The Spirit Of Lent

252

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THE SPIRIT OF LENT

TLe

SPIRIT OF LENT

By

THEODORE HEIMARCK

AUGSBURG PUBUSHiriG HOUSE-TTUnriEAPOUS

THE SPIRIT OF LENT

Copyright 1946
Augsburg Publishing House

Printed and manufactured in the United States of America by the
Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis 15, Minnesota

Gratefully dedicated
to

The Reverend and Mrs. Thor T. Heimarck
my parents

and

Dr. and Mrs. O. H. Hegge
my wife's parents

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the following:

The Board of Publication (N.L.C.A.)
for the kind invitation to present these
Lenten sermons in printed form;

The congregation (United Lutheran
Church) in Red Wing whose * 'good listen-
ing" is always an inspiration and spur, for
patiently testing these sermons during Lent

1945;

The authors and publishers who gra-
ciously granted the requests to use certain
of their copyrighted materials;

And my friends, in books and in real
life, who have generously poured out the
treasure of their thought and experience
without hope of remuneration, for not
complaining when I lean heavily on their
wisdom.

THEODORE HEIMARCK

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

The Judgment in the Lord's Supper i

CHAPTER TWO

On Hindering God 15

CHAPTER THREE

The Song in Lent 29

CHAPTER FOUR

Jesus and Our Scheme of Things 43

CHAPTER FIVE

The Garden in Lent 59

CHAPTER SIX

Free, for What? 73

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Tears in Lent 85

CHAPTER EIGHT

Self-Sacrifice in Lent 101

CHAPTER NINE

Lent and Self -Examination . . :> 117

CHAPTER TEN

Lenten Memories 135

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Lenten Cross in Our Today. 149

Chapter One

The Judgment

in the Lord's Supper

For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh
judgment unto himself, if he discern not the body.

I Corinthians 11:29

TODAY is Ash Wednesday! All Christendom
is again observing in solemn mood and grave
rite the return of the Lenten season. We are part
of an innumerable throng of worshippers intent
on calling to remembrance the prodigious cost
of the salvation offered in Christ Jesus. That price
is plainly marked in Holy Communion, and it
seems fitting that we should here begin our Lenten
pilgrimage. An invitation, therefore, has been
issued to you to eat and drink at the Lord's Table
in the cordial fellowship of God's family, remem-
bering and obeying Christ's command, "'This do
ye in remembrance of me/'

S THE SPIRIT OF LENT

But let it be plainly understood that the invita-
tion is not lightly issued, and must not be lightly
accepted. For no one can approach the Lord's
Table without entering into judgment. The ob-
vious reason for this is that He, even our Lord,
claims without reservation that He is the "meat"
and the "drink" which alone can sustain life-
to refuse it, He insists, can only mean utter de-
struction and death. Words like that mean judg-
ment abroad, and so St. John understood the
situation, for he put it down as certainty that the
Christ bluntly claimed that "the Father judgeth
no man, but hath committed all judgment unto
the Son" (John 5:22). Even a casual reader of
Scripture ought quickly to conclude that Jesus is
actually a divider of mankind, one who cleaveth
asunder, like a wedge, in action of approval and
condemnation .

Nor would we have it understood that this ac-
tion is limited to communion. It is not limited
at all, but it is somehow intensified and brought
into focus here as nowhere else. Here as nowhere
else, we stand with fear and trembling before the
revelation of the frightful penalty of sin, exposed
so shockingly in the suffering and dying Lamb
of God.

Woe to that individual who dares to stand
jaunty and self-satisfied before this judgment on
sin, the thing that crucifies God's best gift, for
the superficial are always resisted and met with

THE JUDGMENT IN THE LORD'S SUPPER g

uncompromising wrath. Blessed alone is that one
who, in the judgment upon sin, finds the free-
dom from sin urged upon him by an overwhelm-
ing desire to flee from the company of those who
crucify, and to stand in the presence of the Cruci-
fied, restored and forgiven. There are actually two
judgments, you see, not one. There is the judg-
ment of condemnation, and the judgment of
approval and acquittal.

The Apostle Paul understood this double aspect
of judgment in the Lord's Supper and urged that
every care be exercised to receive forgiveness and
peace and to escape wrath. This concern is the
reason, of course, for his alarm at the situation
existing in the church at Corinth. Impatient with
their carelessness, he cries, "Whosoever shall eat
the bread or drink the cup of the Lord in an
unworthy manner, shall * be guilty of the body
and the blood of the Lord/' This sober warning
came as a climax to a series of charges reviewing
their guilt of misconduct. To read this summary
of the affairs in the Church is to know that the
Apostle is in dead earnest. His tone is indignant,
his words furious with undisguised dismay and
vibrant with something akin to a consuming fire.
You are wrong, he explodes, dreadfully wrong,
and sin against Christ and do crucify Him anew
with your hateful class rivalry, love of display,
pampering of the flesh, and silly divisions. In plain
language he lays bare their guilt of abusing sacred

4 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

rights and privileges; he insists that a judgment
of mercy is impossible, that a judgment of wrath
is inevitable. For, says he, you do not "discern
the Lord's body."

Well, that seems to be plain enough, not to
"discern the Lord's body/' It was a body that
allowed us to have the incarnate Christ and to
behold His glory. It was a body, also, that brought
Him into vital touch with temptation and allowed
us to see Him, yet without sin. It was a body,
too, that permitted Him to carry in His own per-
son the sins of the world and suffer and die. It is
trite but true that the body is and was identified
with His actual life in history, and to fail to "dis-
cern the Lord's body" must mean a failure to
see Him.

That failure is ever with us yes, even until
today. To live "just as though He had never lived,
as though He had never died" is the recurring
temptation of every age. It is the temptation, too,
as we confront the right use of this Lenten sea-
son. Rites, seasons, symbols, ceremonies, and sacra-
ments have always carried within themselves the
bacteria- of disease and putridity. True evangeli-
cals have known this and been afraid of their use.
Even the Lenten season was subjected to long dis-
favor. Its observance, it was rightly said, was a
frightfully dangerous solution to the problem of
deepening spiritual life.

Dr. Martin Luther shared this suspicion and

THE JUDGMENT IN THE LORD'S SUPPER 5

was not easily reconciled to its perpetuation in
the life of the Church. Small wonder, too, when
it is understood how intimately Lent was asso-
ciated in his mind with absurd medieval rites,
passion plays, and inadequate preaching replete
with farcical and fantastic anecdote and inter-
pretation. "This is a grand gospel/' said the Re-
former of Matthew 15:21-28 (text for the second
Sunday in Lent) , "but they have appointed it for
this Sunday because in it we read of driving out
a devil. They want to indicate thereby that one
ought to become pious and go to confession. But
it is a bad and popish piety which can be stored
up for the entire year and which consists in miser-
able .fasting and unwilling confession, of which
there is no commandment/' It is surprising, in
view of this and other harsh statements, that there
was a survival of any observance of Lent in Ms
ministry.

The fact remains, however, that Luther did not
abolish Lent. This would have been an easy solu-
tiontoo easy. It has always been the solution of
the simple-minded, who, like Simple Simon of
nursery-rime fame, still hope to get something
for nothing. The Doctor of Wittenberg was right
in despising this kind of answer and turning his
mind towards a worthier one, one that involved
the ceaseless struggle of putting meaning and sig-
nificance into such aspects of the Lenten observ-
ance as could be maintained in the light of Scrip-

O THE SPIRIT OF LENT

ture. This potentially useful period of meditation
and reflection, the Passion season, was thus re-
tained; but the danger was not erased. It thus
becomes your task and mine to fill Lenten observ-
ances with significance and to carry that respon-
sibility into any sphere where hands handle sacred
things.

It is understandable that many, remembering
the sins of the Church in Corinth and the sub-
sequent rebuke, should seek to escape the risks
involved in the use of the Lord's Supper by refus-
ing to use it. It remains the easy solution to a
vexing problem, but the answer of all such timid
souls must be refused. Luther, be it remembered,
did not insist that the observance of Lent be for-
saken; and Paul did not call upon the people to
give up the use of the Lord's Supper. The Profes-
sor of Wittenberg was an apt pupil of Paul and
understood the profundity of the principle set
forth: a right use means individual responsibility
to "discern the body/' It is fair, I believe, to say
that rites, ceremonies, days, and seasons can all
be used, and ought to be used to assure and to
slay. It is an individual and recurring assignment
of the worshipper to see the living Jesus. Peace is
found in Him, not in rite or ceremony. To miss
Him is to be unworthy, for true faith fastens on
Him and His work. It is this "Him" we are to be
after, and our very self that He is seeking. The
Holy Communion, therefore, can be said to be

THE JUDGMENT IN THE LORD*S SUPPER 7

constantly searching us. Probing into the secret
places of the heart, it asks about motives and de-
sires and insists that we seek a living Christ to
trust with the work of justification.

We must not expect or attempt to live the
Lenten season in the identical manner of the first
Passion season. It is futile to desire that same
mood of heavy despair. Christ is risen, the "first-
fruits/' and our Lent must ever be lived in that
knowledge of victory and triumph. His death was
important; all Gospel writers give it so much
space as to make one believe it was the most im-
portant thing Jesus did. It even seems that God in
heaven took care to see to it that the death of His
Son could never be disputed high and lifted up
on a Cross for all to see, it was no secret that He
was being put to death; and a spear thrust in the
side gave terrible witness to His dying. The Christ
of Galilee died publicly, and in a way it was a
seal of assurance that He had lived. But of that
dying, Christ Himself said that He gave up His
life freely to death. He must die, He knew, and
He became a willing victim. By far the easiest
solution is that Christ understood that His king-
dom was not and could not be of this world, and
that He must give up the physical body to rule
and reign in His true kingdom which is forever
spiritual. It remains for man to be so stupid as to
believe that kingdoms can be built of concrete
and steel, be accomplished by fear, force, and

8 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

conquest. It is the wisdom of God that refuses
this limited and decadent kingdom for a universal
and eternal reign in the hearts of mankind. And
has not that been the real strength and power of
His rule? "The gates of hell shall not prevail
against this Kingdom," is wonderful assurance of
its permanence, but it is also quite reasonable as
a conclusion; for what, indeed, can you think of
or name that might even conceivably triumph
over this sort of thing? Would men destroy it?
Well, where will they begin? It has no boundaries,
no army, no navy, and yet it is the only permanent
kingdom, and the best defended. Yes, He must
of necessity die. But death could not hold Him!
As Lord of life He rules forever and ever, and
Lent must be lived in that light.

It was necessary, as He Himself said, to go away
in order that the Holy Spirit might come and
lead us into all truth. To this day it is the Spirit
that calls men into the Kingdom and nurtures
them in the true faith. But just here we have
fallen into many foolish and dangerous ideas be-
cause we have failed to understand the Spirit's
work and program.

Some deludable folks keep looking for the Holy
Spirit as though they expected to be overpowered
by unmistakable evidence of His presence. I am
increasingly suspicious of all prayers for another
Pentecost because I am positive we have no reason
to expect or desire one. Pentecost, let it be said

THE JUDGMENT IN THE LORD'S SUPPER 9

emphatically, is an event in history like the Pas-
sion and Resurrection and Incarnation and who
would have the effrontery to pray for another
crucifixion? The Comforter is here according to
promise, doing His work according to promise. It
is only our blindness that prevents us from seeing
and understanding this. We insist on looking for
evidences of the Spirit, but the Spirit is here
not to make Himself known but to make Christ
known. "He [the Holy Spirit] shall take of mine
[Christ's] and declare it unto you/'

You see, surely, that the very work of the Spirit
denies Him recognition as a special agent. It is
His business to make Christ known, and to that
task He ever remains faithful. The life He gives
is the life of Christ. Therefore it is written (Ro-
mans 8:gb) , "Now if any man have not the Spirit
of Christ, he is none of his/' Scripture makes it
crystal-clear that the very fruits of the Spirit are
marks of Christ-likeness. Is it not time that we
forsake all ambitious searching for mysterious
manifestations of the Spirit, and be quite content
to see Jesus only? Let that be our concern as we
approach a right celebration of Lent at the Lord's
Table. We must come expecting to find a living
Jesus, and seeing Him we know the Comforter
will be free to work His saving, healing work.

If we are rightly to see Jesus, we must remind
ourselves again and again that He is alive. Noth-
ing seems quite so important today as to remem-

1O THE SPIRIT OF LENT

ber His words, "I will come in ... and abide/'
That presence is available because He chose freely
the way of death. He who might have called hosts
of angels to His rescue, refused escape. Truly it
is written, "Himself He could not save." What-
ever else it may mean, and it does mean more, it
is a plain statement of the nature of His universal
reign: His reign must be spiritual. As a living
spirit He is with us to this day. And spirit always
seeks a body. This is true whether the spirit be
good or evil. When Jesus cast out evil spirits they
entered into swine or returned to the same man
to make his fate the worse for not giving imme-
diate occupancy to a good spirit. Spirit desires
garb and body, and even eternity takes cognizance
of that fact: there is the promise of a glorified
body. "Take, eat! . . . Drink ye/* surely signifies
that Christ's desire is to come within to be our
strength and sustenance. "This is meat indeed. . . .
This is drink indeed!" Fed by His indwelling, sin
loses its power and attraction, death its sting, for
He has verily known and defeated all life's ene-
mies and His victory becomes ours. Away, then,
with mere trite mouthings of truths about Jesus,
and let Jesus dwell in our hearts richly. "Give
me Jesus, or I die!" must be the cry of desire
from within, and, with Paul, it must be, "It is
no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me."

It was grim tragedy for the Corinthians not to
recognize this living Christ and His complete mas-

THE JUDGMENT IN THE LORD'S SUPPER 1 1

tery of all life. This stupidity brought into jeop-
ardy the entire structure of the Kingdom. Small
wonder that the Apostle's words strike out like
a lash. The cause of Christ was made too limp
because of blind discipleship. It seems important
to ask ourselves today whether or no we have not
stood long in need of the same kind of lash. Is
not our failure apparent? Is it not evident that
we have been far too unwilling to know and re-
ceive this living Christ? And is not the very lack
of Christ-likeness the thing that makes Chris-
tianity ridiculous in the eyes of the world? To
regain this life is our hope. This hope includes
a new life, and the new life is as always the very
life of Christ.

I fear that many will say that this life is too
high for them. We have accustomed ourselves to
saying something like this, "I can not, of course,
be expected to be perfect/' and we think that this
is the final answer and an effective stop to further
urgings. But it is not! The Law is, indeed, too
high for us. Just because it is, we are too content
to accept failure. But the real terror of the Law
is its fulfillment in the Son. Look again at His
life! See! He made it! And His life is offered to
us. This is His gift our ransom.

Think of it! Free from the tyranny of sin and
its power; free from death and its terror who is
there that does not want that, that does not need
just that? You, with sin filling up the cup of your

12 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

life with grim unhappiness and who stand help-
lessly watching it spill over to drip gloom and
shame on those you love. You, trying to rise again
from the slavish depths of wretched personal habits
that have all but destroyed you. You, sitting lonely
and afraid because dim vision and shortness of
breath have come to remind you of the approach
of death. You, I say, need not live forever on the
brink of the abyss of defeat and shame. You can
have a new life, a victorious life, and you can
have it today, now! Jesus is here, and calleth for
you, and His voice is like running waters. Clear
and clean and running and tumbling and sing-
ing and laughing, the waters tell of refreshment
and hope and cleansing and life. One of God's
prophets saw and understood it; cried out a glad
invitation: "Ho! Every one that thirsteth, come
ye to the waters, and he that hath no money;
come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy . . . with-
out money and without price/ 1

It is a fact, is it not, that the greatest stumbling-
block to service for Christ and the extension of
His Kingdom has been the poor showing of His
friends. God help us! We have been a weak and
sickly lot. It was never His plan that we should
be like this, so decrepit and weak and ugly. It is
His presence in our lives that can change all that,
now! His presence will effectively silence the worst
critics of His Church. His presence will give new
visions of service and speed the day of the coming

THE JUDGMENT IN THE LORD'S SUPPER lg

of His Kingdom. And it is His presence that will
rebuke the world and convict it of sin. "Without
me ye can do nothing," but lo, "all things are pos-
sible to them that believe/*

Well, here we are, you and I, just a tiny part
of the great Lenten procession and yet and yet
each one of us so important to the Christ whose
Passion we all strive now to commemorate. Before
us is the Lord's Table. Christ invites us,, individ-
ually, to come. Woe be unto him who fails to dis-
cern the body of the Lord, but blessed is he who
sees beyond the range of ordinary vision and hum-
bly gives over his body as a dwelling-place for
Christ. Ah, Christ has need of you in His work,
but more important still, you have need of Christ.
Then ccene, come to the Lord's Table with its
judgment, unafraid. Let the judgment fall on sin
and unbelief, for it has no terror to such as are
hid in Christ Jesus. To such, indeed, judgment
means acquittal and freedom and peace and glad-
ness and life evermore.

Come into my life, Lord Jesus.
Come in today! Come in to stay!

Chapter Two

On Hindering God

First Sunday in Lent

But He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan;
you are a hindrance to me, because your thoughts are
not God's thoughts, but men's!'

Matthew 16:23 (Weymouth)

IT IS, to be sure, a horrible thought, one to
bring terror charging in to claim the soul.
Probably only Kierkegaard would dare to utter
it, to put it down bluntly, realistically, and with-
out apology, saying: "Let us collect all the New
Testaments there are in existence, and let us carry
them out to an open place or up upon a mountain,
and then while we kneel down let some one address
God in this fashion: 'Take this book back again;
we men, being such as we now are, are no good
at all for dealing with a thing like this which only
makes us unhappy/ Such is my proposal," he con-
tinued, "that like the inhabitants of Gadara we
beseech Christ to 'depart out of our coasts/ "

l6 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

Here certainly is an extraordinarily radical solu-
tion to that vexing problem of what to do about
the obvious bungling which has always character-
ized our handling of God's truth. Most of us don't
take to the idea either. As a matter of fact, it
strikes us as being fearfully indecent and loath-
somely impious. Impulsively and indignantly we
want to hit back with quick questions and ex-
clamations like this: "What! Shall we destroy the
only hope we have? Would you have us smash
the dream of ultimate destiny that has alone been
able to inspire glad songs of victory? What mad
folly is this? What senseless chatter!"

This shuddering and protesting is exactly what
this seemingly irreverent philosopher of the North
wants of us. Exasperation at his words of goading
would please him no end. Only, of course, he
would want it plainly understood that our reac-
tion must go beyond hot words of rebuttal. Words,
as we all know, are poor substitutes for the kind
of noble living one rightly expects to follow in
the train of a genuine profession of Christianity.
The more one thinks about it, the more one finds
difficulty in excusing so much craven behavior.
For here we are, after these hundreds and hun-
dreds of years of preaching and teaching, still lov-
ingly fingering the garments of greatness, admir-
ing the hue and the cut, but forever stepping back
and aside when the suggestion is pressed that we
pay the price and make them our possession. This

ON HINDERING GOD 17

cowardly slinking away is the very thing that net-
tled Kierkegaard and brought his ire to bear upon
the awkward and disappointing manners of Chris-
tians, and made him sternly thunder that mighty
little had yet been done with the New Testament
light, save sin against iteach generation care-
lessly trampling under foot most of its high hopes
and unspeakable love.

Let us admit frankly that we need to be startled
into some kind of drastic action in regard to Christ.
The dull listlessness of those of us who call Him
"Lord" has already given too sound a basis for the
worst of all criticisms, namely, that He really does
not matter. We have no business toying with
divine plans and purposes. We can not and must
not continually dilly-dally with God's great prom-
ises and stay indolent in the face of His prodigious
assignments. It is "high time" that we do some-
thing with the stupendous and revolutionary New
Testament revelations either approve them with
reckless risk of life or confess that they are much
too high for us and fling them far to one side
with shattering violence. It does seem braver and
more nearly honest to deal thus decisively with
this bold claim of Christ to be all in all.

That God in Christ should still give us oppor-
tunity to make a decision is one of the mysteries
of His grace. How wonderful, indeed, does not
the patience of God become when we rightly be-
hold our spluttering blundering and our many

l8 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

black pages of recorded failures, especially when
we note that His patience is not yet exhausted!
He still hopes to restore our souls. We can make
up our minds, also, that He will never retreat
from this world in confused defeat. The Cross
and the resurrection tell us He is in this conflict
of life to stay until His purposes are accom-
plished. That may take time, but what is that
to Him who is eternal? His Kingdom will come
and His righteousness prevail this much we know
or ought to know. In the knowledge of such pa-
tient and prevailing love we ought to gird our-
selves to play the valiant part, not stand puttering
with little nothings that keep us constantly in the
company of those who hinder God.

We can and do hinder God. Jesus said so to
His disciple Peter. "It is because you think the
thoughts of men/' said the Master, "that you now
oppose me and become a hindrance to me."

Many of you are well acquainted with Edmund
Spenser's book, The Faerie Queen, and know
something about that tale called "The Quest of
Sir Guy on." Quite readily you will recall the
events that brought this brave knight to a final
victory over a wicked witch, who had managed
to subject an entire land. Let me remind you,
though, of the scene where the company prepared
to leave by boat. They are attacked again by the
fierce beasts that blocked their earlier arrival; the
palmer touches each one with his staff; they be-

ON HINDERING GOD 1Q

come men again I say "again" because the crafty
witch had turned them into beasts with black
magic and there is great joy, we suppose, in the
hearts of those who now find manhood's estate
restored. That is, most of them evidently found
delight in such a restoration, but one, we are told,
one who had been a pig, complained bitterly
about it, urging his preference for the recent past,
and so the palmer obligingly said, "Let Gryll be
Gryll, and have his hoggish mind," and the man
was speedily granted his desire to grunt his way
back to the filthy mire and slough.

