THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NESS pounds. The children of the street used to play with him, pluck his garment and tease him. What a conception of man hood they would have if that were the only map in the community! But suppose that some day a man should stand among them, clear eyes, wide browed, tall of stature, lithe of limb, deep in chest and strong of arm, what a disclosure of manhood would sud denly come upon them. We were all dwarfed when Jesus came. The race had never seen the flawless man! He was human in his relation ships. A mother had held him on her breast and remembered! He was human in his hungers, desires, and loves. Of this I may not speak. He was mankind’s intellectual Lord. We are slow to accredit that fact. There are some who readily admit his moral majesty, his spiritual superiority, but do not seem to feel his lordship of the mind, and with no apparent concern teach views of life quite different from his. t Jesus never taxes us more than he says: “I am the truth.” Then thinking will never transcend Him!! Philosophy will never outrun him!! Genius will never supplant Him!!! In my senior year at the theological seminary I was assigned for my graduat ing thesis the subject of “Divine Prov idence.” Oh, how much I knew then! If those days of unembarrassed wisdom would only come again! I ransacked the valleys of Euphrates, dug under the pyramids of Egypt, and crossed the lime-stone crags of Palestine to get a base broad enough on which to rest my doctrine of Divine Providence. The boys applauded it. Dr. Miley spec ially commended it as a remarkable paper. Think of that! A man who had never yet known what it is to love utterly, and had never been married, writing on divine providence! But there came a day when it was
844 on the ho^sands of the centuries before the coming King. In his humiliation there were flashes of his power. It was a wild night in Galilee. The face of Simon Peter, blanched as the waves beat over the sides of his boat and the mad winds drenched him with spray. Then he touched the tired sleeper, saying, r“Master, we per ish!” And Jesus rose and took the wild sea in the arms of his omnipotence and hushed it like a mother stills her babe. For four years I lived in Dobbs Ferry, New York, the home of Robert J. Inger- soll. It was said that he used to, tell this story, “I was never nonplussed but once. I was lecturing one night and took occasion to show that the resurrection of Lazarus was a planned affair to bolster the waning fortunes of Jesus. Lazarus was to take sick and die. The girls were to bury him and send for Jesus. Lazarus was to fain death till Jesus should come and say “Lazarus, come forth.” To emphasize the situation I said “Can any man here tell me why Jesus said “ Lazarus , come forth?” Down by the door a palefaced white haired man arose and with shrill voice said: “Yes, sir! I can tell you! If my Lord had not said “Lazarus,” he would have had the whole grave yard of Bethany coming out to him.” The flash of almightiness from the humiliation of Jesus! Paul preached a human Jesus. “Being A Human Jesus made in the likeness of men.” (Greek— “becoming in the likeness, etc.” ) He was bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.” “Who are born of the seed of David according to the flesh,” “born of a woman”—“And being found in fashion as a man.” He was the typal man of the race. He was the eternal ideal of manhood. We had never known what it is to be a man if Jesus had never come. I once lived in a community where there was a little man 40 inches high, forty .years old, weighed forty-eight
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