III, 18: "But we 
 all, with unveiled face, beholding 
 as in a mirror the glory of the 
 Lord, are transformed into the 
 same image from glory to glory, 
 even as from the Lord, the Spirit." 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT MINISTRY 107 
 
 nPHIS second letter of Paul to the Church at 
 Corinth is marked by a pronounced polemic 
 strain. In this respect it somewhat resembles 
 the Epistle to the Galatians. In each instance a 
 serious crisis in the life of the church had 
 evoked it. It is further common to both writings 
 that in certain passages the polemic assumes a 
 sharply personal character. In neither case is 
 this due to any temperamental difficulty on 
 PauFs part to control his outraged feelings, al- 
 though even if this had been so, much could have 
 been said in excuse of the Apostle. His 
 opponents had certainly not been sparing 
 in personalities. He had been represented 
 as a deceiver, as one who preached him- 
 self and praised himself. It had been charged 
 that in his quasi- Apostolic authority he lorded it 
 over the church, employed his usurped power 
 for casting down instead of for building up, and 
 that, in spite of all this bluff and bluster of pres- 
 tige, he lacked the ability to make good his pre- 
 tensions, being indeed weighty and strong in his 
 letters, but weak in his bodily presence, and in 
 his speech, of no account. The insinuation had 
 been made that Paul himself was aware of the 
 hollowness of his claims, because he would not 
 take from the church the support to which, if a 
 true Apostle, he ought to have felt himself en- 
 titled. He had been held up as a man who by his 
 fickleness, his yea yea, nay nay, betrayed the 
 duplicity of his position. The Apostle had not 
 
108 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 even been spared that meanest of all aspersions 
 — that he was spending money collected for the 
 poor saints in Judea on his own person. His sin- 
 cerity as a minister of the truth had been called 
 into question. It was charged that, while aware 
 of his subordination to the original Apostles, he 
 was disloyal to them, and substituted for their 
 gospel an entirely different one spun out of his 
 own mind. Thus the truth of the very substance 
 of his preaching w^as challenged. In this respect 
 again a certain resemblance to the tactics of his 
 Galatian opponents may be observed. The charge 
 in both instances was that he preached "a differ- 
 ent gospel." Nevertheless the point of attack 
 had been somewhat shifted. In Galatia the main 
 question had been that of salvation with or with- 
 out the law. Here in Corinth, on the other hand, 
 the controversy raged around Paul's teaching 
 concerning the Christ. It was with another 
 Jesus that his opponents had approached the 
 Corinthians. No effort had been spared to prove 
 this the true Jesus, by the side of whom the 
 Christ of Paul's preaching was a pure figment 
 of the imagination. Suspicion had been cast on 
 the source of his knowledge of the Savior on 
 the ground that the visions through which it was 
 obtained belonged to the class of wild, fantastic 
 experiences, and that these marked Paul as one 
 beside himself, not merely in this one point, but 
 in the entire tone and temper of his religious life. 
 The exalted, spiritual, heavenly nature, in which 
 his gospel clothed the glorified Christ, was con- 
 strued as convincing proof of the darkness and 
 incomprehensibleness of the Apostle's message. 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT MINISTRY 109 
 
 He preached a Gospel that was veiled. And over 
 against these elusive and intangible things had 
 been placed the palpable institutions of the 
 Mosaic Covenant, carrying with them the de- 
 mand for a Messiah correspondingly substantial 
 and realistic in his make-up. This is but an 
 early illustration of the principle which from 
 that time onward has shaped all forms of 
 teaching in the Church. For in each instance 
 the view about the method of salvation 
 is reflected in the conception of the Savior. 
 A certain Gospel requires a certain kind of 
 Christ, and a certain type of Christ a certain 
 Gospel. 
 
 It might have seemed as if the attack upon 
 the Apostle had therewith reached its logical 
 conclusion and could not possibly go farther. 
 Still this was not the case. With a curious retro- 
 versive movement the issue had been carried 
 back from this point to the question of the per- 
 sonality of Paul, with this difference only — it 
 was now his dignity in office that had been as- 
 sailed. Paul's oflfice as such was made out to be 
 mean and contemptible. Such a Christ and such 
 a cause could engage one who labored for them 
 only in the weakest and most ignoble kind of 
 service. Paul was not permitted to escape 
 the immemorial stigma reflected upon the min- 
 ister from the apparent foolishness and weak- 
 ness of the cross. And the Apostle was sensitive, 
 if anywhere, on this point of the nobility and 
 glory of his oflfice. Moral aspersions against his 
 character he might, had it not been for fear of 
 danger to the churches, have passed by as un- 
 
110 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 worthy of notice. But the pride of office was 
 stronger in him than the sense of personal honor. 
 And thus it happens that we are indebted to these 
 disturbers of the Corinthian church, whose 
 names have long been forgotten, for an encomium 
 upon the Gospel service, which for power and 
 splendor has no equal in the records of Christian 
 apology. It deserves to be placed beside the song 
 of triumph in the eighth chapter of the Epistle 
 to the Romans. As there the Apostle is carried 
 on the crest-wave of assurance of salva- 
 tion, so here he moves with the full tide of 
 enthusiasm over the excellence of his calling. 
 The very words are, as it were, baptized in the 
 glory of which they speak. 
 
 Let us briefly examine the several elements 
 that enter into this high consciousness. The 
 form of argument which Paul adopts is evi- 
 dently determined by the method of his de- 
 tractors. At the climax of their calumny they 
 had concentrated their attack on the meanness 
 and weakness of his message. Consequently he 
 chooses to defend himself on the same basis by 
 arguing from the glory of the message to the 
 distinction of the bearer. While thus adjusted 
 to the manner of attack, this method was also in 
 keeping with Paul's innate modesty, still further 
 refined by grace. But there was another tactical 
 motive besides. Paul recognized that by thus 
 approaching the subject a more substantial title 
 to official prestige could be made out than in 
 any other way, such, perhaps, as calling atten- 
 tion to outward results. After all it is not so 
 much by what the minister contributes of 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT MINISTRY m 
 
 himself to the cause of Christ, but rather 
 by what he is enabled to draw out and utilize 
 from the divine resources, that his office 
 and work will be tested. It is not chiefly the 
 question whether we are strong in the cause, but 
 whether the cause is strong in and through us. 
 And herein lies the practical value of the argu- 
 ment in its application to the servants of Christ 
 under all conditions. If Paul had staked the 
 issue on the personal factor, then there could be 
 in his testimony but little comfort and encour- 
 agement for others, for there are not many 
 Pauls. Now that the subject is dealt with in the 
 other way the Apostle's words contain some- 
 thing enheartening for you and me and the 
 simplest, obscurest bearer of the Gospel. We are 
 too often told at the present day that the official, 
 professional distinction of the minister is a mat- 
 ter of the past, that it has become purely a ques- 
 tion of what is called personal magnetism 
 whether he shall earn success or failure. Paul 
 certainly was far from this opinion. To be sure, 
 to such things as ecclesiastical position or rank 
 he would hardly have attributed much import- 
 ance. Even the difference between the Aposto- 
 late and other forms of service in the Church 
 seems scarcely to enter into the reckoning here. 
 But within the realm of the invisible and spirit- 
 ual there remains such a thing as an intrinsic 
 prestige. Paul is conscious of belonging to a 
 veritable elite of the Spirit. I beg you to notice 
 on how large a scale this thought is projected. 
 It gives rise to the conception of a ministry of 
 God's covenant, that is, a ministry identified with 
 
112 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 an all-comprehensive dispensation of divine 
 grace. Thus Moses was a minister of the Old and 
 Paul is a minister of the New Covenant. To have 
 such a Covenant-ministry means to be identified 
 with God in the most intimate manner, for the 
 Covenant expresses the very heart of God's pur- 
 pose. It means to be initiated into the holiest 
 mysteries of redemption, for in the Covenant 
 these are transacted. It means to be enrolled on 
 the list of the great historic servants of God, for 
 in the organism of the Covenant these are united 
 and salute each other across the ages. It means 
 to become a channel through which super- 
 natural currents flow. In the Covenant the serv- 
 ant is, as it were, made part of the wonder-world 
 of salvation itself. The Apostle has embodied 
 this grandiose thought in a most striking figure. 
 "Thanks be to God," he exclaims, "who always 
 leadeth us in triumph in Christ." The onward 
 march of the Gospel is a triumphal procession, 
 God the victorious Conqueror, Paul a follower in 
 God's train, burning the incense to his glory, 
 making manifest the savor of his knowledge in 
 every place ! 
 
