PROSTITUTION OF EMOTION

PROSTITUTION OF EMOTION & DARKENING OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE

Second, few words need be uttered to prove that the Cross is the ultimate evidence of the PROSTITUTION OF EMOTION. If it be indeed true that the same capacity operates along the lines of love and hate, then of all fearful revelations of prostituted emotion, there is none equal to the Cross of Jesus. There, in all the details, is an expression of the brutal and barbarous in human life, such as the world has never seen at any other point.

But was not this also the revelation of the DARKENING OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE? There is nothing more obvious in the Cross than the blindness of the sin which erected it, both as to immediate interests, and as to far-reaching issues. What utter madness was this murder of the Emancipator the giving over to death of the Life-giver, the whelming in darkness of the one and only Light of life. Thus the essence of sin is revealed in the Cross, as madness, and hatred and rebellion.

This statement will cover also the fact, as the considera­tion leading to it has already covered the subject, of the expression of sin.

Sin as the rebellion of the will expressed itself finally in the murder of God's anointed King. Sin as degraded emo­tion expressed itself most fully in the refined cruelty and malicious brutality of the whole process by which Christ was apprehended and cast out. Sin as darkened intelli­gence expressed itself most surely when it found no room in its counsels for the Voice which alone was that of per­fect wisdom.

What then was the end of sin as expressed in the Cross? THE REJECTION OF THE KING, THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRIEST, THE SILENCING OF THE PROPHET. The exercising of authority must not be permitted, so sin murdered the King. Man's return to God must be prevented, so the great High Priest was refused. The shining of light upon the darkness sin loved must not be allowed, so the voice of the Prophet was silenced. Thus sin has finally expressed itself in anarchy, for the King is dethroned; in irreligion, for the Priest is destroyed; in ignorance, for the Prophet is silenced.