SUNDAY HEADING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13453, 1 June 1907, Page 4 (Supplement)

SUNDAY HEADING.

THE MEANING,OF THE CROSS.

BY REV. JAMES LYALL.

"We preach Christ crucified."—l. Cor. i. 23. " The word of the Cross is to them that are perishing foolishness; but unto us which are being saved it is. the power of God. - I. Cor. i. 18.

"I determined not to know anything among you. save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified."—l. Cor. ii. 2.

"But far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. through which the world hath been crucified unto me. and I unto the world."-Gal. vi.- 14.

' It took a man of more than human fearlessness and courage to utter words like I these, in the age m which the groat apostle lived. # '■■'■ It was an age of wisdom. The Greeks sought after wisdom. Greece had her philosophers and philosophies, her art and architecture. . It, was anago of power. Rome occupied among the nations of the earth a place of unchallenged supremacy; her political power was colossal, her armies were invincible, her gods were the arena, and the racecourse was her worship— worship of physical strength and force. - Jr. was .an age of appalling religious declension. Tho Jewish Church had-become a groat cold ccclesiasticism, preserving the form of a life that had gone, and looking forward to emancipation from the dominion of 'Rome and the re-establishment of the Jewish kingdom, rather than to a spiritual kingdom established try the agency of a cross. iv ' ; It was also an age of absolute alienation from God. Never, perhaps, had there been a more debauched ago ill the world's history. . Rome stank with lust, society __ was corrupt from one end to the other. Every man • had turned to his own way. At a time when God might have come in flaming fire and destroyed the earth, as Ho destroyed tho Cities of the Plain, Ho opened the-= heavens and gave us Jesus. In the fulness of time, when man was at his worst, the Cross was erected outsido the walls of Jerusalem, and messengers wore sent to proclaim its saving efficacy and power. /Little wonder Paul wrote, for the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a .stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." History is repeating herself to-day. With all our boasted advancement and enlightenment, we have largely gone back to the days of Greece and Rome, back to the worship of the intellectual and the physical. Education and culture have almost taken the place of God. The heroes of tho hour are men who have scored the highest figures on the cricket field, left some brutal football conflict injured for life, or come in first in the race on some favourite horse. It is these things that have captured and claimed the interest of modern life. Witness our churches wellnigh destitute of men on Sundays, while from fifty to a hundred thousand of them may be found almost any time watching with keenest interest the- race, the football or cricket match. .

It took courage to preach a cross in tho first century; it takes courage to preach a cross in the twentieth. For years modern culture has been treating the preaching of the cross with contempt, and the men who have been faithful to the old evangel of salvation through shedding of blood have been called " out of date, unintellectual expositors of a religion of the shambles." And yet, if there is any such thing as understanding New., Testament language, the message of every true ambassador of Christ is the cross; not the preaching of Jesus merely; there may be much of that without a cross; but the preaching of Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. In tho vision of tho Risen Christ that came to persecuting Saul on the Damascus Road, there- camo also the vision of the cross, and that vision transformed the Jewish persecutor into the- mighty Apostle of tho Gentiles. Concerning this cross he could never again be silent; it became the centre, tho soul, and the dynamic power of his preaching, the inspiration of his life. For years now the Church has been crying with strong supplication and tears for a Revival. May it not come with a return to tho PREACHING OP THE CROSS? Someone in this connection has emphasised the great fact that Calvary preceded I Pentecost. Mrs. Pcnn Lewis, who has been I in the midst of the great Welsh movement ! from its inception, says in her book describing the Revival, ,r What seems to me to lie at its heart is the unveiling of the —unchanging love as it shone and : shines from tho throbbing mysteries 'of the Cross." The Holy Ghost in Pentecostal power is bearing witness to the Cross, and, as in tho days of old, the cry is going up, "What must I do to be saved?" The Cross, not education; tho Cross, not legislation; the Cro33, not reformation the Cross, not religion, in the matchless wisdom of God, is to save tho world and usher in the glorious year of Jubilee. There are two sides to the Crossa bright side and a dark side. • I want to deal briefly first with the dark side, and then lead you on to the glorious brightness of the other side. |

