“For ye
know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your
sakes be became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich”—2 Corinthians
8:9.
It's
absurd to suppose that all the worlds which on a cold winter's night make the
heavens one great glitter are inhabitantless. There is a great world swung
somewhere, vast beyond imagination, and that it is the headquarters of the
universe, and the metropolis of immensity, and has a population in numbers vast
beyond all statistics, and appointments of splendor beyond the capacity of
canvas, or poem, or angel to describe, is as certain as the Bible is authentic.
Perhaps some of the astronomers with their big telescopes have already caught a
glimpse of it, not knowing what it is. We spell it with six letters, and
pronounce it—HEAVEN.
A GLIMPSE OF HEAVEN
That
is where Prince Jesus lived. He was the King's Son. It was the old homestead of
eternity, and all its castles were as old as God. Not a frost had ever chilled
the air. Not a tear had ever rolled down the cheek of one of its inhabitants.
There had never been in it a headache, or a sideache, or a heartache. There had
not been a funeral in the memory of the oldest inhabitant. There had never in
all the land been woven a black veil, for there had never been anything to
mourn over. The passage of millions of years had not wrinkled or crippled or
bedimmed any of its citizens. All the people there were in a state of eternal
adolescence.
What
floral and pomological richness! Gardens of perpetual fruitage. Had some spirit
from another world entered and asked: “What is sin? What is bereavement? What
is sorrow? What is death?” the brightest of the intelligences would have failed
to give definition, though to study the question there was silence in Heaven
for half an hour.
The
Prince of whom I spoke had honors, emoluments, acclamations, such as no other
prince, celestial or terrestrial, ever enjoyed. As He passed the street, the
inhabitants took from their brows garlands of white lilies and threw them in
the way. When He entered any of the temples, all the worshipers arose and bowed
in obeisance. In all the processions of the high days, He was the one who evoked
the loudest welcome. Sometimes on foot, walking with the humblest of the land;
but at other times, He took chariot, and among the 20,000 that David spoke of
His was the swiftest and most flaming; or as when John described Him, He took
white palfrey, with what prance of foot and arch of neck and roll of mane and
gleam of eye is only dimly suggested in the Apocalypse. He was not like other
princes, waiting for the Father to die and then take the throne.
When,
a few years ago, an artist in Germany made a picture for the Royal Gallery,
representing Emperor William on the throne and the Crown Prince as having one
foot on the step of the throne, Emperor William ordered the picture changed,
and said: “Let the Prince keep his foot off the throne till I leave it”.
THE WEALTH OF THE PRINCE
Already
throned was the Heavenly Prince side by side with the Father. What a circle of
dominion! What myriads of admirers! What unending round of glories! All the
towers chimed the Prince's praises. Of all the inhabitants, from the center of
the city on over the hills and clear down to the beach against which the ocean
of immensity rolls its billows, the Prince was the acknowledged favorite. No
wonder Paul says that “He was rich”.
Set
all the diamonds of the earth in one sceptre, build all the palaces of the
earth into one Alhambra, gather all the pearls of the sea in one diadem, put
all the values of the earth in one coin, the aggregate would not express His
affluence. Yes, Paul was right. Solomon had in gold $3,400,000,000; and in
silver $5,145,001,885. But a greater than Solomon is here. Not the millionaire,
but the quadrillionaire of Heaven. To describe His celestial surroundings the
Bibles uses colors, gathering them in a rainbow over the throne and setting
them as agate in the temple window and hoisting twelve of them into a wall from
striped jasper at the base to transparent amethyst in the capstone, while
between are green of emerald and snow of pearl and blue of sapphire and yellow
of topaz and gray of chrysoprase and flame of jacinth. All the loveliness of
landscape in foliage and river and rill, and all enchantment aquamarine, the
sea of glass mingled with fire as the sun sinks in the Mediterranean. All the
thrill of music, instrumental and vocal, harps, trumpets, doxologies. There
stood the Prince, surrounded by those who had under their wings the velocity of
millions of miles in a second, rich in love, rich in adoration, rich in power,
rich in worship, rich in holiness, rich as God.