 What has been said so far applies to the min- 
 istry of the Covenant of Grace under both dis- 
 pensations. It describes a glory common to 
 Moses and Paul. The Apostle ungrudgingly 
 recognizes that the Old Testament had its 
 peculiar distinction. To be a prophet or priest 
 of the God of Israel conferred greater honor 
 than any secular prominence in the pagan his- 
 tory of the race. Even the ministration written 
 and engraven on stones came with glory. This 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT MINISTRY 113 
 
 excellence of the Old Covenant found a symbolic 
 expression in the light upon the face of Moses 
 after his tarrying with God upon the mount, a 
 light so intense that the children of Israel could 
 not steadfastly look upon its radiance. Paul's/ 
 purpose, however, is not to emphasize what the 
 two dispensations have in common, but that in 
 which the New surpasses the Old. Since the oppo- 
 nents had clothed their attack upon him in the 
 invidious form of a comparison with the Mosaic 
 administration, it was natural for him to take 
 up the challenge and fight out the battle along 
 the same line. None the less the comparison, as 
 followed up by Paul, is startling in its exceed- 
 ing boldness. A more impressive disclosure of 
 his exalted sense of office is scarcely conceiv- 
 able. In order to feel the full force of this we 
 ought to make clear to ourselves that not two 
 single persons but two pairs of persons are set 
 over against each other. On the one side stand 
 God and Moses, the reflector of his glory, on the^ 
 other Christ and Paul, the reflector of his glory. 
 It would be interesting, but beside our present 
 purpose, to consider what it implies as to the na- 
 ture and rank of Christ, that the Apostle feels 
 free simply to put Him on a line with God as a 
 fount and dispenser of glory in the New Cove- 
 nant after no different fashion than God was un- 
 der the Old Covenant. Without pursuing this 
 further, we now wish to make the point, that the 
 comparison lies not between Moses and Christ, 
 but between Moses and Paul. Than Moses no 
 greater name was known in the annals of Old 
 Testament redemption. Prophet, priest, law- 
 
114 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 giver in one, he towers high above all the others. 
 And to Paul, the son of Israel, all this wealth of 
 sacred story gathered round the head of Moses 
 must have been a thousand times more impres- 
 sive than it can be to us. What an overwhelm- 
 ing sense then of the greatness of his own min- 
 istry must Paul have possessed, when he dared 
 conceive the thought of being greater than 
 Moses ! "Verily that which has been made glori- 
 ous has been made not-glorious in this respect 
 by reason of the glory that surpasseth." 
 
 The Apostle, however, does not give expres- 
 sion to this lofty consciousness in an outburst 
 of unreasoning enthusiasm. He carefully speci- 
 fies wherein the surpassing excellence of his 
 ministry above that of Moses consists. The first 
 point relates to the contrast between transitori- 
 ness and eternity. Putting it in 'terms of 
 the figure, Paul affirms that the glory of the 
 Old Covenant had to pass away, whereas that 
 of the New Covenant must remain. When 
 Moses descended from the mount his face shone 
 with a refulgence of the divine glory near which 
 he had been permitted to dwell for a season. 
 But his face could not retain this brightness 
 for any length of time. It soon disappeared. 
 Thus what Moses stood for was glorious but 
 lacked permanence. The day was bound to come 
 when its splendor would vanish. On the other 
 hand the New Covenant is final and abiding. 
 The times cannot outgrow, the developments of 
 history cannot antiquate it, it carries within it- 
 self the pledge of eternity. But not only did 
 such a difference actually exist — both Moses and 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT MINISTRY 115 
 
 Paul were aware of the state of things in each 
 case. Moses was aware of it, for we are told that 
 he put the veil on his face for the purpose of hid- 
 ing the disappearance of the glory. And Paul 
 was, since in pointed contrast to this procedure, 
 he professes to minister with open face : "Not as 
 Moses, who put a veil over his face." It was fur- 
 ther inevitable that in Paul's estimation the 
 speedy abrogation of Moses' work detracted 
 from his glory as a servant of the Covenant, and 
 that, on the other hand, the enduring character 
 of his own work added greatly to the honor 
 wherewith Paul felt it clothed him and the satis- 
 faction he derived from it. Time, especially time 
 with the wasting power it acquires through sin, 
 is the arch-enemy of all human achievement. It 
 kills the root of joy which otherwise belongs to 
 working and building. All things which the suc- 
 ceeding generations of mankind have wrought in 
 the course of the ages succumb to its attacks. 
 The tragic sense of this accompanies the race at 
 every step in its march through history. It is 
 like a pall cast over the face of the peoples. In 
 revealed religion through the grace of redemp- 
 tion it is in principle removed, yet not so that 
 under the Old Covenant the dark shadow en- 
 tirely disappears. The plaint of it is in Moses' 
 own Psalm: "Thou turnest man to destruction 
 — Thou carriest them away as with a flood." 
 And something of this bitter taste of transitori- 
 ness enters even into the Old Testament con- 
 sciousness of salvation. Now put over against 
 this the triumphant song of life and assurance 
 of immortality that fills the glorious, spacious 
 
116 GRACE AND GLOR-X 
 
 days of the New Covenant, especially where first 
 it issues from the womb of the morning bathed 
 in the dew of imperishable youth. The note of 
 futility and depression has disappeared, and in 
 place of this the rapture of victory over death 
 and decay, the exultant feeling of immersion in 
 the atmosphere of eternity prevail. And this 
 particularly communicated itself to the spirit 
 in which the Covenant-ministration was per- 
 formed. The joy of working in the dawn of the 
 world to come quickens the pulse of all New 
 Testament servants of Christ. Paul felt that 
 the product of his labors, the output of his life, 
 would shine with unfading splendor in the pal- 
 ace of God. Thus also the honor of being a fel- 
 low laborer of God first obtains its full rich 
 meaning. It is the prerogative of God, the 
 Eternal One, to work for eternity. As the King 
 of the ages He discounts and surmounts all the 
 intervening forces and barriers of time. He who 
 is made to share in this receives the highest form 
 which the divine image can assume in its repro- 
 duction in man. Neither things present nor 
 things to come can conquer him. He reigns in 
 life with God through Jesus Christ, his Lord. 
 In the second place, there is a difference op- 
 erating to the advantage of Paul between the two 
 ministries in regard to the measure of open- 
 ness and clearness with which they are con- 
 ducted. Moses ministered with covered, Paul J 
 ministers with open, that is uncovered, face. 
 As regards Moses this was that the children 
 of Israel should not perceive the passing 
 away of the glory underneath the veil. Not 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT MINISTRY 117 
 
 that Moses acted as a deceiver of his people. 
 Paul means to say, that in receiving the glory, 
 and losing it, and hiding its loss, he served the 
 symbolic function of illustrating, in the first 
 place, the glory of the Old Covenant, in the^. 
 second place its transitoriness, and in the 
 third place the ignorance of Israel in regard 
 to what was taking place. The chief point 
 of ignorance of the people related to the eclipse 
 and abrogation their institutions would suffer. 
 But the symbolism permits of being generalized, 
 so as to include all the limitations of self-knowl- 
 edge and self-understanding under which the 
 Old Covenant labored. As a matter of fact Paul 
 immediately afterwards extends it to Israel's 
 entire reading of the law, that is, to Israel's self- 
 interpretation and Scripture-interpretation on a 
 large scale. Ignorance as to the end would 
 easily produce ignorance or imperfect under- 
 standing with reference to the whole order of 
 things under which the people were living. 
 Everything temporal and provisional, especially 
 if it does not know itself as such, is apt to wear 
 a veil. It often lacks the faculty of discriminat- 
 ing between what is higher and lower in its 
 composition. Things that are ends and things 
 that are mere means to an end are not always 
 clearly separated. Every preparatory stage in 
 the history of redemption can fully understand 
 itself only in the light of that which fulfills it. 
 The veil of the Old Covenant is lifted only in^ 
 Christ. The Christian standpoint alone fur- 
 nishes the necessary perspective for apprehend- 
 ing its place and function in the organism of 
 
118 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 the whole. So it came about that the Mosaic 
 Covenant moved through the ages a mystery to 
 itself and to its servants. According to Paul 
 this tragical process reached its climax M^hen 
 Israel came face to face with Him who alone 
 could interpret Israel to itself. It is not for us 
 to unravel the web of self -misinterpretation and 
 unbelief wrought by the Jews on the ancient 
 loom previously to the appearance of Christ. 
 Paul implies that both causes contributed to the 
 sad result. There was an element of original 
 guilt as well as of subsequent hardening in- 
 volved. Their minds were blinded. The veil / 
 was on the reading of Moses, but the veil was 
 also on their hearts. And the Apostle's word 
 still holds true: the veil remains until the 
 present day. It can be taken away only when 
 Israel shall turn to the Lord. Then, and not 
 until then, that ghost of the Old Covenant which 
 now accompanies Israel on its wandering 
 through the ages, will vanish from its side. As 
 a double gift of grace it will then receive the 
 treasures of Moses and those of Paul from the 
 hand of Christ. 
 
