The Spirit of Sacrifice
IV The Spirit of Sacrifice
Ne: se a aah ate Sty
IV The Spirit of Sacrifice The powerful poem that begins this section expresses very clearly George Matheson's conviction that at the very heart of God's plan for the world lay the principle of sacrifice. The reason why all life was founded on sacrifice — why the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world — remained a mystery, but it was clearly attested both by the Christian notion of atonement and by the observations of scientists about how progress was made through evolution.
For Matheson the principle of sacrifice translated itself in terms of practical Christianity into a call for selflessness. The loss of selfishness is explored with rare sensitivity and imagination in the meditations on ''No more sea'' and '"'Christ's first note of autobiography''.
The Divine Plan of Creation "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.'' Revelation 13:8
Thou hast, O Lord, a wondrous plan, To build a tower to reach the skies; Its base is earth, its progress man, Its summit sacrifice.
2 'Tis only for the summit's sake Thou layest the foundation-stone; The mornings of creation break For sacrifice alone.
3 Thou wouldst not have prepared one star To float upon the azure main, Hadst Thou not witnessed from afar _ The Lamb that would be slain.
4 Thou wouldst not have infused Thy life Into the insect of an hour, Hadst Thou not seen 'neath nature's strife
Thy sacrificial flower.
5 To Him that wears the cross of pain Thou leadest all Thine ages on; Through cloud and storm, through wind and rain, Through sense of glories gone.
6 Through kingdoms lost, through pride displaced Through systems tried and cast away,
Through hopes dispelled, through stars effaced, Thou leadest to the day.
7 Thou breakest on the rocks of life The wills of men that sought their own; They sank before Thee in the strife, And cried, ''Unveil Thy throne!''
8 And in that blest unveiling, Lord, They found, I find, the reason sure Why Thou hast sent on earth a sword From out Thy meekness pure.
9 Thou wilt not let me live alone; Thou wilt not let me keep my rest; Thy blast on every tree has blown To throw me on Thy breast.
10 Thou madest me for Him whose love From dawn to eve made His will Thine, And all my ages only move Within that Light to shine.
Sacred Songs
No More Sea "There was no more sea.'' Revelation 21:1
Human life below has more sea than land. It is not a connected continent — a brotherhood of souls; it is a multitude of little islands divided
— by stormy waves. There is a great gulf fixed between my life and the life of my brother — the gulf of self-interest; I cannot pass over to him, and he cannot pass over to me. And the secret of our separation is the secret also of our unrest. We live in perpetual storms because we live in perpetual selfishness; the wave of our thoughts rolls back upon ourselves. But in that higher life which the seer of Patmos saw the gulfs were all dried up, and the separation of land from land appeared no more. Human nature became to his gaze a continent. Men lost their isolation and ran together into unity. They saw eye to eye, they felt heart to heart, they wrought hand to hand, and the glory of the Lord was revealed because all flesh could see it together. Each man took up the trouble of his brother-man, and in taking the trouble of his brother each man lost his own. There came a great stillness over the individual heart. Its stillness came because its burden fell, and its burden fell because the burdens of humanity rose; there was perfect self-forgetfulness, therefore there was no more sea.
O thou Son of Man, who, by lifting the burdens of our humanity, hast made Thine own yoke
easy and Thine own burden light, lift this life of mine into sympathy, into union with Thee.
Iam weary of myself, weary of the din and the battle, weary of the burden and the heat. I am seeking everywhere for a hiding-place from the storm, everywhere for a covert from the tempest. But the storm is not without me, but within; the tempest is not in my circumstances but in me. Son of Man, save me from myself, that I may enter into Thy peace, Thine unspeakable joy. Inspire me with Thine own burden of love, that the care of self may fall from me, and that with Thy divine freedom I may be free. Help me to take up Thy cross, that I myself may be lifted up. Give me Thy spirit of sacrifice, that I may be elevated above my own fears. Unite me to the great continent, the brotherhood of human souls, that the storms of my island life may be lulled to rest; then shall I be able in my heart to say ''There is no more sea''.
Moments on the Mount
Christ's First Note of Autobiography 'Blessed are the poor in spirit.'' Matthew 5:3
There is a question I have often asked myself — Why does St Matthew bring the Sermon on the Mount so close to the temptation in the wilderness? That is not its natural position; it belongs to a much later stage of Christ's ministry, and could not have been understood in the earliest period. Why, then, does the First
Gospel place it in the immediately succeeding chapter to the temptation? I take the reason to be that the first note of this sermon is a reminiscence of our Lord's experience in the wilderness — in other words, it is a note of autobiography.
What was the temptation in the wilderness?
