SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 January 1926, Page 15

SUNDAY READING.

“THE GLORY OF GOD IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST” *‘God Who commanded the light to shine out of darkness. -hath shined in our hearts to give thu light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jc-sus Christ. ’ —ll. Cor., iv., 6. (Rev. A. 11. Collins.) By the phrase, ‘’the glory of God,” Saint Paul means the character of God; the full-orbed beauty and brightness of the Eternal. That was the name given to the supernatural light which shone between the twin wings of the Cherubin, which brooded over the Ark of the Mercy Seat. That was the revelation which the Psalmist declared had been visible since the morning of creation. ‘’The heavens proclaim God’s splendour, and the sky speaks of his handiwork.’’ Then, by the phrase “the face of Jesus Christ,” the Apostle means not only tiie countenance of the Son of Man, but His personality. When Jacob met his long lost son down in Egypt, he cried “1 had not thought to see thy face,” meaning he had not expected to see Joseph himself. Moses prayed, “If Thy ]>resence go not with me,” literally “if Thy face go nor with me’’; and the answer came, “My presence,*’ literally “my face,” “shall go with thee and 1 will give thee rest.” So here, when Saint Paul says, “The light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the lace of Jesus Christ,” what he means is that the divine perfections have been manifested in the person of Christ, with a fulness and splendour, not seen anywhere else. After all the voices of Nature ana the guesses of men, and the dreams of the prophets, had been heard, it still remained true that “the world by wisdom knew not God”; and after all the great and progressive unfoldings of the Old Testament, the Father of our Spirit, was not fully known; but in Jesus Christ, God stood unveiled. From out the Temple of Christ’s flesh, the glory of Incarnate God, streamed in radiant beauty, such as Solomon's Temple never knew. For Jesus Christ possessed all the harmonies of God’s nature, all the secrets of Gods mind, all the love

of God’s .heart; and. He revealed them in a life of sinless perfection. He gave to the world the most perfect conception of Deity; and, lest it should happen in Galilee, as at Sinai, that the people “exceedingly fear and quake,” “He wrapped the Godhead in a veil of our inferior clay.” CREDENTIALS OF -MINISTRY. This “glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” Saint Paul had seen, and the effect of the vision was a changed life. Jesus Christ captured Paul’s heart, satisfied his intellect, mastered his energies, enthralled his soul, and made him Christian. Christ rose on the Apostle’s life like the sun at noon; and in presence of that all-searching light, other tapers paled their ineffectual fires. Account for it how we will, the fact remains that from the hour Christ met with Saul on the Damascus Road, he was a different and a better man. This is the point of the Apostle’s argument in this passage. He was challenged on the question of his ministry. His critics wanted to see his credentials. By what right did he hold an Apostleship? This is his reply: “Credentials of my ministry! You Corinthians are my credentials! The change God has wrought in your lives by my ministry is the only witness I need or care to produce; and these spiritual transformationshave only one explanation.” “God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined into our hearts.” This, I say, is the original meaning of the Apostle’s words. But will you think of these .words in a more restricted sense. The phrase, “the face of Jesus Christ,” may be regarded in a threefold way. First, “the face of Jesus Christ” is touchingly historic; next as grandly, typical; and finally as instinctively beautiful. A TOUCHINGLY HISTORIC FACE. First the face of Jesus Christ is touchingly historic. In proof of this one has only to epitomise the gospels. Wreathed in smiles and dimpled in laughter, that face pressed Mary’s bosom. In order to behold that face sages journeyed from the sunlit Orient and shepherds bowed in reverent homage. When Simeon saw the face of Jesus, in the Temple porch, it satisfied every hope he had ever cherished and fulfilled every ancient promise io the Hebrews. In the Temple courts those sunny eyes and ruddy cheeks glowed with health and brightness, and the doctors looked and wondered. When Alary lost, and sought Him sorrowing, the hiding of His face was as the eclipse of the sun. On that face the multitude gazed with astonishment, and from that face demons fled in terror. Angels saw ‘that face uplifted, in prayer and bedewed with tears and blood, and compared with its divine radiancy, the stars seemed lustreless and dim. On Tabor that face was drenched in glory. In the garden IHis face was crimsoned with sweat of agony. The frenzied mob spat on that face, smote that face, and, throned upon the deadly tree, “His visage was marred more than the sons of men.” All this He endures with Godlike patience and fortitude that it might be fulfilled, as it was written, “I gave my back to the smiter, and my cheek to them that plucked off the hair, and I hid my face from shame and spitting.” And yet, to those who see with discerning eyes, that face was never more beautfiul than when it was ploughed with sorrow, and stained with blood. If some young and. beautiful mother should dash through smoke and flame to save her child, and in the act of rescue scorch the bloom and beauty from her cheeks, so that she carried the scars to her grave, what child worthy of such love would not reckon that “marred face” more lovely for its wounds? And if in our spiritual rescue the face of Christ was “marred more than the sons of men,” lie is, nevertheless, “the chief among ten thousand and the altogether lovely. Greek mythology tells how under the thin veil which covered the Athenian Jove, the worshippers could see the sharp outline of his features; but only on special occasions was the image uncovered, and when the .sun smote upon it. women fell down fainting, and strong men were overcome by its glorious beauty, so that it passed into a proverb, “unhappy is the man who has not seen the Athenian Jove.” “Now we see (through a glass darkly.” “Die /veil of -sense hangs, dark between Thy blessed face and imine.

