Jesus admits us into the inner circle of friendship. He gives us the one rarest token of friendship, that is, a task to do for our Friend"s sake.
He asks us to go out to all men, and tell them about His love and sacrifice for them. And He asks that everything we have be held and used for this sacred friendship trust. Are we being true to our Friend"s trust? Is there more stored away for ourselves than is being sent out on His errand? Is there any discoloration on our gold? Anything that looks like rust, a dull-red color--ah, it looks strangely like the color--the stain--of blood.
Is Judas so lonely, after all? He coupled a token of friendship with a betrayal of his Friend"s trust. In his heart he meant far less than the act actually involved. Is he so much alone?
"The latest years shall tremble hearing this And burn for human shame unto the end, That one of us betrayed the tryst his Friend Would keep with G.o.d. A sign that none might miss
He named--the pledge of love. The soul"s abyss, Christ saw, the heart of night, the purse, the end; Knew all, a Man, and knowing stui could bend With soul unpoisoned to receive the kiss.
Before the mult.i.tude have I kist Thee Fresh come from my blood-barter--thou but come From intercession for all souls--and me.
And, mocking Love Divine, amazed and dumb, I learn Love"s deathlessness, and trembling press The lips that kiss away my faithlessness."[37]
Sacrifice
One Hank Over For the Candle.
Sin"s Healing Shadow.
The Underground Way into Life.
A Rare Harvest.
The Fellowship of Scars.
"Won"t You Save Me?"
Sacrifice
One Hank Over For the Candle.
The light of a common candle in the window of a little cottage near the coast shone far out over the sea. It was up north of Scotland, in one of the Orkney Islands. Near the window sat a frail, gray-haired woman with cheery, thoughtful face. She was busy working at her spinning-wheel, and watching the candle, turning now and again to trim it. All night long she sat at the spinning-wheel and watching the candle. Fishermen out on the water, heading for home, knew that light could be counted on, and came safely in, past all the dangers of their coast.
For more than fifty years that woman tended her little lighthouse. When she was a young girl there had been a wild storm, and her father, out in his fisherman"s boat, lost his life. There were no sh.o.r.e-lights. His boat had struck a huge, dangerous rock called Lonely Rock, and been wrecked.
The father"s body was found in the morning washed up on the sh.o.r.e. She watched by her father"s body, as was the habit of her people, until it was laid away. Then she laid down on her bed and slept the day through. When night came she rose, lit a candle, put it in the window, drew up her spinning-wheel, and began her night vigil for the unknown out at sea.
All night long, and all her life long, her vigil of love and light continued. From youth to old age, through winter and summer, storm and calm, fog and clear, that humble lighthouse beacon failed not. Each night she spun so many hanks of yarn for her daily bread, and one hank over for the candle. She turned night into day, reversing the whole habit of her life, and holding every other thing subject to her self-imposed task of love. And through the years many a fisherman out at sea, and many an anxious woman watching by hearth and crib, sent up heart-felt thanks to G.o.d for that little, steady light. And many a life was saved, of which no record could be kept.
That tells the whole story of sacrifice. A need, n.o.body to meet it; the need pa.s.sing into an emergency; and that into the tragedy of an unmet emergency; a heart sore torn to bleeding by the tragedy thrust bitterly home; then sacrifice, lifelong, that others might be saved where her loved one was lost, and still others spared what she herself suffered. And that story has been repeated with endless variations, and is being repeated, in every land, on every mission-field, home and foreign, and in almost every home of all the world.
Sin"s Healing Shadow.
Sacrifice has come to be a law of life. Wherever there is sin there will be a call for sacrifice. For sin makes need, and need intensifies into emergency. And need and emergency mean sacrifice thrust upon some one in peril. And they call for sacrifice, volunteered by some one, who would save the man in peril. And wherever there are true men and women, as well as need, there will be sacrifice.
And sin is everywhere. Even nature is full of evidence of a bad break in all of its processes. The finger-marks of decay and death are below and above and all around in all its domain. That is sin"s unmistakable ear-mark. Man"s mental powers, and his loss of a full knowledge of his powers, tell the same story. And so there is need. Everywhere you turn need"s pathetic face, drawn and white, looks piteously into yours, pleading mutely for help.
And so there is sacrifice. Sacrifice is sin"s healing shadow. It follows sin at every turn, binding up its wounds, pouring in the oil and wine of its own life, and taking the hurt victims into its own warm heart. Nothing worth while has ever been done without sacrifice. Every good thing done cost somebody his life. The life was given out with a wrench under some sharp tug. Or it was given in the slower, more painful, more taxing way of being lingeringly given out through years of steadfast doing or enduring.
Every man who has done something worth while for others has spilled some of his life-blood into it. His work and name may have become known. Or he may belong to the larger number of blessed faithfuls whose names are unknown here, but treasured faithfully above. Either way, the tinging red of his life is upon the thing he did. The nations that are freest cost most in the making, in the lives of men. Every church, and every mission station, has had to use red mortar as its walls went up.
Every bit of advance ground gained for liberty and truth has been stained with the life-blood of the advance-guard. You can depend upon it that whatever you are to do that will really help must have a bit of your own self, your very life in it. Immortality of action comes only by the infusion of human blood.
