1. God having thus reconciled the world unto Himself through the death of His Son, peace is proclaimed in the terms of the Gospel. It is the glad tidings of pardon, the message of peace, the good news of reconciliation. The “peace on earth,” which the angels heralded at the birth of Jesus and which was accomplished by His death, was proclaimed by the Lord Himself on the eve of the first Easter Day. When the disciples were assembled, He said, “Peace be unto you. And when he had said this, he showed unto them his hands and his side” (Joh_20:20). Then followed the great commission, “As my Father sent me, even so send I you” (Joh_20:21). “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation” (Mar_16:15). From that day forward the Church has been entrusted with the Gospel of peace for all nations of men. In the days of the Apostles they came “preaching good tidings of peace by Jesus Christ” (Act_10:36) —peace to them that were “far off,” and to them that were “nigh”: while as to them so to us is “committed the word of reconciliation. We are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ as though God were intreating you by us; we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God.” As men receive that same Gospel and believe that one message, they enter into the state of reconciliation, and the peace which passeth all understanding is theirs.
“If God spares me, I shall accept it as a special mission to preach love and peace to the end of my life.” [Note: T. M. Kettle, The Ways of War.]
2. Peace is the very essence of the Gospel. And the great Apostle of the Gentiles works out this message in the fulness of its power and blessing, as he shows first of all the peace brought to us, sinful men and women, of reconciliation with God through the suffering of the incarnate Son. “Therefore, being justified by faith,” he cries, “let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom_5:1), who “is our Peace,” “having reconciled both Jew and Gentile to God in one body by the cross” (Eph_2:16). This is, as we say, peace objective—the peace of confiding faith in the reconciling Love. And then he shows us again and again the joyful peace of conscious fellowship—the peace subjective; “the peace of God which passeth all understanding” (Php_4:7); that which St. John speaks of when he tells us of “our fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. . . .” (1Jn_1:3) and adds, “These things write we unto you that your joy may be full” (1Jn_1:4). And how should it not be full when, as St. Paul tells us again, “the spirit of bondage and fear” is gone, and the “Spirit of adoption” (Rom_8:15) is given instead, “whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Rom_8:15)? Having peace with God, the peace of God fills our hearts, and is a power that “keeps our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Php_4:7). And it is this glad peace of sonship and trust that the Apostle thinks of as he writes, “The Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means” (2Th_3:16).
(1) Let us ask, then, What has this gospel of reconciliation to say to trouble, to those keen. hours of suffering when the light seems to have gone wholly out of life under some cloud of sorrow? What had it to say to you when the light of your house was darkened and the life that had made your life worth living was snatched away from you? Whether it said anything to you depended upon whether you believed it, whether you had really caught sight of this as the purpose of all things—this plan of God to bring His children back to Himself. If you did see that, then the gospel of reconciliation had surely very much to say to you in your great grief. Death could not seem inexplicable or desperate to one who had caught sight of a design of life which issued from and which must return into the spiritual world, which did not begin and which could not be completed here. And for yourself, if that same plan included you, if for you too there was one supreme wish in your Father’s heart that you should come perfectly to Him, then it was not strange—certainly it was not incredible—that He should have tried to draw you by taking to Himself that which was like your other life, your second self; and you could not have asked Him to spare you the pain if it was by the pain only that He could take hold of you. As well might the child complain of the tight, painful grasp with which his father seized him to drag him out of the river.
“I have nothing to fear,” says one French soldier to his mother. “The worst that can happen to me is to be killed, and to die for a noble cause when one is young is a great blessing.” Writes another to his parents, “One must live the present without thinking of the future. To be nearer danger and death is to be nearer God, and therefore why pity us? Put your trust in God! Everything happens according to His will, and it is ever for the best.” The published letters from the front contain many similar experiences of peace in the midst of peril. The remedy for the doubts, the perplexities, the disbeliefs of a troubled mind is a whole-hearted consecration to a great cause and a great Captain.
