Hebrews 6:4-6 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift… Various as have been God's dealings with the world, there is, after all, a terrible impartiality in His dispensations to His rational creatures. Wherever men possess reason and conscience, they possess, in some measure, the means of pleasing or displeasing Him; whenever they can, in the lowest degree, conceive His law, they are bound to obey it. The whole world is under a moral government, though we alone are in a written covenant; all live to God, though we alone have professed "the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus." The very temptations, ms that dazzle the unevangelised world are, in innumerable instances, the same temptations that are trying us — anger, sensuality, ambition, avarice. We are their brethren in all things except in the revelation of the Divine mercy and the gift of the Divine Spirit. While the human nature of the Church is uniform, its trials must be nearly so. As the Lord ,,f the Church is the same "yesterday and to-day and for ever," so the probation He enforces is distributed pretty evenly through all ages and classes. But of all the equalisations of evil in successive ages, of all the repetitions of trial from generation to generation, of all the instances evincing that, in the Church as in the world, "the thing that has been will be" — unquestionably that expressed in the text is the most startling and fearful. The Crucifixion of Christ, in its literal reality, stands alone in the history of man. It was the last and darkest depth of human criminality. The original fall, and the rejection of the Redeemer, are the two saddest pages in the story of our race. But mournful as is the former, it has never, probably, left the impression upon the heart which is at once produced by all those dread accompaniments that prepared and embittered the last sufferings of the meek and merciful Friend of man. Injustice, cruelty, false shame, unworthy indolence, covetousness, ambition, hypocrisy, envy, all were in different ways exhibited in this tremendous tragedy; all contributed in different ways to fix the catastrophe. No, never, surely, is man, in all the possibilities of futurity, destined again to consummate a wickedness like this. It must be for ever solitary in the world, an event placed beyond anticipation, repetition, or parallel; a lonely and terrible monument of unapproachable guilt. Not thus, however, speaks the voice of inspiration. Heaven has not spared us this trial. When Christ was about to die, He instituted a memorial sacrament of His passion, to show forth His death until He come. It would seem that there is, as it were, a fearful and Satanic sacrament too, of that same dread hour, by which it is still in man's power to reiterate and prolong His death until He come to judge the long succession of His crucifiers. St. Paul delivers to us the tremendous truth, that there is in man a continued capacity of "crucifying afresh the Son of God"; a power to act over again all the scene of His torture, to league with the malignant priests and the scoffing soldiers, to buffet the unresisting cheek, to bind the crown of thorns. Reflect on the frame and temper of mind, on the weakness and the wickedness, that made the chosen people of God the murderers of His Son, and try if you cannot catch some faint image of that treachery in your own hearts. But be true to yourselves if you would indeed detect the lurking evil, and think not that even among the best of us, in a world of oft-recurring temptation, it is useless to prosecute the scrutiny. Doubtless the accuracy of the image will vary in degree: here, through the progressive sanctification, all but obliterated; here, through remaining worldliness, vivid and undeniable; here, through total rejection of Christ, all but complete. To estimate the resemblance we must turn to the original. When Christ was, in that day of mingled horror and glory, sacrificed on Calvary, few things were more remarkable in the accessories of the event than the feelings and motives of the people. Christ was unquestionably a favourite with the mass of the people; the great obstacle to the schemes of the priests was always that "they feared the people." His gracious bearing and the mysterious anticipation that surrounded and dignified His singular 'life, had evidently caught and conciliated the popular mind. Nor was it unqualified malignity that made them His persecutors, Christ Himself had found a palliation for this crime in their ignorance, He besought forgiveness for them because "they knew not what they did." Yet, however it came to pass, this people, thus disposed, are found the unanimous destroyers of their Prophet, the tumultuous petitioners for His crucifixion, the fierce invokers of His blood on them and on their children? Strange as this appears, is there indeed nothing that resembles it in our own experience? Is no parallel to be found for it in the Christian world around us! Can we not, when we go abroad into the highways of daily life, find something in the general mind that reminds us of a people honouring Christ as long as He offers easy blessings, flocking round His standard with enthusiasm so long as He is made the standard-bearer of a party, professing boundless admiration, devotion, and love; yet when the true hour of trial comes, and the question can no longer be escaped, — Shall we surrender our pleasures or our Redeemer? — give up the favour of earthly superiors or the favour of the King of heaven? — abandon our cherished sins, or with our sins nail Jesus to the cross once more? — then, relinquishing their short-lived discipleship, following the instigation of blind and guilty guides, turning with the turning tide, and swelling the torrent of the persecutors of the body of Christ. Turn again to the record. Among the unhappy instruments of Satan, on that dread