Blogotional

Heroes and Artists - The Incredible Hulk

Jack Kirby

Sal Buscema

Ron Wilson

John Byrne

David Finch

Jack Kirby

Jollyblogger looks at comment by Mark Dever on spiritual gifts and spiritual gift inventories.

I gotta agree with Ben and Mark here. Ben Arment interviewed Mark Dever recently and here's a summary of one part of the conversation:

Mark Dever said a lot of things that stuck in my ribs last week over lunch. One of them is how much he detests spiritual gift inventories. He said their whole focus is on what "I want to do" rather than serving in the true spirit of selflessness... helping where we're most needed. Now, I'm all for empowering people to thrive where they're gifted... but I'm inclined to agree with him.

If I may (and why not, it's my blog so of course I may) I'd like to express my agreement with Ben and Mark. And I'll add some reasons to their reasons to show why they are right.
What they said is true. I have seen it most commonly in people who fancy themselves to have the gift of prophecy. On more than one occasion I have heard such a person say "well, I guess I just don't have the gift of mercy" after they have emotionally run over someone.

On a deeper level most spiritual gift inventories are just spiritualized versions of temperament tests. Actually, in their place I find temperament tests very helpful and recommend them as good helps for people seeking to identify their strengths, weaknesses and best ways of working with others.

If we could leave spiritual gift inventories on that level - as helpful but not determinative, then I would be fine. The trouble is, spiritual gift inventories are often accompanied with teaching that says that each one of us is given one particular gift by God and we must identify it and use it. Thus, spiritual gift inventories rise to the level of "thus saith the Lord." Others are frustrated that they haven't taken an inventory so they don't know how to serve.

I have to add my "Amen" here as well. In fact, I think it may be even more insidious than David lets on.

I have run into preaching/teaching that differentiates between the working gifts (I Cor 12) and the motivational gifts (Rom 12). I will not bore you with the details of the exegesis here, but they argument is that Rom 12 divides us up into types that we don't need to cross. "We are what we are," as it were. (Here's a taste of this kind of thinking)

A very wise person I know once compared the "motivational" gifts to zodiac signs and said they were often used by some to avoid anything resembling actual work. As in "Oh, I can't wash dishes, my motivational gift is leadership, that's for you service types." Which takes us back to Dever's contention that it is about what people want to do.

David makes some excellent points in the rest of his post about whether the scriptural lists are exhaustive, do we have to serve in accordance with our gifts, etc.

For me the bottom line is like most things - too much of a good thing is almost as bad as nothing at all. It has been my experience that I serve as best as I can at whatever is presented to me and I find that I usually have whatever resources I need to get the job done. I know for sure that when I quit trying to figure out my giftd and what I was supposed to do with my life, and started just doing it, things got a lot better.

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THE Tex Avery Classic!



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The London Telegraph is wondering if we are stepping into God's territory?

The first artificial genetic code - the software of life - and the method of producing it from scratch from four kinds of chemical are unveiled today by a team in Maryland, marking the completion of the second of three steps towards the dawn of synthetic life.

Is science creating a new Frankenstein's monster by dabbling in such experiments? One critic of this latest venture has commented: "God has competition". Do you agree?

One should never forget the old joke where the scientist challenged God to a creation duel, God accepted, and when the scientist reached down to pick up some dirt to work with, God looked at him and said, "Get your own dirt." We underestimate God when we assume that simply creating life is usurping His authority. After all, the creation of life is a perfectly natural function - it is where babies come from. we have been about creating life for a very long time.

The problems here lies not in the creation, but in the control, and the destruction of life. For example, suppose we create from "alcohols of four carbons or less and phenol" (excuse me, but that is how every organic chemistry synthesis problem in the world begins) a hodge-podge of life forms, only one of which is the desired result. In other words, our yield is low, do we rightfully get to destroy the undesired creations? Suppose those creations were potentially sentient, even humanoid?

Suppose we made a man in this fashion, would this creation be person or property? Not such a far out question when you consider how close to chattel property we currently consider children. When would be the age of emancipation for such a created being?

OK, enough speculating questions. There are just a couple of points I want to make. The question is over simplified and designed, I think, to create a panic. Secondly, ethics is a complex business and we need to be serious about it, not just rifle off platitudes.