I would sum it up in four words — ''Be conscious of yourself.'' The tempter said, ''If you are the Son of God, realize that you are such. Let the thought be ever present to your mind. Let your every action be prompted by the motive of showing that you are Divine. Assert yourself in the world. Command that the stones be made bread. Claim the Father's care in a gigantic leap from the pinnacle of the temple. Aspire to the conquest of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them."'
The one thought in all the temptations is the grandeur of self-consciousness. And this is the thought which in the Sermon on the Mount
Christ begins by repudiating. It shows what an adverse impression it had made upon His mind.
He starts this great sermon by a note of memory
— a memory of His own pain. He remembers how bitterly he felt this perversion of the truth.
He is determined it shall be the first delusion He will publicly expose, the first error of which He will warn the multitude. Accordingly, He stands in the midst of them and, with an air of almost dramatic abruptness, cries, ''Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven!"'
Read that in the light of the wilderness, and it means this — '"'The highest power, even heavenly power, comes in moments of unconsciousness.'' To be poor in spirit is to be unconscious of yourself.
It is not ''to be humble,''
''to be despondent,''
''to be miserable''
— these are all forms of consciousness. It is to forget that you have an eye or ear, a hand or foot, a heart or brain. It is to fly without hearing the movement of your own wings. It is to ignore the flower you wear, to forget the charm you bear, to discount the deed you dare — to see not when you shine, to feel not it is fine, to say not, ''Wealth is mine."'
That is the spirit whose poverty is power.
Lord, only in Thine unconsciousness shall I reach Thy Mount; let me resist the tempter with Thee!
My wilderness is my consciousness. I say, "'If I leap from the pinnacle, I shall prove my trust in God'' — and very likely my courage will fail.
But if a, friend fall from the pinnacle, I make an unconscious leap — the leap of selfforgetfulness. The world marvels at my courage.
It is the want of courage. Love's fear has
paralysed me, made me oblivious of myself. Give me, O Christ, that fear which makes oblivious!
— it was Thine. It is not courage that makes us unconscious of peril; it is the fear that is born of love.
Men exhort me to have the fear of the Lord.
They are right. Thy fear is love's fear — the only fear which deadens personal pain. It makes heroes of the helpless, warriors of the weak, soldiers of the sick, lions of the listless, Daniels of the drooping, fortresses of the feeble, champions of little children, youth's morning light of the fulness of years.
Lord of the beatitudes, grant me this boon!
Rests by the River
V The Christian Life
, tence Pie ST eae % ran y te He Nite] Ta en a ean ASA Pula soe:
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V The Christian Life As a liberal Presbyterian minister, George Matheson was concerned with preaching practical Christianity and expounding the social gospel just as much as with pondering more abstract theological questions and with prayer and devotion. The meditations in this section are about living the Christian life. They have a practical, down to earth flavour and, as their titles suggest, they do not make light of the difficulties and disruption that following Christ brings.
Poet and visionary that he was, Matheson had no time for those Christians who remained always up the ''glorious mountains'' of mysticism and never descended into the plain to share their vision with ordinary believers. As he puts it in ''The Practicalness of Christ's
Cross'', to bear the body of the dying Christ in your life is ''to come from high thought into menial action. It is to empty thyself into the commonplace. It is to descend into what men call reality.''
Interrupted Communion "Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.'' Exodus 32:7
''Go, get thee down;"' it was surely a hard, an unlikely mandate. Was it not a command to go forth from the secret of God's pavilion, from the Mount of Divine vision and Divine communion into the vision of things that were not Divine, into communion with things that were not holy?
You and I have been forced at times to feel what Moses felt. We have had moments of rapture, in which we have been allowed to stand on the very top of the mountain and to see, as it were, the face of God unveiled — moments when His countenance was radiant as the light and His raiment dazzling as the sunlit snow.
But presently a cloud has fallen over the vision and the glory has vanished from the scene. The rapture is turned into coldness, and the mountain sinks into a common plain, filled with the concourse of the multitude, and echoing with the cries of human struggle; a voice has sounded in mine ear and said, ''Go, get thee down."'
Yes, my soul, and has it not brought to thine ear the reason of its sounding? Why has it commanded thee to quit the glorious mountain for the common plain? It is because it is a common plain. It is because on that plain there is a concourse of living beings who are unfit for the glorious mountain. They have no vision from a height, and therefore they are oppressed by
life's labour and its ladenness. They want some one to heal them, some one to lift them, some one to inspire them with the breath of a presence that has dwelt aloft. Thou mayest be that presence. If thou hast gazed on the face of God, thou hast a mesmeric passport into the heart of thy brother man. He shall lift up his eyes unto the hills, whence cometh thine aid; make no tarrying to go down, O my soul.