 It is in sharp contrast to all this that Paul 
 describes his own mode of ministering under the 
 New Covenant. He serves with unveiled face, 
 and in this one figure all the openness, the self- ^ 
 intelligence, the transparency of his ministry 
 find expression. The proclamation of the Word 
 of the Gospel has left behind all the old reserve 
 and restrictions and limitations under which 
 Moses and his successors labored. Its minis- 
 ters can now speak fully and freely and plainly 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT MINISTRY 119 
 
 the whole counsel of God. Paul glories in being 
 able to do this. He uses great boldness of speech. 
 There is nothing to withhold, nothing to con- 
 ceal : the entire plan of redemption has been un- 
 folded, the mystery hidden through the ages has 
 been revealed, and there is committed to every 
 ambassador of Christ an absolute message, no 
 longer subject to change. Not the delicate pro- 
 cedure of the diplomat, who hides his aim, but 
 the stately stepping forward of the herald who 
 renders an authoritative pronouncement, char- 
 acterizes his task to Paul's own mind. He dis- 
 cards all human artifice and invention, all un- 
 sincere and undignified devices evidently em- 
 ployed by some at that time, as they are still 
 not infrequently at the present time, to render 
 the Gospel palatable to his hearers. He scorns, 
 where principles are concerned, all compromise 
 and concession : "Therefore, seeing we have this 
 ministry, even as we obtained mercy, we faint 
 not, but we have renounced the hidden things of 
 shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling 
 the Word of God deceitfully, but by the mani- 
 festation of the truth commending ourselves to 
 every man's conscience in the sight of God." 
 There is a straightforwardness, a simplicity in 
 preaching, which is proportionate to the preach- 
 er's own faith in the absoluteness, and inherent 
 truthfulness of his message. No shallow optim- 
 ism about the adjustableness of Christianity to 
 ever changing conditions, about its self -rejuve- 
 nating power after apparent decline, can pos- 
 sibly make up for a lack of this fundamental 
 conviction. Unless we are convinced with Paul 
 
120 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 that Christianity has a definable and well-de- 
 fined message to bring, and are able to tell 
 wherein it consists, all our talk about its vitality 
 or adaptability will neither comfort ourselves 
 nor deceive others. A thing is not immortal 
 because it is long-lived and dies hard. Only 
 when through all changes of time it preserves 
 unaltered its essence and source of power, can it 
 be considered worth while as a medicine for the 
 sickness of the world. Something that needs the 
 constant use of cosmetics to keep up the appear- 
 ance of youth is a caricature of the Christianity 
 of the New Testament. Its case is worse than it 
 imagines: it has not merely passed its youth, 
 but is in danger of losing its very life. 
 
 In the next place, the greater distinction of 
 the ministry of the New Covenant springs from 
 this that it is in the closest conceivable manner 
 bound up with the Person and work of the 
 Savior. It is a Christ-dispensation in the fullest 
 sense of the word. What is possessed by the 
 New Covenant is not the glory of God as such, 
 but the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 
 Moses had a great vision on the mountain, but 
 Paul had a greater one, even as Moses himself 
 had a greater, when he stood with Elias on the 
 New Testament mount of transfiguration. Paul 
 beholds the glory of Christ as in a mirror, or, 
 according to another rendering, reflects it as a 
 mirror. His entire task, both on its communi- 
 cative and on its receptive side, can be summed 
 up in his reflecting back the Christ-glory, caught 
 by himself unto others. To behold Christ and 
 to make others behold Him is the substance of 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT MINISTRY 121 
 
 his ministry. All the distinctive elements of 
 Paul's preaching relate to Christ, and bear upon 
 their face his image and superscription. God 
 is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The 
 Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. In the procuring 
 of righteousness Christ is the one efficient cause. 
 In Christ believers were chosen, called, justified, 
 and will be glorified. To be converted is to die 
 with Christ and to rise with Him. The entire 
 Christian life, root and stem and branch and 
 blossom, is one continuous fellowship with 
 Christ. But to say that the Gospel is full of 
 Christ is still too general a statement. What 
 the Apostle affirms is that it is particularly the 
 Gospel of the glory of Christ, and that, there- 
 fore, its ministry also has specifically to do with 
 this. Now this is not a mere metaphorical way 
 of speaking, as if it meant no more than that in 
 every possible manner the Gospel-preaching 
 brings out and promotes the honor of the Savior. 
 Paul intends it in a far more literal sense. 
 The glory of Christ transmitted by his Gospel 
 is an objective reality. It is that which effects 
 the Savior's exalted state since the resurrection. 
 While including the radiance of his external ap- 
 pearance, it is by no means confined to this. 
 Paul reckons among this glory the whole equip- / 
 ment of grace and power and beauty, all the 
 supernatural potencies and forces stored up in 
 the risen Lord. It consists of energy no less 
 than of splendor. Taken in this comprehensive, 
 realistic sense, it is equivalent to the content of 
 the Gospel, and determines the nature of its 
 ministry. The rendering, "beholding as in a 
 
122 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 mirror" admirably fits into this representation. 
 As a mirror is not an end in itself, but exists for 
 the sake of what is seen through it, so the Gos- / 
 pel serves no other purpose than to bring men 
 face to face with the glory of Christ. It is 
 naught else but a tale of Christ, a Christ in 
 words, the exact counterpart of Christ's Person 
 and work in their glorious state. Because of 
 the consciousness of this Paul felt himself 
 greater than Moses, for the partial light that 
 shone on the latter's face has now become 
 omnipresent and fills the New Covenant. 
 Under the Old Dispensation the servants of God 
 saw only from afar the brightness of the Mes- 
 siah's rising. Now He is visible from nearby, 
 the One filling all in all, occupying the entire 
 field of vision. The humblest of preachers sur- 
 passes in this respect the greatest of Old Testa- 
 ment evangelists. He carries a Gospel all-frag- 
 rant and all-radiant with Christ. 
 
 In the fourth place the excellence of the min- 
 istry of the New Covenant is seen in this — that 
 it is a ministry of abundant forgiveness and 
 righteousness. This aspect of it also is inti- 
 mately connected with the glory of the Lord, 
 although it requires a somewhat closer inspec- 
 tion to perceive this. It should be remembered 
 that the glory possessed by Christ in heaven is, 
 to Paul, the emphatic, never-silent declaration 
 of his absolute righteousness acquired during 
 the state of humiliation. It sprang from his 
 obedience and suffering and self-sacrifice in our 
 stead. It is righteousness translated into the 
 language of effect, the crown set upon his work 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT MINISTRY 123 
 
 of satisfaction. Consequently the servant of the 
 New Covenant can attach his ministry of par- 
 don and peace to the glory of Christ. Hence 
 Paul in working out the comparison between 
 Moses and himself with special reference to the 
 question of righteousness reduces the difference 
 to terms of glory : "For if the ministry of con- 
 demnation is glory, much rather does the min- 
 istry of righteousness exceed in glory." In a 
 broad sense the Old Testament was the economy 
 of conviction of sin. The law revealed the moral 
 helplessness of man, placed him under a curse, 
 worked death. There was, of course. Gospel un- 
 der and in the Old Covenant, but it was for its 
 expression largely dependent on the silent sym- 
 bolic language of altar and sacrifice and lustra- 
 tion. Under it the glory which speaks of righte- 
 ousness was in hiding. In the New Covenant all 
 this has been changed. The veil has been rent, 
 and through it an unobstructed view is obtained 
 of the glory of God on the face of Jesus Christ. 
 And with this vision comes the assurance of 
 atonement, satisfaction, access to God, peace of 
 conscience, liberty, eternal life. For Paul the 
 commission to proclaim these things constitutes 
 no small part of the excellence of his task. As 
 Jesus delighted in announcing release to the cap- 
 tives, in setting at liberty them that were 
 bruised, in proclaiming the acceptable year of 
 Jehovah, so Paul, even more because of the ac- 
 complishment of the redemptive work, rejoiced 
 in the ministry of reconciliation. Beautiful to 
 him upon the mountains were the feet of them 
 that bring good tidings, that publish peace. 
 
