LET ME SEE CHRIST CRUCIFIED.
By Dr. J. E. Lancely
O MY sin-absolving, soul-healing Saviour! let me see thee, not as thou sattest in thy splendor on the mount of transfiguration, enrobed in blinding beauty, thy garments white and glistening, thy countenance shining as the sun; but let me see thee straining beneath thy sad burden up the steep of Calvary, thy back furrowed and bleeding with the chastisement for my peace; let me see thee “lifted up” to the vengeance of heaven, the malice of earth, the fury of hell; for when I see thee thus, I see the guilt of man, and mine, forever put away, the sin at once condemned and pardoned; and as I gaze on thee, in thy bitter agony, I feel that to me, even me, the bitterness of death is passed. O Christ! thy death wears to the eye of faith all the blooming hues of immortal life; every groan which escapes thy lips speaks out a gospel of bliss, and that accursed tree appears to me as the “tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God.” O brethren, it is God's way, not ours! We cannot explain it. It is the better, not the worse, for that. We can study it, contemplate it, prove its efficacy, and then make it our glory. We must put it where the Christ himself put it,—in the first place. It will astonish and perplex the philosophers, as it does. To the Jew spirit it will be always a “stumbling block,” and to the Greek spirit “foolishness;” but it must not be put aside or made secondary on that account; for “to them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, it will be the power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”—Dr. J. E. Lancely.