BLOOD, which no longer remains confined to the veins, but issues forth, and is seen, affects the nerves of your eye unpleasantly, and makes you shudder.
Shudder; which, according to the nature of the case, occasions very different motions in your heart. Shudder; which makes you run when that blood spells danger to your own blood. Shudder; which makes you offer sympathetic, saving help, when life has not yet ebbed away with the blood. Or, shudder; which rouses the passion of revenge in you, when murder has been committed, and from the shed blood a voice cries for vengeance unto God.
Blood, as it issues forth and stains the ground red before your eyes, takes violent hold of you. The sight of blood, as it reminds you of death, or threatens death, at once takes you out of your ordinary train of thought, makes you oblivious of all things else, and rivets all your attention upon this human life, that already has died, or may die.
Ezekiel, the mighty prophet in Israel, transfers this violent emotion to God the Lord, even where there was no mention of “shed blood”.
“When I passed by thee,” so speaks the Lord God through Ezekiel in the sixteenth .chapter, the sixth verse, “when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.” Here both in language and tone speaks the vehemence of emotion at the sight of blood. And this is added: “No eye pitied thee, to have compassion upon thee.” In man the human was blunted. But with God there was compassion, and at the sight of the lukewarm motherblood, in which the newborn infant bathed itself, the language of compassion goes out. “I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood: Live.”
And this vehemence of emotion at the sight of blood, increases as danger becomes more imminent. You face a small wound, but every wound, as it bleeds more freely, affects you. When streaming blood forms a pool, disquiet overmasters you. When the red of blood contrasts itself against the sheet-white of the face, your disquiet and anxiety become terror. And when the blood, which you see on the corpse, speaks of murder, it is as though your own blood congeals in the veins.
There is nothing that disconcerts one more vehemently than the sight of such shed human blood. Passion can excite you to bloodthirstiness. But however much on the field of battle the eye may steel itself against blood, the moment the fierceness of battle is ended, the sight of the shed blood is equally dreadful again, because you feel that in this blood human life has flowed out.
“The soul is in the blood”, thus spake Moses already in the wilderness to the people that had been led out.
And this is it.
In human blood undulates human life. When that blood is shed, the soul itself is gone from the body. And therefore shed blood addresses your soul so vehemently, and makes your own blood so disquieted within you.
NEVER should the blood of a single man have been poured out.
The blood is the stream within us, which bears our life. Our flesh and bone are as the bedding, through which our blood flows. It courses through our heart with every pulsebeat. And the more violently our feeling is aroused, the quicker the blood hastens through our veins, yea, rushes up, suffusing the face.
But blood must remain closed up. It must remain hidden. Even where it crimsons our face, and strains our flesh, and visibly courses through our veins,—as blood it should never be seen.
When Cain slew his brother Abel, and the blood of Abel flowed out, human blood showed itself for the first time to the human eye.
Here is the sin.
Sin, that destroys the soul, does not rest, until it has also rendered the human body undone. And it keeps on, till the blood, that bare the life and therefore remained hidden, issues out through wounded tissue, and with it carries off human life.
Only in poured-out blood does sin find its consummation. Then it can not go further. Then it has treacherously slain the man, who let it in.
And for this reason, fallen man is not saved except through blood.
One calls the Scripture lovely, and the Gospel tender; but throughout the whole of Scripture there is mention again and again of a stream of blood that must be waded through, that there might be escape from sin; and that Gospel knows no peace save through the blood of the cross.
Embracing the whole Gospel in His person and suffering, Jesus took the cup full of red wine, and said to His disciples: This cup is the blood of the New Testament, My blood, that is shed for the forgiveness of sins.
Outside of the Scripture sounds also the selfsame voice from human history. Boldest imagination itself forms no idea of the sea of human blood that has been poured out upon the earth, that human life might be lifted up to higher levels.
It is true, war is horrible. Nothing is more awful. The heart shudders at it. And yet, the nations that have not found courage in their blood, to whet the sword for fatherland, for liberty, for independence, have languished, have perished. And those peoples alone, who inspired by heroic courage, have not esteemed their own blood, have risen to influence and power.
What God said through Ezekiel: “I say unto you in your blood, live,” is the Divine utterance which finds its confirmation also in the history of nations.
From every conflict “unto blood” the nation ever rose up renewed, rejuvenated, refreshed. The otherwise slumbering powers were awakened. Higher energy developed itself in every realm of life. Imposing forms, great figures, men who interpret the life of an age, have risen up in richest numbers after and from such a conflict, from a conflict that went unto blood.
With such a conflict a cry of rejoicing, a cry of admiration goes up from those who witness it.
When your blood flows for the sake of right and truth, the seriousness of life has reached its highest degree and tension.
Then it means business. Then the thrill of existence goes through to the deepest bottom of life. See it anywhere.
The hireling fights splendidly, and yet he does not inspire. What inspires is a people, that pours out its blood for its holiest pledges.
Yet “the blood of Abel” says still more.
Cain was Abel’s brother, and why slew he Abel? Why else than because Abel believed, because Abel was righteous, because Abel pleased God, and because Abel’s fear of God allowed Cain’s conscience no rest.
The blood of Abel is the blood of the righteous, that is presumptuously shed by the unrighteous in violation of right.
And this is the blood, that cries unto God.
Did not God say to Cain: There is a voice of blood, of your brother, which cries unto Me from the ground.
So is martyrblood. The blood, which, as Scripture says, when Babylon is destroyed, shall be found beneath its ruins.
If by the blood of heroes States have been built, the blood of Abel builds the Kingdom of God.
It is a going into death, as seeing the Invisible, capturing eternal life; in full assurance that from blood thus shed seed shall germinate, whose matured blossom shall diffuse fragrance to the glory of God.
It is to show that one believes, and by his faith has laid hold on a reality, which in power and inspiration far excels, everything that is before one’s eyes.
So Abel fell, when his brother slew him, and no one saw it but God, and no human eye had compassion upon him, till Adam and Eve found the bloodless corpse, and confided it to the earth.
So fell the prophets, whose blood was poured out on the earth, to the blood of Zacharias, the son of Berechias, whom fanatical Jews killed between the temple and the altar.
So fell the martyrs of God’s church, who became prey to the maws of lions, who were put to the wheel, were burned in the fire, or whose head fell on the place of shame.
And yet in all this Abel, the apostles, and God’s martyrs bare but the shadow of what was made perfect upon Golgotha.
There alone the blood has been poured out.
That blood, which speaks still better things than the blood of Abel. The blood of the Lamb of God!