Wason 
 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 COLLECTION 
 
 CHINA AND THE CHINESE 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 
 CLASS OF 1876 
 
 1918 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BT 80.C81 
 
 In touch with realit' 
 
 3 1924 023 019 965 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023019965 
 
IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
IN TOUCH WITH 
 REALITY 
 
 BY 
 
 WM. ARTHUR CORNABY 
 
 Editor of the ' Chinese Weekly ' and the ' Chinese 
 Christian Review' 
 
 y'l^/zL 
 
 LONDON 
 CHARLES H. KELLY 
 2 CASTLE ST. & 26 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 
 
WaSfrn 
 
 I want, am made for, and must have a God, 
 
 Ere I can be aught, do aught ; — no mere name 
 
 Want, but the true thing, with what proves its truth, — 
 
 To wit, a relation from that thing to me, 
 
 Touching from head to foot : — which touch I feel. 
 
 And with it take the rest, this life of ours. 
 
 Browning. 
 
To 
 
 MARSHALL HARTLEY 
 
 with deepest affection 
 
■^' 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These chapters have been written in 
 China, amid scenes and conditions widely 
 different from those of our native land. 
 The tasks of twenty years amid such con- 
 ditions have necessitated the reconsidera- 
 tion of truths held sacred by us, with a 
 view to setting forth their essentials in 
 Chinese apart from the husk of our own 
 conventional phraseology. The result has 
 been a personal possession of truth in a 
 new setting, held with something of the 
 ardour of rediscovery. 
 
 In times of local or political upset, such 
 as 1891 in the Yangtse Valley, when the 
 death of the writer's friend, William Argent, 
 was followed by six months of peril, six 
 months ht with the light of eternity, the 
 grand solidity of the Essentials became the 
 more evident. And from that date there 
 
8 PREFACE 
 
 has been a growing desire to deliver a 
 message in English from the pages of some 
 modest literary production, whose chief 
 burden should be : ' Room for God in His 
 own world ! ' For our God is a grander 
 and more intimate Reality than we have 
 ever dared to dream. 
 Hence the present volume. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. Unacknowledged Atheism . . ii 
 
 II. What are we Required to Believe ? 31 
 
 III. The Joy of the Lord ... 45 
 
 IV. Foreign Devilry ... 62 
 V. A Modern Soul ... 83 
 
 VI. Recreative Reading ... 97 
 
 VII. Concentration of Purpose . . 114 
 
 VIII. Self-Realization . . . 131 
 
 IX. The Incomplete Set . . . 148 
 
 X. A Lesson in Manners . . . 165 
 
 XL Divine Service will be Conducted ... 180 
 
 XII. The Distinctiveness of the Gospel 195 
 
 XIII. The Certainties of Prayer . . 225 
 
 XIV. Why Pray if God already Knows ? 246 
 .XV. Prayer as a Working Force . 265 
 XVI. The Upbuilding Force of the Uni- 
 verse .... 285 
 
 XVIL I and We . . . . 307 
 
 The questions which form the titles of Chapters II and XIV were asked 
 the writer by members of the Y.M.C.A., Shanghai. 
 
Age-woven veil of variegated hue, 
 
 Hanging from dome of high infinity, 
 
 Broidered vfith hieroglyphic witchery : 
 
 Of mystic cloud-shapes hov'ring in the blue. 
 
 Of myriad grass-blades deck'd with magic dew, 
 
 Of forest trees majestic in their pride, 
 
 Of shamefast violets that fain would hide 
 
 And scent the copse unseen ; —Would that we knew 
 
 The inner loveliness enshrined here. 
 
 And knew the guidance of the Infinite, 
 
 To fit the fragment facts into a sphere, 
 
 And mould our lives to patterns of the right ! 
 
 Soft comes a still small voice, ' Is this thy quest ? 
 Then follow, share My yoke, and gain My rest.' 
 
 W. A. C. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 UNACKNOWLEDGED ATHEISM 
 
 Our scriptural warrant for the use of the 
 term atheism is found in the Epistle to the 
 Ephesians (ii. 12), where we have a varia- 
 tion of the Greek word a-theos, 'without 
 God,' as translated in our English versions. 
 Words are subject to variations of meaning 
 arising from conditions of time and place, 
 and the state of popular feeling. They are 
 apt to change their complexion from long 
 accHmation in various lands ; to widen or 
 contract their sphere of influence ; to 
 occupy a certain status in one age, and a 
 different status in another. And of such 
 variations the word before us furnishes an 
 interesting specimen. 
 
 The Greek word a-theos was narrowed 
 down by the Greeks themselves to signify 
 the disowning of the gods recognized by 
 
12 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 the State. Socrates was called ' an atheist ' 
 for maintaining the superiority of the 
 ' Divine Wisdom ' to the accepted deities, 
 including the chief national god Zeus. 
 Later on, the Jews were called ' atheists ' 
 for their recognition of Jehovah in opposi- 
 tion to the ' gods many and lords many ' 
 around them. And later on stiU, the word 
 ' atheists ' was largely used of Christians. 
 
 In the Epistle to the Ephesians the word 
 is used in its strict sense, for although the 
 ' atheists ' there mentioned recognized the 
 gods of the State, they were still without 
 God, without the one God truly so called. 
 But in later centuries the term has just 
 meant one who does not accept the fore- 
 most item in the creed of Jews, Christians, 
 and Mohammedans. 
 
 The importance of this first item in our 
 creed is unspeakable, and we naturally 
 apply the term atheist to a man who denies 
 that there is a God. But the narrowness 
 of the prevailing use of the word will be 
 apparent when we remember that it fails 
 to include the atheist of atheists, the devil 
 
UNACKNOWLEDGED ATHEISM 13 
 
 himself. He and his angels are surely not 
 wanting in the matter of intellectual ortho- 
 doxy. They ' believe and tremble,' but 
 are none the less atheists, whose business 
 it has become to propagate atheism, to 
 lure men away from God. 
 
 So, casting aside the restrictions of the 
 nearer centuries, let us take the term in 
 its true meaning of without-God-ness, of 
 life and outlook dissociated from God, and 
 inquire at the outset how God has been 
 revealed to us as Christians. The answer 
 is found in the writings of that apostle of 
 the ultimate, St. John, who claims to bear 
 witness to facts as solid as those appre- 
 hended by the senses of sight, hearing, and 
 touch. He seems almost to have done 
 with mere faith ; he has seen, heard, 
 grasped, known the things which he de- 
 clares, and invites us to rise beyond a 
 mere belief into a fellowship of glowing 
 realization. And the postulates and 
 axioms so evident to the apostle are as 
 follows : — 
 
 I. God is He by whom all things were 
 
14 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 made, and the ever-living basis of all good 
 things everywhere ; 
 
 2. Who Himself was made manifest in 
 a life of homeful kindness to those who 
 needed, in the way they needed ; and that 
 in defiance to the spirit of religious official- 
 ism and the lust of mastery around and 
 even within the circle of His followers ; 
 
 3. Who seemed to fail, but in His seem- 
 ing failure redeemed the world ; 
 
 4. Who was then manifest in triumphant 
 vindication, both as regards His divine 
 personality and the uplifting power which 
 He infuses into those who own His lord- 
 ship and rejoice in His fellowship ; 
 
 5. Whose nature, typified by light, the 
 essence of Ufe, is Love Supreme. 
 
 These being foundation facts, as all New 
 Testament writers agree, the condition of 
 without-God-ness must mean an unloving 
 repudiation of Love Supreme as thus re- 
 vealed ; while the subhme condition of 
 with-God-ness can only mean submissive 
 and intelligent association with Love 
 Supreme. 
 
UNACKNOWLEDGED ATHEISM 15 
 
 The really godly man is a ' son of light/ 
 like a fleecy cloud floating in the azure of 
 an Oriental sky, shot through and through 
 with sunbeams ; or like an athlete of 
 divinest heredity, with life more abundant 
 pulsing through his veins, rejoicing to run 
 his race or walk the dusty ways of duty ; 
 above all, he is one who has access to 
 the eternal store of infinite generosity, and 
 finds the borrowed forces of his divine 
 Associate ever adequate for his life-task 
 of right-doing and love-diffusing. Such, 
 indeed, is the available potency of God, 
 as St. John teaches, that no halfway ideal 
 must be entertained by those who associate 
 His name with their own. 
 
 The bald statement of such things may 
 well cause astonishment to ordinary mortals 
 like ourselves, but the tones of the aged 
 apostle are as decisive as they are winsome. 
 To all our protests of inadequacy, he re- 
 plies with the words, ' Children of God ' ; 
 adding as his last counsel, ' My little chil- 
 dren, keep yourselves from idols ' — from 
 putting anything short of God in God's 
 
i6 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 place. And this, in the language of St. 
 Paul, reads : ' My beloved brethren, guard 
 yourselves from atheism.' 
 
 In order to rid ourselves of atheism in 
 many ordinary matters, let us adopt the 
 simple method of writing down our full 
 address as schoolboys sometimes do on 
 the fly-leaves of their lesson books. For 
 the schoolboy (God bless him !) has much 
 to teach those who have grown up into 
 pedagogues and parents, business men and 
 * men of the world.' Your address in full, 
 sedate or gentle reader, as perhaps you 
 once wrote it, please ! But do not stop 
 at the country where God has caused your 
 lot to be cast. Put down the continent 
 too, and think for a moment of its wonder- 
 ful history. Then write ' The earth,' and 
 recall what you remember of its marvellous 
 formation. Then ' The solar system,' and 
 recall what has been learnt about that. 
 And do not stop there ; write down ' The 
 universe' — the universe of which the tele- 
 scope reveals some fifty millions of blazing 
 suns floating harmoniously in the infini- 
 
UNACKNOWLEDGED ATHEISM 17 
 
 tudes of space. But we cannot stop even 
 there. To omit the divine name would be 
 to make the greatest possible omission. 
 The place of our abode is just this : the 
 infinity of God. And at whatever of the 
 widening circles of our address the mind 
 may rest, we are confronted by an infinitely 
 righteous and generous Presence. For 
 God is everywhere. His Presence is the 
 ultimate address assumed in the contracted 
 address with which we head our business 
 notes and letters to friends near and 
 far. 
 
 Asia seems to have been the birthplace 
 of every religion worth the name, and in 
 the degradation of its most polluted faiths 
 it may still have something to teach us. 
 India, for instance, has a message for the 
 men and women of the West, for if the 
 typical Hindu holds to one fact above all 
 others, it is what has been called ' the 
 omnipenetrativeness of God.' Put into 
 more familiar Enghsh (by the author of 
 God and the SouF), this fact has been stated 
 by saying : * There is a conscious touch of 
 
 B 
 
i8 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 God on every fibre and atom of the 
 universe. The attention of God is " con- 
 centrated everywhere." And I conclude 
 that when Jesus said " Not a sparrow falls 
 to the ground without your Father," so 
 far from overstating, He was immeasurably 
 understating the fact, since in every feather 
 of the sparrow, and in every thread of 
 down upon each feather, and in every 
 chemical atom in each thread, the divine 
 consciousness and power are operating 
 every moment.' 
 
 Now is this mere poetry, or soUd fact 
 forcibly expressed ? 
 
 We hke not to lose all the poetry of 
 literature ; we smile at the Spanish critic 
 of Shakespeare who altered ' Sermons in 
 stones and books in the running brooks,' 
 to ' Sermons in books and stones in the 
 running brooks.' Yet, after all, he merely 
 dropped a truth-in-metaphor to seize upon 
 an entirely obvious fact. But if we ever 
 reject the godly view of the universe, do 
 not we drop from the region of highest 
 Truth, which is always poetry in essence, 
 
UNACKNOWLEDGED ATHEISM 19 
 
 and fall far lower than did that absurd 
 professor ? 
 
 Many of us are busy workers in towns 
 and citieSj but now and again we are able 
 to spend a holiday, say, by the seaside, 
 or even among mountain scenery. Let us 
 ask what we mean by the words ' sea ' 
 and ' mountain.' It may need a specially 
 developed poetic imagination to describe 
 the former with Swinburne as : 
 
 The sea, that harbours in her heart subUme 
 The supreme heart of music deep as time, 
 And in her spirit strong 
 The spirit of all imaginable song. 
 
 But we have not really seen the sea 
 unless its ' many-dashing ' waves have 
 once more assured us that ' the sea is His, 
 and He made it.' For ' sea ' is a mere 
 school-book term used to differentiate a 
 certain embodiment of God's ever-sacred 
 thought from other embodiments of the 
 thoughts of the Creator, such as ' mountain ' 
 and the hke. A mountain is essentially 
 Love Divine in translation ; it is a physi- 
 cal ' Word of God,' expressed in visible 
 
20 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 proportions of height, space, solidity, 
 sublimity, beauty. 
 
 To these things must be added the ele- 
 ments of an invigorating cUmate, accessi- 
 bihty by road or rail, by methods which 
 the divine wisdom has taught men to use, 
 and many others. And as we bear these 
 things in mind, we find the seaside and the 
 mountain to be expressions of God mani- 
 fest in homeful kindness, kindness to those 
 who need it, and in the way they need 
 it. Sea and mountain are thus in their 
 degree echoes of the divinest Word of God, 
 whose glory it is that He has uttered the 
 supreme Lovingkindness in the noblest 
 possible manner. 
 
 Let these statements be carefully con- 
 sidered, lest they be accepted as so much 
 attempted rhetoric. Are sea and moun- 
 tain sacred expressions of God, or mere 
 ' secular ' facts ? The real answer which 
 we give to these questions will depend 
 largely upon our prevaihng attitude to- 
 ward God during many of the hours we 
 are spending at our present residence, 
 
UNACKNOWLEDGED ATHEISM 21 
 
 whether in the midst of Nature's charms or 
 among the commonplaces of town life. 
 
 ' If God made the country, man made 
 the town/ we say sometimes. But who 
 taught men to make dwellings of such a 
 high order as those found in the average 
 street of our towns, and to deck the interior 
 of those dwellings with winsome beauty, to 
 form the frame of that poem -picture we 
 call a home ? 
 
 ' A high order of dwellings ! Our houses 
 decked with beauty ! ' exclaim some. 
 
 Yes, indeed. And a day or two spent 
 in a city slum would probably sufi&ce to 
 persuade the reader that these words are 
 not exaggerations: even as a journey up- 
 country in China, involving travel in the 
 ordinary native boats, and a lodgement in 
 ordinary native houses, may produce the 
 feeling of dazzlement when the traveller 
 returns to his own home in this land. Nay, 
 a hundred yards from the spot where this 
 chapter has been written are to be found 
 agglomerations of blear-eyed hovels and 
 broken - down mat - hutsTHiiddled together 
 
22 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 like a crowd of leprous beggars, crying 
 audibly to all the senses except that of 
 hearing, the woful cry, ' Unclean ! Un- 
 clean ! ' And the question comes, ' Who 
 maketh thy dwelling-place to differ from 
 these ? ' 
 
 Says George Herbert : ' He that will 
 learn to pray, let him go to sea ' — ^in the 
 sea-going boats of the times when George 
 Herbert lived. And we may add : He 
 that would learn to praise God for his 
 home, let him visit the recesses of the 
 slums, or spend a night in one of those 
 rough shanties in the Orient, described in 
 glaring hyperbole as ' an inn.* And our 
 thankfulness should increase with deeper 
 thought, until we realize that our dwelling- 
 place, so beautiful by contrast, is indeed a 
 sacred fact, and by no means what we call 
 ' secular.' 
 
 Let us examine that much-quoted term 
 ' secular.' It is another of those words 
 which have undergone remarkable changes 
 of aspect during recent centuries. It came 
 into prominence during those ages. when a 
 
UNACKNOWLEDGED ATHEISM 23 
 
 ' religious ' life meant a monastic life^ and 
 was applied to those who were not bound 
 by monastic vows — to those who were 
 ' laymen,' as distinct from ' clerics.' And 
 of course the mere fact of a wife and 
 family would have made the Archbishop 
 of. Canterbury a ' secular ' man and a ' lay- 
 man ' in the days when these terms first 
 came into general use. 
 
 But of late years, as the term ' religious ' 
 has broadened to something like its true 
 proportions, the word ' secular ' has come 
 to mean dissociated from things divine. It 
 is applied to things which many regard 
 as having no direct reference to the glory 
 or the dishonour of God ; while in actual 
 fact, every hair of our head is the object 
 of God's ever-sacred ' attention,' and every 
 one of us, having for his daily abode the 
 Infinity of God, is naturally required to 
 ' do all to the glory of God.' ' He that 
 is not with Me is against me,' said the 
 Son of God, manifest till the age of thirty 
 amid many an action which we unthink- 
 ingly call ' secular.' The youth Jesus in 
 
24 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 the carpenter's shop, sawing and planing, 
 seUing the articles He had helped to make, 
 sweeping up the shavings, and performing 
 various menial offices, did all these things 
 most sacredly. And we need have keener 
 eyes than those possessed by ' Him who 
 was manifest in the flesh ' if we are to 
 discover any allowable location for the 
 ' secular ' within the length and breadth 
 of God's universe. 
 
 Rehgious dreamers of dreams and seers 
 of visions have not been wanting through 
 the ages, mystics who stammered in their 
 description of things lying beyond the 
 range of human language. But even thus, 
 they may have been anything but poets 
 of unreality ; while John the Seer is really 
 the keen-eyed analyst of ultimate reahty. 
 It is the secular-minded man who is ever 
 ' up in the clouds.' He is a dreamer 
 of phantasies which, being devoid of an 
 omnipresent God, are necessarily devoid 
 of any vestige of reality. It is the region 
 of the secular that is dreamland — an al- 
 together hypothetical limho-in-vacuo, dis- 
 
UNACKNOWLEDGED ATHEISM 25 
 
 owned alike by the heavens which declare 
 the glory of God, and the earth whose 
 every atom bears the impress of His 
 might : a wild and unholy fabulosity con- 
 jured up in the minds of men by atheist 
 spirits in revolt. There is no alternative 
 between connectedness with God and 
 atheism, between the sacred and the 
 Satanic. And yet we often profess to 
 regard that wild region of imagination, 
 ' the secular,' as real enough and wide 
 enough to include the greater half of our 
 domestic and social concerns ! 
 
 We speak about the ' clerk of the 
 weather,' and, however unreal we may 
 know that personage to be, quote him as 
 a safer alternative than the Lord of Glory, 
 whose voice the devout Hebrew found 
 suggested in the pealing thunder, who 
 still makes winds His messengers, and 
 whose Word is fulfilled in the laws of the 
 revolving seasons. 
 
 Is there anything secular in our family 
 hfe ? Do we find it in that most heavenly 
 thing on earth, a mother's self-sacrificing 
 
26 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 love ? in the yearning of a true father ? 
 in the intercourse of those who are more 
 related to the one Father-Mother than to 
 each other, and who are Hving out the 
 introductory chapter of an endless exist- 
 ence as members of a homeful circle ? 
 There may be forgetfulness of God in our 
 family Ufe, but there is no crevice through 
 which the secular can possibly intrude. 
 
 Is there such a thing as a secular call- 
 ing or occupation ? Are not God-owning 
 business men, shopkeepers and artisans, 
 ministers of the Church or missionaries 
 abroad, all included under the same 
 essential mission from the Supreme Com- 
 missioner ? 
 
 God looks through the transparencies 
 of garments literal or metaphorical, looks 
 through the outward garb of cleric and 
 layman, and beholds His servants whom 
 He has placed at various points in the 
 region of duty, watching them every 
 moment with a love which demands that 
 the duty of each shall be so done that 
 fraud and falsity and cant, injustice, 
 
UNACKNOWLEDGED ATHEISM 27 
 
 tyranny, and meanness shall be banished 
 from beneath the spreading heavens. All 
 is sacredj for all is missioned by His sublime 
 will. And each fulfilment of His supreme 
 purposes for humanity will be crowned 
 with an eternally-echoing : ' Well done, 
 good and faithful missionary ! ' For what 
 is ' missionary ' but servant spelt in a 
 different way ? 
 
 Every post office and telegraph wire^ 
 spells Intercourse, and that intercourse 
 surely involves a Mission from the Highest 
 toward a rounding-off of the family circle 
 of humanity under the fatherhood of the 
 
 * The first telegraph wire was fixed between Wash- 
 ington and Baltimore. Professor Morse exhibited his 
 apparatus before the U.S. Congress in 1837, but had to 
 struggle on against scanty means until 1843, when 
 Congress, on the last night of the session, voted $30,000 
 for the enterprise. The news was brought to the 
 despondent inventor in the early morning by the 
 daughter of the Commissioner of Patents ; who was 
 accordingly promised that the first message transmitted 
 along the wires should be indited by her. And the 
 words chosen for the first telegram in the world were : 
 ' What hath God wrought ! ' Thus did the telegraph 
 receive its due consecration to the service of the Giver 
 of every good and perfect gift — a fact which we should 
 not allow our children to forget. 
 
28 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 good God of righteousness. Every forge 
 and loom and mart and ocean steamer 
 spells Commerce, but more surely spells 
 Mission. The Union Jack of Old England, 
 with its triple cross, can only spell Mission 
 for our traders and sailors beyond the 
 seas. The word Mission is written upon 
 every factory and wharf in every Christian 
 land. Should that noble word be erased, 
 the walls will not remain blank. There 
 will be other handwritings upon them, 
 such as the handwriting which the king 
 of Babylon saw upon the walls when he 
 was feasting out of sacred vessels stolen 
 from the Holy Place at Jerusalem. 
 
 To come to common matters of the 
 household. We know that every mission- 
 ary abroad, being supported by the con- 
 tributions of those who are kindly disposed 
 to their fellows, is in very deed living upon 
 translated kindness. It has built or rented 
 the missionary's house ; it has bought his 
 garments ; it has provisioned his larder. 
 All is kindness translated into these 
 physical elements, for the express purpose 
 
UNACKNOWLEDGED ATHEISM 29 
 
 of re-translation into kindly preaching, or 
 kindly healing, or the kindly education of 
 the natives, or sympathetic literary work — 
 into kindness to those who need it, in the 
 way they need it. For this is the very 
 thing for which the missionary exists. 
 
 But a moment's reflection will make it 
 obvious that this is also just what we are 
 here for — every man, woman, and child 
 living upon the face of God's love-built 
 and love-stocked earth. Our breakfast is 
 an outcome of the varied forces of the 
 universe : a physical ' Word of God,' a 
 translation of our Father's kindly thought. 
 Every good and perfect gift which makes 
 our household a home is so much divine 
 kindness in translation. We ourselves are 
 sohd echoes of the voice of God ; and must 
 not His words of up-building kindness be 
 re-echoed till, Hke the sound of many 
 waters, they are heard everywhere along 
 the shores of the all-enwrapping Ocean of 
 Love Supreme ? 
 
 A few more years, and our little lives 
 will have merged into the boundless Azure, 
 
30 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 and it will not matter then whether we 
 have been comfortable and prosperous or 
 not. But it will matter everything whether 
 we have cast aside the atheism which doth 
 so easily beset us, whether we have owned 
 the Son of God as our Pioneer along the 
 ever-sacred paths of duty, whether we have 
 been hving lives of generous love, en- 
 heartening him or her that was weary, 
 delivering those that were carried away 
 unto death, and filhng out our destiny 
 as channels of divine righteousness, com- 
 passion, and tactful tenderness. And all 
 this may be ours as we live in habitual 
 heart-touch with the Omnipresence of the 
 Lord God. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 WHAT ARE WE REQUIRED TO BELIEVE ? 
 
 First of all, no one can believe to order. 
 The essential fact about real faith in any- 
 thing or anybody is that faith is spon- 
 taneous. All requirement to believe must 
 be based upon the nature of the things to 
 be believed in ; all obligation to believe 
 assumes that the facts of the case are 
 sufficiently obvious to those who see the 
 whole case. 
 
 As children we do not know the real 
 nature of things, and certainly do not see 
 the whole facts concerning any matter 
 whatever. So that our early beliefs in 
 things seen or unseen are largely dependent 
 upon instruction from those whom we have 
 learned to trust. Our early beliefs are 
 second-hand, but we feel that father or 
 mother, or whoever else tells us that things 
 are so, really knows them to be so. 
 
32 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 Yet every now and then children will 
 ask : ' Is that tale true ? ' showing that 
 there is a latent demand in their minds 
 for solid facts as the basis of belief. This 
 means that sooner or later the time must 
 come when second-hand beliefs wUl no 
 longer suffice, but when every one must 
 examine for himself -into the facts of the 
 case.^ All truths which we hold as our 
 personal possessions on into middle life 
 are truths which we may have first re- 
 ceived through the instruction of others, 
 but which we have rediscovered for our- 
 selves afterwards. 
 
 The mistake of the Middle Ages was not 
 only to treat men as though they were to 
 be children to the end of time, but to back 
 up a system of doctrine by authority and 
 
 1 On my first voyage to China (1885) there was an 
 interesting fellow passenger, the first Korean who had 
 ever visited England. When we had become sufficiently 
 acquainted, I asked him to accept Drummond's Natural 
 Law in the Spiritual World, inside of which I had written : 
 ' Prove (test) all things. Hold fast to that which is 
 good.' He imagined that such a quotation must have 
 been taken from a very irrehgious book 1 ' Does the 
 Bible teach that ? ' he exclaimed. 
 
WHAT ARE WE TO BELIEVE ? 33 
 
 force, saying : ' You must believe this and 
 that, or you will be branded as a heretic, 
 and lose your home and friends, your goods 
 and your life.' How can a man adjust all 
 his beliefs to any system upheld by the 
 authority and force of another ? Con- 
 fronted by force, and wishing to ayoid the 
 penalties of non-belief in a system upheld 
 by force, the utmost he can do is to believe 
 that he believes. And the system which 
 he merely believes that he believes, is 
 hardly likely to exert any sort of moral 
 force in his life. The sort of demi-semi- 
 faith produced is a very barren one. Not 
 only are such methods absurd and cruel, 
 but the results achieved are empty and 
 valueless. 
 
 Whatever personal interest may urge, 
 and whatever the customs of those in our 
 immediate circle, we must each say for 
 ourselves : ' I am not going to be carried 
 along by the crowd, or drift like a dead 
 log with the current. I am going to beKeve 
 what I feel to be believable, I am going 
 
 to believe what I feel I ought to believe, 
 c 
 
34 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 and to live a life which shall correspond 
 with that belief. Else I am not warranted 
 in using the capital I either in speech or 
 in writing.' Personal faith can only be 
 based upon that which we ourselves feel 
 to be true and real. Men who believe in 
 spiritual matters for themselves exercise a 
 behef in something which appeals either 
 to their consciousness and experience, or 
 their knowledge of principle, or their 
 realization of essential need ; or else (as in 
 some matters) they believe on the testi- 
 mony of certain men whose testimony has 
 fulfilled these conditions on other matters, 
 especially when the items to be accepted 
 on testimony fit in with that which is 
 more provable, as a segment fits into a 
 circle. Of one or two Christian doctrines 
 we may have to say to the very end what 
 the children say in their little song con- 
 cerning the central truth of Christianity : 
 
 This I know, 
 For the Bible tells me so. 
 
 But then we may have found the Bible to 
 so fit in with our realization of essential 
 
WHAT ARE WE TO BELIEVE ? 35 
 
 need, or our actual experience, or our 
 knowledge of principle, in ninety - nine 
 items out of the hundred, that we feel it 
 to be a safe guide upon the remaining 
 item. And so we may hold our belief 
 in that item, no less than the rest, as a 
 personal possession. 
 
 The basis of all religion whatever is a 
 beUef in some sort of a deity. What sort 
 of a God are we required to believe in from 
 the testimony of our consciousness or our 
 knowledge of essential principle ? 
 
 The Bible guides us to the starting-point 
 of our creed by declaring that God is He 
 who made the universe. We know the 
 universe to be a fact, and ourselves to 
 be important facts in the universe. It is 
 contrary to all experience to imagine that 
 things made themselves, or that things 
 manifesting a deep and subtle plan should 
 spring into being without some one to plan 
 them first. So it is exceedingly difficult 
 not to beUeve in a Creator, and in an 
 intelligent Creator. 
 
 To enter into detail, we see around us 
 
36 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 and within ourselves (i) matter, (2) orderly 
 arrangement and co-ordination, (3) force 
 and motion, (4) life, (5) sensation and con- 
 sciousness, (6) rational thought, (7) con- 
 science and moral purpose. All these 
 things require to be accounted for, and 
 seem to be satisfactorily accounted for 
 in the great word God. Then, regarding 
 God as the Author of the universe, we feel 
 (i) that He must be possessed of reality 
 as real as that of any solid rock or majestic 
 mountain that He has made ; (2) He must 
 be a Being whose tendency is toward order 
 and sequence and the fitting-in of things ; 
 (3) He must be a Being of immeasur- 
 able force and power; (4) He must be an 
 intensely living Being ; (5) He must be an in- 
 tensely conscious Being ; (6) He must be an 
 intensely thoughtful Being ; (7) He must be a 
 Being intensely cognizant of right and wrong. 
 No wonder that in each of the ancient 
 nations — Chaldean, Egyptian, Chinese, 
 Aryan — we find, before there was any 
 Hebrew nation in existence, some recog- 
 nition of a supreme Creator and Law-giver. 
 
WHAT ARE WE TO BELIEVE ? 37 
 
 However humanity started upon earth, 
 whether by processes of gradual evolution 
 or otherwise, we can hardly imagine many 
 ages elapsing without such a recognition 
 springing up in the convictions of the 
 more thoughtful among the ancients. 
 
 They may still have been in doubt as to 
 the nature of His emotions toward them ; 
 and as some of the early tribes of men 
 became themselves harsh and cruel, they 
 came to regard God as harsh and cruel, 
 and in constant need of propitiation, apart 
 from the practical apology that an offender 
 against law needs to make to the Law- 
 giver. But God has never left Himself 
 without witness. Apart from what we 
 call specific revelation, a worker must 
 stamp something of his character upon his 
 works. We cannot write a Une in our 
 ordinary handwriting without expressing 
 some of our character in the formation of 
 the letters. And God ordained that every 
 human being should come to birth through 
 the agency of a mother, on whom the child 
 should be dependent for months afterwards. 
 
38 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 What a revelation we have of the essen- 
 tials of the divine nature in the word 
 mother ! (i) A mother loves her babe 
 with an immeasurable love. That is her 
 main revelation of God's character. (2) 
 Her love is such that she voluntarily bears 
 weariness and pain on behalf of her babe, 
 to relieve its weariness and pain. Here is 
 a yet further revelation of God. (3) Then, 
 for a long time she puts forth her strength 
 to make up for the weakness of her babe ; 
 she is hands and feet, and force and motion, 
 to supplement its insufficiencies ; and all 
 the while she is training her little one into 
 recognition of, and into communion with, 
 herself. 
 
 Here are three stages of a triple revela- 
 tion, which, rightly viewed, is a revelation, 
 in loveUest type, of some three-fold charac- 
 teristics of the divine Personality. Our hfe 
 began with mother : may not a living faith 
 in the grand essentials of Christian truth 
 find its starting-point at mother also ? ^ 
 
 ' This argument has been found most effectual as 
 the initial lesson in Christian doctrine, year after year, 
 
WHAT ARE WE TO BELIEVE ? 39 
 
 Long before the first letter was written 
 in our Bibles, the sons of woman in Chaldea 
 and Egypt felt there must be a great 
 Mother-heart somewhere in the skies above ; 
 they felt it was not sufficient to adore a 
 merely masculine deity. Our remote an- 
 cestors of the Aryan race (or rather their 
 representatives who conquered Northern 
 India), in a psalm composed about the 
 second millennium B.C., sang the words : 
 ' Thou art our Father, Thou art our 
 Mother, Thou art our beloved Friend, the 
 Source of all our strength ; O give us 
 strength ! Thou that bearest the burdens 
 of the universe, help me to bear the little 
 burdens of life ! ' The term, too, which 
 has come to us from the ancient Hebrews, 
 El Shaddai, and which we translate ' God 
 Almighty,' comes originally from the word 
 shad, a breast : meaning more the breast 
 of a woman than the chest of a man. 
 
 among Chinese outsiders. ' That is right doctrine ! ' 
 has been the exclamation. And often the words have 
 been added : ' When do you hold services ? May we 
 come ? ' 
 
40 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 It is commonly taken to mean the 
 God of Strength typified by the muscular 
 chest of a father, but may mean yet 
 more literally the God of Gracious 
 Supply typified by the full breast of a 
 mother. 
 
 The instinct which has led to the worship 
 of early goddesses — of Kuan-yin in China 
 {Kwannon in Japan), or of the Virgin- 
 mother of later centuries — ^is itself a true 
 one, whatever wrong forms it has taken. 
 The ages in which woman was degraded 
 and despised (as she does not seem to have 
 been among our own prehistoric Aryan 
 ancestors) may have been responsible for 
 keeping back that tenderly beautiful and 
 winsome view of God which we gain by 
 considering the Eternal to be very literally 
 the God of our mother. But what an 
 introduction to all right-minded theology 
 do we gain when we realize that our 
 mother's triple revelation of her person- 
 ality must have had a divine origin, that 
 it did not come of itself, that it was itself 
 born of the Highest, even as we have been 
 
WHAT ARE WE TO BELIEVE ? 41 
 
 born of a mother. To realize that in the 
 personaUty of God there is something 
 corresponding to the triple capacities which 
 mother exhibits in our infant days ; that 
 mother's triple revelation of herself as 
 Love, as Loving sacrifice, as Loving help- 
 fulness and communion, is an earthly 
 shadow of some triple revelation of the 
 divine, which God had, sooner or later, to 
 reveal to mankind — this is, at any rate 
 mentally and emotionally, to touch Truth 
 in its ultimate reality. 
 
 How sweet to rise betimes on some 
 early summer morning, when the scented 
 air is vibrant with the trilUng of the lark 
 in its altogether innocent worship of the 
 sun, and to bend down to satiate the eye 
 with the myriad gems of flashing lustre 
 pendant from the grass-blades of the field, 
 each shining forth with a miniature sun in 
 its bosom ! But sweeter far to watch the 
 mothers of earth's myriad tribes — white, 
 yellow, brown, black, it matters little — 
 and to see in those eyes which smile on the 
 little one, and in those caresses which fold 
 
42 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 the infant to the breast, the very gleams 
 of the Light of Light, ' the Light which 
 Hghteth every man as he cometh into the 
 world ! ' 
 
 Have we had a mother ? Then we have 
 a creed, which, rightly viewed, is the 
 essential creed of Christianity. How runs 
 our creed ? It is threefold : (i) ' I believe 
 in One from whom I received my being, 
 One whose nature is Love, whom I may 
 call my God of Love ' ; (2) 'I believe in 
 One who has been manifest in ministry 
 that cost much, in weariness and pain, 
 that I might be saved from extreme pain 
 and death, whom I may call my sacrificial 
 Substitute and Saviour ' ; (3) ' I believe in 
 One who comes near to me as help in my 
 weakness, and as the drawer-forth of my 
 latent faculties of communion with the 
 divine, whom I may call the Spirit of 
 Help and Communion.' And such a creed 
 will become a creed of living reahzation, 
 as the soul confesses further : ' I know 
 myself to be in need of All-patient Love, 
 and would yield myself up to the embrace 
 
WHAT ARE WE TO BELIEVE ? 43 
 
 of the Everlasting Arms. I know myself 
 to have been wrong with regard to some 
 of the laws which conscience proclaims ; 
 I feel that penalty ought to follow wrong- 
 doing ; but in the Deity I have a Person- 
 aUty who in some wonderful manner has 
 suffered that I might not have to bear the 
 full and final burden of suffering ; and I 
 adore Him who has been my sacred 
 Substitute. I know my need of moral 
 force — when I would do good, evil is 
 present with me ; but in the Deity I have 
 a PersonaHty who supplements my lack 
 of strength, and draws out my soul into 
 communion with God ; and I yearn for 
 that help, I yield myself toward that 
 communion.' 
 
 Once hold such a creed and utter such a 
 confession, and, seeking for further enlighten- 
 ment with that yearning which is prayer in 
 its essence — for more light from God Him- 
 self, from the teaching of those who know 
 God, and from the study of the Book where- 
 in the triple manifestation of God is focused 
 out into detail, our own creed will grow in 
 
44 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 detail ; it will be our own and not another's, 
 and it will become a practical power 
 of righteousness and goodness in our 
 lives. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE JOY OF THE LORD 
 
 Among the several points in which east is 
 east and west is west, there is one in which 
 the Far East has the decided advantage. 
 Such a phrase as ' Sovereign will be done/ 
 whether referring to the will of the 'Son 
 of Heaven' or of heaven itself, forms an 
 appropriate, new year's motto for the lintel, 
 written in fair characters on fehcitous red. 
 And in the Chinese Christian Church we 
 can confidently anticipate the time when 
 ' Thy will be done ' will form the most 
 joyous of nuptial benedictions. Whereas 
 in the West such a phrase used at such 
 times might produce a feeling of something 
 like consternation. It would almost be like 
 a coffin at a feast. For it is a peculiarity of 
 the inhabitants of English-speaking regions 
 to reserve the words ' Thy will be done ' 
 for such things as mourning - cards and 
 
46 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 tombstones, or for prayers which Pro- 
 fessor Henry Drummond has interpreted 
 as : * There is no help for it. We may as 
 well submit. God evidently means to have 
 His own way. Better give in at once and 
 make the best of it.' 
 
 In China, the emperor being regarded 
 as the ' Father-mother of the populace,' 
 his sovereign will is always associated in 
 the popular mind with all that is truly 
 congratulatory. When an imperial pro- 
 clamation (or ' supreme decree ') is issued, 
 the people naturally expect to read of 
 acceptable times and days of salvation, 
 when prisoners are to go forth, and those 
 in darkness may show themselves ; when 
 taxes are to be lightened, or other measures 
 initiated (if only on paper) to reheve the 
 distress or increase the comfort of the 
 national family circle. And it is, of course, 
 this Oriental view of the sovereign will, 
 proclaimed in our Oriental Bible, that we 
 are to adopt as our own. 
 
 We may be assisted thereto by the 
 obvious fact that in the home circles estab- 
 
THE JOY OF THE LORD 47 
 
 lished on earth by our Father in heaven, 
 parents naturally hke their children to be 
 as happy as the day is long, to tell them 
 aU their wants, and to say ' thank-you ' 
 for all that is done for them. And, as 
 the Apostle Paul points out to us in the 
 famiUar passage beginning ' Rejoice ever- 
 more,' this is precisely the will of our 
 Father concerning us all. 
 
 It is owing to the fact that perpetual 
 joy is the wiU of God concerning us, that 
 the words, ' Thy will be done,' gain their 
 appropriateness as a motto for funeral- 
 cards and tombstones. It really is ! And 
 were not stricken hearts so crushed, and 
 were not eyes so tear-blinded sometimes, 
 and all things so fringed with black, and 
 earth so empty and desolate . . . we should 
 see it all, and see it to be even so. It seems 
 so unsympathetic to say so in so many 
 words. The argument may seem hke so 
 much iU-timed jugglery with words to 
 some hearts that are breaking. ' It cannot 
 be so ! I can never beUeve that I ' is the 
 sigh called up by the voice like that of an 
 
48 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 intermeddling stranger who seems not to 
 know aught of ' our ' woe. But how real 
 the truth which the Highest seeks to 
 whisper in our ear, that He loves His 
 children — children whose heads are grey 
 or brown or golden, or just covered with 
 that soft down that we shall never stroke 
 again (God help us !) — He really loves His 
 children so, that He cannot bear to have 
 them remain absent in the body too long. 
 
