The Attraction of the Cross 3

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III. I shall now consider the EFFECTS which the doctrine of the cross has produced. Contemplate the mighty wonders which were wrought by the cross during the apostolic age. It is a fact that the personal ministry of our Lord was attended by comparatively little success. While exhibiting an example in which the uncreated glories of the Godhead mingled their splendor with the milder beauties of the perfect man, while working miracles brighter than the sun, and preaching morality purer than the light—but few were attracted to his cause. We do not read that a single soul was converted by the sublime discourse upon the Mount. But no sooner was he crucified, and his death had become the theme of apostolic preaching, than Christianity assumed a new aspect.

The scene of its first triumphs was Jerusalem. Those simple words of Peter addressed to the Jews on the day of Pentecost, "Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken, and with wicked hands have crucified and slain," wounded three thousand to the heart, and drew them, with weeping and supplication, to look on him whom they had pierced. For a long season, as often as the cross was exhibited, multitudes of the seed of Israel became the trophies of its power. We might have expected it to be successful anywhere rather than there. The inhabitants of Jerusalem had many circumstances in their case which opposed it with the strongest resistance. They had seen all that was repulsive and forbidding—in its exterior aspect.

They had beheld the Crucified One in the very lowest stage of his humiliation; they had seen him covered with shame and spitting, the object of derision, the butt of ridicule, lifted up in the place of public execution, associated with malefactors in his death—and expiring in a way that, according to their own law, rendered him accursed. In addition to this, they had all the consciousness that they themselves had put him to death; which, even if they could admit that he was the Messiah, seemed to throw them to the greatest possible distance from his mercy. They heard the apostles charging them with his murder, and knew the truth and justice of the accusation. Moreover, if they became this man's disciples, it was necessary they should abandon their fond and long cherished hopes of a temporal prince and worldly domination. Yet even there, and over all these prejudices and obstacles, did the doctrine of the cross so remarkably triumph, as to fill Jerusalem with its followers; and vast multitudes, who had remained unallured by the splendor of his living miracles, were captivated and subdued by the spectacle of his dying agonies! Where, I ask, in the language of triumphant exultation, may we not expect it to prove successful, when it subdued the guilt, the fear, the pride, and the bigotry of those very men, by whom the crucifixion itself was effected?

We have heard much of the bigotry of the heathen, especially of that bigotry as fortified in the East by the adamantine bond of caste. But what is the power of caste, when set in opposition to the rod of Jehovah's strength? No matter what is the deity which is at the head of their idols; no matter what the distinctions of the privileged order, or what the reproaches to which their voluntary forfeiture exposes them, let the Brahmin only look by faith to the crucified Savior, and that moment the altar and the god sink together to the dust—his soul swells beyond the measure of her chains, which burst from around her like the green ropes of the Philistines from the arms of Sampson—and the regenerated spirit walks abroad, amidst the whole family of God, greeting them in the language of the apostle, "Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity."

When the Apostles and Evangelists were driven by the storms of persecution from Judea, they turned to the Gentiles, "preaching Christ in every place." One of the earliest scenes of their labor, after they had passed the confines of the holy land, was ANTIOCH, a city, which, with the beautiful grove of Daphne in its neighborhood, was so utterly abandoned to licentiousness as to be shunned by every heathen who had any regard to his reputation, and to give rise to the phrase, "horrid Daphne morals," which expressed the utmost corruption of their morals and manners. "Those who had been scattered as a result of the persecution that started because of Stephen made their way as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the message to no one except Jews. But there were some of them who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Hellenists, proclaiming the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord." (Acts 11:19-21)

In that scene of lecherousness, debauchery, and voluptuous sin, was the truth so remarkably successful as to originate a new name for the followers of Jesus, and the "disciples were called Christians first at Antioch." Tell me in what country, however abandoned to depravity, we may despair of the triumphs of the cross, when it expelled the votaries of Bacchus and Venus from the grove of Daphne; raised a magnificent church upon the site of the temple of Apollo, converted this haunt of vice into the walk of Christian meditation, and taught even the inhabitants of Antioch, to "deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present evil world."

CORINTH was another of the cities into which Christianity made an early and victorious entrance. This was a place of great renown in its day. Such were its commerce, its science, its temples, and its schools, that the prince of Roman orators denominated it "the light of all Greece", and another writer called it the ornament of Greece. Its elegance, however, was exceeded by its vice. Lasciviousness was carried to such a pitch in this most abandoned city, that in the language of those times the appellation of a 'Corinthian' given to a woman imported that she had lost her virtue; and "corinthianize," or to behave as a Corinthian, spoken of a man, was the same as to say, that he was given up to lecherousness and debauchery. To this scene of iniquity did the apostle direct his course, like the sunbeam to the stagnant lake, not to partake of its impurity, but to draw from it a pure and beneficial exhalation.