Moments on the Mount
The Trouble Brought by Christ "When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled.'' Matthew 2:3
There were four kingdoms congregated at the Christian dawn — the kingdom of nature, the kingdom of knowledge, the kingdom of worldliness, and the kingdom of unworldliness.
The kingdom of nature came in a star, the kingdom of knowledge in the Magi, the kingdom of wordliness in Herod, and the kingdom of unworldliness in the child-Christ.
Only one of the kingdoms was troubled by the child. Nature did not fear Him, knowledge did not shun Him; Herod alone trembled at His coming.
My soul, art thou afraid of the coming of Christ into thy life? Dost thou fear that He will narrow thee? Nay, but He will narrow that which narrows thee. He will not destroy thy love of nature, for He is the crown of nature. He will not dispute thy right to knowledge, for He is the end of knowledge; but He will expel from thy heart the Herod that imprisons thee. He will
. deny the power of Herod to make thee happy, and He will prove His denial even by thy pain.
Wouldst thou rather be without that pain? Hast thou forgotten the pool of Bethesda? An angel came down to trouble the waters, and then the waters were powerful. Thou, too, shalt be powerful after thou hast been troubled.
Thinkest thou that the stillness of primeval chaos was a calm? There was no calm till the Spirit moved. Only when the face of the waters
is ruffled by the breath of the life Divine is the mandate truly heard, ''Let there be light.''
Moments on the Mount
The Place in Christ for Repentance 'Jesus saw aman, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and He saith unto him,
Follow Me.'' Matthew 9:9
There is one peculiarity with which I have been struck in the calls of Jesus; they are not preceded by any denunciation of the man's past life. The Baptist's were; his initial cry is, ''Repent!'' Jesus, indeed, calls to a life which involves repentance; but repentance is not His initial cry. Not even is it so in the parable of the prodigal son; the Father gives His demonstration
— of love before any expression of sin on the part of the prodigal. He sees him afar off, He has compassion, He runs across the intervening space to meet him, He folds him in His arms and lavishes on him His affection ere ever one word of contrition falls from his lips.
In the case of Matthew we should have expected the first note of Jesus to have been reproach. Matthew had been living voluntarily the life of a slave. He had become the truculent servant of Roman masters and had wrung for them the tribute from his countrymen. Should we not expect the first cry of Jesus to have been,
"Think shame of yourself!'' It is not; it is, "Follow Me!"'
Can we account for this? Yes, it shows His profound wisdom and how much deeper He sees than the world sees. The world thinks that a man begins by repenting and then turns to follow the right way.
It is the reverse. He begins by following the right way and then he repents of
being so long on the wrong one. It is not our sorrow for the past that leads us to form a beautiful ideal; it is our reception of a beautiful ideal that leads us to sorrow for the past.
Matthew does not say, ''I have led an ignoble life and must now see Christ''; he says, ''I have seen Christ, and therefore I know that my life has been ignoble."'
God's first season for every converted man is the summer. He is not at once shown the winter of his own soul; he is plunged at first into the Divine radiance. He only learns his rags by seeing the new garment that is to clothe him.
He never knows his pool to be stagnant till he stands by the great sea. It is when the waves wash his feet, when the spray refreshes his countenance, when the swell of ocean murmurs in his ear, that he remembers the inland pool of yesterday and cries, ''These were not living waters!"'
Lord, let mine be the call of Matthew — the call into summer radiance! Let me not say within my heart, ''I dare not come; I have not a sufficient sense of my own inadequacy''! Teach me that the sense of my own inadequacy can only be born in Thy light, only perfected in heaven! I have always thought the knowledge of my sin a beginner's lesson; reveal to me that it is the lesson for the highest class of Christian! I shall only become dissatisfied when I reach Thy grace; therefore let Thy grace be my earliest seeking!
Let me not begin by trying to feel my corruption!
Let not my first journey be an inspection of my
own quagmire!
Let it be a flight over the ocean of Thy love! Let me soar at once to the crystal fountain, to the river of life, to the streets of gold! Let not my opening thought be of my tabernacles of clay; let it fly up to the gates of pearl and the rainbow of emerald and the skies without night! Make not my first voyage retrospective; let me begin, not with the past, but with the future! Let the earliest voice I hear be the voice Matthew heard — ''Follow Me''! Be
Thou my beginning, O Lord! Let me enter Thy temple by the gate called Beautiful! Bring me at once into Thy summer, today into Thy ~ paradise!