 The Uttle ones, and bonnie lads and 
 maidens ! What would earth be without 
 the children ? What is earth without that 
 one to us ? And could we really imagine 
 heaven to be a home if there were no little 
 children yonder, no little angel-souls caught 
 up from earth into bliss, unscarred with 
 the battering-about of after years below 
 that we older folks have known ? 
 
 And these, and those of all ages, our 
 Father calls to Himself to teach them 
 indeed that His will is ' Rejoice evermore' 
 — to teach them that in a school whose 
 lessons are music, whose tasks are repose, 
 whose instruction is the wooing of infinite 
 
THE JOY OF THE LORD 49 
 
 loveliness, and where all — and ours 
 among them — drink in pleasures for ever- 
 more. It is the flashing motto over 
 the bright portals of that Home that 
 we transcribe upon our mourning - cards 
 and tombstones. For that which makes 
 heaven heaven, and that which would 
 fain make earth a paradise, is just the 
 good and acceptable and perfect will of 
 God. 
 
 Alas, that we have not made full use 
 of the miniature dictionary compiled by 
 the disciple whom Jesus loved ! By writing 
 down 'God is Love,' does he not bid us 
 substitute that word Love for the mys- 
 terious word God, wherever found in the 
 Scriptures, or wherever evident in our own 
 history? With the use of St. John's dic- 
 tionary we gain a new Bible and new views 
 of life. Let us henceforth read : ' In the 
 beginning Love created the heavens and 
 the earth ' ; that Love sent the Flood, to 
 wash the earth of unimagined pollution ; 
 that Love performed the surgical operation 
 
 of removing certain cancerous Canaanitish 
 D 
 
50 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 tribes^ at a time when the best character 
 to be found in a certain city was a woman 
 who would generally be considered the 
 lowest of the low in ours. And so on 
 throughout the whole Book, and so on 
 throughout the chapters of our own lives, 
 and most of all in places which are most 
 mysterious ; for, as one has pointed out, 
 ' Love which for purposes of love veils 
 itself, is love indeed.' And if there be an 
 axiom truer than all other truths, it is that 
 ' God is Love.' 
 
 Let us consider further that God's ulti- 
 mate name being Love, His one ultimate 
 command must be found in the same word 
 Love. All godliness is likeness to Love 
 Divine. And as godliness is of varied 
 forms, those varied forms of virtue must 
 all of them be forms of the one complete 
 
 I It is difficult to resist the impression that Canaan 
 was not only the focus of ancient heathenism in its 
 worst abominations, but the centre from which it spread. 
 Very much of the mythology, and almost aU the vile- 
 ness, of Greek and Roman heathenism is undoubtedly 
 of Canaanitish origin. Indeed, we may designate the 
 latter as missionary heathenism at that time in the 
 world. — Edersheim. 
 
THE JOY OF THE LORD 51 
 
 Light of Love, even as the various colours 
 are so many aspects of the one complete 
 white hght. 
 
 The whole sentence from which we have 
 quoted a part (i Thess. v. 16-18) has to 
 do, then, with love-lit joy, love-in-longing, 
 loving thankfulness. No thankfulness but 
 that of grateful love is acceptable to 
 Love Supreme. There is no such thing as 
 an unloving prayer : if unloving, it ceases 
 to be prayer. And we cannot have that 
 fruit of the Spirit, joy, without its all- 
 sweetening essence, love. As a traditional 
 saying of Jesus has it, ' Let no one be 
 joyous who does not look upon his brother's 
 countenance with love.' 
 
 The kindly command, ' Rejoice ever- 
 more,' fully stated, must read : ' In the 
 love of your Father rejoice evermore.' 
 And as that love is essentially a through- 
 flowing force, whose outflow is toward our 
 brother, there is thus provided a complete 
 plan for our perpetual joy. 
 
 But, says some one in effect, ' This may 
 all seem lovely in theory, but how am I 
 
52 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 to rejoice evermore in daily life wdth these 
 worries and sorrows of mine ? ' And that 
 is a practical question which we must con- 
 sider. For though at the present moment 
 the will of God may seem as feasible as it 
 is beautiful, it is quite possible that were 
 any one to have confronted us with a text- 
 card inscribed ' Rejoice evermore ' on a 
 certain day not so long ago when every- 
 thing went wrong, it might have called 
 forth exclamations that were neither very 
 Christian nor very beautiful. Yes; how 
 are we to rejoice evermore in the midst 
 of such crowding worries as often beset 
 us ? 
 
 First, let us ask what we mean by 
 worry. The word has two distinct senses. 
 The recurring of a grating noise at intervals, 
 being a strain to Western nerves (happy 
 Orient, that knows not what ' nerves ' are !), 
 is, for instance, described as ' worrying.' 
 But eliminating this adapted use of the 
 word in the sense of nerve-strain, there 
 remains its ordinary sense of that condition 
 of fretfulness or foreboding quoted in the 
 
THE JOY OF THE LORD 53 
 
 New Testament under the word ' anxiety ' 
 in the passages, ' Be not anxious for the 
 morrow,' ' Be anxious for nothing ' : a word, 
 it is interesting to note, which the Chinese 
 express by combining the signs for ' tiger ' 
 and ' thought,' meaning thoughts in the 
 grasp of a tiger — a most excellent definition, 
 as all will admit who have felt the teeth 
 and claws of worrying anxiety. But if 
 earthly fathers do their utmost to ' keep 
 the wolf from the door,' how much more 
 doth our Father in heaven determine to 
 keep the tiger-gnawing worry out of His 
 household. It needs no protracted search- 
 ing of the Scriptures to discover that as 
 the dependent child - soul is ' of the king- 
 dom of heaven,' so worry is not of the 
 kingdom of heaven, but is everywhere 
 kindly and firmly forbidden to the children 
 of God. 
 
 Worry is an acted atheism ! It is a 
 difficulty or a set of difficulties borne alone, 
 as though we had no heavenly Father. 
 When we worry about Uttle things, we 
 have surrounded ourselves with a fog of 
 
54 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 our own creation. As Browning has it (in 
 another connexion) : 
 
 Nothings become something which quietly closes 
 Heaven's earnest eye. 
 
 And in weightier matters, how often we 
 deal with our troubles as though they were 
 honourable guests : first entertaining them 
 by anticipation, then going forth to meet 
 them, then giving them the chief place in 
 the household. And then, by no means 
 hurrying them away, we retain them as 
 prominent topics of conversation or thought 
 for a long time after their actual departure. 
 ' And of such,* saith the Scriptures, ' is not 
 the kingdom of heaven,' the realm of divine 
 homefulness. 
 
 The task of caring for us is a prerogative 
 of our Father. In His lovingkindness He 
 absolutely forbids us to deprive Him of His 
 rights in these matters, but He calls His 
 little ones to His side, that both we and 
 our burdens may be caught up in His ever- 
 lasting arms. For God is Love. 
 
 And this is none the less the case when 
 our worries arise out of our own blunders. 
 
THE JOY OF THE LORD 55 
 
 Jacob is represented as saying, ' My way is 
 hid from the Lord ' — the situation which 
 worrying always assumes to be the fact of 
 the matter — and as worrying over compU- 
 cated tangles of circumstances which had 
 arisen out of his past blunders, and very 
 culpable blunders too. But he was ex- 
 horted by the prophet to look up toward 
 the stars at his Creator, and to comfort 
 himself in the might which upheld the 
 stars in their courses. 
 
 The logic of the passage may seem sadly 
 incomplete to some readers. And it really 
 is incomplete, as all students of Scripture 
 must admit. God rules the stars, which 
 are never lacking in obedience to the great 
 irresistible laws of the universe. Therefore 
 Jacob, who for generations has never been 
 lacking in disobedience to the laws of 
 righteousness, may comfort himself that 
 his case is not so hopeless as his now- 
 enlightened conscience declares it properly 
 to be ! Such seems to be the argument, 
 and to say that the logic is ' incomplete ' 
 will provoke a smile from any one pos- 
 
56 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 sessed of the veriest rudiments of things 
 logical ! 
 
 But what does Love care for the limi- 
 tations of logic ? The whole chapter 
 (Isa. xl.) consists of notes caught by the 
 prophet from the * Troubadour Song ' of the 
 Supreme Lover, who instructed the prophet 
 to reproduce it ' wooingly ' — the Lover who 
 will defy all logic by-and-by, and appear 
 disrobed of all ' beauty,' a Man of sorrows 
 and acquainted with grief, stricken, smitten, 
 afflicted, and all for iniquities not His own, 
 that He may manifest His sublime right- 
 eousness ; the Lover who now and for 
 ever defies all limitations of logic, that He 
 may manifest His boundless love. Who 
 will direct the spirit of the Lord, or, being 
 His counsellor, will teach Him logic ? 
 
 If Jacob, the benighted wanderer, had a 
 vestige of logic in his mental composition, 
 he might know that a contemplation of 
 the stars in their courses would condemn 
 him yet the more. But, as he lifts up his 
 eyes on high, he meets the gaze of Majestic 
 Tenderness, beyond the stars, and yet so 
 
THE JOY OF THE LORD 57 
 
 near to him. Abashed as he is, he feels 
 that gaze, and feels the Love that is larger 
 than logic, even as the infinite heavens are 
 larger than the earth. And so it may be 
 with us. As the mind expands to grasp 
 the fact that our daily place of abode is 
 just the infinity of God, we may find steal- 
 ing over us the irresistible assurance that 
 even the complications which we have 
 woven around ourselves are taken in hand 
 by that Sovereign Love whose behest the 
 worlds obey. Thus may we learn to rest 
 from our direct entanglements of self- 
 woven worry, and rest completely in that 
 measureless might which is also ineffable 
 Love. And the very energy of despair, 
 induced by the chaos of circumstances, 
 will become an energy of reliance upon 
 the Lord, moulding our lives into a sphere 
 of light, as our reliance becomes constant 
 and complete. 
 
 But, secondly, having lost our worries 
 in the presence of the Lord of Hosts (even 
 the hosts of heaven), it is more than pos- 
 sible that a residual something wi!!\ be left 
 
58 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 which none can explain away. The ques- 
 tion asked a while ago was : ' How can I 
 rejoice amid these sorrows ? ' Ah, sorrows ! 
 those persistent facts that bind the tribes 
 of men into one sad brotherhood. What 
 life can hope to be free from sorrows ? 
 They are as universal as the shadows, by 
 which we so often describe them. And 
 what shall we say to these things ? 
 
 We may at any rate ask : ' What kind 
 of joy is this of which St. Paul speaks ? 
 Is it indeed a shadowless joy ? ' The 
 Chinese in their art have striven to repre- 
 sent an ideal state of things by never 
 depicting shadings and shadows. And are 
 we to try and find such regions as these 
 upon earth as a home for the soul ? 
 Surely not. 
 
 * What is the difference,' asked a Chinese 
 scholar one day, ' what is the difference 
 between that picture of yours and our best- 
 drawn pictures ; for we have some correctly 
 drawn, as you know. Yours is aesthetic 
 in a different way from ours. It is so 
 real. What makes it real ? ' And the 
 
THE JOY OF THE LORD 59 
 
 reply was : ' The shadows. Our pictures 
 are never shadowless.' The charm of many 
 a priceless picture, and the nameless charm 
 of many a life that is called noble, is not 
 half the secret of it all the breadth of 
 shadow that has been introduced into the 
 composition ? 
 
 Thank God that we, who live in any- 
 thing but a shadowless world, have any- 
 thing but a shadowless Christ as the object 
 of our adoration ! The strong Son of God 
 stands forth a reality, the Son of Man 
 indeed, most adorable and most real in the 
 depth of the shadows which enwrap Him. 
 It was on the most overcast evening of 
 His life on earth that He wished to com- 
 municate to His troubled followers the 
 very joy which the apostle exhorts us to 
 grasp as a Ufe-long possession. ' Rejoice 
 evermore in the joy of the Lord,' he says in 
 effect. And when we ask, ' What Lord ? ' 
 the answer is none other than this : ' The 
 Man of Sorrows.' 
 
 The chief singer of Ireland once penned 
 the remarkable words : 
 
6o IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 Then sorrow, touched by Thee, grows bright 
 
 With more than rapture's ray ; 
 As darkness shows us worlds of light 
 
 We never saw by day. 
 
 And the child-memories within us may 
 explain that verse, if we ask the simple 
 questions : ' Why was mother so loved ? 
 ^^Tiy was her presence so comforting ? 
 Why is her memory so sacred to us ? ' 
 The voice of the child within us replies : 
 ' It was in my troubles that I came to 
 know mother.' And nowadays, is not the 
 nearest friend we possess the one who, 
 above aU others, knew how to sustain us 
 with words and ministries when we were 
 ' weary ' ? Sorrows and vales of shadows 
 are the regions where we reaUy met with 
 our mother, where we really came to know 
 our choicest friends, and where many of 
 us found the real Christ, our Lord, who 
 grasped us in the gloom and drew us into 
 the love-lit circle of those He has crowned 
 with the word ' friends.' 
 
 It is His joy that we are to make our 
 life-portion — the joy of His sacred fellow- 
 ship, the joy of a Son of God, Unked by 
 
THE JOY OF THE LORD 6i 
 
 bonds that neither death nor Ufe can sever, 
 to the Son of God and the Man of Sorrows, 
 who loved us and gave Himself for us. 
 
 Such an entry into His joy must involve 
 an entry into the sorrows of the Lord also. 
 For he is httle worthy of the name of friend 
 who only wishes to share our joys, and will 
 have none of our sorrows too. The two 
 elements are inseparably bound up in the 
 one word sympathy. And sorrowing as we 
 must in all things which are a grief to our 
 Lord, we may ever be cheered in this, that 
 our capacity of sympathy in His sorrows 
 wiU be the very capacity for entering into 
 the final joy of the Lord in the Father's 
 house, of which we sing : 
 
 No shadows yonder . . . ! 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 FOREIGN DEVILRY 
 
 All highest truths are expressible in terms 
 of extreme simplicity. And how much of 
 God's whole requirements may be summed 
 up in the thought that Our Father just 
 requires that we all should feel at home with 
 Him ! 
 
 But every child knows that however 
 perfectly it may feel at home in a deUght- 
 ful home circle, there are things in the 
 world at large which must be kept out of 
 the home. There are locks and bolts on 
 our front door. We should not feel com- 
 fortable without them. If home is to be 
 home, we cannot admit every one who may 
 wish to enter. Home means, as things 
 are, some shutting-off of things harmful 
 and unhomelike. It means not only the 
 harmony of love, but the exclusion of all 
 things that are opposed to love. The 
 
FOREIGN DEVILRY 63 
 
 final Home will mean this, we are sure. 
 And if God is setting up a preliminary 
 home on earth, there must be some regula- 
 tions as to the exclusion of the unhome- 
 like, in order for that home to be real. 
 This is a lesson taught throughout the 
 Bible, and a lesson gathered up in a 
 sentence of a psalmist (Psalm xcvii. 10): 
 ' O ye that love the Lord, hate evil.' 
 
 At-homeness with God really involves 
 two things : loving what God loves, and 
 hating what God hates. Carlyle says : 
 ' God Himself hates evil with a most 
 authentic, celestial, and eternal hatred — 
 a hatred, a hostiUty, inexorable, un- 
 appeasable.' And to be godly, v,e must, 
 of course, learn to do the same. 
 
 The actual psalm where the words ' Hate 
 evil ' occur, may be compared to Haydn's 
 ' Surprise Symphony,' where, in the midst 
 of a simple melody, there comes a great 
 crashing note from all the instruments of 
 the orchestra. That, in Haydn's case, was 
 a little ebullition of the humour which 
 characterized the most genial of composers. 
 
64 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 But in the psalm it is a piercing trumpet- 
 blast, blown in downright earnest, in the 
 very midst of festive strains of triumph 
 in Omnipotence. And so, in the midst of 
 the joy of the Lord which is our strength, 
 we are sternly warned against that in- 
 discriminating complacency which is our 
 weakness. The day has not yet dawned 
 when we may look upon all things with a 
 universal smile. The same sunbeams which 
 smile upon all things beautiful, smile not 
 but glare upon scenes of filth and rotting 
 corruption. 
 
 We are apt to look upon evil through 
 philosophical spectacles, unless it happens 
 to take the form of a personal offence 
 (when our attitude is not always calmly 
 philosophical), or when it is a wrong done 
 to a friend, or perhaps to our country, or 
 to some cause with which we have identi- 
 fied ourselves. We are accustomed to teU 
 our little ones that guns and cannon are 
 awful things, without any very definite 
 personal objection to their existence in the 
 world, unless they happen to be in the 
 
FOREIGN DEVILRY 65 
 
 enemy's hands, and pointed against us. 
 And in the case of the badness of hearts 
 and lives around, we have none of us so 
 fully identified ourselves with the Cause 
 of Eternal Righteousness as to feel in 
 every evil a more than personal offence — 
 an offence against One whose claims have 
 taken the place of our own personal claims. 
 Speaking generally, God has to be a great 
 fact before sin, as apart from vice and 
 crime, can be a great fact in our conscious- 
 ness. In China, where God has become a 
 very shadowy fact for so many centuries, 
 the sense of sin, as missing the mark of 
 His glory, as being a condition of dis- 
 location from God — all this is practically 
 non-existent. The word ' sin,' in purely 
 idolatrous tribes, means crimes which are 
 destructive of our interests ; and at most, 
 in nations where God is unrecognized, it 
 means crimes and vices which increase the 
 sum of human suffering. Personal offences 
 or offences against society are alone re- 
 garded as evils to be loathed. All else 
 resemble arrows shot into empty air, 
 
 E 
 
66 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 hurting no one, and therefore counting 
 for nothing. 
 
 But as Christians we are confronted by 
 outrageous forces of anarchy, directed 
 against Love the Upbuilder, and against 
 the characters, the home circles, the social 
 order, of a noble generosity which He 
 would upbuild. There are around us on 
 every side cancers in otherwise fair char- 
 acters, skeletons in otherwise smiling 
 households, horrible blots on the escut- 
 cheon of otherwise noble nations ; there is 
 damnation lurking in the core of humanity 
 itself. A very malignant thing is here, 
 which may well call forth all our powers 
 of divinest animosity. No half-hatred will 
 avail. 
 
 China in 1900, in an epoch which will 
 be handed down in history, furnished an 
 example of hatred of the intensest sort, 
 stirred up by a handful of Manchu ' for- 
 eigners ' ruling in Pekin, against the ' for- 
 eigners ' from the West.^ The decree for 
 
 ^ The colloquial term ' Chinese emperor ' is of course 
 cis much a misnomer as would be the term ' Jewish 
 
FOREIGN DEVILRY 67 
 
 the formation of Boxer bands everywhere 
 having been sent to every county in the 
 empire a year and a half previously (No- 
 vember 5, 1898), there was issued, in June 
 1900, the famous decree of the Dowager- 
 Empress : ' Whether foreign residence or 
 preaching-hall, foreign merchant or official, 
 burn them with fire, exterminate them 
 with torture ! Let no pity be shown, as 
 that would spoil the Great Undertaking.' 
 
 Here is hatred indeed ! And a hatred 
 which we must, in some respects, take for 
 our model, for sin is foreign devilry in the 
 kingdom of heaven, and all the imaginary 
 atrocities which the drought-impoverished 
 country folk of Northern China were 
 stirred up to accept as Western customs, 
 such as eye-scooping, brain-stealing, and 
 the like, are being actually perpetrated 
 every day within what is probably the 
 very respectable neighbourhood in which 
 
 emperor ' applied to the Caesars. Since 1644 China 
 has been ruled by Manchu Tartars, and in 1900 the 
 local Chinese authorities almost to a man protected 
 Western residents. 
 
68 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 we live ! The outlook of immortal spirits 
 is being taken from them, the wisdom 
 which would make them men and women 
 of God is being stolen from them, by the 
 subtle processes of that foreign devilry 
 known as Sin. 
 
 And if we visit the slums of our monster 
 cities, even in imagination, we are con- 
 fronted by the facts of ' little children 
 nursed in infamy and suckled on gin; 
 men and women huddled like beasts in 
 filthy tenements reeking with incest and 
 echoing with curses ; homeless, workless, 
 brutaUzed tramps, who will cower in our 
 prisons and die in our hospitals ; wretched 
 and despairing ones, who go through life 
 pelted with troubles as with fiery hail, and 
 who feel that they are neither loved by 
 God nor regarded by man.' Here is the 
 work of foreign devilry in the kingdom of 
 heaven, and within the frontiers of Christen- 
 dom, not to speak of the vile abuses among 
 the populace, and the bribery and corrup- 
 tion among some classes of the officials in 
 Mohammedan and Confucian lands. 
 
FOREIGN DEVILRY 69 
 
 In the keeping of the command to hate 
 evil, as in all education in the opposite 
 realms of the beautiful, the first requisite 
 is eyes. In a sense, we are all bom bhnd. 
 For years our eyes just see what a camera 
 lens can see, and little more. The province 
 of education is to develop the latent eye 
 of the mind and heart. And our education 
 is by no means complete yet : for while we 
 can see the enormity of evil when written 
 in atrocity and blood, and the destructive- 
 ness of evil when embodied in the criminal 
 from the slums, we yet make a wonder- 
 ful distinction between crimes, vices, and 
 sins. As citizens we are educated to abhor 
 the first ; as individuals we are educated to 
 abhor the second ; and as members of God's 
 family, and citizens of God's kingdom, we 
 must be educated to abhor sin itself. 
 
 Every child can recognize black char- 
 coal ; and all who pass the mat hovels of 
 China, when cooking is in process, can see 
 the cloud of very obvious carbon which 
 is blackening the interior. But it needs 
 a special education to recognize the unseen 
 
70 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 carbon in the close air of some churches 
 and drawing-rooms, which may all the 
 while be more filthy, from a physiological 
 point of view, than the smoke-fiUed hovel. 
 
 Old-time missionary meetings were often 
 the great events of the year in many a 
 town during those days when the club of 
 the cannibal and the instruments of cruelty 
 from the dark places of the earth were 
 exhibited. But in these days, when such 
 horrible things are being improved off the 
 face of the earth, it may need a special 
 education to realize the need of sending 
 the man with a message abroad, or the 
 why and the wherefore of the cry ' Repent 
 ye ! ' at home. As though the most devas- 
 tating form of evil in the world were 
 actual savagery ! 
 
 An accident involving gaping wound and 
 shattered body fills the onlooker with 
 horror. The sight of a battlefield after 
 an action would probably cool the martial 
 ardour of many a civilian. But while war 
 and accident have slain their thousands, 
 it is not by such obvious agencies as these 
 
FOREIGN DEVILRY 71 
 
 that the millions of earth's children are 
 being hurried into eternity. It is the 
 unseen microbe which is responsible for 
 ninety-nine hundredths of the mourners 
 that go about the streets, and the widows 
 and orphans whose hearts are desolate 
 within doors. 
 
 Physical health, as we know nowadays, 
 resembles spiritual vigour in this, that it 
 involves a continual wrestling with unseen 
 foes. But the importance of guarding 
 against infection, and the poison contained 
 in the pond and well-water of the towns 
 of tropical countries, are things hard to 
 bring home to the mind of the Oriental, 
 who regards his Western adviser as ex- 
 ceedingly fussy on such matters, even as 
 non-Christians do the preacher who dis- 
 courses upon the virulence of pride and 
 envy, ill-feehng and evil-speaking. It needs 
 a special education of the inner senses to 
 recognize with horror the devastating in- 
 fluences of such little things as myriads of 
 microbes in the soul, which are under- 
 mining the Home of God in Christendom. 
 
72 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 The Manchu Court of China, from that 
 edict of November 1898 onwards, urged 
 forward the formation of Boxer bands, 
 thinking such a measure necessary for the 
 continuance of their d5aiasty. But the 
 effect proved to be in the reverse direction 
 of what they intended, for, after the 
 year igoo, all China began to realize, as 
 never before, that their native land was 
 under the dominion of northern foreigners, 
 and all anti-Manchu rebellions began to 
 be quoted as patriotic movements. So 
 with our encouragement of microbes of 
 anarchy in support of the dynasty of Self ! 
 The attempted saving of our dignity by 
 such means is really a loss of the finer 
 issues of personality, and a degradation 
 from the position that might otherwise 
 be ours in God's universe. 
 
 Our better nature seeks to serve God 
 and man ; our prayers say : ' Thy king- 
 dom come.' But our envies and superior- 
 ities and iU-feehngs and losses of temper 
 cry : ' Down with the kingdom of heaven ! ' 
 And alas! the anarchist shouts are some- 
 
FOREIGN DEVILRY 73 
 
 times louder and more numerous than all 
 the pious prayers. Hence the thunder- 
 ous command, for all that have ears to 
 hear : ' Hate evil, especially evil in its most 
 easily besetting forms of anarchy.' 
 
 Some, however, wiU ask : ' Why use 
 such strong terms for what, after aU, is 
 part and parcel of human nature ? ' The 
 answer is found in the true nature of God, 
 and the fact that human nature must be 
 born anew, bom into the scope of aU the 
 forces of divine heredity, in order to stand 
 uncondemned before God. And in calling 
 common sins by bad names, we have been 
 merely quoting from Scripture. The teach- 
 ing of the Lord Jesus (Matt. v. 21, 22) is 
 that all sins are crimes ; and the teaching 
 of the Apostle John (i Ep. iii. 4) is that 
 aJl sin is anarchy. Pride is also described 
 as abominable (Prov. xvi. 5). And, what 
 may not be so obviously true at first sight, 
 hatred of another is analysed as murder 
 (i John iii. 15). 
 
 This last passage we sometimes soften 
 down by saying that hatred contains the 
 
74 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 germs of murder — feeling all the while, 
 perhaps, that though, say, nux vomica is 
 correctly described as a deadly poison, its 
 poisonous qualities are in reality a matter 
 of dose, and that a few grains of that 
 poisonous root may be an absolutely bene- 
 ficial tonic to some folks. We may be apt 
 to imagine that small doses of uncharity 
 are not only innocuous, but give a healthy 
 tone to the personality. But the parallel 
 does not apply. As a fact, nux vomica 
 is only poisonous beyond a certain dose, 
 whereas uncharity is always deadly, even 
 as the minutest quantity of hydrophobic 
 virus introduced into the veins is deadly 
 poison. Something of the Christ-hke is 
 violently put out of existence whenever 
 uncharity bites a man's soul. 
 
 And if we must be Uteral, and by ' mur- 
 der ' understand the taking away of a 
 man's physical life, we may remind our- 
 selves that although nowadays the man 
 who hates another is overruled in his 
 impulses by the forces of civilization, we 
 have only to remove those forces to find 
 
FOREIGN DEVILRY 75 
 
 the hater making an attempt at actual 
 murder. The man who hates to-day would 
 very probably have been a man-slayer a 
 few centuries ago, and will have to stand 
 at last before the Great Tribunal in com- 
 pany with some whose hatred may have 
 been no greater than his, but who, in the 
 earlier ages of the world, merely lacked 
 the environment of restraint which is now, 
 happily, so potent a deterrent. 
 
 It is a liberal education in itself to learn 
 to single out as the objects of our special 
 hatred those sins which most stirred the 
 righteous indignation of our Exemplar 
 Christ. For these do not seem to have 
 been literal murder, adultery, burglary, 
 and the like — forms of evil which it needs 
 no Christian training to detest. Rather 
 was the life of the Master a continual 
 battle against religious officialism and the 
 lust of mastery around. Officialism and 
 the domineering spirit are characteristic 
 vices in the East, and the things which 
 require constant checking by the Western 
 pastor as mission churches multiply around 
 
76 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 him. But whether in the East or the 
 West, they are the things most inimical 
 to the Church's true progress. 
 
 Whatever differences of opinion may 
 exist as to the precise nature of the ' holy 
 orders ' founded in apostohc times (and, 
 thank God, those differences of opinion 
 may co-exist with the most perfect mutual 
 respect and Christian cordiahty), of one 
 thing we may be quite certain : no church 
 officialism was ever contemplated by our 
 Lord with any other feeUngs than those 
 of indignant horror. Whatever elements 
 His kingdom was to include, they were all 
 to be winsome to the child-soul. Bumble 
 the beadle, and all forms of Bumbleism, 
 whether in ' church,' or ' chapel,' or ' meet- 
 ing-house,' would surely come under His 
 most righteous and wrathful condemna- 
 tion. And whatever our feelings may be 
 toward the Papacy itself (and it is to be 
 hoped that those feehngs are prayerful 
 ones), we may well find scope for a godly 
 hatred of aU forms of what we sometimes 
 call ' popery ' — tyranny and monopoly of 
 
FOREIGN DEVILRY 77 
 
 an altogether unwarranted sort, where- 
 ever found in our Father's home of 
 many rooms here on earth. For apart 
 from the loss of status in the eyes 
 of edl intelligent Christians which these 
 things involve to those overcome by 
 such vices, are not these the very forms 
 of apostasy from the all - essential love 
 of God which most surely * crucify the 
 Son of God afresh, and put Him to an 
 open shame' ? 
 
 Must we have a literal cross of wood, 
 and nails of iron, in order to produce a 
 crucifixion ? Yes, indeed, to produce such 
 a crucifixion as a camera lens might pro- 
 ject upon a film of silver bromide. But 
 have we not higher senses of vision than 
 those possessed by a mere machine of a 
 photographic camera ? In the days of 
 old, it was necessary for the sufferings of 
 the Christ to be manifest in a horrible 
 spectacle of Umbs in painful tension, and 
 red blood streaming from the wounds, in 
 order to be manifest at all to the eyes of 
 men. And some folks seem to need models 
 
78 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 of the cross and the crucifix still in order 
 to realize anything of the tragedy of the 
 ages ! 
 
 But has the crucifixion itself ever been 
 carved in wood or painted on canvas ? 
 The cross has been painted, nail and thorn 
 have been painted, and the form of a 
 Sufferer in agony. The anguish of the 
 body has been painted, with more or less 
 suggestiveness of soitiething deeper, but 
 the inner fact of the crucifixion was that 
 portion of our Lord's sufferings unseen by 
 men. We do not know what sin meant 
 to the heart of the sinless One. Our 
 minds are de-sensitized and dull, except 
 as regards evil which is specially directed 
 against ourselves or those with whom we 
 sympathize. But here was One so iden- 
 tified with God and righteousness that all 
 sin must have assumed a personal aspect. 
 And, as we know, it was the religious 
 officiahsm, the tyranny and monopoly, the 
 lust for pre-eminence among the Jewish 
 leaders, which wreaked a savage vengeance 
 upon the Nazarene who had dared to 
 
FOREIGN DEVILRY 79 
 
 denounce and defy such refinements of 
 ungodliness. 
 
 We may not analyse the Shekinah of 
 anguish in which the Holy One was mani- 
 fest on Calvary ; we cannot fathom the 
 depths of the words : ' He was made sin 
 for us who knew no sin ' ; but each re- 
 membrance of the cross and passion should 
 make us once more the sworn foes of those 
 sins which most literally ' pointed the 
 nail and fixed the spear.' Then, when this 
 point has been reached, let us turn from 
 the anguish of Calvary to the unfathom- 
 able Love of Calvary. For in the word 
 Love is the true motive power toward the 
 divinely-ordained hatred of evil. 
 
 Righteous indignation that is merely 
 human can hardly avoid hating the sinner 
 in his sin. How can we but loathe the 
 man who is doing wrong to others, as he 
 knows full well, and who is making worship 
 a substitute for justice, hoping somehow 
 or other to be smuggled into the eternal 
 Halls of Truth at last without his con- 
 science ? How can we avoid loathing those 
 
8o IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 who are surrounded by all that tactful 
 tenderness can suggest for their comfort 
 and encouragement, but who seem to 
 be utterly unpleasable, returning many a 
 grumble for the utmost efforts of gentlest 
 ministry, and who yet imagine that they 
 themselves are treading the way to the 
 home of ministering spirits ? How can we 
 avoid loathing those who are repressive of 
 all zeal for the house of the Lord, who put 
 heavy loads on the backs of those who are 
 toiling up the hill of the Lord, hurUng 
 half -sneers at those who are trying to 
 do double work to make up for their 
 deficiencies ; and who yet come forward 
 as candidates for high honotirs when any 
 enterprise has been carried to a suc- 
 cessful issue in spite of their obstruction ? 
 How can we avoid loathing those who 
 rarely mention the name of another with- 
 out a note of self-superiority, and a sug- 
 gestion that the person mentioned is hardly 
 so genuine as some may suppose ; who are 
 accustomed to give an ill-natured turn to 
 words uttered with the best of intentions, 
 
FOREIGN DEVILRY 8i 
 
 and to leave dirty finger-marks on almost 
 every character they handle ? Here are 
 some specimen problems involved in our 
 keeping the command to hate evil. And 
 our Anglo-Saxon training comes in to 
 make the case still more difl&cult. 
 
 Such mean traits of character we must 
 loathe. They are disgraceful and abom- 
 inable things, directly opposed to eternal 
 Truth-in-Love. But we may not loathe 
 the offender, unless he happens to be our- 
 self. Hatred of others, as we have seen, 
 is the crime of crimes. And God, even our 
 own God, has provided for the difficulty. 
 He is waiting to pour into our souls a 
 force which shall make hatred of others 
 impossible. It is His own all-generous 
 love, whose watchword in our own hearts 
 will be : ' We love because He first 
 loved us — while we, we ourselves, were 
 yet sinners.' 
 
 The words in the psalm are addressed to 
 those who love God. And more medita- 
 tion upon the love of God in Christ, more 
 waiting upon the Lord, until our souls 
 
82 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 become channels of that through-flowing 
 generosity : these are the hnes on which 
 the force of the command is to be felt, 
 and the words of the command obeyed. 
 Faith in God, by itself, might even make 
 us persecutors Uke Saul of Tarsus ; hope 
 in God might make us loathe the ' publi- 
 cans and sinners ' in their sin and their 
 penitence too ; but divine love is at once 
 the great incentive and the great safe- 
 guard in the hatred of evil. 
 
 Never forgetting that hatred of evil is 
 an integral note in the psalm of life, our 
 song may indeed be ' The Lord reigneth.' 
 And we may everywhere recognize a reign 
 of Light, hidden at times as the seed is 
 hidden within the dark recesses of the 
 soil, but possessed of a power of endless 
 Life which shaU turn the desert into a 
 garden of the Lord, and a way of hohness 
 to the Home of Supreme Love, wherein 
 shall be gathered the glory and honour of 
 the nations, and from which all things 
 unclean and abominable and false shall be 
 excluded for ever. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 A MODERN SOUL 
 
 In these days of enterprise and competi- 
 tion, ' Eastward Ho ! ' has become quite 
 as much the cry as was * Westward Ho ! ' 
 in Elizabethan days. Merchant and mis- 
 sionary aUke are determined, each in his 
 own way, to wake up the ' slumbrous 
 Asiatic' But it must not be forgotten 
 that his slumbers of recent centuries, so 
 often vacuous except in respect of the 
 two superlative ideals, ' Name and Gain,' 
 have followed ages of contemplation, in 
 which the soul was discovered. 
 
 The sister continents of the white race 
 have discovered a bewildering variety of 
 things useful and ornamental, and as such 
 things seem to spell the magic syllable 
 Gain, the Asiatic is arousing himself to 
 take an interest in the most promising of 
 these discoveries. And may not we of 
 
84 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 the West find it to our highest advantage 
 to arouse ourselves to a realization of that 
 ancient Oriental discovery — an immeasur- 
 able soul by which an infinite God may 
 be worshipped ? A keen but not unkind 
 critic of our modern life has suggested that 
 we of the twentieth century are in danger 
 of forgetting that we have any souls at 
 all. And certainly the increasing multi- 
 pUcity of crowding cares and distractions 
 incident to our complex civiUzation — where 
 every day brings a greater variety of 
 thought than a week might bring to our 
 grandfathers, or than a month may bring 
 to many Orientals — seems hardly conducive 
 to the cultivation of a deep soul-fife. 
 
 How utterly out of date is such a state- 
 ment of Richard Baxter's (1649) as : 'It 
 is easier to think of heaven for a whole 
 day than to maintain a lively sense of 
 heavenly things upon our hearts for a 
 quarter of an hour.' The first clause of 
 the sentence, as we read it nowadays, 
 makes the latter appear to be an actual 
 impossibility. What modern mind is ac- 
 
A MODERN SOUL 85 
 
 customed to contemplate heaven for the 
 space of a single hour, not to speak of a 
 whole day ? The tendency of the times 
 is to ' do ' sacred things, much as the very 
 smartest of American travellers may ' do * 
 sacred places. ' To Jerusalem and back 
 in so many minutes,' is the railway motto 
 of much of our modern religious life. And 
 with not a few, the * doing ' is in the past 
 tense. They have ' done ' religion, much 
 as a ' modern side ' coUege student may 
 have taken a small course of the classics, 
 with a view henceforth to throw his whole 
 energy into up-to-date subjects. 
 
 Yet that we are souls clothed in 
 bodies, is a conviction of thoughtful 
 men the wide world over. For the term 
 ' thoughtful ' has come to be applied to 
 those who have passed through the soul's 
 awakening. 
 
 Such an awakening may have come 
 direct from the Infinite, as with a light 
 sleeper aroused by the rays of dawn ; but 
 with many it has involved some collision 
 of circumstances to open the eyes of the 
 
86 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 soul to its environment of reality. There 
 is a Chinese story of an incarnate lohan 
 (Sanscrit arhan or arhat) or saint of 
 untrammelled soul, devoted by wealthy 
 parents to the humdrum Hfe of a Buddhist 
 monk, who, amid the galling conditions 
 of candidature for vacuity of mind, re- 
 ceived one day from the enhghtened abbot 
 of the monastery a resounding slap which 
 woke up the slumbering lohan within him, 
 and became from thenceforth lifted far 
 above the barriers of the conventional. 
 Surely a parable, this, which has had its 
 application in many a life. An over- 
 powering afiection, amid the proverbial 
 vicissitudes which may beset true love, 
 an unspeakable sorrow, a terrible danger, 
 an unutterable wrong, may well reveal to 
 us something of our soul-capacity. 
 
 What depths are discovered within us 
 when once those depths are flooded ! Can 
 we have been made according to any 
 earthly measure ? Must not He who hath 
 made us be Himself beyond measure ? 
 Can we be aught^else than children of the 
 
A MODERN SOUL 87 
 
 eternities, sons and daughters of the 
 Infinite ? 
 
 And to those who have had these facts 
 forced home upon them, and who are 
 consciously embraced by the Everlasting 
 Arms, it becomes a positive rehef when all 
 barriers are cast aside, and one soul is 
 called in to help another soul aroused 
 by an overwhelming sense of need. In- 
 deed, a definition of the word home 
 may sometimes be : 'A condition of 
 things in which others surrender them- 
 selves to be helped.' Is it not thus that 
 the physician finds his home among those 
 that are sick, and thus also that the 
 nurse may hesitate to say which is 
 home, her place of rest or the wards of 
 the hospital ? 
 
 As a rule, the soul is dealt with much as 
 Orientals deal with their women. She may 
 look out of the windows (Eccles. xii. 3, for 
 eyes), but may not appear abroad except 
 with veiled face. In a word, she is kept 
 in a zenana. And such being our Western 
 fashion, any departure from it seems to 
 
88 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 savour of foreignization. It is a revolt in 
 the realms of Dame Custom. 
 