And how did he attempt the reformation of this dissolute people? Did he begin by descanting upon the deformities of vice, and reading lectures in praise of virtue? Nothing of the sort! He himself shall inform us. In writing to his converts he tells them, "And I brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, except Jesus Christ and him crucified." And at Corinth was the attraction of this truth so irresistible, as to raise one of the most considerable of the primitive churches there, to which no small portion of the New Testament was addressed.

These, however, are but instances selected from a general course of exertion and success. Wherever the apostles went, the doctrine of the cross was the theme of their public discourses, and the topic of their more private instruction. Whether standing amidst the luxury of Corinth, the schools of Athens, the overwhelming grandeur of Rome, or the hallowed scenes of Jerusalem, they presented this to all men alike. They did not conceal the 'ignominy of the accursed tree' behind the sublime morality of the gospel, and permit the 'unsightly object' to steal out only disguised, and by degrees. No! They immediately exhibited the naked cross—as the very foundation of the religion which they were commissioned and inspired to promulgate. When the Jew on one hand was demanding a sign, and the Greek on the other was asking for wisdom, they replied to both, "we preach Christ crucified!"

They never courted the philosopher by a exhibition of science; nor the orator by a blaze of eloquence; nor the curious by the aid of novelty. They tried no experiments, made no digressions. Feeling the power of this sublime truth in their own souls; enamored by the thousand, thousand charms with which they saw the preaching of the cross attended; emboldened by the victories which followed its career; and acting in obedience to the divine authority, which regulated all their conduct; they kindled into rapture amidst the scorn and rage of an ungodly world; and in the fervor of their zeal, threw off an impassioned sentiment, which has been returned in distinct echo from every Christian land, and been adopted as the watch-word of an evangelical ministry, "God forbid that I should glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!"

Wonderful was the effect of their labor. A revolution more extraordinary than history records, or imagination could have conceived, was everywhere effected, and this by what the men who gave laws to the opinions of the world, derided as "the foolishness of preaching." The powers of paganism beheld the worshipers of the gods drawn away from their shrines by an influence which they could neither understand nor resist. Not the authority of the Olympian Jove, nor the seductive rites of the Paphian goddess, could any longer retain the homage of their former votaries. The exquisite beauty of their temples and their statues, with all those fascinations which their mythology was calculated to exert upon a people of refined taste and wicked habits, became the objects not only of indifference, but abhorrence.

And millions by whom the cross must have been contemplated with mental revulsion as a matter of taste, embraced it with ecstacy as the means of salvation. The idolatrous rites were deserted, the altars overturned, the deities left to sympathize with each other in dumb consternation, the lying oracles were hushed, the deceptive light of philosophy was extinguished, Satan fell like lightning from heaven, while the ministers of light rose with the number, the order, and the brilliancy of the stars. Resistance promoted the cause it intended to oppose, and persecution like the wind of heaven blowing upon a conflagration, served to spread the flame. In vain "did the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord." The imperial eagle collecting all her strength, and rousing all her fury, attacked the Lamb of God, until she, too, subdued and captivated by the cross, cowered beneath its emblem, as it floated from the towers of the capitol, and Christianity, with the purple waving from her shoulders, and the diadem sparkling upon her brows, was proclaimed to be the Truth of God and the empress of the world, on that throne of the Caesars before which she had been so often arraigned as a criminal, and condemned as an impostor.

What an illustrious proof is there in all this of the divine authority of the New Testament. The men who set out on the project of converting the world from idolatry and irreligion, with no instrument but a cross, and no patronage but his who was crucified upon it, must either have been mad or inspired, and the result proves which was the fact.

Since the apostles fell asleep, and others have entered upon their unfinished labors, has not this continued to be the means by which nations have been subjugated to the sway of religion? I appeal to the records of ecclesiastical history. What was it, I ask, which, by the instrumentality of Luther and Melancthon, and Calvin, and Zwingle, dissolved the power of the Beast on the continent of Europe, and drew a third part of his worshipers within the pale of a more scriptural communion? It was the doctrine of justification by faith in the blood of Christ.