Where is the church on this? Where are the seminary courses on how to become involved in and smart about these kinds of issues. The church, especially the evangelical church, cannot keep its head buried in the sand and just keep preaching the gospel, unless the gospel grows to include some serious consideration of these more complex matters.

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iMonk, moderating the BHT looks at the question of denominationalism in a very short, but impactful post.

All my conscious Christian life, I’ve been around people who made this question- which denomination is true in a way that makes the others false?- into THE question of the Christian life. It’s the “Who do men say that I am?” for a whole breed of denominationally tuned up believers.

Spencer suggests three areas of examination when consider the question:

1) Look at the presuppositions behind this question (especially those about infallibity, God’s historical program and about the role of a denomination per se in the Christian life.)
2) Look at the either/or methodology (a method of exclusion to the core, with God on its side.)
3) Look at the standard used to make the decision.

It is that second one, and particularly the "with God on its side" remark that I want to serious dig into.

There is a vast, and I mean vast difference between believing one is correct in ones understanding, and claiming to hold Truth and therefore carry the EXCLUSIVE banner of God. Nobody knows where the Ark of the Covenant is and Indiana Jones nothwithstanding, I don't think it would have helped Hitler had he found it.

1 Cor 13:12 - For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known.

At our best we can know dimly. What is our hallmark as a Christian? - Is it our knowledge? I think not - I think it is our humility, our knowledge about our lack of knowledge. Jesus, who did not see dimly, possessed the power take over the world, but He chose to win our hearts through sacrifice and humility.

I write for Blogotional far in advance. As I write this particular post, it is mere days since Mitt Romney withdrew from the Presidential race. I am very, very weary of the number of people that have said such condemnatory things at my Mormon friends, and of the vindictives that have been hurled at me from some corners, although generally tiny, dark places where few ever tread, for daring to support someone who so "perverts" the Truth.

Well, here you go - What Mormons believe is wrong, flat out wrong. But Mormons are largely decent, upstanding citizens, and I bet I am going to win a whole bunch more of them with friendship and gentle discussion than I am with bombasting them with notions of their eternal destination.

But more - when you, oh sure one - Ye Who Holdeth THE TRUTH - reach your eternal destination, I am going to make you a solid promise, you too have perverted the Truth. You will have to stand before the Lord God Almighty and explain yourself for the misconceptions, misunderstanding, and lies that you have spread. I know this with certainty because all of us, without exception, hold such misunderstanding and lies.

I just hope you remember to humbly request mercy and don't try and tell God where He is wrong about the Truth that He established.

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BHT posted a while back about what I consider a horrific story related to church discipline. It occurs in an independent congregation and involves the use of local police to remove a congregant that had challenged pastoral authority. I wrote back in January that we often find the devil in the church more than out of it. This is looks like the classic example to me. I want to focus on one particular aspect here - The lack of higher authority to which the congregant could appeal the pastor's behavior.

We live in a fallen world and each of us is fallen. Sometimes in the claims of apostolic authority often made by those in clercial positions, they transmit Christ's infallibility to themselves, but even the apostles made mistakes, and given the fate of many of the congregations they founded and fostered, they were not always listened to either. As the showdown between Peter and Paul in Jerusalem shows, they relied on each other for accountability.

As leaders in the church, and I believe all Christian bloggers are leaders in one form or another, we must deliberately and firstly place ourselves into accountability with others. Whatever gifts, blessings, ordinations and anointments we may have received, we remain sinners, and it is a sure thing that we will sin in the course of our leadership activities. Only in the shared wisdom of others can we hope to find the needed checks and balances on our sinful natures.

We must remember that sin works best in deception, and deception can often be seen by others not deeply entrenched in the situation. Accountability is the only means by which we can remove the devil inside.

Who are you accountable to?

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Sacred Ground?



Vestments?



Not sure, but lots of fun! Hey, where else you gonna go in Memphis?

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Time to go completely out-of-the-box for just one post. The Salt Lake Tribune writes about the loss of the mid-range jumper in college basketball.

It's apparent on the recruiting trail. It's detectable on the scouting reports. It's noticeable on the highlights.

