SUNDAY COLUMN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 65, Issue 246, 28 July 1945, Page 5

SUNDAY COLUMN

DEVOTIONAL READING. (Conducted by the Ashburton Ministers’ Association .) THE LAW OF SACRIFICE. “Except a corn of wheat, fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.” —John xii. 24. In His reply to the Greeks who came seeking Him just before the cricifixion Christ stated the principle on which He was laying down His life. He lived by faith. But His faith in God included faith in the principles on which God rules His world, it was these, m part, ne had come to reveal, iney were the underlying structure of the universe. One ot these was the law ol sacrifice. He saw it working out in every direction. It is the law by which to find we must lose, ■ to become ourselves we must deny ourselves. Ihe way to life is by a kind of dying. The process was at work in the golden fields of corn which He saw sninmg in the sunlight. From this He took His illustration. “Except a corn oi when fall into the ground and die, it. abideth alone.” On this principle He went resolutely to the Cross. He could have escaped that Cross had He chosen to do so. But had He done so, there would have been no New Testament, no Christian Church, and none of these/ thousand times ten thousand who have owed to Him their very souls. It was out oi that grave in the garden that St. Paul came, and St. Francis, John Wesley, David Livingstone and a host oi others whose hearts have been the seed-plots of all the goodness this world knows. Christ knew there could be no other way to His throne in men’s hearts. This law of. sacrifice does not only apply to Him. Calvary was unique because He was unique. But the law of sacrifice is inescapable. None of us'can by-pass Calvary in some form, and reach the fulness of life. The law oi sacrifice applies to business success. It applies to success in all the arts. If a man would be a great musician or poet or writer, he must pay .the inevitable price. As a matter of fact no one can escape sacrifice of some kind. If we demand life on the plane of pleasure or self-gratification, we must renounce the life of the spirit. The one question is not whether or not we shall sacrifice. It is on what altar we will lay down our 'offering. It is the question what we will sacrifice. It is in the region of the spirit that the law of sacrifice applies most fully; for the Bible definition of life is that it is the life of the spirit. It consists in the activities of duty, righteousness, service and above all of love. For loving is living. , . Up to a point, duty can be joy, though that does not exclude sacrifice. But there will come .a point where selfinterest, personal inclination and the like, will clash with duty or right and we must choose. Someone complained the other day that the world, is not arranged for hon'est people. Lies and dishonesty seem to pay. - It is hard to imagine how the world could be so arranged as to make honesty and duty always the most convenient and profitable things. “The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.” There will always he some dying to be done, if God and truth are to be served. It is the same with love. There are cases where we love so deeply and are so fully bound up in the interests of others that to give ourselves wholly to their care is happiness. The joy of heaven will be like that. Every true mother knows this happiness in her selfless devotion to her children. Someone remarked to a girl who gave all her spare time and money to caring for a crippled sister, that she was carrying a heavy burden. Quick as a flash the answer came, “She is not a burden. She is a privilege.” But while We remain in the body there will be times when the pleasure and ease we must give up for the sake of love will bring the pain of wistful regret. There may be some battles with our rebellious longings. “Every human kindness,” wrote William Blake, “is a little death in the Divine image. Because Christ loved men so in a sinful world, their malice thrust more deeply into His heart than the spear that drew His blood and the thorns that pierced His brow. So it will be with us. There is no other way if love is to have its royal way. Jesus spoke of entering into life maimed. There are times When self-denial may seem a kind of mutilation. But the alternative is sterility, frustration and futility. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone.”

This is the hard road that many of us are walking to-day. Some are walking it in actual physical pain and death. They might find it difficult to say why they know that they must go and why they must suffer. But deep in their hearts there is the instinctive feeling that to refuse to carry this burden, even at the risk of all, would be to stultify their own souls. There are others of us who carry little of the physical burden of war, but the love that binds us to those who have gone brings its own agony to the spirit. We may rebel at times. Were it not better not to love a.t all than offer to this cruel world the most sensitive tendrils of the heart? It was for such as we that Christ went to His Cross. The finest fruit is never reaped in this world. It blossoms only in‘the sunlight of another world. To that world of immortality it is the gate. For there is nothing lives but something dies. , And there is nothing dies but something lives.

It was to give us courage and faith to walk the hard road that Christ carried His Cross on the Sorrowful Way. It was that He might join us there. The first fruit of sacrifice is that we know Him in the fellowship of His suffering; and that is to know Him in the power of His Resurrection.