There are, it seems, always those who balk at
the change in status God has in mind for them
folks who prefer the contentment of an animal-
like life. They live by instinct and feeling, resent
the intrusions of thought, and fretfully complain
of boredom when presented with opportunities
to dream big dreams and see great visions. Such
individuals can never be useful in building the
"Eternal City" that John found so impossible to
describe because its wonders exceeded the power
and scope of language. All such persons insolently
block out actually hinder God. Our churches
have many members who in the last analysis do
not really want what God has to offer, are hope-
lessly earthly-minded, and who look with disdain
at the life as "joint-heirs with Christ" that God
shoves toward them with eager hands. Of course
they are hindering God, that is plain. To all such

SO THE SPIRIT OF LENT

comes the plea to look again at God's intentions
and plans for mankind. It is for you, too, "though
your sins be as scarlet," and though your past be a
long list of nothing but defeats and a history of
absorption in worldliness. Come, press forward
to the new life so graciously proffered again in
Jesus' name, and begin to think God's thoughts
after Him of redemption and glory and sonship.

The text for today, however, deals more espe-
cially with those who do call Christ their friend,
and who do delight in His company. They, too,
often hinder God. God's cause can not stand still
in some pleasant retreat but must be thrust into
the center of all life for decision and action. To
tug at God's sleeve and to voice our impossible
plans for a salvation that is cost-free and cozy is
to betray Him and His cause, and means that we
are actually on the side of the enemy of truth.
Peter should have known better.

It happened in Caesarea Philippi. This, as you
probably know, is the most picturesque spot in
all Palestine. Here stands proud Mount Hermon,
snow-capped and haughty in its successful chal-
lenge of the clouds. Everywhere one sees flour-
ishing vegetation, inviting glens, and laughing
waters. Surrounded by autumn's prodigal splurge
of color, with the hush of nearby woods, Jesus and
the disciples were snatching needed rest from over-
crowded days of arduous tasks and finding some
relief from the curious gaze of an increasingly

ON HINDERING GOD 2 1

hostile people who, more and more, coarsely ac-
costed Him and them with flippant questions
and ill-disguised contempt. It was good to rest.
It was a beautiful place to tarry in intimate and
good comradeship. Against that peaceful back-
ground the thoughts Jesus expressed, of coming
conflicts, pain, death, and a little-understood
resurrection, came with horrific force by contrast.
Gloomy disciples listened, looked despondently at
Peter, their spokesman, who in turn managed to
get the Master aside where he felt free to give
Him some friendly counsel about not going know-
ingly into such traps and sorrows and sufferings
as evidently awaited Him in the city. "This," he
said with confidential urging, "this shall not be
unto Thee." He was not allowed to complete
the hastily arranged arguments, because he was
quickly interrupted by the voice of Christ that
unusually sharply said, "Get behind me, Satan,
. . . you are a hindrance to me, because your
thoughts are not God's thoughts, but men's."

Not many days later, disciples, left at a nonplus
by such determination, followed the sure step of
their Lord as He "set His face" towards Jeru-
salem. The city waited impatiently for His arrival
that very city that H. V. Morton, in his book
In the Steps of the Master, describes as being the
color of a lion-skin. "There are," he writes, "tawny
yellows and dark browns and pale golds ... a city
like a lion crouched in the sun, watchful, vindio

22 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

tive, and ready to kill." Here Jesus meant to go
to challenge evil, to reveal God's truth, and to
die. We can not wonder too much that the dis-
ciples followed a bit bewildered and somewhat
dismayed.

There is a Caesarea Philippi in religious ex-
perience. It must not be belittled or made to ap-
pear unreal. The "struggle and strife we find in
this life" needs a healing and quiet place where
stability and wholeness may surge back into sick
and feverish lives. Thank God, we are invited to
a place of rest and to a place of peace where bur-
dens are laid down and the weary welcomed.
There is nothing surer than the tender arms of
the Good Shepherd who carries the lost to green
pastures and living waters. And yet we are not
to think that this is it that Christianity has its
beginning and ending in a sweet fellowship with
Jesus beside a shady brook far from the hustling
throngs in the market-places of life.

It is dreacffully wrong to keep talking about the
Kingdom as though it had only a door, as though
beyond this entrance there was not a road a
"Way." Conversion is a beautiful experience of
turning eyes and steps homeward and being gath-
ered into warm arms of welcome and forgiveness.
The temptation is to stay in this experience to
re-do it, to re-live it, to tarry. "Lord, it is good
to be here!" said one, and we can believe it is
true also of this beginning of the Christian life.

OxN HINDERING GOD 2g

Yet It does become highly dangerous to keep
talking about conversion as though this indeed
were the chief end of Christianity. It is not. It
is factually the first step, the beginning. I do not
want to be misunderstood here, and yet I am
anxious to have you thoroughly instructed in this
vital matter and can not let you go before you
see that that new Christ-life born within is meant
for sturdy uses and not only quiet and comfort.

Paul, it is said, spent some three years in a
wilderness after his dramatic meeting with Jesus
on the Damascus road. It would be interesting
to know if there was a struggle within, fierce and
long, before he consented to the open road again.
It would have been natural, I think, for him to
have said to his Savior something about liking
the isolation of their place of retreat, about enjoy-
ing the bliss of long hours with Him who loved
him and rescued him from that dreadful blind-
ness of only yesterday, and something, too, about
staying there forever. But Paul could not stay.
He was made to shoulder his way back into the
crowds of Jerusalem, to walk "the Way/' and to
suffer the indecencies of prisons, the Indignities
of hatreds, the piercing pain of whip and stone.
Out of this kind of conflict and hardship he wrote
to the Colossians (1:24), "Who now rejoice in
my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is
behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for
his body's sake, which Is the church."

24 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

Whatever else this word means, It means at
least that Christ's life, in the hearts of believers,
is not wholly comfort and nice ease. He is as little
wanted today as on that day we call "Good Fri-
day." Sooner or later we all discover that He
does not fit into the world as we know it, and
never will. Whenever He puts in an appearance,
there is the far-off rumble of conflict and the noise
of battle. Into that furious fray He will go. We
would stop Him if we could, because we know
that we will be dragged along with Him to our
chagrin and disgrace.

What one man has called "the cruel promises
of Christ" promises of hatred that rages and
spends itself in every trick of cruelty, oppression,
and destructionis a fact that we must reckon
seriously with. It is our refusal to suffer that has
made Christianity a thing of no importance a
thing of which it is said, "It may do you some
good and certainly can not hurt you." Just where
is the Cross in that sort of thing? The Cross is
gone! We have managed somehow to make Chris-
tianity a Caesarea Philippi a quiet corner for our-
selves and Christ in some beautiful church build-
ing where we can fellowship an hour or two with-
out fear of interruption. The unkind and un-
friendly world out therewell, let it go its way
without challenge from Him or us, or Him in us.
But the feet of Christ are growing restless. One
can sense it in the uneasy conscience of the Church,

ON HINDERING GOD 25

His body. His penetrating eyes are upon us again
in rebuke for hindering the march of the King-
dom. We must move, or be left behind His face
is set "toward Jerusalem" where He will go to
judge and be judged, reviled, mocked, scourged,
crucified, and, glory be, rise again the third day.

We can not protect Jesus or keep Him safe
from defilement. He always did intend to be on
the offensive in the struggle of life. The believer
in the Cross must go bravely into the streets of
any and every Jerusalem with condemnation for
false beliefs, uncovering with keen analysis the
shallowness of materialism, prodding spiritual in-
difference with the voice of a prophet, overturning
proud self-sufficiency with evidences of limitations
of mortality, challenging drunkenness, revellings,
licentiousness, and all sensual living. It is the
world that is on the defensive, not the Church,
His body. When the world is attacked she will
strike back, remember that. She will lash out
livid facedly at any who become "evil to their
trade" and who threaten her deeds of darkness
with the light of God.

The life of Christ constitutes judgment upon
the world, and the world resents Him with every
whit of strength. The world talks insistently in
terms of self-seeking, sees always through the eyes
of self-interest. Christ talks insistently in terms
of self-sacrifice and sees always through the eyes
of God's interests. These are as incompatible as

26 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

night and day, and as surely as the darkness of
the night gives way to the light of the morning
and the light of the day gives way to the darkness
of night, so the one must displace the other and
will seek desperately to destroy the other. The
resurrection tells us that Christ can not be de-
stroyed. We need not be afraid, and we must not
coax Him to tarry longer, to spare us, even yet,
from the rough and tumble of boisterous ridicule,
and judgment, and blood, and sweat, and tears.
Henry Sienkiewicz has graphically portrayed
the days of early Christian persecution in his
book, Quo Vadis. He imagines that Peter is leav-
ing Rome at the urgent request of all believers
who fear that his death may jeopardize the cause
of Christ. With safety just ahead, Peter sees what
no one else could see a vision of the Lord. "He
fell with his face to the earth, as if kissing some-
one's feet/' says the author. There was a long
silence broken by the sobbed words of the Apostle:
"Quo vadis, DomineT' . . . "To Peter's ears came
a sad and sweet voice, which said, 'If thou desert
my people, I am going to Rome to be crucified a
second time/ The Apostle lay on the ground, his
face in the dust, without motion or speech. It
seemed to Nazarius that he had fainted or was
dead; but he rose at last, seized the staff with
trembling hands, and turned without a word to-
ward the seven hills of the city. The boy, seeing
this, repeated as an echo, 'Quo vadis, DomineT

ON HINDERING GOD 2j

'To Rome/ said the Apostle, in a low voice. And
he returned/*

The novelist has caught a bright glimpse of the
truth that we are after just now, the truth that
His saving work is hindered when we try to save
our lives and His. Let us not stand in His way any
longer, but gladly and confidently keep step with
Him as He leads the way toward our Jerusalem
and our Cross, sustained and assured in the knowl-
edge that what looks like death is life and what
looks like defeat is victory. So difficult and mys-
terious are the ways of God, and yet so plain, too,
now that we have Christ's help and triumph.
There is joy in this way of obedience, the experi-
ence of every disciple is a witness to it. "They
departed from the presence of the council/' we
read in Acts 5:41, "rejoicing that they were
counted worthy to suffer shame for his name/*
Up, up, then, to such living as will bring the
well-earned citation, "Men that have hazarded
their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ/ 1

Chapter Three

The Song in Lent

And when they had sung an. hymn, they went out into
the mount of Olives. Mark 14:26

And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to
take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou
wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood
out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;
and hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and
we shall reign on the earth. Revelation 5:9-10

prelude to the stirring scenes commonly
JL associated with the Passion-tide was a song, a
hymn. Bible scholars seem to think that the text
was Psalms 115 to 118 or else 134. In any event,
it appears certain that one of the mighty truths
emphasized was the power and strength of the
God of all creation, and another, God's gracious
mercy and wisdom and ever-present hand ex-
tended to help and steady His servants. I am
sure you would have enjoyed hearing that song.
Think of it! Judas, you know, had gone out into

gO THE SPIRIT OF LENT

the night. The Lord's Supper had been instituted.
A tremendously moving discourse had been heard.
And now a song. Moving below the windows of
that upper room more than nineteen hundred
years later, we can almost hear in imagination the
song of these sturdy men. And is there not one
voice sweeter, fuller, and probably more intense?
Is it not the voice of the Man of Galilee? Is there
not a semblance of a catch in that voice? Yes, just
there! At the words, "I will take the cup of salva-
tion and call upon the name of the Lord."

One thing is certain, though, and that is that
there is a song in the Passion of Christ. We labor
at times to muffle it and strive to remember with
the help of strong emphasis the sighs, and tears,
and sweat, and blood we can not and will not
ever forget that but always there is that song with
its note of confidence and resignation to eternal
plans and purposes, sounding a note of sure hope
in final and eternal victory. I, for one, am glad
that it is there and that it has not been erased or
overlooked in foolish haste to pass over to bigger
things.

It somehow seems especially fitting that a song
should be included. I have read somewhere,
and I think it was written by a famous theo-
logical professor, that the Lutheran position
does not permit us to stand over-long before a
gruesome blood-spattered crucifix. Our proper
station is rather before an empty Cross betokening

THE SONG IN LENT g 1

His final victoryand from what little I know
about it, that does seem to make good sense. If
you will read some of the first sermons preached
by the Apostles, you will agree that there is a
melody in the Passion because of the glad news
of the resurrection, and that very fact made the
Gospel worth preaching. We dare not, of course,
forget the untold agony of Christ's suffering and
death, but there is no help for it, the song comes
back again in view of our full knowledge of the
"sweetest story ever told."

We ought to be singing that song today. But
here it needs to be said that there are songs, and
then there are songs! Some of them are not worth
singing and some of them contribute not so little
to the program of Satan. Is it not strange and
ghastly how evil cleverly manages to use and con-
trol the gifts of God? Take our eyes, for instance,
or our ears, or our taste, or our feelings, or our
hands and feet indeed all such things as are the
normal equipment of man and just review in
your mind the use our Savior put these things to.
But do not forget that He saw "the lilies of the
field," approached the lepers, placed hands in
blessing on little children. Next, please, take the
worst criminal you have ever heard of, and see
what made his crimes possible. But do not forget
eyes, ears, hands, and feet.

Is it not a fact that evil somehow exists only
by virtue of God's gifts? Evil, it seems, is always

g2 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

a distortion of these marvelous creations of His
to uses that are anti-God!

Then there is song. That, too, is His gift. But
we all know that music and song are generously
employed in the service of all that is unclean and
immoral. Modern jazz has been defined as follows:
4 'Raucous ribaldry on the surface, with a deep
undercurrent of the blues, syncopated to conceal
the heart-break, and blaring loud dissonant defi-
ance at all who would presume to question the
genuineness of its hilarity/' Most of us know
enough about this world of ours to see the in-
solence of the swagger in this kind of song; know,
too, that it is cheap silver-plate to cover up tired,
jaded, and worried spirits. That frivolous tempo
and intoxicated mood of " popular " music is evi-
dence enough to convict its lovers of unfaithful-
ness to life's reality, baring, as it does, its sicken-
ing intention to ignobly hide behind frippery.

It has been said that "there is no accounting
for tastes," but it would have to be an extremely
hasty person who would willingly apply this to all
of life. The poet is much nearer to the truth when
he sings: "You tell on yourself by the clothes you
wear/' and then continues on to describe how our
choices in all such everyday affairs are a valuable
clue and index to the kind of person doing the
choosing. This is substantiated by the sharp anal-
ysis of the author of Proverbs (27:21, Goodspeed),
when he says: "As the smelter is for silver, and

THE SONG IN LENT gg

the furnace for gold, so a man is tested by his
praise/' Taste and praise are here understood to
be identical. Both words represent a decisive selec-
tion resulting from what we are, and what we
therefore approve. Into our praise or approval go
all our prejudices, all our learning, all our best
judgment, and all our loves. To judge a man's
character and personality by the music and songs
he selects seems sensible and fair. The songs a
generation favors become a convenient yardstick
for measuring its breadth and length and height
and depth.

Listen with care to the "popular" songs of to-
day if you would understand this generation. Tell
me, what are your conclusions as to the kind of
people who swing through life on their scales?
You must agree it is almost certain that it is a
very clever generation, for the intricate tonal com-
binations are nothing less than evidences of highly
developed skills. And it is quite certain, too, that
it is a superficial generation bent on having fun,
for the broken rhythm and careless text tell a
story of people intent on entertainment. And the
great company devoted to its interests indicates
that it is "big business." But despite all the activ-
ity of its organization, it is becoming more and
more difficult to stir the crowd out of boredom.
Futility is openly confessed in the entire extrav-
aganza. The brazen nakedness of its appeal to the
vulgar, the crude, and the animal instinct is evi-

34 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

dence enough that it is rotten at the core, and
many people are sickening o the stench and seek-
ing something more satisfying. Gradually there is
developing a consciousness that something impor-
tant has been left out of life. They want to find
that something. The appeal of the life of play is
growing dim in the light of an uneasy revelation
that "life is more than food and raiment."

I do not think this is too much to say about it,
not in the light of the fact that the smartest lead-
ers of bands and orchestras are beginning to in-
clude at least one solid, substantial, and age-proved
song or hymn. People like it, and more and more
insist upon it. Maybe Dr. Kirk is right (A Design
for Living, Harris Elliott Kirk, Fleming H. Revell
Co., 1943): "The whole world is suffering from
an exhausted and overstrained emotionalism, and
the backslider is filled with his own ways. Self-
indulgence has lost its appeal and man is bitterly
conscious of the fact that the way of the trans-
gressor is hard." The songs of just yesterday and
the trend of today seem at least to bear this out.

Several years ago Will Durant said, "We move
into an age of spiritual exhaustion and despond-
ency like that which hungered for the birth of
Christ. . . . The greatest question of our time
... is whether man can bear to live without
God/' Dr. Kirk quotes Katherine Mansfield as
saying: "I do think that one must have some big
thing to live by, and one reason for the great

THE SONG IN LENT 35

poverty o art Is that artists have got no religion,
and they are, in the words of the Bible, sheep
without a shepherd. One can't drift, and every-
body Is drifting nowadays." The confusion and
the growing despair are the challenge that con-
fronts the Christian Church today. But there must
be no complacency, no smugness, no "I told you
so," for it will not be easy to win with promises
these discouraged folks who have listened to prom-
ise after promise and chased and chased in faith
that the promises of the "best" and "biggest" and
most "sensational" meant life and gladness and
even peace. The Christian promises must be
backed by radiant lives, and with a song that can
be sung when life is most real and most strained.

We have songs and hymns available that fit the
hour, but we do not know them at least, not well.
This is partly due to the fact that we have too many
melodies that feebly attempt to match the "pop-
ular" with jingle and jangle, and too many texts
that justify John Haynes Holmes in writing (Chris-
tian Century, June 10, 1942): "The average Prot-
estant hymnbook of the last century was an al-
most hopeless collection of literary and spiritual
trash, illustrating how easy Is the descent from the
simple and natural to the obviously cheap and
sentimental."

I can believe a famous choir director was wiser
than he thought when he said to a group of us:
"If the selection of a new pastor was left to me,

3 6 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

I'd Invite every man recommended to submit the
titles of his ten favorite hymns, and I'd know
quickly the man to suggest and call without fur-
ther inquiry into qualifications/'

Before you throw the idea overboard in dis-
dain, try it out on yourself. You will be amazed
at what such a list will reveal of your theology,
or lack of it; of your spiritual experience, or lack
of it; as well as the degree of appreciation which
is yours of culture, history, and philosophy. I can
think of worse ways to investigate a man, includ-
ing the popular one-sermon-test by a committee
of five five can comfortably travel in one car, you
know. But let that pass, and remember that right
selection and appreciation seem to presuppose
competent judgment.

What is obviously needed is a standard. I should
like to propose the "new song" of Revelation as
an appropriate guide. "Thou art worthy," the song
of heaven begins. Ah, how our hearts pant for
something worthy of our best efforts, our time,
and our love. The vision of John affirms what men
approved of God have been saying generation
after generation: there is something in life that
is worthy of the most precious thing we possess,
namely, God made known in Christ.

"The four and twenty elders fall down before
him . . . and worship him that liveth forever and
ever, and cast their crowns before the throne,
saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory

THE SONG IN LENT 37

and honor and power: for thou hast created all
things, and for thy pleasure they are and were
created." There must be eternity in our song,
you may be sure of that. There must be a God
who reigns forever; a God before whom we can
throw down our crowns in complete resignation.
We want that and need it, and it Is in the "new
song/'

Breathless, bewildered, and anxious men and
women will gladly throw down the symbol and
reality of self-rule if they know where to sur-
render their crowns with safety and wisdom. Here
before the throne of the author of life is the per-
fect answer.

Truly we are "fearfully and wonderfully" made,
for life flowing from Him must return to its
source before life is fulfilled and eternity is won.
We belong to each other, and "what God has
joined together, let not man put asunder." That
you recognize as being part of the marriage serv-
ice of the Church. It is appropriate. Have you
never stood astounded at that mysterious power
that draws man and woman together in matri-
mony? Have you never sensed that life is best and
richest and fullest and most natural in real homes?

I recall walking through the woods, far re-
moved from civilization, with a member of my
parish. We happened upon a little shack where
a man lived by choice in a solitary mode. It
aroused my curiosity. I asked questions. My com-

3 8 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

panion said something like this: "Yes, I know
something about this man. I know that he has
lived in this way for many years. He very seldom
leaves the woods, and then only for very brief
visits to town for necessities. It is very difficult to
visit with him. He is gruff, blunt, and curt in
whatever conversation can be managed. We gen-
erally make it a point to leave him alone. And
you know, pastor, knowing him has persuaded me
of the truth that 'it is not good for man to be
alone/ "

It is such an obvious thing in life, this Adam
and Eve, as to hardly need restatement. Because
of it, one has a right to expect that the intimate
relationship of marriage might possibly become a
way of expressing the relationship between man
and God and Scripture is full of it. There is a
''marriage feast/' and there is a "bride," and there
is a "husband," and all tell the story of God and
man belonging naturally and creatively together.

Well could Saint Augustine confess a "restless
heart until it found its rest in Thee/' a Creator
God. Augustine, mind you, knew something about
life and had tested its gayety and vulgarity. He
had fondled its sham and caressed its thrills until,
satiated to the point of nausea, he stumbled one
day into the presence of God, where all things
were compelled to tell their true worth, and, see-
ing the nothingness of all that life had meant
before, he stooped low to have God give him a

THE SONG IN LENT 5}Q

new hope and purpose. What could he do but
throw his crown before the throne of Him who is
and ever shall be, world without end? And Au-
gustine did that. With the crow r n went all his
talents and all his energy to a new life of service.
You can not read his story without knowing that
he is trying to say over and over again, "Thou art
worthy!"

