XXXIV

DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE

“The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”—Luke xviii. 27.

WE have not to travel far before we meet the impossible. We soon reach the end of the short road of “the possible,” and then the impossible looms before us! It is possible to restrain a man from crime; it is impossible to restrain him from sin. We can compel a man to pay his income tax; it is impossible to compel him to be generous. We can readjust man’s circumstances; we cannot renew a man’s heart. We can educate; we cannot regenerate. We can refurnish a man’s mind; we cannot give him the mind of Christ. We can give him courtesy; we cannot endow him with grace. We may give him good manners; we cannot make him a good man. We may save him from worldly excesses; we cannot make him immune from the contagion of the world. We 127may “patch up a bad job,” but we have no power of new creation.

And so we touch our “impossible” almost at a stride. The “impossibles” stare upon us on every side. How then? It is only in God and in the power of his holy grace that the impossible thing can be realised. In the Lord Jesus miracles may happen every day; they are happening every day. But in our pathetic folly we go on trying to mend the broken earthenware, when the mighty God would recreate the vessel. We rely upon the ministry of good fellowship when we can do nothing without the communion of the Holy Ghost. We use social cosmetics upon a withered and wizened society, and the holy Lord is waiting with the unspeakable quickening of the new birth. We use rouge when we really need the blood of the Lamb.

The world is always arrested when it sees impossibles being accomplished. In God the impossible becomes possible!