The Joy of Saving the Lost.
By Cutler
In Mr. George Kennan’s fascinating “Tent-Life in Siberia,” is a very thrilling account of a search made by the author for a party of his lost countrymen on the Anadyr River. After a journey by dog-sledge for two hundred miles over drifted snow, they reach the spot where they conjecture the missing Americans to be buried away under the snow. Mr. Kennan and his companion are well nigh perishing themselves from a cold which has sunk the mercury to fifty degrees below zero! The feet of their poor dogs spot the white snow with blood at every step. One of the two brave explorers has already sunk exhausted on his sledge, and is fast falling into the sleep of death. Suddenly, at midnight, Mr. Kennan hears a faint, long-drawn halloo across the wintry waste. It comes from one of his “Chookchees,” who has gone on in advance. He hurries to the spot, all the blood in his veins throbbing at his heart. As he comes up, he discovers the Chookchee standing by a small black pipe projecting from a snowbank. The lost wanderers must be under it. “Thank God! thank God! I repeated to myself softly,” says the heroic writer; “and, as I climbed upon the snow-drift, and shouted down the pipe, ‘Halloo the house!’ I heard a startled voice under my feet reply, ‘Who’s there?’ As I entered the snow cellar, and seized hold of my long-lost friends, my over-strained nerves gave way, and in ten minutes I could hardly raise my hand to my lips.” Reading the above thrilling scene in my friend Kennan’s book, I found the tears stealing down my own cheeks in sympathy with the brave fellows who had periled their lives in order to rescue their lost friends from death by cold and starvation. After concluding the narrative, which had almost the sweet “lineament of a gospel-book,” I opened my Bible, and read this parable which Jesus spake: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.” With this vivid scene of the Siberian search fresh in my mind, I read this exquisite parable with a new delight. I seemed to see our divine Shepherd starting off after the lost sheep. He knows the thickets or the quagmires into which the silly truant must have strayed. He may hear its bleatings afar off. He goes until he finds it. He does not beat it for straggling; but, pulling it out of the mire, or drawing it from the tangled thicket, he layeth it on his shoulders—the clean carrying the unclean, the holy carrying the unholy. Beautiful picture of Jesus, the sin-bearer! Every saved soul has been upon Christ’s shoulders. When he “bare our sins,” and “carried our sorrows,” then was the befouled yet precious load upon Jesus’ shoulder. Yes, and he bids us “cast our cares” upon him too! The whole load he takes up joyfully. Say what we may about free agency, or about the activity of the soul in regeneration, it is equally true that not a solitary sheep would ever have entered the fold of God if the divine Shepherd had not come to seek and to save the lost. He came after each one. For Jesus “tasted death for every man”—for the individual, and not for the vague mass of undistinguishable humanity. That “one sheep” was lost was enough to start the loving Shepherd on his search. What an argument is this to labor for the conversion of one soul! It has often been made a cavil by students of astronomy that, if this globe of ours is only a mere speck in the starry universe, amid millions of starry planets, why should the Son of God single out this diminutive globe as the theater of his incarnation and sufferings? Why did he stoop to such a little world as ours? In reply to this cavil, Dr. Chalmers prepared and preached his magnificent “Astronomical Discourses.” But we think that this exquisite parable throws a hint of suggestive light on this problem. For, though we do not know that our Saviour ever went on an errand of redemption to any other planet, we do know that he came to this one of ours. We do not know that he went to stupendous Jupiter, or to belted Saturn, or to far-away Neptune. He did not go, perhaps, to the planet that was biggest in size, but to the one that was basest in sin. He came not “to the largest world, but to the lost world!” Ah! he may have left the “ninety and nine” glorious and gigantic orbs which never wandered, and sought out the single one in which lay a race of sinners lost in misery and guilt! There is one stroke in the parable which we must not lose sight of. It is that which depicts the exquisite joy of the Redeemer. When the Shepherd “findeth the sheep, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.” He is glad for the sake of the restored sheep; but still more for his own. It was for “the joy set before him that he endured the cross and despised the shame.” Into that sublime joy how many elements may enter! There must have been in my Saviour’s heart a holy ecstasy of love which pleased itself in doing good—in saving me when lost—in enduring suffering and sacrifice for my salvation. This sublime love of the Sin-bearer makes even the crown of thorns to flash as a diadem of splendors on the Redeemer’s bleeding brow. Here was the divine luxury of doing good. It is a sweet thought too that Jesus would have missed me if I had never been sought and brought back. As the shepherd in the story left the ninety and nine to hunt for a single straggler, so I may gladly hope that Jesus wanted me in Heaven, or else he would not have come so far or endured so much to save me. If I were left without him, there would have been one more soul in hell. But if he were left without me, there would be one soul the less to sing his praise in Heaven. He would have had one the less to present before his Father “with exceeding joy.” For observe that the sweet parable says nothing about the delight of the sheep in being found; it only depicts the exceeding joy of the shepherd in finding the wanderer. He calls his neighbors together to share his gladness. “Likewise there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” The common and inaccurate rendering of this text confines the joy to the angels only; as if it read, “among the angels.” Just as well say that the “neighbors” felt the thrill of gladness over the recovered sheep, and not the shepherd himself. The transcendent joy in Heaven over a saved soul is not confined to the angel bands. It is only witnessed by them and partially shared by them. It is “in their presence” that the celestial rapture breaks forth. But the supreme joy is in the bosom of the enthroned Redeemer. His was the sorrow, when he was “exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” His is the joy when he presents even one repentant sinner “before the presence of his glory.” He sees of the travail of his soul, and is satisfied. O beloved Saviour! When we behold thee on thy throne, the Shepherd amid his ransomed flock; thy victories complete; the last wandering sheep brought home; the last recovered jewel glittering in thy crown; then we will confess that the triumph was worthy of the toil, and the ransom of thy glorified church was worthy of all the bitter agonies of him who came to seek and to save the lost! “Worthy is the LAMB that was slain, to receive riches and strength and honor and glory and blessing forever and ever!”—CUTLER, in Independent.