Читать книгу Our Master: Thoughts for Salvationists about Their Lord - Bramwell Booth - Страница 21

The new Century will demand an atonement for sin.

The consciousness of sin is the most enduring fact of human experience. From generation to generation, from age to age, amidst the ceaseless changes which time brings to everything else, this one great fact remains, persists--the condemning consciousness of sin. It appears with men in the cradle, and goes with them to the tomb; without regard to race, or language, or creed it is ever with us. It was this robbed Eden of its joys; it is this makes life a round of labour and sorrow; it is this gives death its terrors; it is this makes the place of torment which men call Hell--for the unceasing consciousness of sin will be "the worm that never dies."

All attempts to explain it away, to modify its miseries, to extract its sting--whether they have come from the party of unbelief, or the party of education, or the party of amusement, have failed--and failed utterly. No matter what men say or do to get rid of it, there it is--staring them in the face! Whether they look amongst the most highly civilized peoples or amongst the lowest savages; whether they look into the past history of mankind or into its present condition, there is the stupendous fact of sin, and there is the incontrovertible fact that everywhere men are conscious of it.

It is going to be so in this twentieth century. If God, in His mercy, allows the families of men to continue during another hundred years, this great fact will still stand out in the forefront of life. Sin will still be the skeleton at every feast, the horrid ghost haunting every home and every heart, the spectre, clothed with reproaches, ever ready to plunge his dripping sword into every breast.

Sin. The world's sin. The sin of this one generation. The sin of one city. The sin of one family. The sin of one man--my sin! Ah! depend upon it, the twentieth century will cry aloud, "What shall be done with our sin?"

Yet, thanks be to God! there is an atonement. The MAN of whom I write has made a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. He stands forth the ONLY SAVIOUR. None other has ever dared even to offer to the sin-stricken hearts of men relief from the guilt of sin. But He does. He can cleanse, He can pardon, He can purify, He can save, because He has redeemed. "Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us unto God by Thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation."

Will you come and join in our great world-mission of making His atonement known? Will you turn your back on the littleness, and selfishness, and cowardice of the past, and arise, in the strength of the God-Man, to publish to all you can reach, by tongue, and pen, and example, that there is a sacrifice for men's sins--for the worst, for the most wretched, for the most tortured? As you set your face with high resolve towards the unknown years, take your stand with THE MAN FOR ALL THE AGES; and let this be your message, your confidence, your hope for all men-"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!"