CHRIST SUPREME CREATOR OF OUR WEALTH. 311 glorious sunshine. The brotherhood of man He disclosed has abolished, or is abolishing, the old despotisms and enmities, the tyrannies of rank and power, and is slowly awaking the affections that shall link in subtle alliance the most distant and dissimilar and estranged families of earth. Maternity has become a higher and more sacred thing since Jesus called Mary mother; and since He loved and was loved of woman, womanhood, to a degree that had been unintelligible to the purest of the ancients, has been ennobled, honoured, loved with the chaste love that at once creates and graces the home. The watchwords of human free dom and progress, the ameliorative agencies that are in dark places doing battle with the causes and the issues of our human ills, the ideals that are evoking our best ambitions and working out our highest civilizations, are either directly of His creating or find in Him their ultimate occasion and source. And if such has been His action, has He not by His poverty made us rich, formed the elements, the organizing principles, that are building up the commonwealth of man? But hitherto we have been discussing only one side of His enriching action-that which relates to the forms of our being, individual and collective, realized in time. Yet behind this there is a deeper and richer action still. His action has been regenerative of the spirit, creative, re-creative through and through. The man who is in Christ finds old things passed away, all things become new: God no terror, but a trusted Father; the future no horror of great darkness, but a loved home of light; man no enemy to be watched and spoiled, but a brother to be honoured and served. The salvation Christ brings is no fancy, but a glorious reality attested by the consciousness of all the Christian men who have lived or still live. It is a state in which man is rescued from sin, where its power over and in him is broken, where he lives at peace with God, justified before conscience and law, possessed of the virtues, adorned with the graces that make him a whole, which means a holy man. Men who know that state to be theirs stand above the limits of time, know themselves to be citizens of heaven, naturalized members of its commonwealth, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. "The riches of Christ" in this sphere of action we may not attempt to describe; they are too "unsearchable." Yet there is one way in which we may as at a glance see and measure their extent and variety—as reflected in the consciousness of the saved, the hearts of His people. Think what He has been and is to those who have lived and yet live by faith in Him. Look at this moment over England, over the continents of the East and West, and what see you ? Millions of men and women burdened with sin, laden with sorrow, troubled with the anxieties and weariness of inconspicuous and uneventful human life, possessed of the joys too common to be noted, the hopes too familiar to cheer, have met or are meeting to praise His name, to feel for an hour that shall sanctify days penetrated with a new sense of the mercy of God, lifted into fellowship with Him and into participation in His eternity. To-morrow, when the tide of busy life rolls high and strong through our streets, it may seem as if for the time His reign were over; but in lone garrets where weakness struggles with want, the knowledge of His presence is more than strength, in MAN CONFESSES WHAT HE OWES. 313 rooms made dark by the shadow of death, His face sheds light about the spirit, gives comfort and a courage that fears no evil. He is active every moment, and at the touch of His hand eyes red with weeping over sin or loss grow clear and calm, men tempted to evil turn to good, and those sick of the mean ambitions of the Exchange or the Senate or society are born into a nobler manhood by the faith of the Son of God. Turn now towards the past, and ask whether any consciousness has been so rich, and varied in its riches, as the consciousness of obligation to Christ. Here come toward us an army of great Thinkers, led by Paul the Apostle, bringing in their ranks fathers and schoolmen, reformers and statesmen, philosophers and divines, men who by arduous thought have builded systems, striven to interpret the universe, to spell out the mysteries of the Divine nature, to read the riddle of the human; and they come confessing that the spring of all their action, the one point that shed light into the darkness, order into the confusions of being, was the knowledge of Christ. There follow an immense host of Poets, headed by the great masters of the Christian epic: the sad and banished Florentine who set before us in measures of wondrous music the hell that was a pit of darkness and house of pain, and the heaven which was a mount of light and home of joy; and the still sadder Englishman, whose "soul was like a star and dwelt apart," whose voice had a sound as of the sea and they bring with them out of many ages and lands and tongues the singers of sweet songs, giving words and wings to the faith and hope, the penitence and joy, the aspirations and the peace of the saved soul; and as the host advances it breaks into a hymn in praise of Him who woke their spirits to music by filling them with the harmonies of His own rich love. And who are these that stand beside the Poets? Painters, are they not? The men who made our modern art, and made it so full of light and tenderness and love, an interpretation of the grace of heaven as it strove to create the graces of earth. Builders, too, are there, men who so believed and loved that they made the very stone quick with their faith and affection; and there, too, are the Masters of music, men who heard harmonies human speech could not utter, and translated them into a language so woven of multitudinous sweet sounds that the many-voiced orchestra alone can express it. And what do all these say? To whom do they trace their inspiration? Whence have they their sublimest theme? Do they not, with the poets and thinkers, the saved and the saintly of all Christian ages and tongues, join with one accord to ascribe all unto Him who, "though rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich"? |