 / 
 
124 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 The jfifth and principal reason why the ser- 
 vice of the New Covenant excels in honor, Paul 
 finds in this: that the Christ-glory is a living 
 and self-communicating power, transforming 
 both those who mediate it and those who receive 
 it from glory to glory into the likeness of the 
 Lord. Paul here again has in mind the differ- 
 ence between Moses and himself. Moses' own 
 condition and appearance were only externally 
 and temporarily affected by the vision on the 
 mount. After a while his face became as before. 
 And what he was unable to retain for himself 
 he was unable to communicate unto others. Over 
 against this the Apostle places the two facts, 
 first that the servants of the New Covenant are 
 internally and permanently transformed by be- 
 holding the image of the Lord, and second that 
 they effect a similar transformation in others 
 to whom through their ministry the knowledge 
 of the glorified Savior comes. In its first part 
 this representation was doubtless connected 
 with the Apostle's personal experience. There 
 had been a point in his life at which the percep- 
 tion of the glorified Lord had been for him at- 
 tended with the most marvelous change it is 
 possible to undergo. The glory that shone 
 around him on the road to Damascus had in one 
 moment, in the twinkling of an eye, swept away 
 all his old beliefs and ideals, his sinful passion 
 and pride, and made of him a new creature, to 
 whom the past things were like the faint mem- 
 ory of some distant phase of existence. And 
 what had happened there, Paul had afterwards 
 seen repeating itself thousands of times, less 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT MINISTRY 125 
 
 conspicuously, to be sure, but not on that ac- 
 count less truly, less miraculously. To express 
 this aspect of his ministry he employs the for- 
 mula, that it is a ministry of the Spirit, that is 
 of the Holy Spirit, whereas that of Moses was 
 one of the letter. The Spirit stands for the liv- 
 ing, energizing, creative grace of God, the letter 
 for the inability of the law as such to translate 
 itself into action. Now in saying that the min- 
 istry of the New Covenant is a ministry of the 
 glory of Christ and that it is a ministry of the 
 Spirit Paul is not really affirming two different 
 things but one and the same fact. The glory and 
 the Spirit to him are identical. As we have seen 
 the glory means the equipment, with superna- 
 tural power and splendor, of the exalted Christ. 
 And this equipment, described from the point of 
 view of its energizing source, consists of the Holy 
 Spirit. It was at the resurrection that the Spirit 
 in this high, unique sense was received by Him. 
 There the Spirit transformed the Lord's human 
 nature and made it glorious beyond conception. 
 Besides this, the Spirit is with Christ in continu- 
 ance as the indwelling principle, the element, as 
 it were, in which the glorified life of the Savior 
 is lived. We need not wonder, then, that a little 
 later the Apostle gives almost paradoxical ex- 
 pression to this truth by declaring, "The Lord is 
 the Spirit," and that we are transformed from 
 "the Lord, the Spirit." This language is not, of 
 course, intended to efface the distinction be- 
 tween the Second and the Third Persons of the 
 Trinity, but simply serves to bring out the prac- 
 tical inseparableness of the exalted Christ and 
 
 y 
 
126 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 the Holy Spirit in the work of salvation. So 
 we begin to understand at least a little of the 
 mystery, how the glory of Christ can communi- 
 cate itself to and reproduce itself in the believer 
 and transform him. As Spirit-glory it cannot 
 fail to do this, for it is of the nature of the Spirit 
 so to act. Hence also we read elsewhere that 
 Christ "became a quickening Spirit." The main 
 point to be observed, however, is how all this 
 adds to the high conception held by Paul about 
 the honor of his ministry as compared with that 
 of Moses. The minister of the law, the letter, can 
 never taste that sweetest joy of seeing the mes- 
 sage he brings incarnate and reincarnate itself 
 in the lives of others. The minister of the New 
 Covenant does taste of this joy : he writes with 
 the Spirit of the living God in tables that are 
 hearts of flesh. This means more than what we 
 sometimes speak of and feel as pleasure in the 
 consciousness of power set free or good accom- 
 plished. Paul undoubtedly knew this also, but 
 to confine what he here describes to that would 
 rob it of its most distinctive quality. Paul had 
 the sensation of coming through his ministry 
 into the closest touch with the forthputting of 
 the saving energy of God Himself. He was 
 aware that to his preaching of the Gospel there 
 belonged an invisible background, that at every 
 step his presentation of the truth was accom- 
 panied by a ministry from heaven conducted by 
 the Christ of glory. His work was for him im- 
 bued with divine power, the life-blood of the 
 supernatural pulsed through it. His service, at 
 each point where it touched men, marked the 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT MINISTRY 127 
 
 line and opened channels for the introduction of 
 divine creative forces into human souls. So vivid 
 was this consciousness of involvement in the 
 supernatural, that nothing short of a compari- 
 son of God's word through him with the divine 
 word at the first creation could adequately ex- 
 press it to Paul's mind: "God who said, Let 
 light shine out of darkness, has shined into our 
 hearts for the purpose of our imparting the 
 light of the knowledge of his glory in the face 
 of Jesus Christ." Nor was this close participa- 
 tion with God in a transforming spiritual pro- 
 cess something glorious merely in itself. Paul 
 also took into account its comprehensive effect. 
 When the Apostle says "we all are transformed" 
 it is evident that the statement is not limited to 
 the Apostles or preachers of the Gospel, but in- 
 cludes, so far at least as the passive experience 
 is concerned, all believers. To the joyous con- 
 sciousness of exerting extraordinary power 
 there was added the delight of witnessing ex- 
 traordinary results. There is a note of genuine 
 Christian universalism in this. It was a 
 reason for profound satisfaction to Paul 
 that he needed not stand in the midst 
 of the congregation of God as another 
 Moses, partaking of a light from God in which 
 the others could not share, solitary in his splen- 
 dor, but that the larger share of what he af- 
 firmed of himself had through him become the 
 possession of the simplest believer, a transfig- 
 uration of spirit like his own by the beholding 
 of the Lord. Refracted from numberless mir- 
 rors the light multiplied and intensified itself 
 
128 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 for each on whom it fell. Nevertheless even so 
 a measure of incommunicable distinction re- 
 mained. Since the reproduction into the like- 
 ness of Christ is dependent on and proportion- 
 ate to the vision of the Savior, and since this 
 vision from the nature of the case is more con- 
 stantly present to the minister of the Gospel 
 than to the common believer, it follows that in 
 the former an altogether unique result may be 
 expected. So it was undoubtedly with Paul. He 
 had no need of testing the principle in others; 
 a more direct and convincing evidence lay in its 
 effect upon himself. He was aware of a renewal 
 of the inner man, progressing from day to day, 
 and in which there was observable this law of 
 increase, that the more he did to make Christ 
 known, the deeper the lineaments of the char- 
 acter of Christ were impressed upon his soul. 
 Even the hardships befalling his flesh in the 
 service of the Lord were contributory to this: 
 "We are always bearing about in the body the 
 dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may 
 be manifested in our mortal flesh." And : "Our 
 light affliction, which is for the moment, works 
 for us more exceedingly an eternal weight of 
 glory." "Therefore we faint not, though our 
 outward man decay, yet the inner man is re- 
 newed day by day." Thus the Apostle's minis- 
 try, while exercised upon others, became unto 
 him an unintermittent ministry to his own soul, 
 ever increasingly assimilating him to the glory 
 of Christ. 
 
 Such was Paul's conception of the ministry 
 of the New Covenant. It bears upon its face 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT MINISTRY 129 
 
 the marks of the historical situation in which 
 he was called upon to present it. None the less 
 it has abiding validity, for it is drawn from the 
 nature of the Gospel itself, and the Gospel is 
 the Gospel of Him who remains the same yes- 
 terday and today and forever. Even of the er- 
 rors over against which Paul placed these glori- 
 ous views it is in a certain sense true that they 
 are not of one age but of all ages; they lead a 
 life of pseudo-immortality among men. In the 
 Judaistic controversy which shook the early 
 church, forces and tendencies were at work 
 deeply rooted in the sinful human heart. In 
 modernized apparel they confront us still to the 
 present day. There are still abroad forms of a 
 Christless Gospel. There prevails still a subtle 
 form of legalism which would rob the Savior of 
 his crown of glory, earned by the cross, and ^ 
 would make of Him a second Moses, offering us ^ 
 the stones of the law instead of the life-bread 
 of the Gospel. And, oh the pity and shame of it, 
 the Jesus that is being preached but too often 
 is a Christ after the flesh, a religious genius, the 
 product of evolution, powerless to save ! Let us 
 pray that it may be given to the Church to re- 
 pudiate and cast out this error with the reso- 
 luteness of Paul. There is need for her minis- 
 ters of placing themselves ever afresh in the 
 light of the great Apostolic consciousness re- 
 vealed in our text. They should learn once more 
 to bear their message out of the fulness of con- 
 viction that it is an unchangeable message, re- 
 liable as the veracity of God Himself. Grant 
 God that it may become on the lips of his ser- 
 
130 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 vants more truly from age to age a Gospel from 
 which the name of Christ crowds out every 
 other human name, good tidings of atonement 
 and righteousness and supernatural renewal ; to 
 preacher and people alike, what it was to Paul 
 and his converts, a mirror of vision and trans- 
 figuration after the image of the Lord. 
 