But no one knows those words unless he has first
learned the reality of what the "new song" con-
fesses next: "For thou wast slain, and hast re-
deemed us to God by thy blood . . . and hast made
us unto our God kings and priests and we shall
reign." Here is the reason for the glad exclama-
tion, "Thou art worthy." We can safely trust Him
with our crowns because He loves us. God cares!
And that is no guess, no idle conjecture, but some-
thing demonstrated in this life and from out of
this life. "God so loved the world, that he gave
his son," says Scripture. All world history bears
it out.

He did live, and He did die there is no ques-
tion about it. His life and work mean that the
obstacles have been cleared away, and we, who
were at odds with God, have a road opened to
friendship.

Micah has a striking word for this work of the
Messiah. He calls Him the "breaker." This word
is evidently intended to convey the thought of one
who goes before to break up and break down all

40 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

forces, powers, and obstacles that prevent His peo-
ple from marching to freedom. He is a liberator.
The new song John heard calls Him a Redeemer.
The idea and the experience are the same.

I know there are many of you who have ex-
perienced this. You have been wooed to God by
the Lenten cross. You have come to the side of
the Savior, ashamed of your sins that crucified
Him, and been persuaded there that the cross
guarantees forgiveness, that the burden and guilt
of sin can here be safely laid down, and that at
the cross your God meets you, not with cruel
censorious words, but with an offer of friendship
a friendship that a soul craves and finds natural
and so satisfying that no word will do but home.

But why do we not say so? If we know the "new
song" why do we not let it ring out with a full
voice? So many are waiting for the hope and glad-
ness of it and trying to hum little snatches of it,
little phrases that hint at God or eternity or uni-
versality (remember, it says distinctly, "out of ev-
ery kindred, and tongue, and people, and na-
tion") . We in the Christian Church know, or
ought to know, the whole story and should be
teaching eager souls the words but too often, we
are not. Is it, perhaps, because we are not sure
ourselves?

Then let us come again this Lenten season to
the cross of Christ and see the Son of Man bravely
and gallantly breaking down the fences of sin,

THE SONG IN LENT 4 1

death, and the power of the evil one, and hear
Him graciously promise to make us ''kings and
priests/' Let Him, I beseech you, teach you the
song of heaven.

"When they had sung a hymn, they went out
into the mount of Olives/* and there Jesus prayed,
being in agony. It was the beginning of a way of
suffering and torture that we can only hint at,
but always there was that song of "Thy will be
done" and "Into Thy hands/' He knew His Fa-
ther, you see, so intimately! The disciples did not
do so well that day or the next or the next, but
when they understood that Jesus, their companion
of the wayside, was a "breaker-through" of even
the gates of man's last enemy, death, and that He
was present though unseen, then they got hold of
the Lenten Song and understood something about
the confidence of their Master. Prisons rang with
the "new song," and it carried the faith that noth-
ing could daunt.

"And they sang a new song," those that came
out of the great tribulation and had washed their
garments in the blood of the Lamb. I do not say
that life will always be easy. Just for that reason
it needs a song that is big and sturdy, and yet
tender and sympathetic. Nothing less than that
"new song" will doa song breathing the joy of
fellowship and communion with our Maker, a
song promising victory over life and death, a
song assuring us that God cares and has a plan

42 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

for life because of a Son given and a cross raised
out there at the "place of the skull/'

In the strength of that love and presence we
can and must go on! In the strength of that love
and presence we can and must come home victors.

We have a song. Learn it. Sing it!

Chapter Four

Jesus and Our
Scheme of Things

Second Sunday in Lent

Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. Luke 7:40
And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. Luke 7:48

Incident in the life of Christ is a story
J- about a good man that was no good, and a no-
good woman that was good. This topsy-turvey
state of affairs came about partly because of the
past, partly because of the present, and partly be-
cause of the future. These tenses are ever with
us, of course, but their value and significance get
jumbled when Jesus takes them in hand. The
New Testament, you will note, is replete with il-
lustrations of this sort of thing. All usual and or-
dinary laws and procedures of life, that appear
so formidable and impregnable to mortal eye, are
crushed by Christ with such ease as to make them

44 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

appear fragile and wholly unworthy opponents o
His powers.

For instance, ordinarily we are quite ready to
agree that a person is the sum total of yesterday,
and that on the basis of past history some kind
of future can safely be predicted. "I know of
no way of judging the future, but by the past/' said
Patrick Henry in a great oration that every high
school graduate is acquainted with, and wise, ex-
perienced, white-headed men nodded full agree-
ment with such an obvious fact. And it is true
enough true enough, indeed, to tempt very fine
scholars to make a system out of it only do not
stand, megaphone in hand, shouting such rules
with assurance in the direction of Jesus! I tell you
nothing so simple as that remains long unbroken
before the strength of His Word. Vincius, a char-
acter in Quo Vadis, says truly: "I do not know
how the Christians arrange their affairs, but I
do know that where their teachings commence,
there our dominion ends; there ends Rome, there
ends the world, the difference between conqueror
and conquered, between rich and poor, between
master and slave there ends government, there
ends Caesar, law, and the order of the world."

There is Peter. Who of us, had we known him,
would have risked predicting a glorious future
for such a fellow? He came, we suspect, from the
most ordinary circumstances and environment,
lacked the polish of a formal education, and was

JESUS -AND OUR SCHEME OF THINGS 45

raised in that school of hard knocks where back-
breaking toil is relieved now and then by idle
hours of rough and brutal sport punctuated with
coarse oath and vulgar jest. Life is not usually
sweet and genteel on the water-front. Peter, with
his hot temper and ready tongue, was hardly one
not to be a lively participant in life as he knew it.
Had you known him, and known his record,
would you have predicted for him a future so
super-glorious that following generations would
reverently call him Saint Peter? Would you have
dared to suggest that forever after his death Rome
would engage in arduous and labored and ex-
pensive scholarship to prove that he had once
visited that cityfearful that such a signal honor
might be stolen from her? Yet Jesus, knowing all
the facts as none of us can know them, placed His
hand confidently on those rugged shoulders one
day, pointed to the future, and sketched that sort
of prophecy.

One never knows what will happen next when
one has dealings with Jesus. Simon becomes Peter.
James and John become Boanerges. Saul becomes
Paul. And you? Well, who knows what amazing
person He will make of you? Ordinary things get
all mixed up when Jesus touches them, and whole
systems disintegrate like weathered fabric when
the Nazarene puts His hand to them. Things like
the past seem not to count at all, the present takes
on wildly exaggerated meaning, and the future

46 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

that future is wide, wide open to such flights of
the imagination as to stagger and frighten cre-
dulity.

Christ sets us dreaming, dreaming impossible
dreams of what we ought to be, hinting at great
enterprises we could be engaged in something
that really counts. One searching look into His
face and we know there is something of eternal
significance even in our poor lives. The urge to
set our course by that radiant vision sets our
hearts pounding with fierce excitement and thrill-
ing hopes. Down there a man repairing a barn
suddenly throws down his tools and sets sail for
China to become a missionary. He has caught a
vision that will not let him go. Over there a shoe
salesman throws overboard a promising career to
become an evangelist. He has a vision that will not
let him go. Across the water a miner's son defies all
known authority and becomes the great Reform-
er. He has a vision that will not let him go.

When Jesus looks into the eyes of eager peo-
ple, no impossible anchors of the past can hold
them fast. They must put out to sea and, em-
powered by a smart breeze, be off to new lands
and new ports. It is like that. The past is left be-
hind, and its power to hold with tenacious habit
and sordid fear is snapped. Unfettered they stand,
free for a try at those absurd dreams of immortal
life and sonship with God that have haunted them
ever, and now have come alive with passionate

JESUS AND OUR SCHEME OF THINGS 47

hope because In that sudden turn In the road they
met the Master face to face.

There must be someone here that has experi-
enced something like this, someone who has gone
limping along through dreary days of emptiness
with nothing much ahead except perhaps another
meaningless tomorrow, someone who quite sud-
denly has met Christ and been asked, "Come,
now, is this the best that you can do with this
glorious gift of life?" There must be someone who
has stood confused and stammering before possi-
bilities never seen before, who, having seen this,
has said In dismay, "But Lord, I can not make it.
It is way beyond my strength and powers, held as
I am by the relentless grip of past failures. Surely,
Lord, you do not know me, else you would under-
stand that I am totally unfit for such great things
as you point to." Surely he has then heard, "My
grace is sufficient," "thy sins are forgiven/' "go In
peace." There must be someone here that knows
from experience what it means to have the cruel
memories of yesterday blotted out from the mem-
ory of God so that they are as if they were not at
all, and who stands today delivered and freed,
dreaming new dreams with God of a life that can
be lived as "a workman that needeth not to be
ashamed."

Are you that someone? Then you know that not
only does Christ set you dreaming, not only does
He forgive, but He sets the wild hope alive that

48 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

you can and will be and do those Impossible things
He has in mindthings as good as done because
He promises to be along on that great venture.
With Him there can never be defeat.

Earl Marlatt, in 1926, sensed the reckless con-
fidence of the Christian as he set his face toward
an unbelievably honored tomorrow, and wrote a
hymn about it. The chorus is:

Lord, we are able, our spirits are Thine,
Remold them, make us, like Thee, divine.
Thy guiding radiance above us shall be,
A beacon to God, to faith and loyalty.

All of this happened to that no-good woman.
Her past was a wretched story of ... of, who can
tell what? She was a woman of the street, and who
can tell indeed, who cares to tell if one can all
the misery and unhappiness and lamentable grief
of such a foul-scented business. Enough, surely,
to know that she had sought to batten on man's
lust, using every trick of face and eye and limb to
entice trade from the shadows of the night. It is
enough to know that she had sickened of such a
poor lot and was seeking release. It was not easy.
It never is. Decent folks, who might have given a
hand, hurried to the other side of the street at her
approach, and tight lips and haughty manners
blocked hope of help from them. Old friends, sus-
pecting her longings and betrayal of friendship,
goaded her with jeers and taunts calculated to

JESUS AND OUR SCHEME OF THINGS 49

drive her back Into line and crush any uplift
movement In their midst.

Then came Jesus with His tender manners and
fair speech. His searching eyes looked out over
the crowd until they met hers, offering a new life
and forgiveness for the past. Then nothing would
do for her but to set her feet on that high road
that led to God and home. Nothing, nothing
would or could stop her. She needed no other help.
All opposition crumbled, for in her heart was a
refrain that probably went like this:

Lord, I am able, my spirit is Thine,
Remold me, make me, like Thee, divine.
Thy guiding radiance above me shall be,
A beacon to God, to faith and loyalty.

Nor was it only that the words of Christ seemed
to say, "I excuse you, just forget it." No, it was
far, far and away more than that, and more won-
derful. We must understand that. We limited hu-
man beings have no way of wisely estimating all
that forgiveness from God means, for we cannot
even calculate with any exactness the ache and
soreness we give His loving heart with our quick
jabs of disobedience and disloyalty. Only that
shocking cross can suggest the extreme cost of
God's burden and love in forgiveness, and we look
at that dully and without any great comprehen-
sion. Let us, however, not underestimate the price
of our redemption. We all know from experience

50 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

how difficult human forgiveness can be. We have
heard countless men say that they can forgive but
not forget, which is to say that they will excuse
but not have fellowship again. Some of these sins
against our fellowmen are enormous, to be sure,
and it strikes us as being exceedingly generous
when some kind of little pardon is forthcoming
and prosecution and retaliation dropped.

But what shall we say when we know that all
such things are sins against God? What shall we
say when He promises to erase forever these trans-
gressions and trespasses and regard us in Christ
as though we had never sinned? And then, now
mark this well, to restore freely and fully His
priceless fellowship? Forgiveness with God goes
all the way to restored friendship. The no-good
woman understood Christ so. This forgiven wo-
man, this good woman, when she heard that He
was nearby, in the home of a certain Pharisee,
made some hasty preparations and hurried to do
Him homage and enjoy His undoubted welcome
and friendship.

Jesus did not disappoint her! He was not em-
barrassed by what most people would find to be
an awkward situation. There at that sumptuous
table, with the raised eyebrow and supercilious
stare of the host upon Him, Jesus accepted her
ministrations. Poor woman! Little did she realize
that her very presence would bring nasty sugges-
tions to impure minds that might link His friend-

JESUS AND OUR SCHEME OF THINGS 5 1

ship with her awful past. Does that startle you a
bit? Let it! We need to glimpse some of the fear-
ful implications of what it means when we are
told that Jesus is to be numbered with trans-
gressors and bear our sins.

Poor woman. She had come so bravely and glad-
ly, with no thought but to honor Him, and now,
well she may have sensed the Injustice she was
doing her Savior with such a public display of
friendship before such a cold and critical world,
and sensed, too, that such friendship was even
greater than she had suspected could be true. It
was all too much for her, and unplanned tears fell
in torrents. Ashamed of such weakness, and wholly
unprepared for this emergency, she took refuge
In her long tresses, using the hair as a towel to
dry the feet she had now all unconsciously washed
in preparation for kissing and anointing in low-
liest servile fashion.

Jesus remained calm. Not only did He accept
these devoted expressions of esteem and love, but
solidly protected her and publicly defended her,
giving her credit for all those ordinary tokens of
friendliness that had been denied by His host. To
this good woman He gave recognition of love, as-
surance that her faith was saving, and pointed to
the future of peace and life.

Christ will do that for you, too. Has He ever
been niggardly? Has anyone ever come timidly in-
to His presence and been rebuffed? Think, can

52 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

you name one? Or can you conceive of the Christ
holding the most unworthy mortal in suspense
even for a moment as to His gracious and good
will? History books tell us about that shameful
scene when Henry was compelled to stand outside
the gates at Canossa, begging and pleading with
the self-styled vice-gerent of Jesus for pardon.
Hour after hour and day after day he stood in bit-
ter cold and snow. At long last, he was permitted
to enter, on his knees, and then given the ex-
quisite pleasure and high honor of kissing the
Pope's toe. Have you ever heard 5 of Christ delay-
ing for a minute the release of a sinner who looks
longingly into His eyes with expectant hope? To
others one may look utterly hopeless, more beast
than man, but if in no matter how inarticulate
manner one has been wistfully sighing,

And oh, for the man to rise in me,
That the man that I am may cease to be,

then one can repeat the story in his own life.

Keep sharp watch, then, for Jesus. The no-good
becomes good when He seals the past against one
with forgiveness, and opens the flood-gates of un-
speakable visions for today and tomorrow. Do you
say again that this is not for you? Of course it is,
exactly for you. Do not look so stubbornly at your
tattered garments. Look to His Word, man, look
to His Word, and see for yourself. It does say:
"Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast

JESUS AND OUR SCHEME OF THINGS &3

out." Read It tor yourself In John 6:37 and let it
stand, as it was meant to stand, for you.

And that good man that was no good, what
about him? I suppose he went along satisfied with
what he was and what he was not, listless in his
visions of the intentions of life, unable to cope
with anything as tremendous as Jesus, because
wrong beliefs nurtured by silly pride kept him re-
fusing the faith Jesus demanded.

Wrong beliefs will keep a man from the King-
dom every time. You cannot go through life be-
lieving in the ability of man to conquer the prob-
lems of evil without losing any need for a Savior.
If you start out on the premise that man can mas-
ter his destiny, Jesus becomes unnecessary. Some-
times this takes the form of an ethical program
that demands loyalty to its tenets as the forerunner
of gaining the prizes of life. It appeals to great
numbers of people because it assures them of
their importance to the saving scheme, and re-
wards their efforts. When such a program fails, as
it has time after time, one would think it would
have confessed itself a lie. But no, it comes back
again and again with this excuse or that. "Try
harder" is often suggested to gullible people in-
tent still on saving themselves, or "Try a different
arrangement of the rules."

The host, this Pharisee, was not quite satisfied
with the rewards of his moral living and religious
program. At least so much is plain from his desire

54 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

to have Jesus sup with him. And yet he was not
ready to own himself a bankrupt debtor. His pride
rebelled against that as pride will. Somewhere in
our very being is a twist that honors the "self-
made" man and disdains the life of grace. Is any-
thing more discouraging than a full realization of
the fact that after these hundreds of years of
preaching about "grace alone/' people still feebly
define Christianity as "doing the best one can?"

With the world falling in ruins about us, gov-
ernments and systems plunging to death, stagger-
ing problems of capital and labor, race hatreds,
and unemployment, and a long list of ills and
fears, one would think every Christian would be
shouting, "This way to salvation this way to
Christ!" But we do not hear them. Is it not too
true that we sit smugly with the Pharisee, sensing
vaguely that something is wrong, but rebelling at
the suggestion that we are wrong? Circumstances
must be changed and policies altered and condi-
tions made different, but we are all right. We need
not change. We, God have mercy on us, will not
change. Jesus is incomprehensible because we
keep asking for some new rule, some new inter-
pretation of an old rule, some "Outline" of Wis-
dom in ten easy lessons, and Jesus will not speak
and cannot speak, for what He offers is a new life.

All of which is to say that it is our unbelief that
keeps us from being good people. We call our-
selves good and are no good. Jesus can make only

JESUS AND OUR SCHEME OF THINGS 55

that good which is willing to confess that it is no
good. Jesus is the help of the helpless, the physi-
cian to the sick, the bringer of life to the dead.
"Other refuge have I none/* we sing so sentimen-
tally, and yet no one ever really understands it
until he has tried every other refuge. Goodness is
not something we gain. It is a gift of God in
Christ. Our gifts of love wait the day when we will
recognize this, the day when we see in Him the
only hope left, the day when we understand bet-
ter the offense and stumbling-block of the Cross.
It must wait, as far as world-wide participation
is concerned, but it need not be in that vague fu-
ture for you. For you it can be today. Throw
wrong beliefs aside, trample on pride, and look
with new expectancy at this Christ whose eyes are
looking out over this crowd anxiously searching
out yours. Let nothing prevent you from seeing
that His life can be yours, that that sound joy and
contentment written in every line of His counte-
nance are also meant for you. Start dreaming of
that Christ-life as something freely offered. That
past? That cannot hold you with forgiveness in
the air. Christ will be in you and for you. Let oth-
ers look askance at the new stride and straightened
shoulders, and the new places you seek out, like
prayer. In His company awkwardness will disap-
pear when those blessed new assurances are given,
protection experienced, and happy visions given
of all it means to "go into peace."

56 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

But let one sit glum and unmoved before what
Christ has to offer, satisfied to poke around yet
longer in the debris of a salvation by merit and
good works, and Christ speaks words that sting
and bite. "Simon, I have somewhat to say unto
thee." You know the rest.

That life of lovelessness, little matter how cor-
rect in deportment, was judged as no good. The
new life of love for Christ as Savior stood ap-
proved as good. I tell you again, nothing is safe
with God in Jesus walking these streets and lanes
of ours. The past can not hold tomorrow in its
tenacious grip. No longer can it point its lean,
ghost-like finger and write, "On the basis of yes-
terday's failures I predict failure and misery to-
morrow." It can not do that any longer with Jesus
around. The present is not only another today
with friendlessness to greet those gallant strivings
within. No, the present is a moment of release and
a moment of help when the eyes of Jesus are upon
one.

Hearts full of gratitude for forgiveness will risk
even the home of a Pharisee to meet Him, sure
that His friendship holds anywhere and anytime
and under every sort of condition, for convention
is shattered with Jesus around. All our good works
and all our prides of life that we had figured on
lugging into His presence as the purchase price
of eternal approval, all these look tawdry and
cheap at the foot of the Cross. Values get twisted

JESUS AND OUR SCHEME OF THINGS 57

In His presence, and the things we call good are
no good. Our whole scheme o things goes awry
when the Lord of Life stretches out His loving
hands of healing and forgiving.

Tell me, have you seen Him? If you have, you
will bring your precious ointment in the form
of a whole life and place it at His feet as a tribute
far too small.

Chapter Five

The Garden in Lent

And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane:
and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall
pray. Mark 14:32

A LMOST unconsciously the feet of Jesus car-
JLJL ried Him over the brook toward Geth-
semane. So accustomed was He to seek retirement
and privacy in this garden. The hours in the Up-
per Room had been difficult and trying, and now,
leaving that behind, there was an hour or two
left Him for some last preparations. Without hesi-
tation He led the way to His favorite trysting-
place with God, His beloved garden.

Dr. Gaius Glenn Atkins, in his book Resources
for Living (Harper and Brothers) , has an in-
teresting chapter entitled, "The Use of the Mar-
gin." The title, he explains, is borrowed from an-
other book written by Edward Howard Griggs, on
the "Art of Life/' Griggs, he says, "was almost a
pioneer in noting the significance of the margin

60 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

in the fruitful conduct of life." By ' "margin" is
meant "the margin of time each is free to spend as
he pleases, and its use goes far in determining the
ultimate success or failure in the business of life.
... It is a blank check drawn upon the treasures
of life." The philosophers sometimes call this
* 'solitude/' and narrow it down to the things we
think and do in solitude. The sociologist likes to
think of it in terms of 'leisure" and "recreation."
But the important thing they all emphasize is that
it is what persons do during these free periods that
is decisive for estimating and molding individuals
and society. In such a situation Jesus chose a gar-
den.

It is, to say the least, a revealing angle from
which to study life. It prompts us to ask personal
questions. What is there in my thoughts and de-
sires that demands my whole-hearted devotion
whenever I am free to give myself to it? What
cries impatiently for my attention and time when-
ever I have completed my hours of drudgery at
office and shop? And if we will answer such ques-
tions honestly, we will learn something about self
that we did not know before. Maybe you will dis-
cover that you are one of the few ingenious peo-
ple that always find constructive use for such time.
In which case let me be the first to congratulate
you on your conscious or unconscious wisdom.
Maybe, though, you will learn that there is no
such compelling thing in your life. In that case let

THE GARDEN IN LENT 6 1

me assure you of much company in this genera-
tion.