 But, spite of all conventionality, the 
 government of the world is a government 
 of souls. In the midst of all the mas- 
 querade known as ' The Secular,' the arrow 
 may fly by day, and the terror by night ; 
 and the whole scheme, so well elaborated 
 with its special Uterature and art and 
 music, may collapse all at once in a very 
 unconventional manner, leaving the soul 
 confronted with ReaUty. 
 
 Yet, were sudden shocks and disappoint- 
 ments and ' mysteries ' to be banished 
 from a world otherwise similar to our own, 
 might there not be an imminent danger of 
 a general shrivelling of the soul, which is, 
 after aU, the measure of the man ? 
 
 In the Far East, again, the word 'mys- 
 tery ' has always the latent sense of admir- 
 able, even as the phrase ' Sovereign Will ' 
 has an altogether felicitous meaning. And 
 we only need a wider range of facts to make 
 it the most obvious thing in life, that the 
 supreme government of the world is in the 
 
A MODERN SOUL 89 
 
 hands of a perfectly kind Over-ruler. While 
 it is not doubted that peace, security, and 
 comfort may be fully educative to those 
 whose souls are in perfect health, we shall 
 all of us be grateful one day for that 
 Sovereign Will which for purposes of love 
 veils itself in ' mystery,' and allows the 
 rude shocks of life to arouse us from the 
 danger of something answering to the 
 fatal drowsiness of the Arctic regions, or 
 the sleeping sickness of Mid Africa. And 
 being thus aroused, happy indeed are we 
 if ours is the grip of the hand of One who 
 is ever enthroned in ' admirable mystery,' 
 and if we have learned the lesson that 
 tribulation and God work patience, patience 
 and God work probation, and probation and 
 God work out the noblest destiny of the soul, 
 even as Paul the Apostle has declared. 
 
 All self-revealing emotions, all righteous 
 passions which defy our earthly methods 
 of mensuration, may become of great 
 value on the one condition that they 
 create so much hunger and thirst for the 
 divine. For is not our capacity for feeling 
 
90 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 a wrong done to another the very capacity 
 for realizing the divine righteousness ? Is 
 not our capacity for sorrow our capacity 
 for fellowship with the Man of Sorrows ? 
 Is not our capacity for lonehness our 
 capacity for divine love ? Our sense of 
 human helplessness, is it not a preparation 
 for the reahzation of divine power ? And 
 so the plan of God in our lives includes 
 the keeping alive of a sense of unsatura- 
 tion that can only be met by His infinite 
 fullness. 
 
 How vast the sacred Personality which 
 demands recognition at so many points I 
 How majestic the Love that drives as well 
 as draws us to its embrace ! We flee from 
 the Presence, to hide ourselves amid a 
 crowd of trifles ; and lo ! we are in the 
 Holy of Holies aU the while. We heap 
 up our earthly concerns and call them 
 ' secular ' ; and lo ! in the fire-flame of that 
 sorrow which spoils everything there glows 
 the very Shekinah ! The sacred, the in- 
 finite, enwraps us at every point, and God 
 is everywhere ! 
 
A MODERN SOUL 91 
 
 On every side may be heard the fiat : 
 * Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,' and 
 so near to us comes the pleading whisper : 
 
 And thou must love Me who have died for thee I 
 
 All the commands and promises fall into 
 place between those two sentences, like 
 notes in a majestic chord. And oh ! the 
 music of that chord to those who have 
 heard it ! It is the music for which the 
 soul was made. It is the harmony where- 
 in is home. And the old legend of Am- 
 phion's lyre building the walls of Thebes, 
 and of Fairy Queens building Camelot ' to 
 the music of their harps,' is realized before 
 us. For, at the sound of those majestic 
 strains, stone upon stone, battlement upon 
 battlement, buttress upon buttress, spire 
 upon spire, rises the mystic wonderful 
 palace-home of the soul for evermore. The 
 inexpressible soul has found its abiding- 
 place at last in harmony with Infinity. 
 
 Let this condition of things be reviewed 
 calmly and critically. All the real pleas- 
 ures of life are connected with the union 
 
92 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 of those things which are most fitted for 
 union. We arouse in the morningj and 
 our eyes and the Ught seem mutually to 
 greet each other. Each was made for the 
 other ; each is the complement of the 
 other, and so it is a pleasant thing for 
 the eyes to behold the sun. Garments, if 
 fitting and becoming, are pleasant to wear. 
 Food convenient for us gives pleasure to 
 the palate, and a glow of health to the 
 body, as we absorb it into our persons. 
 But our real self is not a thing belonging to 
 a physical world. It is more inward, and 
 its wants belong to a corresponding region. 
 The soul requires to wake morning by 
 morning to an inner light, an inner en- 
 velopment, an inner food, an inner home, 
 pleasant by reason of fitness, and that 
 fitness is but another word for harmony. 
 
 Harmony may be that of blended notes 
 which satisfy the ear, or blended forms and 
 colours which satisfy the eye, or blended 
 thoughts and emotions which satisfy the 
 mind and heart. And the harmony for 
 which the soul was made is the blending of 
 
A MODERN. SOUL 93 
 
 thought with the thoughts of God, and the 
 blending of the emotions with the love 
 of oiu: Father and Redeemer through the 
 Spirit which He has given us! 
 
 With such harmony for permanent home, 
 what possibilities there are for regaining 
 and developing the soul's native beauty! 
 Taking the noun in our somewhat forbidding 
 word psychology, the imaginative Greeks of 
 old conjured up the vision of a psyche ^ 
 to represent the winged portion of us we 
 call the soul. To depict that psyche in 
 an ideal fashion, they represented it as 
 a woman-form, even as the old rabbis 
 represented Wisdom in their writings, 
 and the classical nations represented Pallas 
 or Minerva in their poems and statuary. 
 Psyche, however, was not regarded as 
 matronly like Wisdom, or martial like 
 Minerva, but a thing of tenderer beauty, 
 unclad in gown or armour, unused to 
 
 "i Critical readers may suggest that the scriptural 
 term for the highest in us is pneuma, but will perhaps 
 allow the present use of the term psyche in an inclusive 
 sense. 
 
94 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 household toil or the noise of battle — ^an 
 impressionable, airy form of utmost dainti- 
 ness, winged like a butterfly, a maiden of 
 such graceful charms as to win the heart 
 of Cupid himself. Her abode, too, was 
 always an ideal region which suited her 
 delicately moulded form. We could never 
 imagine such a being an inmate of a modern 
 household, or as treading the dusty ways 
 of our common life. She belongs to the 
 ages of yore, before the world had learnt 
 to settle down to prosy matter-of-fact. 
 And so the Grecian ideal for the soul seems 
 very far from life as we know it in the 
 twentieth century. 
 
 But a nobler ideal for the soul is opened 
 up in that higher region of the beautiful 
 known as The Heavenlies (Eph. i. 3 ; ii. 6), 
 whose atmosphere is the grace (omni- 
 potence translated into gracefulness) of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. And entering this 
 region, as a butterfly emerging from a 
 chrysaUs, the Christian Psyche becomes 
 related to the angels of light. In her well- 
 wrought form there is a robustness of 
 
A MODERN SOUL 95 
 
 vigour unknown to Greek imaginings, for 
 hers is the secret of immortaUty derived 
 from her Lover, the strong Son of God. 
 As He learned to fill out the common lot 
 of man, so she is to be found busied with 
 the daily round of duty. She is adequate 
 for its most toilsome tasks, for her home 
 is His smile, and her life is His love. She 
 is modest as the stalwart messengers of 
 the Almighty, for the secret of her beauty 
 is her self - f orgetf ulness in His matchless 
 mercy, which has redeemed her from 
 slavery into a life of ministry, ever inspired 
 and ever accepted by Him whom she adores. 
 Perhaps a painter of genius will repre- 
 sent her on canvas one day, in a picture 
 which wiU capture the heart of the world. 
 And yet no one painting could represent 
 the Christ - enamoured soul, for her form 
 varies with the character of every one who 
 is in Christ Jesus. Set free from earth by- 
 and-by, we shall see the souls of others, 
 each arrayed in a different form of beauty, 
 lit with manifold tints and shades derived 
 from the Light of Life. 
 
96 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 One soul will be invisible to us then — 
 our own. We know not the form of the 
 angel within, and the complete loss of self- 
 consciousness will hide her proportions 
 from us yonder. But allowing her the 
 freedom which is her destiny, in the Omni- 
 presence which is her home, it may be hers 
 here and now to radiate forth the beauty 
 of the Lord, learning from His ' loveliness 
 of perfect deed ' to uplift the fallen, to 
 help the helpless, to cheer the faint, to 
 enhearten the downcast, ever with an 
 open-hearted geniality ministering with a 
 surprise of appropriateness to the needs of 
 each needy one. 
 
 Such may be the soul's awakening, from 
 the idle slumbers of selfishness, not merely 
 to a sense of her own existence, but, above 
 all, to a sense of the grace of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and to an initiation into such 
 spontaneous ministry for God and man as 
 the constraining love of Christ shall prompt. 
 
 ' Arise, shine ; for thy light is come ! 
 And the glory of the Lord is risen upon 
 thee.' 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 RECREATIVE^ READING 
 
 One of the most remarkable signs of the 
 times, and a very impressive sight to a 
 visitor from the slow-going Orient, is a 
 bookstall at any large railway station. It 
 is indeed a manifold mirror which reflects 
 much, a compUcated fact which explains 
 many of the characteristics of om* modem 
 life. 
 
 Accustomed as we are to the familiar 
 fact of such a bookstall, it needs the eye 
 of an outsider to note its wonderful char- 
 acteristics. But think what a variety of 
 newspapers are here I What a host of 
 pastime papers ! What an array of maga- 
 zines ! What rows of recent novels ! And 
 all of these have seen the hght, and con- 
 tinue to exist under the strain of keenest 
 competition. In each we have an instance 
 of the survival of the fittest — of that which 
 fits in most closely with the popular taste. 
 G 
 
98 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 Each has been allowed to live in prefer- 
 ence to several others ; each accepted 
 article in the magazines stands in place of 
 one or more consigned to the waste-paper 
 basket, or returned with one of those grace- 
 ful editorial notes which prove us to be 
 such a polite race. The contents of the 
 bookstall, then, represent what the passing 
 crowds would prefer to read rather than 
 anything else, and what, being bought, 
 will occupy their minds in place of some- 
 thing else, being most adapted to their 
 felt needs of the moment. 
 
 Not that any one reader could take in 
 half the contents of all the dailies and 
 monthlies exposed here for sale. The 
 whole twenty-four hours would not suffice. 
 And so we see the purchasers engaged in 
 selection, each according to his bent. But 
 each is impelled to do so in order to supply 
 a felt need. Apart from a desire to know 
 what is happening, what is that need ? 
 
 Are not most of the purchasers saying 
 in effect : ' I need something that wiU hft 
 me out of the humdrum drabs and greys 
 
RECREATIVE READING 99 
 
 of life. I am possessed of a whole gamut 
 of feelings in non - vibration — a whole 
 arsenal of unloaded faculties. I am more 
 than the drudge I seem to be. Let me 
 realize that something more ! In a short 
 dream, if you will, but let me realize it ! 
 In its higher possibilities ? — yes, provided 
 they are not lofty peaks, colourless and 
 cold ; I do not want to climb the Matter- 
 horn ! In its lower possibilities ? — well, 
 yes — that is to say, I should not object 
 to hear the chained dogs growl ; let them 
 be gently stirred within bounds, always 
 stopping short of breaking their chains ! 
 I neither want to be a saint nor a scandal, 
 even in imagination, but just to expand, 
 a man, a woman, with the sense of life, 
 warm tingling life, stirring each fibre of 
 my being. And here is something which 
 may help to do so for a while.' 
 
 Put in a word, the felt need is for life : 
 
 'Tis life of which our nerves are scant ; 
 More life, and fuller, that we want 1 
 
 Which is also, strange to say, the virtual 
 signboard of every Western pubhc-house 
 
100 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 or Oriental opium-den on the one hand, 
 and the virtual motto of every Bible-class 
 and prayer-meeting on the other. It is 
 evidently, whatever form the desire may 
 take, a part and parcel of essential human 
 nature. It is an attempt to realize one's 
 soul. 
 
 Modern fiction seems a quick and easy 
 method of meeting this demand, pre- 
 senting as it does a fascinating array of 
 human passions in contact or collision — 
 passions of which we feel ourselves capable, 
 and which we make more or less our own 
 for the moment. A novel which grips the 
 reader's mind, produces in him the sensa- 
 tion of the filling-out of these personal 
 possibilities. And so, in another way, 
 does the intoxicant at the proper dose, and 
 the opium-pipe in the earher stages of its 
 use. All three are stimulants — ' prickers 
 forward.' They are a pleasant form of 
 the spur which urges the steed to put 
 forth his whole energy — in the case of 
 fiction, a pleasant spur applied to the 
 several human passions in succession. This 
 
RECREATIVE READING loi 
 
 is the case both with higher and lower 
 fiction, however different the set of human 
 passions each may call into play. 
 
 Yet, without at all touching on the 
 controversial, there is one point which all 
 will admit to be obvious. In the scriptures 
 of enlightened common sense it is clearly 
 written : ' Man doth not live by stimulants 
 alone.' There are, indeed, stimulant-fed 
 patients in our hospital wards, but they 
 are patients in extremis. They will not 
 long remain in that condition. They will 
 either improve and take to food, or they 
 will die. And a mind that can only feed 
 on stimulants, is it not also a patient in 
 extremis ? 
 
 Can it be a fact of no consequence, then, 
 that stimulants and certain trifles consti- 
 tute almost the entire mental food of not 
 a few of our twentieth-century youths and 
 maidens ? And this, too, in an era of 
 competition, when the struggle for a com- 
 petency for either body or soul is an in- 
 creasing one ; in an age, too, when moral 
 muscle and soul-vigour is more than ever 
 
102 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 needed, from the fact that we of the West 
 are assuming the position of teachers to 
 nations of a secondary civiUzation, aroused 
 to the condition of copyist pupilage, and 
 prone to emulate our weaknesses rather 
 than our higher quahties. The world de- 
 mands that I should he strong of soul, is a 
 conviction which may well appeal in thun- 
 derous tones to every one who owns to the 
 possession of any sort of soul at aU. 
 
 The appeal of a past generation of 
 preachers was addressed to a soul of in- 
 finite possibilities passing through a short- 
 ening probation for a boundless eternity 
 — a soul whose capacities for blessedness 
 must be acquired before the day of eternity 
 dawns, if they are to be acquired at all. 
 And that appeal must never cease to be 
 made. For God's sake, it must not ! 
 
 But to that appeal the present con- 
 ditions of international diffusion add yet 
 another : the imperative demand of awaken- 
 ing races that their tutors should them- 
 selves have learnt the lesson which will 
 make them men who are qualified to lead. 
 
RECREATIVE READING 103 
 
 Shall our standards of competency be 
 raised in every department of life except 
 in the real life itself, the man himself, the 
 character, the soul ? 
 
 In the midst of our most up-to-date 
 thought, we are confronted by the old- 
 fashioned consideration that a robust life 
 involves the element of daily nourish- 
 ment, and that it is such nourishment, 
 alternating with exertion and rest, which 
 constitutes the true recreation of the facul- 
 ties. We are also confronted by that 
 other old-fashioned consideration that no 
 robust soul-life -has ever been evolved in 
 Christendom without frequent feeding upon 
 the Word of God as recreative reading in 
 the Uteral sense of the word. 
 
 Time was when the Bible was almost 
 the only book of multitudes, even as it is 
 now by far the most -read book among 
 Chinese Christians. But with us is there 
 not a tendency to apply our most con- 
 centrated powers of thought to books 
 many and magazines many, from which 
 even the atmosphere of the Bible is 
 
104 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 excluded ? Yet as Christians we regard 
 the Scriptures as containing the great 
 progressive revelation of our Father's pur- 
 poses for us and humanity, written, indeed, 
 in fragments in the history of nations also, 
 but most clearly and completely here. 
 And while we cannot make the Bible the 
 sole book in our Ubraries nowadays, have 
 we not need to increase our reading of the 
 Scriptures, rather than diminish it with the 
 increase of our miscellaneous reading ? 
 
 Supposing, for instance, that a student 
 is absorbed for a time in the reading of 
 theology; he will still need to readjust his 
 views of the world by the actual reading 
 of the Scriptures; or else, as one has put 
 it, he may merely look at the great fact of 
 sin ' through theological spectacles,' losing 
 the abhorrence of evil demanded by our 
 Maker, and the compassion felt by ovir 
 Father for the sin-oppressed. And if the 
 reader be absorbed in the works of those 
 whose standpoint is the artistic one, the 
 atmosphere of such aesthetic regions may 
 make the evil in the world appear to be a 
 
RECREATIVE READING 105 
 
 mere complement to goodness — a dark 
 shadow of positive value, giving contrast 
 and solidity to whatsoever things are pure 
 and lovely and of good report. And so 
 the reading of the Scriptures will be needed 
 to correct this purely artistic view of the 
 case. Or, should the reader be a com- 
 mercial man, impressed with some recent 
 and inspiring instance of daring venture 
 on the part of men who are more con- 
 spicuous for their worship of success than 
 for their recognition of the rights of others, 
 the moral of it all may appear to be (as 
 some one has said) : ' Whatsoever things 
 are big, whatsoever things succeed, what- 
 soever things please the masses, whatso- 
 ever things bring in cash : if there be any 
 " go " in you, think on these things.' And 
 under the spell of such an appeal, the 
 Christian merchant will need to read afresh 
 the passage whose message is : ' Do justly ! 
 Love mercy ! Walk humbly with thy 
 God I ' For it is the things which we are 
 most apt to forget, and do forget unless 
 our memory is strengthened by the frequent 
 
io6 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 reminders that form the bulk of Scripture 
 teaching. 
 
 By ' miscellaneous reading ' is often 
 meant the reading of books and magazines 
 in which human nature is the main sub- 
 ject — ^human nature, with itself for sole 
 environment, portrayed in stories in which 
 the divine name would be an intrusion, 
 and in which the author's moral purpose, 
 if he have one, must be kept discreetly 
 in the background : stories, indeed, which 
 allow us to hold our obligations to the 
 Lord who bought us in abeyance, while we 
 revel in dreams, pleasant or pungent, which 
 His reaUzed presence would inevitably 
 disturb. That is to say, we allow our- 
 selves to read books which we could never 
 imagine ourselves reading in any conse- 
 crated place ' where prayer is wont to be 
 made ' ; forgetting that we are always in 
 a place consecrated by God Himself to the 
 service of God, always in that Shekinah 
 Presence from which we can never fly, 
 always in the very Holy of Hohes itself ! 
 
 As the authors of many of the books 
 
RECREATIVE READING 107 
 
 and articles we read do not realize the 
 all-saturating presence of God, and as we, 
 being carried away in the current of their 
 thoughts, may often lapse into a tem- 
 porary atheism, the least we can do before 
 retiring to rest is to disinfect our souls 
 after such reading, by bathing in the 
 living waters, and by such absorption 
 in the Book of books as will restore to 
 our God that status of Lordship in our 
 thoughts and affections which a thousand 
 considerations demand. 
 
 ' Ye are not your own, for ye were bought 
 with a price. Whether ye eat or drink, or 
 whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of 
 God.' And that includes mental eating 
 and drinking also. 
 
 Is there any lesser motto available for 
 one bought with the blood of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ than : 
 
 Ah, Lord, enlarge my scanty thought. 
 To know the wonders Thou hast wrought ; 
 Unloose my stammering tongue to tell 
 Thy love immense, unsearchable ? 
 
 It may seem to some a rather ' narrow ' 
 motto to apply to such a general subject 
 
168 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 as reading. But all Christ's ways are 
 ' narrow ways ' at first sight. There is a 
 narrow path along the top of an isolated 
 hiU in Mid China. Its narrowness, how- 
 ever, is only for the feet. For the man 
 himself it is broad indeed. On either side, 
 beyond the dwellings of a million needy 
 human souls, the view stretches out to the 
 far horizon till it is lost in God's boundless 
 blue. And every ' narrow way * along 
 which we are to follow our Redeemer has 
 a breadth about it to which no * broad 
 way ' can pretend, for it is as broad as the 
 infinite will of God ! And what mental 
 recreation may be theirs who walk therein, 
 with visions of the infinite on either hand ! 
 The Old Book contains an autobiographi- 
 cal sketch of a character whose existence 
 might appear to many as more problem- 
 atical than (say) Jonah's whale to others. 
 He is a man who could hardly have had 
 a volume of more than five sections before 
 him, unless he was possessed of some early 
 writings of the seers who saw God in 
 national history, and so wrote it in a God- 
 
RECREATIVE READING 109 
 
 recognizing fashion/ and yet he declares 
 that he finds in that small book all the 
 fascination that the modern devotee of 
 sensational literature finds in ' the very 
 latest.' Throughout the day he is longing 
 eagerly for the evening when he can read 
 it uninterruptedly ; and falling asleep with 
 his mind fuU of it, he wakes before dawn 
 and longs for the Ught that he may 
 continue the reading (Ps. cxix. 147, 
 148). 
 
 Many might imagine this to be a 
 choice specimen of Oriental hyperbole. But 
 siurely there are some to be found in the 
 West who could now and then parallel 
 the utterance fully, as regards a larger 
 Book. The explanation, in both ancient 
 and modern instances, is that the reading 
 was meditative, and that the meditating 
 heart was athirst (perhaps under some 
 sorrow or the pressure of the uncongenial), 
 and that it was not the letter of the 
 Book which fascinated so much as the 
 
 1 In the Hebrew Bible all the historical books are 
 classed as ' Books of the Prophets.' 
 
no IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 inexpressible infinity seen through the 
 transparency of the letter. 
 
 That word meditative is a key to the 
 whole situation. It is only in Ught read- 
 ing that skimming propensities may be 
 safely indulged. All true books, however 
 transparent in lucidity, require to be read 
 by a meditative mind that resolves to 
 delve down beneath the surface. For their 
 store of treasure lies there, as earth's realest 
 treasures always do. 
 
 The daughter of the poet Coleridge, 
 writing about her son one day, uncon- 
 sciously uttered words which a past genera- 
 tion might well apply to the present race 
 of modern readers : ' His eye is rapid, 
 more so than mine ever was. I wish he 
 could unite with this a little more of my 
 pondering propensities, and love of digging 
 down as far as ever one can into the 
 meaning of an author.' 
 
 Were we to cultivate pondering pro- 
 pensities with regard to the world's great 
 Classic, we should surely find in the depths 
 beneath the familiar letter a far greater 
 
RECREATIVE READING iii 
 
 fascination for a sovil attuned to the 
 Infinite than the most skilfuUy devised 
 creation of human genius can boast, 
 and as strong an appeal to the ennobhng 
 passions as lower-class fiction can make 
 to the ignoble side of the soul. 
 
 The lower self is subject to the driving 
 force of passions which, at their fullest, 
 seem well-nigh infinite in power ; for be- 
 hind them is the potent ' flesh ' and the 
 apparently omnipotent spirit of evil. But 
 whatever be the lower capacities of the 
 human soul, the higher capacities may 
 assuredly become as great; and whatever 
 power the forces of seeming omnipotence 
 may wield, the forces of true Omnipotence 
 will be greater. ' I believe in God the 
 Father Almighty.' That is the first item 
 in our creed. 
 
 There are, then, the mixed forces of 
 human nature on which the skilful fiction- 
 writer may play, as an organist may cause 
 his various pipes to vibrate ; there are 
 the passions of the lower self, which may 
 be called up like so many genii by an 
 
112 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 enchanter's spell ; and finally, there are the 
 aspirations of the higher self, with a whole 
 infinite heaven to charm and capture 
 them. The heavenly powers may seem 
 distant and feeble things when ' the 
 secular ' has become the dream-reality 
 of existence; but once let that illusion be 
 broken, let the soul awake, let its appre- 
 hending faculties be put forth, and the 
 heavenward grip is a tremendous one. The 
 hand that is put forth to grasp Reality is 
 itself grasped by a Hand of full human 
 relatedness and of full divine omnipotence 
 (compare Phil. iii. 12). And thus the 
 fascination of the Highest wiU be found 
 to transcend all else. 
 
 Most educated men and women acknow- 
 ledge the fascination of art, or music, or of 
 majestic scenery, or perhaps of some rare 
 orchid ; and for these things they are 
 willing to take trouble and to pay the price. 
 And if we are but willing to take the trouble 
 and to pay the price, to give up ourselves to 
 the spiritual, we may prove the fascination 
 of that majestic infinity which art can but 
 
RECREATIVE READING 113 
 
 feebly suggest, and music can but stammer- 
 ingly whisper, and the subhmest scenery 
 can but faintly hint. And the sense of 
 uniqueness will ' often furnish an added 
 charm to our readings in the Word of 
 Truth, for all dawning Truth-in-love is 
 unique to the patient watcher. As Baxter 
 exclaims in his meditative book : ' What 
 exquisite pleasure is it to dive into the 
 secrets of nature, and find out the mystery 
 of arts and sciences ; especially if we make 
 a new discovery in any one of them ! What 
 high delights are there, then, in the know- 
 ledge (the intimate knowledge) of God and 
 Christ ! ' 
 
 H 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CONCENTRATION OF PURPOSE 
 
 A MUCH-QUOTED Christian of old time once 
 announced the secret of success in any 
 enterprise of any magnitude in the motto : 
 ' This one thing I do.' For centuries now 
 he has been canonized by Christians, even 
 as Confucius has been canonized by the 
 Chinese. But whatever the gain that 
 canonization may bring to a good man's 
 memory, the loss to the world is often 
 great. For, instead of continuing to be 
 an example to after generations, the good 
 man in question, having once been canon- 
 ized, is naturally removed into the region 
 of the inimitable. China had an upright 
 mandarin once in the person of Confucius ; 
 but, having celebrated that fact by canon- 
 izing him, the result has been expressed 
 through the ages in some such thoughts 
 as : * We cannot be upright as that sage. 
 
CONCENTRATION OF PURPOSE 115 
 
 How dare we presume to be ! Let us 
 reverence him as altogether inimitable, and 
 go on in the old way.' Thus canonization 
 has become a substitute for emulation in 
 the case of Confucius. And may it not 
 have been also in the case of Paul and 
 other earnest souls ? 
 
 To the present generation, no less than 
 to the priest of Jupiter and his fellows at 
 Lystra, the Apostle's message would be : 
 ' We also are men of like passions with 
 you, and bring you good tidings.' In the 
 present instance, those good tidings are 
 that when our human passions have be- 
 come absorbed in one thing, until that 
 one thing is completed, undreamt-of possi- 
 bilities may be realized. And we all know 
 enough of the matter to feel that such an 
 utterance is in full accord with the dic- 
 tates of robust common sense. Given right 
 methods, such an absorption is the secret 
 of success ; and given a worthy object, 
 such absorption is the secret of an enjoy- 
 able life. 
 
 Much of the tendency of the times, how- 
 
ii6 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 ever, is in the opposite direction to all 
 this. A modern child emerging from baby- 
 hood is commonly surrounded with a be- 
 wildering variety of toys, and the less 
 experienced mother or nurse may think 
 that the enjoyment of the little one is 
 best secured by multiform diversion. 
 Whereas Andrew Murray, with a philo- 
 sophy that all students of juvenile human 
 nature will respect, pleads for the element 
 of concentration upon a few objects, rather 
 than distraction among many toys, as a 
 principle which should rule the nursery. 
 And we children of a larger growth are 
 taught in many ways that solid pleasures 
 belong to concentration rather than to 
 diversion. We pay our shilling and visit 
 the Academy, for instance ; and, trying 
 to see all that there is to be seen in one 
 visit, perhaps come back uttering the 
 strange verdict that ' There is nothing 
 in the Academy worth looking at this 
 year.' The fact is, of course, that with 
 the nerves of the eye strained by a con- 
 stant change of focus, and a brain tired 
 
CONCENTRATION OF PURPOSE 117 
 
 out by a constant change of subject, there 
 is nothing left after the first half-hour 
 which can imprint legible impressions of 
 soul-stirring beauty upon such a palimp- 
 sest mental manuscript as we bring to bear 
 on the enterprise. 
 
 But suppose that one of the worthiest 
 pictures in that heterogeneous collection 
 had been isolated and exposed in a room 
 by itself, and that we had sat before that 
 one painting for half an hour, yielding our 
 minds to its spell, we might probably have 
 returned home feeling that we had hardly 
 seen such a picture in our lives. And 
 the dream of the artist would become a 
 permanent possession, productive of much 
 enjoyment to the end of our days. 
 
 In our concentrated attention on one 
 theme, moreover, we should have uncon- 
 sciously followed the path which every 
 painter has to take in order to produce 
 a real picture. His subject is perhaps a 
 well-wooded scene which may be cata- 
 logued under the name of a place that is 
 quite as familiar to us as to the painter. 
 
ii8 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 But going to that place and looking around, 
 we ourselves, unless we are artists, realize 
 too much and see too many details to 
 make a picture of the scene. We see 
 thousands of leaves where the painter saw 
 one fine foreground tree. As we study 
 the scene with a view to secure a sketch 
 of it, the eye becomes all the more lost 
 in a conglomeration of puzzling variety. 
 It is a subject for the camera, not for the 
 amateur draughtsman, we say. 
 
 Even had we as great a mastery of 
 technique and brush-work as the painter 
 himself, we should never succeed in making 
 a painting out of this or any other subject, 
 unless we possessed the genius which knew 
 what to select for the ruling scheme of the 
 whole, how to reject those details which 
 were mere distractions, and how to arrange 
 every lesser element in due gradation and 
 subjection to the main'* theme.' These are 
 
 >■ When Mulready first exhibited a certain picture of 
 his which was afterwards famous, the table-cloth there 
 represented was so beautifully finished and coloured 
 that it attracted the attention from the countenances 
 of the chief figures, and it was not until he had subdued 
 
CONCENTRATION OF PURPOSE 119 
 
 the problems involved in the production 
 of every picture, and are the more pressing 
 in the case of the noblest pictures. 
 
 Are not these the problems also involved 
 in a Ufe that shall be consistently har- 
 monious — a work of art which we are 
 called to produce upon our allotted span 
 of canvas woven of hours and moments, 
 as workers together with the Divine Artist ? 
 Nothing noble or beautiful can be produced 
 on hteral painter's canvas, or on the can- 
 vas of our hves, without, first of aU, a 
 ruling scheme, and next, the subservience 
 of every allowed detail to the leading 
 thought in that scheme. 
 
 Behind our ' Academy headache,' and 
 the bracing effect upon mind and heart of 
 our absorption in one fine picture, there is 
 a great law. A Ufe given up to diversion 
 is a life given up indeed. A leading prin- 
 ciple of manhood or womanhood has been 
 lost. We were made for concentration, and 
 
 the pattern in form and colour that the enfotions de- 
 picted on their faces were noticed, and the effect rendered 
 complete. 
 
120 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 it is by following that law that all real 
 success in life, and all reality of enjoyment 
 for ourselves or for others, is to be attained. 
 In the utterance before us, Paul is not 
 only comparable to the aspiring lad who 
 passed through an Alpine homestead bear- 
 ing the banner inscribed ' Excelsior ! ' but 
 in his motto he represents the principle 
 behind all that made Ufe worth Uving in 
 the case of the maiden or of the old man 
 who accosted the traveller. The secret of 
 the enjoyment which a mother finds in 
 fondling her babe arises largely from that 
 concentration of heart which the dear wee 
 dependent thing demands of her. And the 
 father's joy as he watches them both is 
 also conditioned largely by that concentra- 
 tion of heart which is called forth by his 
 relationship to a beloved wife and child. 
 The characteristic of aU truest love is con- 
 centration of heart. God is Love ; and we 
 were made in the image of God. 
 
 The secret of an enjoyable book, and the 
 reason why novels commonly yield a much 
 larger percentage of enjoyment to the 
 
CONCENTRATION OF PURPOSE 121 
 
 many than do the Scriptures as generally 
 readj lies in the fact that the reader has 
 unconsciously ' entered into an inner cham- 
 ber ' with the author and himself alone, 
 and has thus felt the spell of the book 
 before him, as he has not trained himself 
 to do in the case of the Scriptures. Every- 
 thing lies in our powers of sympathetic 
 concentration. Were the book before us 
 a treatise upon a science in which we 
 become readily absorbed, or upon a recrea- 
 tion such as fishing or photography, motor 
 cars or yachting, to quote four hobbies 
 out of many, the sense of enjoyment de- 
 rived from its perusal would also be a very 
 evident one. The books which fascinate 
 us are the books by which we allow our- 
 selves to be captured, mind and heart ; 
 and this involves a certain amount of 
 education (drawing-out of the faculties) 
 upon the subject of the book, and a 
 condition of alert passivity towards the 
 author's thoughts as we read them. And 
 were our minds habitually trained to 
 ' enter into an inner chamber ' by habits 
 
122 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 of ready concentration on the noblest 
 subjects, the argument of the previous 
 chapter would so correspond with our 
 experience as to cause us to relegate it 
 to the region of things too well known to 
 be mentioned. 
 
 But as the consideration that concentra- 
 tion is the secret of the truest joys of life 
 does not seem to have entered very largely 
 into the reckoning of many nominal Chris- 
 tians, a prevaiUng idea of the life demanded 
 of us in Christ Jesus is that of so much 
 weight to be carried — a weight beyond the 
 capacity of all but saints of the Pauline 
 order. And then, added to all holy duties, 
 there is that overwhelming weight of the 
 first great commandment — an all-absorbing 
 love to God. 
 
 The real facts of the case may be illus- 
 trated in the building of an arched stone 
 bridge. The wooden model of the arch is 
 put into position, and weight after weight 
 is placed right and left upon its creaking 
 timbers. In that wooden structure we 
 have a picture of the soul as duty after 
 
CONCENTRATION OF PURPOSE 123 
 
 duty is laid upon the conscience. It feels 
 that any more may be actually crushing. 
 But alasl there remains one great central 
 weight to be adjusted. It is larger and 
 heavier than any yet placed into position. 
 Yet the crowd of bridge-builders known 
 as preachers all declare that this greatest 
 of all weights must be borne if the bridge 
 is to be complete. The thought seems 
 insufferable ! 
 
 f But what happens as the key-stone is 
 put in place ? No less than this, that the 
 relation of every other stone to the sup- 
 porting timbers is altered. The apparently 
 crushing weight itself bears the burdens 
 first laid in order. The bridge is self- 
 supporting now, and the timbers relieved 
 of all strain. And even so with the many 
 commands of God when once brought into 
 unity by the master-principle of absorption 
 in the Love Divine. Oh, the wondrous relief 
 when Christ Himself takes His true place 
 as the centre, the supporting power of our 
 lives ! ' His burden is light ' becomes a 
 truth we never realized before, and labour- 
 
124 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 Ing and heavy-laden under crushing duties, 
 the soul finds its promised rest in Him. 
 
 Let us descend to simple matter-of-fact 
 by considering that to be absorbed in a 
 thing we must feel it to be worthy of our 
 absorption. Darwin ' deliberately began 
 a series of experiments with earthworms, 
 although he knew it would take forty years 
 to accomplish.' Even were we blessed 
 with faculties as remarkable as his in the 
 general subject of natural history, we feel 
 that we should never have been able to 
 devote ourselves to such a subject for so 
 long a time. But he doubtless found much 
 fascination in the pursuit — a fascination 
 which some of the readers of his wonder- 
 ful book on the subject may understand. 
 Faraday worked to such purpose on cer- 
 tain new subjects of electricity and chem- 
 istry as to earn as well as gain some seventy 
 degrees, which the various European centres 
 of learning showered upon him. And he 
 fascinated his juvenile audience, and the 
 ear of royalty too, by his lectures on a 
 common candle, delivered at the Royal 
 
CONCENTRATION OF PURPOSE 125 
 
 Institution. The subject seemed a meagre 
 one, but, taken in connexion with the 
 subhme facts of the universe, it possessed 
 his mind to the point of absorption, so that 
 he said : ' I have taken this subject on 
 a former occasion, and were it left to my 
 own will, I should prefer to repeat it almost 
 every year — so abundant is the interest 
 that attaches itself to the subject, so 
 wonderful are the varieties of outlet which 
 it offers into the various departments of 
 philosophy.' And thus the lecturer was 
 able to communicate his own exhilaration 
 on the subject to each member of his 
 charmed audience. Newton accustomed 
 himself to absorption in the secrets of the 
 mechanism of the skies, until all ordinary 
 considerations of the household seemed to 
 be lost. And his was doubtless a life of 
 serene enjoyment as well as a life fruitful 
 in discovery. Paul chose for his life- 
 quest the highest goal of humanity, and 
 in the absorbing fascination of the quest 
 he found a power which made his many 
 afflictions and persecutions light. He was 
 
126 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 gripped by it : grasped by the hand of the 
 Lord, with whom he sought higher and 
 yet higher intimacy. And so it was that, 
 from the mere standpoint of happiness, he 
 lived an enviable rather than a pitiable 
 life. 
 
 Our choice of a subject for the absorp- 
 tion of our energies will naturally be deter- 
 mined by the relative development of our 
 faculties. The body craves all it can 
 of comfort, hence the particular fascina- 
 tion realized by the glutton and the 
 sensualist. The mind craves all it can 
 get of achievement, hence the fascination 
 realized by certain students even in such 
 forbidding regions as higher mathematics 
 or (say) the higher reaches of the Chinese 
 language ; absorption making either study 
 a delight from which the mind may be 
 loath to tear itself away. The heart craves 
 all it can get of communion, hence the 
 enjoyment of lovers truly in love, possessed 
 by, rather than possessing, that great force 
 of fascination which they feel. 
 
 The nobler the object, and the higher 
 
CONCENTRATION OF PURPOSE 127 
 
 the faculty it may absorb, the higher will 
 be the possibilities of enjoyment which 
 attend such an absorption. Bodily grati- 
 fication is, after all, a blind road, longer 
 or shorter according to the allowability or 
 otherwise of the particular form of gratifi- 
 cation pursued. Mental acquisition has its 
 limits. ' Art is long, and time is short,' 
 is an old motto that might have various 
 words substituted for the first word of the 
 sentence. ' Thus far and no farther ' is 
 written on the frontier of knowledge — a 
 frontier receding generation by generation, 
 yet a very real one to many men of any 
 particular generation. But the soul with 
 an infinite Object of adoring affection has 
 entered the wa^y that knows no blockade, 
 and pursues its course with the assurance 
 that even as a nightly weariness is but a 
 temporary halt for refreshment, so death 
 is but a post-house upon the Way Ever- 
 lasting, the way of ever-increasing fascina- 
 tion, of grace upon grace enabling, and 
 glory upon glory of realization. 
 
 But again to descend to the humdrum 
 
128 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 facts of life. Are not the distractions of 
 our modern life becoming more numerous 
 year by year ? Alas ! they seem to be. 
 The Oriental life of a secondary civiUza- 
 tion, with its absence of boarded floors 
 (in most dwellings), not to mention car- 
 pets, its unceiled rooms and chimneyless 
 roofs, its rough-planed partitions for inner 
 walls, and its open-airiness under varying 
 temperatures : all this, however crude, may 
 mean a freedom from care which would 
 be perfectly elysian to a Western house- 
 holder, whose mere apparatus of living may 
 at times involve a life - draining series 
 of distractions ; until we begin to think 
 that the progress of Christian enlighten- 
 ment will not only lead the East to adopt 
 certain Western ways, but must surely in 
 time import some elements of Oriental 
 simplicity into our Western system of 
 living. 
 
