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ALONE
WITH GOD
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Spiritual Answers and Reasons
for Faith |
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CHRIST'S
MERCIFUL AND FAITHFUL HELP
" merciful and faithful high-priest in things
pertaining to God." HEBREWS ii. 17.
DOST thou wonder that thy
Lord was tempted and sorrowful? It is indeed the marvel of
eternity; and yet not so marvelous, when we consider the
beings whom he elected to succor, help, and save, and
of whom each of us is one.
Had he chosen to lay hold of fallen
angels, with a view of raising them from their lost
estate, he would without doubt have taken upon himself
their nature, and descended into the pit; identifying
himself with their miseries, and paving, by his
sufferings, a pathway across the great fixed gulf which
intervenes between their lost estate and Paradise. But
verily he took not hold of angels, but of the seed of
Abraham; and had no alternative therefore but to
assimilate himself in all points to the nature of those
whom, in infinite mercy and grace, he brothered.
There are two things thou needest,
reader; and not thou only, but all men, reconciliation,
and succor in the hour of temptation. These
instinctive cravings of the soul are as mighty and as
irrepressible as the craving of the body for sleep or
food; and they are as evident amid our luxury and
refinement as in primeval forests, or beside the historic
rivers of antiquity-the Nile, the Indus, the Euphrates.
To meet these two needs, men have
constituted one of their number a priest.
That word has an ominous sound to our ears, because it has
been associated with immoralities and cruelty. The world
has never seen more unscrupulous or rapacious tyrants than
its priests, whether of Baal or Moloch, of Judaism or the
Papacy. All through the ages it has seemed impossible for
men to receive power in the spiritual realm without
abusing it to the injury of those who sought their help.
Study the history of the priesthood, which murdered Christ
because he threw too strong a light upon its hypocrisies
and villainies, and you have the history of every
priestcraft which has darkened the world with crime, and
saturated its soil with the blood of the noblest and
saintliest of men.
And yet the idea of the priest is
a natural and a beautiful one. It is natural for
men who are conscious of sin barring their access into the
presence of a holy God, and demanding sacrifice in order
to peace, to say to one of their fellows, "Our hands
are stained with blood, and grimed with toil; our garments
spotted with pollution and dust; our lives too busy for us
to spare time for those rites which alone can fit the
sinner to stand before the eye of God: do for us what we
cannot do for ourselves; prepare thyself by holy rite and
vigil and fasting from sin, so as to be able to stand in
the presence-chamber of the All-Holy; and when thou hast
acquired the right of audience with him, speak for us,
atone for us, make reconciliation for our sins; and then
come forth to us, succoring and blessing those who cannot
attain to thy position, but must ever struggle as best
they may with the strong, rough, bad world in which they
are doomed to live."
This seems the underlying thought of
the vast system which has built temples in every land,
reared altars on every soil, and constituted a priesthood
amid the most degraded as well as the most civilized races
of mankind.
And there is great beauty in
the work and ministry of a true priest. Not always engaged
in the darker work of sacrificing flocks of fleecy sheep,
by which alone, in those rude days, the cost of sin could
be computed; the true priest would have other, and,
perhaps, more congenial work. He would be the shepherd of
the timid souls around him; listening to confessions
whispered over the heads of the dumb victims; feeling
compassion for erring and wayward ones; comforting those
who were passing through scenes of sorrow, till faces
shadowed with tears began to gleam with holy light;
arresting the proud hand of the oppressor, as Ambrose did
in lawless days, to rescue the poor from the mailed blow.
Never studying self-interest; never consuting ease or
pleasure or gain; never resting while one poor wanderer
was away in the snowdrift or on the wild. Yes, and more:
he would be the spokesman of souls, praying for those who
did not pray for themselves; praying for those who knew
not what or how to ask; interceding for the whole race of
man. Ah! how often must such a one have been compelled by
the pressure of the burden to go apart from the busy
crowds to some lone spot, that he might pour out before
God the long litany of need and sorrow and temptation
which had been poured into his heart. Lovely ideal; ah,
how seldom realized!
All this is Jesus Christ, and
more. Words fail indeed to say all that he is in
himself, or all that he can be to those that trust him.
And it is because of this that he is able to give such
blessed help to all who need it. Let us consider that
help.
IT Is SOVEREIGN AND UNEXPECTED HELP.
Angels fell. Once they were the peers of heaven. They sang
its songs, plucked its flowers of amaranth, and drank its
tranquil bliss. They loved its King, and served him, like
the sunbeam, with unpolluted brightness and unswerving
direction. But, alas! they fell from heaven to hell. And
for them there is no help, so far as we can learn.
"God taketh not hold of angels."
But he has set his heart upon us, the
poor children of dust, the creatures of the transient
moments of time, who had fallen by the same sin of
self-will. Here is a theme for meditation! We cannot
pierce the mystery, or understand its full import. But we
may, with wondering faith and joy, accept the chalice,
brimming with unmerited, unexpected, undeserved grace, and
drain its draughts of bliss.