This is very different from the faith that by and by this troubled life will end, and we shall enter into our rest in Heaven. It is very different from the belief that “God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world.” It is the faith that God is on the earth making all right with the world. It is the faith that the end which we have helped to achieve will at last be achieved and will be worth all that it costs us and all that it costs Him. It is a faith which gives us rest here in the midst of the trouble. It is the faith of the Psalmist: “I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” “To see it,” says John Henry Jowett, “in the very land which seems to be crowded only with convulsion, and sorrow, and disaster.” It is the faith of the author of the 46th Psalm (Psa_46:1-4)—I quote from the Prayer Book version, which I believe to be the true interpretation of the Psalmist’s faith:
God is our hope and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear though the earth be moved,
And though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea.
Though the waters thereof rage and swell,
And though the mountains shake at the tempest of the same.
The rivers of the flood thereof shall make glad the city of God;
The holy place of the tabernacle of the Most Highest.
Mr. Ruskin has given an eloquent description of the mountain storms which strikingly illustrates this faith in the Psalmist: “But, as we pass beneath the hills which have been shaken by earthquake and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of perfect repose succeeded those of destruction.” . . . “It is just where ‘the mountain falling cometh to naught, and the rock is removed out of his place,’ that, in process of years, the fairest meadows bloom between the fragments, the clearest rivulets murmur from their crevices among the flowers, and the clustered cottages, each sheltered beneath some strength of mossy stone, now to be removed no more, and with their pastured flocks around them, safe from the eagle’s stoop and the wolf’s ravin, have written upon their fronts, in simple words, the mountaineer’s faith in the ancient promise:
Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh;
For thou shalt be in league with the Stones of the Field;
And the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.” [Note: Lyman Abbott, The Twentieth Century Crusade, 83.]
(2) It is not only the suffering in life that needs to be spoken to and helped. There is something else that is almost more exhausting than our suffering in its constant wearing pressure upon the hearts of men. It is that feeling of the insignificance of life that often grows so hard to bear. Many of us know it only too well. Not merely on some moody day, but have we not felt it as the constant temper of long stretches of our life—the wonder whether it meant anything, the utter loss of any insight into what it meant, this work of living? That is what rubs deep into our strength with its dull and heavy friction. It rises up like a self-begotten mist out of ourselves. It is reflected and shed on us from other men around us. It haunts the home of poverty, and, even more bitter and disheartening, it sits down at the rich man’s feast. Who can speak to and dispel this spectre? Who can tell us with authority that life has a meaning, and make us see it and rejoice to live for it? Who but the gospel of reconciliation? If that is true, if all these heavenly forces are at work upon our life, if all this watchful interest hovers over what we are doing, if we may really go on and be the children of God, where is there any insignificant detail? Who can help feeling purpose run like life-blood through the half-dried veins of his discouragement? How life lifts itself up with interest and dignity when it really becomes the culture of God’s redeemed children for their Father’s house!
(3) But there is something else. Deeper than suffering and insignificance lies sin. That is at the root of all. These are but the symptoms; this is the disease. And what has the gospel to say to sin? Fancy Him who was the gospel, meeting, as He walked in old Jerusalem, these woes and hindrances of human life which we have spoken of. He walks along, and first He meets a sufferer, some soul wrung with pain and bereavement. He stops and lays His hand upon the wretched head, and says, “Be comforted: thy brother shall rise again. I am the resurrection, and the life” (Joh_11:25). Then He goes on and meets a poor man (poor or rich) fretted and wearied with the insignificance of life. To him He says, “Arise; be strong. He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also” (Joh_14:12). But then He comes to another who is a sinner bowed down with sin, sorrowing and sighing because he is so wicked. Ah, how the Saviour’s face lightens anew! This is the soul He wants. He came to seek and to save the lost. He was called Jesus, because He should save His people from their sins. And as He says to the poor soul, “Thy sins are forgiven thee,” (Mat_9:5) you are sure that the Saviour is speaking the words that He most loves to speak, and that the gospel of reconciliation is doing its deepest work.