We are a busy people. We all know that. The
weekly schedule of most families precludes much
standing around waiting for something to hap-
pen. Not that all or even a major portion of the
elaborate plans are of much significance, nor that
we had very much to do with the planning. No,
the whole thing somehow was foisted on us, and
we simply carry the burden as cheerfully as pos-
sible in the hope that we may be counted "good
scouts" or "civic leaders" or "socially prominent."

Be that as it may, we must confess that dignity,
purpose, and quiet confidence in an eternal des-
tiny have all fled and have given place to fuss,
flurry, and fidgeting. All of this is a fruit of our
secularized and pagan culture. God is left out.
That is sin, Isaiah's description fits us. He might
ac well be writing of us when he says: "But the
wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot
rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is
no peace, saith my God, to the wicked" (Isaiah
57:20, 21) . No wonder power has deserted us.

The world is too much with us; late and soon
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

See all sights from pole to pole,
And glance, and nod, and bustle by;
And never once possess our souls
Before we die.

62 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

14 But we are part of this generation and cannot
help that/* some will protest. And we dare not
deny the potent influence of environment. Indeed,
let us quickly agree that there is profundity in the
estimate given of that woman of whom it was said,
"She averaged well for this community." But it is
wrong, nevertheless, to raise this as a flimsy barrier
to something better, in the light of our knowledge
of Christ. Remember how provoking and stupid
that one appears who said, "Can anything good
come out of Nazareth?" "It is a marvel whence
the white pond lily derives its loveliness and per-
fume," writes one, "sprouting as it does from the
black mud over which the river sleeps, and from
which the yellow lily also draws its unclean life
and noisome odour."

You see, the same environment produces often
enough the beautiful and the ugly. The talent of
some is to gather to themselves what is foul and
poisonous, while others harvest the good and be-
come beautiful and fragrant. Scripture says that
the sons of Eli made themselves vile. Anything less
than personal responsibility is, as always, a half-
truth unworthy of God's best creation.

Undoubtedly we could do better. We could do
better if we made wise use of "the margin." We
all have some time like that on our hands, some
time that we call our own. If we fail to use it to
go into a garden or closet to be alone with God,
that failure must be laid to habits that carry us

THE GARDEN IN LENT 6g

constantly In another direction. Many of us have
been hoping that the world crisis would force big
questions Into our rattle-brained living. At times
there are little indications that make this prayer
seem near to realization.

"I don't quite know how it started/* writes Mar-
garet Lee Runbeck.* "Maybe because we listen to
the news broadcasts just before dinner. But any-
way, about a month ago, something began to hap-
pen In our house. Some unseen presence tip-toed
In, and after we had listened to the tragedy that
is upon the world, it took us each by the hand and
led us more quietly Into our dining room. The
first times we felt it we had no words. Then one
night one of us said with embarrassment: Tunny
thing, but just now I felt we were all going to
bow our heads and say grace/ " And that started
it as a family habit.

There are, we hope, many like that family here
in America, people who, seeing their good fortune
in the light of relentless starvation abroad, sense
that they must give thanks to God for His lavish
goodness that goes far beyond any reasonable de-
serving on their careless part. Our tables can be-
come a garden for us when we make It a rendez-
vous with the unseen but ever-present Giver of
all good gifts. At least it could be a sort of kinder-
garten for us who have been so childish as to go

*Article "Grace" in Good Housekeeping as condensed in Read-
er's Digest (Vol. 42, No. 249) .

64 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

along all unconcerned about the deep and hidden
mysteries of life. It would, at least, bring us within
hailing distance of those deep places that our very
souls cry out impatiently to test. It would bring
us closer to the time when we would seek out
God In our solitary moments, to quietly "wait
upon the Lord/*

Of course It may come, this bowing of the head,
also In some great disaster. It has come to some
of those brave men of ours adrift on endless oceans
with breath coming in labored short gasps and the
mind poised on the portal of Insanity, yet held
fast, as they themselves confessed, by the mercy
and grace of God.

But whether on the stormy seas or rocking gen-
tly at anchor in the quiet waters of the harbor, we
can and must learn the necessity of having in our
lives a little garden where we meet our Maker,

Our Lenten season is intended to underscore
quiet and contemplation and prayer. It Is planned
to hint at the possibilities of a right and good use
of "the margin" in life. Lent has been a healthful
social curb on unrestrained shallow living. As ear-
ly as the third century we discover Wednesday
and Friday set aside as days of fasting, and added
services were the order of the day. After the
Church had gained the recognition of the State,
the world-denying spirit of Lent began to exert
an influence also upon public life. Games, shows,
noise, and frivolity were all taboo. It need hardly

THE GARDEN IN LENT 65

be said that even to this day there Is a sharp de-
cline In participation and planning of such gay
functions. Lent Is still given right-of-way by the
general public. The Church, in many places, dis-
courages or prohibits weddings, parties, and din-
ners. There is an air of earnest soberness and
solemnity, and meditation is urged upon all peo-
pie.

Most of us are agreed that some such restrictions
are probably profitable; also, that It would be well
to carry its lesson of prayerful quiet into year-
round daily living. But not all know how to be-
gin. May I say to you earnestly, the very first thing
you must do is to begin. You need not, indeed
you must not, wait the day when you will be good
enough to begin. Start just as you are and where
you are. Set a time each day and hold yourself to
It with dogged determination. Lack of discipline
in this matter will guarantee failure. Use a plan.

Men Interested in the 'liturgical life" are quite
Insistent that the best plan is to use the "daily of-
fice/' by which they mean Matins or Vespers, "be-
cause it somehow ties us In with the Church of
all ages, gives us a feel of the sweep which is in the
Idea of the Communion of Saints, provides a dis-
cipline of daily lessons, and provides for prayers
that include all manner of men." Do not be too
quick to ridicule the idea which is theirs. Give
them credit for being faithful at prayers.

Others prefer the freedom of the "Oxford"

66 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

quiet time which emphasizes a period of quiet and
prayer with note-paper and pencil ready to jot
down the ideas that may come through contempla-
tion, ideas that plan and control the day. Cruel
jesters have labeled such living "hunch existence/'
but we need to be careful here too. God does work
through impulses, desires, and ideas, so give them
credit for at least listening.

Still others prefer the reading of a portion of
Scripture and prayers of their own making ac-
cording to the needs and desires which they sense.

It does not make so much difference what plan
you adopt, but have a plan: Scripture reading,
prayer, and meditation at a fixed time and place.
When our Catechism was translated to read that
"prayer need not be limited to fixed times and
places/* it failed to emphasize that the "fixed time
and fixed place" was taken for granted as a normal
and natural requirement of the Christian life.
Grimsby was right when he changed it to read,
"but I also need special periods for prayer each
day/'

Men and women, we must come to that kind of
decision today. It is not fair, it is not decent, it is
not even good common sense that we, who have
received all the blessings of Christ's work in home
and school and church, should live in contempt of
God's proffered Father-child relationship. It is
worse than heathenism. "Shall we pray?" I heard
a preacher query. Had he paused just a little long-

THE GARDEN IN LENT 67

er and sought an answer from the upturned faces
of the congregation, he would have known that
the utter Indifference expressed In every line of
those faces really meant, "Well, If you must, but
please hurry ." Never will I ask that question.
More and more I shall find ways to say, "Let us/*
with the compulsion of "we must" pray.

There is an Interesting legend connected with
the Mohammedan custom of praying five times a
day. It Is said that the Prophet met Moses in
heaven, that Moses straightway made inquiry as
to how many times a day he had instructed his
followers to pray, and was told fifty times. Moses
was horrified, insisting that it would never work,
that he had tried fifty times a day on the children
of Israel, and found It too much for them. This
sad experience on the part of Moses excited the
Prophet, who at once hurried to the Lord and
pleaded that the number be reduced. After some
persuasion, the Lord granted a reduction to forty,
but the worried Mohammed pressed for a better
bargain and at long last managed to whittle the
figure down to a mere five. When Moses was told
of this compromise he shook his head In doubt,
saying that the children of Israel had not liked
even that many prayers. But Mohammed, like
Abraham, blushed at the thought of pressing the
Lord further and the figure was allowed to stand.

One could wish that Christians had Moham-
med's sense of shame. We ought to manage to keep

68 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

pace with those whom we hope to Christianize.
Again I say it, men and women, we must pray.
We must set aside a time and place. We must make
right, proper, decent, and Christian use of "the
margin/* If someone will still insist that he has no
time, then let him be reminded of the Scriptural
injunction to "redeem" the time. That means,
plainly put, to "buy back" the time. It may cost
you some sleep, or membership in a club, or a
committee appointment, or a meal, but whatever
the price may be, you pay it.

Sometimes people quite sincerely say, "But Pas-
tor, we tried it and it did not work." Probably
they are referring to Scripture reading and medi-
tation. They started out gallantly, too, they plead,
with colors flying, but a strange stupor seized the
soul. Flatness took stout hold of resolution and
choked it to death. After this silent struggle, steps
no longer sounded on the pavement leading to
the garden. The disciples, right there in Geth-
semane, dozed, and drowsily nodded with every
yawn. "What," said the gentle voice of the Good
Shepherd, "could ye not watch with me one
hour?"

It was different, though, when they under-
stood what their failure had cost them in con-
fusion and shame that awful night and Friday,
and that, despite their failure, He was willing to
come back to companion with them and bless
them. We must try again, you and I, alert to His

THE GARDEN IN LENT 69

love and presence, eager for His benediction, and
heeding anxiously the admonition, "Watch!"

It may be that it was prayer that had been tried,
and that had met with flat failure. One day, one
gloomy day, they would have you know, when
fearful darkness had fallen like a pall over what-
ever joy they had managed in life, they had knelt
to send with fevered intensity a petition to the
throne of grace. The answer was nothing but the
echo of their plea come back to mock them in
their loneliness. So they had flung the whole thing
from them, and only bitterness was left. Surely it
must be wrong that we have been guilty of giving
the crude impression that prayer is magic. It is
not.

God can say "No." Indeed, He does say "No"
on many occasions. "Let this cup pass from me,"
prayed Christ in His Gethsemane. There was no
answer, unless it was "No," or unless it was the
sending of the angels to strengthen Him. God said
"No" to Paul, too, adding only the consolation
that His grace was sufficient, and thus instructing
him to lean and press more confidently on His
friendly shoulder. In neither case was there any
bitterness, just resignation to a higher will.

Prayer is more than petition, a furious insist-
ence upon some plan or desire of our own. It is
also a brave questing for His will in reckless aban-
don of self. First, Thy will, Thy name, and Thy
kingdom. But we must not think of ourselves as

7O THE SPIRIT OF LENT

desolate, only lean harder. His grace Is more than
enough, and look closer, His angels bring strength
to endure. It Is still true, "Ask, and it shall be
given."

No matter what the excuses, the Garden of
Christ manages to brush them aside as unworthy.
Desperately we hold them up, only to feel chagrin
at their tattered and beggarly appearance when
placed squarely inside Gethsemane. When we
complain of unanswered prayer, Gethsemane
points to the angels. When we urge dullness and
heaviness, Gethsemane points to His repeated
prayers. When we half-heartedly suggest lack of
time, Gethsemane points to this vital hour
snatched out of final preparations. When we plead
that we have not words, Gethsemane points to
the simplicity of, "Let this cup pass from me" and
"Not my will, but Thine be done."

Man is a dual creature. Living on this earth-
level, he is never content until he lives also on an
eternal level. If we fail to have our little garden,
we fail our self and our self's greatest meaning.

There is only a confession left. We do not have
a garden because, frankly, we do not feel the need
or desire of the friendship of the Son of Man. We
cringe visibly when we say it. It ought never be
said. But if it be true, we ought to begin by simply
confessing it. All of us know it should be other-
wisewith Jesus "sweating great drops of blood/'
and our knowledge that all the while it is our sin

THE GARDEN IN LENT 71

He has shouldered and our love He ever seeks.
How awful is this coldness of our hearts. We need
a trystlng-place with God just to tell Him daily
about the shame we feel on account of it, and in
the Name of Jesus plead without excuse for par-
don. Let us not be afraid! Into the garden of our
choosing, Jesus will come to meet us. He knows
gardens of prayer and is at home In quiet and
meditation. He knows, too, about coldness and
waywardness, because He lifted and carried all
sin to the Cross. He will tell us of forgiveness and
point again to the proof of His love in the nail-
prints and the jagged wound of the spear. Sooner
or later we will find the delight we know we ought
to have even now In His company. More and more
we will learn to trust Him with all our secrets and
all our life. We will spend more and more time in
our garden, His and ours, because we will be get
ting to be old friends that can not live apart.

Chapter Six

Free, for What?

Jesus therefore said to those of the Jews who had now
believed in him, As for you, if you hold fast to my teach-
ing, then you are truly my disciples; and you shall know
the truth, and the truth will make you free, John 8:36

FREE, for what? This is an important ques-
tion. Frankly, it is not original with me. It
was thrown out from an impressive background
in the Home Furnishings Building at the New
York World's Fair back in 1939. That year, as you
know, saw the entire world sobered by fast mov-
ing events pointing toward a blunt denial of free-
dom. It was a year, too, when everyone sensed that
the inevitable outcome of the clash of ideas must
one day, one fearful day, be warfare. At that mo-
ment the question, "Free, for what?" seemed ex-
ceedingly timely. The passing years have seen it
grow in importance.

This question, then, we wish to deal with and
attempt to answer. Let us first look at the back-

74 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

ground for the question. It came as a climax to a
series of scenes depicting the gradual development
of Increased leisure time, Increased powers of
communication., Increased speed and comfort of
travel, and Increased opportunities for sports and
pleasures. It Is a familiar story, and yet It is as al-
ways a dramatic story of sharp contrasts and whirl-
Ing speed. After all, it Is a thrilling tale of human
achievement packed into a period of only one
hundred fifty years.

The first scene introduced life as lived in 1789.
A typical colonial community was shown where
the usual rule of that era held life in a slavery of
work. Eight hours of sleep and sixteen of work,
with little or no time for leisure. After several dec-
ades had passed, life was shown with a few added
privileges, and so scene followed scene until the
present.

The final action depicted man moving aloft
until he reached a bright star where his home
was revealed. Small clouds were Illuminated, each
carrying a significant symbol, for instance, great
towering masts for radio., and speeding train and
plane for transportation. The emphasis now was
upon man's mastery of today over distance and
hardship and labor. The new rule for life had be-
come eight hours for sleep, eight hours for work,
and eight hours for leisure.

A narrator was making the emphasis pointed
by saying:

FREE, FOR WHAT? 75

"Time for interest In government,
In community, in the group.
Time to plan for our community.
At last Man Is freed. . . .
Freed In time and space.
For what?"

Here Is told a strange tale of glorious progress
ending on a note of tragic almlessness. Here Is the
man of today freed from much of the back-break-
ing work of only yesterday, freed from many of
the time-killing jobs of yesterday, freed from the
isolation of Ignorance and restriction of hamlet
life.

And . . . and, so what? What shall he do with
his Increased efficiency, his Increased capacity to
produce, his new-machine strength? With all the
tools that this breath-taking age of Invention has
provided, what will man make that is better and
finer than yesterday?

The implications of such questions seem to be
these: First, man has not yet defined his goal. The
very struggle for such freedom was so engaging as
to forestall a sincere attempt to find out what all
the bustling was about. Secondly, the accumula-
tion of all these tools ought to presuppose some
tremendous task. Nothing looks quite so ridicu-
lous as what one man called "pounding tacks with
a sledge-hammer." Thirdly, it is possible that man
may choose to use his acquired treasures for pur-
poses of destruction. This seems to be the back-

76 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

ground, real and implied, for the question, "Free,
for what?'*

The next step is to inquire whether or not there
is anything in the present scene that justifies the
anxiety these implications manifest.

Of the desire for freedom we all know some-
thing. We were, as a matter of fact, very young
when that hunger began to gnaw at our spirits. In
loud, impatient youth we passionately yearned for
freedom from parental control, from school's dis-
cipline, and from social restrictions. Most of us,
at one time or another, vowed darkly that we
meant one day to do just as we pleased. All of us
learned, often the hard way, that even maturity
could not provide us with the kind of freedom we
had longed for. Restrictions, we discovered, were
part of all life. The dream of youth was only a
myth. It was not a pleasant discovery. We fled
madly from one restriction only to discover an-
other more formidable than the first.

In many respects the story of western civiliza-
tion is not much different from the school-day
dreams. There is always a real or suspected tyran-
nypolitical, social, or religious that makes flight
desirable. Freedom is always up there ahead, in
the next turn of the road, away from the tyrant.
The desperate search for this dream-world has
written many brave pages of history. It has meant
long and vigorous marches toward the setting sun,
impassioned speeches like, "Give me liberty or

FREE, FOR WHAT? 77

give me death/ 7 and large risks of life In battle and
on dangerous frontiers. It is an epic of valorous
souls leaving security, loved ones, and beloved
places In search of better conditions and a new
civilization. And as long as new country lay ahead,
people kept hopeful that their Ideal community
might yet be founded and their freedom enlarged.

Until only recently, it was easier to flee from
tyranny than to confront it and fight It out. Today
we are matured and are meeting the first indica-
tions of the discomfort that full knowledge of
permanent restriction brings. Until only recently
the struggle and zest of the search were quite
sufficient. Now we are restive and glum. Free-
dom, say many in a unison minor chord, is only
an Illusion. The chase was engrossing and excit-
ing. It was responsible for all the things we call
progress. It stimulated the Imagination and kept
folks marching with heads up and roll of drums.
But It was an unreality that managed to live only
because there was hope that it might be found
over the ocean or across that plain. Now that hope
Is dead. And so Spengler wrote a book about it
and candidly called it, The Decline of the West.

Facing the Golden Gate, in San Francisco,
there is a statue of an American Indian on horse-
back. Of that statue Flewelling says in his stimu-
lating book, The Survival of Western Culture
(Ralph Tyler Flewelling, Harper and Brothers,
N. Y., 1943): "Both horse and horseman present

78 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

the dejected appearance of extreme weariness and
hopelessness. They have reached the end of the
trails and journeylngs. There Is a physical sense In
which the statue symbolizes the present condition
of Western Civilization. For many long years man-
kind had often forsaken all that was dear in ex-
change for a life filled with peril, hunger, and
hardship, and whose end was hid from all but
his own Ideal vision. Now that freedom can not
be secured by moving into new location. He is
through."

This, then, is the story of mankind enthusiasti-
cally seeking freedom and meeting up finally with
an old, toothless, leering hag, offering the ashes of
burnt-up zeal at the end of the trail as her joyless
reivard to a tired world. "Only one color/' blurts
out one despondent soul, "only one color is need-
ed on my palet to paint the future civilization
that color, black."

A good deal of this heavy mood might have
been avoided had we paused long ago to ask,
"What do we want with freedom anyway? What is
it?" But no questions were asked. It was more
than enough to know that our hearts yearned for
some little elbow-room and that it seemed within
reach over yonder. Certain things were taken for
granted, of course, as being implicit in the very
nature of the thing called freedom. Chiefly it was
individual freedom. We learned to recite glibly a
long list of things that were intended to protect

FREE, FOR WHAT? 79

the person: freedom of the press, freedom of the
conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of trial by
jury, and freedom of religion. Everything was
done with an eye toward the individual's rights.
Yes, we called them rights. In doing this, we made
It very difficult for society to find any protection.
Even courts found It next to Impossible to con-
vict the real criminals. There were far too many
loopholes for the Individual who wished to take
advantage of his own peculiar rights rights that
seemed to stretch out endlessly for the unscrupu-
lous. The same rights that protected the individ-
ual, you see, made It possible for him to take ad-
vantage of the weaker members of society- the
impoverished, the Ignorant., the unborn. How
easy, for example, was it not to convince even
good people that the "Prohibition Amendment"
was an Infringement on Individual rights, despite
the fact that most good people did lambaste drink-
ing as a social evil.

"When men no longer are under the restraints
of community ideals, patriotism, integrity, morals,
and religion; popular sovereignty falls into chaos
and anarchy," says Flewelling, and then adds,
"There are not armies and navies enough, police
power, guillotines or scaffolds enough to maintain
for long a civilization which does not possess
widely among Its Individual members the good-
will of self-control In the interests of the wider
society."

80 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

And the "wider society" has also some rights.
We have tried to define it, but never very suc-
cessfully. Limitless individual freedom can result
only in conflict and confusion, and this is exactly
what we have on our hands today. Individuals
can not live together, work together, play together,
and plan together on that kind of basis. There is
something about mankind that seeks power over
others. There is something present in the heart
and soul of mankind that is untrustworthy in deal-
ing with other individuals, seeking advantage for
self, using every freedom for self, and every tool in
his possession for self and against others. If this
is true, then the more potent his tools the greater
the possibility of destructiveness.

Lately we have heard a good deal about "free-
dom from": freedom from want, freedom from
fear, and so on. Though we have heard it expressed
time and time again, we still rather shudder at
the implications. The old freedom we understood,
but this thing seems difficult and impossible. It
appears to cut rather sharply across the boundaries
of what had been staked out with frivolous dis-
respect for others. Instinctively we sense that this
kind of freedom means cooperation and personal
restrictions, a surrender of rights that are dear
because they grant lavish undisciplined living to
the shrewd and the strong. The new conception
is bringing political strife, and people are taking
sides with grim determination. Capital is against

FREE, FOR WHAT? 8 1

Labor, and Labor against Capital. Whites are
against Colored, and Colored against Whites.
Group after group has banded together, surren-
dering certain individual rights for group rights
and now seeking grimly the freedom In strife that
can no longer be found on the frontier. But are
groups to be trusted? Especially groups that seek
their own welfare? Where do their rights end?
When granted power, will they use power for the
same tyranny they now seek to overpower?

