374 LOOK UNTO JESUS. Looking unto Jesus. Returning the look of the Saviour. Not a hasty glance, but a steady, importunate, eager, penetrating "looking for." And he is only behind a veil. If you did but know it, there is hardly a cloud between! He will come from behind, and say to the heart that has waited for him, “For a small moment I have forsaken thee, but with everlasting mercies will I gather thee." It was better to have that small moment. There may be a monotony of kindness, a monotony of light. Better to have a momentary sense of orphanage, and then to be embraced with a still fonder clasp by the infinite love of the eternal heart ! Look unto Jesus even through your tears. Tears are telescopes. I have seen further through my tears than ever I saw through my smiles. Laughter hath done but little for me; but sorrow and a riven heart have expounded many passages in the inspired volume that before were hard, enigmatical reading. Blessed be God, we can see Jesus through our tears. He knows what tears are. Jesus wept! The eyes that John saw as a flame of fire the Jews at the grave of Lazarus saw as fountains of water. “And coming near unto the city, when he beheld it, he wept over it." No man can fathom the depth of that river, or tell the bitterness of that sorrow. You have tears. Every man amongst us has his tearful times. But we use our tears wrongfully if we do not lift up our eyes and look through them unto Jesus in the heavens! So much for the comfortable side of this. Dare I turn to the other side? Surely, for I am a steward only. May I say another word that shall not be so tender? Surely, for I am an echo, not a voice. Am I here to make a Bible for the comforting and soothing of men, and not to expound a Bible that looks all ways, and pierces all things? If I now speak with apparent harshness, believe me that it is a cry of pain, that I may bring some men to consideration and decision in a right direction. My subject is the silent looks of the Saviour-the silent looks of God-and the method in which men are to return the glances of the divine eyes. Let me say that those who will not look now shall look! The great sight shall not perish from the horizon without their beholding it. Hear these words" They shall look upon me whom they have pierced! They would not look upon me, but they shall do so!" The great cross shall not be taken up and set away in the heavens as a centre of holy fellowship without those who despise it having one look at it! What will be the consequence of their looking? They shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and mourn! The look was too late; the look was not in time. You have put your fingers in your ears while the sweet music of the Gospel has been appealing for the attention of your heart; you have shut your eyes when the king has come in to show you his beauty. But he says he will not break up this scheme of things without every eye beholding! Every eye shall see him, and they also that pierced him shall look upon him. Shall I add another word that no human tongue is fit to speak? How shall I utter it? If I could let my heart say it, I would. But it must be spoken with all the incompetence and brokenness of the voice. There shall be a cry in the latter time, and the cry shall be this-" Hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne !" Hide us! What from? "The sword?'' No. "The terrible phenomena ?" No. But from the face-that anguished face, that smitten face, that insulted face! Oh! I see the marks the thorns made! I see the red streaks upon it that I made when I smote him in the face and said, "Prophesy!" Oh, hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne! Shall it come to this? Is he not the fairest among ten thousand and altogether lovely? Is there any one whose beauty is to be compared with his? You say, “Our God is love." Yes, "Our God is a consuming fire!" You say, "The eyes of the Lord are a comfort to his people." So they But the eye of the Lord struck off the iron from the wheels of the Egyptians on the night I have just spoken about. are. Are we We shall have to look the only question is, how? : prepared for his coming? How are we prepared for his face? By going to his Cross. He proposes that we should meet him in his weakness. He appoints the place. He says, He says, "Meet me where I am weakest; when my right hand is maimed, and my left, when my feet are pierced with iron, and my side is gashed with steel, and my temples are crushed with cruel thorns,-meet me there !" Then having met him there, when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all his holy angels with him, he will be the same Saviour, as gentle and as pitiful as ever. And now, the Lord's hands are his again, he will use them for the opening of the door of his kingdom, and the lifting up of all who put their trust in him! NOTES ON THE SABBATH. (See page 208.) 1. I do not believe that the Jewish Sabbath is binding on Christians, but I believe that the Creational idea of the Sabbath is unchangeable. 2. By the Creational Sabbath I mean the seventh-day rest. When, in this discourse, I speak of stealing God's time I mean stealing the seventh day of rest, be it Sunday or Saturday, Monday or Thursday. 3. Christians can have no doubt as to choice of day. That is determined for them. They want no other. It is Resurrection day. They would as soon change a birthday as change the Lord's Day. 46 4. The Sabbath controversy can never be settled by references to Judaism, or by references to anything of the nature of mere usage, apostolic or patristic. It is the heart that remembers the elect day, and it is the heart alone that can keep" it. Christian obedience is a sacrifice of love and joy, without one particle of mere legalism, or one link of bondage. We cannot keep the Sabbath because we are commanded to do it, but because we long for it with all the eager expectancy of love. 5. What wonder if Christians are unwilling even to appear to de-sanctify the day? I do not use the strong word desecrate," for it is not the intention of many free-Sabbatarians to do anything so violent. Christians have what to them are the tenderest reasons for preserving and hallowing the day of Christ; not only have they an argument, they have also an emotion to direct their policy. Even if their logic could be answered, their sentiment would be indestructible. 