The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1896-04-30


exile was far from home. It is ninety
five million miles from here to the
sun, and all astronomers agree in say
ing that our solar system is only one
of the smaller wheels Of the great
machinery of the universe turning
around some one great center, the
center SO far distant it is beyond all
ina ination and calculation, and, if,
as some think, that great center in
the distance is heaven, Christ came
far from home when He came here.
Have you ever thought of the home
sickness Of Christ? Some Of you know
what Inconsistencies is when you have
been only a few weeks absent from
the domestic circle. Christ was thirty
three years away from home. Some
of you feel inconsistencies when you
are a hundred or thousand miles
away from the domestic circle. Christ
was more million miles away from
home than you could count if all your
life you did nothing but count. You
know what it is to be homesick even
amid pleasant surroundings, but
Christ slept in huts, and He was
athirst, and He was a-hungered, and
He was on the way from being born
in another mans barn to being buried
in another mans grave.
l have read how the Swiss, when
they are far away from their native
country, at the sound Of their national
air get so homesick that they fall into
melancholy and sometimes they die
under the inconsistencies. But oh! the
Inconsistencies Of Christ. Poverty home
sick for celestial riches. Persecution
hoinesick for hosanna. WEAKNESS
hOmesick for rest. HOmeSlck Tor an
gelic and archangelic companionship.
Homesick to get out of the night and
the storm and the worlds execratlon.
Hone Sickness will make a week seem
as long as month, and it seems to
| me that the three decades of Christ's
residence on earth must have seemed
to Him almost interminable. You have
| often tried to measure the other pangs
| Of Christ, but you have never tried
to measure the magnitude and ponder
osity Of a Savior's inconsistencies:
1 take step further and tell you
that Christ was in an exile which He
knew would end in assassination. Hol-
man Hunt, the master painter, has a
picture in which he represents Jesus
Christ In the Nazarene carpenter shop.
Around him are the saws, the ham
mers, the axes, the drills of carpentry.
| The picture represents Christ, as us
ing from the carpenters working bench
and YEARLY stretching out His arms,
as one will after being in contracted or
uncomfortabl posture, and the light
of that picture is so arranged that the
arms of Christ, wearily stretched forth,
together with His body, throw on the
wall the shadow Of the cross. Oh, my
friends, that shadow was on every
| ~, ;ct, n
a cross on the Bethlehem sWaddling
clothes. Shadow of a cross on the
road over which the three fugitives
Lake Ga1iiee as Christ walked its
mosaic floor Of opal and emerald and
crystal. Shadow of a cross on the
. road to Emmaus. Shadow of cross
on the brook Kedron, and on the tenn
pie, and on the side Of Oliyet. Shad-
oW of a cross on sunrise and sunset.
Constantine, marching with his army
saw just once a cross in the sky, but
Christ saw the cross all the time
On rough journey we cheer our
4 selves with the fact that it will end in
warm hospitality; but Christ knew
that his rough path would end at a
defoliaged tree without one leaf and
with only two branches, bearing fruit
Of such bitterness as no human lips
had ever tasted. Oh! what an exile
starting in an infancy without any
cradle, and ending in assassination.
Thirst without any water. Day with
out any sunlight. The doom of a des-
4 perado for more than angelic excel
lence. For what that expatriation and
that exile? Worldly good sometimes
comes from worldly evil. The acct
dental glance Of a sharp blade from a
razor grinders wheel put out the eye
of Gambetta and excited sympathies
which gained him an education and
started him on a career that made his
name more majestic among French
men than any other name in the last
twenty years. Hawthorne, turned out
Of the office of collector at Salem, went
home in despair. His wife touched him
on the shoulder and said, "NOW is the
time to write your BOOK and his ia
nous "Scarlet Letter" was the bril-
liant consequence. Worldly good some
times comes from worldly evil. Then
be not unbelieving when I tell you
that from the greatest crime of all
eternity and of the whole universe,
the murder of the Son of God, there
shall come results which shall eclipse
all the grandeurS Of eternity past and
eternity to come Christ, an exile from
heaven, opening the way for the depor-
tation toward heaven and to heaven
Of all those who will accept the prof
fer. Atonement, a ship large enough
/ to take all the passengers that will
come aboard it.
For the royal exile I bespeak the
4 love and service Of all the exiles here
present, and, in one sense or the other,
that includes all of us. The gates of
this continent have been SO widely
opened that there are here many vol
untary exiles from other lands. Some
i Of you are Scotchmen. see it in your
high cheek bones, and in the color that
! illumines your face when l mention
/ the land Of your nativity.
Bonnie Scotland! Dear old kirk!
Some Of your ancestors sleeping in
4 Greyfriars churchyard, or by the deep
lochs filed out Of the pitchers Of
heaven. or under the heather some
times SO deep Of color that it makes
one think Of the blood of the Cove.
.nanters, who signed their names for