Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 271, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1917 — CHRIST’S SUPREME SACRIFICE [ARTICLE]

CHRIST’S SUPREME SACRIFICE

His Earthly Life, Strong and Beautiful, Was a Journey Toward Death on the Cross. Our Lord’s life on earth, strong and beautiful though it was, was really at the same time his procedure toward death. He lived as one laying down his life, not merely in one great sacrifice at the close, but from step to step along his whole earthly history. With no touch of the morbid or the fanatical, yet his course, in practice, had to be one of selLlmpoverishment, of loneWness, of-aetpnlntance with energetic hostility of sin and sinners. It had to be so if it was to be faithful. He knew not where to lay his head; he endured the contradiction of sinners against himself; he came unto his own, and his own received him not. Even his friends, whom he loved, and who loved him tn their Imperfect way, did. not love him wisely or magnanimously, and constantly became occasions of temptation which had to be resisted. Pain and trial were the inevitable characters of the work given him to do. It lay in his calling to put a strong and faithful negative on the natural desire for safety, for happiness, for congenial society and surroundings, for free and unembarrassed life All thls he bad steadily to postpone to a period beyond, the grave, and meanwhile make his way to the final crisis, at which, under a mysterious burden of extreme sorrow, accepted, as. the Savior’s proper portion, he died for our sins.—Robert Rainy.