Sacrifice attends us faithfully from the cradle to the body"s last resting-place. The giving of one"s self for others begins with the beginning of life, and never ends till life ends. Each of us comes into life through the sacrifice of the mother who bore us. That love-service of hers would not have been a sacrifice, but only a joy, had sin"s cramping, restricting atmosphere not been breathed into all life. Now, with much pain, and great danger, and sometimes at the cost of life, it becomes a sacrifice. Yet it is a sacrifice of great sweet joy to her.
And that same spirit of sacrifice attends our baby years, and childhood experiences, and school-days, and times of sickness, and our matured years. The more faithfully those who make up your life-circle yield to the law of sacrifice, and give of themselves out to you, the finer and stronger you grow to be, and the sweeter life becomes to you. And every selfish shirking and shrinking back by some one impoverishes your life by so much.
A hush of awe comes over one"s spirit as we recall that even for the Son of G.o.d there was no exception to this law, as He took His place down among human conditions. It was by His own blood that He saved men, and saves men. It was the spilling out of His own life that brings such blessed newness of life to us. His was a living sacrifice through all the years, and then greatest when that life, so long being given, was given clean out.
That sacrifice of His stands unapproached, and can never be approached by any other. His relation to sin was different from that of all other men.
He made a sacrifice for men in a sense that no other can. Yet, while that is true, it is equally true that every man who follows Him will drink of His cup of sacrifice.
But it"s a cup of joy now, for His drinking drained out all the bitter dregs. He asks us into the inner fellowship of His suffering. The work He began isn"t yet done. He asks our help. We may fill up the measure of His sacrifice yet needed, in healing men"s wounds and in throttling sin"s power.
The Underground Way Into Life.
The request of the Greek pilgrims, that last tragic week, drew out of Jesus wondrous words about the law of sacrifice[38]. Their request made the necessity for His coming sacrifice stand out more sharply to His view--with edgy sharpness. The realness of that sacrifice of His stands out very vividly in the intensity of His feelings, of which we get only glimpses.
Listen to Him talking: "if the grain of wheat doesn"t suffer death, it lives; but it lives alone. But through death it may live in the midst of a harvest of golden grains. The man who turns away from the appeal of need will live a lonely life, both here and in the longer life. (Is there anything more pathetic and pitiable than selfish loneliness!) He who feels the sharp tug of need, and can"t resist the appeal that calls for his life-blood, rises up through that red pathway into a blessed fellowship with the lives that owe their life to his."
He goes on: "he that clingeth with strong self-love to his life will find it slipping, slipping insistently out of his fingers, leaving a dry husk of a sh.e.l.l in his tenacious clutch. But he who in the stress of the world"s emergency of need, and in the thick of the subtlest temptations to put the self-life first, treats that life as a hated enemy, to be opposed and fought, as he gives himself freely out to heal the world"s hurt, he will find all the sweets and fragrance of life coming to him. Their unspeakable refreshment will ever increase, and never leave."
Then follow the words that go so deep: "if any man would serve Me, let him come along, putting his feet into my prints. Let him come through a long Nazareth life of common toil in home and shop, then along the crowded path of glad service for others, responding to every call of need. Let him come down into the shadowed olive-grove beyond Kidron"s waters, up the bit of a hill outside a city wall, and deep down into the earth-soil of men"s needs.
"And where I am there I will surely have that faithful follower of Mine up close by my side. He shall find himself rising up out of the common earth-life into a new life of strangely strong drawing power. And, while he will be all wrapped up in love"s service, My Father will give special touches of His own hand upon his person, and upon his service."
In one of his exquisitely quiet talks, Henry Drummond used to tell the story of a famous statue in the Fine Arts Gallery of Paris. It was the work of a great genius, who, like many a genius, was very poor, and lived in a garret which served as both studio and sleeping-room.
One midnight, when the statue was just finished, a sudden frost fell upon Paris. The sculptor lay awake in his fireless garret, and thought of the still moist clay, thought how the moisture in the pores would freeze, and the dream of his life would be destroyed in a night. So the old man rose from his cot, and wrapped his bed-clothes reverently about the statue, and lay down to his sleep.
In the morning the neighbors found[B] him lying dead. His life had gone out into his work. It was saved. He was gone. But he still lived in it, and still lives in it. He saved not his life, and he found a new life in the world of his art. He that saveth his life shall surely lose it. He that gladly giveth his life up for the Master"s sake, and for men"s sake, will find a wholly new life coming to him.
A Rare Harvest.
There is a strange winsomeness about sacrifice, peculiar to itself, and peculiarly strong in its drawing power. Everywhere men acknowledge the peculiar fascination for them of the man who is not only wholly unselfish, but who utterly forgets himself in doing for others. The feeling is very common that the man in public life is chiefly concerned with what he can get out of it for himself. And when, now and then, the conviction seizes the crowd that some public man is not of that sort at all, but is devoting himself unselfishly and unsparingly to their interest, their admiration and love for him amounts to a worship and enthusiasm that knows no stint.