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 SUN-RISE 
 
 Addresses from a City Pulpit 
 
 BY THE 
 
 y 
 
 REV. G. H. MORRISON, M,A. 
 
 GLASGOW 
 
 NEW YORK 
 A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 
 
 3 AND 5 WEST I 8th STREET 
 
 LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 M c M I 1 r 
 
Unto you that fear My name shall the 
 Sun of Righteousness arise ivith healing 
 in His ivinors. — Mal. iv. 2. 
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty. 
 
Dear Dr. Black, 
 
 I wish to dedicate this little 
 book to you as a token of regard. It would 
 be difficult for me to speak too gratefully of 
 the courtesy I have received at your hands. 
 I can cherish no brighter hope for my own 
 ministry than that after a lengthened term of 
 service, such as yours has been, I too may 
 have won some of that loving reverence in 
 which you are held by our noble congregation. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 G. H. MORRISON. 
 
 JVeUington Church, 
 Glasgow, 1903. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Homesickness of the Soul . . . i 
 
 And when he came to himself, he said, * How many hired 
 servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, 
 and I perish with hunger !' — Luke xv. 17. 
 
 Mystery . . . . . .12 
 
 Now I know in part. — i Cor. xiii. iz. 
 
 * The Wonder and Bloom of the World' . 21 
 
 Consider the lilies of the field. — Matt. vi. 28. 
 
 Mistaken Magnitudes . . . .32 
 
 Ye blind guiiles, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. 
 — Matt, xxiii. 24. 
 
 Laughter and Sorrow . . , , 43 r^ 
 
 Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful. — Prov. xiv. 13. 
 
 vu 
 
Vlll 
 
 SUN-RISE 
 
 The Pagan Duty of Disdain 
 
 Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ontrs. 
 Matt, xviii. lo. 
 
 53 
 
 Near-Cuts not God's .... 
 
 God led them not through the way of the land of the 
 Philistines, although that was near. — Exod. xiii. 17. 
 
 64 
 
 The Departing of the Angel 
 
 And they went out, and passed on through one street, and 
 forthwith the angel departed from him. — Acts xii. 10. 
 
 74 
 
 Undeveloped Lives ..... 
 
 Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth 
 alone. — John xii. 24. 
 
 H 
 
 The Search for Happiness 
 
 Happy art thou, O Israel. — Deut. xxxiii, 29. 
 
 9+ 
 
 V 
 
 Curiosity 
 
 And He smote the men of Bethshemesh because they had 
 looked into the ark of the Lord. — i Sam. vi. 19. 
 
 104 
 
CONTENTS ix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Seeming to Have . . . s ,114 
 
 From him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have. 
 — Luke viii. 18. 
 
 A Plea for Simplicity . . - .124 
 
 The simplicity that is in Christ. — 2 Cor. xi. 3. 
 
 'After that, the Dark' . . . • ^33 
 
 He knoweth what is in the darkness. — Dan. ii. 22. 
 
 Counting the Cost . . . .147 
 
 Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down 
 first, and counteth the cost. — Luke xiv. 28. 
 
 The Sending of the Sword . , .158 
 
 I came not to send peace, but a sword. — Matt. x. 34. 
 
 Wasted Gains . . , . .169 
 
 The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunt- 
 ing. — Frov. xii. 27. 
 
SUN-RISE 
 
 Undetected Losses 
 
 Gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not. 
 — Hos. vii. 9. 
 
 / 
 
 When the Child-spirit dies • . .187 
 
 Of such is the kingdom of heaven. — Matt. xix. 14. 
 
 The Leisure of Faith , . . .196 
 
 He that believeth shall not make haste. — Is. xxviii. 16. 
 
 The Opened Windows .... 207 
 
 His windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusilfm. 
 — Dan. vi. 10. 
 
 Is Life a Tragedy? . , . .218 
 
 To the Half-hearted .... 230 
 
 Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord. — Col. iii. 23. 
 
 The Unlikely Instruments of God . . 240 
 
 Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lor<rs hand. — Jer. li. 7. 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Touchstone of Fact .... 2+9 
 
 Have ye not asked them that go by the way ? — Job xxi. 29. 
 
 The Glory and the Gate . . . 260 
 
 And Mordecai came again to the king's gate. — Esiher vi. 12. 
 
 A Soul to Let . . . . .271 
 
 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh 
 through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. 
 Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence 
 I came out ; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, 
 swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with 
 himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, 
 and they enter in and dwell there : and the last state of 
 that man is worse than the first. — Matt. xii. 43-45. 
 
 The Irksomeness of Religion . . . 279 
 
 There is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes. — 
 Num. xi. 6. 
 
