THE ATTRACTIVE POWER OF THE CROSS OF CHRIST.

BY REV. GEORGE D. CUMMINS, D. D.,

RECTOR OF ST. PETER'S CHURCH, BALTIMORE.

(Episcopal)

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.-St. John, xii, 32.

When Jesus spake these words, His gaze was fixed upon the Cross. The "lifting up from the earth," to which He referred," was the hour, when, nailed to the accursed tree, He should be "lifted up" on Calvary, in the sight of a mocking and insulting crowd, to endure the bitter and ignominious death of the crucified. Such an interpretation of His words is not a suggestion of the fallible human mind; it is the explanation of the sacred writer himself. "This He said," adds St. John, "signifying what death He should die." And yet, it was a joyful exclamation-a prediction uttered with a heart swelling with love, and full of anticipations of coming triumph. And so, we may believe that, throughout the whole life of Jesus, His eye was fixed upon the closing scene upon Calvary, longing for the great consummation of His redeeming work. Never, it may be, was that vision of suffering and shame hidden from His mind. Hence it was that so often He forewarned His disciples of those fast-approaching scenes. Hence His earnest expression, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" Hence, even in the midst of the transcendent glory of the Transfiguration, and in communion with the glorified spirits of Moses and Elijah, His converse was only of "His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem." And now, as the hour draws nigh, and the shadow of the Cross falls darkly upon Him, it is almost with the language of exultation that He exclaims, "Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out; and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me."

What a testimony to the divine omniscience of Christ is to be gathered from such a prediction! What more unlikely than that the drawing of all hearts to the persecuted Nazarene should follow His being lifted up upon the Cross! What, to human judgment, seemed better fitted to secure the rejection of Christianity, than the death of its Founder by the Roman penalty of crucifixion-a death of ignominy, to which only the basest malefactors were consigned?

Yet, in the face of all this likelihood, Jesus predicts the very opposite results, and makes His Cross of agony and shame the mighty magnet which should attract the world to Him as its Redeemer"the polar power of the spiritual world, to which every heart should tremble and turn."

The attractive power of the Cross, and the powerlessness of all else, to draw the heart to God-this is now our theme.

Perhaps the most difficult problem which infinite wisdom had to solve in the redemption of our world was this: How can the love of a revolted and alienated race of beings be won back to God? It was a problem quite distinct from others, which must be solved ere man could be redeemed. It was one thing to reconcile God to man; it was another to reconcile man to God. It was one thing to remove the mighty barriers which stood in the way of guilty man's return to his offended and outraged Sovereign; it was quite another to move him to rush with outgushings of love back to the outstretched arms of his Creator. It was one thing that the face of the Infinite One should be turned with a smile of forgiving love upon His erring child; it was another to make that prodigal child look up, and, with a full and bursting heart, say, Abba! Father!

And so take the human heart now, dead and cold to God; without one throb of love to God-nay, with an aversion to Him, and no desire for His love or favor; and how shall that alienated heart be won to tenderness, to gratitude, to fervent love? There is but one way; there is but one power mighty enough to effect it. Infinite wisdom tried but one way; it was the way Jesus declared when He said, " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me!" One chord alone in man's cold heart could be touched with the hope of awakening a response, and that chord must be swept by the finger of love-love reaching its sublimest manifestation upon the Cross of Calvary.

Let us, however, not anticipate our subject, but first seek to ele

vate it, by testing the worth and power of other means to effect this great design.

I. And, first, see how powerless our highest natural conceptions of God are to awaken love to Him. The instinctive and universal feeling towards God, where he is unknown as "God in Christ," as "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," is a feeling of dread. Where, in any heathen nation, is there to be found the conception of God as a being to be loved? Where does love mingle with their worship? Is it not all fear, dread, terror? What is the meaning of the almost-universal prevalence of human sacrifices? What mean the offerings to Moloch, the drownings in the sacred Ganges, the immolations under Juggernaut's car? What do all the cruel and bloody rites of heathenism mean but this-that the Deity is to be feared, to be dreaded, to be propitiated, and that there is nothing in His character to awaken love?

And this feeling has its basis in man's moral nature, in the sense of guilt and ill-desert, in the law written by the finger of the great Creator upon every human soul. Tell me alone of the omnipotence. of God in its sublimest aspects, and the intelligence is only fitted to fill me with alarm, as the array of the forces of Him whose power I have cause to fear. Tell me of His unsullied justice alone, and I am prompted to flee from the face of Him whose laws I have broken, and whose just anger I have incurred. Tell me of the dazzling holiness of the Being "in whose sight the heavens are not clean," and rather than be drawn to His presence, would my strongest impulse be to call upon the rocks and mountains to hide me, the unholy and unclean, from His gaze.

II. Nor is nature, or the visible universe, better able to accomplish this great work of drawing the heart of man to God, where the universe is beheld without the light of Revelation.

Such an announcement may sound strange to many who all their lives have been accustomed to "look through nature up to nature's God." There are certain minds, gifted with a love of the beautiful, and elevated by a high degree of culture, who, as they behold the radiant glories of the morning, or the milder beauty of the setting sun, the splendor of night when the firmament is all glowing with living lights, the beauty of spring-time, the golden harvest-fields of summer and the gorgeous hues of autumn, the grandeur of mountain and cataract and ocean, can only see incentives to love towards Him

who traces the lines on every leaf, and colors every flower with beauty. They forget how much of the beauteous light from the face of nature is reflected light from the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. How different its aspect to those who are without a knowledge of salvation through the Redeemer! Has nature ever taught the heathen world to love God? Nay, where the light of the Gospel has never penetrated, all the beauty and grandeur and sublimity of this goodly universe have been powerless to enkindle in the darkened and degraded soul one throb of genuine love to the Cre

ator.

Men forget also that nature has two voices, and that her testimony is far from being harmonious and invariable. If tokens of goodness abound on every side, they are commingled with signs of severity. The surface of the earth, so fair and smiling with the fruits of plenty, might speak of the hand of a loving and bounteous Father; but within and beneath the soil are to be found traces of convulsion, disaster, and ruin, which might indicate the judgments of an angry Deity. The gentle refreshing rain of summer might bear one testimony to God, and the fearful tempest or desolating tornado another. The air of heaven, now bringing health to the invalid's wasted frame, bears witness to the goodness of God; while the same element, ladened with the deadly pestilence, would seem to testify of the harsh severity of a wrathful Deity. Cast the human soul out amidst these conflicting testimonies of nature, with no light from on high to reconcile them, and to blend all discordant voices into one harmonious utterance, and, so far from the heart being drawn to God, it might despair to find whether the God of nature were indeed a God of love.

III. Is the providence of God, then, able to do what nature cannot? Alas! we are met here by a like impotency. Conflicting testimonies abound here, also. Is there, on the one hand, much peace and comfort? There is, on the other, more strife and want. Here is a land over which peace smiles, there a country desolated by the ravages of war. Here are happy homes, with unbroken family circles; there are darkened apartments and silent halls and cheerless firesides. On the one side, I hear blithe voices, making music in their joy; but again, "the air is filled with sighings and wailings for the dead; the heart of Rachel, for her children mourning, will not be comforted." Thousands bask in wealth; tens of thousands struggle from the cra