The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1907-10-07
.F|sRT SERMON OF
NEW PARSONAGE
Continued from Page one.)

power of His nation. something like
that EngIishman, whose name prob
ably no one Of us remembers, who
some years ago arose in service and
/ denounced certain ecclesiastical prac-
tises in one of the great churches OF
/ London. Jesus knew that he was a
/ nobody in the vast Roman Empire
| that his life and death would create
not so much as a ripple on the ocean
| surface of imperial affairs. He did not
| however, speak these words as pro-
test of disappointed conceit against His
| own inconspieuousness. They show no
suggestion of young Disraeli's rage, as
he shakes his fist at the British Com
mons, jeering his maiden speech. and
| thunders, You may laugh now, but the
| time is coming when you viii hear
me-" Our Master spoke so quietly that
only one man seems to have marked
| the saying. Tt was no boast. The mo-
ment was one of intensest agitation in
Jesus life-the narrative shows that.
All the conditions were present for a
Seer to look behind the veil like every
artist-and Jesus was the supreme
/ human Artistic looked; and saw two
pictures The first was Himself nall
!
men coming to Him as He hung there;
| the first merged into the second, like
dissolving view, but with the i'm
perative necessity of universal law.
What He saw He stated with the
crystal simplicity of all His great ut
| terances-''And I, if I be lifted up
from the earth, will draw all men unto
myself"
n n c.
ness. Every man sooner or later comes
| to face his own if, the memorable OBJ
stacle that threatens to bar his way
to the goal of worthy character His
own darling sin. his pet weakness
fronts him with the inevitable if-'If
only you can best me you may become
man. 1t is the real skeleton in the
closet of his inner life. beside which
all other breads are but phantoms. 1t
comes with him to each communion
festival, rattles its bones and with its
ghastly laugh rights him to .agonize
in prayer, Lord, give me the mastery
this time, that / may keep my tryste
with Thee two months hence at Thy
table, bearing the record of unstaineo
victory
So from birth until He cried out in
with Him the possibility of missing the
mark. From Genesis to Revelation in
both the Hebrew and the Greek the
most familiar picture of sin is failure
to hit the target. God gives each man
his mark, his target. Into every human
spirit, since the first day when man
became a living soul, the consciousness
of what he ought to be has been grad
81 ~ ~,
trail hottest truth he knows. That is
his mark. He spends his days in an
effort, often heroic, often careless, to
hit it. Jesus had His mark. He CALI
ed it Son of Man. Where did He get
it? First in the face of His mother,
when He was moved unconsciously to
strive to bring to it the gladdening JOY
of a smile. Next in the hearty well
DONE of His father Joseph, when. the
tired little boy hands had brought the
completed bit of childs carpentry. 1t
looked out at Him from the pages of
the books He loved best-Isaiah and
Psalms and Deuteronomy. 1t beckoned
Him in the play of His comrades,
where His spirit of fun and fairness
sweetened every sport. Nature whis-
pered it to Him as He sought her in
with His God, the image of what His
Father had for Him to be and for Him
to do rose before His large eyes, radi-
ant with a glory that three of His
disciples once saw in His TRANSPORTED
frame. How that consciousness dawn
ed upon His baby mind and grew into
such power that it forced its rea1iza-
ton in His life is the crowning ro-
tn
But Jesus felt in Himself the pos
sibility of missing this mark 1t was
the one great dread of His life, it met
Him in the lonely wilderness, it hall
looed its threat to Him in the cry
Grown Him King of the multitudes
near Bethsaida, it forced Him TO His
knees on the crags of Mt. Hermon and
wrestled with Him in sad Gethsemane
and I. if I be lifted up, if only do
not falter, if my will holds out, will
draw all men," Jesus knew He could
fail.
He was therefore no sham human.
In the early Christian centuries GER
tain theologians made Him just that
God masking as man. Our day, throb-
bling with passion to know the truth, |
will have none of this heresy For me
JCSuS IL SAdClIy WIldl raul GdIlSQ Kim,
God manifest in the fesh.' But be- |
cause He is this. He is the most in
tensely human man who ever lived |
He Is the embodiment of the humanity, |
the human ideal, of God. The poets
sing ITO err is human" 1t is a lie. |
To err is inhuman, bestial. 1t is not |
our manhood that errs. 1t is the ami |
NAL, the grating sneak-thief jackall, |
the sinuous snake, the numbering
tiger, the crafty fox, the singing
scorpion, the war lion, in us that sins. |
Don't you know that, every time you
miss your mark? 1t is something for
eign TO your real self, the Mister Hyde
to your Doctor Jekyl, that sins, not the
undying 1 but the fleeing transitory
earth soul. don't let it get the mas
terry!
Jesus made this clear for all time
With an animal nature as strong as
that which you and / possess, living
in the most groveling age in history
when passion was king, Jesus set
Himself to be a man. Others might
call Him Son of God. He called Hinn-
self Son of Man. He proved 1t nv