VI. Heavenly-Mindedness 
 
The Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 XI, 9, 10: "By faith he became a 
 sojourner in the land of promise, 
 as in a land not his own, dwelling 
 in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the 
 heirs with him of the same prom- 
 ise; for he looked for the city 
 which has the foundations, whose 
 builder and maker is God" 
 
HEAVENLY-MINDEDNESS 133 
 
 'PHE chapter from which our text is taken is 
 pre-eminently the chapter on faith. It illus- 
 trates the nature, power and effects of this 
 grace in a series of examples from sacred his- 
 tory. In the context the prophecy of Habakkuk 
 is quoted: "The righteous shall live by faith." 
 We remember that in the Epistle to the Romans 
 and Galatians also the same prophecy appears 
 with prominence. Abraham likewise there fig- 
 ures as the great example of faith. In conse- 
 quence one might easily be led to think that the 
 development of the idea of faith in these Epis- 
 tles and in our chapter moves along identical 
 lines. This would be only partially correct. 
 Although the two types of teaching are in per- 
 fect accord, and touch each other at certain 
 points, yet the angle of vision is not the same. 
 In Romans and Galatians faith is in the main 
 trust in the grace of God, the instrument of jus- 
 tification, the channel through which the vital 
 influences flowing from Christ are received by 
 the believer. Here in Hebrews the conception 
 is wider; faith is "the proving of things not 
 seen, the assurance of things hoped for." It is 
 the organ for apprehension of unseen and future 
 realities, giving access to and contact with an- 
 other world. It is the hand stretched out 
 through the vast distances of space and time, 
 whereby the Christian draws to himself the 
 things far beyond, so that they become actual to 
 him. The earlier Epistles are not unfamiliar 
 
134 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 with this aspect of faith. Paul in II Corinthi- 
 ans declares that for the present the Christian 
 walks through a land of faith and not of sight. 
 And on the other hand this chapter is not un- 
 familiar with the justifying function of faith, 
 for we are told of Noah, that he became heir of 
 the righteousness which is according to faith. 
 Nevertheless, taking the two representations as 
 a whole, the distinctness of the point of view in 
 each should not be neglected. It can be best 
 appreciated by observing that, while in these 
 other writings Christ is the object of faith, the 
 One towards whom the sinner's trust is directed, 
 here the Savior is described as Himself exercis- 
 ing faith, in fact as the one perfect, ideal be- 
 liever. The writer exhorts his readers: "Let 
 us run with patience the race that is set before 
 us, looking unto Jesus the leader and perfecter 
 of our faith." Faith in that other sense of spe- 
 cific trust, through which a guilty sinner be- 
 comes just in the sight of God, our Lord could 
 not exercise, because He was sinless. But the 
 faith that is an assurance of things hoped for 
 and a proving of things not seen had a large 
 place in his experience. By very reason of the 
 contrast between the higher world to which He 
 belonged and this dark lower world of suffering 
 and death to which He had surrendered Him- 
 self it could not be otherwise than that faith, as 
 a projection of his soul into the unseen and 
 future, should have been the fundamental habit 
 of the earthly life of his human nature, and 
 should have developed in Him a degree of in- 
 tensity not attained elsewhere. But, although, 
 
HEAVENLY-MINDEDNESS 135 
 
 for the reason stated, in the unique case of Jesus 
 the two types of faith did not go together, they 
 by no means exclude each other in the mind of 
 the Christian. For, after all, justifying faith is 
 but a special application in one particular direc- 
 tion of the frame of mind here described. 
 Among all the realities of the invisible world, 
 mediated to us by the disclosures and promises 
 of God, and to which our faith responds, there 
 is none that more strongly calls into action this 
 faculty for grasping the unseen than the divine 
 pronouncement through the Gospel, that, though 
 sinners, we are righteous in the judgment of 
 God. That is not only the invisible, it seems the 
 impossible ; it is the paradox of all paradoxes ; it 
 requires a unique energy of believing; it is the 
 supreme victory of faith over the apparent 
 reality of things ; it credits God with calling the 
 things that are not as though they were ; it pene- 
 trates more deeply into the deity of God than 
 any other act of faith. 
 
 What we read in this chapter about the vari- 
 ous activities and acts of faith in the lives of 
 the Old Testament saints might perhaps at first 
 create the impression, that the word faith is 
 used in a looser sense, and that many things are 
 attributed to it not strictly belonging there on 
 the author's own definition. One might be in- 
 clined in more precise language to classify them 
 with other Christian graces. There is certainly 
 large variety of costume in the procession that 
 is made to pass before our eyes. The under- 
 standing that the worlds were framed out of 
 nothing, the ability to offer God an acceptable 
 
136 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 sacrifice, the experience of translation unto God, 
 the preparing of the ark, the responsiveness to 
 the call to leave one's country, the pov^er to con- 
 ceive seed v^hen past age, the vdllingness to 
 sacrifice an only son, Joseph's making mention 
 beforehand of the deliverance from Egypt, and 
 his giving commandment concerning his bones, 
 the hiding of the child Moses, the choice by 
 Moses, v^hen grown up, of the reproach of God's 
 people in preference to the treasures of Egypt, 
 all this and more is represented as belonging to 
 the one rubric of faith. But let us not misunder- 
 stand the writer. When he affirms that by faith 
 all these things were suffered and done, his idea 
 is not that what is enumerated was in each case 
 the direct expression of faith. What he means 
 is that in the last analysis faith alone made pos- 
 sible every one of the acts described, that as an 
 underlying frame of mind it enabled all these 
 other graces to function, and to produce the rich 
 fruitage here set forth. The obedience, the self- 
 sacrifice, the patience, the fortitude, of all these 
 the exercise in the profound Christian sense 
 would have been impossible, if the saints had 
 not had through faith their eye firmly fixed on 
 the unseen and promised world. Whether the 
 call was to believe or to follow, to do or to bear, 
 the obedience to it sprang not from any earth- 
 fed sources but from the infinite reservoir of 
 strength stored up in the mountain-land above. 
 If Moses endured it was not due to the power 
 of resistance in his human frame, but because 
 the weakness in him was compensated by the 
 vision of Him who is invisible. If Abraham, 
 
HEAVENLY-MINDEDNESS 137 
 
 who had gladly received the promises, offered up 
 his only-begotten son, it was not because in 
 heroic resignation he steeled himself to obedi- 
 ence, but because through faith he saw God as 
 greater and stronger than the most inexorable 
 physical law of nature : "For he accounted that 
 God is able to raise up even from the dead." 
 And so in all the other instances. Through faith 
 the powers of the higher world were placed at 
 the disposal of those whom this world threat- 
 ened to overwhelm, and so the miracle resulted 
 that from weakness they were made strong. No 
 mistake could be greater than to naturalize the 
 contents of this chapter, and to conceive of the 
 thing portrayed as some instinct of idealism, 
 some sort of sixth sense for what lies above the 
 common plane of life, as people speak of men of 
 vision, who see farther than the mass. The 
 entire description rests on the basis of super- 
 naturalism; these are annals of grace, mag- 
 nalia Christi. Even the most illustrious names 
 in the history of worldly achievement are not, 
 as such, entitled to a place among them. 
 This is the goodly company of patriarchs and 
 prophets and saints, who endured the reproach 
 of Christ, of whom the world was not worthy, 
 who form the line of succession through which 
 the promises passed, who now compose the cloud 
 of witnesses that encompass our mortal strife, 
 men of whom God is not ashamed to be called 
 their God, vnth whom the Savior Himself is as- 
 sociated as the leader and finisher of the same 
 faith. 
 