Rests by the River
The Practicalness of Christ's Cross "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.'' 2 Corinthians
4:10
What an unhealthy state of mind! you say — to ' be ever fondling the idea of death. How can it manifest life to bear death in my body? Will it not sap my energy? Will it not make me a dreamer? Will I not lose all interest in the present world, if I am always thinking of passing from earth to heaven? Yes; but this is no common death of which the apostle speaks; it is the dying of the Lord Jesus. The dying of the Lord Jesus was not the passing from earth to heaven; it was the passing from heaven to earth. Every step of His dying was a step downwards. He took the servant's form. He took the human likeness. He took the fleeting fashion of a man. He took the image of the humblest man. He went down deeper than humility. He lost His personality in love. He became one with the poor, the outcast, the erring. He felt the pains that dwelt in other bodies, the griefs that lived in other souls, the sins that slept in other hearts. At last He touched the lowest ground, and, therefore, the common ground — He completed His dying in the Cross.
It was the final stage of His union with man. It brought Him into the heart of the world. It made
Him in the deepest sense a citizen of time.
Say not, then, oh, my soul, that to bear Christ's dying within thee is to lose thy hold of earth; it is to double that hold. It is to come from high
thought into menial action. It is to empty thyself into the commonplace. It is to descend into what men call reality. It is to leave the green fields of speculation for the thorny paths of practice.
It is to give up thy poetry for other people's prose, to resign thy sunlight for thy weak brother's candle. Art thou prepared for this sacrifice, oh, my soul? It wants not less but more love of the world. When Jesus died he went to Galilee.
Only in death did He touch the uttermost earth. If thou wouldst bear in thy body His dying, thou must love not death but life.
Nothing but the preciousness of life could prompt the dying of the Lord Jesus, or prompt thee to follow that dying. Thou canst not reach it by dreaming; thou must put away thy dream.
Thine eye must be fixed on the rude multitude.
Thine ear must be caught by the cry of sorrow.
Thy hand must be held by the clasp of pain.
Thou must dismiss the thought of delectable mountains, or of harps on the glassy sea. Thou must consider the sea that is not glassy, the mountains that are not delectable, the sounds that are not music. Thine must be the love of the prosaic present. If thou wouldst long to depart and be with Christ, it must be, like Him, to get nearer to the earth, closer to the wants of man. To leave the world that is beyond for the world of the passing day — that is the dying of the Lord Jesus.
Searchings in the Silence
Instinctive Christians "That ye may be found of Him in peace. '' 2 Peter 3:14
There are two sets of minds in the Christian life — those who find Christ, and those whom Christ finds. Those who find Christ are active; those who are found by Christ are passive. The one have a hard struggle; the other enter the gates
'"'in peace''. There are some whose experience is that of the wise men of the east; they search for the star, and discover it after many days.
There are others like the keepers of the flock of Bethlehem; they are engaged in their own work, and the star comes to them. The men of the east are men of talent; they plan, and they succeed. But the keepers of the flock are men of genius; they never need to plan; they are illuminated in a moment. In the midst of their daily toil there is suddenly with them a multitude of the heavenly host singing ''glory''.
They are like the great masters in music; their work costs them little trouble. They are born to love; they are made to sacrifice; they are bound to say the right thing at the right time. The garment of goodness becomes them, sits gracefully on them. It is a garment, not of heaviness, but of praise. The men who are found by Christ take the kingdom by violence.
Son of Man, I would like to be one of Thy men of genius — one of those who are found by Thee.
I would like Thy life to be my starting-point
rather than my goal. I would rather fly with Thee than to Thee. I do not want to wait for Thy rest till the end of the journey; I want to journey on Thy wing. I would have rest before I start — rest to help my start, rest to sustain my start.
It is by Thy rest I would travel; I would walk by rest, run by rest, fly by rest. If I come first to seek Thee, I shall be weary when I find Thee; however short the way, it is too long without Thee. Shall I ask the wings of a dove, that I may fly away and be at rest? Nay; let me get Thy rest, and then I shall have the wings. There is no power of motion like the repose in Thee. The brooding of Thy Spirit is a rushing, mighty wind; it will carry me beyond myself — into the life of my brother. Come, then, to me, oh, Dove of the Firmament. Wait not till I seek Thee, amid the troubles of the wilderness. Descend upon me at the dawn. Light upon me when the heavens are opened, and the waters of youth are sparkling. Abide on me when it is morning and the day is yet to begin. Spread Thy wings over me before I go out into the temptation. Bring
Thy message of peace, and I shall be strengthened for every war. I shall find myself when I am found by Thee.
Searchings in the Silence
VI Christian Freedom
i Ai