Sermons which have won souls

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The Soul's Quest 23

The Potter and His Marred Vessel .... 59

II

We have also suggested in our theme the souFs quest for power. In our text Paul says, ''That I^ may know him, and the power of his resurrection. ' ' I am sure that Paul meant here more than the resurrection of the body. From many of his utterances he makes it very clear to us that the resurrection of the body, in which he thoroughly believed, was to him a vivid and powerful illustration of the resurrection of the soul and its redemption from sin. In his letter to the Romans he says : *'Eeckon ye, . . . yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. And in his letter to the Colossians he says : " If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth." And again, Paul goes on to explain still more carefully what he means by declaring that the Christian hath

THE SOUL'S QUEST

* ' Put off the old man with his deeds ; and hath put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him."

These and other strong utterances of Paul give us authority to believe that in his mind the power of Christ's resurrection indicated in the strongest way the power to triumph over sin, to gain conquest over the human heart, and to live victoriously the Christ life amid the temptations and the sins of earth. In Jesus Christ alone can we find the power that can give us this victory. Dr. Watkinson, a popular English preacher now in this country, tells how he was recently reading a medical book on ' ' The Sterilization of the Hands ' ' — the importance of the medical man, the surgeon, having his hands clean for his operations. He tells us how he tried a great number of things to cleanse his hands, and in the end found it impossible. He came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as cleaning your hands ; at least, they are surgically infective. The writer says that when he washed his hands in soap and water he found that they were more infected than they were before. The more he scrubbed the more the microbes multiplied. He gives reasons why this should be so, reasons that seem quite feasible. The more he scrubbed the more the microbes came to light.

^ SERM0N8 WHICH HAVE WON 80VL8

Is not that exactly the case with the man who begins to deal with his sinful nature? What does Paul say? ''When the law came, sin revived." It was fomented, stirred up, came to light, asserted itself. When the law came, when it came home, irrationality, passion, self-will, were stirred up and came to light. "Sin revived, and I died." Many people are living just there, with the painful consciousness of evil passions, of wicked affinities that appeal to them, and they have a gnawing, haunting consciousness of guilt that makes peace impossible. It is only the power of Christ's resurrection that can cleanse such a heart. In Isaiah we read of the wonderful times that are coming in this world when the kingdom of Jesus Christ shall come to full victory. He tells us that the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and kid, the lion and the ox, will all be brought into a marvelous harmony; the sucking child is to play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child to put his hand on the cockatrice's den. That all seems very marvelous and very wonderful, but it is not so wonderful as when a sinful man by humility and prayer and self-surrender brings into his heart the resurrection power of Jesus Christ, and obtains the forgiveness of his sins, and finds his nature renewed in love and purity.

THE SOU US QUEST

It is not only in the Bible that we learn it, but the most modern science tells us that a man's heart is by nature a dark forest, where wild beasts roam, and where they hiss and snarl and scream and bite. The scientists tell us that these beasts came out of the primeval forest in our ancestral days, and they are the survivals of the animality of our origin. We do not need to quarrel with the scientists. One thing we are sure of when we look into the human heart, and that is that the wild beasts are there — asp, cockatrice, wolf, leopard — all the wild passions are there ; but, thank God, Jesus Christ has power to tame them, to take the drunkard and make him sober living, to take the sinner most wretched and tyrannized over and make him as peaceful and loving as the man out of whom he cast devils in Gadara. There is power in Jesus to soften and strengthen and harmonize in the human heart until what was a den of wild beasts becomes a garden of the Christian graces.

It is not only for our own salvation that this resurrection power of Jesus Christ should be sought after by us, but that with it bestowed upon us we may work the will of God in our own day and time. If we shall be worthy of this power it will be because we surrender ourselves completely to him and wiUingly give ourselves to do his work.

Some one sings who has known this experience:

My hands were filled with many things,

Which I did precious hold

As any treasure of a king's,

Silver, or gems, or gold.

The Master came and touched my hands, The scars were on his own.

And at his feet my treasures sweet

Fell shattered one by one; 'T must have empty hands," said he, "Wherewith to work my works through thee."

My hands were stained with marks of toil,

Defiled with dust of earth.

And I my work did ofttimes soil.

And render little worth —

The Master came and touched my hands, And crimson were his own.

And when amazed, on mine I gazed,

Lo ! every stain was gone.

"I must have cleansed hands," said he, "Wherewith to work my works through thee."

My hands were growing feverish,

And cumbered with much care.

Trembling with haste and eagerness,

Nor folded oft in prayer.

The Master came and touched my hands. With healing in his own,

And calm and still to do his will

They grew, the fever gone.

"1 must have quiet hands," said he, "Wherewith to work my works through thee."

My hands were strong in fancied strength, But not in power divine.

THE SOUL'S QUEST

And bold to take up tasks at length,

That were not his, but mine.

The Master came and touched my hands, And might was in his own.

But mine, since then, have powerless been,

Save his were laid thereon, "And it is only thus," said he, "That I can work my works through thee."