The midrange game has become a lost art in college basketball. Although a few players still embrace the beauty of a pull-up jumper, most take a feast or famine approach to offense - either drive straight to the basket or step behind the three-point line and let it fly.

"A guy who can play off the dribble, bounce and score without having to get all the way to the rim is hard to find," said Utah men's basketball coach Jim Boylen. "If you find one of those, you better try and get one."

Much of the decline in the midrange game is attributed to the infatuation with the three-pointer. The shot many coaches term "the great equalizer" often helps smaller programs contend with some of the big boys.

I never, ever, have had one, but there is nothing prettier than a jumper. The greatest basketball movie ever made - Hoosiers - has one enormous flaw. At the time of the actual events on which the movie was based, the game was defined by the jumper - they played modern ball in the movie.

I always preferred the Bob Knight approach to the three-pointer. Have one great three point shooter and a great post man, the defense has to flex, and the jumper is open all night long. The three also makes a great fake to set up the closer and therefore more probable jumper. Fake, dribble, swish - what a rhythm.

It makes me wonder -is efficiency the enemy of beauty, or is beauty really relative and we can view the efficient as beautiful? The three is more efficient - it is a jumper and a half. Shooting 20% from the three-point line is the same as 30% in the wings. The three opens up the middle and makes room for the drive - makes your front line therefore much more effective. In many ways the game is more exciting that way. But it somehow lacks poetry.

It also lacks teamwork. The jumper demands the screen; it should be shot behind one. A three often comes off a scrape on the opposite side of the floor, or a simple head-fake during positioning. And that is where I really miss the jumper. There is poetry in the timing and grace of the shot itself, but there is poetic dance in the interplay of the team to set the shot up.

Find some film of the 1987 National Champion Indiana Hoosiers - coached by Bob Knight and lead by perhaps the greatest jump shooter in history - Steve Alford. Almost every Alford jumper was a 5-man ballet that began when the ball was inbounded on the opposite end of the floor.

When I think about that, I wonder if this post is really as outside-the-box for this blog as it appears.

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Alexander MacLaren was born in 1826, educated at Glasgow University, for twelve years preached at Southampton, and afterwards for many years in Manchester. Besides an impressive face and figure he brought to the pulpit a ripe scholarship, an almost perfect English style, and an uncommonly vigorous personality. The keynote of his life and character is disclosed in his own words, uttered in Manchester:

“I have been so convinced that I was best serving all the varied social, economical, and political interests that are dear to me by preaching what I conceived to be the gospel of Jesus Christ, that I have limited myself to that work. I am sure, with a growing conviction day by day, that so we Christian ministers best serve our generation. My work, whatever yours may be, is, and has been for thirty-eight years, and I hope will be for a little while longer yet, to preach Jesus Christ as the King of England and the Lord of all our communities, and the Savior and friend of the individual soul.”


He touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, He sighed, and saith, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. - Mark 7:33, 34.

For what reason was there this unwonted slowness in Christ’s healing works? For what reason was there this unusual emotion ere He spoke the word which cleansed?

As to the former question, a partial answer may perhaps be that our Lord is here on half-heathen ground, where aids to faith were much needed, and His power had to be veiled that it might be beheld. Hence the miracle is a process rather than an act; and, advancing as it does by distinct stages, is conformed in appearance to men’s works of mercy, which have to adapt means to ends, and creep to their goal by persevering toil. As to the latter, we know not why the sight of this one poor sufferer should have struck so strongly on the ever-tremulous chords of Christ’s pitying heart; but we do know that it was the vision brought before His spirit by this single instance of the world’s griefs and sicknesses, in which mass, however, the special case before Him was by no means lost, that raised His eyes to heaven in mute appeal, and forced the groan from His breast.

The missionary spirit is but one aspect of the Christian spirit. We shall only strengthen the former as we invigorate the latter. harm has been done, both to ourselves and to this great cause, by seeking to stimulate compassion and efforts for heathen lands by the use of other excitements, which have tended to vitiate even the emotions they have aroused, and arc apt to fail us when we need them most. It may therefore be profitable if we turn to Christ’s own manner of working, and His own emotions in His merciful deeds, set forth in this remarkable narrative, as containing lessons for us in our missionary and evangelistic work. I must necessarily omit more than a passing reference to the slow process of healing which this miracle exhibits. But that, too, has its teaching for us, who are so often tempted to think ourselves badly used, unless the fruit of our toil grows up, like Jonah’s gourd, before our eyes. If our Lord was contefit to reach His end of blessing step by step, we may well accept patient continuance in well-doing as the condition indispensable to reaping in due season.