But the day is coming when the last shred of that veil will be removed, and “Beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, wo shall be changed into the same likeness’’; for Heaven itself holds no greater promise than this. "They shall sec His face and live.” A GRANDLY TYPICAL FACE. Secondly, [ remark that the face of Christ is grandly typical. It is significant that we have no authentic picture of Christ. We have the hkeißts of men who lived before and since Christ s advent, but we have A one of Him. The. reason I do not stop to discuss, further than to say that .the tendency to idolatry may supply the reason. The point 1 wish to stress is this, that there was nothing merely local and racial in the face ot Jesus Christ. It had no national caste. He was neither Jew nor Gentile. His face was not typical of a family, a tribe, or a nation; but of the entire human race. He was the Catholic, the Cosmic man. His favourite title was

“the Son of Man.’ The Greek language has two word® for man; one to distinguish man from woman, and the other to describe a member of the human race; and it is the latter word which Jesus used concerning Himself. He was not the Son of David, or the Son of Mary; He was “the Son of Man.*’ The word occurs some sixty times in the four gospels. Canon Liddon suggests that this title was adopted to make clear Christ’s claim to be the Messiah; for from the days of Daniel “Son of Alan” was the official designation of the. Messiah. CHRLSTS TRUE HUMANITY. But “Son of Man” means more. It. expresses His true humanity; His real and definite alliance with the human race. -He was the child of every age and nation. He was every man’s Brother. He had no racial prejudices. His blood pulsed with universal sympathy. He reckoned for His ancestry the collective myriads of mankind. In Him the whole world may claim a part and find the claim allowed. The nation i© not yet born for which the gospel is not designed; the man has yet to be discovered for whom “the Son of Ala'.i" is not an adequate Saviour. The same fact emerges to view when you think of Jesus Christ’s religion. Christianity is neither eastern nor western; it is universal. Palestine was the race centre of the world. Camels unloaded in the streets of Jerusalem the goods laid upon them in the seats of ancient empires. On the pebbly beach of Galilee, the Mediterranean rolls, bearing the commerce of Europe. Behind Judea lay the past, and before it the future. Christ came at a time when East and West were locked together in one vast empire, and open for the first time to an exchange of thought and trade; and, coming at -such a -time, and to such a centre, Jesus gathered up in Himself all that was living and vital in all other religious systems and gave them permanence and publicity. All that is true in all the great religions of the East is found in Christianity, with this in addition, that, instead of being local they become universal. You might count on your fingers the Englishmen who are followers of Buddah, or Alohammed, but the religion of Jesus Christ is many-sided as humanity, and presents a family likeness to all people. Jesus Christ is needed by all, adapted to all, and offered to all. “They shall come from the East and the West, the North and -the South.” The face of Christ is grand!v typical. ’He is the cosmic Christ? THE IDEAL Al AN. Finally I conceive “the face of Christ” as being instinctively beautiful. 1 do net forget what 1 have said about our possessing no authentic picture of Christ; and we are left to devout imagination to conceive what He was like; and thus far our most gifted artists have failed to worthily depict the Saviour of the world. 1 have seen many pictures of the. Master, in the galleries of Europe and elsewhere, but none of them satisfy me. Painters usually paint the feminine type of 'beauty. A soft oval face without expression; long auburn hair, parted in the centre; eyes large and lustrous, but without depth or penetration, and a certain weakness about the mouth! Hence the world has come to conceive of Christ as possessing the graces common to womanhood, rather than the sturdier qualities of manhood. But Christ combined the characteristic features of man and woman; for He was the Ideal Alan. He was what each one of us should be; and since goodness cannot be in the heart and not shine in the face, 1 conceive the Saviour to have been "fairer than the sons of men, and the altogether lovely.” If you put a lighted candle in a porphery vase, the marble becomes translucent, and all the lines and markings become visible. Fill the, human heart with holy principles; with purity and truth and love, and the plainest of plain faces grows beautiful and such was “the face of Jesus Christ.” Jjet our last word be personal and practical. Saint Paul says “God hath shined into our hearts.” Is that true? Has “God shined into our hearts - *? It was true of the Apoetle, true of some of the Corinthians; and we know some of whom i-t is true to-day. Are we of that number? A Christian is one, who has experienced a clear, visible, definite change of heart and life. It is the difference between darkness and light. It is not a question of creed or church relation, but of conduct. “If any man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creature.” and nothing else matters.