 The Pre-Requisite of Vision . . . 290 
 
 When they were awake, they saw His glory.— Luke ix 32. 
 The Note of the Heroic .... 3°° 
 
 His eyes were as a fiame of fire. — Rev. i. 14. 
 
THE HOMESICKNESS OF THE SOUL 
 
 And when he came to himself, he said, * How many hired servants 
 of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with 
 hunger • ' — Luke xv. 17. 
 
 A VERY fresh and delightful American writer, 
 John Burroughs — a man who often reminds us 
 of our own Richard Jefferies — has given us in 
 one of his books a most illuminative and sug- 
 gestive paper on Carlyle. Mr. Burroughs visited 
 Carlyle in London — his essay is called * A Sunday 
 in Cheyne Row ' — and with great tenderness, and 
 wisdom, and literary skill he has recorded his 
 impressions of the visit. Now I am not going 
 to speak of Mr. Burroughs to-night, nor am I 
 going to preach about Carlyle ; but there was one 
 phrase in that essay that seemed to me very 
 memorable : it was the phrase ' homesickness of 
 the soul.' 'A kind of homesickness of the soul 
 was on Carlyle,' says Mr. Burroughs, 'and it 
 deepened with age.' 
 
2 HOMESICKNESS OF THE SOUL 
 
 That, then, is the topic on which I wish to speak. 
 My subject is the homesickness of the soul. 
 I want to take the thought that the soul is home- 
 sick, and use it to shed a little light on dark 
 places. Perhaps we shall proceed more com- 
 fortably togefher if I divide what I have to say 
 under two heads, (i) Under this light we may 
 view the unrest of sin. (2) Under this light we 
 may view the craving for God. 
 
 First, then. Under this light we may view the 
 unrest of sin. 
 
 It is notable that it was in this light that Jesus 
 viewed it, in the crowning parable from which we 
 have taken our text. The prodigal was an exile ; 
 he was in a far country. It was the memory of 
 his home that filled his heart. There are concep- 
 tions of the awakened sinner that make him the 
 prey of an angry and threatening conscience. 
 And I know that sometimes, when a man comes 
 to himself, he can see nothing and hear nothing 
 in the universe but the terrors and judgments 
 of a sovereign God. But it was not terror that 
 smote the prodigal deep. It was home, home, 
 home, for which his poor soul was crying. He 
 saw the farm, bosomed among the hills, and the 
 
HOMESICKNESS OF THE SOUL 3 
 
 weary oxen coming home at eventide, and the 
 happy circle gathered round the fire, and his father 
 crying to heaven for the wanderer. His sorrow's 
 crown of sorrows was remembering happier things. 
 He came to himself, and he was homesick. 
 
 Now I think that Jesus would have us learn 
 from that that wickedness is not the home-land 
 of the soul, and that all the unrest and the 
 dissatisfaction of the wicked is just the craving 
 of his heart for home. We were not fashioned 
 to be at home in sin. We bear the image of 
 God, and God is goodness. The native air of 
 this mysterious heart is the love and purity 
 and joy of heaven. So when a man deliberately 
 sins, and all the time hungers for better things, 
 it is not the hunger for an impossible ideal ; 
 it is the hunger of his soul for home. Ah ! 
 do not forget that you can satisfy that hunger 
 instantly. To-night, out of the furthest country, 
 in a single instant of time, you may come home. 
 We are not like the emigrant in the far west 
 of Canada longing for Highland hills he will 
 not see for years. God waits. Christ says, 
 * Return this very hour.' Though your sins be as 
 scarlet, they shall be white as snow. 
 
4 HOMESICKNESS OF THE SOUL 
 
 In that very fascinating little volume by- 
 Charlotte Yonge, in which sh^ narrates the history 
 of the Moors in Spain, there are few pages more 
 enthralling than those in which she tells the 
 story of Abderraman. Abderraman was the first 
 Moorish Khalif in Spain. He was an Eastern, 
 bred by the Euphrates. There was no great 
 beauty in the scenes where he spent his child- 
 hood. And his Spanish home, in the old city 
 of Cordova, seems to have been a fairy-palace of 
 delight. Yet among all the groves and towers 
 and fountains of fair Cordova, Abderraman was 
 miserable — it was banishment. And when he 
 got a palm-tree from his Syrian home, and planted 
 it in his Spanish garden, one of the old ballads of 
 the Arabs tells us that he could never look at it 
 without tears. Do you not think that the children 
 of Cordova would mock at that ? It was their 
 home, and they were very happy. They could not 
 understand this Oriental, unhappy and restless 
 among the garden groves. And my point is that 
 you will never understand the soul's unrest, amid 
 the exquisite delights of sense and sin, unless it 
 is hungering for another country, as Abderraman 
 hungered for his Syrian dwelling. It is not facts, 
 
HOMESICKNESS OF THE SOUL 5 
 
 it is mysteries, that keep me from materialism. 
 I believe in the cravings of the human heart, and 
 they overturn a score of demonstrations. If I 
 were a creature of a few nerves and fibres only, I 
 should be very happy in my Cordova. But we 
 were made in goodness, and we were made for 
 goodness ; and the native air of the soul is love 
 and truth ; and we shall always be dissatisfied, 
 always be homesick, if we are trying to live in 
 any other land. 
 