Ill

We have also, very earnestly set forth, Paul's ambition to share the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. He does not put this first, he does not feel that the fellowship of Christ's sufferings is the first thing that the soul must seek. In Paul 's writings, everywhere, life and not death is the key-note. If ever a man was sane and healthy it was Paul. He is ambitious to know Christ, to become acquainted with him personally, and he is determined to attain the power of the risen Lord over sin; but then he longs to share with Jesus to the full the fellowship of his sufferings. A willingness to share suffering is a test of true friendship. Casual acquaintances do not feel it necessary to telegraph us or write us if they are ill or in trouble, but old friends with whom we have borne the burden and the heat of the day, sharing their joy and their power, do us honor when they call us to share with them in their sufferings. And we cannot know

Jesus so as to receive the richest blessings from him unless we know the fellowship of his sufferings. Dr. Jowett commenting on this phrase recently said that we are apt to regard the table at which our Lord sits as only laden with delicate and dainty luxuries. But upon that table there is another cup which is very much nearer to the Master's hand. ' ' Are ye able to drink of the cup that I drink of ? ' ' is Christ's question. Our intimacy with the Lord can best be estimated by our familiarity with the contents of that bitter cup. Our fellowship with the Lord can best be measured, not by our capacity for joy, but by our capacity for suffering. It is when deep calleth unto deep that we enter into the mystery of the Savior's cross.

This fellowship of Christ's sufferings will make us very sensitive to the approach of evil. It may be doubted if Jerusalem was as wicked a city as Denver, but the prevailing sin of the city hurt Jesus, and the closer we come into fellowship with Christ the more the sins of the city will hurt us, and the more we will share with Jesus in suffering over it, and that suffering will drive us to sacrifice in effort to stop the sin. Christians ought to be more sensitive and more easily shocked at the sins of the city than they are. See Christ when on one occasion they come to him and tell him a filthy story.

TEE 80VU8 QUEST

What does he do? He stoops down and writes on the ground. What is he doing? He is blushing — he is blushing. They tell him an impure story and he hides his head for shame. But I fear many in Christ's church to-day can listen to such stories and not blush. Is it not true that we are often fascinated by iniquity? We take up our morning paper and follow its unclean track down column after column of print when we ought to burn the dirty sheet with consuming shame. Oh, disciples of Jesus Christ, the sin of Denver ought to make us smart. Does it ?

The fellowship of Christ's sufferings must also involve the power to enter into the sorrows of the world. A servant girl came into her pastor's study one day, and in the course of the talk said, ' ' I only get out one evening in two weeks, so I cannot do much, but I will tell you what I do; an evening paper comes into our house, and I am allowed to look at it. I turn to the obituary column and to the news about the homeless and starving, and I pray over each name." Was not that sharing the fellowship of his sufferings? What a strange prescription for trouble Jesus gave when he said: ''Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. . . . take my yoke upon you. ' ' At first glance it seems a strange way to find rest to add one yoke to another. The secret of it is in the fellowship. In the doubling of the burden, the burden becomes light. When we add our grief to the grief of another, there is in the combined fire a third form, one like unto the Son of man.

The biographer of Charles Lamb tells us that when those awful periods of mental darkness threatened Mary Lamb, she and her brother Charles would go out in the early morning or late at night, speechless and w^eeping, treading their desolate way in silence. They w^ent together hand in hand and weeping. I do not care what Charles Lamb's creed was; in his silent sympathy in those dread hours he was taking the awful goblet from the table of his Lord. He was sharing the fellowship of Christ's sufferings.

The great trouble with many of us is not that we are not sympathetic, but that we do not express it in service. We are moved, but we do not move. We are stirred by gracious impulse, but we do not stir. The impulse does not take on a practical form. We cry out, *'Lord, I will follow thee: I could do anything for thee; I will follow thee in a moment, suffer me first to go and bury, ' ' — ''Let the dead bury their dead and follow me,'' is Christ's word. Do we not need to hear that voice to-day? Follow Christ at once in service and

THE SOWS QUEST sympathy, and in sharing the sufferings of your fellow men with him, before the fire of sympathy which has become kindled in your breast becomes dead.

Dr. Jowett, from whom I have already quoted, truly says that one of the greatest hindrances to Christianity in our time is that while we share Christ's fellowship to some extent we stop short of the blood-letting. And yet it is precisely at the point of blood-letting that our cause begins to win. When our work becomes costly, it begins to pay. Our life only becomes contagious when it becomes sacrificial. The curse of our time in Christian circles is that we are so comfortable. Good men and good women are willing to allow their pastor to stir them to generous emotions on a Sunday morning, but would count it beyond their power to come to a Sunday evening service, at the cost of an extra nap, that sinners might be converted and the lost sheep of Christ be brought home. It is the laziness, the self-indulgence, the lack of willingness, the lack of real desire to share the sufferings of Jesus Christ in saving sinners, that makes the church slow and stumbling in her course, when she should march forth like an army ''with banners.'' Oh, for a year of men like John Knox, whose prayers a wicked queen feared more than an army of soldiers! Oh, for a year of those Pentecostal Christians who wrestled every man with his neighbor until he surrendered to Jesus! Oh, for a year of the early ]\Iethodists, whom stones could not make timid, whom poverty could not shame, who turned the world upside down by their fervor ! Oh, for a year of you, men and women sitting in these pews, shaken out of your self-indulgence, aroused to such gratitude to Christ for your salvation that you will cry out with Paul, and vie with each other for an opportunity to share with Jesus Christ in sympathy, and self-sacrifice, and suffering, that you may win the men and women of Denver to salvation!