Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1881-03-02
The Transfigured Cross.

Ihe cross OF Christ has in most won
drous way like the gittering eye of God,
held man spellbound, and made him listen
to its strange story "like a three years old
child" who "cannot choose but hear" Were
not the fact familiar, men would call it mir
aculous. Had its action and history been
capable of priori statement, it would have
seemed, even to the most credulous age, the
maddest of mad and unsubstantial dreams.
For it is not only that in the immense his
tory of human experience it stands alone,
fact without fellow, the most potent factor
of human good, yet with what seems the
least inherent fitness for it, but it even ap-
pears TO contradict the most certain and
common principles man has deduced from
his experience. We do not wonder at the
cross having been a stumbling-block to the
jew, and foolishness TO the Greek. We
should have wondered much more had it
been anything else. In the cross by itself
there was nothing to dignity and everything
to deprave. Men would at first interpret it
rather by its old associations than its new
meaning. 1t had by its positive achieve
ments to prove its peculiar significance and
merit before it could make out an indefeas-
ible claim on mans ratioual regard. But
the extraordinary thing was how, with its
ancient obloquy and intrinsic unsuitable
ness to its destined end it could ever accom-
plish any positive good. There would in
deed have been little to marvel at in the
posthumous fame and power of Christ. His
was a name and personality that could hardly.
but be made beautiful by death. One who had
been so loved and lovely could not fail to be
idealized when he lived only to the memory
too fond to forget and the imagination too
deeply touched to be prosaic. The dead are
holt a,,I -, tko,.
the living To lose is only to love more
deeply, to become more forgetful of faults
that panied, mindful only of virtues that en-
nobled and graces that adorned. Could we
love and think of our living as we love and
think of our dead, the loftiest dreams and
most hopeful prophecies as to human happi-
ness would be more than fulfilled. But
Christ's death was, in all that strikes the
senses, not one the memory could love to re-
call or the imagination so dwell on as TO
idealize and glorify. 1t was the worst the
men that hated him could think of-even
they were satisfied with its horror and shame.
1t made him, in the eyes of their law and
people, accursed. We can hardly imagine
what the cross then was-so different has it
now become. 1t stood almost below hatred,
was the instrument of death to the guitiest
and most servile Rome in her nobler and
| simpler days had not known it, had only,
when depraved by conquest and brutalized
by magnifcence, borrowed it from the baser
and crueler East. But she used it with
proud discrimination, too much respecting
herself in her meanest citizen to cruelty
| him,-crucifying, as rule, only the con-
quered, the alien, and the slave; M ,JS T9 he be
| simply to death but to dishonor, to be made
| a name hateful, infamous, whose chief good
was oblivion. But the very horror that sur
rounded the death now commended it to the
"chief priests and elders" The voice that
first cried Cruelty him" seemed to have
formulated a new and final argument against
all high divine claims-disproof by odium
refutation of the claim to the Messiahship
by the abhorred symbol Of shame and crime.
But Providence, by an irony infinitely subtler
and more terrible than the priests, was to
prove their genius but idiocy. Their elab-
crate attempt at refutation by odium be-
came only the most splendid opportunity
possible for the exercise of Christ's trans
forming might The cross did not eclipse
his name; his name transfgured the cross,
making it luminous, radiant, light for the
ages, the sign of the gentleness of God.
What is so extraordinary as the suddenness
and completeness of the changer Suddenly,
| ny INC Nci idSb VI Shiiot uJluS VI IL
ceased to be to the Imagination the old,
loathed instrument of death, and became the
symbol of life. In the very age
when the cross was most hated, when its
bad associations were intensest and most
vivid, Christ crucifed was preached as the
power and wisdom of God. And as ex-
traordinary as the preaching was its success:
=" The word of God grew mighty and pre-
vailed" If we think what the cross had
been to the centuries before Christ, then
what it has been to the centuries since
Christ, we may find it in some degree a
measure of the exaltation of him who could
so exalt it. His enemies meant it to make
an utter end of him and his cause, but he
made it the emblem Of the eternal reconcil-
iation worked through him Of God and man.
Their worst against him became their very
best for him. The setting of crime and
passion which they gave to his death only
makes it look the more divine, surrounds It
with glory more wonderful than any the
radiance Of heaven has ever woven out OF
the darkness of earth. The shadow Of the
cross is like the shadow of the sun, the light
and life of the world.-A.M. Fairbarn, DD