'When we want anything very much, as Jesus Christ sup-Poses' men ought to want. <to be what He calls "saved." there ie always @ foch ence" in their attempt to get it. They are ruthless ax regards small, ind often rear difficulties in the!
They are not ensily put oit.
gentleness of our Lord has beest used. He has been represented as sentimentally weak, There. is a ory of a vicar of a quiet Knalish village of some 20 houses. Yor Know how deadly quiet life in such a village is. "One morning the such brought him an invitation. to {Quiet Day" at the episcopal palace. You know what 1s. meant by quiet day," 4 day of silence-except for almost inaudible prayers, with intervals for "silent prayer." 'The good man wrote to his bishop in these terms, "My Lord, what want in our' village is' an carthy quake." He was sick of quiet days. No wonder! A Primitive Method: ist Camp-Meeting would have done him more good. Jesus Christ did not come into the world to conduct Quiet Days. He came to cause earthquakes; to set "a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against wer because they were what He lied "violent." dead in earnest. Now, it cannot be without meaning that" the man, who takes a strong initiative is Christ's moder man, In fact, the text is literally 'From the days of John the Baptist, [the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence." Jesus took up the work of John. The cases I have quoted show, that from the beginning of Christ's ministry, He was taken' by the vigorous people, who shewed small respect for diffeulties, social conventions, and conventional religious ways.
Then, have you ever noticed how, in His teaching as to prayer, He is in favour of "violence?" His two cases are of the Importunate Widow, and the Friend at midnight. Both are most extraordinary ones. The widow keeps at the judge till in shoor weariness he grants her prayer, and the man rings his friend up at midnight to borrow three loaves. And the teaching is clear, that God cannot resist determined.prayer. A Salvation Army captain wrestling in prayer for the crowd round. him on the sands at the seaside is much more Our Lord's ideal of prayer than our quiet respectable whisperings. God, according to Jesus, likes people who stick to Him, till they wrest an answer. To ask: quietly and doubtfully, expecting a refusal is to get a refusal. If that is not the meaning of it, what is the meaning of each of these parables?
The Language of Jesus Then there is the language of Jesus Christ. As it has often been remarked, we read certain chapters of the Gospel by John about the Good Shepherd,.and we do well to read them. We need shepherding, and the lost sheep need seeking, and tired lambs need leading or carrying home. That is true. But there are other chapters that show the complementary side to the nature of Jesus, and these we do not read, There is the eighth chapter of John. The people said that God was their Father. He said that can hardly be so, because, if God were your Father, you would love Him. "And He went on to say the fact was that they were of their father, the That is plain speaking, nothing gentle about it, Christ had a tremendous respect for man's capacity to perceive the truth, if he {s willing to perceive it, and wants to do so. No one was ever so com plimentary to man's capacity to take truth as the Lord. -He credited everyone of us with the capacity to know the truth, if we want to. And He didn't believe they wanted, and He said, that not to want the truth is devilishness. Do we ever read that tremendous chapter, St, Ma thew XXIII?" You can hardly say anything worse of a man than that he is a *whted sepuleh calls them "hypocrites, blind," and winds up, with calling them, "serpents" and "a generation of vipers." And these words are to describe the religious leaders of the nation! Yet such violent language was not inconsistent with tenderness And love, for He immediately breaks out into' passion of tears for the unhappy city that has rejected Him, how He would have gathered her children together "as a hen gather~ oth her chickens under her wing," bat they would not.
We talk glibly about Christianity being independent the spirit of Jesus." But, are we sure we have got hold of the real spirit of Jesus? It is not the spirit of the young lady in one of Charles Dickens's books, who was so charitable and broad, that she "could smile with equal sweetness fon brimstone and on treacle." Indeed it Is not as if there were no difference between truth and deadly error,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.