But there are other thoughts still more needful which suggest themselves. Those mi¬nute details which this evangelist ever delights to give of our Lord’s gestures, words, looks, and emotions, not only add graphic force to the narrative, but are precious glimpses of the very heart of Christ. That fixed gaze into heaven, that groan which neither the glories seen above nor the conscious Power to heal could stifle, that most gentle touch, as if removing material obstacles from the deaf ears, and moistening the stiff tongue that it might move more freely in the parched mouth, that word of authority which could not be wanting even when His working seemed likest a servant’s, do surely carry large lessons for us. The condition of all service, the cost of feeling at which our work must be done, the need that the helpers should identify themselves with the sufferers, and the victorious power of Christ’s word over all deaf ears - these are the thoughts which I desire to connect with our text, and to commend to your meditation today.

We have here set forth the foundation and condition of all true work for God in the Lord’s heavenward look.

The profound questions which are involved in the fact that, as man, Christ held communion with God in the exercise of faith and aspiration, the same in kind as ours, do not concern us here. I speak to those who believe that Jesus is for us the perfect example of complete manhood, and who therefore believe that He is “the leader of faith,” the head of the long procession of those who in every age have trusted in God and been lightened. But, perhaps, though that conviction holds its place in our creeds, it has not been as completely incorporated with our thoughts as it should have been. There has, no doubt, been a tendency, operating in much of our evangelical teaching, and in the common stream of orthodox opinion, to except, half unconsciously, the exercises of the religious life from the sphere of Christ‘s example, and we need to be re¬minded that Scripture presents his vow, “I will put my trust in Him,” as the crowning proof of His brotherhood, and that the prints of His kneeling limbs have left their impressions where we kneel before the throne. True, the relation of the Son to the Father involves more than communion - namely, unity. But if we follow the teaching of the Bible, we shall not presume that the latter excludes the for¬mer, but understand that the unity is the foundation of perfect communion, and the communion the manifestation, so far as it can be manifested, of the unspeakable unity. The solemn words which shine like stars - starlike in that their height above us shrinks their magnitude and dims their brightness, and in that they are points of radiance partially dis¬closing, and separated by, abysses of unlighted infinitude - tell us that in the order of eternity, before creatures were, there was communion, for “the Word was with God,” and there was unity, for “the Word was God.” And in the records of the life manifested on earth the consciousness of unity loftily utters itself in the unfathomable declaration, “I and my Father are one”; whilst the consciousness of communion, dependent like ours on harmony of will and true obedience, breathes peacefully in the witness which He leaves to Himself: “The Father has not left me alone for I do always the things that please him.”

We are fully warranted in supposing that that wistful gaze to heaven means, and may be taken to symbolize, our Lord‘s conscious direction of thought and spirit to God as He wrought His work of mercy. There are two distinctions to be noted between His communion with God and ours before we can apply the lesson to ourselves. His heavenward look was not the renewal of interrupted fellowship, but rather, as a man standing firmly on firm rock may yet lift his foot to plant it again where it was before, and settle himself in his attitude before he strikes with all his might; so we may say Christ fixes Himself where He always stood, and grasps anew the hand that He always held, before He does the deed of power. The communion that had never been broken was renewed; how much more the need that in our work for God the renewal of the - alas! too sadly sundered - fellowship should ever precede and always accompany our ef¬forts! And again, Christ’s fellowship was with the Father. Ours must be with the Father through the Son. The communion to which we are called is with Jesus Christ, in whom we find God.

The manner of that intercourse, and the various discipline of ourselves with a view to its perfecting, which Christian prudence pre¬scribes, need not concern us here. As for the latter, let us not forget that a wholesome and wide-reaching self-denial cannot be dispensed with. Hands that are full of gilded toys and glass beads cannot grasp durable riches, and eyes that have been accustomed to glaring lights see only darkness when they look up to the violet heaven with all its stars. As to the former, every part of our nature above the simply animal is capable of God, and the communion ought to include our whole being.