A FALLEN WORLD
But
one day there was a big disaster in a department of God's universe. A race
fell! A world was in ruins! Our planet was the scene of a catastrophe. A globe
was swinging out into darkness, with mountains and seas and islands —an awful
centrifugal of sin seeming to overpower the beautiful centripetal of
righteousness, and from it a groan reached Heaven. Such a sound had never been
heard there. Plenty of sweet sounds were forever familiar, but never an outcry
of distress or an echo of agony. At that one groan the Prince rose from all the
blissful circumstances, started for the outer gate and descended into the night
of this world—out of what a bright harbor into what rough sea!
“Stay
with us”, cried angel after angel and potentate after potentate.
“No”,
said the Prince. “I cannot stay; I must be off for that wreck of a world. I
must stop that groan. I must hush that distress. I must fathom that woe. I must
redeem those nations. Farewell, thrones and temples, companions cherubic,
seraphic, archangelic! Excuse this absence, for I will come back again carrying
one My shoulder the ransomed world. Till this is done I choose earthly scoff to
heavenly acclamation and a cattle pen to a king's palace and the frigid zone of
earth to the atmosphere of celestial radiance. I have no time to lose, for hark
ye to the groan that grows mightier while I wait. Farewell! Farewell!”
CHRIST'S ARRIVAL ON EARTH
Was
there ever a contrast so overpowering as that between the noonday of Christ's
celestial departure and the midnight of His earthly arrival? Sure enough,
the angels were out that night in the sky and especial meteors acts as escort,
but all of that was from other worlds and not from this world. The earth made
no demonstration of welcome. If one of the great princes of this world steps
out at a depot, cheers resound, and the bands play, and the flags wave. But for
the arrival of this missionary Prince of the skies not a torch flared, not a
trumpet blew, not a plume fluttered. All the music and the pomp were overheard.
Our world opened for Him nothing better than a barn door.
The
Rajah of Cashmere sent to Victoria a bedstead of carved gold and a canopy that
cost a million dollars; but the world had for the Prince of Heaven and earth a
little of straw. The Crown jewels in the Tower of London amount to hundreds of
millions of dollars; but this member of eternal royalty had nowhere to lay His
head.
To
know how poor He was, ask the camel drivers, ask the shepherds, ask Mary, ask
the Three Wise Men of the East who afterward came there.
To
know how poor He was, examine all the records of real estate in that Oriental
country and see what vineyard or what house or what field He owned. Not one! Of
what mortgage was He the mortgagee? Of what tenement was He the landlord? Of
what lease was He the lessee? Who ever paid Him rent? He did not own the boat
on which He sailed or the beast on which He rode or the pillow on which He
slept. He had so little estate that in order to pay His tax He had to perform a
miracle, putting the amount of the assessment in a fish's mouth and having it
hauled ashore. And after His death, the world rushed in to take an inventory of
His goods; and the entire aggregate was the garments He had worn—sleeping in
them by night and traveling in them by day, bearing on them the dust of the
highway and the saturation of the sea. Paul hit the mark when he said of the
missionary Prince: “For your sakes he became poor!”
A CHILLING RECEPTION
The
world could have treated Him better if it had so chosen. It had all the means
for making His earthly condition more comfortable. Only a few years before,
when General Pompey returned in triumph, he was greeted with arches and a
costly column which celebrated the 12,000,000 people whom he killed or
conquered; and he was allowed to wear his triumphal robe in the senate. The
world had applause for imperial butchers, but buffeting for the Prince of
Peace; plenty of golden chalices for the favoured to drink out of, but our
Prince must put His lips to the bucket of the well by the roadside after He had
begged for a drink.
Poor?
Born in another man's barn and eating at another man's table and cruising the
lake in another man's fishing smack and buried in another man's mausoleum. Our
inspired authors wrote His biography; and innumerable lives of Christ have been
published; but He composed His autobiography in the most compressed way when He
said, “I have trodden the wine press alone”.
Poor
in the estimation of nearly all the prosperous classes. They called Him
Sabbath-breaker, wine-bibber, traitor, blasphemer, and ransacked the dictionary
of opprobrium from lid to lid to express their detestation. I can think now of
only two well-to-do men who espoused His cause, Nicodemus and Joseph of
Arimathea.