 In our text, however, we meet faith in its 
 
138 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 more simple and direct mode of operation. It 
 appears as dealing with the unseen and future. 
 From the life of the patriarchs the more mili- 
 tant, strenuous features are absent. In their 
 lives it is allowed as in a region of seclusion and 
 quietness to unfold before our eyes its simple 
 beauty. Faith is here but another name for 
 other-worldliness or heavenly-mindedness. 
 Herein lies the reason why the writer dwells 
 with such evident delight upon this particular 
 part of the Old Testament narrative. The other 
 figures he merely sketches, and with a rapid 
 skillful stroke of the brush puts in the high 
 lights of their lives where the glory of faith 
 illumined them. But the figure of Abraham he 
 paints with the lingering, caressing hand of 
 love, so that something of the serenity and 
 peacefulness of the original patriarchal story is 
 reproduced in the picture: "By faith he be- 
 came a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a 
 land not his own, dwelling in tents with Isaac 
 and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same prom- 
 ise, for he looked for the city which has the 
 foundations, whose builder and maker is God." 
 The charm spread over this part of the subject 
 to the author's vision also appears in this, that, 
 after having already dismissed it and passed on 
 to the portrayal of Abraham's faith in another 
 form, as connected with the seed of the promise, 
 he involuntarily returns to cast one more loving 
 glance at it: "They died in faith, not having 
 received the promises, but seen them and greeted 
 them from afar, and having confessed that they 
 were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For 
 
HEAVENLY -MINDEDNESS 139 
 
 they that say such things make it manifest that 
 they are seeking after a country of their own. 
 And if indeed they had been mindful of the coun- 
 try from which they went out, they would have 
 had opportunity to return. But now they de- 
 sire a better country, that is a heavenly ; where- 
 fore God is not ashamed to be called their God: 
 for He hath prepared them a city." 
 
 The other-worldliness of the patriarchs 
 showed itself in this, that they confessed to be 
 strangers and pilgrims on the earth. It found 
 its visible expression in their dwelling in tents. 
 Not strangers and pilgrims outside of Canaan, 
 but strangers and pilgrims in the earth. The 
 writer places all the em.phasis on this, that they 
 pursued their tent-life in the very land of prom- 
 ise, which was their own, as in a land not their 
 own. Only in this way is a clear connection be- 
 tween the staying in tents and the looking for- 
 ward to heaven obtained. For otherwise the 
 tents might have signified merely that they con- 
 sidered themselves not at home when away from 
 the holy land. If even in Canaan they carried 
 within themselves the consciousness of pilgrim- 
 age then it becomes strikingly evident that it 
 was a question of fundamental, comprehensive 
 choice between earth and heaven. The adher- 
 ence to the tent-life in the sight and amidst the 
 scenes of the promised land fixes the aspiration 
 of the patriarchs as aiming at the highest con- 
 ceivable heavenly goal. It has in it somewhat 
 of the scorn of the relative and of compromise. 
 He who knows that for him a palace is in build- 
 ing does not dally with desires for improvement 
 
140 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 on a lower scale. Contentment with the lowest 
 becomes in such a case profession of the high- 
 est, a badge of spiritual aristocracy with its 
 proud insistence upon the ideal. Only the pre- 
 destined inhabitants of the eternal city know 
 how to conduct themselves in a simple tent as 
 kings and princes of God. 
 
 As to its negative side, the feeling of strange- 
 ness on earth, even in Canaan, the writer could 
 base his representation on the statement of 
 Abraham to the sons of Heth : "I am a stranger 
 and a sojourner with you," and on the words of 
 the aged Jacob to Pharaoh: "The days of the 
 years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and 
 thirty years : few and evil have the days of the 
 years of my life been, and have not attained unto 
 the days of the years of the life of my fathers 
 in the days of their pilgrimage." As to the posi- 
 tive side, the desire for a heavenly state, there 
 is no such explicit testimony in the narrative of 
 Genesis. None the less the author was fully 
 justified in affirming this also. It is contained 
 by implication in the other. The refusal to 
 build an abiding habitation in a certain place 
 must be due to the recognition that one's true, 
 permanent abode is elsewhere. The not-feeling- 
 at-home in one country has for its inevitable 
 counterpart homesickness for another. The 
 writer plainly ascribes this to the patriarchs, 
 and in doing so also ascribes to them a degree 
 of acquaintance with the idea of a heavenly life. 
 His meaning is not that, unknown to themselves, 
 they symbolized through their mode of living 
 the principle of destination for heaven. On the 
 
HEAVENLY -MINDEDNESS 141 
 
 contrary, we are expressly told that they con- 
 fessed, that they made it manifest, that they 
 looked for, that they desired. There existed 
 with them an intelligent and outspoken appre- 
 hension of the celestial world. Let us not say 
 that such an interpretation of their minds is 
 unhistorical, because they could not in that age 
 have possessed a clear knowledge of the world 
 to come. Rather, in reading this chapter on 
 faith let us have faith, a large, generous faith 
 in the uniqueness and spiritual distinction of 
 the patriarchs as confessors, perhaps in ad- 
 vance of their time, of the heaven-centered life 
 of the people of God. In other respects also 
 Scripture represents the patriarchal period as 
 lifted above the average level of the surround- 
 ing ages, even within the sphere of Special Reve- 
 lation. Paul tells us that in the matter of grace 
 and freedom from the law Abraham lived on a 
 plane and in an atmosphere much higher than 
 that of subsequent generations. Anachronisms 
 these things are, if you will, but anachronisms 
 of God, who does not let Himself be bound by 
 time, but, seeing the end from the beginning, 
 reserves the right to divide the flood of history, 
 and to place on conspicuous islands at succes- 
 sive points great luminaries of his truth and 
 grace shining far out into the future. The patri- 
 archs had their vision of the heavenly country, 
 a vision in the light of which the excellence or 
 desirableness of every earthly home and country 
 paled. Acquaintance with a fairer Canaan had 
 stolen from their hearts the love of the land that 
 lay spread around like a garden of paradise. 
 
142 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 Of course, it does not necessarily follow from 
 this that the author credits the patriarchs with 
 a detailed, concrete knowledge of the heavenly 
 world. In point of heavenly-mindedness he 
 holds them up as models to be imitated. In point 
 of information about the content of the celestial 
 life he places the readers far above the reach of 
 the Old Testament at its highest. To the saints 
 of the New Covenant life and immortality and 
 all the powers of the world to come have been 
 opened up by Christ. The Christian state is as 
 truly part and prelibation of the things above 
 as a portal forms part of the house. If not 
 wholly within, we certainly are come to Mount 
 Zion, the city of the living God. And in this we 
 are more than Abraham. No such Gospel broke 
 in upon the solitude of these ancient shepherds, 
 not even upon Jacob, when he saw the ladder 
 reaching up into heaven with the angels of God 
 ascending and descending upon it. But do you 
 not see, that precisely on account of this differ- 
 ence in knowledge the faculty of faith had ad- 
 dressed to it a stronger challenge than it has 
 in us, who pilgrim with heaven's door wide open 
 in our sight? For this reason it is so profitable 
 to return again and again to this part of the Old 
 Testament Scriptures, and learn what great 
 faith could do with less privilege, how precisely 
 because it had such limited resource of knowl- 
 edge, it made a sublimer flight, soaring with 
 supreme dominion up to the highest heights of 
 God. 
 
 Let us try briefly to analyze what this other- 
 worldliness of the patriarchs involved, and in 
 
HEAVENLY-MINDEDNESS 143 
 
 what respects it will be well for us to cultivate 
 it. The first feature to be noted is that it is not 
 essentially negative but positive in character. 
 The core lies not in what it relinquishes but in 
 what it seeks. Escape from the world here be- 
 low and avoidance of the evil in the world do not 
 furnish its primary motive. That is true only 
 of the abnormal, morbid type of other-worldli- 
 ness, that connected with pessimism and mon- 
 astic seclusion. From an unwarranted identi- 
 fication with these the true grace portrayed by 
 Scripture has been exposed to much ill-consid- 
 ered criticism and fallen into disrepute. If 
 heavenly-mindedness were an upward flight in 
 the ignominious sense of the word, it would be 
 the very opposite to the heroism of genuine 
 faith, a seeking for a harbor of refuge, instead 
 of a steering for the haven of home. Do not mis- 
 understand me. It is only right that in some 
 measure the bitter experience of sin and evil 
 should contribute to the Christian's desire for 
 heaven. The attraction of heaven is in part the 
 attraction of freedom from sin. And not a lit- 
 tle of the contempt poured upon it, while pre- 
 tending to protest against cloistered withdrawal, 
 springs in reality from a defective perception 
 of the seriousness of sin. Where the eye has 
 not by divine grace been opened to the world's 
 wickedness, it is easy to look with disdain on 
 the Christian's world-shyness. But the Chris- 
 tian, who knows that the end of sin cannot come 
 until the end of this world, looks at the question 
 in a light of his own. He is fully warranted in 
 considering ridicule of this kind part of the re- 
 