What side are you on? Do you want to con-
tinue with the old conception of freedom? And
Is it because that concept yields you personal ad-
vantage? Do you want a new conception of free-
dom? And is it because you have been with the
unfortunate victims of the stronger? In this com-
ing conflict and struggle where will you side? Can
freedom survive? Will the majority find freedom
an empty thing, good only to " trade in" for food,
shelter, meat, and drink? Who is to blame If the
clever of today, the rich of today, the strong of
today, are tomorrow to be the victims of a com-
pulsory goodness and generosity that Is plainly a
denial of their freedom?

Free, for what? That is the question that is
pressing for an answer today with an Insistence
born of necessity. Is freedom a personal achieve-
ment that hungrily devours all in its path to
power? If It Is, we need not be shocked when we
hear sounds of battle. Is freedom a gift that in-

82 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

volves cooperation and restraint? How can it be
achieved or received? How can it be effected with-
out a denial of freedom?

These are questions that are difficult and sug-
gest lengthy answers. Let us answer them as suc-
cinctly and clearly as possible. There is only one
answer, for there is only one Name given amongst
men whereby they can be saved. There is no polit-
ical or social scheme big enough to solve the
problem of man. Man is himself the problem.
There is no freedom worth having except the
freedom from self. The recurring temptation is
to seek freedom for power, or at least to use free-
doms won for purposes of tyranny. This is the
lesson of history that has gone unheeded.

The children of Israel, by the hand of God,
were given freedom from the slavery of Egypt.
No sooner had they received this gift than they
began to seek scope for expressing their new
power. Like other nations, they wanted kings as
well as the pomp and the glory of this world and
opportunity to enslave others by the might of
their given freedom. Time and again God gave
them this precious gift, and time and again they
wasted it. God intended them to have it for serv-
ice but they managed to use it for self and for
things. God has been revealing in history that
freedom is a spiritual thing for spiritual ends,
and man has been blindly groping at it for the
satisfaction of appetites that are carnal. Man can

FREE, FOR WHAT? 8g

not be trusted. He Is wrong. He is selfish. He is
proud.

Pride prevents man from confessing selfishness,
and pride is an attribute of the devil. Listen to
Christ as He says of those people long ago, "Ye
are of your father the devil, and he is the father
of lies." True freedom, He would say, begins and
ends with the release He alone can give to the
human soul held in the bondage of lies. You must
be born again, He said, and it is quite evident,
no matter how mysterious it may sound. Men
must be changed if freedom is to find uses that
satisfy the real hunger of the spirit. Jesus offers
to change people. Love for me will change you,
He says, and He walks with staggering steps up
the steep way to Calvary to bear our blindness
and conceit, and wring our hearts with a love
so undeserved as to bring giants like Paul to his
feet in adoration and worship.

Christ is making a bid for your heart today.
Not for the past hundreds of years has Chris-
tianity stood as such a saving alternative to the
path of destruction. The issue is clear-cut and
distinct. People must either change or be doomed.
Man is not the master of his fate, but the slave
of a distorted reason and will that tosses him
about gnashing and wailing in the manner o
the one possessed. Christ speaks, as He did then,
words of release and pardon, words of love that
send men out as servants even as He was a serv-

84 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

ant under the constraint of His love to do the
works approved of God.

4 * Abide," said Jesus, "hold fast to my teach-
ings," and ye shall know the truth. And I must
confess that it is not always an easy matter, for it
means walking along roads that seem many times
very dangerous and unreasonably difficult. How
many, even of those whom we reverently speak of
as * 'saints/ 1 have not confessed that they started
out on some road of obedience reluctantly and
shivering with fright, finally risking to go ahead
only because they stretched out a nervous hand
to find something to hold to, and met His, the
ever Good Shepherd. Only hold on, hold out,
and you will experience His Presence. As you walk
you will learn the truth the truth about man,
the truth about God, the truth about freedom.
Then, when the question, 'Tree, for what/' comes
thundering at you from busy lanes where walk
the tired, the dejected, the cynical, the fearful,
you will know the answer and speak with assur-
ance about freedom as a gift of the Son who, by
His wondrous Cross, purchased and won you
from all of life's enemies.

Free, yes free. Free to serve in the spirit of
Christ, victor over the thralldom of sin and death.
For this is God's great gift, a love that is liberat-
ing and cleansing and healing, a love that pur-
poses to glorify the Creator of life with holy pur-
poses that center in Him who is holy.

Chapter Seven

The Tears in Lent

And the second time the cock crew. And Peter called to
mind the word that Jesus said unto him, Before the cock
crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. And when he
thought thereon,, he wept. Mark 14:72

T ENT Is traditionally characterized by a spirit
-L^ of passionate sorrow. There are tears in Lent
which bespeak the tragic plight of mankind and
confess the depth of his potential sense of self-
reproach and remorse. One would think that the
Church would use its strength to hush the sobs
and quiet the expressions of hopelessness, but
not so. Indeed, the Church begins the season by
striking a note of futility, preaching in prophetic
style with ashes (indicated by the very name Ash
Wednesday)^ gravely speaking of mortality and
doom: "Remember, O man, that dust thou art
and unto dust thou shalt return/' From the very
first announcement, worshippers stand in the
presence of altars, pulpits, lecterns, and clergy,

86 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

wearing violet or purple to emphasize that there
has been and must be a noise of mourning in the
Lenten experience.

It is admittedly a heavy mood, almost morbid.
But the Church the same Church that decks its
chancels with gay evergreen and Easter lilies
seriously demands articulate expressions of sorrow
during Passiontide and is insistent that this minor
chord is an important and integral element in all
Christian experience. So important is it, dictates
this institution that has gathered the experiences
of the ages unto herself, that it must not even be
relegated exclusively to any season of the Church
Year. It must be present in every Order of Service.
Thus it argues that tears belong to the every-day
experience of the Christian life.

From early childhood most of us have been
poignantly aware of this gloomy, introspective,
and fault-finding note in the message of God and
have known intuitively that it could have no
other end than to usher us into the presence of
despair. As children we did not like this inter-
pretation of man's lot. We writhed uneasily in
our pews as we listened to something that sounded
dangerously like false alarms set ringing chiefly
to destroy all laughter, all joy, all fun. It seems
fair to say, too, that many young people deter-
mined very early to quietly sever relationship with
this message as soon as opportunity presented it-
self. Others drifted easily away from an, institu-

THE TEARS IN LENT 87

tion that had indelibly impressed itself upon them
as being opposed to the thing they wanted most:
life, glad life and free. This is probably the reason
so many people explain absence from participa-
tion in the life of /local churches by saying,
"Church? No, thamis, I had an overdose when I
was young/' It is/ undoubtedly a faulty explana-
tion, but it indicates pointedly the vivid impres-
sion left on such lives by a church preaching
heaviness and despair and tears in sharp contra-
diction to the listeners' experiences and desires.

Could this have been avoided? Perhaps, in part.
At least it can be partially explained. There is
little question but what the stern and rocky land
of our forefathers, with its massive heights and
expansive sea, introduced into their knowledge
of life a futility and despair out of proportion
with the American scene. As the years passed, the
lonely sternness of hymns and literature became
increasingly difficult to translate and transfer into
a vacuum. This was the experience, too, I believe,
of Puritanism. The tendency of men with such
severe background was to insist upon a duplica-
tion of their experience, obviously impossible.
They often as not, in desperation, tried to * 'stuff
it down the throats" of their hearers with physical
violence, accompanied by much pounding of the
pulpit and expert grimace and shouted invective.
Many of the children tried to follow where they
were told they must go. But more and more found

88 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

themselves admitting that they were not "built"
for this kind of business, and its unreality became
something to rebel against and resist. It seems
that this must be the explanation for part of the
cruel criticisms leveled at the Church by a gen-
eration that failed to understand its message, and
fled.

In Worcester Cathedral there is a tombstone
with an inscription which includes these lines:

Here born, here Bishop, buried here,

Chief pastor late of Lincoln's flock,
Whom Oxford trained up in youthe,
Whom Cambridge doctor did create,
A painful preacher of the truthe.

It probably is a mistake to interpret this as mean-
ing a preacher that is painful by style, method,
and theory, and yet most of us know something
about that type. Many preachers would like it
said of them that they were preachers of the "pain-
ful truthe/' but I am sure they would resent
being called "painful preachers." There is a world
of difference, as you can readily see. The latter is
likely to give impressions that are not quite in
line with the message, and this actually happened.
Christianity, it became rumored, is nothing but
a gospel of fear. The chief reason for serving God,
it was said, is to escape hell and the company of
the devil.

THE TEARS IN LENT 89

Whether we like to admit It or not, churches, in
enough places to make It appear general, gave an
Impression of being against joyous living. Preach-
ing became an exhibition of fury and wrath. It
appeared, at least, as though the preacher hoped
to drive the devil and his workers from the face
of the earth with a "puff and a huff/' I can not
help sympathizing with people who gained their
impressions from such "goings-on." Many a per-
son has sat In a pew and shivered, not so much
from fear of the devil, as from fear of the preacher
and his frenzied indignation.

This does not mean that fear has no place In
the Christian message. The message Is life, and
fear Is a part of living. As a matter of cold fact,
It Is an extremely useful gift of life. Christianity
is not ashamed of including it In its pronounce-
ments. It saves lives daily. We would not care to
live long in a world void of it. Imagine that kind
of world, If you can, and see the catastrophic con-
sequences of having doctors, nurses, engineers,
mothers, children, and a long list that you can
compile, all absolutely unacquainted with fear.
Fear prevents us from dashing in front of trains
and cars and means that extra touch of safety that
Insures protection to other lives as well as our
own. It even serves as a check on dishonorable
conduct.

From days at school you will remember Eugene
Field's amusing little poem:

9O THE SPIRIT OF LENT

Once when I licked a feller 'at had just moved on our

street,

And father sent me up to bed without a bite to eat,
I woke up in the dark and saw things stand' n in a row,
A-lookin' at me so!

Oh, my! I wuz so skeered 'at time I never slept a mite-
It's almost alluz when I'm bad I see things at nite.

An* so when other naughty boys would coax me Into sin,
I try to skwush the tempter's voice 'at urges me within;
And when they's pie for supper, or cakes 'ats big an' nice,
I want to but I do not pass iny plate fr them things

twice!

No, ruther let starvation wipe me slowly out of sight
Then I sh'd keep a-living on an' seem' things at night!

Fear is a helpful comrade on life's road, no
doubt of that, but it can be destructive, too, and
terribly so. When the Church is accused of preach-
ing a gospel of fear, I suspect that it is intended
to be a jibe at the very motive power of the Gospel.
That accusation must be refuted. Fortunately this
is not so difficult as one would think. Fear does
not create music like Bach's! Fear of mistakes will
make Bach a meticulous creator, but it can not
be and is not the inspiration and dynamo back
of the creation. Christianity is not fear, but love,
and "perfect love casteth out fear."

"What did you preach about?*' asked an older
pastor of a youngster in the ministry.

"About hell/' said the youngster with violent
thrust of jaw and bold air.

THE TEARS IN LENT 9 1

"I hope you preached it tenderly/' said the
experienced and gentle shepherd of souls.

There is tenderness In the gospel, even in severe
judgment. Our Catechism makes a distinction
between what it calls "a slavish fear and a child-
like fear/ 1 The former serves God because of the
punishment only. It is churlish and weak and
suspicious and destructive. The latter is rightly
said to be a constructive power that fears to sin
against love.

If preachers forget now and then that this dis-
tinction is important, laymen must not be so
foolish.

Just as important, no doubt, In contributing
to gross misunderstanding, is the fact that the
pulpit is often far ahead of the hearers in spiritual
understanding and experience. Augustine was able
to write: "Thou, O Lord, didst turn me round to-
ward myself, taking me from behind my back,
where I had placed me, unwilling to observe my-
self; and setting me before my face, that I might
see how foul I was, how crooked and defiled, be-
spotted and ulcerous/' Many preachers under-
stand these words, as do many devout Christians.
But we need to bear In mind that this statement
came from a man who had set his foot in mad
gladness on the dark lanes of terrible sin, had
had much forgiven, and who, by long and intimate
association with his Savior In prayer, meditation,
and careful study of God's Word had penetrated

Q2 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

into the deep mystery of the real cleavage between
God and man.

It is not given to all to know the life of the
spirit as well as this, and one ought not be im-
patient if such a vision be slow in coming or de-
nied despite the use of prayer. Often enough the
deep sighs and tears, so important in Christian
experience, are only the result of long experience
in the company of Jesus. Real depths of remorse
are often as not reserved for the saints. Those of
us who have been plunged into an understanding
of it must be patient with those who long for it
and can not seem to find it. Our experiences or
remorse must not be foisted upon them. Nor do
we have the right to infer that there is something
wrong with them unless they conform to our per-
sonal (very own) experience.

Salvation does not depend upon tears, but upon
the ''blood of the Lamb, slain from the foundation
of the world." Let us never forget that. Remorse,
sorrow, and tears are not something we present
to God to make us worthy to claim adoption as
sons. It is not a manipulation whereby we wheedle
"grace" from the reluctant hands of God. What
terrible thoughts!

And yet it does seem true that some people, in
the presence of God, behave like a famous woman
in history of whom it is written: "An outburst o
tears, so she seemed to think, would solve any
problem, and make her right." It can happen,

THE TEARS IN LENT 93

you see, that the deep places, understood by saints,
become stumbling-blocks for the untutored, who
flee because the whole thing Is unintelligible and
even reprehensive.

I know there are many today who earnestly
desire to be Christians, and who may feel that
they have failed because there are no tears. Let
me remind you that we are created unlike In many
respects, even to our emotions and strength of
mind. Life treats us differently, too, but God
wants you also in His Kingdom. Just start where
you are, without tears and without remorse. Go
quietly to the heavenly Father and say each day,
"1 know there should be sorrow, for I know I am
not perfect as Thy Son was perfect, and yet, merci-
ful God, I feel none of this. But cast me not aside
for this reason, but teach me to love Thee and
Thy paths of righteousness/* Begin where you are.

Another thing is certain, though. The Church
can not silence or erase its message of Lenten tears.
Frequently that message has been misinterpreted
by zealots whose harshness has sometimes been
said to have driven people from the Church. It
may well be that we need to ask forgiveness for
trying to drive when w r e should have led, and for
storming when we should have sympathized, and
for impatience when we should have been under-
standing.

There have undoubtedly been numerous signal
failures, but not on God's part. It is His good

94 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

pleasure that we still have time to serve more
effectively as pulpit and lay witnesses.

That more effective way does not lead toward
a renunciation of remorse and tears and con-
fession. That can be underscored, too, for it is
not a theoretical assertion; it is experience. Those
who have followed the trends in religious life
know something about the effort put forth by
perspiring men to erase all gloom and sadness
from Christianity. There was a timeonly a few
years ago when, in order to overcome criticisms
and guarantee church attendance, preachers vied
with each other to make Christ popular. The lowly
Carpenter became in turn an unwilling world's
greatest salesman, business executive, and sports-
man, and His Gospel became a success story of
evolution that would, we were assured, by the
efforts of civilized and educated man, soon culmi-
nate in the "kingdom of God" here on earth.

The complete collapse of such shallow historical
study and optimistic opulence came with a terror
and shudder of "black-outs." It had to fail. It was
confronted with a phenomenon it did not under-
stand and could not interpret. Who could explain
as easy jogging progress an enlightened modern
civilization lying awake nights plotting diabolical
horrors with which to frighten the world into
submission? Especially when it became evident
that plots of the night were to be realized in
day activity? "When the morning is light," wrote

THE TEARS IN LENT 95

Micah, "they practice It, because It is In the power
of their hand. And they covet fields, and take them
by violence; and houses, and take them away . . ."

Paul S. Minear has an article In Religion in Life
(A Christian Quarterly, Spring Number, 1943.
Abingdon-Cokesbury) entitled "Satan Returns
from Holiday " which sums up the situation real-
istically. He writes: "We have been so confident
of advances In psychology, sociology, history and
metaphysics as assuring mastery of destiny that
we have termed biblical attitudes primitive and
credulous and have prided ourselves on progress
as distance from rather than nearness to their in-
sights. But It is we who have been naive and super-
stitiousand unsatisfied. Jesus, Peter, Paul testify
to actual victories over the tyrant Satan, victories
for which our souls are starved. But we have stifled
our hunger by denying its existence and are thus
doubly under the power of the kingom of this
world. No less slaves than they, we ignore the
existence and power of our masters." If the Church
has made mistakes and been impatient in present-
ing its message, Its mistakes were quickly seized
upon and used as excuses by a generation eager
to seize upon a hostile world philosophy built on
flimsy wishful thinking.

Current events conclusively demonstrate that
though God is in His heaven, not all is right with
the world. The trouble with the world is man,
of course. The trouble with man is not that he

9 6 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

does not know what to do, but that he is unable
to do what he knows he ought to do. Man's job
is bigger than man's strength. Knowledge is at odds
with desire and craving, and the latter are the
proven victors. "But," you protest, "they can not
and will not win in this conflict," and you will
say it emphatically.

The answer seems to be that they have already
won. They have managed to bring the entire
world to the abyss of destruction, and have demon-
strated that evil is bigger and stronger than knowl-
edge of decency and that evil delights in distort-
ing knowledge to its own fiendish ends. Because
it has happened today, it can happen tomorrow.
We are opposed by a force too strong for us. We
are fools unless we now look earnestly for a salva-
tion that is strong enough to match this menace.
There is only one power strong enough, and that
power, too, has been demonstrated in history.
Thank God for that! Need I tell you the name
again? You know, do you not, the name above
every name? When pronounced it shall make
every knee bow, both in heaven and on earth.

We are a strange people, are we not? So quick
to forget that time is on God's side. "Ye shall be
like gods," promised the prince of liars to our
first parents. The glib smoothness of the words
prodded humanity into a faith in self that has
never been justified but which has never been
completely destroyed, a faith which keeps us in

THE TEARS IN LENT 97

a slavery that we even fail to recognize. Now and
then, of course, there come little stirrings within
to question whether or no it be really true. So
many little things are amiss. We ask questions,
for instance, when we should be answering them,
if gods we are. We should be controlling forces,
if gods we are. Oddly enough, too, there come
promptings to worship to worship that which we
know, in our better moments, is above us. "Bet-
ter to forget these weak moments of acknowledged
incompetence," w r e gruffly say, "for w r e are masters
of our destiny and do hold all fate in the palm
of our hand/'

That fierce contest has gone on through the
centuries in varying intensity. Looking down from
His Creator throne, seeing man bustling around
surly, rebellious, proud, all dressed up in god's
clothes, He might have laughed the Psalmist was
certain he heard a note like that but God, who
is perfect love and mercy and goodness and wis-
dom, threw down a challenge to that lie in life
and sent His Son carrying a crude Cross to tear
man from his love of self, and turn his clumsy
feet homeward.

We have been such crude failures at playing
god, have we not? There is something contempti-
ble, as well, about the modern Nebuchadnezzar
strutting vainly to the proud boast, "Is not this
great Babylon, which I have built for the honor
of my name, and the might of my majesty, and

98 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

the power of my kingdom?" It looks silly today,
and the prophet is heard with new understand-
ing as he repeats the words of Daniel: "And thy
dwelling (therefore) shall be with the beasts of
the field." "Fool," said a greater prophet than
Daniel, even God's Son, to that rich man striving
to make himself secure against tomorrow with
new barns and great harvests, ''this night thy soul
shall be required of thee!"

We all know, deep in our hearts, that we must
be better than "fools," and better than "beasts/'
for the sake of this stunned and battered world,
for the sake of bewildered lost selves, and for the
sake of the love in the face of God's Son. We also
know that it is beyond our power. "Ye must be
born again," said Jesus; and we must confess, in
the light of colossal failure, that something radical
like that must happen to our whole being. But to
be born either a first or second time is something
with which we have precious little to do. It is the
work of God! That is what He is doing out there
on Calvary. He is winning victories we can not
win over powers before which we stand helpless,
and offering that power to us. "I will not leave
you desolate," He promised, "I will come and
abide with you." It does seem simple enough, an
offer of friendship that passes human understand-
ing.

In the cold court-yard stood Peter, brought
there by his impetuous, unthinking self-confidence.

THE TEARS IN LENT 99

Out he went, to weep! He had failed so miser-
ably to live up to the love of his best friend. The
remorse would have killed him, too, as it did
Judas, except for the remembrance of love's tender
assurance and forgiveness in the eyes of Him who
knew the denials and who, even then, was carry-
ing the agonizing burden of such sin. That love
held Peter steady. He had caught a glimpse of
the hope of forgiveness and restored friendship.
He kept hoping and it was true! Jesus came and
called him friend again. Never again would Peter
trust in himself alone and follow Jesus "afar off,"
but he would cling close to Him who saved him
by grace, and trust utterly in the Savior's strength.

Many years later, after much experience, Peter
was able to confess honestly that he had never
changed his mind about the worth of that power
found in Christ. "His divine power," he wrote,
"has given us all things that are needful for life
and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who
called us by His own glory and perfection."

How long must we stand impotent and im-
pudent in the cold court-yard before we look up
and see that "Jesus Christ is passing by"? How
long before we see that it is not our tears He is
after, but our very innermost being?

The Church will speak again this year of tears
and remorse and doom. It is real! But even as
she speaks in word and symbol of man's tragic
plight of blindness and weakness, and the stormy

100 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

path of rebellion, lo, a rainbow, a promise of
God's forgiveness and peace and joy in Christ.