IT IS HUMAN HELP. " Made like unto
his brethren." The peculiarity of this phrase
testifies to Christ's pre-existence and glory, and
indicates how great a stoop on his part it involved ere he
could be like man. He had to be made like
man, i.e., he was not like man in the
original constitution of his being. We cannot solve the
mystery of the holy incarnation. And yet the thought of it
has never been quite foreign to the heart of man. Many a
Greek and Hindu myth rested on an instinctive craving for
the presence of God in human flesh, which became parent to
the belief that such a thing had been, and might be again.
Even in the highlands of Galatia, the most ready
explanation of the miracles of Paul was that the gods had
come down in the likeness of men.
But though there be such a profound
mystery resting on this subject, yet the union of the
Almighty with a human life is at least not more
incomprehensible than the union of a spiritual, unmaterial
principle, as the soul, with a material organism, as the
human body. When the secrets of our own nature have been
unraveled, it will be time enough for us to demand of the
Almighty that, when he assumes our nature, lie should
disrobe himself of all mystery. How exquisite is the
arrangement that God's help should come to us through the
Son of Man; that our Helper should shed true human tears,
and feel true human pity Jew though he was, child of the
most exclusive and intolerant of peoples, yet the humanity
which is greater than Judaism makes us oblivious to all
else than that lie is our Brother.
IT IS HIGH-PRIESTLY HELP. The full
meaning of this phrase will appear as we proceed. It is
sufficient to say here, that all that men have sought to
realize in human priesthoods, but in vain, is realized
with transcendent beauty in him. Nor is there any way of
weaning men from the human priesthoods which deceive, but
to present to them the all-glorious, immaculate priesthood
of Christ.
It is of little use only to denounce
the priests that are coming back to Protestant England
through a thousand covert channels, or the people who go
to them. There is a craving in their heart which impels
them. It is of no use to fight against nature. But satisfy
it; give it its true nutriment; supply its wants with
reality; and it will be content to drop the false for the
true, the paste diamond for the Golconda pebbles, the
human for the divine. Men must have a priest; and they are
going back to the mummeries of Rome, because there has
been too scanty a presentation in our pulpits of the
priesthood of Jesus.
IT IS MERCIFUL AND FAITHFUL HELP. When
we are in need, we want help wedded with mercy.
The patient in the infirmary does not like to be
treated as a broken watch. Oh that he were at home again,
to be nursed by the soft hands of his mother, which ever
feel so skillful and gentle and soft! We need merciful
help, which does not upbraid, is not in too great a hurry
to listen, and gladly takes all extenuating circumstances
into account. Such mercy is in the heart of Jesus. And his
help is ever faithful, too. This word has a
fine tint of meaning, almost lost in our translation,
giving the idea of one who runs up at the first cry of
distress. He neither slumbers nor sleeps. He watches us
with a gaze which is not for a moment diverted from us. He
sees us through the storm. He sits beside the molten
metal. He will help us right early -i.e., when the day
breaks. You may be bereft of all power of consecutive
thought, unable to utter a single intelligible sentence,
frantic with agony and remorse; but if you can only moan,
he will instantly respond. "He will be very gracious
unto thee at the voice of thy cry."
IT IS HELP BASED ON RECONCILIATION FOR
SIN. Sin is one of the greatest facts in our history. It
is impossible to ignore it. You cannot explain man unless
you take it into account. For this the world has been
covered with the apparatus of sacrifice; and the cry has
rung in a monotone of despair, "How shall man be just
with God?"
But Jesus met the demands of
conscience, echoing those of a broken law, when on
Calvary, as High-Priest, he offered himself as victim, and
made an all-sufficient, satisfactory, and complete
sacrifice for the sin of the world.
Burdened one, groaning under the load
of sin, remember that he bare thy sins in his own body on
the tree. Approach the holy God, reminding him of that
fact, and daring on account of it to stand unabashed and
accepted in his sight.
IT IS SYMPATHETIC HELP FOR THE TEMPTED.
" Them that are tempted." Within that circle we
all stand. Each is tempted in subtler, if not in grosser,
forms; in extraordinary, if not in ordinary, ways. You
have been trying, oh, so hard, to be good; but have met
with some sudden gust, and been overcome. Tempted to
despair! Tempted to yield to Potiphar's wife! Tempted to
become a brute! No lawn without the fowler's snare! No day
without its sorrow! No night without its noisome
pestilence! No rose without its thorn!
Do we not need succor? Certainly; and
he is able to succor the tempted, because he has suffered
the very worst that temptation can do. Not that there was
ever one symptom or thought of yielding; yet suffering to
the point of extreme anguish, beneath the test.
O sufferers, tempted ones, desolate and
not comforted, lean your heads against the breast of the
God-Man, whose feet have trodden each inch of your thorny
path; and whose experiences of the power of evil well
qualify him to strengthen you to stand, to lift you up if
you have fallen, to speak such words as will heal the ache
of the freshly gaping wound. If he were impassive, and had
never wept or fought in the Garden shadows, or cried out
forsaken on the cross, we had not felt him so near as we
can do now in all hours of bitter grief.
O matchless Saviour, on whom God our
Father has laid our help, we can dispense with human
sympathy, with priestly help, with the solace and stay of
many a holy service; but thou art indispensable to us, in
thy life, and death, and resurrection, and brotherhood,
and sympathizing intercession at the throne of God!
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