Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

2 Then said Jesus, Father forgive them; for they know not what they do.”— Luke 23:34. S you know we are considering now on Sun day evenings “The Place and Power of Prayer;” and for the time bein g we are con sidering the Prayer Life of Jesus, hoping [A] upon this to lay a foundation for some more prac tical consideration of the subject of praver. . I must say to you, before I begin the considera tion of this prayer of Jesus for His enemies, that I do not feel that lam at all able to deal with it. The moie I think of it, the more I am overwhelmed with the depth of it, and the more I feel myself unworthy to deal with it. There is not much of it, but it goes deeper than anything perhaps that we have in the experience of Jesus. “Then said Jesus, Father for give them; for they know not what they do.” Just awhile ago, you remember, Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, where, prostrate on the ground beneath the olive trees, his heart bursting with sorrow, he prayed that memorable prayer, “Fath er, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, never theless not my will, but Thine be done.” Since that time Jesus has passed through some very trying ex periences. The first of these was his betrayal by Judas Iscariot, the treasurer of his company. The second was the denial of Peter, the disciple who boasted so loudly and declared so firmly that he would never forsake him. Following this was the sham trial through which he has to pass; and finally his unparalleled experience on the cross. It is with ref erence to his experience upon the cross that we wish to speak tonight. In the company that stood around the cross were some of his disciples; and the faithful women who had not turned their backs upon him, through all the various experiences through which he had passed in his eventful life, they had stood faithful and true, and are now standing by his side while he hangs upon the cross. In that company there is one that stands out more conspicuously than all the rest, a loving, lovable character, our Lord’s own dear mother. She is there to witness the awful agony of her son upon the cross, and as far as it is possible for a mother’s love and sympathy and tenderness to sup port him, she gave it all. And there is a man in the crowd who was pressed into service against his will to carry his cross up the slopes of Calvary. There are also the Roman soldiers, and the men and wom en of the streets, who have, by reason of the sen sation that has spread throughout the city, come to gether to see the Son of God die. As they stand there about the cross, Jesus beholds the multitude and, beholding them, he utters these significant and deeply pathetic words, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” I want that we shall remember at the outset that this prayer was made just before Jesus died. The last words of our friends and loved ones are always to us the most significant; they are the words that linger and live with us longer than all the rest of the words spoken by them. . I remember a few years ago standing by the bed side of a good mother, and seeing her pass away. Just before she passed she called me to her bedside, and said, “I have a message that I want to give, but I cannot give it until they are all present.” They were all hurried into her chamber, and she said, with out a tear in her eye or even a tremor in her voice, “My message is that I am assured that I am going to heaven, and I want each one of you to so live that when you come to die you will feel as I feel.” That mother spoke many a word in her life time that was worth remembering, but she never spoke a word in all her life that weighed as much as that last word. So it is with this prayer that we are now con sidering. It was our Lord’s last word. Words spoken just before his spirit went back to the Father. It is because of this that I feel that I am so unworthy and so unable to expound them. But more than this THE GOLDEN AGE FOR WEEK OF JULY 23, 1914 JESUS AND HIS ENEMIES By BEV. LEN G. BBOUGHTON, D.D., of Christ Church, London. Reported for The Golden Age by M. I. H. —Copyright Applied for. still, it was a prayer made in the very moment of his death. It would seem that his spirit already be gun its ascent. Under such circumstances it would have been perfectly natural for him to have prayed for his fond mother, ever faithful and true. It would have been natural for him to have remembered in that last prayer his family for they were all about him, his brothers and his sisters. It would have been perfectly natural for him to have remembered just at that time the faithful women who had fol lowed him all along and been true to him to the last. It 'would have been natural for him to have remem bered just at that time the faithful women who had followed him all along and been true to him to the last. It would have been natural for him to have remembered his disciples for he loved them and they loved him, and he knew their need of him. But in stead of this he drops his eyes down and over this an gry, howling mob of his enemies and prays for them. But who are these enemies of Jesus gathered about his cross? In the first place, there are the scholars of the day, they are there. There are the priests, and the Scribes and Pharisees, and the Sadducees, magistrates of the law, armed soldiers, thieves and thugs; they are all there in the company that stand around the cross while Jesus hangs his head and gasps for berath. It was a mob made up of all kinds and classes and conditions of humanity. In it were men whose eyes were red with the fire of hell; scof fing and ridiculing and swearing every time he gasp ed for breath. I have seen a picture in the Dresden Art Gallery of the Crucifixion of our Lord, with a great crowd of angry looking men standing around in front of the cross. In the midst of that angry crowd that looks into the face of the dying Christ, there is a slave with his hands tied and shackles upon his feet, leaning forward with a scowl on his face as he endeavors to spit upon him. A slave in shackles spitting upon th? Son of God! It was just such a picture as that that the