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Page 40
Are there any human beings, for example, who have been more effective
and influential than her saints--men and women, that is to say, who have
_died daily_, in order to live indeed? They have not, it is true,
prospered, let us say, as business men, directors of companies, or
government officials, but such a success is simply not her ideal for
them, not their own ideal for themselves. That is precisely the kind of
life to which they have, as a rule, determinedly and perseveringly died.
Yet their effectiveness in this world has been none the less. Are any
kings remembered as is the beggar Labr� who gnawed cabbage stalks in the
gutters of Rome? Are the names of any statesmen of, let us say, even a
hundred years ago, reverenced and repeated as is the name of the woman
of Spain called Teresa of Jesus who, four hundred years ago, ruled a few
nuns within the enclosure of a convent? Are any musicians or artists
loved to-day with such rapture as is God's little troubadour, called
Francis, who made music for himself and the angels by rubbing one stick
across another?
Or, again, is any empire that the world has ever seen so great, so
loyally united in itself, so universal and yet so rigorous as is that
spiritual empire whose capital is Rome? Is there any nation with so
fierce a patriotism as she who is Supernational? Earthly kings speak
from their thrones and what happens? And an old man in Rome who wears
three crowns on his head speaks from his prison in the Vatican and all
the earth rings with it.
Has her policy, then, been so suicidal after all? From the world's point
of view it has never been anything else. Her history is but one long
example of the sacrifice of human activities and earthly opportunities;
she has expelled from her pulpits the most brilliant of her children,
she has silenced or alienated the most eloquent of her defenders. She
has cut off from herself all that she should have kept, and hugged to
her arms all that she should have relinquished! She has never done
anything but die! She never does anything but live!
III. Turn, then, to the life of her Lord for the solution of this
riddle. Last week[1] He was going to His Death. He was losing, little by
little, all that bound Him to Life. The multitudes that had followed Him
hitherto were leaving Him by units and groups, they who might have
formed His armies to seat Him on the throne of His father David.
Disloyalty had made its way even among His chosen body-guard, and
already Judas is bargaining for the price of His Master's blood. Even
the most loyal of all are dismayed, and presently will _forsake Him and
flee_ when the swords flash out in the garden of Gethsemane. A few weeks
ago in Galilee thousands were leaving Him for the last time; and when,
once again, a company seemed to rally, He wept! And so at last the
sacrifice was complete and, one by one, He laid down of His own will
every tie that kept Him in life. And then on Good Friday itself He
suffered that beauty of His _Face to be marred_ so that no man would
ever _desire Him_ any more, silenced the melody of the Voice that had
broken so many hearts and made them whole again; He stretched out His
Shepherd's Hands with which alone He could gather His sheep to His
Breast, and the Feet that alone could bear Him into the wilderness to
_seek after that which was lost_. Was there ever a Suicide such as this,
such a despair of high hopes, such a ruin of all ambition, a dying so
complete and irremediable as the Dying of Jesus Christ?
[Footnote 1: This Sermon was preached on Easter Day.]
And now on Easter Day look at Him again and see how He lives as never
before. See how the Life that has been His for thirty years--the Life of
God made Man--itself pales almost to a phantom before the glory of that
same Life transfigured by Death. Three days ago He fainted beneath the
scourge and nails; now He shows the very scars of His Passion to be the
emblems of immortal strength. Three days ago He spoke in human words to
those only that were near Him, and limited Himself under human terms of
space and time; He speaks now in every heart. Three days ago He gave His
Body to the few who knelt at His Table; to-day in ten thousand
tabernacles that same Body may be worshipped by all who come.
In a word, He has exchanged a Natural Life for a Supernatural in every
plane at once. He has laid down the Natural Life of His Body to take it
back again supernaturalized for ever. He has died that His Life may be
released; He has _finished_ in order to begin.
It is easy, then, to see why it is that the Church _dies daily_, why it
is that she is content to be stripped of all that makes her life
effective, why she too permits her hands to be bound and her feet
fettered and her beauty marred and her voice silenced so far as men can
do those things. She is human? Yes; she dwells in a _body that is
prepared_ for her, but prepared chiefly that she may suffer in it. Her
far-reaching hands are not hers merely that she may bind up with them
the broken-hearted, nor her swift feet hers merely that she may run on
them to succour the perishing, nor her head and heart hers merely that
she may ponder and love. But all this sensitive human organism is hers
that at last she may agonize in it, bleed from it from a thousand
wounds, be lifted up in it to draw all men to her cross.
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