Sometimes in the church you will hear messages
that are frankly beyond your experience. Some-
times there may even be an emphasis that is fright-
ening (it is so difficult to manage a right balance
in every sermon). But the experience of Christ's
friendship is available, that is sure. Only start out
today in His company, and journey with Him by
prayer and reading of God's Word, but start out
and just as you are. As you keep stride with
Him, you will enter into the mysteries of the
depths and the heights and be satisfied. Following
like that, the day will come when you, too, will
look up and be startled into a realization that you
have denied the Holy One of God, and join Peter
on "the mourner's bench." In that day remember
the compassion of the Savior, and know His hand
is extended to you in glad forgiveness and salva-
tion. As you walk, you will understand more and
more the grief of the pain you have caused Him,
as well as the joy that Is found in the words, "saved
by grace/' Only start out today just as you are!

Chapter Eight

Self-Sacrifice in Lent

And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the
faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave him-
self for me, Galatians 2: sob

ON July 12, 1944, The Christian Century
printed a poem written by Franklin D.
Elmer, Jr., entitled, "American Cathedral/* He
writes:

Main Street is an empty-ended nave

Thronged with worshippers.

The windows are brilliant showcases

Stuffed with the trivia of little life.

Soul-hungry, harried multitudes,

Seeking, seeking, seeking,

Dash from the Chapel of the Dollar,

Checkbook still in hand,

To share vicarious confession

Slumped in a deep-cushioned seat

Before a silver screen.

A touch of laughter, a sniff of tears,

Then out again.

And now the station of the hat

1 02 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

Or shoes, or candy, or a bright necktie-
Then a visit to the Fountain of the Rich Milk Shake,
And home!

Day after day they come,
For this is a seven-day faith!
See how devoutly they genuflect at crossings
To the Red and Green,
Rushing, stopping, rushing!
Day after day they leave,
Wearier, more harried than when they came.
Main Street is an empty-ended nave.
Look east! Look west! There is no altar!

That strikes us as being a succinct and pungent
story of man's noisy and pointless existence. There
is no theme-song, unless you dare to call its chatter
and boom, its din of clattering and noisome traffic
a theme-song. Of course that is what Carl Sand-
burg probably would call it, for he writes in his
poem entitled "Chicago":

And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and give them back the sneer and
say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cun-
ning.

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,

SELF-SACRIFICE IN LENT

Wrecking,
Planning,

Building, breaking, rebuilding.
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with

white teeth,

Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs. . . .

But there Is no melody only that frightful wail.
It reminds us of an old frame house that stood
on the campus of the school we once attended.
Most people called it "The Music Hall/' Every
afternoon, as one passed by, there could be heard
the shrill screech of a violin, the squeak of a
clarinet, the thunder of many pianos, and the
crazy competition of many soloists, all working
on different compositions. Do you know what we
called that building? We called it "Agony Hall."
And it seemed like a very appropriate name to
most of us. There was, though, one redeeming
feature. Out of it came trained musicians who
gathered voluntarily before the discipline of a
baton, and then, hallelujah, we had music with
melodies that stirred the depths of our souls.

It was an incisive insight that led Mr. Elmer
to write, "Main Street is an empty-ended have.
. . . There is no altar!" It explains why the world
has become a heaving "Agony Hall," and why a
business-man friend said, "All of my associates
have made a lot of money this past year, but there
is present in their conversation a certain hopeless-

104 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

ness, a 'what In the world is the ase* attitude/'
In such lives there is apparently no altar.

There is only one thing wrong with this idea.
It is not true. *Man is by nature a worshipper.
He always builds an altar. The Old Testament
introduces us very early to a picture of man gath-
ering stones for the purpose of building one.
When Paul came to Athens he found many and
ancient altars. Search antiquity, search history,
and you will find yourself stumbling against them
in every civilization: Roman, Greek, Egyptian,
Babylonian, Druidic. No matter what civilization
you study, make up your mind to have a look at
the altars. Your knowledge of any given genera-
tion's culture is incomplete until you have stood
there and asked questions. It is a simple factual
statement to say, as one did, that "man is incur-
ably religious," and it is just as factual to say
that if you want to know what a man is like you
must visit his altar.

If this is true, and I believe it is, then it does
not help to say, "Look east! Look west! There is
no altar!" One must keep looking in! What is it,
one must ask, that man bows down to, reverences,
sacrifices to? What is it he lavishly spends his time,
money, and interest upon? I think you know the
answer.

Once upon a time there lived an old couple
in almost complete isolation. By one means or
another It came to their attention that, far re-

SELF-SACRIFICE IN LENT 105

moved from their backwoods home, a man had
Invented what was called a "looking glass" that
was guaranteed without reservation to duplicate
exactly what the looker looked like. The idea cap-
tivated their imagination and they determined
to scratch and save in order to purchase this won-
derful gift of civilization.

After much effort the price was ready to be met.
The last few pennies had been scraped together
by the man, who now determined to secure the
"glass" as a surprise. It was done. But lo, the
"glass" was such a wonderful thing that he de-
cided to hide it in a distant shed where he might
enjoy it alone for awhile. So it came to pass that
he spent much time away from home, contrary
to habit.

The suspicious wife followed him one day and
saw him enter the shed. She peered in and watched
him preen himself, smile, and laugh before a
small flat object that looked much like a picture.
But examination could wait. Later she stole over
and searched the shed until she found the exact
object. She looked, saw the face of a woman,
hurried to her husband, confronted him with the
thing and said: "So this is the picture of the
old hag you have been spending your time with
lately!"

The story does not say so, but we are sure that
the husband explained, and that a now delighted
wife found excitement and pleasure in its use. At

1O6 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

least we do know that the present generation
understands its use and delights in it. "What do
you do/' asked a modern girl of another, "when
you see a pretty face?" "Oh," said the other, "I
just lay the mirror down, rest awhile, then look
again." And it is not funny!

The point is that man has seen himself in a
mirror, a mirror of his own making, and keeps
coming back and back again to admire himself.
There is an altar in that mirror. Do you not
believe me? Look at America's cosmetic bill.

Of course it is more than cosmetics. A man
pointed to a window and said to a friend, "Look
into the glass and tell me what you see." The
other looked out upon a crowded city scene and
said, "I see people." "Look again but into this
glass/' said the first, pointing to a mirror. "I see
myself/' said his companion. "Isn't it strange/'
mused the instructor half to himself, "how by
simply adding a little silver, man's vision becomes
limited to self?" It is the silver, then, that does it
-symbolical of man's wealth. It is the ever in-
creasing purchasing power that builds the altar
in life.

Purchasing power has always limited vision. It
was when Sennacherib had gathered the spoils of
victories that he dared mock the God of Israel in
stupid confidence in his own strength. But we
have not learned well the facts of history, have
we? There is a reason for that, too. Much of the

SELF-SACRIFICE IN LENT 107

tragic behavior of contemporary humanity would
have been impossible if history were well known.
But people do not read history; they only hear
commentators. But read history, especially the
history of Israel, and learn its sober lessons. We
shall have need of them tomorrow.

There we stood, only yesterday, with all the
wealth of science at our disposal, and with all
the wealth of an industrial world, and with all
the wealth of learning. And we built an altar in
a mirror. I know there are many indications that
repentance for this bitter fruit of humanism and
rationalism is on the way. I have heard and read
many great leaders of world thought, and under-
stand that all such leaders are beginning to de-
fine the limitations of man with sharp emphasis.
It has been said that the man in the study is twenty
years ahead of the man on the street, and it fright-
ens me because in my impatience I want them to
see the limitations now before a new substitute
for God's altar is found.

We stand, God willing, on the doorstep of such
victories on the far-flung battlefronts as to insure
an end of the hostilities that have given us all
"war-nerves." We must understand that victory
has graver responsibilities than conflict. Remem-
ber, it was when Belshazzar was feasting that ruin
fell with the deafening commotion of a horrific
explosion. And there are plenty of indications
that we are waiting for the hour of feasting with

108 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

an insatiable maw. God have mercy upon us if
with the spoils of victory we turn to frivolity,
nudity, vulgarity, and drunkenness as fit sacrifices
to lay on the altar of life! One need hardly be a
prophet t o see the handwriting on the wall in that
case. No, there must be no detour. We in the
Christian Church must see to that with enthu-
siasm.

Possi / the greatest danger lies with the Church
itself. The question will not down: Are we in
the Church ready for this hour? Are we not guilty,
too, of worshipping at strange altars? Could not
Micah say of us truly that despite our sins of
selfishness, greed, avarice, and lust we content our-
selves with a superficial knowledge of God's ways
and presence "Yet will they lean upon the Lord
and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can
come upon us/'

Of all the evils that could come to pass, this
must surely be the worst: God's people delighting
in the sins of worldliness and still insisting that
they have Him among them and feel secure. "Unto
the angel of the church of Ephesus write: ... 1
have somewhat against thee, because thou hast
left thy first love' . . . repent! " "Unto the angel of
the church in Thyatira write: ... 1 have a few
things against thee, because thou sufferest that
woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess,
to teach and seduce my servants to commit forni-
cation, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols' . . .

SELF-SACRIFICE IN LENT 10Q

repent/' "Unto the angel o the church of the
Laodiceans write: . . . 'Because thou art luke-
warm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee
out of my mouth. Because thou sayeSt, I am rich,
and increased with goods, and have need for noth-
ing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and
miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked' . . .
repent!"

Repent. Turn around! That is whei J we must
begin. Let self-consciousness cease, tliat fearful
consciousness that weighs everything in the light
of self's needs and powers, that shameful practice
of protecting, shielding, comforting me.

We must come to a speedy realization that all
half-way sacrifices to God are of no avail. "Where
your heart is, there will your treasure be." There
could be no half-way for our Savior. The way of
sacrifice must begin with a "not my will, but
Thine be done." Calvary was an altar, God's altar.
Here the 'lamb without blemish and without
spot" was slain. "Ye know," wrote Peter, "ye
were not redeemed with corruptible things, but
with the precious blood of Christ." And then He
came with those gruesome holes in hands and
feet and side, saying, "Peace be unto you," and
Thomas knew there was nothing for it but to
throw himself at His feet and confess Him "Lord
and God."

There is no use shying from the full implica-
tions of that confession^ for so have said all His

1 1 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

disciples. They understood that the lordship of
Jesus meant that they were no longer their own.
They had been purchased and bought from sin
on the altar of Calvary. It meant that their life
in all its wholeness must be brought and placed
on that altar of God. Without it there could be
no discipleship. It meant that all of life's purposes
must now be to glorify His name. Without it there
could be no discipleship. Faith, for them, meant
not only trusting Him with death, but with life.
The altar once reared to self must therefore be
crushed and hauled away for junk. It was not
worthy of their prodigious efforts of sacrifice, for
it was the altar of a god of destruction. But Christ
and Calvary, that was different: "He is worthy,"
they joyously cried and brought their poor lives
to lay upon His altar for healing and dedication
for service.

Now Lent comes to remind us that self-sacrifice
is part of life lived in the light of the Cross. No
one argues it, everyone admits that "Thou gavest
Thyself for me, what have I given for Thee?" is
a fair question. Most of the people in the Church
are willing to do something special during Lenten-
tide "to show Jesus that they really care." Some-
times this takes the form, in our Church at least,
of "Penny-a-Meal" offerings and special devotions.
In some instances there is fasting, and abstinence
of various kinds. All of these things, these little
extras, are without question a fine and splendid

SELF-SACRIFICE IN LENT 1 1 1

thing. Many people, indeed, take a great deal of
pride in their Lenten routine.

And that is where they are wrong! "Why don't
you ever sing the second stanza of No. 121?" a
young girl asked. "Because," was the answer, "I
do not believe it I do not believe that 'the least
you do for Jesus will be precious in His sight.' M
But many do! They take a little from the overflow
of life's goods and lay it on His altar and feel very
pious about it

"I can not understand it/' said a venerable old
pastor to his flock before an offering was to be
received, "I watch you men in the fields tossing
big bundles about with apparent ease, and yet
as soon as an offering is announced you all look
pale and sickly. I have noticed that many times
it takes as many as ten of you to carry a dollar
to the altar."

Kierkegaard is not so gentle as the old pastor
when he attacks the discrepancy between what we
say we believe and the way we express our faith
in deeds: "In an author of old time I read the
following observation or something like it," he
writes. "When one sees a man holding the axe
wrong and chopping in such a way that is likely
to chop everything but the log, one does not say
how wrongly the woodsman handles the axe; but
one will say, the man is not a woodsman. Make
the application. When one sees thousands and
thousands and millions of Christians whose lives

1 1 2 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

have not in the remotest way even the least like-
ness to what and that is the decisive thing to
what the New Testament calls Christians is it
not strange and confusing, is it not to speak as
one would not do in any other situation, when
one says how poorly the Christians express what
it is to be a Christian, how far they are from ex-
pressing it? In every other situation one would
say, these men are not Christians/'

It is confusing to look at the things we bring
in the name of "sacrifice" something that is in-
tended to confess the measure of our love for a
Christ who gave His life freely for us, and find
that the spirit of Cain is still with us. We have
this amazing gift of God in Christ with forgive-
ness, reconciliation, and eternal life, and and
God help us! some unfeeling, impertinent per-
son pipes up with the staggering problem, "Do
you think it is a sin to dance? to go to shows? to
visit taverns?"

What is it, I beseech you, that we have made
of Christ's agonizing death and priceless atone-
ment? What is it, I beg you, that we have made of
His "Take up your cross and follow me'? By
what and whose authority have we translated it to
mean a "stop this!" or a touch of lumbago or a
financial reverse?

Can this be the meaning of Paul's plea to the
Christians at Rome: "I beseech you . . . present
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto

SELF-SACRIFICE IN LENT 1 lg

God, which is your reasonable service" and his
injunction, "Be not conformed to this world'?

Is this the most that we can make of these words
of Christ, "Truly, I tell you, except a grain of
wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a
single grain; but if it die it bears rich fruit"?
Then truly is our plight desperate, for we have
the "letter that killeth" without the spirit "that
giveth life."

"I'd give my life to have those little ones crowd
so joyously about me/' said a fastidious irreligious
club-woman to a Christian friend with whom she
had insisted upon going on a regular visit to the
slums. "I had never thought of it that way/' said
the Christian, "but I guess that is what one has
to give." And it is! "I bear in my body the marks
of the Lord Jesus," said Paul. Do we have the
marks of Jesus? Look at our hands! Are they there?
Look at our feet! Are they there? And do we, as
Paul admonishes the Corinthians, "do all to the
glory of God"? Even our eating and drinking and
daily chores? Do we work for the purpose, as the
Apostle puts it, that we "may have to give to him
that needeth"?

When Jesus came to Galilee, a few men gave their all
Their souls and minds, their strength and wealth in

answer to his call;
Eleven men did not withhold from him a thing they

owned
'Twas worthy of a Christ who died to see a world atoned.

1 14 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

When Jesus came to my home town, they sold him

novelties;
They gave him suppers, pies and plays just anything to

please.

For men had lost the vision of a world from sin redeemed;
They bought and sold for profit even in his church, it

seemed.

Still Jesus cried: "Forgive them, they are children yet and

blind;
They think they do my will when they give money of

this kind."
The men just laughed and said in scorn: "Why, no man

gives his all.
Tell him to come to our bazaar; we'll rent him out a

stall!"

But Jesus wept such bitter tears to see the sons of men
Live just as if he'd never come and died and risen again;
As if he'd never taught them they must consecrate their

all-
Their souls and minds, their strength and wealth in

answer to his call.

(Ernest Emurian in Church Management, Feb., 1939)

Let us not speak of self-sacrifice and self-denial,
unless we are willing to look into the gentle eyes
of Him who "hangs on a rough-hewn Cross, and
cry not sing

The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from Thy throne,
And worship only Thee.

W. Gowper

SELF-SACRIFICE IN LENT 115

Let us not speak of self-sacrifice and self-denial,
unless we are willing to die to self how our nature
rebels at that! and to raze the altar to self.

You cannot do it? Tell Jesus so. He will draw
you up Calvary's slope with the power of His
divine love, and lo, it is done! See, He is smiling
as you exclaim in astonishment, "But this is not
death, it is life!"

Hush! There is the sound of angelic choirs, and
they are singing "Amen." There is bound to be
celestial music when men gather from every tribe
and nation around an altar like the Cross.

Chapter Nine

Lent and
Self-Examination

Examine yourselves,, whether ye be in the faith.

II Corinthians 13:5

SELF-EXAMINATION is one of the avowed
purposes of Lenten tide. What is it? What are
its prized benefits?

Most of us have had the experience of a medi-
cal examination. We know that ordinarily the
first step is to answer numerous questions about
father, mother, grandparents, habits, past illnesses,
and a host of kindred things. All of these we
answer, personal though they be, because we ex-
pect that honest replies will be helpful in deter-
mining the status of our health. Next we are
subjected to various tests to ascertain whether
blood, heart, lungs, and what-have-you measure
up to fixed standards acceptable as normal be-

Il8 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

havior; and finally comes a verdict upon the de-
gree of our physical well-being.

Self-examination is comparable to this kind of
procedure in that there are questions, tests, stand-
ards, and verdict. It is radically different in that
it proposes to examine, instead of body, thoughts
and words and desires and deeds indeed, man's
spirit, things which can not be submitted, except
in a limited sense, to any other examiner save one-
self. Therefore, it is literally examination of self,
by self.

This calls for a truly extraordinary ability, a
strange and mysterious power to stand outside of
oneself looking at oneself as objectively as though
self were another, as though self were actually a
stranger, and yet a stranger about whom we know
every dark secret. This power inherent in man
makes it possible for Gillilan to urge:

Just stand aside and Watch Yourself Go By,
Think of yourself as "he" instead of "I";
Pick flaws; find fault; forget the man is you,
And strive to make each estimate ring true.

Without this knack of being able to say, * 'Think
of yourself as he instead of //' there could not
be the kind of consciousness of self that we all
have experienced. Then most certainly there
would not exist as a fundamental hunger this
appetite for approval of both self and others.
Whether we would then be human is another

LENT AND SELF-EXAMINATION 1 1 9

matter, but let us try to make it clear that we have
this peculiar power, and almost unthinkingly use
it in our restless search for approval. This knowl-
edge results in some interesting and vital facts con-
cerning human behavior.

A few years ago I read the sensational account
of the death of a Chicago physician. He was dead
by his own choice, a suicide. A note left behind
read: "Surely there can be no good reason for my
going on and maiming honest people just to eke
out a living/' Here a recent patient was named,
followed by a brief summary of a last bedside call
that led to these thoughts, "His very last dying
words called me back to his side, bringing the
terrible realization that I had utterly and com-
pletely missed the diagnosis, a fearful monument
to my horrible ineptness as a practitioner."

There is profound meaning for us in this rec-
ord of human tragedy, for here, mind you, is a
history of self-examination. Here certainly can be
seen questions, tests, standards, and verdict. It was
an examination of self and by self done almost as
unconsciously as we breathe. He did not say, "I
shall now go into a room apart and examine my-
self/' This man looked at himself, as we all look
at our selves in anxious quest of approval. But
approval was not forthcoming. He saw nothing
but things which met with his deepest disap-
proval. The chagrin of failure compelled a fren-
zied search for some avenue of escape, and when

120 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

all avenues appeared blocked, death beckoned with
lies of security. This man in despair was desperate,
and any promise of deliverance was snatched at
with ferocious hunger.

The insistent verdict of failure may frequently
end in suicide. Sometimes it results in insanity.
In all such cases it is obvious that the standards
are too high. If the standards could be lowered
for them, complete despair might be avoided. It
is a matter of record that parents and teachers have
often sinned against lives entrusted to their care
by pointing such persons at goals far beyond native
talents and endowments. Wisdom in this matter
would save many lives and many heartaches.

But of course not all self-confessed failures turn
to self-destruction. There are many individuals
who manage to shoulder the burden this knowl-
edge thrusts upon them. Some even manage to
be quite brave and gay in spite of the pronounced
judgment of doom. Margaret Goldsmith writes of
Christina of Sweden, "She knew that she had ac-
complished nothing, that she was leaving no mark
on time . . . she had lived, and that was all, for
sixty-three years/' And yet she was able to order
as her epitaph with a flippant show of courage,
"Vixit Christina."

To manage by sheer will-power to live under
this horrible judgment is not easy. It involves one,
as it did Christina, in the need for a forced gayety
that restlessly paces the streets of the world in

LENT AND SELF-EXAMINATION 1 2 1

search of new thrills and new crowds. It brings a
nervous behavior that needs shrieking excitement
and giddy movement. Often as not, it brings in its
train a long list of physical ills that destroy happi-
ness, all happiness save such as can be wrested
from self-pity, and the poor comfort that respon-
sibility for usefulness and success can no longer
be expected.

Another group, probably the great majority,
feels only twinges of remorse, and hears only the
rumble of defeat. Such warnings may come with
frequency and some insistence, or like some faint
echo, sounding from the depths of unsuspected
caverns deep within, muffled and all but inartic-
ulate. They manage to live with such sounds be-
cause of another mysterious power, the ability to
justify and harden self with deception.

We all know the subtle tricks used to justify
this self. At least we have a gift for recognizing
the tricks when we suspect others are employing
them. "I have just been talking to so-and-so, and
she says she knows the reason why so-and-so said
what she did/' But how did she know the why
and the wherefore? Was it not because of her
ability to stand in the place of the other person
and select motives and reasons, knowing the worst
as well as the best, and giving her credit for the
worst? We can guess at other persons' reasons only
because we know all the temptations and treachery
within our own spirit. But the feeble, invalid,

122 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

and sordid motives we find in others are never
found in us, on the other hand, because we give
self substantial and noble reasons which we refuse
to test, and therefore accept as true. And where
there is some feeble testing, there are also preju-
dice and self-satisfying reasons.

