Walking by Faith, learning how to put aside the natural senses.

Francis Asbury Society Past President, Rev. Ron Smith, and current President of Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, once stated an axiom for a Labor Day weekend series of five sermons on the Conscience. Smith stated that the Conscience is God’s measuring rod for measuring the distance between the head and the heart.

In a sense, Sanctification could be described as the Holy Spirit’s movement, in the life of a believer, to bring the two – the heart and mind – together reducing the distance to zero.

Another Pastor, Andrew Jukes, in his 1898 book Types in Genesis, suggests that we all begin as Adam (carnal) and should hope to be transformed through six sequential spiritual types to become like Joseph (fully spiritual).

Whichever example we use, the development of the individual needs to be transformed; from walking by sight to walking by faith alone.

As a 9th grader, a large part of my walk was by sight and I possessed the kind of outlook that Twain described in Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Before I read Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities in 9th grade, I was very familiar with Christ’ passage, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends,” at John 15:13. But the passage presented an idealized concept that I only watched in old war movies when a hand grenade was tossed into a bunker and a U.S. soldier would throw his body onto the grenade so his buddies could live.

Along with the challenging passage from Jesus in John 15, was His “corn of wheat passage” describing multiplication and “bringing forth much fruit” if a corn of wheat dies and is buried. As a 9th grader, how was I ever going to more deeply understand such great love and the multiplication factors described by Jesus?

As I read through Dickens’ Tale, I found a fictional love triangle in which two men loved the same woman. Sharing a resemblance, one was free and one was imprisoned in Paris during the French Revolution, probably for life. The heroine loved the imprisoned man. As the plot unfolded, I read how the un-loved man had such a great love for the woman that he visited the imprisoned man and traded places after posing as his lawyer.

Perhaps the 9th grade girls found romance in that novel, but the boys could not comprehend how anyone could give up their freedom in real life based on a love for someone who did not return the love.

Accepting that the “love” part of the fictional novel was possible, we could not fathom that a man would voluntarily accept life imprisonment by substituting himself for a jailed man.

Ten Years later, as a History student, I learned about very real “draft substitutes,” approved by Congress during the Civil War (see references below). Throughout the North, men could “buy” their way out of their Union Military Draft status by paying another man – a substitute – to take his place. All totally acceptable, but having unusual consequences.

This very real example, however, was done for cash, not for love, and it hardly resembled the fictional love expressed by the substitute in A Tale of Two Cities, written in 1848.

Through the years, I processed the fiction against the facts of the American Civil War’s reality. Much later, after my first read through the Bible, I had an epiphany when I realized that my sister, who was highly critical of the U.S. role in Hiroshima (which probably spared our father who was poised to invade Japan), may only be alive because of the events at Hiroshima. Continuing to ruminate on that stream of thought, I was aware that hundreds or thousands of Americans are alive today because of the purchase of a Draft Substitute made during the 1860s in Pennsylvania and Ohio and other Northern States.

While Dickens’ fiction presented an immediate substitute prompted by love – like a shadow of Christ’s – the Civil War Draft Substitute examples presented a very real, historical, sequence of events in American History that have produced much fruit. It is entirely possible that a spared man who avoided the Civil War by purchasing a substitute, could have hundreds of descendants living today. Some, like my sister, could hold a high disdain for the Civil War, without acknowledging that she may owe her existence and life to a substitute.

In October 2005, my Japanese wife took me to visit Hiroshima and we reflected on the images inside the museum while reflecting on our father’s different paths. The earthly impact of the events occurring at that now quiet site were considered and the images remind us of the fall of man and the foothold captured by evil in Genesis 3. However, we were comforted by our substitute who brought forth much fruit at Pentacost.

It is not just a fiction that love can be so great as His, that we can live because a substitute purchased us and went in our place and how successive people – generations – can produce much spiritual fruit. It is possible for an act performed long ago to alter our lives today. Whether it happened 150 years ago or 2000 years ago, a substitutionary act can bear fruit today.

Jesus, our substitute and lover of our souls.





http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:AZDt33cQteUJ:www.newtonnj.net/Pages/civilwar.htm+%22draft+substitutes%22%22Civil+War%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=9

In the waning months of the war, stories of bounty jumpers, fraud and misfortune multiplied. Instead of paying $300 for a substitute, one Lafayette farmer drafted in July fled from home but was arrested in Pennsylvania and sent to the front for three years. In February 1865, it was reported that one township in Sussex County had been defrauded of $1,800 paid out to unscrupulous brokers who promised three draft substitutes to fulfill the township's quota.

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/u-s-civil-war/biography/5669.html

North – In March 1863, the Northern Army begins its Civil War conscription when Congress gives President Lincoln the authority to require draft registration by all able-bodied men between the ages of twenty and forty-five, regardless of their marital status or profession. To avoid military service, however, substitute soldiers are permitted to be hired and for a $300 fee, draft exemptions can be bought, proving the system to be unfair and unpopular. Many northern businessmen whose livelihoods benefit from southern slavery resist service and the Governor of New York, Horatio Seymour, himself declares the conscription act unconstitutional.
On July 13, 1863, an angry mob sets off the four-day New York City Draft Riots by seizing the 2nd Avenue Armory and interrupting the selection of registrants' names. Abolitionists' homes, conscription offices and city buildings are burned, shops are looted, and blacks, along with anyone refusing to join the marauders, are tortured. About one thousand people die. New York troops are called back from Gettysburg to quell the riot and Gov. Seymour finally urges compliance with the draft.

In 1864, the Northern draft is amended to allow buyouts by conscientious objectors only.