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the wrong spirit, until it is filled out. God takes you very gently by the hand and leads you out into the desert place, until you begin to hunger for home; and God will take you and put you in the darkness until you begin to cry out for the light; God will let you go; yea, urge you to go, into the far country, until you learn to know the husks and remember the bread in the Father's house. You who do not know what is the meaning of that which has come to you, which is so hard to bear, so difficult to support, so impossible to understand, might learn from the text. Contrite means crushed; sometimes God in His mercy crushes us into the right spirit for the destruction of the wrong. Jesus, who spake as never man spake, identified Himself with the promise of our text. I only need refer you to Luke iv. for you to see how easy it is of application to the needs of to-day and to yours in particular. In Luke iv. 18 we read that our Lord entered into the synagogue-for He was so well known -and opened the Holy Book, as we have opened it this morning, and quoted the words of the same prophet:

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The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised [the contrite], to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And He closed the book, and sat down, and said, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your

ears.'"

How beautiful it is to think of it! The Lord of the universe, the high and holy One that inhabiteth

eternity, stood amongst men as the lowly One, who came not to be ministered unto, but to ministerthe truth which seems so impossible for the mind to grasp, but which countless hearts have grasped ere now, that Jesus, who was before all things, came as a suffering Saviour unto His own, yet was rejected by His own. He who dwells in the high and holy place came to dwell with him also that is of a contrite heart and humble spirit; this same Jesus, who is despised and rejected by men, is the Judge to whom account must be given of all our doings in this life of ours. And we are not going away from the spirit of the text if we identify Him with that which it contains; with him also dwells this Jesus, with him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit. Brethren, think of it, the Lord of the universe hanging on a cross, agonised, shamefully intreated, rejected of men; the suffering Messiah giving Himself for the sins of men, dwelling "with him also "-you and I, each one of us, who are of a contrite and humble spirit, and have discovered our need of the forgiveness of God. This is the very essence of the Gospel. We talk not about Christ so much as an ideal as a Saviour, when we have right views about God, and have entered deep into the conception of His nature, to save men. We think of Him as the one who "was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed." A modern poet places in the mouth of an Oriental who is supposed to have

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been listening to the words of Jesus some such sentiment as this:

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If Jesus Christ is a man,

And only a man-I say

That of all mankind, I will cleave to Him,

And to Him will I cleave alway."

"If Jesus Christ is a God

And the only God-I swear

I will follow Him through heaven and hell,
The earth, the sea, and the air."

If Jesus Christ is what He claimed to be, and can do what He claimed to do; if He has power on earth to forgive sins, and to revive the hearts of the contrite ones, it is only because He Himself has been crushed. We approach One who has been bruised for our transgression, wounded for our iniquity; the chastisement of our peace is upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed. Let us take the message of that text to our hearts, and we will follow it as between ourselves and God, and take it as a personal message.

XVII

THE ANTIPHONY OF PENITENCE

The son said: Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy

son.

But the father said: Bring forth the best robe and put it on him.-Luke xv. 21-22.

I

N this chapter we have the substance of our Lord's

teaching on the great mystery of repentance and re

mission of sins. This teaching was given, according to some of the best expositors, to a very composite and heterogeneous body, perhaps that one which was gathered together on a certain historic occasion in the courtyard of the house of Matthew the Publican. The chapter opens, "Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners for to hear Him. And the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them." The significance of those few words reaches far. Our Lord had just completed His synagogue ministry; He had given His message to those who were waiting for the deliverance of Israel; and now He hungered and thirsted to carry the tidings of the Divine Fatherhood and love to that great congregation which was without the synagogue-the despised, the outcast, the publicans and sinners. To that end, say some, He asked Matthew the Publican to prepare a great feast in his

house, and to bring there such persons as he could find and whom hitherto Christ had not known.

The teaching contained in this chapter is presented in picture form. Three parables occupy the whole space-the parables of the lost sheep, the lost piece of silver, and the prodigal son. It is significant that the first two parables teach one side of the truth the other side of which is taught by the third. It is remarkable, too, that our Lord employs two parables to teach the Divine side of the great mystery of repentance, and only one parable to teach the other, but necessary, side of the same mystery-the human side. The first and second parables close with substantially the same words-" joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." But is not this strange language? and is not this Teacher, who spake as never man spake before, a little mistaken in the application of His own figure? For the sheep, according to our notions of repentance, did not repent; it stayed away, and remained lost until the shepherd went to find it, and the only part that the sheep had to do with the rescue was in submitting to be picked up and carried on the shoulders of the good shepherd. And the lost piece of silver did not, and could not, repent; it remained lost until the woman who had missed it re-discovered it and put it back in the place whence it had fallen. No, there are no mistakes, as we shall see. It is not the parable of the prodigal that comes first; it is the parable of the lost sheep, and that of the lost piece of silver; and our Lord means us to imply, surely, that repentance is but the climax, the consummation of a state of mind in which God seeks man before man seeks God. Our

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