 That our machinery of modern civihza- 
 tion is, in some respects, too complicated 
 for it to be an ideal state of things, is a 
 fact that few will deny. But taking things 
 
CONCENTRATION OF PURPOSE 129 
 
 as they are, there is still the resource re- 
 maining to thread circumstances together on 
 the string of a great life-purpose. 
 
 This is our one hope, and the one method 
 by which modern soul-life can become a 
 life worthy of our manhood. Complicated 
 machinery, whether it be literal, or com- 
 mercial, or domestic, or ecclesiastical, is 
 only an improvement upon crudely simple 
 mechanism, so far as it produces higher 
 results than those obtainable by simpler 
 methods. And in order that these higher 
 results may be attained, every part of the 
 machinery must be controlled by a ruling 
 principle, toward which every cog and 
 wheel contributes, however various the 
 directions in which each may move. The 
 alternative for such a ruHng principle, in 
 the case of living machinery, can only 
 be deterioration, distraction, or even final 
 disintegration, without attainment of the 
 one purpose of existence. 
 
 How kind, then, is that good and accept- 
 able and perfect will of God to demand a 
 
 concentrationof purpose which shall raise 
 I 
 
130 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 life to its true value ! To accept this 
 principle and to be caught up in its grip, 
 makes a difference corresponding to that 
 which is apparent between the several 
 forms of the element carbon. Particles of 
 soot, befogging the great city, are sub- 
 divided carbon. The pencil which makes 
 its not indelible mark on the page is 
 compressed carbon, but, melted and crys- 
 tallized into a perfect unity by the Master- 
 Chemist of the universe, the soot-particles 
 or the graphite become a diamond, fit for 
 the Crown Regalia. And the sole differ- 
 ence in value, strange as it may seem, lies 
 in the words unification and concentration. 
 
 But the highest consideration remains : 
 the great principle enunciated by Moses 
 and backed by the essential nature of 
 Love Supreme. God is one, and not a 
 subdivided conglomerate of gods many 
 and lords many. And they that worship 
 the one God must worship Him in unity 
 of purpose, and the concentrated energies 
 of a life of sincerity. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SELF-REALIZATION 
 
 Among the nearer followers of our Lord 
 was the disciple Simon, who, under Christ's 
 training, developed into a character of 
 rock-like reliability, and became the chosen 
 type of a Christendom 'out of weakness 
 made strong.' 
 
 The process of his evolution from the 
 average to the excellent is laid bare at 
 some length for our instruction. And at 
 the outset we have in him a man who 
 does not seem to excel us at all in endow- 
 ments of intellect, or in breadth of capacity 
 generally. It is true that, even in his 
 years of schooling, he had a certain bor- 
 rowed power of working signs and wonders 
 which we have not ; and also the bodily 
 presence of the world's Redeemer, whom 
 he imperfectly reahzed to be such. We, 
 on the other hand, have a complete Bible, 
 
132 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 and the experience of centuries to under- 
 stand it ; and above all, the spiritual 
 presence of the Omnipotent Redeemer, 
 known to be such. 
 
 From the start he possessed certain all- 
 essential quaUties of discipleship : he was 
 a man of moral transparency, straight- 
 forwardness, and tenacity of purpose. 
 Without these, intellectual capacities of 
 a far higher order than his would mani- 
 festly have been useless for his Master's 
 purposes of self-realization. 
 
 On Simon's first introduction to 'the 
 probable Christ,' our Lord ' discovered 
 him ' (as our modern phrase goes), sa5dng, 
 ' Thou art Peter, the rock ' (John i. 42) : 
 words which are seen in their fuUer signifi- 
 cance on a subsequent occasion (Matt. xvi. 
 18) : ' Thou art Petros, and upon this 'petra 
 I will build My church.' 
 
 The situation, so complicated by the 
 glosses of certain centuries, may be illus- 
 trated very simply. A certain English 
 landed proprietor had, brought him by his 
 steward, a stone picked up from a stretch 
 
SELF-REALIZATION 133 
 
 of barren land adjoining his own. And as 
 he examined it, he said, in effect : ' Here 
 is iron, and on this iron I will build a 
 fortune.' It was, of course, iron ore — ^iron 
 in the grip of much that was not iron, but 
 still ore which, after passing through the 
 blast-furnace and the like, would yield a 
 valuable percentage of genuine metal. Nor 
 was he disappointed. The large tract of 
 land which he bought at a few pounds per 
 acre has by this time yielded as many 
 thousand pounds per acre. His fortune 
 has been made, and the useful metal, which 
 was once held down in uselessness by the 
 grip of earthly elements, h&,s been set free 
 for the benefit of the world at large ; some 
 of it having been exported, in the form of 
 machinery, to the very centre of Far Cathay 
 itself. 
 
 Looking again at the passage thus 
 paraphrased in transparent allegory, we 
 find indeed two discoverers. Simon him- 
 self had just exclaimed ' Thou art the 
 Christ, the Son of the living God ' — that is, 
 ' Thou art the very One expected of our 
 
134 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 nation, and on Thee we will build our 
 hopes for the " good time coming," so long 
 desired.' Which we may very roughly 
 parallel by imagining the discoverers of 
 Klondyke saying : ' Here is gold — the 
 pure metal — and on this gold we will 
 build our hopes of untold enrichment.' 
 
 The reahzation of our true selves through 
 Christ always follows our reahzation of 
 Christ's true self. The two are inseparably 
 connected. It is in exact proportion to our 
 realization of the Christ that the possibilities 
 within ourselves are discovered and realized. 
 
 Simon was first introduced to the pos- 
 sible Christ by a brother who had found 
 Him. It is always a brother- or sister- 
 soul, a soul in touch with oiurs, that 
 introduces us to the Christ. And on his 
 introduction to the possible Christ, he 
 received the name of the possible Peter. 
 
 Next, at the lake-side, he received his 
 initial lesson in sacrifice. He was asked to 
 lend his boat — a small favour which he 
 readily granted, it may be supposed with 
 no expectancy of reward. The reward 
 
SELF-REALIZATION 135 
 
 followed, however, as the reward of the 
 Highest always follows sacrifice — a reward 
 out of all proportion to the little sacrifice 
 itself. 
 
 That princely act, and the Personage 
 behind it, aroused Simon's conscience and 
 his reverence too ; and thus the draught 
 of fishes was an inestimable boon to him. 
 It awoke the true forces of his manhood. 
 For are not conscience and reverence the 
 very essentials of all moral civiUzation ? 
 Certain Chinese classics compel our respect, 
 for the reason that the message of the 
 ancients (in the History Classic) is ' Be 
 reverent toward Heaven ' ; and the great 
 teaching of the sage who is honoured by 
 a quarter of the human race, is ' Be 
 conscientious.' God thundered from Sinai 
 to arouse reverence ; He reasoned by the 
 mouth of the prophets to arouse conscience. 
 Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil 
 all these preliminary teachings in His own 
 magnetic personality, culminating in Christ 
 Crucified. 
 Some time after that draught of fishes, 
 
136 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 Simon saw our Lord walking on the water ; 
 and, trusting himself to His power, found 
 it adequate as long as he trusted. Then, 
 being rescued from sinking, and finding 
 that his Lord was not only personally 
 independent of circumstances, but pos- 
 sessed an actual mastery of circumstances, 
 he seems to have led the impulsive chorus : 
 ' Of a truth thou art the Son of God.' And 
 doubtless he received a corresponding stab- 
 lishment within himself as the developing 
 character Peter. 
 
 An impulsive utterance under great ex- 
 citement, however, may differ widely from 
 a settled conviction in calmer moments. 
 We have all, it is to be hoped, discovered 
 the Christ in the greater crises of our lives, 
 or amid the sacred glow of some special 
 Sabbath. But how often we allow the 
 discovery to slip out of our lives amid the 
 crowding cares of an ordinary week-day ! 
 And so one day, when nothing extra- 
 ordinary seems to have happened, the 
 question was quietly put to the twelve : 
 ' Who do you say that I am ? ' And now 
 
SELF-REALIZATION 137 
 
 Simon's settled conviction found utter- 
 ance. Quite apart from anything corre- 
 sponding to the robe and regalia of royalty, 
 he had learned to recognize the Prince 
 of Heaven, and to recognize Him under 
 all disguises. That faculty of recognition, 
 which he had gained from above, was the 
 very faculty which, on further develop- 
 ment, would enable him to recognize true 
 and false Christians under all disguises. 
 And so there followed the very natural 
 declaration that whatever such heavenly 
 wisdom enabled him to decide, would be 
 indeed the actual decision of heaven. 
 
 The power to differentiate sincere and 
 insincere candidates for church member- 
 ship, so necessary for pastors in the mission 
 field and at home, may not be the precise 
 need of every one of us. But the task 
 of ' trying the spirits ' must ever form 
 an important element in every Christian 
 career. We have to examine the influ- 
 ences which we welcome into our char- 
 acter, the godliness or otherwise of certain 
 company, certain occupations, certain books ; 
 
138 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 we have to keep our thoughts of 
 others in a well-balanced condition ; we 
 have that task of tasks before us, the 
 knowledge of ourselves. And success in 
 all these things is intimately connected 
 with our recognition of the true Christ. 
 The eye that cannot see the light cannot 
 see anything. It knows not black from 
 white, still less is it able to determine the 
 relative proportions of black and white 
 in various shades of grey. 
 
 Simon Peter was to prove full soon that 
 the non-recognition of the Christ of God 
 meant a loss of reahzation of his own 
 higher self. Strong in the might of his 
 new name, he presumed to misconceive 
 some essential elements in the personality 
 of his Master, whose divine nobiUty was 
 going to be proved by voluntary and 
 untold suffering. And as this miscon- 
 ceiving ' self ' of Simon's was the exact 
 opposite of that on which our Lord could 
 build His hopes, and an actual offence to 
 Him instead, it was denounced as ' Ad- 
 versary,' and was ordered off to summary 
 
SELF-REALIZATION 139 
 
 and perpetual disgrace, even the disgrace 
 of a felon on his way to an execrable 
 death, Peter was commanded to repudiate 
 it, to pass judgement upon this false spirit, 
 even as it had been repudiated and con- 
 demned by the Master. And not only 
 Peter, but the rest of the twelve, and 
 Christians generally to the end of time. 
 For it was no mere lack of perception, it 
 was the age-long adversary of God and 
 man — Self, the repudiator of God, which 
 must be daily repudiated and condemned 
 in the most drastic manner at all costs. 
 
 This being the clear meaning of our 
 Lord's fiat, how lamentably weak is the 
 current mediaeval misinterpretation of the 
 passage before us ! ' Repudiate Self ' has 
 been emasculated into ' Forbid yourself 
 certain comforts,' even as the thunderous 
 ' Repent ! ' has been softened down into 
 ' Make yourself uncomfortable by certain 
 inflictions.' Yet the former colourable 
 substitute for our Lord's dictum has ap- 
 parently come to stay, and the doctrine, 
 * Forbid luxury,' instead of being regarded 
 
140 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 as a frequent attendant upon the fiat, 
 ' Repudiate Self ! ' has come to be regarded 
 as the very fiat itself, under the colloquial 
 name of ' self-denial ' ! 
 
 We admire and revere saints of the 
 Thomas a Kempis order, who honestly 
 believed what ' the successor of Peter ' 
 taught, and who, Uving up to their highest 
 convictions, were caught up still higher by 
 Peter's Master. But it is never safe to 
 tamper with the actual commands of the 
 Christ of God. Are there not graves in 
 the mission field which ought not to have 
 been dug till a score of years later ? And, 
 on the other hand, is there not selfishness 
 rampant in Christendom and unreproved, 
 which ought long ago to have been given 
 over to shame and everlasting contempt ? 
 Such have been some of the results of this 
 substitute of the Dark Ages for the fiat of 
 the Light of Life. 
 
 There is no argument here for luxury 
 at home or abroad, but an attempt to 
 reinstate the truth, whatever its infer- 
 ences may be. And we may depend upon 
 
SELF-REALIZATION 141 
 
 it that neither personal character nor the 
 kingdom of God will ever snfier from the 
 recovery of any real command of God. 
 
 Did Peter eat or drink less in the days 
 which followed this drastic admonition ? 
 Was Peter's repudiation of the Christ a 
 prohibition concerning the amount of food 
 He was to take at the Last Supper ? For 
 this is the inference impUed in the popish 
 phrase ' self-denial.' Nay, verily, Peter 
 repudiated Him, not ' denied ' Him certain 
 luxuries or necessities. And while it is 
 ' through much tribulation ' that we are 
 to reahze the full domination of the king- 
 dom of God within us, the mediaeval 
 substitute for the repudiation of the lower 
 self as a step to the realization of the higher 
 self, is seen on close study of the Scriptures 
 to be a very miserable substitute indeed. 
 
 The Self to be repudiated is either the 
 Self - in - opposition to God, or, generally 
 speaking, the Self which regards God and 
 man as its servants. The Self which 
 regards itself as the servant of Christ, and 
 of man for Christ's sake, must never be 
 
142 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 repudiated, but realized in the communi- 
 cated might of the Christ who was never 
 self-denying, in the scriptural sense of the 
 word, for * He cannot deny Himself.' He 
 is ever true to Himself. 
 
 The phenomenon of two selves, one 
 higher and one lower, is only puzzhng at 
 first sight. A moment's reflection will 
 assure us that this phenomenon is to be 
 found in every nursery. And a wise 
 mother, however unconsciously, always 
 follows the method which our Lord used 
 in the case of Peter and the rest of the 
 disciples. 
 
 There is a sound of altercation among 
 the Uttle ones ; cries of ' I want ! ' are 
 heard. Whereupon mother enters and ex- 
 claims : ' That is never my CharHe ! — 
 snatching and shouting hke this ! I don't 
 know that rude boy ! Send him away, 
 and let me see my loving httle CharUe 
 back again ! ' She repudiates the grasp- 
 the-whole-world self of her little boy, and 
 teaches him to do the same, in order that 
 his higher self may be reinstated. And 
 
SELF-REALIZATION 143 
 
 before long, as her efforts are rewarded, 
 there is a different cry heard. It is still 
 ' I want,' but the I is that of a higher self, 
 which says : ' I want to kiss you, mother.' 
 The selfish little grasper has disappeared ; 
 the submissive little son has come back. 
 The two are mutually exclusive. To 
 reahze the one is to repudiate the other. 
 
 Even thus we read in effect : ' Whoso- 
 ever would save his self -life shall lose 
 Self-Life ; and whosoever shall lose self- 
 life for my sake shall find Self-Life. And 
 what is the success of the grasp-the-whole 
 world self compared with the loss of the 
 true Self, the true Life ? How incom- 
 parable is that Life ! ' 
 
 To that higher self, in the narrative 
 before us, our Lord gave the definite name 
 Peter, reserving the old name Simon for 
 the occasions when the higher self was not 
 in evidence (Luke xxii. 31), or had need to 
 be pubhcly reinstated (John xxi. 15-17). 
 And with what consummate tact and 
 patience did the Saviour repress the lower 
 and educe the higher self in the mixed 
 
144 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 character Simon Peter ! And ever present 
 with us is the same Lord of gracious tact 
 and patience^ teaching us to be workers 
 together with Him, in renouncing the 
 selfishness which He repudiates, and in 
 reaUzing the higher character which He 
 so generously calls His ' follower.' And 
 the task widens in importance when we 
 consider that upon our success or failure 
 in thus dealing with the individual most 
 under our control will depend our success 
 or failure in repressing ' the world ' and 
 enthroning the Lord Christ in the lives of 
 those within our sphere of influence. 
 
 To return to Peter's history. What 
 intense fires must have played upon ' the 
 ore ' between that glance on the night of 
 the denial of Christ and the Easter after- 
 noon interview with the risen Lord ! Well 
 might his ' weeping bitterly ' be followed 
 by thoughts too deep for tears ! His 
 higher self had failed to be realized ; his 
 lower self, instead of being repudiated, 
 had repudiated the Master ! That re- 
 pudiated Master had Himself borne the 
 
SELF-REALIZATION 145 
 
 horrible cross to the place of suffering — 
 suffering in the room and stead of that 
 execrable Self ! Yet, surely, bearing it 
 with Him to the mount of death. 
 
 And now that Simon's old self had died 
 with Jesus, the new self, Peter, was ready 
 to be raised up in him ; to be vivified 
 by the divine Breath of Life, first as an 
 individual, and then more fully as an 
 individual item in a well-compacted body 
 throbbing with Pentecostal power. 
 
 The details may vary in the case of 
 every modern disciple of Christ, but the 
 process is the same, for our Lord Christ 
 is the same. ' We raze to raise ' is the 
 ancient motto of one of the City of London 
 Companies. It is Christ's motto too, and 
 must be made our own. And let us re- 
 mind ourselves daily that the realization 
 of personal possibilities must be accom- 
 panied by the recognition of the possi- 
 bihties in Christ, with us as with Peter. 
 
 Has Christ, then, any lower self, any 
 second best ? We might almost imagine 
 so to hear some Christians talk ! Theirs is 
 
 K 
 
146 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 a Christ who affords them a little comfort, 
 perhaps at Holy Communion, apart from 
 which they do not reahze any communion 
 with Him ! Or perhaps at other times 
 they receive a little help from Him, a little 
 variable answer to prayer, and so on. A 
 second-rate Christ this, surely ! 
 
 But oh ! let us rediscover the very 
 Christ of God as Peter did, rediscover Him 
 with every new return of day. Let us 
 address Him by His true titles. Let us 
 give our souls wing. With all that is 
 within us let us bless His holy name, 
 saying : ' We hail Thee, O Conqueror over 
 sin and difficulty and death ! We hail 
 Thee, O Victor of the Ages, so infinitely 
 great, so wonderfully near in all the con- 
 cerns of life ! We hail Thee, O Man of 
 Sorrows and acquainted with grief, the 
 Solace of the mourner and the bereaved ! 
 We hail Thee, Rest and Peace eternal, the 
 Friend of all that labour and are heavy 
 laden ! We hail Thee, O Love longsuffering 
 and kind, who wast poured out for us on 
 Calvary, and art undiminished still ! We 
 
SELF-REALIZATION 147 
 
 hail Thee, our All-in-all, the Prince of Life 
 eternal ! ' 
 
 And as we do so morning by morning, 
 we shall ourselves become real in His own 
 rock-Uke reaUty ; we also shall become 
 living stones of a spiritual house for 
 evermore. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE INCOMPLETE SET 
 
 In every part of Christendom there are to 
 be found folks who profess and call them- 
 selves Outsiders. They are by no means 
 lacking in a belief in the existence of 
 God, but do not regard His provisions for 
 others as including themselves ; and while 
 not definitely classing themselves as ' non- 
 elect/ they feel, as they put the case, that 
 they are ' out of it.' In some cases, natural 
 shyness, perhaps a touch of heart-ache, or 
 some condition of body and mind that may 
 be summed up in the word ' stagnation,' 
 may debar them from the comradeship 
 which they see around them ; and such 
 feelings keep them aloof from fuU relation- 
 ship to the Church, which otherwise might 
 be their home. Or perhaps they are held 
 back by a fear of professing more than 
 they are able to hve up to (especially as 
 
THE INCOMPLETE SET 149 
 
 they see notorious discrepancies between 
 the profession and practice of certain 
 others), or they imagine themselves to be 
 the victims of some besetment, over which 
 they may never hope to gain the victory. 
 Some of them, did they know it, really 
 belong to the very class which drew forth 
 our Lord's first beatitude. They are the 
 typically ' poor in spirit.' Others are actual 
 outsiders as regards the kingdom of heaven, 
 and weary of ineffectual struggles to enter 
 in at the strait gate. And the present 
 chapter is written on behalf of such, being 
 a study of the treatment our Lord is wont 
 to give to ' outsiders.' Let us turn to 
 Luke XV. 8, 9, and consider the Oriental 
 parable commonly known as that of * The 
 Lost Coin.' 
 
 One characteristic of our Lord's words 
 is the fact that they lend themselves 
 more to translation than do the words of 
 almost any other speaker quoted in the 
 Scriptures. While Paul, for instance, is 
 often the despair of translators into cer- 
 tain Asiatic languages, Jesus seems to be 
 
150 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 talking English in the English Bible, and 
 Chinese in the Chinese Bible. One reason 
 for this is that His words are those of the 
 people and not of the scribes, and also 
 His subjects are more broadly human than 
 those of others in Old Judaea. The mean- 
 ing (say) of the triplet of parables given 
 in St. Luke's fifteenth chapter seems so 
 obvious that to discourse thereon would 
 seem to dilute the sense, and to attempt to 
 explain them would appear comparable to 
 the uncalled-for remarks of the ubiquitous 
 guide to a Continental picture-gallery. 
 
 Yet, domesticated in ovu midst as the 
 Bible has become, it is after all an Oriental 
 book, and the Orient may yet have some 
 interesting Hght to throw upon the stories 
 of our Lord, and by doing so may bring 
 them aU the nearer to our hearts. 
 
 To begin with, we of the West hardly 
 know what ' publicans ' are, though Phari- 
 sees are not unknown in our midst ! And 
 such is our Anglo-Saxon dislike of the 
 Pharisee that we very likely feel we should 
 prefer to deal with an undisguised ' pubU- 
 
THE INCOMPLETE SET 151 
 
 can/ sinner though he be. Whereas, had 
 our lot been cast in the East, we should 
 assuredly regard the Pharisee as a gentle- 
 man, if a gentleman who was somewhat 
 punctilious about things ceremonial, and 
 the ' pubUcan ' as an unmitigated rascal. 
 
 As a specimen, at any rate, of the Chinese 
 publican's methods of procedure, here be- 
 fore the writer is a tax-paper, marked in 
 plain figures an equivalent of sevenpence. 
 This tax-paper is regarded as a receipt 
 for the sum demanded, and that sum, 
 spite the plain figures, is no less than two 
 shillings and fourpence ! The ' publican ' 
 explains that the sevenpence is merely for 
 the government, that another fourteen- 
 pence will be claimed by the county court, 
 and as for the remaining sevenpence 
 claimed, ' Well, we underlings are un- 
 salaried and poor, you know.' A ' publi- 
 can,' then, in China, is a tax-coUector who 
 demands, not always smilingly, four times 
 the right amount of the taxes. In the 
 Orient generally, except where he has been 
 checked of late years by Western super- 
 
152 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 vision, his motto from of old has been: 
 ' Grasp all you can get.' And unless the 
 Judaean publicans of old differed widely 
 from the rest of their class in the East, 
 our verdict would have coincided with 
 that of every gentleman who knew them. 
 We should have voted them * a worthless 
 lot.' 
 
 But that happens to be the very point 
 which the Friend of Sinners began to debate 
 in His inimitable way. A lost sheep. He 
 urges, is not worthless. Yet, as the simile 
 of sheep and shepherd had gained some 
 very sacred associations in Judaea, that 
 argument was found to be not fully con- 
 vincing. A lost coin (say a shilhng), then, 
 is not worthless. And finally a son, even 
 though he be a prodigal, is worth welcoming 
 home again. 
 
 To our Western minds, however, there 
 seems to be a strange drop, in the second 
 parable, as regards the value of the thing 
 lost. Surely it is a rule in debate to argue 
 with climactic force, and the shilling seems 
 out of place between the sheep and the 
 
THE INCOMPLETE SET 153 
 
 son. Was that drop in value a real one 
 or not ? 
 
 The answer involves an archaeological 
 study of great interest. First, the number 
 of the coins was ten, and to this day that 
 is the precise number of coins worn on the 
 head-dress of many of the women of Pales- 
 tine. ' Ten pieces of silver ' was a techni- 
 cal term, just as our word ' ninepins ' is a 
 term for the set in the game of skittles. 
 Ten was also the Egyptian number of 
 perfection. Egypt was visited with ten 
 plagues ; the newly rescued band of Hebrew 
 slaves were called to listen to ten command- 
 ments ; and the use of the Egyptian num- 
 ber is found as late as the first book of 
 Samuel, in the phrase ' ten sons,' and in 
 some later instances. 
 
 Moreover, this head-dress of ten coins 
 was connected, on the one hand, with the 
 head-dress of the Trojan princesses in the 
 days of the Judges of Israel, and, on the 
 other hand, with the winter head-dress of 
 many a little Chinese maiden to this day. 
 Homer tells us that Andromache, the noble 
 
154 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 wife of Hector, hearing of her husband's 
 death at the hand of Achilles, in the agony 
 of her grief flung her head-dress to the 
 ground, and that this head-dress consisted 
 of four parts. The first was probably used 
 both as a veil and as a turban (Od. i. 334), 
 the second was a hair-net,^ the third was 
 a golden frontlet, and the fourth a fringe 
 of delicate golden chains adorned with 
 pendants. And in verification of Homer's 
 description, the golden parts of such head- 
 dresses were unearthed by Dr. Schliemann 
 at Hissarlik, and were once on view at the 
 South Kensington Museum for a year or 
 two previous to their being returned to 
 Greece. 
 
 It is obvious that pendants hanging by 
 slender chains or threads would be Uable 
 to drop off, and that in course of time the 
 pendants would become attachments of the 
 frontlet itself. This is the case, in that 
 museum of antiquities, the land of Sinim, 
 with the ' begemmed ' frontlets, from which 
 hang black silk fringes, for the adornment 
 
 ■■ See Gladstone's Homeric Synchronisms. 
 
THE INCOMPLETE SET 155 
 
 of little maiden faces during the colder 
 months. And in Judaea the women seem 
 to have abandoned the fringe (found in 
 some Egyptian pictures), making what 
 were once the pendants in some neigh- 
 bouring lands the head-dress itself, but 
 retaining the ancient Egyptian number 
 of perfection. 
 
 On this head-dress of ten pieces of silver, 
 often an heirloom of many generations, 
 they naturally placed a high value. In- 
 deed, it has been stated that a native of 
 Palestine, who exhibited his wife's head- 
 dress in England, actually refused the sum 
 of a thousand pounds for this unique 
 curio— an offer made by a wealthy man 
 whose name was known. It would be 
 against aU tradition to part with such an 
 heirloom. And we may weU imagine that 
 in times of danger, such as some residents 
 in China have known, when it has had to 
 be decided beforehand which one posses- 
 sion, or two if possible, might be snatched 
 up and saved on the inrush of the enemy, 
 a Hebrew mother's first thought would be 
 
156 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 for her little son, and her second would be 
 for the priceless heirloom of ten pieces of 
 silver. A sheep, or a hundred sheep, would 
 fail to compensate for the loss of such an 
 heirloom. 
 
 Now let us look again at the three par- 
 ables. We have in the series a descending 
 scale of actual value, to meet the objectors 
 to our Lord's associating Himself with the 
 ' utterly worthless.' First a sheep, worth 
 many a shilling ; then a missing shilling ; 
 then a scapegrace, ' good-for-nothing ' to 
 any one. Thus did the Master descend 
 by two steps to the very standpoint of His 
 opponents. He gave up the very point 
 which they were contending ! But no ; in 
 apparently conceding all that their views 
 of the case demanded, He was merely 
 stooping to conquer. He was all the while 
 introducing an ascending scale of value in 
 view of special relationship. The shepherd, 
 the woman, the father, stand before us. 
 Any healthy sheep might do to replace 
 the one that was lost, but no other piece 
 of silver than the one required to make 
 
THE INCOMPLETE SET 157 
 
 up the set would satisfy the woman ; and 
 the son, worthless to all else, even to the 
 elder brother, was his father's boy still, 
 and of priceless value to that yearning 
 father's heart. 
 
 The consummate genius of the man 
 Christ Jesus is often veiled under nobler 
 attributes, but surely we may see some- 
 thing of it here. And note how that these 
 three parables were a double stroke of 
 genius. For all the while that Jesus was 
 arguing so skilfully with the Pharisees, 
 He was ' preaching at ' the publicans (if a 
 term stained with such mean and un- 
 christian associations may be used) — 
 ' preaching at ' the pubUcans with equal 
 skiU and graceful tact. And winning their 
 hearts too. For was He not standing 
 forth as their advocate ? 
 
 See the Son of Man as the great Treasure- 
 seeker, the very one who discovered the 
 Peter in the Simon, now searching with 
 trained eyes for valuable ore in a polluted 
 soil ! It needed trained eyes to see any- 
 thing valuable in the publicans. There 
 
158 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 was perhaps only one good point about 
 them, but He seized upon it. For while 
 it is an ideal, cherished by not a few, to 
 be of great value to many, it is surely 
 a necessity of the human heart, however 
 degraded, to he of some, value to some 
 one. 
 
 You read in the papers a while ago of 
 a constable deposing at an inquest that 
 on a certain night he saw a bent figure 
 hurry along London Bridge, mount a stone 
 seat, look wildly around, and then take 
 a leap into the dark waters below. The 
 coroner's verdict wa§ a mere legal formula. 
 Would you know the truth ? It was this : 
 She felt herself of no value to any one. 
 
 Nor is this a merely Western trait. Here 
 is a woman who manages — God knows 
 how ! — to journey a score or two of miles 
 to a mission hospital, suffering from a 
 complaint of such malignity as would long 
 since have killed any one in the West^ 
 But hearing that foreign doctors can work 
 miracles, she has come to ask for ' the 
 knife.' They tell that there is hardly a 
 
THE INCOMPLETE SET 159 
 
 vestige of hope. ' Yes, that is why I came 
 to you,' she says. 
 
 ' But, my good woman, an operation 
 will kill you. Do you understand ? We 
 cannot hope to cure you. Had you not 
 better go back home ? ' 
 
 ' Go back home ! ' she exclaims, ' You 
 do not understand, then, that I am in 
 everybody's way. I am of no value to 
 any one ! I'm not going back to that ! 
 Why are you afraid ? This girdle will do 
 it if you will not, round my neck . . . I'm 
 of no value to any one, don't you under- 
 stand ? ' 
 
 Here is an actual conversation which 
 took place some years ago. With great 
 readiness the woman submitted to be 
 photographed. And the sequel was that 
 the Viceroy of two Mid-China provinces, 
 as he examined a couple of photographs 
 a month afterwards, no longer doubted 
 that Western doctors could indeed work 
 miracles ; and the anti-foreign inhabitants 
 of the woman's native town welcomed the 
 story, told by the woman, of One above. 
 
i6o IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 who set a high value on every worthless 
 soul. 
 
 Our instances have been of women, but 
 the sense of being of no value to any one 
 in the world is a strain upon every man's 
 heart, if he possess any sort of heart at 
 all, a well-nigh intolerable strain when once 
 that heart is touched and awakened. The 
 publicans and sinners, rascally outcasts as 
 they were, did yet wish to be of some 
 value to some one. And Jesus seized upon 
 this point, and with this one coign of 
 vantage proclaimed glad tidings to their 
 hearts, as He pleaded for them. 
 
 Christ sees all that is good in a man, and 
 sees good where others fail to see it. 
 
 Some years ago a near friend of the 
 writer, having been in contact with many 
 cases of small-pox in a certain city, took 
 the infection, and was carried to a hospital 
 in which his was the very worst case. It 
 was hopeless. And after all that could 
 be done had been done for him, his name 
 had to be crossed off the books. His body 
 lay in the mortuary, while the coffin was 
 
THE INCOMPLETE SET i6i 
 
 preparing. . . . But one of the nurses, wish- 
 ing to have a last look at him, went into 
 the mortuary, alone with the loathsome 
 corpse. And as she watched the body, 
 she started. Night watching had affected 
 her nerves, and produced the illusion that 
 one of the dead man's eyeUds quivered 
 slightly. She looked again. No, it could 
 not be imagination ! It did move, how- 
 ever slightly ! She ran to call the house- 
 surgeon. And . . . that friend of the 
 writer's is aUve to-day ! 
 
 My * outsider ' brother, for one must 
 speak direct, let me drop all convention- 
 alities and just take your arm, saying : 
 ' That is the sort of Saviour who has won 
 my heart, the One who sees possibilities of 
 Ufe when all else have given up hope. You 
 wish to be of some use to some one. Oh, 
 believe that the Lover of souls values you, 
 and feels He must bring back life and joy 
 and strength again. Repeat this to your- 
 self until it is all real. Then bow down 
 before the sacred Presence which con- 
 fronts you, till you hear Him whisper 
 
 L 
 
i62 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 the message that surely no heart can 
 resist.' 
 
 Note, too, Christ's unique definition 
 of 'an outsider.' What dictionary -maker 
 would think of adopting it ? Yet the Man 
 who spake as never man spake, announces 
 it clearly. In the eyes of the Redeemer, 
 an outsider is one of the set. And that set 
 is not, after aU, a set of mere religious- 
 professors, but is made up of the noblest 
 of earth's heroes and heroines, the most 
 genuine-hearted ones the world has seen, 
 who, being once aliens from the common- 
 wealth of the godly and princely ones, were 
 grasped by a Hand stretched out to draw 
 them near : which Hand they learned to 
 grasp, and found that out of weakness 
 they were made strong — strong to do 
 exploits, and strong to suffer for their 
 Lord, when need arose. A short list of 
 such is given in the eleventh chapter of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, and that 
 chapter ends with words which read very 
 much hke : ' The list is not complete. It 
 is waiting for your name.' 
 
THE INCOMPLETE SET 163 
 
 This is the set, then, which claims every 
 one of us— the set to which the Christ 
 of God declares that we belong. And, as 
 Ruskin says in his outspoken way, ' There 
 is always a considerable quantity of pride 
 in what is called " giving one's self to 
 God." As if one ever belonged to any- 
 body else ! ' And when we come to think 
 of it, those who know that they are claimed 
 by the kingdom of heaven, and yet do not 
 yield themselves up to become loyal citi- 
 zens, are not they kept back by pride of 
 a very obnoxious character ? The very 
 vice from which the outsider imagines 
 himself to be most free, may, after all, be 
 his most easily besetting sin. From all 
 such meanness of pride that apes humility, 
 good Lord deliver us ! 
 
 But if pride is to be flung away, it is 
 in order that something better may take 
 its place. The message of the parable is : 
 ' Value yourself ! For Christ values you, 
 and seeks your life with all its energies, as 
 a treasure over which He will rejoice.' In 
 Christ alone we realize the full value of our 
 
i64 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 manhood, and take our destined place in 
 the army of those who are right with God, 
 and whose life will do much to bring back 
 the world to rightness with God. 
 
 Hark ! The RoU-call ! Your name is 
 called I And who will dare to be a 
 deserter ? 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 A LESSON IN MANNERS 
 
 As the previous chapter dealt with our 
 Lord's treatment of outsiders, it may be 
 well to study some teaching of His ad- 
 dressed to those who are so fully identified 
 with good things and good deeds as to be 
 in danger of self-complacency, Jack Horner- 
 ism, or even an oppressive sense of their 
 own indispensability and usefulness in the 
 kingdom of God. 
 
 Let us turn to Luke xvii. 5-10, where 
 the colouring of the lesson is nothing if 
 not Oriental, and where the most dutiful 
 servant is taught to call himself ' unprofit- 
 able.' 
 
 Western masters and mistresses are 
 happily accustomed to say * Thank you * 
 to their servants almost as frequently as 
 their servants say ' Thank you ' to them. 
 But to the question, ' Doth the Oriental 
 
i66 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 master thank his bondservant because he 
 did the things that were commanded ? ' 
 the answer will be ' No, of com^se not,' 
 For in the East, words of thanks are ex- 
 pressive of gratitude for favours received. 
 So that if dutifulness in a servant is duly 
 recognized, it will not be in the words 
 ' Thank you,' which in the East would 
 mean ' I am extremely obliged for the 
 favour you have done me.' 
 
 Also, the language of politeness among 
 equals throughout the Orient often de- 
 mands the self-designation of ' Thy ser- 
 vant' — a survival of which we retain in 
 the * obedient servant ' signature of of&cial 
 correspondence — with a suggestion of un- 
 profitableness added thereto. And so, the 
 very least that Oriental politeness would 
 demand of an actual servant would, of 
 course, be a similar description of himself. 
 
 The whole case being so Oriental, we 
 may perhaps feel that ' east is east and 
 west is west,' and fail to apply to ourselves 
 the^universal instruction contained in a 
 picture of manners and customs which 
 
A LESSON IN MANNERS 167 
 
 have been improved away with the ' rise 
 of the people ' in Western lands ; while 
 some timid souls, suffering perhaps from 
 overwork and its attendant depression of 
 spirits, may easily construe the parable in 
 terms of direst discouragement. 
 
 It is obvious at the outset that the harsh 
 selfishness of the Oriental master in the 
 parable before us is no more characteristic 
 of our Lord and Master than is the injustice 
 of the Oriental judge depicted in another 
 parable. Our Master, so far from tying 
 Himself down to Oriental methods in treat- 
 ing those who are bound to His service, 
 had already given His disciples an insight 
 into His generous heart (Luke xii. 35-38) 
 in a very un-Oriental picture of a master 
 returning from a marriage-feast and making 
 his bondservants his honourable guests, 
 served, as very honourable guests would 
 be, by the host himself. But it seems to 
 have been as a corrective to a miscon- 
 struction of that previous picture that 
 the present lesson in manners was given 
 to the self-satisfied. 
 
i68 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 The permanent use of the parable is 
 that of a ' side board,' hung over the side 
 of saiUng boats, to avert the danger of 
 capsizing in a stiff breeze when they are 
 carrying much sail. And while the adage 
 is a true one that ' Nothing succeeds like 
 success/ all pubhc or private successes in 
 Christian work, which win the approval 
 of those around, may make it very ad- 
 visable that the worker should * carry a 
 side board' in the sense that sail-boats 
 do. Then, apart from success in Christian 
 work, there is lurking in Christendom the 
 idea that being upright and reUgious, being 
 free from mean faults and excesses, consti- 
 tutes the whole duty of man, and that all 
 extra is entitled to extraordinary recog- 
 nition and reward. Whereas the Christian 
 ideal of duty is on far broader Unes than 
 these. 
 
 Happy are we of the West that our com- 
 monly accepted standards of duty are as 
 high as they are. For it is otherwise in 
 the East. The vulgar word ' tips,' which 
 is being smuggled into our language, is but 
 
A LESSON IN MANNERS 169 
 
 a mild translation of the Arabic baksheesh, 
 the Hindoo dhasturi, or the semi-Chinese 
 term cumshaw. Oriental judges in their 
 law-cases, and Oriental waiters, servants, 
 and many other lesser functionaries, are 
 accustomed to regard claimants for justice, 
 or visitors requiring attention, as folks 
 who are asking for unheard-of acts of 
 merit, for which they must be prepared 
 to give a suitable reward of baksheesh or 
 cumshaw ; while all the time the office 
 demanded of them may be but a small 
 percentage of their clearest duty. 
 
 Their own definition of duty seems to 
 be summed up in the enterprise of keeping 
 themselves alive, and it is toward this 
 noble enterprise that their salary was 
 evidently intended ! They resemble the 
 mechanical toys at exhibitions, whose 
 existence there is an evident adornment. 
 But a coin must be dropped into the 
 slot before the figure will move ; a de- 
 narius, a shekel, or even a talent must be 
 given if any work is required from these 
 ornaments of humanity. And such being 
 
170 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 the prevalent system in the hoary East — 
 a system common to the publican in 
 matters financial, and to the Pharisee in 
 matters moral, the one seeking gain, the 
 other a name — the disciples themselves 
 seem to have caught something of the 
 infection, and needed a corrective dose of 
 instruction. 
 
