THE GLORY OF THE WORLD
‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross.’
What an extraordinary statement this was—made by a Jew; one, too, accomplished in Greek thought and a member of what we call the comfortable classes. St. Paul, in short, was himself unspeakable evidence to the truth of Christianity. The Cross the glory of the world!
I. As a thinker St. Paul found the Cross an intellectual glory.—It explained three of the greatest mysteries of human life.
(a) It explained sudden death.
(b) It explains, too, the suffering of good men and women.
(c) It explains, too, the inequalities of people’s lives. Why does God allow this inequality of opportunity, of comfort, of possibility of a good life? There is no answer but the Cross, and that in our limited knowledge only partly explains it. I believe that if Christ were to choose where He would be born to-day it would be among the poor still. He loves poor people, and gives us a glorious chance to help them in His Name. But it calls forth the spirit of generosity and self-sacrifice.
II. The Cross is the glory of the world, because it is the greatest moral stimulus the world has ever seen.—You can trace the course of Christianity across Europe by the hospitals. It explains why men go out as missionaries; why men have done work for Christ for twenty or forty years quite unnoticed and unknown. Nothing but the Cross enables them to do it. There is the girl who patiently tends an invalid at home; there is the poor sufferer who has no chance of getting better. See the men who are daily fighting and crushing down their passions. The Cross explains all these.
III. But what are you doing morally with the Cross?—Is it your glory or your shame? Are you prepared to take your lives and look at them in the presence of the Cross? The Holy Spirit can take the Cross and smite with the Cross the hardest heart. Get by yourself, with the Cross before you, and pray that you may be shown yourself just as you are. Then it will be the beginning of a new life for the most hardened and the most careless.
Bishop A. F. Winnington-Ingram.