Christ is truth for the understanding, au¬thority for the will, love for the heart, certainty for the hope, fruition for all the desires, and for the conscience at once cleansing and law. Fellowship with Him is no indolent passiveness, nor the luxurious exercise of certain emotions, but the contact of the whole nature with its sole adequate object and rightful Lord.

Such intercourse, brethren, lies at the foundation of all work for God. It is the condition of all our power. It is the measure of all our success. Without it we may seem to realize the externals of prosperity, but it will be all illusion. With it we may perchance seem to spend our strength for naught; but heaven has its surprises; and those who toiled, nor left their hold of their Lord in all their work, will have to say at last with wonder, as they see the results of their poor efforts, “Who hath begotten me these? behold, I was left alone; these, where had they been?”

Consider in few words the manifold ways in which the indispensable prerequisite of all right effort for Christ may be shown to be communion with Christ.

The heavenward look is the renewal of our own vision of the calm verities in which we trust, the recourse for ourselves to the realities which we desire that others should see. And what is equal in persuasive power to the simple utterance of your own intense conviction? He only will infuse his own religion into other minds, whose religion is not a set of hard dogmas, but is fused by the heat of personal experience into a river of living fire. It will flow then, not otherwise. The only claim which the hearts of men will listen to, in those who would win them to spiritual beliefs, is that ancient one: “That which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, declare we unto you.” Mightier than all arguments, than all “proofs of the truth of the Christian religion,” and penetrating into a sphere deeper than that of the under¬standing, is the simple proclamation, “We have found the Messias.” If we would give sight to the blind, we must ourselves be gazing into heaven. Only when we testify of that which we see, as one might who, standing in a beleaguered city, discerned on the horizon the filmy dust-cloud through which the spearheads of the deliverers flashed at intervals, shall we win any to gaze with us till they too behold and know themselves set free.

Christ has set us the example. Let our prayers ascend as His did, and in our measure the answers which came to Him will not fail us. For us, too, “praying, the heavens” shall be “opened,” and the peace-bringing spirit fall dove-like on our meek hearts. For us, too, when the shadow of our cross lies black and gaunt upon our paths, and our souls are troubled, communion with heaven will bring the assurance, audible to our ears at least, that God will glorify Himself even in us. If, after many a weary day, we seek to hold fellowship with God as He sought it on the Mount of Olives, or among the solitudes of the midnight hills, or out in the morning freshness of the silent wilderness, like Him we shall have men gathering around us to hear us speak when we come forth from the secret place of the Most High. If our prayer, like His, goes before our mighty deeds, the voice that first pierced the skies will penetrate the tomb, and make the dead stir in their grave-clothes. If our longing, trustful look is turned to the heavens, we shall not speak in vain on earth when we say, “Be opened.”

Brethren, we cannot do without the communion which our Master needed. Do we delight in what strengthened Him? Does our work rest upon the basis of inward fellowship with God which underlay His? Alas! that our pattern should be our rebuke, and the readiest way to force home our faults on our consciences should be the contemplation of the life which we say that we try to copy!

We have here pity for the evils we would remove set forth by the Lord’s sigh.

What was it that drew that sigh from the heart of Jesus? One poor man stood before Him, by no means the most sorely afflicted of the many wretched ones whom He healed. But He saw in him more than a solitary instance of physical infirmities. Did there not roll darkly before His thoughts that whole weltering sea of sorrow that moans round the world, of which here is but one drop that He could dry up? Did there not rise black and solid against the clear blue, to which He had been looking, the mass of man’s sin, of which these bodily infirmities were but a poor symbol as well as a consequence? He saw as none but He could bear to see, the miserable realities of human life. His knowledge of all that man might be, of all that the most of men were becoming, His power of contemplating in one awful aggregate the entire sum of sorrows and sins, laid upon His heart a burden which none but He has ever endured. His communion with Heaven deepened the dark shadow on earth, and the eyes that looked up to God and saw Him could not but see foulness where others suspected none, and murderous messengers of hell walking in darkness unpenetrated by mortal sight. And all that pain of clearer knowledge of the sorrowful¬ness of sorrow, and the sinfulness of sin, was laid upon a heart in which was no selfishness to blunt the sharp edge of the pain nor any sin to stagnate the pity that flowed from the wound. To Jesus Christ, life was a daily martyrdom before death had “made the sacrifice complete,” and He bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows through many a weary hour before He “bare them in his own body on the tree.”- Therefore, “Bear ye one another’s burden, and so fulfill the law” which Christ obeyed, becomes a command for all who would draw men to Him. And true sorrow, a sharp and real sense of pain, becomes indispensable as preparation for, and accompaniment to, our work.