144 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 proach of Christ and bearing it with joy. Nor 
 should we forget, that an excess of interest in 
 the present life, when shown in the name of 
 religion, is apt, in our day, to be a symptom of 
 doubt or unbelief in regard to the life to come. 
 Still the principle remains in force, that the de- 
 sirability of heaven should never possess exclu- 
 sively or mainly negative significance. It is not 
 something first brought into the religious mind 
 through sin. The lineage and birth-right of 
 other-worldliness are of the oldest and noblest. 
 By God Himself this traveler's unrest was im- 
 planted in the soul. Ever since the goal set by 
 the Covenant of Works came within his ken, 
 man carries with him in all his converse with 
 this world the sense of appurtenance to another. 
 This is but to say that supernaturalism forms 
 from the outset the basis of true religion in man. 
 Man belongs to two spheres. And Scripture not 
 only teaches that these two spheres are distinct, 
 it also teaches what estimate of relative impor- 
 tance ought to be placed upon them. Heaven is 
 the primordial, earth the secondary creation. In 
 heaven are the supreme realities; what sur- 
 rounds us here below is a copy and shadow of 
 the celestial things. Because the relation be- 
 tween the two spheres is positive, and not nega- 
 tive, not mutually repulsive, heavenly-minded- 
 ness can never give rise to neglect of the duties 
 pertaining to the present life. It is the ordi- 
 nance and will of God, that not apart from, but 
 on the basis of, and in contact with, the earthly 
 sphere man shall work out his heavenly destiny. 
 Still the lower may never supplant the higher in 
 
HEAVENLY-MINDEDNESS 145 
 
 our affections. In the heart of man time calls 
 for eternity, earth for heaven. He must, if nor- 
 mal, seek the things above, as the flower's face 
 is attracted by the sun, and the water-courses 
 are drawn to the ocean. Heavenly-mindedness, 
 so far from blunting or killing the natural de- 
 sires, produces in the believer a finer organiza- 
 tion, with more delicate sensibilities, larger 
 capacities, a stronger pulse of life. It does not 
 spell empoverishment, but enrichment of nature. 
 The spirit of the entire Epistle shows this. The 
 use of the words "city" and "country" is evi- 
 dence of it. These are terms that stand for the 
 accumulation, the efflorescence, the intensive 
 enjoyment of values. Nor should we overlook 
 the social note in the representation. A perfect 
 communion in a perfect society is promised. In 
 the city of the living God believers are joined to 
 the general assembly and church of the first- 
 born, and mingle with the spirits of just men 
 made perfect. And all this faith recognizes. It 
 does not first need the storms and stress that in- 
 vade to quicken its desire for such things. Be- 
 ing the sum and substance of all the positive 
 gifts of God to us in their highest form, heaven 
 is of itself able to evoke in our hearts positive 
 love, such absorbing love as can render us at 
 times forgetful of the earthly strife. In such 
 moments the transcendent beauty of the other 
 shore and the irresistable current of our deep- 
 est life lift us above every regard of wind or 
 wave. We know that through weather fair or 
 foul our ship is bound straight for its eternal 
 port. 
 
146 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 Next to the positiveness of its object the high 
 degree of actuality in the working of this grace 
 should be considered. Through the faith of 
 heavenly-mindedness the things above reveal 
 themselves to the believer, are present with him, 
 and communicate themselves to him. Though 
 as yet a pilgrim, the Christian is never wholly 
 separated from the land of promise. His tents 
 are pitched in close view of the city of God. 
 Heaven is present to the believer's experience in 
 no less real a sense than Canaan with its fair 
 ^hills and valleys lay close to the vision of Abra- 
 ham. He walks in the light of the heavenly 
 world and is made acquainted with the kindred 
 spirits inhabiting it. And since the word "act- 
 ual" in its literal sense means "that which 
 works," the life above possesses for the believer 
 the highest kind of actuality. He is given to taste 
 the powers of the world to come, as Abraham 
 breathed the air of Canaan, and was refreshed 
 by the dews descending on its fields. The roots 
 of the Christian's life are fed from those rich 
 and perennial springs that lie deep in the re- 
 cesses of converse with God, where prayers as- 
 cend and divine graces descend, so that after 
 each season of tryst he issues, a new man, from 
 the secrecy of his tent. Because it had this ef- 
 fect for the patriarchs, faith had so intimately 
 joined to it the exercise of hope. It is no less 
 the assurance of things hoped for than the prov- 
 ing of things not seen. It annihilates the dis- 
 tance of time as much as of space. If faith 
 deals with heaven as it exists, hope seizes upon 
 it as it will be at the end. Hope attaches itself 
 
HEAVENLY-MINDEDNESS 147 
 
 to promises; it sees and greets from afar. As 
 the Epistle describes it, it does not contemplate 
 purely provisional and earthly developments, 
 does not come to rest in the happenings of inter- 
 mediate ages, but relates to the end. In one un- 
 broken flight it soars to the goal of God's work 
 in history, which is none other than the finished 
 heaven. For heaven itself is subject to a process 
 of preparation, so that its full content became 
 accessible only to the patriarchs through a pro- 
 jection of their faith in time. The heaven for 
 which they hoped was the heaven of redemption, 
 enriched through the ages, become peopled 
 with the successive generations of the saints of 
 God, filled with the glory of Christ, the recre- 
 ated paradise, towards which all the streams of 
 grace springing up in time send their waters. 
 The believer requires this new heaven, not sim- 
 ply the cosmical place that resulted from the 
 first creation. Hence his heavenly-mindedness 
 can never destroy interest in the unfolding of 
 the ways of God throughout the history of the 
 present world. Neither grows he impatient 
 when the promise seems to tarry. For his hope 
 also is in him a vitalizing power. It lives by the 
 things that are not as though they were already, 
 and makes the future supply strength for the 
 present. Amidst all the vicissitudes of time the 
 Christian knows that the foundations of the 
 city of God are being quietly laid, that its walls 
 are rising steadily, and that it will at last stand 
 finished in all its golden glory, the crowning 
 product of the work of God for his own. 
 
 But the faith of heavenly-mindedness in yet 
 
148 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 another, even prof ounder, sense surmounts time. 
 In contrast with what is transitory it lays hold 
 of the unchanging and eternal. The text ex- 
 presses this by describing the city looked for as 
 the city which has the foundations. The differ- 
 ence between the well-founded enduring edifice 
 and the frail, collapsible tent has induced this 
 turn of the figure. Already in the prophet 
 Isaiah Jehovah declares : "Behold I lay in Zion 
 for a foundation a stone, a precious corner- 
 stone of sure foundation : he that believeth shall 
 not make haste." In this word the two ideas of 
 sure foundation and faith are brought into close 
 connection. Because the foundation is sure the 
 believer can lay aside all disquietude and im- 
 patience in regard to the working out of the 
 divine purpose. He need not make haste. It is 
 of the essence of faith to crave assurance ; hence 
 it cannot come to rest until it have cast its an- 
 chor into the eternal. Ajid heaven above all else 
 partakes of the character of eternity. It is the 
 realm of the unchangeable. In this lower world 
 Time with its law of attrition is king. Nothing 
 can escape his inexorable rule. What is must 
 cease to be, what appears must vanish, what is 
 built must be broken down, even though human 
 heart should cherish it more than its own life. 
 And this applies not merely to objects of natural 
 affection ;. it involves also much that is of transi- 
 tory purpose in the service and Church of God. 
 Even our religion in its earthly exercise is not 
 exempt from the tragical aspect borne by all ex- 
 istence in time. The summons comes again 
 and again: "Get thee out of thy country, and 
 
HEAVENLY-MINDEDNESS 149 
 
 from thy kindred, and from thy father's house," 
 and after a brief spell of comfort and delight we 
 anew find ourselves in tents roaming through an 
 inhospitable world. There is no help for these 
 things. Like Abraham we must resolutely con- 
 fess, that we are strangers and pilgrims in a 
 land of time, and that the best this land can 
 offer us is but a caravanserai to tarry in for a 
 day and a night. Abraham would have undoubt- 
 edly rejoiced in the vision of the historical Jeru- 
 salem around which gather so many glories of 
 God's redemptive work. But, suppose it had 
 risen up before him in all its beauty, would that 
 have been the soul-satisfying vision his faith de- 
 sired ? No, there is neither quietness nor repose 
 for the believer's heart except on the bosom of 
 eternity. There and there alone is shelter from 
 the relentless pursuit of change. The inspired 
 writer tells us that the two most momentous 
 events in sacred history, the giving of the law 
 on Sinai and the end of the world, signify the 
 removal of things that are shaken, in order that 
 such things as are not shakable may remain. 
 And the second shaking is so radical and com- 
 prehensive that it involves not only the earth 
 but likewise the heavens : it will sweep the transi- 
 tory out of the life of the people of God even in 
 the higher regions, and will leave them, when 
 the smoke and dust of the upheaval are blown 
 av/ay, in a clear atmosphere of eternal life. But 
 in this sense also faith is not purely prospective : 
 it enables to anticipate; it draws down the im- 
 perishable substance of eternity into its vessel 
 of time and feeds on it. The believer knows that 
 