 If we except the waiters in our hotels, 
 and the stewards on our steamers, we as 
 a nation may be said to be fairly free 
 from this Oriental f aihng. Yet in Christian 
 work does not recognition by others often 
 appear to us to be a higher duty on their 
 part than serving God with our whole 
 heart and mind and soul and strength 
 does on our part ? Votes of thanks, re- 
 ports in the papers, and the like, are now 
 well-estabhshed customs amongst us. They 
 may be rendered innocuous to the most 
 successful public worker if the lesson 
 before us has been learnt, but once let 
 the feeling be entertained that ' I have 
 done more than my duty toward God 
 and man to-day,' and the servant of the 
 
A LESSON IN MANNERS 171 
 
 Lord does in very deed become unprofit- 
 able. 
 
 With a feeling of self-satisfaction there 
 often comes the discovery that this is a 
 wofully unresponsive world. This is, in- 
 deed, no new discovery. Prophets of the 
 Lord in all ages have had to cry : ' Who 
 hath beUeved our report ? and to whom 
 hath the arm of the Lord been revealed ? ' 
 But with the self-satisfied the irritating 
 consideration is rather: 'Who has ap- 
 preciated my abilities ? and to whom 
 has that reaUy fine stroke of genius 
 appealed?* when, as often happens, the 
 display of abiUty on the part of the com- 
 plainer has really evoked more response 
 in the minds of the audience in question 
 than has the actual ' report ' which it is 
 his whole duty to proclaim. 
 
 In general matters, the feeling of re- 
 sponsiveness in others is, of course, one 
 of the chief things which make Ufe worth 
 living. As long as there are unresponsive 
 keys in the organ, the organist will feel it 
 hardly worth while trying to play at all ; 
 
172 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 and as long as there are obviously un- 
 responsive hearts in the social circle or 
 the home, all feelings of homefulness must 
 be marred. For homefulness is just made 
 up of the dual elements of freedom and 
 res'ponsiveness. 
 
 Yet feelings of disappointment at an 
 unresponsive world are best met, not by 
 such a marked responsiveness as would 
 make the servant of the Lord conceitedly 
 satisfied, but by a searching scrutiny into 
 his own measure of responsiveness to his 
 Master. And toward this self-knowledge 
 the very unresponsiveness of surroundings 
 may be a positive help. For what is it 
 all but an object-lesson concerning the 
 ciphering keys and the voiceless pipes of 
 his own soul, when the Master comes 
 seeking to draw forth the melody of the 
 eternities from his heart and life ? 
 
 Then it should be remembered that the 
 unresponsiveness of others to us is often 
 due to the very demand they themselves 
 feel for a full responsiveness to their own 
 concerns from us and from the world. 
 
A LESSON IN MANNERS 173 
 
 If we have any right to be wrapped up in 
 our own selfishness, they have an equal 
 right to be wrapped up in theirs. Their 
 concerns are as all-engrossing to them as 
 ours may be to us. Each, in a word, may 
 easily regard his own Uttle world as the 
 centre of the universe. 
 
 But as the various worlds of self come 
 to own the common gravitation of the 
 regal Centre of the system, all will swing 
 into their destined orbits, responsive to the 
 spell of that noblest gravitation. ' Ye 
 have one Master, even Christ,' is the 
 grand motto of all harmony and holy 
 emulation, whether in the Christian social 
 circle, or the various churches, or the world 
 of workers for the good of humanity 
 generally. 
 
 And what does all work for God and 
 man mean but the application of those 
 divine forces which in the physical region 
 may lift a weight ; which in the mental 
 region may break down solid walls of 
 prejudice, hew down thickets of igno- 
 rance, prepare a way in the desert, and 
 
174 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 make the wilderness blossom with rose- 
 like thoughts of beauty and sweetness ; 
 which in the efmotional region may lift 
 a heavy burden from aching hearts, and 
 encourage the soul to try her angel-wings ; 
 which in the region of the human will may 
 overturn the dynasty of Self and enthrone 
 God as the All-in-all of life ; and which in 
 the purely spiritual region may win the 
 day in the desperate encounter with forces 
 of evil that, from our standards, seem all 
 but omnipotent ? What is it all but the 
 application of forces wholly divine in their 
 origin, and lent to the bondservant of the 
 Lord for the divinest purposes ? 
 
 All success in the application of these 
 divine forces must be success from the 
 point of view of the Master, whose thoughts 
 are higher than our thoughts, and whose 
 ways are higher than our ways. All satis- 
 faction with accompHshed work is only 
 warranted in so far as it is induced by the 
 satisfaction of One whose marred visage 
 shines forth upon us after much travail 
 of soul. Yet, without waiting for this, are 
 
A LESSON IN MANNERS 175 
 
 we not often satisfied with a seeming 
 triumph, in which we have placed the 
 victor's chaplet upon the brow of Self, and 
 have praised Self as the ultimate worker of 
 mighty works ? 
 
 Amidst the unwarranted triumph there 
 comes a still small voice as of a Man of 
 Sorrows, saying, ' You have magnified your- 
 self and neglected Me to-day ; you have 
 made it hard for that seeking soul to enter 
 the kingdom of heaven ; you have put a 
 stumbling-block in the way of little ones 
 that believe on Me, and it were better ..." 
 
 Ah ! who shall stand when He appear- 
 eth ? Canst thou ? Can I ? ' Lord ! 
 Master ! Have mercy upon us, unprofit- 
 able servants ! ' 
 
 The roar of unrelieved evil and misery 
 in the world around may well add a tremor 
 to our voice as we cry for grace to be less 
 unprofitable. For if anything is clearly 
 taught in the New Testament, it is this, 
 that benevolence is bare duty. In the Judge- 
 ment of the Nations, the ' righteous ' — 
 those regarded as right with God — are the 
 
176 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 benevolent, while the 'cursed' are they 
 who have neglected their bare duty — of 
 benevolence. To do the right — ^the aim of 
 every honest man — is thus to be benevolent. 
 And the measure of benevolence required 
 of the children of God — members of the 
 family of Love Supreme — is only Umited 
 by the infinite enablings which might be 
 ours were our Hves spent in the constant 
 attitude of waiting upon the Lord. 
 
 But in using the formula that ' benevo- 
 lence is bare duty,' we have hardly touched 
 the secret of its necessity. Benevolence is 
 just the main symptom of soul-health. God 
 is no taskmaster demanding an amount of 
 good deeds from us which must always 
 keep our muscles on the stretch and our 
 nerves on the strain. Benevolence is just 
 the healthy movement of the Christian 
 heart, and, Uke the movement of the literal 
 heart, will often be an unconscious one. 
 This is the true meaning of the words : 
 * When thou doest thine alms, let not thy 
 left hand know what thy right hand 
 doeth ' — 'Do not tell yourself,' as a 
 
A LESSON IN MANNERS 177 
 
 certain scholar has rendered it. And as 
 a fact in the opposite direction, the folks 
 in the Church who are generally most self- 
 assertive are those who are successful in 
 Uttle else but hindering progress. They are 
 like the gouty foot, useless for walking, but 
 big and self-assertive by reason of disease. 
 
 Benevolence is a sign of life in the sons 
 of God, even as warmth is a sign of life 
 in a human body. We do not introduce 
 cold corpses, however dear to us, into the 
 family circle. And there is a necessity in 
 the eternal order of things that the corpse- 
 Mke should gain the glow of a resurrection 
 Kfe — ' be born anew ' — ^before inclusion 
 within God's family circles upon earth ; 
 and also that mouldering corpses should be 
 kept out of God's family circle of the skies. 
 Else were the home feeling which God and 
 His children may share marred and spoilt. 
 God's home circle can only be made up of 
 the benevolent. 
 
 The disciples read ' follower ' in the 
 light of privileges and honours ; Christ 
 read ' child of God ' as one who serves God 
 M 
 
178 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 and man by partaking of the nature of 
 Infinite Benevolence. The impelling force 
 was to be felt from within, as it is ever felt 
 by those in filial relationship to God, when 
 their hearts are open to His divine forces 
 of sacred generosity. 
 
 The self - designation of ' unprofitable ' 
 has behind it the fact that the divine love, 
 whether in God Himself or in the soul of 
 man, feels that it can never do too much. 
 Love's ideal of accomplishment is always 
 beyond what has been actually accom- 
 plished. 
 
 Of the love of our Father, as of His 
 wisdom, we may say, as we recall all the 
 goodness which has ever passed before 
 us, ' Lo, these are but the outskirts of His 
 ways.' Eternities of outpouring wiU be 
 needed to satisfy the heart of the Eternal. 
 And shall we, whose accomplishment of 
 His great plan is so meagre at best — shall 
 we, forsooth, prove to God and man that 
 we have hardly grasped the rudiments of 
 Love Divine, by announcing that we have 
 done enough, or even more than enough ? 
 
A LESSON IN MANNERS 179 
 
 Too much to Thee I cannot give ; 
 Too much I cannot do for Thee. 
 
 Such is the first and the last sign of life 
 in God. And the sense of incompleteness 
 will grow with the efficiency of our service, 
 and must grow as we appropriate more 
 and more of the divine dissatisfaction of 
 Love Supreme. Yet, for our encourage- 
 ment, is it not also true that the more 
 we feel the self-dissatisfaction born of Love 
 Divine, the more intense will be the ring 
 of the Master's ' Well done ! ' 
 
 To think that anything we may do can 
 be right in His ' eyes of glory ' ! to think 
 that any task appointed to us feeble and 
 faulty ones can be ' well done ' I Oh, the 
 generosity of our Master ! Oh, the grace- 
 ful kindness of the Lord Jesus Christ ! 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 DIVINE SERVICE WILL BE CONDUCTED . . . 
 
 What a majestic existence is theirs who 
 are in Christ Jesus ! It is a hfe that be- 
 longs, in quaUty as well as duration, to 
 things eternal. Its essence is incorrup- 
 tion ; it is for ever entering on its youth. 
 It is planned on vaster lines than those 
 of this temporary universe. It outweighs 
 in value the bulking masses of a million 
 suns. It is more substantial than they, 
 and possesses far higher possibilities of 
 radiance. For its hfe-secret is the blazing 
 Love-force of the Eternal, and that Ufa is 
 destined to be manifest, now and for ever, 
 in service. ' His servants shall do Him 
 service.' That is the simple and subhme 
 definition of its outward characteristics. 
 
 Perhaps we ask : Of what nature is this 
 service, and where is it to be performed ? 
 Is it to be rendered in one's native land, 
 
DIVINE SERVICE i8i 
 
 or abroad ? Is it to be performed in 
 cathedrals dim and vast, or in the market- 
 place, or at home among the children ? 
 Is it to be performed in the capacity of a 
 statesman, or of a crossing-sweeper ? Is it 
 to be that of a poet who will set humanity 
 singing the words he caught in echo from 
 the heavenlies, or that of one who washes 
 the sores of an outcast in a hospital? 
 Is it to take the form of a great dis- 
 covery which shall enrich the world, or 
 of a sunbeam-smile cast upon a life that 
 is frost-bitten ? Is it to be some grand 
 thing that men will quote to the end of 
 time, or a Httle deed done in the darkness, 
 with only a needy one, and the angels 
 and God, as witnesses ? Is it service on 
 earth or in heaven ? 
 
 Nay; there is no need to ask. All else 
 but the main fact is mere geography and 
 detail. For in writing this sentence, John 
 the Apostle was not so much a prophet in 
 the sense of one that forecasts future events, 
 as a seer whose eye penetrates deep down 
 into the eternal laws of things, and who 
 
i82 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 brings forth those laws and exhibits them in 
 the Hght of assured reality. ' His servants 
 shall do Him (sacred) service.' That is all. 
 (Rev. xxii. 3.) 
 
 The nobility of generous service is our 
 first lesson, even as it is our last. None of 
 the young of beast or bird is so helpless 
 at birth, or for so long a time afterwards, 
 as the human infant. When we ask the 
 reason, the philosopher teUs us : ' The 
 meaner the origin, the higher the destiny.' 
 But the fuller explanation is that the 
 Creator has planned it so, in order that 
 every one born of woman should be cradled 
 in a love which is earth's noblest picture of 
 the Divine. God wants, as the first lesson 
 of human hfe, to enthrone the word mother 
 in every child's imagination, and with that 
 word the nobiUty of loving ministry. 
 
 Our existence to-day is due to that loving 
 ministry in our utterly dependent infancy. 
 In childhood's years, when the patience of 
 others failed, mother's patience remained, 
 fed from an infinite source. She was the 
 typical ' servant of the Lord ' to us. The 
 
DIVINE SERVICE 183 
 
 Lord God had given her the tongue of 
 them that are taught, that she should know 
 how to sustain with words him that is 
 weary. It is no Oriental peculiarity, but 
 a great law of human emotion, which 
 makes middle-aged sufferers in China cry 
 ' My mother ! ' with every pang of fresh 
 pain. Mother is the most worshipful being 
 known to milUons. And the lesson of her 
 life is that there is no higher characteristic 
 of noblest manhood or womanhood than 
 self-forgetting ministry. 
 
 It is no ignoble drop to the region of the 
 ridiculous to recall a woodcut, once framed 
 in a portion of the Kensington Museum, 
 and representing a committee of saurian 
 monsters discussing the weakness of an 
 extinct race (!) by considering the small 
 teeth of a human skull. To their saurian 
 minds, their imaginary consultation could 
 only bring them to one conclusion : that 
 here was a relic of an inferior creature 
 which perished off the face of the earth 
 for lack of due development of jaw. But 
 the moral which the humorous artist 
 
i84 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 conveyed by his sketch is a valuable one 
 indeed. 
 
 What constitutes higher and lower ? 
 Which is up and which is down upon our 
 planet ? A child asked such a question 
 in Austraha will point in an opposite 
 direction from that indicated by a child 
 in England. Yet both are right. Towards 
 heaven is always up ; away from heaven 
 is always down. In the direction of the 
 ministering spirits is always up ; toward 
 the ichthyosaurus, which perished from 
 the very strength of its snapping jaws — 
 a bulky zero in the scale of ministry — ^is 
 ever down. 
 
 But the angels forbid us to indulge in 
 any admiration of their exalted ministry. 
 With the reverence which is ever highest 
 in the highest characters, they point up- 
 ward toward the throned One, the minis- 
 tering Spirit Supreme, whose lowly scholars 
 they have been through the ages. 
 
 God is the great Minister. What min- 
 istry of a Love that could wait untold 
 millenniums for recognition do we find 
 
DIVINE SERVICE 185 
 
 evidenced in the common minerals which 
 He has stored up in the earth's crust ! 
 What patient ministry was poured upon 
 the prehistoric earth in the sunbeams 
 which He kindled ! What a revelation of 
 God to the initiated heart is found in a 
 common lump of coal ! How sacred the 
 Love-gift of food, over which we often 
 utter a formal ' grace ' ; forgetting that 
 it took the whole machinery of God's 
 universe to manufacture our breakfast ! 
 
 But aU this seems to have been ministry 
 of Httle cost to the resources of the Infinite. 
 ' He spake, and it was done.' God the 
 Minister was not fully manifest in ministry 
 that meant no labour. And so, that He 
 might have men know Him and be drawn 
 from their sins to His embrace, God was 
 manifest in ministry that cost much — ^in a 
 human Hfe of blood-spending, in a human 
 death of blood - spilhng. He walked the 
 earth as the Minister to the consciously 
 needy; He bore the death-agony as the 
 Minister to those who were all unconscious 
 of their need ; and has waited long cen- 
 
i86 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 turies, while only a little band among 
 earth's millions have lifted up their hearts 
 in half-intelligent gratitude ! For who is 
 there that knows, so as to fathom, the 
 grace of our Lord Jesus Christ ? 
 
 After that supreme manifestation of 
 Himself, He ascended into heaven. True ; 
 but did He not previously ascend to the 
 manger in the ox-shed ? did He not ascend 
 to minister to the torn and broken bodies 
 of men ? did He not ascend to the feet- 
 washing ? to the agony in the garden ? to 
 the pangs of Calvary ? Is not all ministry 
 ascent ? ' He who would become great 
 . . . shall be . . . minister, and whoso- 
 ever would be first . . . shall be the 
 servant of all.' 
 
 Christendom is being convinced, if by 
 slow degrees, of the reahty of this law of 
 ascent. Who is the greatest among the 
 citizens of the realm ? We call him the 
 Prime Minister. Who occupy the highest 
 positions in the kingdom ? We call them 
 Public Servants. And who in a family ? 
 Is it the masterful one, or the genius of 
 
DIVINE SERVICE 187 
 
 the family, or the flower of the family ? 
 As the years pass, we find that the one 
 who has unconsciously claimed the highest 
 position in our minds is none other than 
 the patient one of self -forgetting service. 
 And so it is in God's realm, in God's family 
 circle. The chief ones are the ministering 
 ones. 
 
 But we may ask, although St. John 
 seems to answer plainly beforehand : ' Who 
 is to be the object of our sacred ministry ? ' 
 And the answer, as we read it in the light of 
 New Testament teaching, is : ' A needy one.' 
 
 A pedestrian journey was once taken in 
 Mid China at dawn one summer morning. 
 Going along the same country paths was 
 a mandarin in his sedan chair on his way 
 to office, and behind him on foot was his 
 chief personal attendant, who entered into 
 conversation with the foreigner, exclaim- 
 ing : ' What hospitals you have yonder ! 
 And what merit you foreigners must be 
 accumulating ! ' To which the answer was : 
 ' Not merit, but just a recognition of 
 H eaven's grace ! ' 
 
i88 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 ' Heaven's grace ! But what has that 
 to do with heahng our sick folk ? ' 
 
 'It is Hke this, to speak in homely 
 language. Were we to throw our thank- 
 offerings of gold and silver up to the skies, 
 they wotild but fall down upon us again. 
 And so the Sovereign on High has decreed 
 that what is done to the poorest of the 
 needy, out of gratitude to Him, shall be 
 accepted as service rendered to Himself.' 
 And when this point had been further 
 impressed upon the wondering Hstener, 
 he exclaimed : ' But Heaven's grace. We 
 all receive it. How is it that you of the 
 West feel it so, as though it were special 
 and personal ? ' The answer involved an 
 hour's unfolding of the grace which Chris- 
 tians enjoy and proclaim. And when our 
 ways diverged, we parted cordially. 
 
 ' His servants shall serve a needy one, 
 and thus serve Him,' is a truth of which 
 the common word ' chapel ' may be a 
 reminder. For instead of being a second- 
 ary word for ' church,' it originally had 
 no religious significance whatever. Its 
 
DIVINE SERVICE 189 
 
 literal meaning is that of ' cloak-room,' 
 from the late Latin capella, a little cape 
 or cloak ; and our use of the word arose 
 from the fact that the Prankish kings 
 preserved the cape or capella of one 
 Martinus as a sacred relic, in a special 
 building, under the charge of attendants 
 called cappelani, cloak-keepers or chaplains. 
 
 And who was this Martinus ? And why 
 was his cloak thus preserved ? 
 
 Martinus was the son of a military tri- 
 bune, was born at Sabaria about the year 
 316, was educated at Pa via, and served 
 in the army of Constantine and JuUan. 
 One day, as he was going out of the gate 
 of Amiens, he met a half-naked beggar 
 shivering with the cold, and felt com- 
 passion for him. But having no silver or 
 gold on his person, he took the cloak he 
 had on and cut it in twain with his sword, 
 giving one half to the beggar, and covering 
 himself, as best he might, with the other 
 half. That night he beheld in a dream 
 the Lord Jesus wearing on His shoulders 
 the half of the cloak he had bestowed on the 
 
igo IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 beggar, and heard Him say to the angels 
 around Him : ' Know ye who hath thus 
 arrayed me ? My servant Martinus hath 
 done this.' ^ It was on this wise that the 
 first 'chapel' was built in connexion with 
 the church, an intended reminder of the 
 sacredness of all service rendered to the 
 needy, and sealed with the royal ' Inas- 
 much' of the King of Glory. 
 
 The word used by St. John has the sense 
 of sacred service, indicating, not that the 
 supremest task of the servants of Christ 
 is something religiously removed from 
 common deeds of ministry, but that all 
 such common ministries, done from the 
 love of God, are indeed religious and 
 sacred. 
 
 We often see the words : ' Divine service 
 will be conducted ' at such an hour, by 
 such and such a minister. And without 
 detracting from the special status of the 
 ministerial office, or the sanctity of the 
 
 ' Martinus was afterwards St. Martin, Bishop of Tours. 
 And it was the above story, of course, which inspired 
 Count Tolstoi's Where love is, God is. 
 
DIVINE SERVICE 191 
 
 service of praise and prayer^ when truly 
 rendered to the King of Glory, we may 
 still, with enlightened hearts, widen the 
 scope of the phrase, and say : ' Divine 
 service will be conducted ' in this and that 
 home, by the Christian serving-maid or 
 the mother who lights the fire and prepares 
 the breakfast, as the incarnate Minister 
 did by the lake-side so sacredly. ' Divine 
 service will be conducted ' in this and 
 that workshop, by such and such a car- 
 penter, even as it was once performed so 
 sacredly at Nazareth. Or in this office 
 and on that wharf, in this warehouse or 
 behind that counter, in yonder palace in 
 the great city, in this tiny cottage along 
 the country lane, will divine service be 
 conducted daily for the King of Glory, with 
 vibrating thoughts of harmonious love for 
 organ, and the seraphim, who cry, ' Holy, 
 holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts,' for choir. 
 Oh, the sacredness of all service rendered 
 to the ever-sacred One ! 
 
 We read further : ' And they shall see 
 His face.' Nor is all this exclusively in 
 
192 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 the future. That thrill of joy which came 
 hke a sunbeam shot from the skies into 
 oiu" heart when we had made the life 
 of a Uttle one joyous, or when we had 
 given up some self-gratification to cheer 
 the heart of the humblest, or when we had 
 given up an hour of ease to tend to that 
 sick one — what was it but a beam of satis- 
 faction from the Marred Visage made 
 glad ? It was the hght of His counten- 
 ance ; it was a ghmpse of His face : a 
 ghmpse which might be a continuous 
 vision of glory, were we to serve the 
 Lord more constantly with whole-hearted 
 devotion. 
 
 And finally, ' His name shall be on their 
 foreheads.' Various schools of interpreters 
 have risen and fallen, and may yet rise 
 and feJl. But, in the end, is it not hkely 
 that the school of interpretation which 
 will prevail in all matters concerning the 
 Kingdom will be that of the child-soul ? 
 It was through the child-soul within that 
 prophet and seer received any revelation 
 whatever, while ' wisdom and prudence,' 
 
DIVINE SERVICE 193 
 
 apart from that child-soul, will find many 
 things to be ' hidden.' And especially in 
 such a passage as this does the child-soul 
 come to our aid. 
 
 A httle lad was once taken into the 
 dispensary of one of the great hospitals 
 of London. He watched the nurses flitting 
 quietly in and out, and felt a sense of awe 
 steal over him as he looked at their faces. 
 Were they all handsome women ? He 
 knew not. But he felt that there was a 
 something written on those faces, which 
 set him pondering for years after. Then 
 he saw that something upon his mother's 
 face too, even in her tired moments, when 
 some would not think her fully handsome. 
 But had any one ventured to say so, what 
 f eehngs would have risen within him in con- 
 tradiction of their mistake ! For no face in 
 the world was so lovely as mother's ! 
 
 Does her portrait indicate that now, 
 after the lapse of years ? It hangs yonder. 
 A visitor comes in and examines that 
 woman-face. The verdict, however genially 
 expressed, is sure to be inadequate. The 
 
 N 
 
194 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 camera but caught the form of the fea- 
 tures, and a gleam of light in those kindly 
 eyes, and that something may not be 
 apparent to a visitor. But it was there 
 once, even as it is there now upon the 
 forehead of a soul that has long since done 
 with the body — the body that was worn 
 out with ministry. And what was, what 
 is, that something more beautiful than 
 beauty written there ? Hush ! it was, 
 it is. His holy Name ! 
 
 And now, as John would allow us, we 
 may combine the harmonies of two utter- 
 ances of his into one chord, and hear him 
 say to us : ' Beloved, now are we ministers 
 of the Ministering One, and it doth not 
 appear what we shall be ; but we know 
 that when He shall appear, we shall be 
 like Him, for we shall see His face, and 
 His name of noblest ministry shall be 
 upon our foreheads.' 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF THE GOSPEL 
 
 While the practice of benevolence is uni- 
 versally acknowledged to be one of the 
 great needs of the world, a change has 
 come over the minds of many professed 
 Christians as to the continued necessity 
 for the of&ce and work of the preacher of 
 the gospel. Some who do not profess to 
 be members of Christian churches are 
 happily taking so much philanthropic work 
 upon their shoulders, the churches are 
 themselves branching out into social work 
 of a sort acknowledged to be ' practical,' 
 as distinct from the ' proclamation of 
 dogma ' ; and so, especially in these days 
 of Higher Criticism, many are beginning 
 to feel that if the mission of the preacher 
 is not exactly at an end, yet that it must 
 be relegated to a very third-rate position. 
 As to missions abroad, such observers 
 
196 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 as Darwin and R. L. Stevenson may have 
 borne their testimony to the civilizing 
 influences of the missionary among tribes 
 of hardly any civilization whatever, and 
 the rapid rise of Uganda has been a fact 
 still nearer to the ken of the present genera- 
 tion ; but when all has been said, are not 
 such nations as those of the East, for in- 
 stance, possessed of religions which suit 
 and satisfy the Asiatic temperament ? Has 
 not the study of Comparative Religion, 
 and the splendid work of Max Miiller and 
 others, unearthed such excellences of moral 
 teaching in ancient classics, that to send to 
 these nations the missionary and the gospel 
 would seem to be an intrusion, if not an 
 impertinence which they may justly resent ? 
 Here, then, are two questions born of 
 the spirit of the times : ' Why should the 
 gospel be preached in civilized lands Uke 
 our own ? Why should we try to propa- 
 gate the gospel among nations already 
 possessed, and that for ages, of classics 
 which every fair-minded man must ad- 
 mire ? ' And behind this double question 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 197 
 
 there is the query : ' What is there, after 
 all, distinctive about the gospel ? ' 
 
 In deaUng with this latter subject, it is 
 proposed in the present chapter to give 
 a short collection of the finest sentences 
 to be found in a wide range of Chinese 
 Uterature, which, we may remind our- 
 selves, is the Uterature of a quarter of 
 the human race, and worthy of our most 
 sympathetic study. After which, we will 
 return to the important subject of the 
 distinctiveness of our (Asiatic) gospel, and 
 why it may be still necessary to proclaim 
 that gospel, both in its native continent 
 and in our own. 
 
 Selections from Chinese Literature 
 
 ' Great is God ! In His majestic ruler- 
 ship He regards the lower world, 
 surveying all regions, and seeking 
 the repose of the populace.' Book 
 of Odes, 12th cent. B.C. (edited by 
 Confucius). 
 
 ' Heaven aids the populace, giving them 
 rulers and leaders, that they may 
 
igS IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 be of service to God, and secure 
 the peace of the realm everywhere.' 
 History Classic {edited by Con- 
 fucius). 
 
 ' God has no fixity of favouritism. On 
 those that do good He sends a 
 myriad blessings ; on the evil- 
 doers, a myriad calamities.' History 
 Classic. 
 
 Said the founder of the Hsia dynasty 
 (1766 B.C.) : ' I fear God, and dare 
 not but do right (in this matter).' 
 History Classic. Of the father of 
 the first monarch of the succeeding 
 dynasty (beginning 1122 B.C.) it is 
 said : ' With the carefulness of a 
 bird fluttering on the wing, he 
 served God intelligently, and re- 
 ceived great blessedness.' Book of 
 Odes. And in reference to the enor- 
 mities of a Nero whom he super- 
 seded, the first monarch of that 
 new dynasty said : ' I have heard 
 that " God leadeth (men) to peace," 
 but the previous dynasty would not 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 199 
 
 follow peace, and so God sent cor- 
 rection.' History Classic.^ 
 ' Heaven is the One Great, exalted and 
 Most High.' Ancient Dictionary, 1st 
 cent. A.D. ' Heaven is most high, 
 and listens to the lowly.' yd cent, 
 
 A.D. 
 
 ' Heaven is the source of all things.' 
 Book of Rites (edited by Confucius). 
 ' Men owe their origin to Heaven, 
 and when oppressed with poverty, 
 return to their Source for help. For 
 who is there, when worn with labour 
 and weary with pain, who does not 
 cry to Heaven ? ' A statesman who 
 committed suicide, 295 B.C. 
 
 ' Heaven aids the submissive.' A.D. 
 (early cents.). ' The humble have 
 the advantage ; the self-satisfied 
 invite calamity.' History Classic. 
 ' Those who are obedient to Heaven 
 
 1 After this, the term Sovereign on High (God) gradu- 
 ally disappears from the literature of ancient China. 
 And the term Heaven becomes marred by its being 
 frequently coupled with Earth. 
 
200 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 are preserved ; the unsubmissive 
 perish.' Mencius, 4-3 cents. B.C. 
 ' Heaven searches out the sinner.' 
 History Classic. ' The meshes of 
 Heaven's net are wide, but nothing 
 ever escapes them.' Lao Tzu, yth 
 cent. B.C. 
 ' The task of the Sages is to unite man's 
 heart to that of Heaven, so that 
 there shall be no severance.' Yang 
 
 Tzu, 53 B.C.-18 A.D. 
 
 ' There are heavenly as well as earthly 
 ranks of nobility. Goodness, jus- 
 tice, loyalty, fidelity, held with 
 unwearied delight — these are marks 
 of heavenly rank, even as to be a 
 duke, or other great one, is to be 
 " a man of rank " on earth. The 
 men of antiquity cultivated their 
 heavenly rank, and the nobility (or 
 rank) of man followed in its train. 
 But at the present day [3rd cent. 
 B.C.] men cultivate their heaven- 
 ward nobility for the express pur- 
 pose of gaining rank and position 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 201 
 
 among men ; and having obtained 
 thatj they throw away the other ! 
 What a delusion ! And the result 
 is that they lose both.' Mencius. 
 
 ' The worship of the virtuous will re- 
 ceive a due reward of happiness, 
 but it will not be what the world 
 calls happiness. It wiU be the hap- 
 piness of preparedness, a prepared- 
 ness based on complete submission 
 (to Heaven). For with the loss of 
 aU unsubmissiveness, there is pre- 
 paredness for all things.' Book of 
 Rites. 
 
 ' He who, conscious of manly strength, 
 preserves a womanly tenderness, is 
 hke a great valley (toward which 
 all streams will flow).' Lao Tzu. 
 ' The great man is he who does not 
 lose his child' s-heart.' Mencius. 
 
 ' Victory in war is not a beautiful thing. 
 Those who see beauty in it are such 
 as admire slaughter. . . The com- 
 mander-in-chief who has killed multi- 
 tudes should weep bitterly with pity 
 
202 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 and compassion. Having gained a 
 victory, his is the post of chief 
 mourner.' Lao Tzu. ' The true 
 military art is to put an end to 
 strife.' A statesman, 597 B.C. * When 
 Heaven intends to dehver men, it 
 endows them with compassion as 
 their safeguard.' Lao Tzu. 
 
 ' AU the world is one family, and the 
 realm should be as one manj such 
 was the teaching of the Sages.' 
 Book of Rites. 
 
 ' The myriad hosts without a commander- 
 in-chief must fall into confusion. 
 Righteousness is the commander-in- 
 chief of all things, the basis of the 
 realm, and the very hfe of man.' 
 Date uncertain ; quoted in 18th cent. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 ' Make conscientiousness and sincerity 
 your first principles. I do not know 
 how a man without conscientious- 
 ness is to get on. When you have 
 bad habits do not hesitate to change 
 them. To see the right and not to 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 203 
 
 do it is to be a coward.' Confucius, 
 551-479 B.C. 
 ' Hear all sides, then you will be en- 
 lightened ; hear one side, and you 
 will be in the dark.' A statesman, 
 666 A.D. ' To distinguish truth from 
 sham may need much study, but 
 through the ages truth will last 
 ineffaceable, and cannot finally be 
 hidden.' Lit Kun, 1.6th cent. A.D. 
 ' Scholars of the highest order hear 
 the truth and diligently practise 
 it ; those of the medium sort, 
 hearing the truth, now retain it, 
 and now throw it aside ; those 
 of the lower grade hear the truth 
 with a big laugh, and if they 
 did not laugh at it, the truth 
 would not be worth much.' Lao 
 TzU. ' The mean - minded set 
 themselves to forcibly investigate 
 the Way of Heaven; but con- 
 founding greatness with pettiness, 
 and losing all broad distances 
 in their own narrowness, every- 
 
204 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 thing becomes fragmentary and un- 
 knowable.' About A.D, 
 
 ' Partiality is human, but a large com- 
 pleteness belongs to Heaven.' Chuang 
 TzU, 4th cent. B.C. ' Heaven seems 
 most partial, but in practice is most 
 just.' ? 1.2th cent. B.C. ' Heaven's 
 lustrous intelligence far exceeds 
 man' s drowsy dreaminess . ' Date un- 
 certain. ' Heaven's way is occult 
 and distant, but wait, and aU will 
 be proved to be right.' Date un- 
 certain. 
 
 ' Righteousness and benevolence are like 
 the riches and provisions of a house- 
 hold. He who has much of them 
 is rich ; he who has httle of them 
 is poor ; he who has none at all is 
 a pauper.' Hsun TzU, ^rd cent. 
 
 B.C. 
 
 ' The truly benevolent man is genial 
 and friendly without seeking for 
 gain. He follows the right way 
 without reckoning up his merits.' 
 A statesman, 140 B.C. 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 205 
 
 ' Is there one word which may guide us 
 in the deeds of a whole lifetime ? 
 The word reciprocity is perhaps the 
 word. What you do not wish others 
 to do unto you, do not unto them.' 
 Confucius. 
 
 ' Cultivate yourself rather than reprove 
 others, and your good example will 
 be the finest possible reproof ; sym- 
 pathize with men, and you will find 
 such sympathy the best means of 
 self -correction.' Lii Kun, i6th cent. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 Here are sayings which must call forth 
 our admiration, and being all of them, in 
 the original, expressed in a terse style of 
 great beauty, may well be regarded by the 
 Chinese as gems of truth and wisdom. 
 Some of them are national treasures, 
 around which the pride of the centuries 
 has gathered. They are, however, locked 
 up in an antique dialect that not one in 
 a hundred of the populace has learned to 
 read, and a score of them in books which 
 
2o6 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 an ordinary Chinese schoolmaster has never 
 seen. But imagining these sayings to be 
 current in every one's mouth, let us ask 
 our question : ' Wherein lies the distinctive- 
 ness of the gospel ? ' And the answer need 
 not by any means be a speculative one. 
 
 In a conversation with a Brahmin at the 
 Holi Gate, Muttra City (1903), the Brahmin 
 is reported to have said to a missionary, 
 ' I find that your faith differs in one point 
 from every other faith I have examined. 
 All other teachers tell me to " Do," and I 
 cannot do as I ought. Your teacher says : 
 " I completed the work for you when I 
 died for you." Perhaps some day I, 
 though a Brahmin, may take Christ openly 
 as my Saviour.' 
 
 There are two things alleged here : 
 first, the lack of power in the human 
 heart ; and secondly, the promised power 
 of the Christ. Is the former of these 
 assumptions true to fact or not ? 
 
 Confucius seems to debate it, for he 
 says : ' If a man were really to exert 
 himself for a single day to live a hfe of 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 207 
 
 goodness, I do not believe he would find 
 his strength insufficient for the task. If 
 a man will only wish to live a good life, 
 his life becomes good there and then.' 
 And that is the assumption behind the 
 precepts of sages in most lands. 
 
 Confucius, however, while holding this 
 assumption as a theory, confesses his in- 
 ability to point to a satisfactory case as 
 regards practice. In the same breath that 
 he uttered the first of the sentences just 
 quoted, he said : ' I have not seen a man 
 who really loved virtue, or hated what 
 was not virtuous. He who really loved 
 virtue would esteem it above all else.' 
 And on another occasion : ' I have not 
 seen one who loves virtue as he loves 
 beauty.' There is an evident need of 
 arousal in the human heart, if nothing 
 else. And we shall find this to be one of 
 the two great characteristics of the gospel. 
 It is a message of arousal. 
 
 A literary statesman of the tenth ceiitury 
 A.D., visiting a Chinese monastery with a 
 friend, heard the abbot recite the words : 
 
2o8 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 * Avoid every form of evil ; reverently 
 follow all that is good.' Whereupon his 
 friend exclaimed : ' Every lad three feet 
 high knows that ! ' The statesman added : 
 ' Yes, every lad of three feet knows it all, 
 but no patriarch of a hundred years has 
 learned to practise it.' ' And,' says the 
 narrator of the incident, ' is not that a fact 
 to this day ? ' No one, at any rate in 
 China, debates it now. And so we are 
 confronted by an acknowledged lack of 
 power, that other great characteristic of 
 the gospel, as we shall see at length. 
 
 The collection of quotations given above 
 may be summed up in the suggestive 
 Chinese phrase, ' Virtue-talk.' They are 
 backed by no moral force other than that 
 of the residual goodness in human nature. 
 No prayer is offered for moral power, either 
 to the long-discarded Sovereign on High,* 
 
 1 The Sovereign on High was drastically discarded by 
 the builder of the Great Wall of China, who substituted 
 ' Heaven-lord ' and seven others as national deities (221 
 B.C.) ; was reinstated after that tyrant's death, then 
 degraded to one of ' Five Sovereigns ' in 165 B.C. ; then 
 identified with a deceased Court juggler by the emperor 
 Hui Tsung, iioi-ii2S^a.d. 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 209 
 
 or to Heaven, still less to any of the idols. 
 And added to the general feeling that no 
 one practises what the ' virtue - books ' 
 preach, and a vague conviction that moral 
 renewal is necessary, there is still no sense 
 of personal sin, for there is no definite idea 
 of any one higher than human against 
 whom sin could be committed. One soli- 
 tary sentence of Confucius reads : ' He 
 who offends against Heaven has none to 
 whom he can pray.' 
 
 It is often assumed that the preacher of 
 the gospel abroad is one who says to non- 
 Christians, forcibly or sympathetically, ' I 
 am right, and you are wrong.' But this is 
 by no means the main part of the preacher's 
 task, if he really proclaims the gospel. Are 
 the sentences quoted from Chinese litera- 
 ture wrong or right ? Is there a word in 
 the whole selection which clashes with our 
 most enlightened conceptions of truth ? 
 And when Confucius said one day, * Heaven 
 produced what is good in me,' might he 
 not have said also, as he surely believed, 
 that Heaven produced what was good in 
 o 
 
210 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 the literature of his land ? All truth, 
 scientific, moral, spiritual, is God's truth. 
 As Emerson says : ' When we discern 
 justice, when we discern truth, we do 
 nothing of ourselves ; we allow a passage 
 to its beams.' And happily no nation has 
 had anything hke a complete monopoly 
 of such discernment. 
 