What an elaborate and intricate game it turns
out to be! "I heard that vulgar person tell a friend
that I am a selfish wretch/' we confide to a friend,
"but I have done this good thing, contributed to
that good cause, donated of my precious time on
behalf of this project and that you don't think
I am a selfish wretch, do you?" we implore. And
few would, in that spot. But though we know
enough to know even this, we go triumphantly
home, elated and vindicated. At once we manage
to force the little voice into an inglorious retreat,
properly cowed. If we have too much pride to
go to a friend, we argue it out in the inner courts
and chambers, marshal such prodigious argu-
ments for our side as to rout any thought of guilt.
We are adept, not only at finding excuses, but
at fixing upon reasons that are noble and un-
selfish, thus ushering self into a make-believe "hall
of fame."

This game of justifying and excusing self makes
repetition of some repulsive action possible. When
such repetition is indulged in, and excuses are
directed long enough and often enough at one
target, such actions become accepted as right with-

LENT AND SELF-EXAMINATION 12$

out the need for expending any effort on its de-
fense. Thus it becomes possible to harden self
against the demands of a former ideal, and to lower
standards.

Approval, remember, must be had by every hu-
man soul, and must be had short of despair if
there is to be any peace and happiness. Other than
by the way of self-deception, there is no way to this
peace except through the absence of ideals. This
presupposes such ignorance and darkness as to
make civilization almost unthinkable.

It is actually, then, deception of self by self that
makes it possible for great numbers of people
to live in some degree of peace. The degree of
that peace depends upon the kind of standards
that have been presented and accepted as the test
and pattern of normal behavior, together with
the strength inherent in that pattern to insist upon
conformity. People may spurn an ideal as un-
attainable and undesirable, may giye self such
faulty ideals as to make attainment easy, or may
successfully excuse themselves by giving them-
selves credit for things they are not, overlooking
the things they are. The way to peace, it seems,
is a way of low ideals and successful lies.

On the other hand, if and when the standard
becomes insistent and determined in its judgment
of failure, man enters into the dark region of
despair.

Here suicide and insanity beckon with wild ges-

124 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

ticulations that appear friendly, or nervous fatigue
offers panting and perspiring companionship.

William Allen White writes (Masks in a Pag-
eant) out of long experience with men high in
public life: "They were men half beast and half
god, with the two elements continually battling
within them. They were typical of their times,
incarnations of various phases of the democratic
spirit. Each had his delusions about truth upon
which his career was founded, and from which
delusions, curiously, came much of his strength.
For instance, Harrison and Wilson cherished Cal-
vinistic gods, created in their own image. With
these gods they deified the world. . . . But Cleve-
land seems to have heard the voice in the clink
of a gold reserve, and Bryan was fooled by the
ballot box. ... So Bryan was always listening at
the little hole in the top of the box, sedulously
convinced that what he heard there was the voice
of God/' Now, regardless of what you may think
about the conclusions which he draws from his
knowledge of these men, here can be seen the
results of different standards. We, in turn, judge
them by our standards.

But who can understand completely the mys-
teries of this inner court? The dim light and the
labyrinthine corridors yield their secrets to no
man. The presence, though, of this ability of self
to criticize self to question, test, measure, and
bring judgment is something we need to reckon

LENT AND SELF-EXAMINATION 12PJ

with seriously, for it is as plain as an elephant's
nose that civilization can flounder into despair
with standards beyond it, or sink into shabby in-
difference and reckless destruction by a shameful
deceit and a refusal of any standard save that with-
in easy reach. Self-approval, and the approval of
others, both eagerly sought, are the roads to peace
all right, but without Christ they are to be had
in this world only by cheapening life's meaning
and destiny.

Thus far I have refused to use the name "con-
science." That has been done deliberately. "Con-
science" is the name Christians use to label this
area in life, but the area is not Christian. It does
not belong to the Christians as a peculiar posses-
sion, but is a universal endowment. The Chris-
tian Church gives, besides its own name, its own
questions, its own tests, its own standards, and
its own verdict.

In the Christian life the standard is ever our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. "Behold the man!"
said one who sat in judgment upon Him during
the shameful mockery of His trial, and all Chris-
tians agree that the ejaculation of this pagan ruler
is true the Man. He is our standard of perfec-
tion, and we sing, "I long to be like Jesus/' We
confess, too, that besides revealing what man ought
to be, He reveals what God is. Therefore He has,
we say, not only our approval, but God's, sealed
with the resurrection, the ascension, and the com-

126 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

Ing of the Spirit. Our conscience, this uncanny
ability to stand outside and pass judgment on self,
has a new light in the life of Christ. It is not
for nothing that He is called the "Light of the
World/' and personal witness is made that He is
"my light/ 1 The Christian ideal is fixed in Him.

Jesus makes it very difficult. Make no mistake
about that. He comes with such lowliness as to
make recognition difficult, no grandeur that we
should desire Him. He comes bluntly pointing
out that the approval we hunger for and seek
with lies, self-deception, and lowered ideals, is
not the thing we want at all. If we seek the clue to
happiness in this manner, happiness will be tran-
sient and temporary in view of the judgment of
God. He comes with pounding footsteps to con-
front us with a love as tremendous as the Cross
on Calvary, drawing life up to that for its testing
and verdict.

We stand before Him, recognizing dimly the
beauty of His lowliness, astounded at His sin-
lessness, confounded by His life of sacrifice, asking
questions, testing, measuring by His standards,
and . . .

Who dares bring in the verdict? It is a stand-
ard too high for us! Its road leads straight to
despair. Here surely is mystery. For the very thing
man must avoid if he is to live with peace and
happiness is now proposed as the very thing to
embrace.

LENT AND SELF-EXAMINATION 127

Despair, for the Christian, is also a desperate
plight, but lo, the alternatives have been increased
by one. There is an open door that this dark re-
gion has not yielded before, and it is the door to
the very thing his spirit craves, approval of God.
This approval is the key to the approval of self,
for self is excused and forgiven in Christ. The ap-
proval of others, so important in the past, is dis-
carded as unworthy in the light of the knowledge
that the real "other" is God alone.

Thus despair becomes the goal of Christ for
every human being. We could not insist upon this
way of destruction except for Him except for
those explicit promises to the helpless to be their
helper to stand with them in the courts of their
own lives and in the courts of God, accepting their
sin and failure as His very own, and pleading His
sinlessness for them. We find that despair at stand-
ards too high is an open road to the status of
children of God.

Christian Lenten self-examination is meant to
confront self with Christ. Ask questions like these:
What did His eyes see? What do mine see? Where
did His feet go? Where do mine go? What were
His thoughts? What are mine? What did His lips
speak? What do mine? This is conscious, deter-
mined self-examination, and the call now during
Lent is for you to make the effort. Ask questions,
test, measure, and walk into the regions of despair.
He will not forsake you in your sick despair,

128 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

but will tenderly bind up the wounds and lift you
in His power to a new life hid in Him.

Such examination has another use. His life in
mine ought to dominate and shine forth radiantly.
It is our task to let Christ dwell in us richly to
the showing forth of His praise. Conscious self-
examination is a road that leads to Christ-likeness.
It is a daily assignment, though it means time
and toil. Do not forget that pardon is given freely,
but Christ-likeness is won only in conflict. It looks
like a dreary assignment, but there is unsuspected
joy and zest in the given task. "Count it all joy,
brethren/' shouts Paul back over his shoulder to
us, "count it all joy when you fall into tempta-
tion." Sweat and bleed and pray there is victory
ahead, for Christ is with you and in you.

"I buffet my body to bring it into subjection,"
shouts the Apostle with gladness in the fight, and
points us to other battlefields, saying, "We battle
not against flesh and blood, but against principali-
ties and powers and rulers in dark places/'

And even as he speaks one catches a picture of
a man battling his way into the dark regions of
soul-life, coming to grips with lies and deceit and
sham, and valiantly struggling to defeat and slay
such treacherous foes. Come along, he seems to say
to you and me, come along, clutch the sword
which is the Word of God just so, and if you are
worsted for a minute or two, up, up, again and
again. Christ is with you because He was with me.

LENT AND SELF-EXAMINATION

We know he speaks the truth. We are inspired
at the assurance of his experience and step back
into the fray with new confidence and hope. So
the battle rages, today, tomorrow, every day, until
that final great victory when we, because of Him,
conquer that last grim tyrant called "death."

But we are often listless and tired soldiers.

One day I happened to be in the company of
a pastor friend in his office. He was ministering
at that time to delinquent boys. "Come over here,"
he said, "I want to show you a picture one of
the boys painted for me/' I stepped around the
desk and looked at a copy of a famous picture of
Christ. "Not bad," said I. "No, not bad," he said,
"but notice how there are betrayals of the crim-
inal tendency in the painter see here, around the
eyes, look here, around the mouth." There was
no doubt about it, the hand could not behave ex-
cept in obedience to the inner spirit of the painter.

As I looked at my life, I asked soberly, "I
wonder, what kind of Christ do people see in
me?" The question hurt, deeply! For I knew that
the Christ who saved me was looking to me to
paint a picture that would glorify Him and be a
good presentation of what His Gospel can do for
a man and all that.

Look at yourself! Could not you, too, do better
with a daily self-examination? Of course, it means
toil, but the Lord of Life is looking to you and
to me to express that life:

130 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

Not merely in the words you say,
Not only in your deeds confessed,
But in the most unconscious way,
Is Christ expressed.

And from your eyes He beckons me,
And from your heart His love is shed,
Till I lose sight of you and see
The Christ instead.

Self-examination will help us in that it will
spur us on toward Christ-likeness, but it will also
keep us earnestly single-minded in all our efforts.
One finds it impossible to forget the main busi-
ness of a Christian life if it is lived with daily
examination before the face of Christ. And it is
easy to forget! So much of life seems organized
against us. Just that deadly daily routine social
contacts, business worries, political problems, and
the lure of worldly pursuitsis enough to blunt
the edge of what ought to be a sharp consciousness
of our relationship to God in Christ.

"Watch! Watch! Watch!" shouts Scripture, un-
derstanding better than we our perils. Forgetful-
ness of our role as "sons of God and joint heirs
with Christ" threatens always to sink us into
mediocrity and uselessness for the gigantic task
and place of honor that has been accorded to us
by the mercy of God.

History is full of examples: For instance, King
Saul was chosen of God for the highest position

LENT AND SELF-EXAMINATION Igl

in the land, yet he went his heedless way until
finally it was written of him, "After whom is the
king of Israel come out? after whom dost thou
pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea?" "But even
a king/' Ivan H. Hagedorn reminds us, "can sink
to the level of a beggar, and have the beggar's
outlook, and spend his life looking for a dime/
or as David said, 'pursue after a flea.' " Then there
was Nero who ran giddy-headed about his king-
dom flinging challenges at the fiddlers. And do
not forget Lydian scraping away at his hobby
of filing needles.

Great tasks were before them all, but they be-
came preoccupied and engrossed in trivial mat-
ters. Little wonder that men of long experience
in the "Way" cry, "Watch." Let him that thinketh
he stands take care lest he fall. For when I am
strong, then am I weak.

Self-examination will keep us humble, too, and
dependent upon our Savior for strength, for as
we learn dependence we learn the peace and joy
and hope of His constant presence.

I am sure as sure can be that somewhere there
is a frightened, lonely self who is trying to carry
the burden of failure all alone. "Come/ 1 Jesus
tenderly says, "come unto me, ye weary and heavy
laden," and it must mean you. There must be
someone "sick and tired" of making excuses and
building elaborate fortifications in the joyless task
of protecting self from self and others. Confess the

THE SPIRIT OF LENT

flimsy walls and be done with it, for He will
abundantly pardon. There must be, too, many
who sense the need to walk boldly into His pres-
ence daily for renewal, that one may walk "worthy
of the high calling in Christ Jesus."

One morning many years ago I went with a
mother, at her urgent request, to a jail where
her young son had been incarcerated late the night
before. Anxiously we looked through the heavily
barred door. We saw a large group of youngsters-
rebellious, tired, shabby, disheveled, and ragged
Jew, Greek, Italian, Indian, Negro, and just
plain Yankee. Finally my eyes caught sight of her
boy. He was sitting apart from the others, im-
maculate in appearance, and plainly ill at ease.

"There he is," said the mother as she, too,
caught sight of him. Then she called, and he came
walking toward her, this fine appearing boy that
anyone would be glad to call son, and at last they
stood face to face, with only bars between. She
reached eager hands and arms through the open-
ings and drew him close as she sobbed through
tears, "Oh, son, son, don't you see, can't you see
that you don't belong here!" And he did not be-
long there, not with his splendid home back-
ground and adequate financial resources, not with
his Church and Confirmation instruction. No,
he did not belong there.

Now some of you may be away from home, im-
prisoned with careless habits, wrong occupations,

LENT AND SELF-EXAMINATION

and shabby, unworthy companions. Can you not
see? You do not belong there not you not with
your training and resources and available love,
and I want to urge you to come home where the
love o Christ will forgive, and His skill bind up
the wounds, and His inspiring presence lift you
to a sonship that is eternal.

Self-examination is one of the avowed purposes
of Lententide. Use it, though it lead through the
frightening darkness of despair, for it leads the
way to life, to Christ-likeness, to single-minded
purposeful living, to humility and a consciousness
of our high destiny in Christ Jesus, whom we con-
fess to be Lord.

Chapter Ten

Lenten Memories

In remembrance of me. Luke 22:19

YOU have no idea/' said a victim of amnesia,
"how lonely life can be without any mem-
ories/'

Well, try to imagine what it would mean to
lose this ability to recall the "scenes of my child-
hood" to lose all vital contact with the past.
I shudder at the thought of having yesterday a
great void, and can understand that 'lonely" was
probably a feeble attempt to describe an aching
spirit that longed to have "memory play an old
tune on the heart/'

It would be a frightful thing to have a society
without a trace of remembrance. It would meafi
a solitariness that would speedily destroy order
and coherence. Thank God for this great gift of
memory, which when combined with imagination
makes possible a history and tradition that is
animated and generous in its rich gifts for life.

136 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

Without such a faculty there could be no roots
to existence, in lieu of which there could be noth-
ing but shallowness and emptiness.

Who can properly estimate the place of memory
in the habits of men who carry the indelible men-
tal etching of a praying mother? Who can escape
the urge that prompted Joseph's brave answer
when there is a past to sin against? No, we dare
not discount the importance of memory as a
force and power in the behavior of mankind.

William Allen White once said, "Life is organ-
ized memories. And the kind of organization one
gives to his memories makes his personal equation
his personal character/' In the light of this, it
becomes imperative for us to select the material
for memory with utmost skill and care. It is ex-
treme folly to crowd a personal life with material
that will later cause fear and cringing. Many of
us would like another chance, I am sure, for in
our stupidity we thought we were strong enough
to tolerate tainted memories, or at least supposed
we should be able to subdue them with some kind
of forgetfulness. We never thought that conscience
would insist upon thrusting them constantly to
the fore to menace all health and happiness.

"Why did you return this money, son?" said a
man to a small boy who came running with a
lost purse. "You might have kept it. No one would
have known, and it could have been used to pur-
chase many things you desire."

LENTEN MEMORIES

"Oh, but I would have known, sir/' said the
boy, "and I don't want to live with a thief/'

But that was wisdom beyond the knowledge of
experience. The lad was selecting his memories
in faith. Would to God that we all had had that
kind of faith a faith that walks by the knowledge
of revelation and the experience of others.

Choose the material for your memories with
all the help and training and experience that you
can get, for here lies much of the precious stuff
that life is composed of, and here is the secret of
much of what we call character. Little wonder,
then, that nations and churches should set aside
days for calling to mind important past events.
It is society proposing such memories as it sup-
poses will be a leaven for good in the behavior
of its people, and confessing that much of the past
is a precious thing that needs cultivation and
selection in the best interests of all humanity.

It should occasion no surprise, therefore, when
Jesus boldly makes a bid for a place in this de-
partment of life. "This do/' He said, broke and
gave bread, passed the cup, "in remembrance of
me/'

It was as though He proposed to make His
place in memory secure by eating and drinking.
That was ever the way of Jesus, to take the ordi-
nary and make it extraordinary. Of water He
made Baptism. Of bread and wine He made the
Holy Communion. Of a body He made a fit sacri-

Ig8 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

fice for the sins of the world. Of a cross He made
a throne. Of death He made life.

And so it came to pass that He was known "in
the breaking of bread," and the disciples of all
ages have met with Him around a Table to find
refreshment in remembering Him. There have
been times, to be sure, when a heavy lethargy has
prevented the frequent opportunities for com-
muning that would seem to be desirable, but even
during sulch days there has been a profound re-
spect for its significance, and participation has
meant hush and quiet and His presence. Today
we notice that more frequent communions have
become the rule in many congregations, and all
of us are hoping that this means the beginning
of a firmer hold on the knowledge of Christ's
nearness.

Let us come to the Lord's Table intent on re-
membering, persuaded that Jesus asks urgently
for a place in this determinative sphere of char-
acter and behavior.

According to Thy gracious word,
In meek humility,
This will I do, my dying Lord,
I will remember Thee.

The Lord's Table has often been called a
Eucharist, that is, a thanksgiving. And the first
thing we ought to do this Maundy Thursday is
to resolve to listen with unusual care to the glad

LENTEN MEMORIES 139

invitation, "Lift up your hearts/' and respond
with fervor, ''We lift them up unto the Lord." We
are such ungrateful creatures, forever heaping up
the prodigious gifts of a loving Father without
taking thought of His mercy and goodness, and
accepting them all more or less as our rightful
possessions.

"If I could paint/' said one man, "I'd paint a
panel of three pictures. First, I'd show Jesus tak-
ing the cup and giving thanks. Secondly, I'd show
Jesus with the seven loaves and few small fishes
giving thanks. Thirdly, I'd show the Apostle Paul
on that pitching ship in a gale of such propor-
tions as to make hardened sailors quake, taking
bread and giving thanks in the presence of them
all. Then," said the man, "I'd hang that picture
in every home to remind all people of God's gra-
cious care, and as an exhortation, too, to give
thanks to almighty God."

We need that reminder. Our dour and glum
countenances are constantly revealing our ingrati-
tude and lack of understanding of that revelation
which declares, "God is love." The wonder of it
no longer startles us, and our listlessness is proof
enough that too frequent hearing has taken the
mystery out of it for us.

I heard the other day of a minister who had
the courage to do what I have often thought I
should like to try. He entered the pulpit, offered
prayer, read the text, "God is love/' said that

140 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

there was nothing he could add to such a glori-
ous message, said, "Amen/' and left the pulpit.
The friend that reported this incident expressed
deep regret. "Because," said she, "I had looked
forward to hearing this man preach, and had
traveled many miles to be present at the service."

The preacher was right, of course, for there is
little that can be added to such revelation, and
all attempts to stimulate enthusiasm are quite
futile in unregenerate hearts, though helpful for
the regenerate. But the preacher was wrong, too,
for though power of description fails and tongues
reach dryly for words to speak the unutterable
things of God, yet we can and must point to the
Cross as the evidence.

Without that story of Calvary, the statement,
"God is love," is open to serious objections. For
someone will surely say, "Prove that to me, please,
for my experience is at odds with that kind of
knowledge. Search history as I will, I can not find
traces of it there; and if I search the heavens and
the earth the knowledge is not there." And they
have reason to question the unruly elements and
human strife, woe, pain, disaster, and death, as
expressions of love. '

No, we could not defend such a doctrine unless
God had revealed it in some way that would
forever still questionings, had spoken some word
as articulate as a Cross. Someone has said: "Rea-
son cries: If God were good, He could not look

LENTEN MEMORIES

upon the sin and misery of man and live, His
heart would break/ And the Church points to
the crucifix and says, "God's heart did break/
Reason cries, 'Born and reared in sin and as we
are, how can we keep from sin? It is the Creator
who is responsible, it is God who deserves to be
punished/ And the Church kneels by the Cross
and whispers, 'God takes the responsibility and
bears the punishment/ Reason cries again, 'Who
is God, what is God? The name stands for the
unknown. It is blasphemous to say we know Him/
And the Church kisses the feet of the dying Christ
and says, 'We must worship the majesty which
we see/ "

The Cross is stronger than our doubts and
fears. And though all of life and its experiences
bring that love into question, yet within the
shadow of the "Place of the Skull" questions are
exchanged for a knowledge that is beyond all
human , knowing. "Nerve me," said one man,
"nerve me with constant affirmations/' It must
be our business as a Church to point to the Cross
though all language and explanation fail us.

Give thanks, then, as you kneel at the altar.
Give thanks for the memory of God's unspeak-
able love in Christ Jesus, our Savior.

That love is best known in the forgiveness of
sins, the assurance that Christ's sacrifice is suffi-
cient atonement for sin. God has always called
forth sacrifice. It was true of the children of Israel

142 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

with their regular lamb, dove, and bullock offer-
ings for trespass and sin and thanks, but it is
also true of all who call upon the name of a god-
man has always sensed that something must be
brought as an offering for peace. More and more
it becomes plain that the only sacrifice acceptable
is a perfect lifesomething beyond man's power
to give. It is as this understanding comes to the
fore that God's sacrifice of His only Son begins to
assume its true magnitude, and the true riches of
His gift is laid bare. God's love is best known by
what He does for us, carrying in His own person
the sin of the world.