150 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 even now there is in him that which has been 
 freed from the law of change, a treasure that 
 moth and rust cannot corrupt, true riches en- 
 shrined in his heart as in a treasury of God. 
 Have we ever been impressed in reading the 
 narrative of Genesis by the peacefulness and 
 serenity enveloping the figures of the patri- 
 archs? There is something else here besides 
 the idyllic charm of rural surroundings. What 
 enviable freedom from the unrest, the impa- 
 tience, the feverish excitement of the children 
 of this world! Our modern Christian life so 
 often lacks the poise and stability of the eternal. 
 Religion has come so overmuch to occupy itself 
 with the things of time that it catches the spirit 
 of time. Its purposes turn fickle and unsteady; 
 its methods become superficial and ephemeral; 
 it alters its course so constantly; it borrows so 
 readily from sources beneath itself, that it un- 
 dermines its own prestige in matters pertaining 
 to the eternal world. Where lies the remedy? 
 It would be useless to seek it in withdrawal from 
 the struggles of this present world. The true 
 corrective lies in this, that we must learn again 
 to carry a heaven-fed and heaven-centered spirit 
 into our walk and work below. The grand 
 teaching of the Epistle that through Christ and 
 the New Covenant the heavenly projects into 
 the earthly, as the headlands of a continent pro- 
 ject into the ocean, should be made fruitful for 
 the whole tone and temper of our Christian ser- 
 vice. Every task should be at the same time a 
 means of grace from and an incentive to work 
 for heaven. There has been One greater than 
 
HEAVENLY-MINDED NESS 151 
 
 Abraham, who lived his life in absolute harmony 
 with this principle, in whom the fullest absorp- 
 tion in his earthly calling could not for a moment 
 disturb the consciousness of being a child of 
 heaven. Though, like unto the patriarchs. He 
 had no permanent home, not event a tent, this 
 was not in his case the result of a break with an 
 earthly-minded past. It was natural to Him. In 
 his mind were perfectly united the two hemi- 
 spheres of supernaturalism, that of the source 
 of power back of, and that of the eternal goal of 
 life beyond every work. A religion that has 
 ceased to set its face towards the celestial city, 
 is bound sooner or later to discard also all super- 
 natural resources in its endeavor to transform 
 this present world. The days are perhaps not 
 far distant when we shall find ourselves con- 
 fronted with a quasi-form of Christianity pro- 
 fessing openly to place its dependence on and to 
 work for the present life alone, a religion, to use 
 the language of Hebrews, become profane and 
 a fornicator like Esau, selling for a mess of 
 earthly pottage its heavenly birth-right. 
 
 There are two more aspects of the patri- 
 archal faith of heavenly-mindedness to be brief- 
 ly considered. The first is its spirituality. 
 Heavenly-mindedness is spiritual-mindedness. 
 This pervades like an atmosphere the entire 
 Epistle. We have already seen that even in the 
 promised land the patriarchs remained tent- 
 dwellers. God had a wise purpose in thus post- 
 poning for them personally the fulfilment of the 
 temporal promise. Although Canaan was a good- 
 ly land, it was yet, after all, material and not 
 
152 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 of that higher substance we call spiritual. While 
 capable of carrying up the mind to supernal 
 regions, it also exposed to the danger of becom- 
 ing satisfied with the blessing in its provisional 
 form. That this danger was not imaginary the 
 later history of Israel testifies. In order to guard 
 against such a result in the case of the patri- 
 archs God withheld from them the land and its 
 riches and made of this denial a powerful spir- 
 itualizing discipline. By it they were led to re- 
 flect that, since the promise was theirs beyond 
 all doubt, and yet they were not allowed to in- 
 herit it in its material form, that therefore it 
 must in the last analysis relate to something far 
 higher and different, something of which the vis- 
 ible and sensual is a mere image. Thus the con- 
 ception of another sphere of being was intro- 
 duced into their minds : henceforth they sought 
 the better country. Not as if the things of 
 sense were worthless in themselves, but because 
 they knew of something transcendent that 
 claimed their supreme affection. Their tastes 
 and enjoyments had been raised to another 
 plane. The refinement of grace had been im- 
 parted to them. For bodily hands there had 
 been, as it were, substituted spiritual antennae, 
 sensitive to intangible things. They had come 
 to a mountain that could not be touched and yet 
 could be felt. In all the treasures and promises of 
 religion the one valuable thing is this spiritual 
 core. In the word that God speaks we can taste 
 all his goodness and grace. Hope itself is spir- 
 itualized, remaining no longer the hope of im- 
 agination but grasping in God the ideal root 
 
HEAVENLY -MINDEDNESS 153 
 
 from which the whole future must spring and 
 blossom in due time. The heavenly world does 
 not appear desirable as simply a second im- 
 proved edition of this life ; that would be noth- 
 ing else than earthly-mindedness projected into 
 the future. The very opposite takes place: 
 heaven spiritualizes in advance our present 
 walk with God. Each time faith soars and 
 alights behind the veil it brings back on its 
 wings some of the subtle fragrance that there 
 prevails. This also is an important principle in 
 need of stress at the present day. If there is 
 danger of Christianity being temporalized, there 
 is no less danger of its being materialized. How 
 easily do we fall into the habit of handling the 
 things of our holy faith after an external, quan- 
 titative, statistical fashion, so that they turn 
 flesh under our touch and emit a savor of earth ? 
 If at any time or in any form this fault should 
 threaten to befall us, let us revisit the tents of 
 the patriarchs and rehearse the lesson, that in 
 religion the body without the soul is worthless 
 and without power. 
 
 The other point to be observed is this, that 
 heaven is the normal goal of our redemption. 
 We all know that religion is older than redemp- 
 tion. At the same time the experience of re- 
 demption is the summit of religion. The two 
 have become so interwoven that the Christian 
 cannot conceive of a future state from which the 
 redemptive mould and color would be absent. 
 The deepest and dearest in us is so much the 
 product of salvation, that the vision of God as 
 such and the vision of God our Savior melt into 
 
154 GRACE AND GLORY 
 
 one. We could not separate them if we would. 
 The simple reason is that precisely in redeeming 
 us God has revealed to us the inmost essence of 
 his deity. No one but a redeemed creature can 
 truly know what it is for God to be God, and 
 what it means to worship and possess Him as 
 God. This is the fine gold of the Christian's ex- 
 perience, sweeter to him than honey and the 
 honeycomb. The river that makes glad the city 
 of God is the river of grace. The believer's mind 
 and heart will only in heaven compass the full 
 riches, the length and breadth and depth and 
 height of the love of God. No one can drink so 
 deeply of it here, but he will more deeply drink 
 hereafter. Blessed be God, no stream of Lethe 
 flows this side of his city to wash away from our 
 minds the remembrance of redeeming grace! 
 The life above will be a ceaseless coming to 
 Jesus, the Mediator of a better covenant, and to 
 the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than 
 Abel. The Lamb slain for our sins will be all the 
 glory of Emmanuel's land. 
 
 Finally the highest thing that can be spoken 
 about this city is that it is the city of our God, 
 that He is in the midst of it. Traced to its ulti- 
 mate root heavenly-mindedness is the thirst of 
 the soul after God, the living God. The patri- 
 archs looked not for some city in general, but 
 for a city whose builder and maker was God. 
 It is characteristic of faith that it not merely 
 desires the perfect but desires the perfect as a 
 work and gift of God. A heaven that was not 
 illumined by the light of God, and not a place for 
 closest embrace of Him, would be less than 
 
HEAVENLY-MINDEDNESS 155 
 
 heaven. God as builder and maker thereof has 
 put the better part of Himself into his work. 
 Therefore those who enter the city are in God. 
 The thought is none other than that of the seer 
 in the Apocalypse : "I saw no temple therein : for 
 the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb are 
 the temple thereof. And that city has no need 
 of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it, 
 for the glory of God lightens it, and the throne 
 of God and the Lamb are therein : and his serv- 
 ants shall do Him service, and they shall see his 
 face, and his name shall be on their foreheads." 
 And the faith is the faith of the Psalmist, who 
 spoke : "Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and 
 there is none upon earth that I desire beside 
 Thee." Here it is impossible for us to tell how 
 truly and to what extent our relation to God is 
 a relation of pure, disinterested love in which we 
 seek Him for his own sake. There, when all want 
 and sin-frailty shall have slipped away from us, 
 we shall be able to tell. It was because God 
 discerned in the souls of the patriarchs, under- 
 neath all else, this personal love, this homesick- 
 ness for Himself, that He caused to be recorded 
 about them the greatest thing that can be 
 spoken of any man : that God is not ashamed to 
 be called their God, and that He has prepared 
 for them the city of their desire. 
 
Date Due 
 
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