The Attraction of the Cross # 4

The Attraction of the Cross # 4

Conceive then, my hearers, the effect of this wonder of wonders upon the minds of the poor pagans, who, after having been conversant all their lives with nothing but the despicable ignorance of a barbarous state, hear for the first time of the death of the Son of God. "This this," said our missionary, Ebner, speaking of the wild Bushmen, "tis this that excites their admiration, melts them into tears, and breaks their hearts." If then, you would arrest the savage of the desert; if you would detain him from the chase; if you would rivet him to the spot, and hold him in the power of a spell that is altogether new to him - do not begin with cold abstractions of moral duties or theological truths; but tell him of Christ crucified, and you shall see his once vacant countenance enlivened by the feelings of a new and deep interest, and the teardrop glistening in the eye unused to weep; and shall witness the evil spirit departing out of the man, as he drops one by one from his hand, the murderous weapons with which he lately would have sought your life.

As an exhibition of unparalleded love, the Cross melts and captivates the heart. The Cross has been beautifully denominated the noon-tide of everlasting love, the meridian splendor of eternal mercy. The sacred writers never seem to labor so much for expression a when setting forth this mystery. "Herein, is love" - as if, until God gave His Son, men had never seen anything that deserved the name of love. John calls it the "manifestation of love" - as if nothing more now remained to be known of love in any age or any world. And Paul speaks of the Cross as the commendation of love, as if nothing more could now ever be said upon the subject. Jesus Christ, in describing this act of divine mercy, uses this remarkable emphasis, "God so loved the world," importing that this is a demonstration of love which will send rapturous surprise to the remotest world that Omnipotence has formed.

In short, all we can say of this love which was demonstrated at the Cross, is that it is ineffable; and that all we know of it, that it passes knowledge. Now, my brethren, there is a mighty power in love. He that knows all the mechanism of the human mind, has told us, that "the cords of love are the bands of a man." That heart, which wraps itself up in the covering of a stubborn and reckless despair against the attacks of severity, like the flower which closes its petals at the approach of the angry blast - will put forth all the better parts of its nature to the smiles of love, like the tendrils of the sea anemone, when it feels the first wave of the returning tide upon its native rock.

Think then of the attraction of the Cross - when the love which it exhibits is seen and felt by a mind under the influence of the Spirit of God. What was it,k my hearers, that melted your hard and frozen hearts into penitence, and gratitude, and love? What was it that drew you away from your sins? What was it that brought you as willing captives to the feet of Jesus? It was the love of God beseeching you upon the summit of Calvary, and with open arms bidding you welcome to the heart of Deity! Everything else united to repel you; the terrors of justice petrified you with horror, and despair was binding you more closely than ever to your sins - until divine mercy appeared and told you there was hope for the guilty - in the Cross of Christ!

One of the prevailing features of all idolatry is cruelty; and for this plain reason. When man lost the knowledge of God, he cast his deities in the mold of his own imagination, and animated them with the dispositions of his own heart. Go, Christian missionary, to the dark places of the earth, which are full of habitations of cruelty, and to those who have never associated any other idea with Deity than inexorable terror - proclaim that God is love; and by all the soft allurements of heavenly grace, draw them away from the hideous frowning objects of their homage - to the Father of Mercies.

As a system of meditation, it allays the fears of a guilty conscience, and draws the soul into confidence in God. History informs us that the greater part of the religion of all idolatrous nations, both ancient and modern, has consisted of denigrating rites of expiation - a plain proof, in my opinion, that no nation ever considered penitence and obedience to be sufficient to satisfy the demands of an offended deity. So far as the testimony of history and experience goes, the idea of "retributive justice", as an attribute of the Divine Being - seems far more easily deducible by a sinner, from the light of nature, than that of "free mercy". What, I ask, is the meaning of all those bloody sacrifices, and rites, and penances, which have been multiplied without number in the ritual of idolatry? They are the efforts of a guilty but blinded conscience, groping, in the hour of its extremity, after some atonement on which to roll the burden of its sins, and seeking some satisfaction to the justice it has offended, by which its fears may be allayed. How shall man be just with God?" Here, then, is the attraction of the Cross - it removes every obstacle out of the way of the sinner's approach to God; it puts an authorized and perfect satisfaction to God's justice in his hand, with which he may venture to the very throne, and gives him that boldness which arises from a perception that God has not more effectually provided for the sinner's salvation, than He has for the glory of His own attributes, government, and laws. In short, that God is both "just, and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus."

The doctrine of the Cross is the only certain method of improving the moral condition of the world. And what is it which, at this moment, is kindling the intellect, softening the manners, sanctifying the hearts and purifying the lives of the numerous sons of Ham? It is the faithful saying, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." 

~John Angell James~

(continued with # 5)