David Brainerd, the apostle of the American Indians, has left an essay to inform the world that it was by preaching Christ crucified that he was enabled to raise a Christian church in the desolate wilds where he labored, and among a barbarous people devoted to witchcraft, drunkenness, and idolatry.*

* "I cannot but take notice," he remarks, "that I have, in the general, ever since my first coming among these Indians in New Jersey, been favored with that assistance, which to me is uncommon in preaching Christ crucified, and making him the center and mark to which all my discourses among them were directed. God was pleased to help me 'not to know anything among them except Jesus Christ and him crucified.' And this was the preaching God made use of for the awakening of sinners, and the propagation of this work of grace among the Indians; and it was remarkable, from time to time, that when I was favored with any special freedom in discoursing of the ability and willingness of Christ to save sinners, and the need they stood in of such a Savior, there was then the greatest appearance of divine power in awakening numbers of self-secure souls. And it is worthy of remark, that numbers of these people are brought to a strict compliance with the rules of morality and sobriety, and to a conscientious performance of the external duties of Christianity, by the internal power and influence of divine truths, the peculiar doctrines of grace, upon their minds.

And God was pleased to give these divine truths such a powerful influence upon the minds of these people, that their lives were quickly reformed, without my insisting upon the precepts of morality and spending time in repeated harangues upon external duties. When these truths were felt at heart, there was now no vice unreformed, no external duties neglected. Drunkenness, the darling vice, was broken off from, and scarcely an instance known of it among my hearers for months together. The practice of husbands and wives in divorcing each other, and taking others in their stead, was quickly reformed, so that there are three or four couples who have voluntarily dismissed those they had taken, and now live together again in love and peace. The same might be said of all other wicked practices. The reformation was general, and all springing from the internal influence of divine truth upon their hearts, and not from any external restraints, or because they had heard their vices particularly enforced, and repeatedly spoken against. Some of them I never so much as mentioned, particularly that of the parting of men and their wives, until some having their conscience awakened by God's word, came and of their own accord confessed themselves guilty in that respect." (See Brainerd's Journal, Edwards's Works, vol. 3, p. 416.)

The Moravian Missionaries, those holy, patient, unostentatious servants of our Lord, have employed with peculiar effect these heaven-appointed means, in converting and civilizing the once pilfering and murderous Eskimos. With these, have they also "dared the terrors of an Arctic sky, and directing their adventurous course through the floating fields and frost-reared precipices that guard the secrets of the Pole," have caused the banner of the cross to wave over the throne of everlasting winter, and warmed, with the love of Christ, the bosom of the shivering Greenlander.

Mr. Kicherer, when he first labored among the Hottentots, proceeded upon the plan recommended by some modern sociologists. He tried to civilize their habits, as a preparatory process for communicating to them the principles of religion; but every effort failed, until he was obliged to try that last, which he should have done first, and proved by an additional experiment that the doctrine of the cross is the only certain method of improving the moral condition of the world. And what is it which, at this moment, is kindling the intellect, softening the manners, sanctifying the hearts and purifying the lives of the numerous tribes of the degraded sons of Ham? It is the "faithful saying, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." It is this, poured in artless strains from the lips of our missionaries, and sent home to the soul by the power of the Holy Spirit, which is more than realizing the fable of Amphion's lyre, and raising up the stones of African deserts, into the walls of the church of God.

O, had the cannibal inhabitants of Tahiti been persuaded to renounce their wretched superstition and cruel customs, by any efforts of a purely rational nature; had the emissaries of 'philosophy' been the instruments of their conversion, and had the gods of Pomare been sent home by them, to be deposited in the British Museum, instead of the Missionary Rooms, how would the world have rung with the praises of 'all-sufficient Reason'. New temples would have been raised to this modern Minerva, while all the tribes of the heathen would have been seen moving in triumphal procession to her shrine, chanting as they went the honors of their illustrious goddess. But yours, O crucified Redeemer! yours is the power, and yours shall be the glory of this conquest. Those islands of the Southern Sea shall be laid at your feet, as the trophies of your cross, and shall be added as fresh jewels to your mediatorial crown!

And indeed, not to leave our own age, or our own land—do we not see all around us the attractions of the cross? What is it that guides and governs the tide of religious popularity, whether it roll in the channels of the Establishment or those of Dissent? Is it not this which causes the mighty influx of the spring tide in one place, and is it not the absence of it which occasions the dull retiring ebb in another? Yes, raise me but a barn, in the very shadow of Saint Paul's Cathedral, and give me a man who shall preach Christ crucified with something of the energy which that 'all inspiring theme' is calculated to awaken, and in spite of the baseness of the one, and the magnificence of the other, you shall see the former crowded with the warm and pious hearts of living Christians, while the matins and vespers of the cathedral, if the gospel be not preached there, shall be chanted only to the cold statues of the mighty dead.

To conclude this part of my discourse, where, I ask, and when, was there an idolatrous nation converted to Christianity, or a lukewarm church reclaimed from indifference; when was there minister at home, or missionary abroad, who was successful in bringing sinners unto God through Christ, by any other system than that which I have before described? This has ever been successful, and with the proofs of its power embodied in the records of its victories, can we, who have adopted it as the instrument of our warfare, doubt for a moment of its ultimate and universal triumph?

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