Mark how in us, as in our Lord, the sigh of compassion is connected with the look to heaven. It follows upon that gaze. The evils are more real, more terrible, by their startling contrast with the unshadowed light which lives above cloudracks and mists. It is a sharp shock to turn from the free sweep of the heavens, starry and radiant, to the sights that meet us in “this dim spot which men call earth.” Thus habitual communion with God is the root of the truest and purest compassion. It does not withdraw us from our fellow feeling with our brethren, it cultivates no isolation for undisturbed beholding of God. It at once supplies a standard by which to measure the greatness of man’s godlessness, and therefore of his gloom, and a motive for laying the pain of these upon our hearts, as if they were our own. He has looked into the heavens to little purpose who has not learned how bad and bow sad the world now is, and how God bends over it in pitying love.

And that same fellowship, which will clear our eyes and soften our hearts, is also the one consolation which we have when our sense of all the ills that flesh is heir to becomes deep, near to despair. When one thinks of the real facts of human life, and tries to conceive of the frightful meanness and passion and hate and wretchedness, that has been howling and shrieking and gibbering and groaning through dreary millenniums, one ‘s brain reels, and hope seems to be absurdity, and joy a sin against our fellows, as a feast would be in a house next door to where was a funeral. I do not wonder at settled sorrow falling upon men of vivid imagination, keen moral sense, and ordinary sensitiveness, when they brood long on the world as it is. But I do wonder at the superficial optimism which goes on with its little prophecies about human progress, and its rose-colored pictures of human life, and sees nothing to strike it dumb for ever in men’s writhing miseries, blank failures, and hopeless end. Ah! brethren, if it were not for the heavenward look, how could we bear the sight of earth! “We see not yet all things put under him.” No, God knows, far enough off from that. Man’s folly, man’s submission to the creatures he should rule, man’s agonies, and man’s transgression, are a grim contrast to the psalmist’s vision. If we had only earth to look to, despair of the race, exprest in settled melancholy apathy, or in fierce cynicism, were the wisest attitude. But there is more within our view than earth; “we see Jesus”; we look to the heaven, and as we behold the true man, we see more than ever, indeed, how far from that pattern we all are; but we can bear the thought of what men as yet have been, when we see that perfect example of what men shall be. The root and the consolation of our sorrow for man ‘s evils is communion with God.

We have here loving contact with those whom we would help, set forth in the Lord’s touch.

The reasons for the variety observable in Christ’s method of communicating supernatural blessing were, probably, too closely connected with unrecorded differences in the spiritual conditions of the recipients to be distinctly traceable by us. But tho we cannot tell why a particular method was employed in a given case, why now a word, and now a symbolic action, now the touch of His hand. and now the hem of His garment, appeared to be the vehicles of His power, we can discern the significance of these diverse ways, and learn great lessons from them all.

His touch was sometimes obviously the result of what one may venture to call instinctive tenderness, as when He lifted the little children in His arms and laid His hands upon their heads. It was, I suppose, always the spontaneous expression of love and compassion, even when it was something more.

The touch of His hand on the ghastly glossiness of the leper’s skin was, no doubt, His assertion of priestly functions, and of elevation above all laws of defilement; but what was it to the poor outcast, who for years had never felt the warm contact of flesh and blond? It always indicated that He Himself was the source of healing and life. It always exprest His identification of Himself with sorrow and sickness. So that it is. in principle analogous to, and may be taken as illustrative of, that transcendent act whereby He became flesh, and dwelt among us. Indeed, the very word by which our Lord’s taking the blind man by the hand is described in the chapter following our text is that employed in the Epistle to the Hebrews when, dealing with the true brotherhood of Jesus, the writer says, “He took not hold of angels, but of the seed of Abraham he taketh hold.” Christ’s touch is His willing contact with man’s infirmities and sins, that He may strengthen and hallow.

