(Preached on Good Friday.)
“Praise and thanks be to Him who lifted up the Saviour on the cross as the bringer of salvation, that thereby He might glorify Him with heavenly glory! Praise and honour be to Him who by His obedience even unto death has become the Author of our faith, that so He may be able, as a faithful high-priest, to represent before God those whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. Amen.”
TEXT: LUKE xxiii. 44-49.
THE habit of expecting to find great events accompanied by strange portents is so old and so universal, that, though it might not shake our faith, we should miss a certain feeling of satisfaction, and should also be inclined to wonder, if all that took place in connection with the great event that we commemorate to-day had not been full of significance regarding the work of Christ, and the great end which the heavenly Father purposed to bring about by His death. But we find that it really was so. Looking at the sad and mournful spectacle of the death of Christ, sur rounded as He was by unfeeling enemies to the last moment, the watchful eye sees greatness and sublimity shining through all, and the believing heart is calmed and refreshed by clear tokens from above. Let us then in this light meditate together on the circumstances that accompanied the Saviour’s last hours; that our comfort and hope through His death may receive new strength, and that we may take a broader and more confident view of its blessed results. We will consider first the outward signs that accompanied the Saviour’s death, and then the effects which, according to the gospel narrative, those signs produced on the feelings of men.
I. When we look at the outward signs that accompanied our Lord’s death, we cannot resist a feeling that there must be some great and mysterious connection between the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of the Spirit and of grace. We take note of such a connection in all the great events that take place in the world. The endeavour to trace relations of this kind is indeed a somewhat dangerous practice for those who are only slightly acquainted with natural processes, and who, on every unusual natural occurrence, set themselves anxiously to wonder what it may indicate in the spiritual world. But right as it is to warn people against this, it is very different with those who are awake to all that pertains to the spiritual life, and who look at things from the other direction. In that case the finest feelings are called into play when we search into the natural signs that may accompany and correspond with the value of spiritual events. The discovery of this connection in the great course of the world’s government is the utmost, highest aim of the profoundest human wisdom and knowledge. But even in single instances, when anything great, either good or evil, occurs in the domain of the spirit, it is only the tenderest conscience that can teach us how to seek out significant signs in nature. Was it not just the consciousness of the divine in Christ that, as it were, compelled so many to discern, in the wonderful works that He accomplished, an evidence of His high dignity and mission? This connection appears at the time of His death full of significance, first in the darkening of the sun, and then in the rending of the temple veil.
It was about the sixth hour, says the evangelist, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour, and the sun was darkened. This darkness was not one of those eclipses which result, according to ascertained law, from the natural course of our earth and her attendant planet; it was a phenomenon out of the regular order of Nature, which covered the whole land with darkness, while the sun concealed or lost his light until the ninth hour, when the Saviour gave up His spirit. And then also,—and this is just the most significant point,—then the darkness ceased, and the extinguished sun beamed forth again in his brightness and spread abroad his beneficent light. Oh, my dear friends, that which made it necessary for the Saviour to appear on earth was the universal, mournful darkness of the human spirit through error, delusion, and sin; but still it was a special darkening of men’s spirits, not so easily to be explained by the laws of human nature, or appearing in a general way,—an abnormal darkening,—that could make them put to death, and that under pretext of God’s law, the man mighty in word and deed, whose teaching was in the Spirit and with power, who went about freeing those whose spirits were bound, and miraculously healing their sick; and it was to such a darkness that nature called attention when the sun was darkened in an unusual way. But inasmuch as it shone out at the moment of the Saviour’s death, oh, let that be truly a token to us, a more glorious token than the bow of peace that Noah saw on the cloud after the waters of the flood had subsided! As then the Lord said, “Let this be a sign between me and thee, that I will not again destroy the race of man,” so here, by the shining forth again of the darkened sun after the death of the Saviour, the Eternal says to us, Let this be a sign between Me and you that the darkening of the human soul is withdrawn and past. The light had come from heaven and shone into the darkness; and though the darkness had not yet welcomed it, though the cross was surrounded by a crowd of the very most darkened spirits, yet the light was now to hold a permanent place in human nature; its kingdom was founded, and in the gracious counsel of God it was decreed that this heavenly light, proceeding from a point which at that time appeared so insignificant, should go on spreading ever more widely, and the power of the faith kindled and cherished by this light should triumph over the world and all its darkness. It is true that in the history of the gospel and of the kingdom of God there have often been times of darkness; it is true that the followers of the light that appeared in Christ Jesus have often, like Him, been put to death by the children of darkness; but the servant cannot expect to fare better than his Lord, and the darkness which made such treatment possible towards the servants of the Most High,—weak and sinful, though truly chosen men,—must be regarded as less deep than that in which men could so act towards the anointed of the Lord Himself. Therefore the assertion still holds good, that the cessation of that darkness was the great turning point in the history of men, and in the development of their spiritual nature. From Adam down wards the Spirit was working with growing power through the revelation of God written on the hearts of men; but the darkness could not thus be entirely dispelled. For from the beginning the flesh lusted against the Spirit, and took pleasure in the darkness, and kept back truth in unrighteousness. In this continually renewed struggle divine voices were ever coming to aid the hearts of men; but the victory of the light over the darkness became decisive only in the death of the Lord, when the kingdom of light was established, and the Lord’s work accomplished. Those who are buried with Him in His death rise with Him to a new life; those who renounce the darkness of sin which the Prince of Life vanquished on the cross shall have His life manifested in them from glory to glory.