eyes of Jesus looked down upon as he hung there upon the cross and ut tered these words. I want us now to understand the nature of this prayer for these enemies. First of all, let me call your attention to the fact that it was a prayer for their forgiveness. “Father, forgive them.” This leads us to study of the word “forgiveness.” The more we study it the more we see that there is in it and the more we feel like blessing God that Jesus ever used the word with ref erence to ourselves. There are two words from which we get our word “forgiveness.” One' signifies the forgiveness of condonation; the other signifies the forgiveness of dismissal. There is a vast difference between the forgiveness of condonation is human; the forgiveness of dismissal is divine: That is the differ ence. The forgiveness of condonation is the for giveness that man exercises to his fellow man, alas, too often. The forgiveness of dismissal is the for givenes of God to a poor repentant sinner. We have a splendid example of this in the Old Testament Scriptures; the example of the scapegoat. On the day of atonement, one goat was brought in and sacrificed, and the other was brought in and the sins were confessed over his head, and then, in the hands of a fit man, he was led away to the wilder ness. I have seen a picture somewhere in some art gallery, I do not know where, of that scapegoat wandering about in the wilderness without food, starving. Wherever it was, I remember feeling at the time I would like to destroy it. It is false; the whole conception is false. No man ever saw the scapegoat he left with the sins of the people upon him. He was lost in the wilderness, never to be seen by mortal eye. So dt is with the forgiveness of dismissal. It is the forgiveness of Christ, it is the forgiveness that Jesus prays for in this prayer for His enemies. It is the forgiveness of dismissal, the sin is lost never to be discovered by the eye of mortal man, not even to be reproduced by God Him self; lost in the wilderness even of God’s forgetful ness. But we do not have to go to the Greek in order to find a simple definition of the word forgiveness, Our own Anglo Saxon word itself is sufficient. It is the word ‘forth give’ or ‘give forth.’ We see it also illustrated in the Bible picture. It is the picture of Lazarus. You remember him after he was raised from the dead. He was at first bound with grave clothes. A napkin was over his face so that he could not talk like a live man; his hands were bound together so that he could not work like a live man; and his feet were bound together so that he could not wark like a live man. So we find Lazrus, though raised from the dead, helpless. Jesus said, “Loose him, and let him go.” Forgive him —“forth give him; let him go forth: it is the same thought.” Loose him, free him, so that he may work and talk and walk in the exercise of the life that he has. But I think that I have an illustration that will convey my idea more than anything that I have yet said. It is a little chapter out of my boyhood days; I shall never forget it. I was taken by my father to the nearest town, for we then were country people, to see a balloon. Such a thing had never been heard of in our section of the world up to that time and the whole of that part of the country was ablaze with expectation concerning it. For weeks we had been seeing pictures on boards and in papers and the like about how the thing looked, and how it would sail and fly, and how a man would go up in the parachute. We got to the ground where this thing was to take place, this wonderful thing, so wonderful, especially to this brain of mine and in my boyish eyes. We got there before the crack of dawn and camped during hte rest of the night so that we might see the thing from the beginning. When the sun got up I was up; the fact is I was up before I was down. I saw the men begin to work upon it, stretching the canvas out, putting the ropes in place, then lifting it, then pouring gas into it till it began to stretch the canvas and tug the ropes that held it fast to stakes driven in the ground. I saw the thing thump, and throb and sway a bit, and more and more I could hear the canvas stretching and the ropes likewise. After a while I began to get so anxious to see that thing turned loose I could hardly contain myself. It seems to me as I think back over it I must have lived about a month that morning. After a while men went round cutting the ropes, and as they cut a rope this side the thing would leap over on the other side and tug at the rope. Then they would cut a rope on the other side and we would have the same experience. At last they were all cut but one center rope, and I looked and looked at that great house built of canvas as it swayed to and fro, and begged, as it seemed to me, to be let go, and nobody would let it go, and if I had not been afraid I would have cut it with my pocket knife. It seemed to me to be hours, I suppose it was minutes, that thing tugged and pulled and beg ged to be free, to be “forth given,” and nobody would “forth give” it. After a while a man came and cut that center rope, and when he did, it sailed up and on, and on, and on through the clouds, that had lowered, carrying the man in his parachute until ’it was out of sight, and the fun was all over. But the lesson was not, for the lesson has abided and is with me this night. This is Jesus’ forgiveness in a picture. Forth given, given forth, free for higher and holier and purer air. That is the forgiveness of Jesus that He prays for on this occasion for his enemies. But again, I want us to note the ground on which He bases this remarkable prayer for the forgiveness of His enemies. “Father forgive them; for they know not what they do.” There are four attributes of God which we need perpetually to keep in our minds —His love, His mercy, His justice and His judge ment. Also we need to keep perpetually in mind the fact that these four attributes are inseparably linked together. No man ever receives divine judgment without divine love and mercy. It is in keeping with this that Jesus makes His prayer for the forgiveness of these cruel men —“they know not what thev do.” (Continued on page 14.)