THE GENTLENESS OF CHRIST
‘Then the Pharisees went out … till He send forth judgment unto victory.’
There are numbers of people who want far less words of reproof than words of sympathy and tenderness.
What shall we learn from such a text as this?
I. Where there is life there is hope.—First, it implies that wherever there is so much as a spark of life left in the conscience, there is always the possibility of an entire conversion to God. I am not speaking of what is easy, nor what is common; I am speaking of what is possible. If you could know the stories and histories of those who have been rescued from our streets and enter the shelter of godly homes, you would know it was because the faint feeble recollections of better days has been reached and recalled, and they have come back with tears of sorrow to the God they had forsaken.
II. The possibility of death-bed repentance.—It throws great light upon a death-bed repentance. Not to encourage us to trifle with our best interests upon the possibility of our being in possession of our faculties then; but rather than deny possibilities of salvation we believe in the possibility of a death-bed repentance.
III. No limits can be set.—It throws some light upon a subject that has been a good deal discussed of late years, and that is, Can a criminal sentenced to die for the crime of murder, and given three weeks’ grace, possibly in those three weeks find himself acceptable to God? We say, if we believe in the virtue of Christ’s blood, and in the power of the Holy Ghost, we can set no limits; and wherever there is a lingering remainder of grace, or at least a lingering contrition, there must be the hope of perfect repentance and ultimate sanctity.
IV. Lost without hope.—A sinner out of hope is lost. Many and many a suicide is the suicide of despair; if hope is taken from men and women it is the last thing left to us, and there is nothing more perilous nor repressive, in certain crises of mental feeling, than harsh words.
—Dean Pigou.
Illustrations
(1) ‘Such is the nature of the blood of Christ, and such is the power of the Holy Ghost, that we can quite believe if our sins were like scarlet they may be made as white as snow. Why do we say scarlet, and not green, or yellow, or blue? Because the Tyrian die of scarlet is that which you cannot erase from what is dyed; you may dip it over and over again in the vat, you simply destroy the face, you cannot extricate the crimson; and therefore in order to describe the extent of the virtue of the healing blood of Christ, they used that expression in the Bible.’
(2) ‘An artist was once asked, “Where did you get your models for your beautiful angels in your frescoes?” “I picked up a poor little girl out of the streets of Florence,” he said, “with rags and disordered hair and unwashed face, but I saw underneath all these the possibility of saintliness and she was my model for my saints and my angels.” ’