CHAPTER VII.

DEATH AND LIFE.

SECTION I.

THE POWER OF DARKNESS.

This is your hour, and the power of darkness.- LUKE Xxii. 53.

It seems strange. The three disciples naturally thought it good to dwell amidst the splendors of the mountain vision. Why not build there the three tabernacles, for Moses, for Elias, for Jesus? This surely befits the character, and all they could then perceive of the destiny, of the prophets and the Master. But the word is everlasting, My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways. Moses and Elias go back to their long silence; the cloud and the voice disappear; the dazzling splendor has passed away. Jesus, left alone, leads his disciples down the mountain, and thenceforward his whole thought appears marked by those anticipations which connect themselves with the near and sorrowful decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.

Everything has its two sides. In the Divine Mind the destiny awaiting Jesus shone like the dawn; to the human eye it was the hour of prevailing night, the power of darkness. Enemies have gained numbers and strength; their money, their force, their persevering wickedness, have succeeded. Overwhelmed with the conflicts of a heart shrinking in agony from the terrible doom, still striving to cast its burden on the Father and to trust in him through all; assured how soon even his disciples should forsake him, and leave him, but that the Father lives, alone; assured also, that, of those very friends with whom he had dwelt so long and in such dearness of intimacy, one should deliver him up to his enraged enemies, he waits in the garden, full of sorrow and of prayer, for the hour yet darker which is at hand. We know the issue. The heart of man remembers it with other tears than he wept, and blesses God, not that he suffered, but that he conquered; not that the power of darkness prevailed, but that the power of darkness passed with the morrow, dissolved in the brighter dawn after which there is no night.

And this is also perpetual symbol. We have a common saying, The darkest time is just before break of day. There is nothing arbitrary in It must be so. No cross, no

this spiritual fact.

And all ex

crown, men have repeated for ever. perience attests it, and shows, when it is over, that, things being as they are, not temptation only must succeed the coming of the filial spirit, not sorrow only when this spirit meets and resists the evils of earth and assaults from beneath, but even death, clouding the light of the transfiguration. The Apostle comes proclaiming the Truth; we hear his word gladly, and follow him awhile, as he speaks the oracle and rejoices to see men welcome it to their hearts; but sin and falsehood die not soon. Sin and falsehood have the world, the numbers, and the power. And the world has in all times some form or other of the cross; and not only the Apostle, but the humblest disciple, must bear it after his Saviour. Some may talk unwisely of persecution for righteousness' sake, and proudly invite sympathy with themselves in their sacrifices; others may sneer at the delusion, or, in wiser and gentler spirit, urge the true humility which forgets the self and accepts its lot without either reproach or complaint. But say what we will, so soon as the thing is looked at thoroughly, men will find themselves compelled to see and to confess that the cross is no temporary fact, but the burden which every true soul is destined to bear before it is made perfect; that the martyrdom, which is really within always, even in ages of

deepest darkness, is not an occasional heroism, but a suffering for the Truth, borne some time or other by every man who lives the life of Jesus. We cannot escape it. This way, walk we but firmly in it, leads inevitably to the hour in which evil celebrates its triumph, and the power of darkness spreads the shades in which only the cross is seen.

This spiritual law of crucifixion may reveal itself in various ways. The whole process of the divine life, the whole development of the Christ in us, may be secret, confined to the consciousness within which it advances. The birth, the baptismal vision, the wilderness, temptations of the Devil and ministries of angels, the virtues of the healing truth, the vision and rapture of the mountain, the last evening, the morning shaded by the prolonged darkness, may be hidden from the world, may have little openly to do with outward things; but they are realities of experience, realities of an experience which must have such issue. The Pharisees and Scribes, the false priests and the traitors, the world and the Devil, conspire within, and crucify the Christ. That one fact is form of the universal law. Then if out of the retirement of a private experience the man is called to bear the witness of word or the witness of deed to the immortal Christ, the same issue repeats itself. Let him

worship only the Father; let him serve men in the spirit of Jesus; let him identify himself with the poor, the despised, the enslaved; let him be true to God when the sects are false, and obedient to God when parties and his country refuse obedience, and a Christian when either Christianity is despised, or, what is worse, distorted into the monstrous image of an almighty despotism; then he will learn also something of what his Master bore before him, and, living as he lived, amidst influences kindred to those which gathered over him, he must go into his sad retirements, and bow beneath heavy griefs, and drink a bitter cup, and stand once more at the cross: the Christ must again be crucified.

A sad destiny, we think. A dark promise to the soul asking its rest and peace in God alone. Precisely this: the end is rest and peace in God alone; so we must be severed from everything but God. The earthly must die, death is in its nature; the sensual must die, the selfish, the evil the Christ is crucified, but it is not the Christ that dies; the Christ is immortal.