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PERFECT
THROUGH SUFFERINGS
"It became him, for whom are all things, and by
whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory,
to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through
sufferings." HEBREWS ii. 10.
THERE
is no book which can stand the test of sorrow and
suffering as the Bible can. Other books may delight us in
sunny hours, when the heart is gay; but in dark and
overcast days we fling them aside, and eagerly betake
ourselves to our Bibles. And the reason for this is in the
fact that this Book was born in the fires. It is soaked
with the tears, either of those who wrote or of those
addressed.
Take, for instance, this Epistle. It
was intended to solace the bitter anguish of these Hebrew
Christians, who were exposed to the double fury of the
storm. In the first place, there was the inevitable
opposition and persecution to be encountered by all
followers of the Nazarene; not only from the Gentiles, but
specially from their fellow-countrymen, who accounted them
apostates.
Next, there was the pain of
excommunication from the splendid rites of the Temple,
with its daily service, its solemn feasts, its magnificent
ceremonial. Only those amongst our-selves who from
childhood have been wont to worship in some splendid
minster, with its pealing organ, full-voiced choir, and
mystery of architecture, arresting and enchaining every
sense of beauty, but who have felt constrained to join the
worship of an obscure handful in some plain meetinghouse,
can realize how painfully those who were addressed in
these words missed the religious associations of their
early days.
And then this suffering, thorn-crowned,
dying Messiah! It seemed almost impossible to realize that
he was the Christ of national desire. The objections that
baffled the faith of the two travelers to Emmaus arose in
almost irresistible force: "The chief priests and our
rulers have crucified him; but we trusted that it had been
he which should have redeemed Israel" (Luke xxiv.
20).
No attempt is made in these
words to minimize the sufferings of Christ. That
were impossible and superfluous. He is King in the realm
of sorrow; peerless in his pain; supreme in his distress.
Though earth be full of sufferers, none can vie with our
Lord in his. Human nature is limited. The confines of its
joys or sorrows are soon touched. The pendulum swings only
hither and thither. But who shall estimate the capacity of
Christ's nature? And because of it, he could taste the
sweets of a joy beyond his fellows, and of sorrow so
excessive as to warrant the challenge: "Behold, and
see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, wherewith
the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce
anger." If it be true, as Carlyle says, that our
sorrow is the inverted image of our nobility, how deep
must the sorrow have been of the noblest of our race! Well
may the Greek liturgy, with infinite pathos, speak of his
"unknown sorrows."
Shall the sufferings of Christ
cause us to reject Christ? Ah, strange
infatuation! As well reject the heaven because of its sun,
or night because of the queenly moon; or a diadem because
of its regal gem; or home because of mother. The
sufferings of Christ are the proudest boast of the Gospel.
He himself wears the insignia of them in heaven; as
a general, on the day of triumph, chooses his choicest
order to wear upon his breast. Yes, and it was the
deliberate choice of him, "for whom are all things,
and by whom are all things "-and who must, therefore,
have had every expedient at his command-that the path of
suffering should be his Son's way through our world. Every
track through creation is as familiar to Omniscience as
the tracks across the hills to the gray-haired, plaided
shepherd. Had he wished, the Father might have conducted
the Son to glory by another route than the thorny,
flint-set path of suffering. But the reasons for this
experience were so overwhelming that he could not evade
them. Nothing else had been becoming. Those reasons may be
stated almost in a sentence.
Our Father has on hand a work
greater than his original creation. He is
"bringing many sons unto glory." The way may be
rugged and tedious; but its end is glory. And it is the
way along which our Father is bringing us; for, since we
believe on the Son, we have the right to call ourselves
sons (John i. 12). And there are many of us. Many sons,
though only one Son. We do not go solitarily along the
narrow way. We are but part of a multitude which no man
can number. The glory of which we have already spoken, and
into which Jesus has entered, is not for him alone, but
for us also. "Many sons" are to be his
joint-heirs; reigning with him on his throne, sharing his
unsearchable riches and his everlasting reign.
But all these sons must tread
the path of sufering. Since the first sin brought
suffering to our first parents, and bloodshed into the
first home, there has been but one lot for those who will
live Godly. Their road leads to glory; but every inch of
it is stained with their blood and watered by their tears.
It climbs to Hermon's summit; but it descends immediately
into somber and devil-haunted plains. It conducts to the
Mount of Olives, with its ascension light; but it first
traverses the glades of Gethsemane, the wine-press of
Golgotha, the solitude and darkness of the grave.
"The path of sorrow, and that path
alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is
unknown."