I remember when I was a child a picture that hung in the house of a relative, where some of my holidays were spent, a picture which fascinated me, and remains after fifty years as distinct as if I saw it with my eyes. It was called, I think, “The heart of man,” but it represented a human being first in one phase and then in another. A man showed his heart. It was the principal thing in the picture; but his face and form were also quite distinct. That heart at first was filled with a number of creatures that represented the different vices and faults. Could I remember them? Yes, this I remember: that there was a noble-looking tiger which stood for human cruelty; a peacock with outspread tail that stood for pride; a bristling hog that stood for uncleanness; and a portentous snail that stood for sloth. The other creatures I do not distinctly remember, but there were many of them, so that the heart was filled with the ill-assorted collection. And above all was the man’s face, proud, handsome, and yet bad; and in his hand was some weapon which apparently he was prepared to use on himself or on others. And as I looked upon this heart of a man I supposed that my heart was a similar scene of savage and unclean creatures that crouched or roamed undisturbed in it. I think in the actual picture they were all comfortably settled as if they feared no intrusion and never dreamt of expulsion.
There also remains in my mind the face of the man, possibly in a second picture, with tangled hair and frenzied eyes, as if he had reached the extremity of degradation and despair.
Then came the other picture, which showed the light of heaven penetrating this den of unclean beasts. I hardly remember how the transformation took place, but the heart was illuminated, and the creatures were stirred so that they began to escape from the intolerable light: the tiger had got out, the hog was getting out, the peacock’s tail had fallen and it slunk away. This picture showed the entrance of the Word giving light; and it remains before me still as a marvellous presentation of the soul’s awakening. Then at last, I suppose in another picture, there was the heart emptied of all that foul rout. The luminous eye was at the centre, the single eye, and the whole body was full of light. The face above was transfigured, peace and joy and love had changed the desperate man into the image of an angel. And I remember what a strong desire possessed my childish heart to be rid of those corrupt creatures and to be filled with that divine light. I am sure that the picture stirred the desire which seemed for so many years impossible of fulfilment, and I am ashamed to think how slow and uncertain the process is by which the light of God really penetrates the heart and transforms it. [Note: R. F. Horton, Free Church Year Book, 1916, p. 25.]
A friend of mine who belongs to the most advanced school of theological thought said the other day that he was called to see a sick man who lived in one of the mean streets of a great town. He found him very ill and very poor. The room was bare of all comfort, and lacked even most of the necessaries of human existence. After a little while my friend said, “What can I do for you? Tell me fully and frankly what you want, and I will do my best to help you.” “I only want one thing,” was the startling reply, “the forgiveness of my sins.” The minister’s eyes had roamed the room, and he had already made a mental note of several things which were sorely wanted. But the dying man ignored these trifles. He was beyond the reach of man’s harm or help. He was independent of wealth and comfort, and all the things men strive for. One great deep-sea need had come to the surface and scared all lesser wants away. “I only want one thing, the forgiveness of my sins.” [Note: J. M. Gibbon, The Veil and the Vision, 89.]
There was a Prince of old
At Salem dwelt, Who liv’d with good increase
Of flock and fold.
He sweetly liv’d; yet sweetnesse did not save
His life from foes.
But after death out of His grave
There sprang twelve stalks of wheat;
Which many wond’ring at, got some of those
To plant and set.
It prosper’d strangely, and did soon disperse
Through all the earth ;
For they that taste it do rehearse
That vertue lies therein;
A secret vertue, bringing peace and mirth
By flight of shine.
Take of this grain, which in my garden grows,
And grows for you ;
Make bread of it; and that repose
And peace, which ev’ry where
With so much earnestnesse you do pursue,
Is onely there [Note: Herbert’s Poetical Works (ed. Grosart), 161.]
