With God in the World: A Series of PapersBrent, Charles Henry
Religion
With God in the World: A Series of Papers
Brent, Charles Henry
Christianity
No act of Christ was a mere personal experience. The Son of Man, as in
loving sympathy He declared Himself to be, was the Universal Character
whose life must needs concern and touch all other lives. It was His
expressed desire that His fellows should share all that He was and did.
He, the Son of God, became the Son of Man that we might become Sons of
God.[25] Therefore it is not surprising that, at this the supreme moment
of His life, He should bid the representative group who companied with
Him, and through them all men, come in and participate in its power and
joy; He did not merely lay down His life, but asked others to enter into
His experience, saying, "Take, eat; this is My Body," "Drink ye all of
this; this is My Blood." For what is the import of this invitation but
this? "Associate yourselves with Me,--aye, be one with Me, incorporated
into Me, in this great moment of self-offering; for I would present you
a willing surrender in and with Myself." The idea of at-one-ment was
never more intelligible than in these latter days. We are becoming more
and more conscious of how close-wrought are the fibres of the human
race; we recognize how the life of any one man affects the life of his
fellows, and how the individual can gather into his own soul the sorrows
and joys, the perplexities and aspirations of many people. If this is
part of the experience of _a_ son of man, it follows that _the_ Son of
Man, by the extension and completion of that quality which, when found
in us, is known as sympathy, if by nothing else beyond,--and the
character of His personality tells us there is much beyond that is
inexplicable--not only may but must take into Himself and hold there for
time and eternity the whole race--except so far, alas, as men struggle
from the freedom of His embrace into the slavery of a false
independence. Thus the Eucharist is the divinely chosen means whereby we
men are invited to enter into, and consciously to appropriate the
highest points of the victory of the Cross as well as what lies
beyond,--the resurrection life. Through it He shares with us His
life-giving death and His deathless life, His Divine nature and His
perfect humanity, and we are "accepted in the Beloved."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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