It was on this Mount of Calvary, looking down upon the city, that there
came to us an overwhelming sense of the sin of selfishness and greed. In
the ruins of Belgium we had felt it, in the tumult of war on the
battlefields of France we had seen what it could do, in the records of
the desperate struggles of the Peace Table we had caught glimpses of its
power, in China we saw its work, in Korea we looked upon its suffering
victims, and here on Calvary the weight of the world sorely wounded and
dismayed by sin, pressed hard upon us. It would not have been possible
to bear had we not read also of the stone rolled away and the great
triumphant Victory.
A deep conviction settled down upon us until it possessed every muscle
and fiber of body and mind, until it possessed our souls—the thing that
He preached and that only can save the world. His great command that man
love his God and serve his neighbor—this principle alone can rescue
humanity from the abyss of chaos into which blind greed, individual and
national, has plunged it. As the pilgrims knelt at the Holy Sepulchre,
we knelt there under the open skies on the hill that is called Calvary
to accept again His first great commandment, and the second that is like
unto it, in repentance and humility to pray for pardon for past failures
and strength for new endeavors.
That night at evening service in clear soprano voice a boy in the choir
sang:
There is a green hill far away
Without the city wall
Where the dear Lord was crucified
Who died to save us all.
Oh dearly, dearly has He loved
And we must love Him too,
And trust in His redeeming blood
And try His works to do.
There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin:
He only could unlock the gate
Of Heaven and let us in.
Oh dearly, dearly has He loved
And we must love Him too,
And trust in His redeeming blood
And try His works to do.
The echo of the last line followed us home. There is work to be
done—challenging, mighty world-building tasks—and for the doing of them
those who call themselves servants and followers of Him whose brave,
suffering footsteps we had traced from the Garden along the Sorrowful
Way to Calvary have waited too long.
I GO DOWN INTO EGYPT
_The strings of camels come in single file
Bearing their burdens o’er the desert sand;
Swiftly the boats go plying on the Nile
The needs of men to meet on every hand.
But still I wait
For the messenger of God who cometh late._
—_Author Unknown._
I GO DOWN INTO EGYPT
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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