+All men instinctively believe in the Atonement.+--This is the deepest
and truest impulse of the human heart, as all men already know if they
would only trust their better nature to tell them what God wants from
his children. Here is an explosion in a coal-mine, and forthwith every
mother's son above ground volunteers to go down into the choke-damp to
snatch his buried comrades from the sleep of death. A few months ago
one such disaster took place in a Durham colliery. Most of my readers
will remember that in the newspaper reports of the incidents that took
place at the pit mouth were the following: A father who was brought to
the surface was asked whether he lost hope during the long hours of his
imprisonment below without food or light. "No," was the reply, "for I
knew my boy would be in the rescue party, and that nothing would turn
him back until he found his father, dead or alive." The suffragan
bishop of the diocese, along with a number of other clergymen and
nonconformist ministers, remained all night amid the scene of sorrow at
the pit mouth, doing his best to comfort the mourners as their loved
ones were brought up dead. As morning broke he mounted a heap of
cinders and, without making any attempt to conceal his emotion, spoke a
few manly words of brotherly exhortation and Christian love to his
deeply moved congregation of toilers and sufferers. One poor woman,
with unconscious irony, exclaimed to the bystanders: "He doesn't seem
like a bishop! He is just like one of ourselves." That servant of God
has never preached the Atonement more effectually in all his life--by
getting together of man and man, and man and God, through the spirit of
self-sacrifice. He stands in the true apostolic succession, the
succession of men like Saul of Tarsus, the erstwhile persecutor, who,
under the inspiration of the love of Jesus, lived to say, "Who is weak
and I am not weak? Who is offended and I burn not?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account