July 1932
T h e K i n g ’ s
303
B u s i n e s s
to reality and faced the fact of fallen human nature and the only way of recoverability, by the cross of Christ. To deny man’s lost condition is simply to bite on granite, and to ignore it is the crown of folly. If man is not a sinner, Christianity is a farce; but if Christianity is a reality, it is because sin is a fact. T he N ote of R edemption Another major note in the music of the gospel is redemption by the sacrifice on Calvary. The great thing in Christianity is that the death of Christ was propitiatory, expiatory, reconciling. On the cross, “ guiltless blood for guilty men was shed.” The love of God, which is set forth in the New Testament, is not just divine benevolence, but suffering love, bleeding love, dying love, atoning love, the love of Calvary. This, of course, is an offense to many; they say that a sanguinary religion repels them; but such should think again, and make the great discovery that the cross is not aesthetic, but moral; it does not appeal to our sense of beauty, but to our consciousness of sin; it was not erected to satisfy the canons of taste, but to make possible the forgiveness of our transgressions, and though Cow- per’s hymn has been severely criticised on several grounds, the church continues to sing, as expressive of a deep spirit ual experience, Say, if you will, that that is untheological and unrefined, but the experience of a countless multitude will affirm that it is true; for “without shedding of blood there is no re mission of sins.” The gibbet displays the glory of God, the glory of His righteousness, and the glory of His love, and this is the only way of salvation. T he N ote of J udgment A ther great notes in the divine harmony are repent- ^ ance and faith and forgiveness and holiness and, unwelcome though it may be, judgment also. Yes, that is a note in the divine harmony. “ And again they said, Alle luia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever.” Think about that, and about this phrase also, “ The wrath of the Lamb.” I know of no more terrifying phrase in hu man language than that. But do we preach it? We may smile at the hell of the Puritans and early revivalists, but with all our progress and pride, we have not got rid of hell. There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Emmanuel’s vein's,' And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains.
o f the “ grand particularities,” as Chalmers would say, and if we would have a great spiritual awakening in our land and over the world, we must return to faith in these, and to the faithful proclamation of them. In his Confessions, Thomas De Quincy speaks of his minister-guardian as a preacher “ sincere, but not earnest.” He had 330 sermdns. and these were all very ordinary and ethical and passion less. But one day De Quincy heard quoted two lines which strangely moved him. They were, I preached, as never sure to preach again; And as a dying man to dying men. “ This couplet,” he says, “which seemed to me, equally for weight and for splendor, like molten gold, laid bare another aspect of the catholic church— revealed it as a church militant and crusading.” Yes, that is what the church must become again. Our intellectual misgivings and scholastic theorizing have paralyzed our practical useful ness, but we must get back to a. few convictions, and preach them with silver-trumpet certainty and melody. Evangelical theology is not a philosophical concept, but an experimental science, and if it be proclaimed as such with conviction, tenderness,, and joy, we shall see again a day of God’s right hand upon us. A “ There is a sound o f the feet o f the rain-storm” said Elijah. Have you hèard it? Can you hear it now? It would not have tarried so long if thè church had believed more simply, and prayed more earnestly, and labored more diligently to bring to Christ the souls for whom He died. Formalism on the one hand, and worldliness on the other hand, have almost destroyed the church as a soul-saving agency. Our business as churches is, in the first place, to bring men and women and children face to face with Christ the Saviour, and thereafter to teach them, and or ganize them for service in the embrace of the will of God. If we are not doing that, we are failing. Too many churches are just religious clubs, and not too much religion about them at that; but with revival, all that will be changed; indeed, the change will be revival. God provides His Spirit, His Word, and His throne, and He asks us to trust Him to finish through us His redeeming work. No revival can ever come, apart from prayer, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit, but by these the church of God becomes invin cible. What is to be your personal and your church’s an swer to the present challenge ?
Modernism may reject the hell of medievalism, but it cannot get rid of the element of righteousness in the mor al government of the world. Many men and women walking our streets are now writhing in the lambent flame. As long as man is moral and sin is loved, there must be hell. “ No one fears God nowadays,” was the sigh of Dr. Dale shortly before he died. But fear is still one of the great human' emotions, and God will be feared sooner or later. T he R evival of a S piritual P assion These, then, are some
Dr. Scroggie preaches in his toric Edinburgh, which was also the home of the intrepid John Knox, whose house, with its outside stair and famous ‘‘preaching window,” is pic tured here. It has been justly said that to Knox Scotland owes in great measure, under God, her ministers and schools, her open Bible, her Christian Sab baths, and her free gospel. May she not, then, say, “I f you seek his monument, look around!”
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