It was on this Mount of Calvary, looking down upon the city, that there came to us an overwhelming sense of the sin of selfishness and greed. In the ruins of Belgium we had felt it, in the tumult of war on the battlefields of France we had seen what it could do, in the records of the desperate struggles of the Peace Table we had caught glimpses of its power, in China we saw its work, in Korea we looked upon its suffering victims, and here on Calvary the weight of the world sorely wounded and dismayed by sin, pressed hard upon us. It would not have been possible to bear had we not read also of the stone rolled away and the great triumphant Victory.
A deep conviction settled down upon us until it possessed every muscle and fiber of body and mind, until it possessed our souls—the thing that He preached and that only can save the world. His great command that man love his God and serve his neighbor—this principle alone can rescue humanity from the abyss of chaos into which blind greed, individual and national, has plunged it. As the pilgrims knelt at the Holy Sepulchre, we knelt there under the open skies on the hill that is called Calvary to accept again His first great commandment, and the second that is like unto it, in repentance and humility to pray for pardon for past failures and strength for new endeavors.
That night at evening service in clear soprano voice a boy in the choir sang:
There is a green hill far away Without the city wall Where the dear Lord was crucified Who died to save us all. Oh dearly, dearly has He loved And we must love Him too, And trust in His redeeming blood And try His works to do.
There was no other good enough To pay the price of sin: He only could unlock the gate Of Heaven and let us in. Oh dearly, dearly has He loved And we must love Him too, And trust in His redeeming blood And try His works to do.
The echo of the last line followed us home. There is work to be done—challenging, mighty world-building tasks—and for the doing of them those who call themselves servants and followers of Him whose brave, suffering footsteps we had traced from the Garden along the Sorrowful Way to Calvary have waited too long.
_The strings of camels come in single file Bearing their burdens o’er the desert sand; Swiftly the boats go plying on the Nile The needs of men to meet on every hand. But still I wait For the messenger of God who cometh late._ —_Author Unknown._