His
friends for the most part were people who, in that climate where opthalmia or
inflammation of the eyeball swept ever and anon as a scourge, had become blind,
sick people who were anxious to get well, and troubled people in whose family
there was someone dead or dying. If He had a purse at all, it was empty; or we
would have heard what was done with the contents at the post-mortem.
Poor?
The pigeon in the dovecote, the rabbit in its burrow, the silkworm in its
cocoon, the bee in its hive is better provided for, better off, better sheltered.
Ay, the brute creature has a home on earth, which Christ had not.
But
the Crown Prince of all heavenly dominion had less than the raven, less than
the chamois, for He was homeless. Ay, in the history of the universe there is
no other instance of such coming down. Who can count the miles from the top of
the throne to the bottom of the cross?
Cleopatra,
giving a banquet to Anthony, took a pearl worth $100,000 and dissolved it in
vinegar and swallowed it. But when our Prince, in His last hours, took the
vinegar, in it had been dissolved all the pearls of His heavenly royalty. He
descended until there was no other depth for Him to touch; He was troubled
until there was no other harassment to suffer and poor until there was no other
pauperism to endure. Billions of dollars are spent in wars to destroy men. Who
will furnish the statistics of the value of that precious blood that was shed
to save us?
THE GRACE OF GOD
One
of John Bunyan's great books is entitled GRACE ABOUNDING. “It is all of grace
that I am saved” has been on the lips of hundreds of dying Christians.
Oh!
the height of it, the depth of it, the length of it, the breadth of it—the
grace of God!
Mr.
Fletcher had a pamphlet that pleased the king; and the king offered to
compensate him. But Fletcher answered, “There is only one thing I want, and
that is more grace”.
Yes,
blood-bought readers, grace to live by and grace to die by. Grace that saved
the publican, that saved Lydia, that saved the dying thief, that saved the
jailer, that saved me. But the riches of that grace will not be fully
understood until Heaven breaks in upon the soul. An old Scotchman, who had been
a soldier in one of the European wars, was sick and dying in an American
hospital. His one desire was to see Scotland, his old home, and once again walk
the heather of the highlands and hear the bagpipes of the Scotch regiments. The
night that the old Scotch soldier died, a young man, somewhat reckless but
kindhearted, got a company of musicians to come and play under the old
soldier's window; and among the instruments was a bagpipe. The instant that the
musicians began, the dying man said: “What's that, what's that? Why, it's the
regiment coming home. That's the tune, yes that's the tune. Thank God, I'm home
once more!
“Bonny
Scotland and Bonny Doon” were the last words he uttered as he passed up to the
highlands of the better country.
When
Artaxerxes was hunting, Tirebazus, who was attending him, showed the kind a
rent in his garment. The king said: “How shall I mend it?”
“By
giving it to me”, said Tirebazus.
Then
the king gave him the robe, but commanded him never to wear it, as it would be
inappropriate.
See
the startling and comforting fact! While our Prince laid aside His heavenly
garment, He not only allows us to wear it, but commands us to wear it; and it
will become us well; and for the poverties of our spiritual state, we may put
on the splendors of heavenly regalement. For our sakes! Oh, the personality of
this grand salvation.
Not
an abstraction, not an arch under which we walk to behold elaborate masonry,
not an ice castle like that which Empress Elizabeth of Russia over a hundred
years ago ordered constructed, but a Father's house with a wide hearth
crackling a hearty welcome. Ours is a religion of warmth and inspiration and
light and cheer; something we can take into our hearts and homes, our business
and recreation, our joys and sorrows.
Not
an unmanageable gift, like the galley presented to Ptolemy, which required
4,000 men to row and its draught of water was so great that it could not come
near the shore; but something you can run up any stream of annoyance, however
shallow; and it gives enrichment now, enrichment forever.
The
seven wise men of Greece were chiefly known each for one apothegm: Solon for
the saying “Know thyself”; Periander for the saying, “Nothing is impossible to
industry”; Chilo for the saying, “Consider the end”; Thales for the saying, “Suretyship
is the precursor of ruin”. And Paul, distinguished for a thousand utterances,
might well afford to be memorable for the saying, “Ye know the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet he became poor, that ye through
his poverty might be rich”.
—TDT
