Читать книгу Our Master: Thoughts for Salvationists about Their Lord - Bramwell Booth - Страница 29

But if, on the human side, our Redeemer's origin and circumstances were of the humblest, and we are thus enabled to see His humanity, as it were face to face, there was united with it the Divine nature; so that as our Doctrines say, "He is truly and properly God, and He is truly and properly man." Many mysteries meet by the side of that manger, some of them to remain mysteries, so far as human understanding can grapple with things, till God Himself reveals them to our stronger vision in the world to come. But, blessed be God, some, things that we cannot compass with our mental powers are very grateful to our hearts.

How Thou canst love me as I am,

Yet be the God Thou art,

Is darkness to my intellect,

But sunshine to my heart.

And we to whom the Living Christ has spoken the word of life and liberty, although we may not now fully comprehend this great wonder of all wonders--God manifest in the flesh--and may not be able effectively to make it plain to others, we cannot for ourselves doubt its central truth--that God dwelt with man.

Here was, indeed, a perfect union of two spirits. There was the suffering and obedient spirit of the true man; there was the unchanging and Holy Spirit of the true God. It was a union--it was a unity. It was God in man--it was man in God. A being of infinite might and perfect moral beauty, sent forth from the bosom of the Father; and yet a being of lowly and sensitive tenderness, having roots in our poor human nature, tempted in all points like as we are, and touched with the feeling of all our infirmities.

Is it not to something of the same kind we are called? Is not every true Salvation Army Officer designed by God to be also (not, of course, in the same degree, but still up to the measure of his own capacity and of his Master's will) a dual, or two-fold creature, with associations and roots and attachments in all that is human, and yet with the divine life, the divine spirit, divine love, divine zeal, divine power, divine fire united with him and dwelling in him?

The perfect man would have been a great marvel, a great teacher, a great prophet; but without the God he could never have been the perfect Saviour. The Divine, without the human, would have been an awe-inspiring fact, a spectacle of holiness too great for human eyes; but He could not have been a Saviour. If it were possible for us to conceive the one without the other we should certainly not find a JESUS in either.

And so, your merely human Officer, no matter how pure, how strong, how thoughtful, how clever, how industrious, will fail, and ever fail. And even so the Officer who is lost in visionary seeking after the Divine alone, to the neglect of action, of duty, of law, of self-denial, of the common conflicts and contracts of the man, will equally fail, and always fail. It is the man we want. The man--but the man born of the Spirit. The MAN--but the man full of the Holy Ghost. The man--but the man with Pentecost blazing in his head and heart and soul.

Comrade, what are you? Are you striving to be a prophet without possessing the spirit of the prophets? Are you trying to be a priest without the priestly baptism? Are you labouring to be a king without the Divine anointing? Beware!