What true soul has not its
wilderness of temptation; its conflicts with Sadducees and
Scribes; its hour of weariness and watching; its tears
over cities full of rebellious men; its disappointments
from friends; its persecutions from foes; rejection,
agony, friendlessness, loneliness, denials, trial,
treacheries, deaths, and burials? Such is the draught
which the noblest and saintliest have drunk from the
golden chalice of life.
Foreseeing our needs, our
Father has provided for us a Leader. It is
a great boon for a company of pilgrims to have a
Great-heart; for an army to have a captain; for an exodus
to have a Moses. Courageous, sagacious, and strong leaders
are God's good gifts to men. And it is only what we might
have expected that God has placed such a One as the
efficient Leader at the head of the long line of pilgrims,
whom he is engaged in bringing to glory. The toils seem
lighter and the distance shorter; laggards quicken their
pace; wandering ones are recalled from by-paths by the
presence and voice of the Leader, who marches, efficient,
royal, and divine, in the van. 0 heirs of glory, weary of
the long and toilsome march, remember that ye are part of
a great host: and that the Prince, at the head of the
column, has long since entered the city; though he is back
again, passing as an inspiration along the ranks as they
are toiling on.
Our Leader is perfect.
Of course this does not refer to his moral or spiritual
attributes. In these he is possessed of the stature of the
perfect Man, and has filled out, in every detail, God's
ideal of manhood. But he might have been all this without
being perfectly adapted to the work of leading many sons
through suffering to glory. He might have been perfect in
character, and desirous to help us; but, if he had never
tasted death, how could he allay our fears as we tread the
verge of Jordan? If he had never been tempted, how could
he succor those who are tempted? If he had never wept, how
could he stanch our tears? If he had never suffered,
hungered, wearied on the hill of difficulty, or threaded
his way through the quagmires of grief, how could he have
been a merciful and faithful High-Priest, having
compassion on the ignorant and wayward? But, thank God,
our Leader is a perfect one. He is perfectly adapted to
his task. His certificate, countersigned by the voice of
inspiration, declares him fully qualified.
But this perfect efficiency,
as we have seen, is the result of suffering. In no
other conceivable way could he have been so effectively
qualified to be our Leader as he has been by the ordeal of
suffering. Every pang, every tear, every thrill, all were
needed to complete his equipment to help us. And from this
we may infer that suffering is sometimes permitted to
befall us in order to qualify us to be, in our poor
measure, the leaders and comforters of our brethren, who
are faltering in the march. When next we suffer, let us
believe that it is not the result of chance, or fate, or
man's carelessness, or hell's malevolence; but that
perhaps God is perfecting our adaptability to comfort and
succor others.
Are there not some in your circle to
whom you naturally betake yourself in times of trial and
sorrow? They always seem to speak the right word, to give
the very counsel you are longing for; you do not realize,
however, the cost which they had to pay ere they became so
skillful in binding up gaping wounds and drying tears. But
if you were to investigate their past history you would
find that they have suffered more than most. They have
watched the slow untwisting of some silver cord on which
the lamp of life hung. They have seen the golden bowl of
joy dashed to their feet, and its contents spilt. They
have stood by ebbing tides, and drooping gourds, and noon
sunsets; but all this has been necessary to make them the
nurses, the physicians, the priests of men. The boxes that
come from foreign climes are clumsy enough; but they
contain spices which scent the air with the fragrance of
the Orient. So suffering is rough and hard to bear; but it
hides beneath it discipline, education, possibilities,
which not only leave us nobler, but perfect us to help
others. Do not fret, or set your teeth, or wait doggedly
for the suffering to pass; but get out of it all you can,
both for yourself and for your service to your generation,
according to the will of God.
Suffering educates sympathy; it softens
the spirit, lightens the touch, hushes the tread; it
accustoms the spirit to read from afar the symptoms of an
unspoken grief; it teaches the soul to tell the number of
the promises, which, like the constellations of the arctic
circle, shine most brilliantly through the wintry night;
it gives to the spirit a depth, a delicacy, a wealth of
which it cannot otherwise possess itself. Through
suffering he has become perfected.
His sufferings have purchased our
pardon. He tasted death for every man. But his sufferings
have done more in enabling him to understand
experimentally, and to allay, with the tenderness of one
who has suffered, all the griefs and sorrows that are
experienced by the weakest and weariest of the great
family of God.
So far, then, from rejecting him
because of his sorrows, this shall attract us the more
quickly to his side. And, amid our glad songs, this note
shall predominate: "It behoved Christ to
suffer." "In the midst of the throne, a Lamb as
it had been slain."
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