Heart of our hearts, the Life of our lives. We are lifted by the cross into a great redemptive fellowship, a society of redeemers -the redeeming Father, the redeeming Son and a whole company inspired by the redeeming Spirit. We fill up on our part as individuals and as Christian social groupschurches, nations, families-that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for His Kingdom's sake. The more Christian our human society becomes, the more it will manifest the vicarious conscience of its Lord, and feel burdened with the guilt of every wrong-doer, and bound to make its lawcourts and prisons, its public opinion and international policies and all its social contacts, redemptive. Through every touch of life with life, in trade, in government, in friendship, in the family, men will feel selfgiving love akin to, because fathered by, the love of God commended to the world when Christ died for sinners. While in a sense men will become all of them redeemers one of another, behind them all will ever lie the unique sacrifice of Jesus. The singularity of that sacrifice lies not in the act but in the Actor: "He is the propitia tion for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world." Every member of the redeemed society, however much he may owe to the sacrificial service of his brethren, will feel himself personally indebted to Christ, who loved him and gave Himself up for him. As the Originator of the redemptive fellowship, the Creator of the new conscience, the Captain of our salvation who opened up the way through His death into the holiest of all, we give to Jesus and to no other the title, "The Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world." CHAPTER VI THE NEW LIFE-INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL The health department of a modern city is charged with a double duty: it has to care for cases of disease, and it has to suggest and enforce laws to keep the city sanitary. The former task-the treatment of sickness-is much more widely recognized as the proper function of the medical profession; the latter -the prevention of the causes of illness-is a newer, but a more far-reaching, undertaking. When Pasteur was carrying on his investigations into the origins of certain diseases, most of the leading physicians and surgeons made light of his work: "How should this chemist, who cannot treat the simplest case of sickness nor perform the most trifling operation, have anything to contribute to medical science?" But Pasteur's discovery of the part played by bacilli not only altered profoundly the work of physicians and surgeons, but opened up the larger task of preventive medicine. The Gospel of Christ, in its endeavor to make and keep men whole, faces a similarly double labor. It has its ministry of rescue and healing for sinning men and women; it has its plan of spiritual health for society. It comes to every man with its offer of rebirth into newness of life: "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." It comes to society with its offer of a regenesis, a paradise of love on earth. The life of God enters our world by two paths-personally, through individuals whom it recreates, and by whom it remakes society; socially, through a new communal order which reshapes the men and women who live under it. The New Testament speaks of both entrances of the Spirit of God into human life: it pictures "one born from above," and "the holy city coming down from God out of heaven." The two processes supplement each other. Consecrated man and wife make their home Christian; a Christian home renders the conversion of its children unnecessary; they know themselves children of God as soon as they know themselves anything at all. Saved souls save society, and a saved society saves souls. Religion must always be personal; each must respond for himself to his highest inspirations. A child may confuse the divine voice with that of its parents, through whom the divine message comes; but a day arrives when he learns that God speaks directly to him, perhaps differently from the way in which his parents understand His voice, and he must listen for himself alone. A Job may take at second-hand the conventional views of God current in his day, and through them have some touch with the Divine; but this will seem mere hearsay when the stress of life compels him to fight his way past the opinions of his most devout friends to a personal vision of God. Religious experience is hardly worthy the name until one can say, "O God, Thou art my God." There is no sphere of life in which a man is so conscious of his isolation as in his dealings with his Highest. The most serious decisions of his life-his apprehension of Truth, his obedience to Right, his response to Love-he must settle for himself. Space is but narrow- -east and west- |