CHAPTER VIII. THE REPROACH OF CHRIST. "O thou who mournest on thy way, The dear Lord ordereth all things well."" "Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.”—HEBREWS 11: 26. THERE shone before Moses in the future a recompense of reward that attracted him upward and onward continually. In reference to the past, he had a faith resting on the promises of God, which sustained and strengthened him, and became the victory that overcame the world. We have, in this verse which I have selected as the subject of reflection, the true estimate of what the world dreads as its great calamity, "reproach;" and of what the world loves as its choicest treasure, "the riches of Egypt." We have here the instance of one who is not a solitary fact, but a precedent, a model for us; for nothing was done by the saints of God of old that may not in the same strength be done by God's arm is not shortened, God's ear is not heavy. It is still true, "My strength is made perfect in weakness." My grace is sufficient for thee." us. The two things that are brought before us in this passage correspond to the two we have considered, namely, "affliction with the people of God," and "the pleasures of sin for a season." Moses chose the first, and repudiated, in that choice, of necessity, the last. He esteemed the "reproach of Christ " corresponding to the "affliction" of the former verse as "greater riches;" or found in it a mine of richer gold than he discovered by his enlightened eye in all the treasures of the wealthiest land of ancient times, even "the treasures of Egypt." Let us look at this reproach, here asserted as "the reproach of Christ," or the reproach that ever veils and clouds from the world the great beauty and glory of the people of Christ; and we shall find that in every age of the world, just in proportion as the lustre of Christian character has broken forth, clouds and reproach have been heaped upon the people of God. It is when the Christian character reaches its greatest brightness, that, provoked by it, the reproaches of the world are most multiplied and heaped upon it. It is well known that when the sun, by the very excess of his brilliancy and heat, draws forth from the earth the moisture that ascends into the sky, becomes consolidated into clouds, that ultimately seem for a season to darken his splendor, the very same beams that raised the clouds dissolve them into showers that fertilize the earth, and refresh the fainting violet and the parched grass, and give bulk and volume and speed to the rivers that water the earth. And, looking at the history of the people of God, we shall find that reproach has ever been more or less their account. The persecution, so called, of Isaac, was reproach. Job, the patriarch, was reproached by his friends, and by Satan. The builders in the days of Nehemiah were treated as weak, ignorant and contemptible men. David says of himself, “I am a reproach to the people." The apostles also were reviled at the day of Pentecost as fanatics and drunkards, but they said, "Being defamed, we entreated." And, coming down to later times, what has been the predominant characteristic of the papal hierarchy ?- the habit of reproaching the people of God, and especially Luther, the Reformer. The fables they have invented, and the publications they have written, in order to blacken that bright character, are only evidences to those who know it, and know what he was, that reproach followed him because he was so much more truly in Christ than the multitude that were about him. Calvin's character has been also misrepresented as a fatalist. The descriptions given by Romish writers of his death are most horrible, but most untrue; for none so truly believed, none so purely lived, none so magnanimously and nobly died. But so it will be. The brightest light has always in this world the darkest shadow; the living epistles never will be without the comments, the blackening comments, of those that cannot endure their light. The reproach of Christ is the reproach of his people still. But, whilst looking at it in this light, we must also recollect that every reproach we meet with as Christians may not be necessarily the reproach of Christ. Sometimes our own infirmities provoke the animadversion of the world. Sometimes the inconsistencies of Christians draw down reproach; and when our inconsistency, infirmity or sin, provokes the scorn of the world, it is not right to call such scorn the reproach of Christ, although it be perfectly true that the least falter in a Christian's footstep is by an Argus-eyed world denounced as a fatal fall, the least infirmity in a Christian man's character is magnified into a grievous crime, and an unguarded expression incidentally dropped is construed by the world. that watches as a great calumny. The same world that most charitably construes its own sin denounces in a Christian the falter of a word. When the world looks at its own transgressions, it views them through a diminishing medium, by which they are diminished into infinitesimal molecules; but when the world views a Christian's failing, falter or infirmity, it looks through a magnifying medium, and sees it increased and exaggerated to the most gigantic size. We must, therefore, recollect that we live in a watchful world; that the more of a Christian one professes to be, the more need one has to walk watchfully, and circumspectly, if possible avoiding not. only evil, but the very appearance of it; for they that know the world best will readily acknowledge its disposition to make a slight slip of the tongue, a short falter in the step, the least excess in the temper, a reason for rejecting the whole testimony of God, and blackening the claims of Christianity itself. But, while we must guard against such reproach as this, yet there is a reproach incurred by the people of God which is here very appropriately called "the reproach of Christ." There is not a doctrine of the Gospel that is not perverted or misinterpreted by the world. The truths we hold, the graces we develop, are equally caricatured by the enemies that wait to do so. For instance, election is denounced by some as fatalism. Let a man only whisper that a Christian is saved by grace, and the least severe epithet for him will be Calvinist; and generally the world's estimate of a Calvinist is that he is a fatalist. Justification without works is denounced as a license for sin; the Atonement is thought an irrational provision, and the Trinity is pronounced simply a delusion, because an incomprehensibility. This is the language of men that do not know better; this is strictly so far "the reproach of Christ." Again, let Christian graces be seen by the world, and they, too, are equally denounced. Zeal in the cause of truth is denounced as fanaticism. Excitement or enthusiasm for a or against the papal aggression, is all perfectly beautiful; but enthusiasm for Christ, for truth, for justification by faith, for missions, is denounced as client or a patient, or for downright fanaticism. Religion, in the estimate of the world, is hypocrisy, piety is mere pretence, and as for religious profession, it is well known, it will tell you, to be a mere passport got up for specific and ulterior purposes. You cannot please the world; there is no use attempting it. The right course is, to believe what God says, and do what God bids, and leave the world to reproach or praise, as it may be disposed. "He that judgeth us is God." Reproach, to be the reproach of Christ, must be incurred for holding Christ's truth, or exhibiting Christ's character; the world, in either case, turning what we believe, and what we do, into reproach. In fact, the world is much like the tarantula spider, of which we read that it draws the intensest poison from the fairest flowers and the richest blossoms, and turns what are elements of beauty into deadly bane, and the substance of good into evil. But reproach, in order to be Christ's and for his sake, must not only be incurred, because of what we believe, and what we do, but it must be borne also in a Christian spirit. It is Christ's reproach when incurred for holding Christ's truth, and doing Christ's work, and especially when it is borne in a Christian spirit. How beautiful is that expression, "If any man suffer as a Christian"! And again, says Paul, "Let us go forth out of the camp, bearing his reproach.' And again, "If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye." And yet, how often is our language, “If I had been reproached for what is true, I could have borne it; but, not being true, I cannot bear it"! Now, it ought to be the reverse; because it is not true, how composed and satisfied ought we to be! And, at all events, if it be true, yet, if it be borne in a Christian spirit, it is so far Christ's reproach. An ancient heathen, and a distinguished philosopher, Xenophon, on being reproached, made a remark which might have been a reflected ray from Christian truth, "You, my |