THE PREACHER'S STUDY
greater disclosures Christ has yet to make to us, not backward to the record of past attainment. Or suppose that one day, feeling constrained—as you often—will to lead your people to the very crux of God's dealings with them, you take the texts from Hebrews: "It was not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins"; "He hath appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." Your theme is man's desperate dilemma and God's decisive answer. You begin by remarking that the whole history of humanity has been the record of the age-long endeavour to answer the stubborn question. How to make peace with life. How to be right with God. You proceed to point to three classic answers to the problem, three historic expedients which have been tried: the answer of the Jew, the answer of the Greek, the answer of the Roman. You show that each of us has in his constitution something of all three: something of the Jew, who hoped to deal with sin by the intricacies of a religious cult; something of the Greek, who thought to deliver his soul aesthetically and intellectually; something of the Roman, who trusted to moralism and disciplined conduct. Finally, where all three answers break down, through the night of man's despair comes God's answer, smiting the darkness like a sudden dawn. Every other experiment fails: only Christ's —the experiment of the Cross—triumphantly succeeds.
All for sin could not atone:
Thou must save, and Thou alone.
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