occasion, was one whose name, almost unknown in all else, his relation to this event has miserably immortalised — the wretched, wavering, timorous Pilate. Willing to save, but afraid to resist, anxious to do right as long as virtue cost no trouble,-has this crucifier of Christ no image among us? Are there no Pilates among our grave and reputable men of business? — none who cold be models of consummate piety if there were no danger of its disturbing their tenure of wealth and influence? — who would gladly save the Son of God from degradation if they were not a tittle apprehensive of degrading themselves in the task, — and would allow Him supreme authority as long as the r own was warranted secure? Not far removed from this is the case of those rulers who struggled against their very faith lest it should hazard their popularity (John 12:43). Alas! these poor dependents on human fame stand not alone in the world; this weapon of the evil one has not been suffered to rust in disuse! It is not with open disavowal that the votary of fashionable worldliness disclaims the Lord of glory. A peril such as this might be met and warded off. But society does its work surely because slowly. Religion is not proved to be absurd, but assumed to be so; the world would not harshly ask us to disbelieve in Christ, but merely to forget Him. Principles are lost for ever before we have dreamed they were in danger, and the poor victim of the world's opinion has learned to "crucify afresh the Son of God," without relinquishing one outward characteristic of discipleship I But these, wretched and criminal as they are, are but the less daring forms of crime. Deeper guilt than this bore the suffering Lamb of God to His cross, and deeper guilt than this is not confined to His first crucifiers. Can we witness nothing that recalls the rebellious ambition of those who said, "This is the heir; come, let us kill Him, and the inheritance shall be ours"? The world at large — yea, the far immense of worlds — is the inalienable property of God; the inheritance is entailed upon that only-begotten Son, "whom," it is written, "He appointed Heir of all things." And when, refusing to hold as His lessees, spurning His rights of lordship, we would explode His claims for antiquated and fanciful, that we may enjoy His gift as though the fee were ours; in all this is there none of that spirit which once raged in those who, in angry impatience of His claims, "took counsel against Him for to put Him to death"? And when a paltry hope of gain or advancement can bribe us to forsake a gracious Master, to forget all He has done, and all He has borne; does he remain the. alone in the world who "said unto the chief priests, What will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you"? Nay, at such an hour we are worse than Judas; for even Judas, the miserable suicide of remorse, we may believe, had another option been his, would not have " crucified the Son of God afresh! "Can we descend yet deeper? Christ was crucified on the imputation of blasphemy. What was the "blasphemy"? He had called Himself the Son of God, and the Son of man, and in right of this transcendent union, the Judge to come " in the clouds of heaven," and "sitting at the right hand of power." If this was false, His crucifiers were justified; if this was false, in a theocratic government, He deserved His fate. There are those who pronounce that mysterious title false in any sense that could have ever made it "blasphemy" from human lips, who deny the Sonship of the Eternal any significance beyond what more or less belongs to all the virtuous revealers and interpreters of the will of heaven that have ever instructed man. Surely we cannot in justice refuse to such impugners the place they have chosen for themselves in the throng that circled the cross of Jesus! Still we have not sunk to the last level of the Jewish persecutors. Fallen as we are, we could not have borne to prefer Barabbas, the thief and murderer, to our pure and guiltless Redeemer. And who, then, are the darling idols of human applause? Who are the chosen of our race that poetry crowns with its halo of glory, and every young imagination bows to worship? Who, but the laurelled Barabbases of history, the chartered robbers and homicides that stain its pages with blood, and that, after eighteen hundred years of Christian discipline, the world has not yet risen to discountenancing? Remove the conventional discredit that attaches to the weaker thief, exalt him to the majesty of the military despot, and how many would vote for Barabbas, how many linger with the lowly Jesus? "Be it so, but our votes would at least be open and undisguised, we would not stoop to the meanness of hypocrisy. We would not, with those you are pleased to make our prototypes, 'put on Him the scarlet robe and the crown, and the sceptre,' that we might 'bow the knee and mock Him.' Of this, at least, we are incapable." Perhaps so. I pray God it may he so. And yet, recall but the hour that has just now floated past you into eternity, when you "bowed the knee" to this same Jesus who was crucified, when your lips uttered words of piercing sorrow, and besought His mercy and implored His aid, as erring and straying sheep, as miserable offenders, miserable sinners. Ask yourselves how many knees were bowed in the repentance the lips rehearsed, how many hearts were melted in the agony the tongue so readily expressed. And if conscience whisper an accusation, bethink you how differs this from the guilt of those who called Him King, and despised the royalty they ascribed; or was it more a crime to insult Him when He walked the earth in poverty and pain, than when He sits, as now, the recognised Monarch of the universe! (Prof Archer Butler.) Parallel Verses KJV: For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, |
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