 But the gospel means more than this. 
 The term * glad tidings,' which we com- 
 monly read as Gospel, comes originally 
 from the later chapters of the book of 
 Isaiah, where we find the Hebrews not so 
 much in need of information concerning 
 the truth, as of arousal to the realization 
 and appropriation of a righteous and sym- 
 pathetic Sovereign Lord. Those chapters 
 contain hardly a single statement of any new 
 moral truth not found in the earlier Hebrew 
 books, but are full of a hving, thrilhng 
 message of arousal from the Spirit of God. 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth and His disciples 
 first preached the ' glad tidings ' to fellow 
 countrymen whose creed was the same 
 as their own. And as to idols, the Jews 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 211 
 
 of our Lord's time regarded them with 
 intense abhorrence. 
 
 The gospel of Isaiah we find to have 
 been : ' Thy God reigneth ! ' It was the 
 message : ' God is real ; He has the upper 
 hand ; He is thine if thou submit to 
 Him.' This was also the gospel which 
 Jesus preached (Matt. iv. 23 ; Mark i. 14 ; 
 Luke ix. 6) ; and sending His disciples 
 forth to ' preach the kingdom of God ' 
 (Luke ix. 2 ; x. 9), this was their gospel 
 too. And with the added elements 
 of the grace of God manifest through 
 Christj the innermost gospel is still char- 
 acterized by the same message : ' God is 
 real ; God reigns ; God is thine if thou 
 submit to Him.' 
 
 Put into two words, the gospel is chiefly 
 an authoritative and sympathetic message 
 of arousal a^nd power : the two elements 
 lacking in the Far East and the Far West, 
 and all other parts of the world — the two 
 great needs of humanity everywhere. 
 
 John the Baptist preached the message 
 of arousal in the power of the Spirit. The 
 
212 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 disciples preached the message of arousal 
 with powers of healing granted them — 
 specimens of spiritual power in physical 
 regions, meeting a felt need. And then, 
 after the sacrificial death of Christ, the 
 risen Lord, wishing that no gospel should 
 be preached anywhere unless accompanied 
 with its characteristic elements of arousal 
 and power, gave His followers, as His last 
 injunction, the command : ' Tarry ye in 
 the city, until ye be clothed with power 
 from on high.' 
 
 It is well to recite the Decalogue in 
 public and private ; it would be well to 
 write up the two great commandments in 
 every house, where they could arrest the 
 eye daily ; but for all preachers of what- 
 ever sort, whether preaching by word or 
 deed, it would be well if our Lord's last 
 commission — the foundation of every real 
 mission to preach, at home or abroad — 
 could be told out with every stroke of 
 the clock. The Church of the Middle Ages 
 used the cross and crucifix as reminders 
 of the obligation to live the religious life, 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 213 
 
 and is it too wild a dream to anticipate 
 that the Church of the future may adopt 
 some sort of phonograph attachment to 
 the household clocks, as hourly reminders 
 of the all - essential basis of a continued 
 mission ? 
 
 In the place of the gospel of arousal and 
 power, has there not been too much of 
 an emasculated gospel proclaimed — a poor 
 substitute indeed ; a ' gospel ' which arouses 
 not, and which may be preached and heard 
 powerlessly ? And thus it has come to 
 pass that certain learned scholars, not 
 having the actual gospel in view at the 
 moment, have written comparisons be- 
 tween Christianity and Confucianism, or 
 Buddhism, or other non-Christian systems, 
 much as anthropologists may have pub- 
 lished comparisons between the skuU of 
 a deceased European of genius and that 
 of a native of some semi-civilized region, 
 and have perhaps discovered that the 
 cranial measurements did not differ so 
 widely after all. Milton certainly could 
 not have been Milton without his skull. 
 
214 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 but the discovery of the relative pro- 
 portions of that skull does not necessarily 
 involve an enlightened estimate of the 
 force of genius which dwelt therein. We 
 cannot estimate Paradise Lost by com- 
 parative anatomy ! 
 
 Given any body of divinity, we have 
 still to ask : ' What is its soul Uke ? ' In 
 the rudimentary conditions of the human 
 mindj images are regarded as divine spirits. 
 With further enlightenment the mind may 
 grasp the fact that all good things are ' like 
 in pattern to the true ' (Heb. ix. 24 R.V.), 
 and that all intellectual and moral truth is 
 intended to be the shrine of God. But ' The 
 Gospel ' is our term for the shrine as in- 
 habited by the indwelling Deity, even as 
 the phrase man's body (except to anato- 
 mists) includes the notion of the hving 
 body of man — his body as tenanted by a 
 living soul, endowed with its various life- 
 forces. 
 
 It is not denied that there are stand- 
 points from which we may compare the 
 system of Christian ethics (say) with the 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 215 
 
 ethics of Confucius and Gautama. Christian 
 ethics are based upon the four positive 
 elements in the Decalogue : God ; Wor- 
 ship ; Filial Piety ; Work. Confucianism 
 is seen to be minus the first two, and 
 Buddhism minus the last two of these four 
 essentials. For while the ancient religion 
 of China was based upon the patriarchal 
 worship of God, the Confucian system, 
 from the days of Confucius onwards, has 
 acknowledged no national worship of any 
 deity. And Buddhism, as it left the hands 
 of its founder, seems to have been minus 
 all four of the essentials of the Decalogue. 
 It was a system of virtual atheism, without 
 worship, or obligations to parents, or any 
 recognition of the duty of labour (all 
 Buddhists having to become mendicant 
 monks or nuns). But, as some time after 
 the death of Gautama, the Sage and his 
 chief disciples were deified and worshipped, 
 idols and idol-worship are its two positive 
 elements now. 
 
 We need withhold no due meed of ad- 
 miration for these systems at their highest, 
 
2i6 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 any more than we need withhold our 
 admiration for (say) the statue known as 
 the Venus de Milo. But every child-soul 
 in the kingdom of heaven will feel that the 
 object of our admiration is no hving being 
 capable of doing the work the world re- 
 quires. For lo ! it has no arms. These 
 non-Christian systems are torso systems as 
 compared with the ' quick and powerful ' 
 Word of God. 
 
 Paul the Apostle had no more contempt 
 for theology than he had for ethics. He 
 proclaims both. But when required by 
 force of circumstances to give his defini- 
 tion of the gospel, he calls it ' the power 
 of God ' (Rom. i. i6). And in another 
 place (Gal. i. 8) he says : ' Though we, or 
 an angel from heaven, should preach unto 
 you any other gospel than that which we 
 preached unto you, let him be anathema ! ' 
 — ^words that we need to take most seri- 
 ously to heart. For a gospel minus the 
 essential elements of arousal and power is 
 certainly not the gospel of the strong Son 
 of God. 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 217 
 
 Having the genuine gospel committed to 
 his care, Paul was not ashamed of it, even 
 when he was writing to the capital city of 
 a nation which had conquered the world 
 by sheer force, and knew well what fower 
 meant. Romans might deride him, but 
 their derision would be comparable to that 
 of the Chinese toward the first foreigner 
 who claimed to have the secret of an in- 
 visible power, superior to that of man or 
 ox — a power generated by allowing water 
 to tarry upon fire till the power of fire had 
 saturated it. 
 
 ' Every lad of three feet ' knows now- 
 adays that water, being allowed to tarry 
 upon the fire, does indeed become a potency 
 — ^the most common potency, indeed, in 
 our modern mechanism and commerce 
 generally. But the common laws of steam, 
 as all natural laws, are just the by-laws of 
 great central spiritual laws : their analogues 
 tn regions where the senses are able to 
 detect them. Spiritual law pervades the 
 natural world. The one Lawgiver has ar- 
 ranged that each higher spiritual law shall 
 
2i8 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 have its analogue in physical regions. And 
 just as the growth of the seed is the ana- 
 logue of the growth of divine grace in the 
 human heart, so the fact that water, when 
 allowed to * wait upon ' fire, gains a great 
 store of energy, is an analogue of the 
 higher fact that ' they that wait upon the 
 Lord shall renew their strength.' And the 
 essential philosophy of our Lord demand- 
 ing that His ancient or modern ministers 
 of the gospel should ' tarry until they be 
 endued with power from on high,' is 
 identical with that of a modern chief 
 engineer of a steam-boat demanding that 
 the water in the boilers should tarry over 
 the fire until saturated with the energy of 
 that fire. 
 
 The difference between a row-boat and 
 a steam-boat is that the one is a man- 
 power boat, and the other is worked by a 
 far more potent force under the co-opera- 
 tion of human thought and effort ; and in 
 Uke manner, the difference between a non- 
 Christian system of teaching (however true 
 some of that teaching may be) and the 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 219 
 
 gospel, is that the former is a system to be 
 worked by man-power, and the latter is a 
 system whose whole reliance is upon ' that 
 Power, not ourselves, that makes for right- 
 eousness,' the Spirit of the living God, 
 Omnipotence in possession — ^under the co- 
 operation of a surrendered human will, 
 and constant, ardent supplication. What- 
 ever be the similarities of the hnes on 
 which the two kinds of boats are built, 
 the essential difference between the kind 
 of force employed to work the row-boat 
 and the steam-boat respectively is one 
 that cannot be ignored. 
 
 The Chinese, however, in earlier years, 
 having once seen the steamship, began to 
 try and imitate it. Paddle-boats were 
 made, worked by men who turned the 
 wheels ! Whereupon the wise and prudent 
 Chinese, not yet understanding that steam 
 was essential for the steam-boat, exclaimed : 
 ' We are as clever as the " ocean men." 
 We have " side-going boats " just hke 
 theirs ! ' 
 
 Now it is quite possible that the paddle 
 
220 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 form of propulsion may have some ad- 
 vantages over the ordinary method of 
 rowing, and that the early Chinese imi- 
 tators of Western discoveries may have 
 gained by their efforts an improved form 
 of man-power boat. So much as that may 
 be said on their side. But were they to 
 have continued their improvements until 
 they constructed a yet more modern ship 
 which could be classed as ' A i loo at 
 Lloyds/ it is quite obvious that there 
 would be one thing lacking in such a 
 * steam-boat ' if it had no steam. 
 Yet, as a Lancashire poet has it : 
 
 There's nowt so queer as folk. 
 
 And in the building up of those higher 
 analogues of steam-boats which we call 
 churches, the paramount need of that 
 Force of which steam is an everyday type, 
 is often the one consideration which ' folk ' 
 do not and will not acknowledge to be 
 at all obvious ! Indeed, a church whose 
 members, having received the one Gospel 
 of Power, become above all things men 
 of prayer; a church whose united prayer- 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 221 
 
 meetings are its chief characteristics, and 
 in which all public worship means a mighty 
 propulsion Godward by unseen power 
 divine, and a manifestly aggressive victory 
 over opposing forces in the world around — 
 such a church would appear to some to 
 be the dream of a man unacquainted with 
 modern conditions of things. Whereas, of 
 course, the above characteristics are the 
 prominent essentials of any church which 
 recognizes the secret of apostoUcal suc- 
 cess. These characteristics are, indeed, as 
 much included in the phrase ' church of 
 God ' (of Love Supreme, of Omnipotent 
 enabling) as steam is included in the word 
 ' steam-boat.' And that initial element in 
 the gospel, arousal, will make such things 
 almost too obvious to be mentioned. 
 
 Right in the forefront of all questions 
 put to candidates for any office and min- 
 istry in connexion with the potent gospel, 
 should be the inquiry : ' What is your 
 attitude toward the working Force of the 
 whole ? And what evidences have you of 
 the possession of that Force ? ' We can 
 
222 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 imagine no examination of candidates in 
 apostolic times in which questions of this 
 sort would not be asked. The men en- 
 trusted with the potent gospel in those 
 days would be sure to inquire : ' Is the 
 man filled with the Spirit/ or, at the 
 very least, ' Is he prepared to be thus 
 filled ? ' For ' church ' in those days 
 meant Church of Spiritual Power, even 
 as ' steam-boat ' nowadays means a boat 
 either filled, or prepared to be filled, with 
 potent steam. 
 
 We can never be too sympathetic to- 
 ward all that is genuine in motive or 
 practice among our fellow men. And one 
 fact which may be exceedingly cheering 
 to those blessed with broad sympathies, 
 is that the various prominent sections 
 and denominations among the Reformed 
 Churches are the outcome of an honest 
 attempt to get yet nearer to apostolic 
 lines than those of the particular Christian 
 community from which the founders of 
 such denominations have emerged. The 
 inner raison d'etre of the Established 
 
DISTINCTIVENESS OF GOSPEL 223 
 
 Church, as distinct from Roman Catholi- 
 cism ; the inner raison d'etre (say) of the 
 Society of Friends, as distinct from 
 Churches possessed of a 'ministry' and 
 the Sacraments ; — what is it but an at- 
 tempt to regain the normal apostohc 
 conditions from which all started ? The 
 motive of each of the several Christian 
 communities, however it may have been 
 worked out, has been that sublime one : 
 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 
 Around the various organizations, and 
 above the various names, is the one yearn- 
 ing Spirit, as omnipresent and as omni- 
 potent as in the early days; while in the 
 world outside, the crying need for the true 
 potencies of the gospel is greater than 
 ever. If the comparatively small world of 
 St. Paul's day needed the true preacher 
 of gospel truth, and the true dispenser 
 of gospel omnipotence, the needs of the 
 present-day world are yet more wide- 
 spread. 
 
 The amalgamation of the various church 
 
224 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 organizations under one central organiza- 
 tionj may be a dream that we shall not 
 live to see fulfilled. But, thank God, 
 there is a nearer outlook. It is that ' all 
 may be one ' in loyalty to the highest 
 demand of our Lord : the all-essential 
 ' waiting on the Lord ' ; and the resultant 
 filling out of the terms ' Christian ' and 
 ' Gospel ' with the Force Divine which is 
 inseparable from their true meaning ; until 
 a wondering world shall have learnt to 
 exclaim : ' Thanks be unto Thee, O Lord, 
 for this Thy glorious gospel 1 ' 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE CERTAINTIES OF PRAYER 
 
 The writers of three of the Gospels quote 
 some exceedingly definite utterances of 
 one man who believed and taught the 
 absolute certainties of prayer. Here is an 
 interesting fact for all readers of the New 
 Testament^ from whatever standpoint they 
 may regard the man J esus of Nazareth. For 
 if there be any uncertainty upon any one 
 subject of religion, that uncertainty seems 
 to haunt the minds of many with regard to 
 the central item of all religion — prayer. 
 
 The Chinese offer prayers on occasion — 
 some of them to the visible idol before 
 them; others, who are more thoughtful, 
 to the spirit of some deceased personage 
 whom they regard as residing in the idol 
 or ancestral tablet. The range of their 
 prayers is usually a material one ; they 
 pray for wealth, for sons, for restored 
 P 
 
226 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 health in sickness, and for long life gen- 
 erally. On asking them whether they re- 
 ceive answers to their prayers, the general 
 reply is that it is always best to pray, 
 although some idols do not seem to be 
 very efficacious, and some Hves seem to 
 be dogged by the adverse forces of ill- 
 luck. But as every Chinese doctor manages 
 to get some friend to write him a testi- 
 monial tablet inscribed : ' The Wizard 
 Hand brings back the Spring,' or some 
 such stock motto, so the meanest shrine of 
 a local deity is pretty sure to display a tes- 
 timonial tablet inscribed : ' Asking brings 
 Certain Response.' We of the West, see- 
 ing such advertisement tablets, naturally 
 feel assured that if the sick man got better, 
 it must have been in spite of the ignoramus 
 who treated him; and that if the farmer 
 got a good harvest or his wife bore him a 
 son, it had nothing whatever to do with 
 the poorly - painted board displa5dng the 
 inane features of an impossible deity, con- 
 tained in the little shrine before which 
 prayer was offered. So that such assur- 
 
CERTAINTIES OF PRAYER 227 
 
 ances as may possess the minds of a quarter 
 of the race on the subject of answered 
 prayer, cannot be said to affect the matter 
 at all as regards scientific demonstration. 
 But they may be useful to us, perhaps, 
 in warning us against quoting mere co- 
 incidences as answers to prayer, to the 
 befogging of the minds of those who are 
 seeking for definite evidence, and as a 
 warning against too hasty assurances gen- 
 erally. For we can see that while the 
 Chinese offer prayers to a wooden image 
 or to dead men, it is quite possible for us, 
 with the name of an omnipotent God upon 
 our Hps, to offer up wooden prayers, dead 
 prayers, which ought not to avail any 
 more than the former kind of prayers. If 
 any happy coincidences follow, those co- 
 incidences will have no more to do with 
 our dummy prayers than they would have, 
 had we worshipped any of the dummy 
 deities of China. 
 
 The barest sine qua non of anything we 
 may truly call prayer is real supplication 
 offered to a real God. 
 
228 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 The Mohammedans offer prayer to a 
 God whom they regard as a Supreme Unit ; 
 they ehminate from their minds any un- 
 real deity, even if they may not have the 
 real deity in full focus before their minds. 
 Ask them why they pray, and they will 
 answer in the one word ' Custom,' or per- 
 haps ' A custom binding on all true be- 
 lievers.' Ask them whether they are sure 
 of a definite response, and they will prob- 
 ably reply : ' Great is Allah ! His ways 
 are inscrutable. As Lord we worship Him, 
 and as Lord we pray to Him. AU things 
 are decreed by His will. We know we 
 ought to pray, and we ask no further 
 questions.' 
 
 This is perhaps the attitude of many 
 attendants at Christian places of worship 
 also. In Nonconformist churches the topics 
 of prayer are left to the discretion of the 
 minister conducting the service ; in the 
 Church of England services they are fixed 
 by venerable custom. But let it be 
 imagined that in any one congregation 
 of either sort the whole of the prayers 
 
CERTAINTIES OF PRAYER 229 
 
 offered upon a given Sunday were fully 
 answered ! What astonishment would fill 
 the minds of that congregation ! What a 
 miracle it would seem to many of them ! 
 What a notable event it would be in the 
 history of that neighbourhood ! If such 
 a thing were to happen in Britain or 
 America it would be a public occurrence 
 of sufficient magnitude to be telegraphed 
 to the ends of the earth and to be trans- 
 lated into all the leading languages of the 
 world. We can imagine the headlines : 
 ' Marvellous ReUgious Developments/ 
 ' Astounding Revival Intelligence,' and 
 the Hke.^ 
 
 No ; attendants at public worship, many 
 of them, do not expect an answer to the 
 prayers offered there, and few really ex- 
 pect a full answer to the prayers offered 
 there. The general attitude seems to be: 
 ' We are not heathens, and we hope we 
 are not ungodly. It is a Christian custom 
 to attend the offering of public prayers 
 
 * This chapter was written before any such headlines 
 had actually been used of the Revival in Wales. 
 
230 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 and to be present at stated religious ser- 
 vices in general. It is part of our duty, 
 however dull the sermon may be — and 
 many sermons are so dull that we should 
 not tolerate their paucity of thought and 
 feeling if they were newspaper articles on 
 national topics instead of being discourses 
 on the problems of the kingdom of heaven. 
 We attend to our duty. To neglect it 
 would be irreligious. We can hardly ex- 
 pect much beyond a comfortable feeling 
 of conscience that we have done our duty, 
 can we ? ' 
 
 Such a state of mind, and it is a fairly 
 general one, does not, of course, prove that 
 prayer is not a good and proper custom, 
 binding upon those who recognize the good- 
 ness of God and His claims upon humanity. 
 But it is removed a whole hemisphere 
 from the standpoint of the Son of Man, 
 who said, in response to a request for 
 instruction in the art of prayer (Luke xi. 
 i-io) : ' Every one that asketh receiveth ; 
 and he that seeketh findeth ; and to him 
 that knocketh, it shall be opened' — ^words 
 
CERTAINTIES OF PRAYER 231 
 
 which mean, if they mean anything, that 
 real prayer always has a definite and certain 
 response. His words have to do with 
 receiving what was asked for and finding 
 what was sought. He quotes what to 
 Him was a law of the case, and states that 
 law as definitely as any scientific discoverer 
 ever stated a law he had discovered and 
 proved by reiterated experiment. He says 
 most emphatically that what He calls 
 prayer is a certain means of obtaining. 
 
 The weight of present-day experience 
 may seem to be against Him, but, spite 
 of the general feeling of iincertainty with 
 regard to responses to prayer, it is still 
 quite conceivable that Jesus had well 
 weighed His words, and that He was 
 absolutely right. Of course if ten thou- 
 sand adepts at the art of prayer were to 
 tell us that the whole question of response 
 is a most indefinite one — and just one man 
 is reported to have said, centuries ago, 
 that there was no indefiniteness in the 
 case — ^it would seem on the face of it that 
 either this one man was not correctly 
 
232 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 reported, or, if correctly reported, that He 
 allowed a glowing Oriental imagination to 
 lift Him beyond the region of absolute 
 matter-of-fact. But, on the other hand, 
 if Jesus had never uttered these words, 
 we can hardly imagine any early Christian 
 writer inventing them f or^ Him ; and if 
 Jesus really uttered these words, it is quite 
 likely that He who prayed as never man 
 prayed was referring to a true art of 
 prayer, in which many who profess to be 
 adepts are the merest amateurs, who have 
 not fulfilled the essentials of the case. 
 
 Here is an electrician who says : ' Let 
 a circuit of conducting wire be made to 
 include a battery, an electric bell, and 
 an electric push-button ; press that button, 
 and the bell will certainly ring. Or, let 
 a circuit include a powerful battery, an 
 electric switch, and a spark apparatus in 
 the midst of an explosive charge inserted 
 in a certain rock under water ; turn the 
 switch, and the rock will be blown up.' 
 Whereupon ten thousand students of elec- 
 tricity in various parts think the experiment 
 
CERTAINTIES OF PRAYER 233 
 
 worth the trial, but either fail to insulate 
 their wire, or imagine that string will do 
 instead of wire ; then, having no definite 
 results to quote, they settle down to the 
 conviction that the electrician was a good 
 man, worthy of all respect, and that the 
 fixing up of uninsulated wires or of string 
 connexions is a commendable custom. 
 Such a state of things would be somewhat 
 comical from an electric point of view, 
 would it not ? And yet hardly comical 
 as taken to represent the Master's afi&rma- 
 tions as to real prayer and His followers' 
 misunderstandings as to the true essentials 
 of that art. He says in effect : ' Let a 
 full connexion be established between your 
 soul and Omnipotence by prayer, and 
 results are bound to foUow ; let a full 
 connexion be established between your 
 soul. Omnipotence, and another soul it is 
 desired to bless, and results are bound to 
 follow in this case also.' With faulty 
 connexions in matters of electricity or 
 prayer, of course the desired results will 
 not be attained ; but that in no wise 
 
234 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 negatives the words of the electrician or the 
 affirmations of the Christ. 
 
 I for one fully believe that in making 
 those affirmations Jesus was as scientific 
 as any scientist, as practical as any mechan- 
 ician, and as matter-of-fact in His most 
 exalted utterances as the calmest critic of 
 absolute facts has ever been. I believe the 
 laws of prayer to be more definite and 
 irreversible than any of what we call the 
 fixed laws of nature. The laws of prayer 
 are never at fault ; it is our practice that 
 is so faulty. We have not because we 
 pray not, or we pray and receive not 
 because we pray amiss — ^not fulfilling the 
 necessary conditions of the immutable laws 
 of prayer. 
 
 Those laws are as simple in their grand 
 essentials as those of any science taught in 
 our elementary schools, and as intricate in 
 their ramifications as those of any science 
 when taken as a whole. And surely in these 
 days of widening knowledge the time will 
 come when they will be tabulated like the 
 laws of the physical sciences, when the art 
 
CERTAINTIES OF PRAYER 235 
 
 of prayer shall have begun to flourish in 
 Christendom as the mechanical arts based 
 upon modern science are flourishing. 
 
 Is it not strange — the progress of all 
 arts except the art of prayer, the progress 
 of all sciences except that of the essential 
 laws of supplication ? Why should all the 
 arts of life and of international communi- 
 cation have reached such a pitch of ex- 
 cellence, and the initial art of a Christian 
 soul be in such a backward state, what- 
 ever may be the condition of the science of 
 it all ? The art must come first, whether 
 the science follows or not. We must ' do 
 the will if we would know the doctrine ' in 
 its certainty. It is as we pray, really 
 pray, that our doubts dissolve ; and, as 
 we have seen, the One Man who of all 
 others lived the prayer-life, had no doubts 
 whatever on the subject. 
 
 But let us study the elementary lesson 
 He once gave in the art of prayer. It is 
 found in the eleventh chapter of Luke's 
 Gospel. His disciples, being struck per- 
 haps with a remarkable glow upon the 
 
236 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 face of Jesus after He had been praying 
 on a certain occasion, asked to be taught 
 how to pray. John the Baptist, a mighty 
 man of God, had given some lessons to his 
 disciples, and Jesus, a yet mightier man 
 of God, might be expected to give lessons 
 which were still more to the point. 
 
 The Master's answer was twofold. It 
 was like the answer of a father in the old 
 days of archery to a son who asked to be 
 taught how to shoot. The answer of that 
 father would consist in producing the 
 apparatus for shooting, and then in telling 
 his son how to use it. ' Here is the bow 
 and arrow. Now pull the string with all 
 your might. No mere twanging of the 
 bow-string will avail anything. You must 
 pull to the utmost of your strength.' It 
 was thus the Master taught the art of 
 prayer ; as though He said : ' Here are 
 the most suitable petitions. Now pray 
 them with all the soul-forces you possess.' 
 He gave them an ideal collection of speci- 
 men petitions, and then uttered a parable 
 to show the intensity and persistency with 
 
CERTAINTIES OF PRAYER 237 
 
 which they were to be prayed. That set 
 of petitions is more than famihar to all of 
 us. The parable may be recalled to our 
 minds. It was probably based upon an 
 actual incident at Nazareth ^ — that home 
 of humble poverty, where the bread for 
 the day may have often been earned on 
 the day itself, and eaten too. There is 
 nothing in the house to set before a visitor 
 who arrives after dark. And so we find 
 the man who wishes to entertain his friend 
 stepping out into the unlighted street and 
 knocking at a neighbour's door, not gently 
 tapping as we should do in the West, but 
 banging away with might and main, as 
 residents in the inland towns of China 
 have often heard belated travellers bang- 
 ing — making themselves a nuisance to all 
 who are not nerveless. This is how the 
 man banged away : with ' shameless ob- 
 stinacy,' as the word means which we 
 mildly translate ' importunity.' Behind 
 the bolted door was a drowsy man who 
 proved to have an obstinate wiU, and the 
 
 1 As Dr. Whyte suggests in a sermon. 
 
238 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 suppliant continued his shameless banging 
 until he had overcome the resistance of 
 that obstinate will. 
 
 Our Lord tells the tale, and then says, in 
 effect : ' If you want to reaUy pray, you 
 must pray like that — with the intensity 
 and persistence which would serve to over- 
 come an obstinate human will.' Taking 
 the Lord's Prayer as a whole to indicate 
 that our prayers must coincide with God's 
 will, we have in the parable instructions 
 to put forth our own will-force to its 
 fullest extent. 
 
 Prayer is thus the putting forth of a 
 man's utmost will-forces in accord with 
 the will of God. It is anything but a 
 mere sacred pastime.^ It is more hke a 
 siege conducted with the combined wiU- 
 forces of man and God. It is a persistent 
 onslaught of human will-forces under the 
 
 ' If we are simply to pray to the extent of a pleasant 
 and enjoyable exercise, and to know nothing of watch- 
 ing in prayer and weariness in prayer, we shall not 
 maintain the spiritual life of our own souls as it ought 
 to be maintained ; we shall not sustain our mission- 
 aries. . . — Hudson Taylor, New York Conference, 
 1900. 
 
CERTAINTIES OF PRAYER 239 
 
 generalship of the mighty Will which willed 
 a universe into being and which willed 
 order out of chaos : the divine will-force 
 behind all the forces of evolution in nature. 
 Prayer, however earnest, which runs counter 
 to the divine will, can never hope to 
 overcome Omnipotence ; prayer under the 
 generalship of Omnipotence can never 
 have anything short of a campaign of 
 glorious achievement. 
 
 Intensity and persistence are the two 
 great human essentials of true prayer, not 
 because it is ever necessary or possible to 
 make Infinite Love and Wisdom alter His 
 mind, but because there is so much resist- 
 ance to be overcome in the human nature 
 of ourselves and others. It is we our- 
 selves and our friends who are so often the 
 sleepers within closed doors against which 
 God's highest blessings are pressing. When 
 we pray : ' Fill me with Thy Spirit,' the 
 praying part of us, however unconsciously, 
 takes its place outside the door in company 
 with the Divine Neighbour who knocks, 
 until the rest of our personality has aroused 
 
240 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 to make the necessary preparations for that 
 blessed and tremendous change which the 
 reception of the Spirit of absolute Lordship 
 will involve. 
 
 In the case of the national games of 
 ancient Greece, the winner of the Olympian 
 races was brought back into his native 
 city through a breach that had been 
 specially made in the city walls. And for 
 any one to actually receive the Spirit of 
 Omnipotence in all His fullness, may 
 involve intense and persistent prepara- 
 tion of the will, which may be comparable 
 to the tearing down of a city wall. To 
 really pray the highest prayers that we 
 have been taught, will mean that we set 
 ourselves — our will-forces versus the slug- 
 gishness and obstinacy of human nature — 
 to prepare for tremendous changes within. 
 
 And if we find such resistance to be 
 overcome in ourselves, we may readily 
 see that it is likely to be found in many 
 other human lives also. In praying for 
 the conversion of others, we may often 
 have to reckon with a resistance which 
 
CERTAINTIES OF PRAYER 241 
 
 will be unconquerable, save by the com- 
 bined will-forces of God and man. But 
 acting through the medium of our sacred 
 human wiU-forces, the mighty will of God 
 may press so close upon the man that his 
 final refusal to arise and open the door 
 would be a very unlikely contingency. 
 And if we cannot predicate mechanical 
 certainty in all cases of intercessory prayer, 
 we have stiU the grand motto of the divine 
 adept at prayer to inspire us : ' Despairing 
 of no man.' No human being is a mere 
 machine capable of being irresistibly 
 dragged into godliness ; but in every 
 prayer which fulfils the conditions of com- 
 bining the utmost will-forces of the man of 
 prayer with those of God, there must be, 
 there cannot but be, definite achievement. 
 Years ago chemists discovered that 
 matter is indestructible ; of more recent 
 years physicists have discovered that energy 
 is also indestructible. Like matter, it may 
 change its mode of manifestation ; like a 
 burnt candle, its essential elements may 
 change their form into one not so easily 
 
 9 
 
242 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 recognizable by the senses ; but by no 
 means can it be destroyed. The energy 
 of walking along a path is an obvious form 
 of energy. By the contact of the feet 
 with the pavement that energy becomes 
 translated into heat, which is not so 
 obvious to the senses. We can see, how- 
 ever, by the rapid melting of snow in city 
 streets as compared with its tardy melting 
 on country paths, that the pedestrians 
 along the pavements do put heat into those 
 pavements. The energy is not lost ; it 
 may be recognized by suitable tests. The 
 law of conservation of energy is absolute, 
 whether in the natural world, or in the 
 spiritual world, of which the natural world 
 is the working model. 
 
 Thus when we pray, really pray, we are 
 bringing an indestructible force to oear 
 upon the situation. If that force does 
 not accomplish all the details we hoped, 
 it will accomplish many others which are 
 as important from the divine standpoint ; 
 and then it will go on and on to the end of 
 the world, aye, and on and on after the 
 
CERTAINTIES OF PRAYER 243 
 
 earth and all the works that are therein 
 have been dissolved — it will go on and 
 on for ever in its sublime career of blessed 
 achievement. Who does not feel stirred 
 to a lofty ambition to become, above aU 
 things else, a man of prayer, when prayer, 
 real prayer, means all this ! 
 
 We have not been very successful in 
 prayer, perhaps, because it has not been 
 what our Lord caUs prayer. And some- 
 times when we have really prayed, for 
 temporal blessings especially, we have been 
 hke those who have asked for a penny, with 
 just one definite bronze penny in view. We 
 may or may not have received our penny, 
 but if our prayers were from good and 
 sincere hearts, hearts obedient to the 
 supreme wUl, we have received pounds 
 instead of our penny ; and by praying 
 more and more in accord with the divine 
 will, we may gain by our prayers thou- 
 sands and milUons of pounds, in the long 
 run, for God and humanity. And because 
 we may not always get the exact bronze 
 penny we sought, it does not at all follow 
 
244 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 that Jesus was not more than true when 
 He affirmed that ' every one that asketh 
 receiveth.' We measure Him so often by 
 our own narrow, mathematical notions of 
 truth, when His truth is broader and 
 vaster than ours, even as the infinite azure 
 is broader and vaster than our httle earth- 
 baU. 
 
 My brothers ! let us ponder over these 
 facts until we rise to action, determined 
 to succeed in prayer when success is within 
 the reach of every one of us. Here we are, 
 too often like poverty-stricken Chinese 
 squatters in their rush-mat huts upon a 
 sort of no-man's land. Some one comes 
 along and says : ' Would you like to be 
 rich ? Dig the ground and you will be.' 
 Many do not believe him, and others are 
 too lazy to stir. Others set to work, dig 
 up the surface and plant cabbages — which 
 are of course some gain to them. But the 
 wise man meant : ' Dig deeply and per- 
 sistently.' And it happens that, almost 
 by accident, one or two dig a little deeper 
 than the rest, to find a gold mine that would 
 
CERTAINTIES OF PRAYER 245 
 
 enrich a nation, were it to be fully worked. 
 Then, if only they combine their energies, 
 they may be in possession of countless 
 riches. 
 
 In exhorting us to pray, our Lord calls 
 us to the grandest and noblest under- 
 taking of which human lives are capable; 
 to the surest and most remunerative enter- 
 prise that is possible for human prowess. 
 We must not fail. We dare not fail, with 
 God as our Father and Christ as our 
 Master. His words are anything but an 
 exaggeration ; no human imagination can 
 exaggerate the subhme possibilities of the 
 latent power within us. Let us then, one 
 and all, so unloose our imaginations, and 
 put forth our divinely-granted energies, as 
 to prove to a wondering world the absolute 
 certainties of prayer. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 WHY PRAY IF GOD ALREADY KNOWS ? 
 
 The processes of education are three-fold. 
 They consist (i) in teaching the scholar 
 what he does not know ; (2) in correcting 
 his mistakes ; and (3) as the word educa- 
 tion really means, in educing or drawing 
 out his latent faculties. Our consideration 
 of the absolute certainties of prayer was 
 based upon that portion of our Lord's 
 teaching in which He taught what the 
 disciples did not know — how to pray. 
 The subject of the present chapter takes us 
 to that section of the Sermon on the Mount 
 where Jesus sought to correct the mistake 
 of praying with merely reiterated phrase- 
 ology. And in both passages where the 
 Lord's Prayer occurs, the Master was en- 
 deavouring to draw out the latent faculties 
 of His scholars. 
 
WHY PRAY IF GOD KNOWS ? 247 
 
 In Luke xi. 2-13 j Jesus gave, as we have 
 seerij a collection of specimen petitions, 
 and then a parable indicating how to 
 pray — ^with intensity and persistency. In 
 Matt. vi. 5-13, Jesus gave a similar 
 collection of specimen petitions, and then 
 directions how not to pray. He showed 
 that prayer should not be a performance 
 before men, to win from them the ex- 
 clamation : ' How very good that man 
 must be to pray so regularly ! Really, we 
 must respect him ! ' or the utterance of 
 reiterated phraseology before God, to win 
 from God the exclamation : ' How very 
 good that man must be to utter such pro- 
 Ufic prayers ! ReaUy, I must reward him ! ' 
 Jesus gives the reason why both practices 
 axe so inappropriate by showing (i) that 
 prayer is an address of the soul to God 
 alone, and (2) by saying : ' Your Father 
 knoweth what things ye have need of 
 before ye ask Him.' 
 
 It would seem on the face of it that we 
 of the present day are in no danger of 
 falUng into either of the errors of the men 
 
248 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 of old Judaea ; and yet, as errors die hard 
 and assume various aliases before they are 
 finally arrested and banished from the 
 earth, we may note in passing that it is 
 still possible, in meetings where prayer is 
 wont to be made, to introduce various 
 forms of more or less ornate padding into 
 the pubhc prayers. The aim of it all may 
 still be to gain the approbation of the 
 human listeners, and the fact of the matter 
 is that the man has been so remiss in his 
 private devotions that he needs to add all 
 this miscellaneous padding in order to hide 
 from men the paucity of real prayer in 
 his utterances. 
 
 The genius of modern line-drawing is 
 opposed to every superfluous line which 
 would clog up the picture ; the genius of 
 modern journalism is opposed to all padding 
 that would clog up the sense ; the art of 
 stoking, besides adding fresh fuel, is to 
 dispose of all dead ashes which wovild clog 
 up the fires ; and so aU meaningless padding 
 in public prayers — so different from the 
 outflow of the emotions stirred to poetry — 
 
WHY PRAY IF GOD KNOWS ? 249 
 
 is so much hindrance to the true practice 
 of prayer. 
 
 ' Why add superfluous phraseology ? ' 
 asks our Lord. ' Pray to One who knows, 
 because He knows.' There were doubt- 
 less reasons in the mind of Jesus why 
 prayer should be offered to One who 
 already knows what is needed. Some of 
 them wiU be apparent at a glance at the 
 Lord's Prayer. Others were beyond the 
 grasp of the peasant disciples of that 
 day, who were not trained in modern 
 logic and science. And it is proposed in 
 this chapter, first to point out the ex- 
 ceedingly obvious reasons arising out of 
 the use of the Lord's Prayer itself, and 
 then to study reverently what reasons 
 may be suggested by our modern ex- 
 perience and the revelations of modern 
 science. 
 
 The opening sentence of the Lord's 
 Prayer, and some of its later sentences, 
 have to do with the establishment of 
 realized relations between those who pray 
 and God ; the rest of the prayer deals 
 
250 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 chiefly with the extension of those realized 
 relations between all men and God. 
 
 If we were to repeat to ourselves the 
 words : ' Our Father which art in heaven ' 
 — ^repeat the words over and over again 
 for an hour a day, it need not be a vain 
 repetition, but might be a most useful 
 means of saturating our subconsciousness 
 with the thought that God is indeed 
 related to us as Father, and that we are 
 related to aU men as brothers and sisters 
 in a relationship too real to allow us to 
 bear grudges against them, or to fail to 
 forgive their trespasses, when we and they 
 are the objects of such Fatherly generosity 
 of love. 
 
 There is nothing in the fact that our 
 Father knows that we need to be in right 
 relations to Himself and others, to prevent 
 us prajdng all the time that we may gain 
 and preserve those right relations. Rather, 
 as our Father is so fully aware that our 
 highest need is the estabUshment of those 
 right relations, should we wake up to 
 our needs in this matter, and earnestly 
 
WHY PRAY IF GOD KNOWS ? 251 
 
 set ourselveSj with His aid, to supply 
 them. 
 
 The next great item in the Lord's 
 Prayer is the estabUshment of right re- 
 lations between all men and God, that 
 due honour may be rendered to Him, 
 that His Fatherly authority may prevail 
 on earth, and that His Fatherly purposes 
 may be perfectly fulfilled. And having 
 made our own relationship to God a real- 
 ized fact, we naturally rise to take our 
 places by the side of our Father, accepting 
 His interests as our own highest interests, 
 and blending our wiU-forces with His to 
 accomphsh what He desires. 
 
