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THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NESS
Whether the crippled man had or had not anyone in the wide world to love and care for him he knew at that mo ment that there was a Temple of Com radeship and Love through the Divinely Beautiful Gates of which he was straightway invited to pass. Real Love beamed in gentle but all powerful radi ance upon him encouraging his soul to live. Is it a,ny wonder then that when the Name of Names, the Name of the Perfect Love was uttered, all the forces of life in his soul and body were rein forced and quickened, and that they welled up triumphantly over the bar rier of his lameness? This is what re ligion is in the world’to do. This is what we are Christians for—-to fling open the Gate Beautiful to every crip pled and impotent soul. Silver and Gold, or Power There is another contrast in this il luminating story that is very instructive. The beggar asked for money. That is not surprising. A society built, as so ciety hitherto has been built, on the money standard, has no right to expect anything else of its beggars. But evi dently Peter and John were living by a different standard. “Silver and gold have I none, but what I have give I unto thee.” Not “such as I have,” which seems to carry the suggestion of depre ciation with it, as though what Peter had to give was not so valuable as sil ver or gold. “What I have give I unto thee.” We remember a time when Pe ter said to his Lord, “We have forsaken all to follow Thee, what therefore shall we receive?”’ How changed he is! Sil ver and gold seem to have lost their charm for him. Was it with a'touch of shame I wonder that later on he wrote “we are not redeemed with corruptible things such ,as silver and gold, but with the precious blood. . . .” There is a great story of a certain Pope who was watching the bags of Pe ter’s pence being brought into the Vati can treasury. Turning to a friend he said with a smile, “St. Peter is no
Beautiful Gate! A uoble vision of the world as one vast happy temple of God, one glorious Divine Home of Perpetual Peace, holds the modern heart in thrall. Yet how strangely, terribly impotent is humanity to step within its portals. Some essential of life seems lacking, some means of movement. Humanity is like a bird with a broken wing, like a man crippled of limb. There is no doubt in this situation as to where the Christian’s interest and function should lie. Jesus, much as He loved the glori ous temple of stone, ever put the tem ple of the human heart first. So did His faithful Apostles. The interest of Peter and John in this man is a great object lesson for us. It was something so vastly different from anything the poof fellow had known before. The Gates of the Soul Probably most of the passers-by who tossed him a coin were not thinking of him at all, but rather of their precious selves and the merit in God’s sight, which, according to Pharisaic doctrine, such a deed stored up. We are not without that kind of almsgiving in our own day in spite of Henry Drummond’s sharp contention that “one should be too interested in a beggar to give him a penny.” But Peter and John had learned of Jesus to love men as men; to see beneath the shabbiest exterior all the Divine potentialities of a redeemed and sanctified soul! And so the beggar was startled to find himself an object -of real interest at last to others. The Gate Beautiful was not more beautiful or more arresting to these dis ciples of Jesus than the gates into this man’s soul, into the living temple. “Look on us!” they cry to him. Cannot you feel the mutual greeting of those eyes? Eyes that were on the one hand full of a great surging, pitying love, and, on the other, of a great aching, wistful need. Love has a wonderful channel of expression through the eye. “From eye to eye the signal runs.”
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