In the first place, the Cross confirms the. great fact of human guilt and sin, if indeed it need any confirmation. Paul savs. For I delivered unto you, first of all, that which also I received, how that wmst died for our sins according to tho Scriptures" (I. Cor. xv. 3). IT WAS SIN THAT MADE THE CBOSS OF CHRIST A NECESSITY A few years ago in the harbour of Havannah, in Cuba, a Spaniard touched an : elecfno button, exploding a mine under the great American warship The Maine, destroying the ship, and sending numbers of the pride of America's navy into a swift eternity, I'he touching of that.. button

brought on the Moody Spini-h-Amori-,,, 1 war. and set every civiliwl ('}ovcrnm*nt i. I motion. Back yonder six thousand "«L» '' X ss ago, one act of disobedience in the C,L r ■' P of Eden ushered in sin. with oil its «££ 1 Cant guilt and pain and miwy brol If 1 ' jthe rest of God, and compelled Him to ' :} '' 11 j begin the stupendous work of human r » H Idemption. |p j_ It was sin that made the Cross a t)t^ t WL pity. The denial of sin is the denial 0 ] »' the Cross in its groat centra! meaning m 1 Modern Christian Science denies the fa c{ §§f of sin, therefore denies the new! 61 » "f\, Cross, and tint* in spite of all its claim to .'■•'■ if be Christian, stands • * i§ THE COLOSSAL BLASPiIEMT OF THE AGE. ■ ' jtl j anti-Christian in its very essence and core '("' the very smoke cf the pit. If sin is only €■ a myth, or something in the imagination Kj that may become non-existent by »om< | j gymnastic feat of the intellect, then the ill j whole fabric of the sacrificial work oi the If Cross crumble* into rum. sl| But no undeceived man Or woman be ml lieves this. We know that -in is ind«s> ( ; B] an awful fact— fact in national life, j„ m social life, in family life, in individual life - §1 [And every man, who faces intelligently j, :k j Si honestly the great fact-; of his own sit", a g, t m guilt and ill-desert, knows his need „.- a 11 way'of escape, and turns with a glad ho\ti |f ! to the uplifted Cross to find his need mij>- fi I plied. ; m Oh. why was He there, as the Rearer of jjn 'if ! If on Jesus my guilt was not laid? ' ' If [Or why from His side flowed the sin-cUani- if. ing blood !»;. If His dying my debt has not paid? B In the- second place, the Cross reveals w j the enormous cost, of sin. j| Peter writes: "Forasmuch as ye know If that ye were not redeemed with corruptible I i tiling's, ns silver and gold, but with the If precious blood of Christ, a? of a lamb with- 1 out blemish and without spot" (I. p t ef , |: I 113. 19). ' I j President Finney says- somewhere that ; I 1 SIX IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE THING IX THIS ■ CX! VERSE. I j Wo have only to remember the have* if I wrought by sin to acknowledge tlio truth § of this statement. Sin has ushered in death If and dug every grave. Sin has been* the i cause of all tho sorrow and misery, and , K tears and broken hearts, and horrible sick- ft nesses that the world has ever known, of I all the war. and strife, and bloodshed i i a t ~ 'If have devastated Cod's fair earth. S : n l a , ■ • if I opened every public-house and brothel ate" ; 9 gambling den that are ruining the fouls o( 1 ' men to-day. B j The world is paying heavily for and 8 groan tig under this weary, crushing weight ■ i of sin. But not till .we stand before the i ! tragedy of Calvary do we get tho true con if ccption of sin's fearful cost. I It cost God His only Son. |. It cost Christ the scourging, the buffet', »| ! ling, the spitting, the hiding of the Father's • I | face, tlio shame, and agony, ami pain of 1 tho Cross. _ " •'■. i Tlio cost of sin is represented by the fa 'death of Christ. If every angel and arch- I' angel, every cherub ami seraph, had poured B out their lives in one mighty sacrificial tide m ! for sin, it would not have ransomed » If single lost son of Adam. Nothing but tho B life-blood of tho Son of Man could meet tho If demands of the justice and holiness of Cod, ' I and this is what gives the Cross its value. §1 Jesus the Son of Cod died upon it. II There was no other Rood enough 11 to pay tho price of sin; * - m He only could unlock the gate ? II Of Heaven and let us in. |§§