And the lesson is one of universal application. Wherever men would help their fellows, this is a prime requisite, that the would-be helper should come down to the level of those whom he desires to aid. If we wish to teach, we must stoop to think the scholar’s thoughts. The master who has forgotten his boyhood will have poor success. If we would lead to purer emotions, we nust try to enter into the lower feelings which we labor to elevate. It is of no use to stand at the mouth of the alleys we wish to cleanse, with our skirts daintily gathered about us, and smelling-bottle in hand, to preach homilies on the virtue of cleanliness. We must go in among the filth, and handle it, if we want to have it cleared away. The degraded must feel that we do not shrink from them, or we shall do them no good. The leper, shunned by all, and ashamed of himself because everybody loathes him, hungers in his hovel for the grasp of a hand that does not care for defilement, if it can bring cleansing. Even in regard to common material helps the principle holds good. We are too apt to cast our doles to the poor like the bones to a dog, and then to wonder at what we are pleased to think men’s ingratitude. A benefit may be so conferred as to hurt more than a blow; and we cannot be surprised if so-called charity which is given with contempt and a sense of superiority, should be received with a scowl, and chafe a man‘s spirit like a fetter. Such gifts bless neither him who gives nor him who takes. We must put our hearts into them, if we would win hearts by them. We must be ready, like our Master, to take blind beggars by the hand, if we would bless or help them. The despair and opprobrium of our modern civilization, the gulf growing wider and deeper between Dives and Lazarus, between Belgravia and Whitechapel, the mournful failure of legalized help, and of delegated efforts to bridge it over, the darkening ignorance, the animal sensuousness, the utter heathenism that lives in every town of England, within a stone’s throw of Christian houses, and near enough to hear the sound of public worship, will yield to nothing but that sadly forgotten law which enjoins personal contact with the sinful and the suffering, as one chief condition of raising them from the black mire in which they welter.

The effect of much well-meant Christian ef¬fort is simply to irritate. People are very quick to catch delicate intonations which re¬veal a secret sense, “bow much better, wiser, more devout I am than these people!” and wherever a trace of that appears in our work, the good of it is apt to be marred. We all know how hackneyed the charge of spiritual pride and Pharisaic self-complacency is, and, thank God, how unjust it often is. But averse as men may be to the truths which humble, and willing as they may be to assume that the very effort to present these to others on our parts implies a claim which mortifies, we may at least learn from the threadbare calumny, what strikes men about our position, and what rouses their antagonism to us. It is allowable to be taught by our enemies, especially when it is such a lesson as this, that we must carefully divest our evangelistic work of apparent pretensions to superiority, and take our stand by the side of those to whom we speak. We cannot lecture men into the love of Christ. We can but win them to it by showing Christ’s love to them; and not the least important element in that process is the exhibition of our own love. We have a gospel to speak of which the very heart is, that the Son of God stooped to become one with the lowliest and most sinful; and how can that gospel be spoken with power unless we, too, stoop like Him?

We have to echo the invitation, “Learn of me, for I am lowly in heart”; and how can such divine words flow from lips into which like grace has not been poured? Our theme is a Savior who shrunk from no sinner, who gladly consorted with publicans and harlots, who laid His hand on pollution, and His heart, full of God and of love, on hearts reek¬ing with sin; and how can our message correspond with our theme if, even in delivering it, we are saying to ourselves, “The temple of the Lord are we: this people which knoweth not the law is curst”? Let us beware of the very real danger which besets us in this matter, and earnestly seek to make ourselves one with those whom we would gather into Christ, by actual familiarity with their condition, and by identification of ourselves in feeling with them, after the example of that greatest of Christian teachers who became “all things to all men, that by all means he might gain some”; after the higher example, which Paul followed, of that dear Lord who, being highest, descended to the lowest, and in the days of His humiliation was not content with speaking words of power from afar, nor abhorred the contact of mortality and disease and loathsome corruption; but laid His hands upon death, and it lived; upon sickness, and it was whole; on rotting leprosy, and it was sweet as the flesh of a little child.

