The Project Gutenberg EBook of Parables of the Cross, by I. Lilias Trotter

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Title: Parables of the Cross

Author: I. Lilias Trotter

Release Date: August 1, 2007 [EBook #22189]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PARABLES OF THE CROSS ***

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Parables of the Cross
by I. Lilias Trotter

To A.C. & B.A.B.
in memory of lessons
learnt together

Marshall Brothers, Ltd.
London & Edinburgh.

Death is the Gate of Life

There was deep insight in those old words. For man's natural thought
of death is that of a dreary ending in decay and dissolution. And
from his standpoint he is right: death as the punishment of sin is an
ending.

But far other is God's thought in the redemption of the world. He
takes the very thing that came in with the curse, and makes it the
path of glory. Death becomes a beginning instead of an ending, for it
becomes the means of liberating a fresh life.

And so the hope that lies in these parable lessons of death and life
is meant for those only who are turning to Him for redemption. To
those who have not turned, death stands in all its old awful doom,
inevitable, irrevocable. There is no gleam of light through it for
them.

* * * * * * * *

"The death of the Cross"--death's triumph hour--that was the point
where God's gate opened; and to that gate we come again and again, as
our lives unfold, and through it pass even on earth to our joyful
resurrection, to a life each time more abundant, for each time the
dying is a deeper dying. The Christian life is a process of
deliverance out of one world into another, and "death," as has been
truly said, "is the only way out of any world in which we are."

"Death is the gate of life." Does it look so to us? Have we learnt to
go down, once and again, into its gathering shadows in quietness and
confidence, knowing that there is always "a better resurrection"
beyond?

It is in the stages of a plant's growth, its budding and blossoming
and seed-bearing, that this lesson has come to me: the lesson of
death in its delivering power. It has come as no mere far-fetche