 It is obvious that God needs to gain our 
 wills in order to estabhsh right relations 
 between ourselves and Himself ; and I 
 think it is obvious that God may need 
 our will-forces to co-operate with His own 
 in order to bring humanity at large into 
 right relations with Himself. On the face 
 of it God needs men who will tell those 
 who know it not that there is a heavenly 
 Father, and who will stir up the reahzation 
 
252 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 of those who are apt to forget the pres- 
 ence of the Heavenly Father, and the 
 glowing fact of His immeasurable love. 
 Hence, from the letting loose of fiUal will- 
 forces in prayer, there springs an ardour 
 for mission work among those who know 
 not God, and various forms of activity 
 for the rousing of the reaHzation of men, 
 such as preachings and conversations and 
 letter - writings on God's behalf. Hence 
 also there will be benevolent work for the 
 needy, and kindly, sympathetic aid toward 
 all men. 
 
 So far all is clear- The praying of an 
 ideal prayer is a most valuable exercise 
 for the establishment of right relations 
 between our souls and God, and to start 
 us working for the establishment of right 
 relations between man and God every- 
 where. Yet all this has merely to do with 
 the subjective influences of prayer — the 
 influences upon the man who is praying. 
 He prays, and becomes more godly by 
 prajdng ; then sets to work to help others 
 into godhness. 
 
WHY PRAY IF GOD KNOWS ? 253 
 
 But in the previous chapter it was 
 assvimed that prayer is itself a mode of 
 work ; and if that be so, then a bedridden 
 man or woman, or youth or maiden, 
 utterly unable to influence folks outside 
 their little circle by any outward deeds, 
 may still by their prayers be working 
 much toward the supply of the greatest 
 needs of many in their own neighbour- 
 hood, or in distant parts which they have 
 never visited and never will visit. As 
 Bishop Westcott says : ' The lonely suf- 
 ferer is still a fellow worker with God; a 
 sleepless voice of intercession, unheard of 
 man, but borne to God by a surrendered 
 soul, may bring strength to combatants 
 wearied by a doubtful conflict.' 
 
 By what means is such work likely to 
 be accomplished ? First of all, consider 
 the condition of the soul accustomed to 
 pray to God. Is it not in the condition 
 of a wireless telegraphy receiver to electric 
 waves and forces which pass over minds 
 lacking that special adjustment and sen- 
 sitiveness ? Towards the close of 1904, 
 
254 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 Marconi sent wireless telegraphy waves of 
 electricity from the south of Cornwall to 
 the south of Italy. Those electric waves 
 passed across various great centres of 
 population in France and Italy without 
 being recognized by the millions over 
 whom they passed. Only the man in the 
 south of Italy, with his special receiver, 
 caught the waves which passed over two 
 countries unnoticed. Then, having re- 
 ceived the message, he as a fact used the 
 very same force of electricity which brought 
 it to him, and by means of connecting 
 wires, repeated the message to aU the 
 leading editorial offices of Europe. Those 
 editorial offices did not possess instruments 
 sensitive to electric waves sent without 
 material connexions, but, given such con- 
 nexions, were able to receive the message 
 in question. 
 
 Now to apply this. God's omnipresent 
 forces of love, joy, peace, of wisdom and 
 power, are always vibrating around us, 
 thrilUng the whole universe more really 
 than the deep chords of a great organ 
 
WHY PRAY IF GOD KNOWS ? 255 
 
 set the lofty arches of a cathedral 
 vibrating. For it is these Love-forces of 
 Omnipotence which are responsible for 
 all the self-repairing and progressive tend- 
 encies of Nature in evolution, and are 
 quite sufficient to lift every man of moral 
 failure into a man of God, and every land 
 into a Holy Land. But only by that 
 practical * tuning ' of soul that we call 
 prayer, does a man reach the point of 
 fuller recognition and receptiveness. God's 
 waves of wireless telegraphy pass over the 
 remaining millions unnoticed by them. 
 There is need for some human mode of 
 contact in order to make their mighty 
 forces obvious to the generality. 
 
 This may be assisted by word of mouth 
 — Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, 
 arresting and informing the minds of the 
 crowd by audible words — but in all speak- 
 ing for God it is always the Spirit-forces 
 behind the spoken word which really tell 
 upon the soul it is desired to influence. 
 
 The influencing element is and must be 
 akin to the part of the man influenced. 
 
256 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 You may move a man's body by colliding 
 with him in the street ; you may move a 
 man's mind by the sympathetic contact of 
 your own mind ; you may move a man's 
 emotions by the intense play of your own 
 emotions ; but soul can only be moved 
 by soulj spirit can only be moved by 
 spirit. In every sermon or address or 
 conversation, the exact power to make 
 men godly is of course just the amount of 
 God which that sermon or utterance apphes 
 to human souls through the medium of a 
 soul in sympathetic touch with men. 
 
 Moreover, quite apart from any discus- 
 sion of all the extraordinary phenomena 
 claimed to have been noted by clair- 
 voyants and the hke, it is the definite 
 belief of scientists of the soberest descrip- 
 tion, that, under certain favourable cir- 
 cumstances, mind may act upon mind at 
 a distance. And if this be an acknow- 
 ledged possibility, think of the added 
 possibihty of affecting a soul at a distance 
 when one's own soul is fiUed with the 
 forces of God 1 There may be no definite 
 
WHY PRAY IF GOD KNOWS ? 257 
 
 message telegraphed to the brain-cells, but 
 if soul be superior to brain, and if God 
 be the most intensely real Potency in the 
 universe, it is not easy to imagine how a 
 soul, charged with the forces of God, can 
 fail to affect those near and distant, upon 
 whom the utmost soul-yearning is exer- 
 cised in the act of prayer. 
 
 In the absence of any record of telepathy 
 or thought-transference, I for one am sure, 
 and have abundant cause to be sure, that 
 there may be some spiritual contact be- 
 tween a soul in intense suppUcation and 
 another soul at a distance. 
 
 Up-country residence in China, year 
 after year, and journeys which took one 
 away from a fellow countryman for days 
 and weeks together, with no scrap of 
 English conversation, and only one's own 
 soul for company in the presence of God, 
 could hardly fail to have a sensitizing 
 influence toward aU thoughts and feehngs 
 of related souls. Yet, however startling 
 one or two events may have been at home 
 in one's absence, and however intense the 
 R 
 
258 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 thoughts arising from them in the minds 
 of those concerned — when one's dwelling- 
 house seemed in imminent peril from a 
 fire next door, for instance — such things 
 utterly failed to telegraph themselves to 
 one's consciousness. Whereas an earnest 
 prayer offered by a hearty Christian friend 
 during one's waking moments for the last 
 decade or more, has hardly ever failed to 
 make one conscious of what has seemed 
 to demand the name of ' prayer-touch.' 
 
 Sometimes a sudden and vivid impres- 
 sion has been made on the consciousness, 
 so that a watch could be set by the prayer 
 offered ; sometimes there has been an 
 instant reversion from intense depression 
 to glowing exhilaration ; and always there 
 has been a heightened glow of soul, in 
 which brain -work and even muscular 
 exertion have been easier. 
 
 In the majority of Christian hves there 
 may not be that special sensitiveness to 
 ' prayer - touch ' which would make it a 
 phenomenon of very definite conscious- 
 ness. Many are too absorbed in business 
 
WHY PRAY IF GOD KNOWS ? 259 
 
 details, or a crowd of material trifles, for 
 that to be easily possible. But in relating 
 one's experiences in various places, several 
 have testified to at any rate some ex- 
 periences which have corresponded with 
 one's own. 
 
 Here, then, is a phenomenon, surely 
 known to many, which may form a legiti- 
 mate subject for study no less than any 
 fact of physical science. Let us begin our 
 studies at the material world (even as 
 scientists have studied ether by analogies 
 in more material regions than those of 
 ether itself) — the material world whose 
 phenomena and laws are typical of those 
 in spiritual regions. 
 
 Iron can combine directly with oxygen 
 only when the iron is strongly heated in 
 oxygen, although iron rust, or higher 
 oxide of iron, is an exceedingly common 
 substance. How is that rust formed ? 
 Iron rusts, that is, combines with oxygen, 
 in the presence of moisture. Not that 
 pure water (the pure compound H,0) 
 contains any free oxygen which can com- 
 
26o IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 bine with iron, for it is all firmly combined 
 with hydrogen. But ordinary water con- 
 tains oxygen and carbonic acid dissolved 
 from the air ; and these two dissolved 
 gases, being brought into contact with the 
 iron through the medium of water, produce 
 first a carbonate, and then an oxide. The 
 oxygen needs an intermediary to bring it 
 into combining contact with the iron. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, also, that abso- 
 lutely pure concentrated nitric acid wiU 
 not dissolve iron at all, but, on diluting it 
 somewhat with water, it combines with 
 the iron most vigorously. The nitric acid 
 needs a diluent intermediary to bring it 
 into combining contact with the iron. 
 
 Now God is a Spirit who is ever yearning 
 to combine with our spirit, for ' person- 
 ahty is the capacity for fellowship,' and 
 God is a PersonaUty of Love. His person- 
 ahty is as a fact far more real than the 
 personahty of any friend ; but we are all 
 of us, as a rule, more affected by human 
 personalities than by the Divine Person- 
 ality. We can see beauty and nobility 
 
WHY PRAY IF GOD KNOWS ? 261 
 
 in a friend's character, and feel the impress 
 of beauty and nobility in a friend's fellow- 
 ship, often, alas ! without a thought of 
 the supremely beautiful and noble Friend 
 Divine whose own forces of generous love 
 are thus brought home to our souls. And 
 just as it often needs some expression of 
 a friend's soul in a look, a word, or a 
 letter, to make us vividly conscious of his 
 feehngs, so, in a higher plane, our minds 
 often need the forces of divine love to 
 be brought home to us through the per- 
 sonality of a friend, for us to be vividly 
 conscious of them. 
 
 In an absolutely ideal friendship, the 
 presence of a friend may itself suffice for 
 communion, apart from any word or sign ; 
 in an absolutely spiritual mind the Holy 
 Spirit may communicate His higher in- 
 fluences direct to the soul ; but just as a 
 word from a friend — something conveyed 
 to us by the vibrations of inanimate air — 
 is an undoubted assistance to realization, 
 so the Holy Spirit may employ the vibra- 
 tions of a human soul at prayer to affect 
 
262 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 our souls the more fully. The human 
 spirit in prayerful vibration becomes the 
 intermediary, the diluent intermediary, of 
 the all-potent Spirit Divine, to bring that 
 Spirit into combining contact with the 
 man who is the object of intercessory 
 prayer. 
 
 After years of pondering on the matter, 
 the answer to the question : ' Why need 
 we pray if God already knows ? ' seems to 
 come to this, that Prayer for ourselves 
 is a mode of spiritual contact with God, 
 thus becoming a mode of reception for one's 
 own character and disposition and person- 
 ality generally — the ultimate ideal of which 
 is that we should be combined with God 
 by the interfusion of His Spirit with our 
 spirits. Prayer for others is a mode of 
 spiritual contact with God and others, thus 
 becoming a mode of conveyance of the 
 divine energies towards others, with our 
 praying souls as God's intermediaries — 
 bringing God into closer combining con- 
 tact with others. Prayer for a set of 
 circumstances which need improving, is 
 
WHY PRAY IF GOD KNOWS ? 263 
 
 a mode of applying the forces of God to- 
 ward those circumstances, so that through 
 the medium of the soul-forces in prayer 
 God can the more readily raise those cir- 
 cumstances toward His own ideal of what 
 they should be. And as God loves man 
 in his complete manhood of body, mind, 
 heart, and soul, the variety of circum- 
 stances for which prayer is appropriate is 
 well-nigh endless. 
 
 In three words, then, prayer is a mode 
 of reception, of conveyance, of application 
 of the upbuilding forces of Love Divine. 
 
 One other fact needs to be noted. A 
 pra5dng soul at its highest is a soul filled 
 with divine love-in-yearning. It is God 
 who prays. It is His nature which is 
 filled with love-in-yearning. We but catch 
 something of His own yearning when we 
 pray our highest prayers. And that yearn- 
 ing of God was such that it had to embody 
 itself in a human soul, yes, and in human 
 flesh too, in order to bring itself near to 
 the great needs of humanity. Christ, in 
 assuming our nature, became God's living 
 
264 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 'prayer on earth. And when we devote our- 
 selves to the prayer-hfe, we too in our 
 measure become God's living prayers on 
 earth, God's outlet of love - in - yearning 
 toward the world, God's mode of convey- 
 ance of His utmost forces of blessing right 
 into the very centre of the greatest needs 
 of the world. God knows those needs, 
 and it is just because He knows them that 
 He stirs up our souls to pray, and to 
 become Uving embodiments of His own 
 prayers for the world. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 PRAYER AS A WORKING FORCE 
 
 There is one writer in the New Testament 
 who strikes us as being a very modern 
 character. His great characteristic is 
 robust common-sense. He descends from 
 the mountain of theology to deal with very 
 practical matters on the plain of everyday 
 Hfe. The epithet might be appUed to him 
 which was applied to Charles Kingsley. 
 He seems to be an ' ordained layman.' 
 And his name is James. 
 
 ' You are very orthodox/ he saySj ' and 
 so is the devil. . . You have heard of a 
 Pentecostal tongue of fire; I will teU you 
 of another — a tongue of fire Ut from the 
 pit. Some praise God in a very pious 
 manner, then lose their temper and scold. 
 . . Some regard themselves as true 
 Christians, and say to their relatives : " Be 
 comfortable, be warmed and iiUed," while 
 
266 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 they sit down to their dinner alone. Shams, 
 all of them ! Let us get to practical 
 matters. You talk of faith. Show me 
 your deeds ! ' 
 
 Speaking of sacred things, he does so in 
 an unconventional manner. He starts con- 
 gratulating his readers on their difficulties, 
 for although the world has its ups and 
 downs — some poor getting rich, and some 
 rich getting poor — yet with character in 
 view as the ultimate possession of a man, 
 he shows that difficulties call forth en- 
 durance, and that the power of bearing up 
 under trials is a grand means toward the 
 attainment of a crowned hfe. 
 
 The whole epistle is anything but the 
 writing of an unpractical dreamer. James 
 is an intensely practical man who * means 
 business.' And when he says : ' The sup- 
 plication of a righteous man availeth much 
 in its working,' it sounds like an utterance 
 as practical as any of his previous ones. 
 
 He is a man, every inch of him, and his 
 declarations seem to inspire confidence. 
 He seems to know what he is talking about. 
 
PRAYER AS A WORKING FORCE 267 
 
 He has made the subjects his own by 
 practical experience. He is so opposed to 
 cant and unreahty, that he places an 
 emphasis, which some ordinary readers 
 have called an undue emphasis, upon the 
 habit of oath-taking (probably a common 
 failing in his own day), saying : * Above 
 all things swear not.' But we may admire 
 his earnestness when, warring against un- 
 reality, he felt that habit of those days to 
 be specially exasperating. It helps us to 
 feel that the man who was so opposed to 
 unreality in every form had anything but 
 indefinite convictions upon the great sub- 
 ject of prayer, which he felt to be the 
 conclusion of the whole matter. 
 
 Double - minded waverers can expect 
 nothing of an unchanging God ; those who 
 have not are those who pray not, however 
 many petitions they may offer — ^mere words 
 like the words of unconsidered oaths — or 
 who ask amiss, just wanting the Most 
 High to be a special minister to their own 
 comforts and luxuries. But men right 
 with God, who ' pray with prayer,' as he 
 
268 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 puts it, are workers grasping a force 
 superior to weather and disease — the force, 
 indeed, which can control weather and 
 disease, as far as it may be the will of 
 the Highest to do so. 
 
 Such are his utterances upon the central 
 exercise of all religion worth the name, 
 and especially of the Christian Ufe. His 
 view of God is that of One who, having 
 created all good things, by no means 
 ' shut Himself up in a corded box of 
 physical laws' so that He had no power 
 to move among any of those laws after- 
 wards. His idea of prayer is of something 
 which, chiming in with the potent wiU of 
 God, brings the forces of that wiU to bear 
 upon all tilings in creation. And we feel 
 this view to be a logical one. 
 
 Yet in our heart of hearts we almost 
 wish that James had not wedged in his 
 absolute utterance as regards prayer being 
 a working force between two such in- 
 stances, one concerning control of the 
 weather, and the other concerning control 
 of disease. We can see EUjah was a man 
 
PRAYER AS A WORKING FORCE 269 
 
 abandoned to prayer as few nowadays are, 
 and that his motive in praying that it 
 might not rain, or that it might rain, was 
 not so much the change of the weather, 
 as the vindication of the reaUty of a 
 neglected God ; that Ehjah was a man 
 of exceptional power in prayer, which he 
 used for the highest purposes. But still 
 the subject is such a mysterious one in 
 these days of accurate meteorology, as 
 healing by prayer is in these days of 
 accurate pathology, that we almost wish 
 he had been content to state the definite 
 law of prayer as a working force, without 
 introducing these debatable topics. 
 
 Yet again our confidence in this man of 
 robust common sense may assure us that 
 he intended to enunciate only one absolute 
 and inimitable law — the working force of 
 fervent prayer — and that the two instances 
 given are quite secondary to this. Take 
 the instance of healing by prayer as an 
 ilUmitable law, and of course it breaks 
 down. Can Hfe on earth be prolonged for 
 ever ? Are not human bodies, no less 
 
270 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 than inanimate machines, bound to wear 
 out in time ? Did not James and all his 
 early readers long since pass into the 
 unseen ? James could never have meant 
 that in prayer we are possessed of an 
 elixir of hfe which would banish death 
 from the world ! StiU less did he assume 
 that, given enough Elijahs, the earth could 
 be prayed into a condition of perpetual 
 drought or perpetual flood ! He evidently 
 intended to set forth just one illimitable 
 law, that we might fix our attention upon 
 that. 
 
 Ruskin says with regard to architecture : 
 ' Have one large thing and several inferior 
 things, and bind them all together ; per- 
 haps a monarch with a lowly train, as a 
 spire with its pinnacles.' And here, in 
 this whole passage, we have a lofty spire 
 whose point touches the heavens, with two 
 lesser pinnacles which are clearly sub- 
 ordinate, and do not reach so high. We 
 have a monarch-truth, with an attendant 
 standing on either side. We must not 
 confine our attention to the attendants 
 
PRAYER AS A WORKING FORCE 271 
 
 so as to fail to see the monarch. Attend- 
 ants come and go ; the monarch con- 
 tinues to rule. It is ours to fix our 
 attention upon the great essentials of 
 the paragraph, and to interpret aU lesser 
 things by those great essentials. 
 
 Is it not an absolute fact that when 
 the strenuous will-forces of a good man 
 coincide with the mighty will-forces of an 
 all-powerful God, much soUd achievement 
 must assuredly follow ? We have reasoned 
 this out in a previous chapter, and we have 
 only to be right with God and to pray with 
 all our might, in order to be as much 
 assured that prayer accomplishes much, 
 as that some of the unseen gases in the 
 air build up very solid tons of timber 
 in a growing forest. Logic shows that 
 such prayer should accomplish much, and 
 practice proves that it does. 
 
 But however much we may have pro- 
 gressed or stopped short in the prayer- 
 life, and therefore have proved or failed 
 to prove these things, there is no reason 
 why we should shirk a candid examination 
 
272 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 of the problems which the whole passage 
 thrusts upon us. 
 
 James talks to us so like a modern man 
 on many things, that we may venture to 
 treat him as a modern man on these things. 
 We have gained so much in the knowledge 
 of science since the days of James, even if 
 we have let slip so much of the practice 
 of prayer. It was not his fault that he 
 was born before the birth of science ; let 
 us allow him our modern privileges. Let 
 us ask him to restate his declarations in 
 up-to-date terms. 
 
 If we can imagine him endowed with 
 modern modes of expression, I think his 
 reply would be something hke this : ' By 
 the prayer of a righteous man I mean the 
 strong yearning of a man habitually in 
 touch with God, a yearning generally ex- 
 pressed in the form of strong pleading 
 with God, continued perhaps for an hour 
 together, or a whole night together, or 
 during all available intervals of the work- 
 ing day. The men and women who 
 practise this art to that extent may be 
 
PRAYER AS A WORKING FORCE 273 
 
 few nowadays — the tendency of human 
 nature is to let go of great essentials and 
 to smother itself in the dust of trifles — 
 and so in the general decadence of the 
 practices I refer to, of course instances of 
 the solid achievements of prayer may not 
 be apparent to every one. There are, 
 however, not far from Bristol, some huge 
 and soUd buildings containing a large 
 number of orphans, which buildings have 
 been erected, and which orphans have been 
 supported for many years, at the cost of 
 (say) £1,400,000, by the prayers of one 
 George Miiller ; a notable instance, which 
 drew forth, at any rate, words of faith 
 from a Chinese ambassador who visited 
 them on a pubhc occasion once. There 
 are also other such solid and tangible 
 instances elsewhere. And I maintain, of 
 course, that real prayer is as great a 
 working force to-day as ever it was. 
 
 ' On your modern steam-ships there is 
 
 a steam-steering apparatus, in which the 
 
 pounds of energy put forth by a human 
 
 hand, brought into connexion with the 
 
 s 
 
274 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 force of steam, let loose that force of 
 steam so that the pounds of energy get 
 translated into tons of energy, sufficient 
 to guide the largest steamer afloat. And 
 in real prayer any one of you, if right 
 with God, will find the amount of energy 
 you put into your prayers multipHed 
 a thousand-fold by the forces of Omni- 
 potence. If you put no force whatever 
 into your prayers, or if your hearts are 
 not at any rate yearning to be right with 
 God, of course no such results will follow. 
 You can only gain power by putting 
 forth power. You can only gain God by 
 godhness. Fulfil the conditions, and the 
 working force is yours. 
 
 ' In my epistle I mentioned the heahng 
 of the body in connexion with the fervent 
 prayers of the godly, in days when the 
 science of diet and hygienics, not to say 
 the science of medicine, was practically 
 nil ; when it was not even known what 
 food was convenient for a patient suffering 
 from any one disease, still less what herbal 
 or chemical substances could act as food 
 
PRAYER AS A WORKING FORCE 275 
 
 for certain tissues, or as . poisons for cer- 
 tain germs, or as tonics for certain organic 
 functions. The modern science of these 
 things was unborn, but we knew our God 
 as we could wish you knew Him, and 
 having instincts to pray for our sick 
 friends as you have, we found that God's 
 sacred forces, finding a channel through 
 our prayers and the faith of the sick man, 
 did in many cases introduce healing powers 
 into the body through the soul and the 
 nerves. Those of the Better Land do as 
 a fact feed upon God's energies direct ; 
 you on earth feed on His energies trans- 
 lated into physical form as regards your 
 bodies, and are wont to benefit those bodies 
 by the genial intercourse of friends — God's 
 forces translated into geniality — and by a 
 change beside God's ocean, or among 
 God's hills. Your life is every day fed on 
 God's translated energies ; and a man in 
 touch with God can gain some measure 
 of those energies direct into his system in 
 health and in sickness. God is the source 
 of all strength, and certain faculties of 
 
276 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 direct assimilation are developed, within 
 certain limits, under certain circumstances 
 of necessity, through prayer and faith.' 
 
 I think we are not doing violence to the 
 mind of St. James by expressing what 
 might be his up - to - date convictions 
 thus. 
 
 Moreover, on careful reflection, it may 
 be asserted that all power in the relief of 
 human suffering has been gained along the 
 lines of prayer, if not by stated spiritual 
 supphcation. All healing has been in the 
 first instance prayer-healing. For prayer 
 is the ardent coincidence of the human 
 will with the divine will ; and through 
 the ages many benevolent minds have 
 been filled with strong yearnings for the 
 relief of physical suffering. These yearn- 
 ings have coincided, consciously or un- 
 consciously, with the yearnings of a bene- 
 volent God; and these very practical 
 yearnings have been rewarded by the 
 discovery of many divine laws of health, 
 of diet, of exercise, of nourishment and 
 cleansing for the body — of divinely created 
 
PRAYER AS A WORKING FORCE 277 
 
 herbal and chemical products for the aid 
 of worn-down tissues and the expulsion of 
 living impurities from the blood — so that 
 the science of divine healing by the use of 
 material means has grown vastly of late 
 years. 
 
 The phrases ' divine laws of health ' and 
 ' divine healing ' have been purposely used. 
 Andj speaking generally, it is only as we 
 give God His rightful place in His own 
 world that we are at all quaUfied to study 
 such subjects as the possibiUties attending 
 the action of divine forces upon the human 
 frame. A man who does not recognize 
 God in His omnipresence may be as un- 
 quaUfied to discuss the things of God as 
 a man who is tone-deaf would be to discuss 
 musical subjects. Both would be discuss- 
 ing things beyond their consciousness. 
 There is always a certain amount of in- 
 congruity in those who are not men of 
 prayer discussing the possibilities or limita- 
 tions of an art they have not learnt. 
 Music, prayer, godliness, can only be under- 
 stood from the inside. A Chinese coolie 
 
278 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 was seen one day walking along the streets 
 of Shanghai^ carefully carrying a violin- 
 case under his arm. We should not go to 
 him for a discourse upon the possibilities 
 of violin - playing to stir the emotions. 
 Music needs an ear trained and attuned 
 to music ; prayer needs a soul trained and 
 attuned to God. And in any discussion of 
 the possibilities of prayer, there is much 
 suggestiveness in Browning's Hne : 
 
 'Tis we musicians know. 
 
 At the very least we need to adopt a 
 godly view of things. We need to feel 
 that all feeding and healing of the body 
 is so much divine feeding and healing — 
 especially as it has to do with intricate 
 processes of assimilation and self-repairing 
 of tissues which no doctor understands, 
 which are beyond human ken, and are 
 manifestly arranged for by God. Then 
 we are in a position to realize that man 
 doth not live by bread alone, still less by 
 medicine alone, but by the divine forces 
 which take these forms of translation ; 
 which are present in all the love and 
 
PRAYER AS A WORKING FORCE 279 
 
 geniality of life that so affects our bodies 
 as well as our minds, and which (who can 
 doubt it ?) may surely find some means of 
 affecting human life direct, to some ex- 
 tent, under favourable conditions. So that 
 when some men of prayer and common 
 sense, men whose opinion we should respect 
 in other matters, affirm the importance of 
 the practice of prayer in this connexion, 
 we seem bound to feel that they are 
 affirming manifest possibilities. 
 
 Prayer wiU never prolong a man's fife 
 indefinitely. There will come a breaking- 
 down at last which it is not God's will to 
 build up. He has provided something so 
 much better than physical healing for His 
 loved ones when the worker's task is done. 
 No amount of prayer will keep the worker 
 out of his destined reward in the home 
 of untiring service and strenuous repose. 
 Faith, being an assurance of God's will, is 
 not granted to oppose the will of our 
 Father that His children should rest after 
 their labours. But the prayer of faith — 
 of ardent coincidence with God's will- 
 
28o IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 forces — may still be a mighty healing 
 iovce, as every man of prayer may prove 
 many a time. 
 
 In both instances, of prayer for the 
 sick, and of prayer for the vindication of 
 God's majesty through natural circum- 
 stances, there must be a full accord with 
 the mind and will of the great Law-giver. 
 He is not a caricature demi-god of man's 
 invention, who is ' musing ' about other 
 things and must be called to attention ; 
 nor is He ' on a journey,' that He must be 
 run after and brought back ; nor is He 
 * sleeping ' that He must be awakened. In 
 Elijah's historic prayer on Carmel, when 
 by pungent sarcasm he had cleared away 
 these notions from the personality of the 
 God he worshipped, he said : ' Let it be 
 known that Thou art God, and that I am 
 Thy servant, and that I have done all 
 these things at Thy word.' For God is 
 ever the Suggester of real prayer, and the 
 praying man is ever the servant who is 
 just longing to carry out the suggestions 
 of his Master. 
 
PRAYER AS A WORKING FORCE 281 
 
 Scientists have often taken their stand 
 on the apparent axiom that there must be 
 no violation or suspension of natural law. 
 But as Huxley once wrote in a letter to 
 Charles Kingsley : ' I will not say for a 
 moment that prayer is illogical ; for if the 
 world is governed by fixed laws, it would 
 be just as illogical for me to ask you to 
 answer this letter as to ask the Almighty 
 to change the weather.' And Sir Oliver 
 Lodge says (Contemporary Review, Dec. 
 1904) : ' We must realize that the Whole 
 is a single, undeviating, law - saturated 
 Cosmos. But we must also realize that 
 the Whole consists not of matter and 
 motion alone, nor even of spirit and will 
 alone, but of both and aU ; we must even 
 yet further, and enormously, enlarge our 
 conception of what the Whole contains. 
 Not mere energy, but constantly directed 
 energy — the energy which is not (mere) 
 energy . . . but is akin to hfe and mind. 
 Prayer is part of the orderly cosmos, and 
 may be an efficient portion of the guid- 
 ing and controlling will ; somewhat as the 
 
282 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 desire of the inhabitants of a town for 
 civic improvement may be part of the 
 agency which ultimately brings it about, 
 no matter whether the city be represen- 
 tatively or autocratically governed.' 
 
 What common-sense utterances these 
 are ! It is natural for a father to answer 
 a son's letter, and for a father of wealth 
 to enclose a cheque in his letter, if the son 
 be in a state of honourable need — aye, and 
 even when the son is in difficulties from 
 his mistakes, if the father be a man of 
 ideal generosity. It might be a special 
 providence on the part of the father, some- 
 thing beyond his son's stated income ; 
 but those who love, delight in specially 
 providing for those they love. And if 
 the son asked for a boon, not for his own 
 sake, but to vindicate the father's honour, 
 how perfectly natural that the father 
 should rejoice to grant it ! The logic 
 of dead mechanical law is nothing to 
 the law of Uving generous love. And 
 that is the one great fixed law of the 
 universe. 
 
PRAYER AS A WORKING FORCE 283 
 
 Citizens of the City of God longing for 
 civic improvements J members of the County 
 Council of the Most High who own that 
 the revenues are all His, and that the 
 right of veto is His — such are the righteous 
 when they pray. If we are right with 
 God through Christ Jesus, then we are 
 no longer ahens and sojourners — ^like the 
 crowds of ahens in London and New York 
 — but citizens indeed, who have a voice in 
 the affairs of the city. 
 
 Oh, brothers and sisters, we are much 
 bigger than we have ever dared to imagine ! 
 As Christians we are God's associates on 
 earth. All possible pride is swallowed up 
 in that which is so much greater than 
 pride. What a destiny is ours ! It is to 
 co-operate with the Almighty. He cannot 
 do without us in the civic improvements of 
 the City of God on earth. He needs our 
 wiU-forces as His vicegerents. He needs 
 our downright earnest prayers. And as 
 our relatedness to Him is kept intact, we 
 may be perfectly assured that every time 
 we put forth those sacred will-forces we 
 
284 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 call prayer, we are in the most matter-of- 
 fact and yet glorious sense workers together 
 with God. 
 Let us pray. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE UPBUILDING FORCE OF THE UNIVERSE 
 
 It is probable that, while Herbert Spencer's 
 works have been for the moment accepted 
 in their entirety by many non-Christian 
 Japanese, few, if any, of the readers of 
 the present volume are prepared to foUow 
 that distinguished philosopher in all his 
 conclusions. There is one of his greatest 
 utterances, however, in which aU will 
 concur. It is that ' We are ever in the 
 presence of an infinite and eternal energy 
 from which all things proceed.' To this 
 Lord Kelvin added (May 1903) : ' Modern 
 biologists . . . are absolutely forced by 
 science to admit and believe with absolute 
 confidence in a directive Power — ^in an 
 influence other than physical, dynamical, 
 electric forces.' While, ages ago, the most 
 celebrated Book in the world — now trans- 
 lated into nearly four hundred languages 
 
286 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 and dialects — affirmed what has satisfied 
 the thoughtful human mind, as a whole, 
 in most lands : ' In the beginning God 
 created the heavens and the earth.' 
 
 Given this latter belief and a devout 
 mood, the mind naturally finds vent for 
 its highest thoughts in other words of 
 Scripture, such as : 'Of old hast Thou 
 laid the foundation of the earth ; and the 
 heavens are the works of Thy hands. . . 
 For ever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in 
 heaven. Thou hast established the earth, 
 and it abideth. They abide this day ac- 
 cording to Thine ordinances ; for all things 
 are Thy servants. . . O Lord, how mani- 
 fold are Thy works ! In wisdom hast 
 Thou made them all.' 
 
 Coming to the New Testament, we find 
 John the son of Zebedee beginning his 
 career as a Galilean fisherman, then be- 
 coming the intimate associate of Jesus for 
 three years, passing through the soul's 
 awakening, gaining unusual faculties of 
 insight, and toward the end of a long life 
 leaving behind him an analysis of God. 
 
UPBUILDING OF THE UNIVERSE 287 
 
 Quoting from Jesus, he says that ' God 
 is Spirit ' — a Spirit everywhere seeking 
 response. He also says : ' All things were 
 made by the living Word of God.' Then 
 finally : ' God is Light. God is Life. God 
 is Love.' And it may be shown that in 
 these utterances put together, we have not 
 only an analysis, as far as words can go, of 
 the nature of the Creator, but also a hint 
 as to certain important revelations of that 
 nature in His creation. 
 
 Every creative mind seeks to reveal 
 itself, to convey some image and likeness 
 of itself, through whatever medium lies 
 to hand. With ruder and less plastic 
 materials that self-expression will be more 
 limited ; with finer and more plastic 
 materials that self-expression will be more 
 copious. But creation always involves self- 
 expression to some extent. 
 
 Passing by the creation of angel-spirits 
 most like unto the Creator — a subject 
 which lies beyond the scope of our present 
 study — God a Spirit began to form the 
 universe by creating that which was hkest 
 
288 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 to Himself, as far as matter could in any 
 sense resemble Himself. ' By the word of 
 the Lord were the heavens made ; and all 
 the host of them by the breath of His 
 mouth/ says the Psalmist (xxxiii. 6). We 
 recognize the poetry of the utterance, but 
 find in its latter clause a statement upon 
 which we cannot improve. For matter 
 first appeared in a gaseous form, as aU 
 science assumes. God the eternal Spirit 
 first created that which, in the material 
 realm, most resembles spirit. ' By the 
 breath of His mouth ' vast volumes of 
 vapour were formed — gaseous matter in a 
 condition of intense vibration, shot through 
 and through with mighty forces. 
 
 Matter was produced in, or raised to, 
 the highest condition of inorganic matter — 
 light. Such a creation was a preliminary 
 form of divine self-expression. The Creator 
 is that Being, more real than matter, which 
 matter endeavours to express through its 
 highest quality of incandescence, pointing 
 to its Source as Light of Light. 
 
 Then notice how that, in the passing of 
 
UPBUILDING OF THE UNIVERSE 289 
 
 a portion of creation from the first stage 
 to a higher stage of the creative process, 
 no less than in the phenomenon of Hfe 
 itself, we have an important hint of the 
 divine nature. The luminous vapour hav- 
 ing condensed into those globules we call 
 suns and stars, one of these stars, our 
 earth, began to prepare for becoming the 
 scene of life. Incandescence is incom- 
 patible with the life of any beings familiar 
 to our senses. The high quality of in- 
 candescence had to be sacrificed to make 
 way for life. The once incandescent eaxth 
 had to sacrifice its external heat, to cool 
 down to darkness, before it could be the 
 scene of a quality higher still than in- 
 candescence, viz. : the highest quality of 
 organic matter — ^life. 
 
 The fact vvas that the Creator had in 
 Himself the impulse of Self-sacrifice, which 
 was to work out in the sacrifice of all 
 radiant glory visible to the eye, in order 
 that He might become to humanity the 
 Lord and Giver of life eternal. It was 
 that subhme impulse which had to be 
 T 
 
290 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 expressed in forecast during the early 
 stages of His creation. Oh, brothers, the 
 universe is more divine than we have ever 
 dreamt ! 
 
 We see the earth, once glowing in its 
 glory of ardent incandescence, now ex- 
 hibiting its borrowed energy translated 
 into that gentle hfe-force which moves the 
 silent sap in the tender plant ; in the 
 early moss-Hke forms which are embalmed 
 in our coal ; in the stem and leaf and petal 
 of the royally-clothed hly of the field — ^in 
 flowers, as lacking in what men call utiUty 
 as the spangled heavens are lacking in 
 audible speech and language, yet aU the 
 more eloquently expressing some qualities 
 of the Creator. Victor Hugo has said : 
 ' The beautiful is as useful as the useful — 
 and perhaps more so.' True words indeed, 
 if the flowers to which he refers appeal to 
 us as witnesses to the Life-in-loveliness of 
 our God — that Life which could manifest 
 itself on earth in ' loveliness of perfect 
 deeds,' and flower-like fragrance of tender- 
 est grace. 
 
UPBUILDING OF THE UNIVERSE 291 
 
 Anon other forms appear — not only trees 
 yielding timber and fruit, but creatures 
 which we call ' living/ and thus more 
 nearly related to the Creator than mere 
 vegetation : creatures with all their end- 
 less train, and man the noblest creature, 
 each glowing with that higher quality for 
 which incandescence was sacrificed, that 
 quahty which points to the Creator as Life 
 of Life. 
 
 But as Love-in-sacrifice was an impulse 
 in the nature of the creative Word of God, 
 so life raised on sacrifice is to be the law 
 of production, and eventually love in self- 
 sacrifice is to appear among His creatures. 
 On examination of the whole creation, we 
 find an attraction between certain com- 
 plementary orders of existences (an attrac- 
 tion prefigured, indeed, in the affinities of 
 the chemical elements), which attraction, as 
 the series is ascended, gradually becomes 
 a care for another as well as for self ; then 
 a more definite altruism, if in a restricted 
 region ; and at length the definite quality 
 of love, appearing first as a bodily passion. 
 
292 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 but rising upward from thence to invest 
 the mind, the soul, the spirit — sacrificing, 
 if need be, bodily pleasure or mental en- 
 joyment, and even bodily life itself, on 
 behalf of another. And thus the highest 
 quality of intelligence — ^love — is found on 
 earth, pointing to its Source as Love 
 Divine. 
 
 One human frame contained that love 
 in a degree which was altogether unique, 
 in a totality which was altogether divine; 
 and crowning the whole series of beings 
 that have ever been visible on earth, that 
 Divine Man is described as being ' the 
 effulgence of the glory of God, and the 
 very image of the substance of God.' In 
 His life on earth we see the goal toward 
 which all human hfe on earth may move, 
 until, in the words of Goethe, ' Life is 
 love, and the hfe of Life, Spirit.' And as 
 that consummation is approached in the 
 case of any human hfe, the universe with 
 aU its mystery ceases to be a riddle; the 
 Source of all that is good is seen in the 
 goal of all that are good. The circle of 
 
UPBUILDING OF THE UNIVERSE 293 
 
 creation is completed : from Spirit to 
 Spirit, from Love to Love, from God to 
 God. 
 