6. I believe it would be perfectly possible to open museums and galleries of art on Sunday without doing injury of a social kind in thousands of instances. But Christians as such, who really reverence the day because of its distinctively Christian memories, can never promote such opening. As citizens and as reformers of some kinds of social abuses, they may not hinder the introduction of any healthy competition as against taverns and places of dissipation, but as Christians they can never consent to fall below the level of the day's one great meaning the triumph and the joy of their Lord's Resurrection. END OF VOL. II. A COMPANION TO OTHER BIOGRAPHIES THE INNER LIFE OF CHRIST, As Revealed in the Gospel of Matthew. BY JOSEPH PARKER, D.D., AUTHOR OF ECCE DEUS,' Price, $1.50. Vol. I., "THESE SAYINGS OF MINE." FOURTH THOUSAND. name.... Notices of the American Press. The Boston Congregationalist says: "Exceedingly stirring sermons in the best sense.... They rouse the reader to take fresh courage and make sturdier efforts in Christ's The reader feels himself in contact with a manly Christian soul, bent on uttering truths, so as to make men listen, and yields willingly to the preacher's spell.. These sermons are admirably adapted to be read where service has to be held without a preacher. The prayers which accompany them are remarkable for tenderness and power." The New York Methodist says: ... "Suited to move the sensibilities; to influence the life and conduct. We like them decidedly." The Cincinnati Christian Standard says: "Dr. Parker . . . is famous as a London preacher, whose originality of thought, power of illustration, and boldness of utterance secure constant attention on both sides of the Atlantic. Precisely the kind of sermons that our preachers need to become familiar with; they come from a master mind." The Chicago Advance says: "As an expositor, as a preacher, Dr. Parker possesses qualities of marked excellence." The Cincinnati Herald and Presbyter says: "Dr. Parker is an extemporaneous preacher; a hard student, whose aim is to preach rather than excel in literary composition." The Pittsburgh Christian Advocate "Burning with utterances of says: needed truth." 378 THE INNER LIFE OF CHRIST. THE EDITOR OF THE AMERICAN EDITION (Rev. Dr. DEEMS) SAYS: "The first knowledge we had of him in America was, I think, the publication of his work styled Ecce Deus.' It exhibited a freshness and a power which would have secured its place, on the ground of its other higher merits, even if it had not had the additional virtue of antag onizing certain errors of Ecce Homo." Whoso read it felt that its author must be a man of much more than ordinary ability. When it was announced that Dr. Parker was the author, thousands on this side of the Atlantic became interested in him. It prepared the warm reception which he met when he came to the Evangelical Alliance in 1873. It is well remembered that no representative from Great Britain produced such a marked impression as Dr. Parker did, by the magnificent address which he delivered in the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. His book, The Paraclete,' maintained his reputation, and enlarged the circles of his readers. "But nothing that he has published so shows the man, I think, as the following sermons. I heard three of them. Notices of the English Press. The Christian World says: "We have no hesitation in describing these 'expositions,' for such they really are, as most luminous in their highest interpretation of the Divine Sayings. They glow with holy fire, and they are inspirational alike to intellect, conscience, and heart. At times Dr. Parker seems to flood a familiar scene or saying with a light that surprises us, and withal it is such genuine truth that you know it is no fancy illumination, but a truth light, although an unperceived one before. Intellectual genius does unquestionably belong to Dr. Parker, and the first sermon on the Genealogical Tree is quick with it. The intellectual strength of the volume is but a part of it; there is poetry in it-true poetry of the soul, whose faith-vision sees what the intellect can never pierce. It is pre-eminently a book for preachers, and will be eagerly read by many whose means are sparse and whose studytables are poorly spread with new bread of thought. We pity the preacher who is not stimulated and helped by this volume, placed so easily within the reach of all. We have three hundred and sixty pages. Then there is no literary padding' here, no make-up. Dr. Parker's power of graphic description and of intuitive perception are here accompanied by that glorious gift of turning truth into life, bringing to bear in an instant the highest truths on the common wants, faults, hopes, and agonies of the human heart. 'We cannot mistake true music,' says the author, speaking of the sayings of Christ; we shall know whether the wind comes along the earth, and brings the earth's dust with it, or whether it comes resoundingly from the heavens, and brings with it voices and utterances of the upper and better world.' "Doctors Farrar and Geikie have done much in illustration of the life of Christ; and These Sayings of Mine,' by Dr. Parker, should accompany these volumes on the library shelves, for he is here doing the divinest and most difficult work of all; he is not the historian or the painter, but he is the spiritual philosopher, removing difficulties here and there in the way of faith, never hesitant or apologetic, but so full of a living theology of the mind and the heart, that we are borne along, not only convinced, but grateful, for the Divine life thus vivified in the soul. This book is what we call the thinking of a living man, not of a mere book-making defender of the faith who wants a library of reference in his company always. The volume has interested us beyond measure at times; it has thrilled us with vital convictions of truth, and at the last page, like 'Oliver Twist,' we want more.' The volume is destined, we think, to take a foremost place among the books of this era, written in relation to the Christ of History, and will give a new illustration to the wonderful fact that, in this nineteenth century, the one subject which occupies the highest minds and awakens interest in the great world's heart is "JESUS CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD." The Primitive Methodist Magazine says: "These lectures are said to be extemporaneous as far as their diction is concerned. Had they been elaborated beforehand, it is probable their style would have been much more finished, Whether they would have been the better for this may, however, be questioned. It would not, we are persuaded, have improved them in their delivery; and, for practical purposes, it is perhaps better we |