And at the Lord's Table Jesus is present to
touch you with this material sign that you may
know of pardon and reconciliation and peace, and
understand that God forgives rebellion and be-
trayal and accepts trust with a friendship that
astounds and confounds. Here is adequate sacri-
fice, and here is healing for the wounded mind
and spirit that desperately cries for love, sym-
pathy, and tender assurances. "If only I knew,"
sighs one. But here in Communion we know
God's favor, for here is pledged His good-will
toward you. It is for you and requires a believing
heart. Take it, accept it, believe it and sing:

O Jesus, blessed Lord, to Thee
My heartfelt thanks for ever be,
Who hast so lovingly bestowed
On me Thy body and Thy blood.

LENTEN MEMORIES 143

Truly it is a wonderful relationship "once afar
off, strangers, aliens, and now made nigh in the
blood of the Lamb" a relationship of pure grace.
But it does mean that this same relationship must
exist as a basis for all of life. Having accepted
His life, we must remember to live out in word
and deed the forgiveness received. The love of
Christ must constrain us to love and to forgive,
and that often becomes exceedingly difficult. The
only thing that makes it possible is the Christ
living within. Ever to forget it is to fail sadly
in our pledged word to Him.

"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those
who trespass against us/' is not a limitation that
has been put there to restrict us. It is a simple
revelation of fact as to how life is organized. There
can be no forgiveness for him who refuses to for-
give, and no love for him who refuses to love.
There are many times when we find ourselves
stubbornly refusing, and justifying our reluctance
by a recital of the unworthiness of the person in
question, adding up, too, the number of trespasses.
But we are not to measure the forgiveness we
give, in view of the fact that it has not been meas-
ured unto us. Our human relationships fall apart
without forgiveness. There is nothing that can
hold us together except th<? limitless willingness
to forgive in the spirit of Christ's mission and
message.

There should be no place where cooperation

144 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

and brotherly good-will are more in evidence than
in the Christian Church. The Church is a society
or a community by and of itself. It is the body
of Christ, a body of which He is the head and we
the several members. This society ought by its
communal living to constitute a rebuke to a world
that seeks every other way of life except that of
love and forgiveness. To be sure, many of the
world's laws and codes are formulated under the
influence of Christian love and mercy, but it can
not be understood in any sense to be Christian.
No, it is humanitarian. It has as its interest the
best welfare of people, but Christianity has as its
first and chief interest the glory and honor of
God. We who kneel at the altar to receive forgive-
ness must arise to live in a community that gives
forgiveness without motivation other than that of
Christ's love. In this sense it should be a perfect
society here on earth, not perfect always in words
and deeds, but perfect in the sense that it is gov-
erned by a Cross. More and more the Church must
assume responsibility for a community or family
life that is filled with the warmth of a relation-
ship that is forgiving, loving, sympathetic, and
cheering.

"I should like to join your church/' said one
individual, "but I simply can not as long as Mr.
Blank is a member. Confidentially, he cheated me
out of a considerable sum of money, and I can
not sit in church and see him there without

LENTEN MEMORIES 145

having old hates surge through my mind. It is
better, of course, that I stay away don't you
think so?"

"The trouble with you/' answered the pastor,
"is that you don't comprehend the significance of
the Christian Church. In the Church we forgive
once and for all for the sake of Christ, and be-
cause He Himself forgives in this fulness. But
you find it hard to forgive, don't you?"

"Hard," said the man, "it is practically impos-
sible after what he did to me."

Said the pastor, "You ought to be in a good
position to understand the cost of forgiveness-
it cost God a Cross, you know."

And that is the point. In just these ordinary
human relationships we can find the cost of for-
giveness and therefore look with new wonder at
the Cross, and with new understanding, build our
congregational life with this as its basis. That is
why congregational organizations are effective in
the Kingdom's work. People have an opportunity
to "rub shoulders," to cook together, to work on
the same committees, and to cooperate on various
projects all this, mind you, with people that are
often not easily loved and with qilirks that make
them difficult, yet always held steady on the foun-
dation of Christ's Kingdom of forgiveness and
love.

The congregation is in some respects a "test-
ing ground" for the family as Christ planned it,

146 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

Others build their organizations on the basis of
mutual likes and dislikes with a careful eye to-
ward economic and social levels, but the Church
of Christ defies all such limitations. It accepts rich
and poor, lettered and unlettered, black and white,
and asks them to work together under Him in
whose eyes there is "neither Jew nor Greek/' Let
us not forget at the Table of the Lord that we are
one in needs, hopes, and faith.

The Church is not only a rebuke but a promise
to a bewildered world that in the Cross is found
the solution to all those relationships between
man and man as well as between man and God.
We are not to eat His body and drink His blood
unless we, committed to Him by love, accept His
life as our own.

There is a dramatic moment in Uncle Tom's
Cabin that you probably all remember. Tom had
been threatened with a flogging by Legree, who
says, "I'll conquer ye or I'll kill ye! I'll count every
drop of blood in your body till ye give up."

"Marse," says Tom, "if you was sick, or in trou-
ble, or dyin,' and it would save ye, I'd give ye
my heart's blood, and if takin' every drop of blood
in this poor old body of mine would save your
precious soul, I'd give 'em freely as the Lord gave
His for me. Do the worst ye can/'

Then follows a moment of hesitation when love
almost swayed cruel Legree, but only for a mo-
ment, and then followed the flogging that was to

LENTEN MEMORIES 147

mean the death of Uncle Tom. A friend comes
to his side in death and mutters his hatred for
Legree, and Tom says, "Hush, Marse George!
Don't feel so. He ain't done me no real harm-
only opened the gates of heaven for me that's all/'

"Only opened the gates of heaven! " Think of
that! How many there are, as a matter of fact,
who, like Tom, have discovered that in giving
full and free forgiveness to fellow-men, no matter
how vicious and brutal, have released for them-
selves a vibrant sense of heaven's nearness and
Christ's approval. And at the same time, how
many there are who, in stubborn unwillingness to
forgive, have found Christ slipping from them,
leaving them the worst of all fates forsaken of
God.

A community of Christ-loving, Christ-confess-
ing, Christ-living men and women a company of
forgiven and forgiving, loved and loving this is
the Church. That Church gathers today to give
thanks for One who, "in the night in which He
was betrayed," thought more of us than of Him-
self, and who instituted, in that grave hour, the
Lord's Supper and who now invites all mankind
to share in His life, accept its benefits, and shoul-
der its responsibilities to the finding of life and
to the glory and honor of the Lamb enthroned to
reign forever and ever.

How different it all could be if we remembered
Him, and if we carefully and deliberately chose

148 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

as memories the things He has asked us to re-
member.

Remember Thee, and all Thy pains,
And all Thy love to me;
Yes, while a breath, a pulse remains,
Will I remember Thee.

Chapter Eleven

The Lenten Cross
in Our Today

They crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and
put him to an open shame. Hebrews 6:6b

ON April 27, 1944, more than five hundred
witnesses professed to have seen a vision of
Christ on the Cross in the skies over Ipswich,
England, during an air-raid alert. We call your
attention to this phenomenon, not to argue the
plausibility of it, but to suggest that such a spec-
tacle is in accord with a vague intuition which
dictates that Christ is forever being put to death,
that the Calvary Cross is a contemporary thing in
every generation, and that Jesus of Nazareth is
still bleeding and dying, still gathering unto Him-
self and absorbing the sin of the world. There
is present with us the uneasy feeling that "The
Stranger of Galilee" is even now being nailed
to a rude Cross, still the object of vehement

150 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

mockery, agitated hatred, and foul spittle. Fac-
tually it is impossible, since He died once, but
the vision in the skies over Ipswich will not re-
spond to a fretful command to be gone. It comes
back again and again to stir the conscience and
preach hope and forgiveness.

Crucified One, so plainly visible in our world
today, too, speak to me this Good Friday and tell
me why You still haunt the conscience of hu-
manity. Why must there be a great gathering of
men and women in churches today to recall the
horrors of a "black day" in history when men and
women met on that little hill outside Jerusalem
to slay You?

Plead as we will for plain explanations and
definitions, the answer seems always to be, "Look
yet again, and again," and we know that somehow
its mystery will never be resolved from this side
of the grave. It is as broad and deep and high as
all life and will not submit to man's puny attempts
at analysis and control. Yet we must exert our
every faculty to reach some conclusions. We must
know something of the meaning of this Amazing,
never-dying yet always-dying, ever-present cruci-
fied Jesus. For though it be so complex and dif-
ficult as to defy a full explanation, yet there must
be a simplicity about it all, too, or how could
ordinary folks like you and me ever hope to secure
an answer?

Some plain facts we all know about that man

THE LENTEN CROSS IN OUR TODAY 151

on "the old rugged cross/' We know that He came
forth from God and that He is God's well-beloved
Son born of the Virgin Mary, and that in Him
dwelt true righteousness and holiness. Soderblom
calls attention in his writings to a medieval chas-
uble in Uppsala Cathedral, and says that this
most beautiful of all chasubles of this period has
embroidery which places the Christmas idyll di-
rectly in the middle of the Cross. The unknown
artist thus declares the vital connection that exists
between the Bethlehem manger and "the hill far
away/' "Ye have seen me, therefore ye have seen
also the Father/' Jesus says constantly, and we in
the Christian Church bow low in adoration and
say, "Even so! Amen!" And it ought to gather us
together today in a common up-reach of spirit in
wonder and awe. It is not beyond us, not out of
reach. This knowledge is yours and mine by faith
in His Word.

It was at a midnight Christmas eve service that
I first sensed this awful mystery. A splendid choir
was singing the Credo. They came to the words
I had'hlltad a thousand times and more, "and was
made man/' but I heard them now with new
understanding as they were sung slowly and
quietly with stirring reverence. Those words be-
long to song and poetry and the deep places of
the spirit. They will not be cramped into cold
scientific analysis. They refuse to yield significance
when said with speedy flourish and thoughtless

152 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

haste. The writer of the following lines has caught

the mood:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descended!,
Our full homage to demand.

If it is not true that the Cross carried the "true
Son of the Father" who "comes from the skies/'
then Good Friday is hardly worth remembering.
But this is exactly who He is, this Crucified One
with a crown of thorns. The Church will never
tire of proclaiming Him as "the Word" who "was
made flesh and dwelt among us." That is reason
enough to meet here today around His Cross. For
here we see God and know His unspeakable love.

The life of Christ is well known to you, and
there is no reason why we should review it today.
Yet, it seems fitting that we should let our minds
hastily survey that perfect life of holiness and love,
remember His quick compassion for everyone in
need, remember His perfect goodness as He walked
the crowded streets and narrow country lanes or
preached to the multitudes by the side of the sea,
remember the love that eagerly stretched out heal-
ing, forgiving hands to all who besought Him in
faith. Hunger and thirst and friendlessness was
there any need too small for His sympathetic at-
tention? Sinners without hope, men despised and

THE LENTEN CROSS IN OUR TODAY 153

hated was there any limit to the kind of people
He joyously defended and received in forgive-
ness?

This Christ will never cease to evoke our ex-
clamations of "Well done!'* for we know that
here is the very stuff that life ought to have for
us also, and our hearts cry out for a God like this
who knows the difficulties of life a God that
does not hesitate to share our fate and shoulder
our burdens.

The Cross declares that God has entered into
our struggles and walked even the lonely, fear-
ful, agonizing path of death. We have a God that
cheers us with hearty participation in our battle,
and keeps assuring us that life is not futile; that
victory is a victory of faith with eternal life and
peace and joy as prizes worthy of striving after
with heart and soul and mind; that He Himself
is in it, with us and for us.

Another thing we know about the Cross is
that the One hanging in pain there was the vic-
tim of the perfidious sinfulness of humanity. Jesus
the judged has turned the Cross into a judgment.
Crafty Caiaphas, gay Herod, and proud Pilate
have lost though they won. We have learned to
study them from the viewpoint of the Crucified,
and in the light of later happenings their sins
are nothing short of monstrous. And yet I am
sure that if we could have been present to re-
monstrate with them, they would have denied

154 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

that they were motivated by ambition, fear, and
selfishness. No one will admit that decisive things
like these are empowered by such ugly things in
life. I am sure that they themselves utterly failed
to comprehend the injustice and the wrong con-
nected with the decision to put Jesus to death.
No, to them the whole thing was on a supposedly
higher level. It was important, they reasoned, for
the future welfare of religion, and vital for na-
tional security, and essential for peace and har-
mony. It was from this level that they made it ap-
pear reasonable, even to themselves, that it was
right that He should die. The whole action was
an action determined by convictions that the only
sensible thing that could be done was to crucify
Him. One simply can not account for the Cross
unless one sees sincere men desiring His death for
what they thought good and sufficient reasons.

We are, indeed, "fearfully and wonderfully
made" especially "fearfully," when we remem-
ber that it is possible to bring Scripture, ex-
perience, and reason to our support to such an
extent and degree as to make us wonderfully sin-
cere in wrong actions. It is possible for a person
to do good, suppose he does it for the sake of
doing good, and discover upon careful examina-
tion that it was all done for the purpose of gain-
ing approval of others in the hope of glorifying
self. It is possible for a person to do evil, not
for the purpose of doing evil, but because it

THE LENTEN CROSS IN OUR TODAY 155

appears to be right. How else can one account
for the difference in viewpoint during the Civil
War? Read some of the sermons of that period,
and see the sharp division of opinion even in the
Church. The men that supported slavery were
not wicked and evil people. They were sincere
in believing that they were doing right. And the
frightening thing about all this is that we may
be both earnest and sincere and still be foolishly
the victims of deceit and lies.

Deceived men crucified the Lord. They were
not the kind of people we would ordinarily call
"wicked" people. No, they were ordinary people
with ordinary sinfulness. They were intensely in-
terested in protecting personal security and in-
stitutions vital to their life. They argued it out
with themselves and the people around them
on the basis of community welfare and national
safety.

Somehow that sounds very familiar to us all,
for at one time or another we have been guilty
of the same practice. Tell me, honestly, have you
not, too, argued against some venture, some cause,
or some plan because it meant interference with
your personal plans and personal budget, and
then pitched your reasoning on the level of group
or community welfare? "This/' you said, "is not
good for the Church or the community, can never
be paid for, can not be justified in the light of
conditions, will work a hardship on many of our

156 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

people, etc." Though at first you knew this thing
had to be fought because it might cost you some-
thing, in the end you were perfectly sincere in
thinking that the real reason was bigger than
you or your selfishness.

You see, it is our very nature that is involved
in sinfulness, not deeds on the surface of life,
but deeds that flow out of depths of wrong think-
ing, wrong reasoning, and wrong conclusions.
Satan is called a deceiver because he has managed
to twist the source of our being into a "wrong-
ness" that is defended by self as right. The lie
in life is not on life's surface but intimately as-
sociated with the very thing we call the "I" or
the "self."

None of us can disassociate himself from this
common fate of mankind. We are all caught in
this vast and sturdy net. The devil is a liar, not
because he comes often with tinsel and sham
that is easily brushed aside by the vigilant, but
because he comes with a distorted reason and
will that leave us helpless to know whether we
are right or not.

Probably one reason for such blindness on our
part is that we are by nature led to ask the wrong
questions when confronted by truth, justice,
mercy, goodness, and honesty. We are always
prompted to ask questions like these: Does truth
pay here? Does goodness pay here? Does honesty
pay here? And if it does not "pay," we are easily

THE LENTEN CROSS IN OUR TODAY 157

persuaded that a compromise is not only in order
but essential.

Truth, of course, does not always "pay" in the
sense that there are immediate rewards in tan-
gible things. Rewards like these often go to the
boldly dishonest people. Pilate was sure that it
would not pay to be on the side of Christ. It
might, yes, it looked very probable that it would
cost him his position. No matter where you look
in the Passion story you find people weighing
the cost of discipleship and answering that it
does not pay.

No, justice does not always receive as its re-
ward a return of justicenot in this life. Mercy
is not always rewarded by mercynot in this
life. Love is not always an investment that returns
dividends of love not in this life.

Jesus understood all this, and still insisted that
justice was worthy of itself, and that it was a
great and noble thing in and of itself. He called
upon mankind to forgive beyond any law or re-
striction or contemplated reward, to love when
loving seemed intolerable, and to do justly when
justice appeared to be a hardship rather than a
blessing. All these virtues, He said, can stand on
their own feet. They need no incentive from
dividends. "I do always the will of my Father/'
was His sufficient reason for any course of action,
and He did not change His mind when con-
fronted with Calvary.

158 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

And if it is not asking wrong questions that
keeps blindness with us, it is the tendency to
"whittle down" goodness and love and justice
and mercy to our own size. Bunyan tells about a
day in his life when he was resting in bed and
a voice came into his consciousness saying, "What
can you do with Jesus?" Another voice, he says*
insistently answered, "Sell Himsell Him!" Bun-
yan cried out desperately, "No! No! that I will
never do!" But the voice persisted, "Yes, yes,
sell Him! Turn Him into money. Sell Him!" At
last, so he says, he could not stand that inner con-
flict any longer, but hurled himself from the bed
and fled.

Well, right here is bared the conflict that we
are all tortured by. Here are alternatives that
must be accepted for debate and decision. Deep
in our spirits, too, some jumbled voices arguing
that selflessness, mercy, honesty, and truth are
costly things that lead to death and destruction.
They fail to gain appreciation and applause.
They are often received with cruelty, derision,
and crucifixion. Again and again comes the voice
insisting that there is an escape from all this for
one who will compromise, and that no one need
hardly know that a compromise has been effected.
"Turn Him into money!" does seem like a shame-
ful and cowardly thing to do, but the temptation
will not leave us.

"Enough is enough," we say, and argue it out

THE LENTEN CROSS IN OUR TODAY 159

with self on the basis of all our good works. We
are wise enough to understand, at least part of
the time, that life will go to pieces without a
certain minimum of the virtues of Christ, and
we do homage to them as long as they do not cut
across our lives too drastically. But Christ looks
intently at us and whispers words that sound
like "blindness" words that remind us of the
stern accusation He voiced once, saying, "Ye are
of your father, the devil/'

The Cross can not tolerate that kind of thing.
It actually shouts at our folly in daring to par-
ticipate even half-heartedly in sins that crucified
Him. He Himself is perfect goodness, perfect
love, perfect truth. To do violence with any de-
tail of it is to take part in that atrocious act of
Good Friday, to become partners in a perfidious
scheme to destroy life with curses and hisses.

Jesus bears the sin of the world. In doing so
He uncovers the nature of sin and reveals the
pain sin costs God. Here is demonstrated for us
the bent of all evil to destroy. Here we see sin
poised with dagger ready to slay. God looks with
pity on the lost and accepts the agony. Who is
there that can fail to see that this is what sin is
ever determined to do? To destroy the Prince
of Life! It is against His Person we do wrong,
and into His hands and feet and side that we,
in sin and by sin, thrust instruments of torture
and pain. No one can sin against goodness, jus-

l6o THE SPIRIT OF LENT

tice, and truth any longer and feel that it is a slight
thing. It is not a difficult deduction that leads us
to the knowledge that there is no evil thing
which is not part and parcel of His crucifixion.

To every generation comes the realization,
though it may not come with such vividness as
that April day in England, that Jesus is still being
put to death. Every generation has a share in
the bloody Good Friday's business. Every person
has a hand in the cruel work of destroying the
Lord and Giver of Life.

It is the God-Christ, His perfect sinlessness and
perfect accord with the Father, that discloses the
inherent wrong in mankind. He it is that reveals
to mankind that the Kingdom is within, in the
hearts of people. Our helplessness is so utterly
complete because we can not even know the
depth of our evil. When we think we are right,
we are often wrong. Helplessness is complete.

The Cross must mean this much to us: It must
mean that sin is aimed at the heart of God in
Christ. It must mean that sin is a deep lie in our
very heart that deceives us. It must mean that
goodness can never be "whittled down" without
in some way doing injury to His life. It must
mean that we are guilty of the sin of all human-
ity and stand without excuse.

Yet one plain truth: the Cross tells of pardon
and reconciliation. What would we do without
it in our complete despair? What could we do

THE LENTEN CROSS IN OUR TODAY 1 6l

without God bringing us out of blindness and
making us children of the light? "Forgive them/'
the Lamb of God said so gently from the Cross,
and excused them with, "they know not what they
do/' It was not a feeble excuse as much as a plain
statement of the lost condition of humanity, a
people that were confused about life's meaning
and life's values, who did not understand that
their whole bent of life was misdirected and their
whole life misspent. "Forgive them/' He said.
And that divine love must warm our hearts to-
day, and must make us kneel in helplessness be-
fore Him who carries in His body our sins, too.

Sin is terrible. It puts to death goodness and
life, even Christ our Lord. Sin is terrible. It
makes even wrong things look expedient and
sensible. Only the Cross can reveal the true mean-
ing of our deception, and He did not shrink from
that costly revelation. Only the Cross brings us
to a knowledge of a God that makes satisfaction
for our sin and frees us from the curse and pun-
ishment of sin and invites us lovingly to a new
life of sonship. On what grounds shall we refuse
it? Because we are too full of sin? That we are
beyond redemption? That will never do as a rea-
son for refusing Him. Remember the woman
taken in adultery, remember the thief on the
Cross next to that of Christ! He will receive you,
forgive you, heal you, and sup with you.

On what grounds shall we then refuse Him?

1 62 THE SPIRIT OF LENT

Because we do not want Him? Because we prefer
to live life as a lie, frantically protecting ourselves
and saving ourselves? Must we go on forever de-
nying that we are wrong? Must we in our blind
folly continue to crucify life, and pursue and
woo death? Again that voice from the Cross, say-
ing, "Forgive/' Broken-heartedly we must fall be-
fore Him and confess our need of help and par-
don and peace and cleansing.

Come, let us join that band that speaks ex-
citedly of the wonder of redeeming love and life
in His name.