The same principle might be further ap¬plied to our Christian work, as affecting the form in which we should present the truth. The sympathetic identification of ourselves with those to whom we try to carry the gospel will certainly make us wise to know how to shape our message. Seeing with their eyes, we shall be able to graduate the light. Thinking their thoughts, and having in some measure succeeded; by force of sheer community of feeling, in having as it were got inside their minds, we shall unconsciously, and without effort, be led to such aspects of Christ’s all-comprehensive truth as they most need. There will be no shooting over people’s heads, if we love them well enough to understand them. There will be no toothless generalities, when our interest in men keeps their actual condition and temptations clear before us. There will be no flinging fossil doctrines at them from a height, as if Christ’s blest gospel were. in another than the literal sense, “a stone of offense,” if we have taken our place on their level. And without such sympathy, these and a thousand other weaknesses and faults will certainly vitiate much of our Christian effort.

We have here the true healing power and the consciousness of wielding it set forth in the Lord’s authoritative word.

All the rest of His action was either the spontaneous expression of His true participation in human sorrow, or a merciful veiling, of His glory that sense-bound eyes might see it the better. But the word was the utterance of His will, and that was omnipotent. The hand laid on the sick, the blind or the deaf was not even the channel of His power. The bare putting forth of His energy was all-sufficient. In these we see the loving, pitying man. In this blazes forth, yet more loving, yet more compassionate, the effulgence of manifest God. Therefore so often do we read the very syllables with which His “voice then shook the earth,” vibrating through all the framework of the material universe. Therefore do the gospels bid us listen when He rebukes the fever, and it departs; when He says to the demons, “Go,” and they go; when one word louder in its human articulation than the howling wind bushes the surges; when “Talitha cumi” brings back the fair young spirit from dreary wanderings among the shades of death. Therefore was it a height of faith not found in Israel when the Gentile soldier, whose training had taught him the power of absolute authority, as heathenism had driven him to long for a man who would speak with the imperial sway of a god, recognized in His voice an all-commanding power. From of old, the very signature of divinity has been declared to be “He spake, and it was done”; and He, the breath of whose lips could set in motion material changes, is that eternal Word, by whom all things were made.

What unlimited consciousness of sovereign dominion sounds in that imperative from His autocratic lips! -It is spoken in deaf ears, but He knows that it will be heard. He speaks as the fontal source, not as the recipient chan¬nel of healing. He anticipates no delay, no resistance. There is neither effort nor uncertainty in the curt command. He is sure that He has power, and He is sure that the power is His own.

There is no analogy here between us and Him. Alone, fronting the whole race of man, He stands - utterer of a word which none can say after Him, possessor of unshared might, and of His fullness do we all receive. But even from that divine authority and solitary sovereign consciousness we may gather lessons not altogether aside from the purpose of our meeting here today. Of His fullness we have received, and the power of the word on His lips may teach us that of His word, even on ours, as the victorious certainty with which He spake His will of healing may remind us of the confidence with which it becomes us to proclaim His name.

His will was almighty then. Is it less mighty or less loving now? Does it not gather all the world in the sweep of its mighty purpose of mercy? His voice pierced then into the dull cold ear of death, and has it become weaker since? His word spoken by Him was enough to banish the foul spirits that run riot, swine-like, in the garden of God in man‘s soul, trampling down and eating up its flowers and fruitage; is the word spoken of Him less potent to east them out? Were not all the mighty deeds which He wrought by the breath of His lips on men’s bodies prophecies of the yet mightier which His Will of love, and the utterance of that Will by stammering lips, may work on men’s souls. Let us not in our faint-heartedness number up our failures, the deaf that will not hear, the dumb that will not speak, His praise; nor unbelievingly say Christ’s own word was mighty, but the word concerning Christ is weak on our lips. Not so; our lips are unclean, and our words are weak, but His word - the utterance of His loving will that men should be saved - is what it always was and always will be. We have it, brethren, to proclaim. Did our Master countenance the faithless contrast between the living force of His word when He dwelt on earth, and the feebleness of it as He speaks through His servant? If He did, what did He mean when He said, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father”?

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