 And now let us notice that the phe- 
 nomenon of attraction, which gradually 
 becomes altruistic love, is associated with 
 the process of building up or else of repair- 
 ing the waste in the universe. Egoism is 
 the first law of being, but not the highest. 
 The instinctive care of self which is neces- 
 sary to perfect the organism, passes natu- 
 rally into the expenditure of energy in one 
 cell, or one plant, or one animal ; or the 
 expenditure of thought and affection at 
 personal cost, in the higher creation ; on 
 behalf of a something other than self, 
 which may last after self has passed away 
 from earth. In the case of a simple cell, 
 as in the yeast-plant, we see that cell first 
 perfecting itself, but doing so in order 
 that it may spend its hfe-force toward 
 that which eventually is not self — another 
 ceU at first budding out from the parent- 
 cell, and then separating from the parent- 
 cell. And throughout those existences 
 
294 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 which form a series from the yeast-cell 
 to the higher mammaha, although the 
 sense of attraction between the dualities 
 of living things may be all that each feels, 
 that attraction is utilized by the Creator 
 toward repairing the waste caused by the 
 passing away of worn-out organisms, and 
 toward the constant building-up of new 
 lives. Plants in their duahties, animals in 
 their sexes, are all, however undesignedly 
 to themselves, actors in a drama whose 
 title is ' Love Upbuildeth.' And assuredly, 
 man in that higher love, which is not of 
 the animal, but the going-forth of pure 
 spirit toward other spirits in the aU-sacred 
 Love Divine, is, no less than the rest, an 
 upbuilder with every exercise of that love. 
 All creation, as well as aU works of 
 genius, must be read backward from the 
 chmactic result. ' All expressions of the 
 mind of a creator find their ultimate 
 explanation in his mind. The sculptor 
 Gibson and the painter Leighton would not 
 allow any uninitiated visitor inside their 
 studios while any statue or painting was 
 
UPBUILDING OF THE UNIVERSE 295 
 
 being chiselled or painted. Only initiated 
 friends of the two artists would be able 
 to interpret all preparatory stages by the 
 design in the mind of their creator. God 
 does allow us in His studio to watch His 
 work in all stages of preparation^ but we 
 must become initiated enough to reaUze 
 that the explanation of it all is to be found 
 in the climactic result — nay^ in the nature 
 of the Artist Himself. His ultimate name 
 is Love, and the inherent quaUty of that 
 Love is that it upbuildeth. It is because 
 the creation has expressed that Name in 
 lesser or greater degree that it has been 
 productive. And in that region most 
 allied to the Creator, the region of sacred 
 and spiritual love, that productiveness 
 must necessarily be found in the highest 
 degree. 
 
 As we ascend the scale of creation, we 
 find the outward and visible productive- 
 ness of the creature diminished instead of 
 increased. The bacillus has a fecundity 
 which is enormous — one fish may produce 
 a shoal; but ascending the scale, we find 
 
296 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 productiveness diminishing, until at last, 
 in the highest creature, it is lowest of all. 
 This seems anomalous at first sight. But 
 man is essentially spirit clothed in flesh. 
 His flesh exists for the sake of spirit. 
 Once yielding to his higher destiny, and 
 he is caught up in the majestic scope of 
 the higher laws of spiritual production. 
 That production may indeed be immeas- 
 urable. In the case of the one Man of 
 men, the upbuilding achievement of a life 
 and death of love will in the end be 
 measurable only by the rule and square 
 of infinity. And among ordinary men, 
 once surrendered to the impulses of divine 
 love, the upbuilding achievement of a Ufe- 
 time will defy all our arithmetic. No 
 divine love can be put forth from one 
 soul and received by another, or interflow 
 between both, without some waste being 
 repaired, some ruins restored, or something 
 sacred, solid, eternal being built up. 
 Where love is, God is. Where God is there 
 must be creation, or restoration — the up- 
 building of the eternally soUd City of God. 
 
UPBUILDING OF THE UNIVERSE 297 
 
 In a previous chapter we have seen that 
 the reverse is the case with everything 
 sinful and unloving. All hatred or ill- 
 will is disintegrating. It divides man from 
 man, breaks up the one great family of 
 humanity, disintegrates communities and 
 social circles, produces chaos in house- 
 holds, and, moreover, disintegrates the 
 personality of the hater himself. No fully 
 unified personality can be attained or 
 preserved without love. 
 
 What have sometimes been called the 
 loves of the lower creation may often have 
 no trace of altruism in them. And it is 
 only as the loves of humanity are caught 
 up by the divine force of all-generous love 
 that they become really altruistic. Many 
 who imagine themselves in love with 
 another, are not really in love with that 
 other person at all — they are merely in 
 love with the personal pleasure which the 
 society of that other person yields them, 
 or with the ease and comfort of that home 
 which the personality of that other person 
 seems likely to promise them. Their so- 
 
298 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 called love is pure selfishness, as will be 
 apparent by-and-by when they are joined 
 to that other person in marriage. 
 
 Selfishness seems natural to the infant 
 condition of humanity. A baby's duty is 
 to eat, sleep, and grow, not to be at all 
 altruistic. We do not imagine the infant 
 Jesus to have been an altruistic infant. 
 He would hardly have been a normal 
 infant if He had been altruistic at that 
 early stage. But selfishness in the human 
 being is merely an early transitional 
 stage, normally. That which is proper 
 for a being of rudimentary soul, becomes 
 abnormal in proportion as that soul is 
 developed within. Before long it becomes 
 actually sinful. The healthy soul is al- 
 truistic ; its nature is to expand beyond 
 the narrow hmits of personal concerns. 
 To shut up the soul in selfishness is to 
 shut up an eaglet in a very small cage. If 
 it is to grow at all, it must break the bars 
 and spread its wings beyond. The soul is 
 bound to be sympathetic if it is to be a true 
 soul at all. 
 
UPBUILDING OF THE UNIVERSE 299 
 
 Thus, while egoism is the first law of 
 individuality for the lower creation, al- 
 truism is the first law of personaUty for 
 the human being. Love, not selfishness, 
 is the upbuilding force of personahty. 
 It alone can raise a man to his true self. 
 In the best sense of the word, the only 
 properly selfish man is the man of loving 
 sympathy, who has conquered his ordinary 
 selfishness, first, perhaps, as regards one 
 individual or two, his father and mother, 
 for instance ; or several, as the members 
 of his family ; then those beyond the 
 family; and finally, all men everywhere. 
 The word man at its highest and realest, 
 stands for a human being who is fully 
 sympathetic toward all (that is not evil, 
 in all) men. One true Man has appeared 
 on earth, and the only true measure of a 
 man is ' the measure of the stature of the 
 fuUness ' of that Man, in whom loving 
 sympathy toward all men was complete. 
 
 Then, sympathy in action, sympathy 
 born of Love Divine, is always an up- 
 building force as it touches the lives of 
 
300 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 others, and is at all welcomed by them. 
 To recognize and actively sympathize with 
 the best in a man, tends to raise his whole 
 life to the level of that best. It was thus 
 that Simon became Peter. It is thus that 
 a good mother rears character in her 
 children after she has borne and reared 
 their bodies. Her truest motherhood finds 
 scope long after any processes of what is 
 commonly called motherhood have ceased 
 in their case. The Chinese argument for 
 that greatest word in the Chinese language 
 hsiao, fihal piety, is that children are 
 bound to be filial to their parents because 
 born of those parents. But what actually 
 makes filial piety a natural growth is that 
 parental pro-ducing (fro and duco, lit. to 
 lead forward) which follows the year of birth. 
 That higher producing may be a function 
 of those who are not literally parents at 
 all. A Chinese proverb says : ' Parents 
 produced my body ; friends evolved my 
 resolution.' ^ There are faculties in our 
 
 ' Or 'spirit,' in the sense of that which makes a man 
 spirited, determined, enterprising. 
 
UPBUILDING OF THE UNIVERSE 301 
 
 liveSj giving rise to definite achievement, of 
 which the parent has been some affection- 
 ate youth or sympathetic maiden. Every 
 reahzed inflow of altruism, of sympathy, 
 of love, into our lives, has a parentage 
 toward something better than was there 
 before. In quite a different sense than is 
 commonly meant, a child may often be- 
 come ' father to the man ' ; a child's love 
 may produce in a senior that which makes 
 him in the truest sense a man. The highest 
 possible achievement of a child has been 
 noted some decades back by the author 
 of the Story of the Commonwealth, in the 
 words : ' The good God has more ways 
 than we wot of, and more means of grace 
 than are counted in our catechisms and 
 confessions. The touch of a Uttle child's 
 hand has opened many a door through 
 which the Master has come in, and sat 
 down, and supped' — bringing with Him, 
 surely, those forces which make man 
 man indeed. The very gentleness of 
 the lowUest lover may have made a 
 man great. For gentleness is God's 
 
302 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 favourite form of embodiment for His 
 mighty forces. 
 
 All loving sympathy must be creative 
 (even as the opposite is destructive). Says 
 Whittier : 
 
 Love that self-forgetting gives, 
 Sows surprise of ripening sheaves. 
 
 Nay, and more, the loving sovil takes its 
 place by the side of God, and becomes with 
 Him a creator of something that was not 
 in evidence before. 
 
 Sympathy is self -projection into the 
 condition of another. It may be locked 
 up in the innermost heart, and exist quite 
 unknown to another. If utterly unex- 
 pressed, as in a look, a word, a letter, a 
 deed, its value remains in the subjec- 
 tive region. It becomes, and cannot but 
 become, an upbuilding force in the soul 
 of the sympathetic. Expressed in some 
 recognizable form, its potency does not 
 stop at the subjective region, but becomes 
 objective also. All expressed sympathy is 
 ' twice blessed ; it blesseth him that gives 
 and him that takes.' When its expression 
 
UPBUILDING OF THE UNIVERSE 303 
 
 is in a spiritual form worthy of its Source^ 
 it gains its greatest potency. The ideal 
 expression of sympathy, and the most 
 potent, where soul-needs are concerned, 
 is in earnest, importunate prayer. There 
 is nothing so creative as prayer. For the 
 sympathy expressed in prayer Hnks itself 
 with divine potencies in action, with the most 
 active upbuilding forces of the universe, and 
 becomes a medium for those forces toward 
 the personahty it is desired to bless. 
 
 A friend once wrote in a letter : ' I 
 have noticed at times that a person (per- 
 haps a mere acquaintance, or a friend of 
 some personal friend) may have been in 
 difficulty or distress. One has sympathized 
 with them, and even gone so far as to 
 suggest some remedy or other, and yet no 
 rehef has come to them. But suddenly, 
 when at prayer, the thought has crept in, 
 " I'll pray for him or her. It may be 
 that God is only waiting for my prayer 
 to commence His work of restoration." I 
 have prayed for that unknown one, and 
 sure enough the desired change has come, 
 
304 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 and I have become (shall I say ?) self- 
 important enough to think that my prayer, 
 after all, was of use in the case. Is that 
 possible ? ' Verily it is. And more : it 
 is inevitable. Pure sympathy, with no 
 thought of personal recognition, is of the 
 Divine. Prayer born of that divine sym- 
 pathy becomes in God's hands an oppor- 
 tunity for the application of His upbuilding 
 forces. 
 
 All expressions of loving sympathy may 
 be fully sacred, and thus of spiritual 
 potency. A look of sympathy may be- 
 come a dynamic force within a man, even 
 as a look of grief became in the case of 
 Simon Peter. A loving word in season 
 may reverse the destructive influences 
 which were disintegrating a whole Ufe. 
 A letter may result in the birth of a soul, 
 A deed of self-forgetting ministry may 
 help to determine an eternal destiny. But 
 the highest potency of loving sympathy 
 is attained when it is expressed in that 
 highest condition of love-in-projection — 
 prayer. It is, after all, a truism to say 
 
UPBUILDING OF THE UNIVERSE 305 
 
 that ' Prayer is part of the orderly cosmos ' 
 (though we thank the scientist who an- 
 nounced this fact to scientific circles). 
 Apart from the prayers of God — God's 
 Love-in-yearning, God's Love-in-projection 
 — there would have been no visible cosmos 
 whatever. The cosmos was built, and is 
 being daily renewed, by the prayers of 
 God, now assisted by the prayers of the 
 godly. The Creator is but another name 
 for God-in-prayer. 
 
 The man who does not pray, therefore, 
 is out of harmony with the vital energy 
 of the cosmos. The man who does not 
 love is a fragment of chaos, and a centre 
 of disintegration. The man who loves is 
 in harmony with that ' infinite and eternal 
 energy from which all things proceed.' The 
 man whose love takes the form of prayer 
 actually links himself with that infinite 
 and eternal energy. He becomes an up- 
 builder ' better than he knows.' And not 
 merely a builder of eternal soHdities, but 
 a producer of that which is eternally hving 
 and productive, 
 u 
 
306 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 ' Beloved, let us love : for love is of 
 God ; and every one that loveth is be- 
 gotten of God.' Yes, and becomes, with 
 God, a begetter for ever and ever. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 I AND WE 
 
 An important stage was reached in the 
 onward march of humanity when the in- 
 dividual was rediscovered and regarded 
 as a unit, instead of a mere fraction of a 
 social unit. 
 
 We imagine that humanity must surely 
 have begun with individuals, recognized 
 as such. The fact that the population 
 of the earth, under normal conditions, 
 increases year by year, persuades us that 
 the farther back we go into antiquity, the 
 fewer the members of the human family, 
 until the biblical representation of the 
 race beginning with a single pair becomes 
 more and more satisfying. The individual, 
 avowedly such, seems then to have been 
 an ancient fact. 
 
 But later on, an increasing population, 
 and the increasing difficulties of detailed 
 
3o8 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 oversight on the part of clan rulers, might 
 easily lead to the formation of groups — 
 bundles of humanity — which in time be- 
 came regarded as the practical units, 
 until, as the law of China stands to-day, 
 a notable crime might involve the punish- 
 ment of all within the ' nine degrees of 
 kindred ' ; that is, every member of the 
 family would be involved in the crime of 
 one person. So that Ezekiel, in that 
 announcement (Ezek. xviii. 4, 20), so often 
 taken by our forefathers as a text for the 
 terrors of the law : ' The soul that sinneth, 
 it shall die ' — meaning, of course, ' it alone 
 shall die' — was announcing a rediscovery 
 (compare Deut. xxiv. 16 ; 2 Kings xiv. 6) 
 which must have appealed to many as a 
 noble and new revelation. 
 
 The rediscovery of the individual was 
 completed by our Lord. And a growing 
 conviction as to the validity of that re- 
 discovery, in modern days, has formed 
 the basis of all our social and national 
 reform. Western liberty began with the 
 capital /. 
 
I AND WE 309 
 
 But the prosperity of a community 
 requires that the / be regarded in con- 
 junction with other /'s. Excessive isola- 
 tion of the individual would prevent the 
 formation of any community whatever ; 
 and excessive selfishness of the individual 
 would be enough to wreck the commonweal 
 anjrwhere. 
 
 The first-rate Powers of the world are 
 they whose home -lands, while compara- 
 tively lacking in the precious metals 
 (which may be worked by selfish greed), 
 have had stored beneath the surface such 
 homely and useful minerals as have neces- 
 sitated the voluntary combination of the 
 individual to bring such minerals to the 
 surface, and to prepare them for general 
 use. 
 
 While nothing great has originated in 
 the world except at the impulse of one 
 individual mind, no grand scheme has 
 been carried into action except by a 
 combination of individuals in touch with 
 each other, as well as with the mind of the 
 originator. Great campaigns, planned by 
 
310 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 the individual commander-in-chief, have 
 been carried to a crowning victory, not 
 by sohtary skirmishers, but by the army 
 as a whole, acting with its thousand 
 hearts fused into one by a common pur- 
 pose. A great spiritual campaign was 
 indeed once planned by a great Commander- 
 in-chief, whose troops at the outset but 
 mustered a hundred and twenty. And, as 
 we might imagine. His consummate miU- 
 tary genius assured Him that before any- 
 thing could be done with those troops, 
 the hundred and twenty hearts would 
 have to be fused into one, and fully in- 
 spired by His Spirit. That band of united 
 hearts, beginning with the hundred and 
 twenty, is known by the name of the 
 Church. Its initial victory is called the 
 victory of Pentecost. And no other hues 
 are at aU feasible, for the further carrying- 
 on of the campaign, than those which the 
 Commander-in-chief found to be necessary 
 at the start. The objection against such 
 a continued necessity, which is sometimes 
 urged — namely, that among the hundred 
 
I AND WE 311 
 
 and twenty there were eleven picked men 
 specially trained — is, of course, no argu- 
 ment at all, but an additional reason 
 why those who do not claim the advan- 
 tages of being specially picked and trained 
 in the sense that those eleven were, should 
 find the chief rule of all successful warfare, 
 Uteral or spiritual, to be all the more 
 binding in their case. 
 
 At the starting-point of all true religion, 
 and right on to its last chapter, there is, 
 indeed, the intercourse of an individual 
 soul with an individual God. But even 
 the individual / of God Himself does not 
 stand for the solitary monad conceived by 
 the Mohammedan mind. God is a God of 
 love, and was such, in communion with 
 Himself, in the eternal ages before there 
 were either angels or men as objects of 
 His sacred affection. And starting, as 
 we all must, each for himself, with an 
 individual repentance, an individual sub- 
 mission, an individual reliance upon God, 
 the spiritual life is in a very rudimentary 
 state until the soul has learned to pray 
 
313 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 to our Father, retaining the individual, but 
 fully including others also. 
 
 In naaking man, God created the nucleus 
 of a family ; in revealing His Son to an 
 individual soul. His design is to form a 
 community of united souls. Our hearts 
 being opened toward Himself, are also 
 opened toward others. The inflow in- 
 volves the outflow. The filial involves 
 the fraternal. 
 
 How, then, is the / and the We of the 
 Christian system to be realized and made 
 effective ? The answer is by ' waiting 
 upon the Lord ' (Isa. xl. 31), by ' tarrying ' 
 (Luke xxiv. 49). Moses tarried forty years, 
 all unconscious of his destiny ; Jesus 
 tarried at Nazareth tiU He was thirty 
 years old, and tarried yet further for forty 
 concentrated days in the wilderness, after 
 the fullest assurance of His being the Son 
 of God ; Paul tarried in Arabia (Gal. i. 17). 
 And such tarrying is all - important, in 
 the case of ordinary individuals, for the 
 reahzation of the sovil within, and its 
 encirchng God. 
 
I AND WE 313 
 
 The Lord of our life often makes 
 opportunities for ' tarrying ' — opportunities 
 which we should not choose, and which we 
 find it hard to welcome. The philosopher 
 Mencius (372 - 289 B.C.) says : ' When 
 Heaven is about to confer a high office on 
 any man, it first exercises his mind with suf- 
 fering, and his sinews and bones with toil ; 
 it exposes him to hunger, and subjects 
 him to extreme poverty ; it confounds 
 his undertakings ! And by these methods 
 it stimulates his mind, fortifies his nature, 
 and suppUes his incompetencies.' Such 
 was the conviction of a semi-agnostic, 
 whose eyes were opened to the method 
 and purpose of Heaven by the history of 
 men around him. And knowing God as 
 we do, our eyes may well open to this 
 divine method and purpose in the less 
 welcome affairs of personal life. The soul 
 is concentrated in dreary deserts in order 
 that the Fire Divine may be kindled 
 within. 
 
 And when once that Fire has been given, 
 may not all repressing influences and cir- 
 
314 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 cumstances assist in the getting -up of 
 pressure which is destined to accomplish 
 something ? How easily might that pres- 
 sure be dissipated by such praise of men 
 as would open the valves ! The boiler of 
 the engine must feel in itself the pressure 
 it is to exert as power. And so the Lord 
 may shut up the soul year after year in 
 seeming failure, denying it the outlet 
 which would afford personal relief, and 
 mean also a lapse into uselessness. Let 
 us cheer our dreariest days by grasping 
 His purpose. Let us rejoice with the 
 exceeding joy of candidature for the ' high 
 office ' of co-worker. 
 
 Such a shutting-up of the soul by God 
 is, however, a very different thing from 
 the volimtary closing-up of the soul in 
 selfish isolation from its fellows, until it 
 resembles a growling dog, gnawing the 
 dry bone of some pet grievance. Nay; 
 it is of the nature of the soul to seek 
 after communion with fellow souls wher- 
 ever possible. All expansion toward the 
 Divine means an embracing sympathy with 
 
I AND WE 315 
 
 the Divine in fellow men. Communion 
 with God involves communion with all 
 that is godly in others. ' Tarry ye ' means 
 ' tarry within the scope of the two great 
 Laws of hfe, which are one — namely, love 
 to God and love to every neighbouring 
 soul.' It means tarrying in ardent soul- 
 expansion, until all selfish isolations dis- 
 appear, as the isolations of the several 
 blocks of ore disappear in the blast-furnace, 
 and the whole, being subjected to the Fire of 
 Divine Love, becomes fused into one glowing 
 mass, a veritable home for that Fire. 
 
 No metallic block can be made out of 
 lumps of unsmelted ore ; no mechanism 
 can be constructed from grains of metal 
 not fused into one whole. A dislocated 
 body, for all purposes of work, is as useless 
 as a corpse. And the prayer : ' That 
 they all may be one ' — one in soul-union 
 with each other — was the cry of an infinite 
 necessity, backed by an eternal must, if 
 the world was to be won to the knowledge 
 of Love Divine, by seeing it displayed and 
 feeling its penetrating Jorce. 
 
3i6 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 Yet it is human to realize the veriest 
 minimum of such a divine necessity, or to 
 realize the spiritual law in the least spirit- 
 ual and most superficial manner, and 
 then, perhaps, to fight and struggle for 
 our own superficial view of the case. 
 
 We are not divided, all one body we, 
 
 has all along been the boast of the Church 
 enriched by Constantine and presided over 
 by the Pope. But has such unity always 
 consisted in that interfusion of soul 
 decreed in the ' Tarry ye,' without which 
 Peter and the rest could never have be- 
 come ' one body ' or one Church at all ? 
 And, on the other hand, spite of differing 
 names, differing schemes of discipline, and 
 multiform views of the many-sided Truth- 
 in-Love, what sublime possibilities of inter- 
 fusion of soul yet remain among those 
 lovers of the Lord Jesus who are not called 
 ' Catholics ' ! 
 
 And what considerations there are 
 around us, demanding the full realization 
 of these possibilities! Behind the woes 
 
I AND WE 317 
 
 and sorrows of the world are great forces 
 of evil. Human depravity is no mere 
 surf ace - matter that can be eradicated 
 by wise legilslation or merely ecclesiastical 
 practices. Its seat is the soul ; its secret 
 is that malignant spiritual potency, the 
 devil. Spiritual forces can only be over- 
 come by higher spiritual forces. It is the 
 pagan Taoist who seeks, by the use of an 
 embroidered vestment, some genuflexions, 
 and the waving of what he calls a ' sword 
 of the spirit ' — mere iron — to combat evil 
 spirit-potencies. Nay; the foe is proof 
 against all ' carnal weapons,' however 
 beautiful in design and workmanship. He 
 can only be ejected by the Spirit of the 
 Uving God making the Church His glowing 
 home — a fact which is at once our caution 
 and our encouragement. For if divine 
 laws and methods persist through the 
 centuries — and a hundred and twenty souls, 
 being fused into one glowing home for the 
 Spirit of Burning, did as a fact begin to 
 shake the world — what possibihties He 
 latent within that particular congregation 
 
3i8 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 to which the reader belongs ! Is there 
 any congregation in Christendom, holding 
 the truth as it is in Jesus, which, when 
 once fused into such a divine home, might 
 not go forth conquering and to conquer ? 
 
 The real problem of winning the world 
 is a much nearer one than many imagine. 
 ' It is not too hard for thee, neither is it 
 far off. It is not in heaven that thou 
 shouldst say, Who will go up for us to 
 heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may 
 accomplish it ? But the word is very 
 nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy 
 heart, that thou mayest do it.' It is not 
 so much, 'Will the murderers of Jesus at 
 Jerusalem submit to be saved by Him ? ' 
 or ' Will the ungodly at home or abroad 
 take heed to the gospel ? ' It is rather 
 ' Will / submit to love the Lord my God 
 with all my heart and soul and mind and 
 strength, and so to love Him as to love 
 my fellow Christians with a love which 
 shall fuse us all into a home for the Spirit 
 of Burning ? ' That is the problem, an 
 entirely personal one. It is : ' Will we 
 
I AND WE 319 
 
 make it our first concern to " tarry " 
 until the whole resources of Omnipotence 
 are ours ? ' 
 
 Our Lord's idea of His Church is plain. 
 Speaking one day on the petty differences 
 between brother and brother, He gave His 
 definition of (the nucleus of) His Church 
 as ' Two or three gathered together in My 
 name ' — that name of Love, ' forming a 
 home for the One by whose name the house 
 is called,' as the rest of the sentence may 
 be paraphrased. And the early Fathers 
 of the Church accepted this passage as 
 our Lord's definition of His Church, saying : 
 Uhi tres, ihi ecclesia. 
 
 Later on, that home circle was illus- 
 trated by a gathering in His presence of 
 companions, literally eating in common of 
 the same bread, and drinking of the same 
 cup, typifying full union with each other 
 and with the Master.^ Then finally, the 
 
 1 In the Manchurian records of a certain general, 
 since known as T'ai Tsung, father of the first of the 
 (Manchu) emperors of the present dynasty in China, 
 inaugurated in 1644, it is related that in the year 1631 
 he said to his of&cers : ' I am not Uke the Ming (Chinese) 
 
320 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 illustration became reality among the hun- 
 dred and twenty men and women, during 
 those ten days of ' tarr5dng/ with souls 
 expanding toward the Divine, and there- 
 fore expanding so as to enwrap each other 
 — fused eventually in one Fire, and glow- 
 ing with immeasurable Energy. Such was 
 and is our Lord's idea of His Church. 
 
 We may well begin where our Lord 
 began, with the * two or three.' Soul- 
 combinations of two are comparatively 
 common. Every pair of true lovers form 
 such a combination ; but alas ! not always 
 with the supreme purpose of making a 
 home for Him who knocketh at the door. 
 Thus the interfusion of soul, otherwise so 
 promising, fails to realize its destined pur- 
 pose. The true Church - nucleus appears 
 
 emperor. All my ministers sit down by my side, and 
 eat and drink in my company.' And then, entering his 
 ' travelling hall ' of Uterature, he found a translated 
 Chinese book which said : ' In ancient times, when a 
 good general led his men out to battle, he threw a little 
 food and wine into the river, and caused his troops to 
 drink some of the water. This was to betoken that 
 they were all acting in a common cause ; and that if a 
 soldier died in the cause, his death was of the same pubUc 
 nature as that of the general.' 
 
I AND WE 321 
 
 when (say) two souls^it may be of a 
 man and a maid, or of two friends — being 
 ' gathered together/ are quite given up 
 to the supreme Searcher for a place to 
 lay His head. And how refined and trans- 
 figured is now the love which He author- 
 ized and kindled! Instead of stopping 
 short at human love (with a small ' 1 '), it 
 owns the added potency of that divine 
 Love which soars high above the reach of 
 jealousies, and claims its rights, beyond 
 the bounds of earthly relationships, to 
 make all Christians (not lovers, with the 
 small ' 1,' but) Lovers filled with the sacred 
 glow of godly generosity. What an added 
 potency God's kingdom has gained when- 
 ever ' two are gathered together, with Him 
 in the midst ' ! How enhanced are the 
 powers of intercession in the case of such 
 a pair of hearts ! 
 
 The potency of prayers from two hearts 
 made one, over and above the potency of 
 the prayers of two disconnected hearts, 
 may not be quite obvious to all. We have 
 been misgmded by the formula, ' Twice 
 
 X 
 
322 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 one makes two,' as though it were an 
 axiom applicable to soul-combinations ; 
 when, as a fact, the law belongs merely 
 to the cold, dead region of mathematics. 
 It is repudiated by two literal flames, and 
 how much more by two glowing souls ! 
 
 Here are two flames of equal intensity. 
 We take one of them, and place it at such 
 a distance from an object casting a shadow 
 on the wall, that the shadow shall be equal 
 in blackness to that cast by an ordinary 
 candle on the same wall. Then, by meas- 
 uring the relative distance of the candle 
 and the flame we are testing (which can 
 be done with great accuracy in a photo- 
 metric laboratory), we find that flame to 
 be of (say) ' five candle-power.' And as 
 twice five makes ten, we naturally argue 
 that two such flames will give a sum-total 
 of ten candle-power. Which, of course, is 
 true when those two flames are separated 
 one from the other. But bring them near 
 together until they almost touch, and now 
 test them with our candle-shadow. And 
 lo ! we find that, brought thus together, 
 
I AND WE 323 
 
 they are equal to twelve or more candles. 
 This is the principle of the duplex lamp : 
 each flame so helps the other as to defy 
 the meagre maxim that ' Twice one makes 
 two.' And now, instead of the two flames 
 being merely brought near together, let 
 us combine them into one circular flame, 
 as in the Argand lamp. And lo ! our 
 ' twice two ' makes three, or four, or even 
 five. A common Argand burner is thus 
 a sermon on Pentecost. 
 
 Moses was a better scientist than we 
 often are in this region, when he exclaimed : 
 
 Then miglit one chase a thousand. 
 And two put ten thousand to flight ! 
 
 But even 'Twice one makes ten' may be 
 an inadequate formula for combinations 
 of soul-force. A Persian proverb declares, 
 in Oriental imagery, ' Two hearts in one 
 may rend a mountain.' 
 
 If two hearts may combine thus, and 
 with such results, why not three or more ? 
 Here we are confronted by the tyranny 
 of merely human love, humorously set 
 forth in the common Enghsh proverb, 
 
324 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 ' Two's company, three's none.' In our 
 Christmas gatherings, however, we say 
 otherwise, quoting an equally hght pro- 
 verb, ' The more the merrier.' For a 
 Christmas party is regarded as a family 
 gathering glowing with home feeling. And 
 hence it becomes no mean type of the true 
 Church — that family gathering, that home 
 circle of Emmanuel. 
 
 A mission for the definite promotion of 
 heartiest home feeling might be started 
 with advantage in many of our congrega- 
 tions. We have our schemes of church 
 decoration, of organ - building, of choir- 
 training — all of them good and admirable. 
 Although it is, of course, quite possible 
 to offer true worship to the God of Love 
 in an earthen - floored shanty, built of 
 sun-baked bricks, unceiled, and with an 
 open door and a hole in the roof (as 
 frequently in the East), in place of 
 
 storied windows richly dight. 
 
 Yes ; let us praise our Maker with our best 
 decorative art, with the finest instruments 
 
I AND WE 325 
 
 most skilfully played, with well-trained 
 voices blending harmoniously, which are 
 all ' figures of the true ' inner harmony 
 of homefulness that He loves. But let 
 us not stop short at types and shadows 
 of reality. Let us contribute the true 
 tribute -gold of Christian hearts toward 
 the promotion of that homefulness which 
 wiU invite the Spirit of Love, who is none 
 other than the Spirit of Pentecost. 
 
 Let us also make the most of the various 
 geniahties which, happily, are to be found 
 everywhere. Blown upon by the Breath 
 Divine, such sparks may serve to kindle 
 the flame that invites the Shekinah Pres- 
 ence, of which the Church is the destined 
 shrine. And with the same definite pur- 
 pose in view, let us utilize our existing 
 friendships for the royal sake of Him who 
 loves the world. 
 
 The institution of a seventh day of 
 united worship suggests our instituting 
 a Sabbath hour every day, when we and 
 our soul - fellows may ' gather together in 
 His name.' And by doing so in reality, 
 
326 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 we shall discover, as all have discovered 
 who have truly adopted such a helpful 
 means of grace, that the hymn is no 
 poetic dream which declares : 
 
 There is a spot where spirits blend, 
 And friend holds intercourse with friend ; 
 Though sundered far, by faith they meet 
 Around one common Mercy-seat. 
 
 There, there on eagle-wing we soar. 
 And time and sense seem all no more ; 
 And heaven comes down our souls to greet. 
 And glory crowns the Mercy-seat. 
 
 The ennobling enjoyment of such an 
 hour will make the word Pentecost to 
 glow with a beauty and sublimity far 
 higher than that which attaches to the 
 highest music or art. For these are but 
 types of that inner harmony of accordant 
 souls — souls blending together in irides- 
 cence, with each other and the Lord. 
 Every true picture, and every true musical 
 composition, is really a Pentecost for the 
 eye or the ear; while Pentecost itself is 
 the reality for the soul, set forth in musi- 
 cal notes and cunning brush -marks. We 
 
I AND WE 327 
 
 admire the shadow. Shall we not seek 
 the substance ? 
 
 We have only to pray in full accord 
 with one or two souls, and the duet or the 
 trio thus realized will be quite sufficient 
 to make us long, with a holy impatience, 
 for the orchestral music of a whole con- 
 gregation of blended hearts ; nay, a whole 
 Church of accordant souls, which shall 
 peal forth the potent strains of Pentecost, 
 and win the hearts of a wondering 
 world. 
 
 But Love is needed in order to initiate 
 such a magnificent movement as a con- 
 gregational or general Pentecost. And 
 poor human nature seems almost possessed 
 of a hydrophobic dread of the water of 
 life that flows from the Throne of Love 
 Supreme. We are willing to argue about 
 points of doctrine, and perhaps may have 
 to do so at times ; we are willing to give 
 our energies to tasks of organization, and 
 organization is as necessary as machinery; 
 but, having adjusted every item of doctrine 
 to the eternal rule and square (as far as 
 
328 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 we can see), and having elaborated and 
 lubricated the machinery, what about the 
 Fire ? The reply comes : ' Yes, that is 
 all very well in its way — an appropriate 
 subject for an annual sermon on Whit- 
 sunday. But to be practical, you know, 
 is it not time we got on with that renova- 
 tion scheme ? ' And so the machinery is 
 polished and re-pohshed — till those in 
 charge can see their faces in it. ' But the 
 Fire ! the moving force of the whole ? ' 
 And, unable to evade the question any 
 longer, poor human nature stammers : 
 ' If that involves all-absorbing love to 
 God and to So-and-so and So-and-so, it 
 is really too much to expect. We will be 
 as orthodox as you like, we wiU take our 
 full share of the business of the church; 
 we are really very earnest workers as it 
 is, and broad-minded enough to give our 
 trifle to Foreign Missions. But Love ! No ; 
 we do not like the submission it involves. 
 Anything but that. We must draw the 
 line somewhere ! ' 
 
 Such being a not exaggerated statement 
 
I AND WE 329 
 
 of the attitude of manyj what ^remains to 
 be done ? 
 
 True prayer, as we have seen, is purely 
 a love-force, even as colour is a form of 
 light. The truest prayer is just Love-in- 
 yearning. But, happily, the act of pray- 
 ing is an important means toward the 
 obtaining of that love which is the basis 
 of truest prayer. There is much philo- 
 sophy in that somewhat naive proverb 
 (Prov. iv. 9, R.V., marg.) : ' The beginning 
 of wisdom is, Get wisdom ' ; for the way 
 to learn to write is. To write ; the way to 
 learn to play an instrument is. To play 
 it ; and so the way to learn to pray is, 
 To pray and keep on praying. 
 
 Make much of the prayer-meetings ; let 
 them be the first consideration in the 
 whole plan of church work. To inaugurate 
 God's scheme of ' Church renovation ' by 
 a great prayer-meeting, or series of prayer- 
 meetings — or even, did human nature per- 
 mit such an innovation, to turn morning 
 and evening services into prayer-meetings 
 for once in a while — would be to make a 
 
330 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 very practical beginning. And, as a fact, 
 it was in a prayer-meeting that the hun- 
 dred and twenty of old began statedly to 
 prepare to become a Church indeed. 
 
 We can only surmise what measure of 
 heart-union was theirs immediately after 
 the Ascension. Observation proves that 
 Christian men and women may partake of 
 the most thrilling experiences in common 
 — experiences in which the hand of God 
 is most markedly revealed to each of 
 them — and yet emerge from such crises 
 without having attained to anything like 
 interfusion of soul. And the whole of 
 the ten days may have been needed in 
 order to remove various petty isolations, 
 and what we call ' stand-ofl&shness,' from 
 among those hundred and twenty human 
 beings, if they were at all like the human 
 beings of the present day. But was not 
 the result worth the ten days' tarrying in 
 prayer and supphcation ? And would not 
 the result to-day be worth any degree of 
 concentration of purpose, and any amount 
 of ' tarrying ' in fulfilment of the very 
 
I AND WE 33r 
 
 last commission of the Head of the 
 Church ? 
 
 Again and again let us remind ourselves 
 that our Lord's last commission was in- 
 deed ' Tarry ye.' We have too long quoted 
 the pendant command, and omitted to 
 make everything of that from which the 
 pendant hangs. Half-quotation may be 
 mis-quotation. And we omit the great 
 essential if our eyes can only read, * Go ye 
 into all the world. . . Go and make 
 disciples of all the nations,' even if we 
 understand it to mean, ' Go, and I will 
 send you help from heaven,' as we often 
 virtually do. Nay; the last command of 
 the ascending One was : ' Go not. . . 
 Tarry ye.' We regard the pendant com- 
 mand as perpetual. Every missionary 
 platform quotes it as a supreme justifica- 
 tion, even as those who once brought the 
 Gospel to heathen Britain doubtless quoted 
 it in their hearts. And if the pendant be 
 so important, how much more that from 
 which it depends ! It is only in so far 
 as any individual, or any number of 
 
332 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 individuals, recognize the last commission 
 of our Lord that they can be said to have 
 any true mission at all. A fact this — 
 perhaps a startUng fact to some — which 
 never needed to be emphasized more than 
 in these rush-ahead days. No ' tarrying,' 
 then no mission whatever ! 
 
 As individuals the apostles had been 
 breathed upon by the risen Lord, with 
 the words : ' Receive ye the Holy Ghost.' 
 But this individual reception of the Spirit 
 Divine did not fulfil our Lord's full pur- 
 pose. There were possibilities of united 
 receptivity yet to be realized. It was 
 preparatory for the latter. Ten whole 
 days of united supplication were decreed 
 to foUow. And then the full possibilities 
 became actual fact. It is always thus. 
 For God works by sublime laws that 
 cannot be improved upon, and that know 
 no change through the ages. 
 
 Oh, the receptive power of fully united 
 prayer ! Have we not known something 
 of it ? Has not the reader attended some 
 gatherings for prayer, where, amid much 
 
I AND WE 333 
 
 ' unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,' 
 the principle of the hydrauhc press seemed 
 needed to explain the experiences of those 
 moments : the pressure of the whole body 
 of fluid being felt by every square inch ? 
 For was not the whole praying force of 
 the whole community available for every 
 member of that praying band ? Then was 
 the word ' Pentecost ' lifted off the printed 
 page of the Old Book, and brought down 
 through the centuries — brought into touch 
 with all of those who were thus ' gathered 
 together ' in heart. So that each could 
 stand up and say : ' That which we have 
 heard, that which we have seen with our 
 eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands 
 have handled, declare we unto you.' And 
 are there not many hving witnesses to- 
 day, whose bodies were not present at 
 these meetings, but whose souls were born 
 anew while such prayers were being offered, 
 born with such pentecostal prayer-meetings 
 for their time of arousal into eternal 
 
 life ? 
 
 Those who know these things, add their 
 
334 IN TOUCH WITH REALITY 
 
 voices to the voice of Him who loved us 
 and gave Himself for us, and to the voices 
 •of a world lying helpless outside the 
 Kingdom of Omnipotence, and ask the 
 •question : 
 
 Why then, unloving, will not men combine. 
 Till olden tale each morning is renewed : 
 
 Till Christendom is crowned with Fire Divine — 
 With God's whole plenitude ? 
 
 THE END 
 
 TRINTKD BY M'LAREN AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH. 
 
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