 This thought, too, helps us to understand why 
 men cover evil with a veil of goodness. It is just 
 the longing of the exile or of the emigrant to give 
 a homelike touch to his surroundings. Why do 
 you find an Inverness in Canada.^ Because men 
 and women from Inverness went there. And why 
 do you find a Glasgow in Canada ^ Because it 
 reminded these Glasgow men of home. Do you 
 know what James Chalmers of New Guinea — the 
 greatest soul on the Pacific, as Stevenson called 
 him — do you remember what he called the first 
 bay he discovered in New Guinea ? He called it 
 Inveraray Bay. I do not think he would ever have 
 dreamed of that name had he not been born and 
 spent his boyhood by Loch Fyne. And when I 
 
6 HOMESICKNESS OF THE SOUL 
 
 see men taking the names of goodness and labelling 
 their vices and their sins with them, when I note 
 how ready we all are to use a kindly term for 
 some habit or frailty that is most unkindly, I 
 think that it is the soul telling where it was 
 born, confessing unconsciously that it is a little 
 homesick, and trying to give a homelike touch 
 to the far country, just like James Chalmers 
 with his Inveraray Bay. 
 
 And we can understand the loneliness of sin 
 when we remember this homesickness of the 
 soul. The man who is homesick is always lonely. 
 It does not matter how crowded the streets are ; 
 the city may be gay and bright and brilHant, but 
 all the stir of it, and all the laughter of it, and 
 all the throng and tumult of the life of it will 
 not keep a homesick man from being lonely. 
 Nay, sometimes it intensifies his loneliness. It is 
 made more acute by the contrasts of the crowd. 
 It is not in the quiet spaces of great nature, it is 
 among the crowds whom you will meet to-night, 
 that the bitterness of loneliness is found. Now 
 sin is a great power that makes for loneliness. 
 Slowly but surely, if a man lives in sin, he drifts 
 apart into spiritual isolation. And the strange 
 
HOMESICKNESS OF THE SOUL 7 
 
 thing is that the sins we call social sins, the sins 
 that begin in fellowship and company, are the very 
 sins that drive a man apart, and leave him at last 
 utterly alone. That loneliness is homesickness of 
 the soul. It is the heart craving for home again. 
 God grant that if in this house there be one man 
 who is drifting away on a great sea of wretched 
 self-indulgence, from wife and child or mother 
 and sister and friend — God grant that, drawn by 
 the love of Christ, he may come home I 
 
 Secondly and briefly : Under this light wc may 
 view the craving for God. 
 
 We often speak of heaven as our home, and in 
 many deep senses that is a true expression. If in 
 heaven we shall meet again those whom we loved 
 and lost, and if boys and girls will be playing in 
 the streets of Zion, I have no doubt that heaven 
 will be a homelike place. But in deeper senses 
 heaven is not our home, or if it is, it is just 
 because God is there. In the deepest sense our 
 home is not heaven, but God. Do you remember 
 how Wordsworth put it in his glorious Ode on 
 the Intimations of Immortality from Childhood ? 
 I think a lesser poet would have written it thus, 
 * Trailing clouds of glory do we come from 
 
8 HOMESICKNESS OF THE SOUL 
 
 heaven which is our home.' But Wordsworth. 
 
 Uke a true seer, did not write that, but — ' Trailing 
 
 clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our 
 
 home.' 
 
 ' Our God, our help in ages past, 
 Our hope for years to come, 
 Our shelter from the stormy blast, 
 And — our eternal home.' 
 
 God is the true home of the human soul. 
 
 Do you see, then, the meaning of that craving 
 
 for God that is one of the" strangest facts in 
 
 human history ^ You would have thought that 
 
 in a world like this, so full of interest, colour, 
 
 music, and delight, mankind would have lived 
 
 in contentment without God. But the Book 
 
 of Psalms is filled with that passionate craving 
 
 — *As the hart pants after the water-brooks.' 
 
 And if the Book of Psalms has lived through 
 
 chance and change, and been cherished when 
 
 ten thousand volumes are forgotten, it is largely 
 
 because it gives a voice in noblest poetry to this 
 
 unappeased hunger of mankind. We do not 
 
 crave for God because He is glorious. We do 
 
 not crave for God because He is sovereign. We 
 
 are just homesick, that is the meaning of it. 
 
 We crave for God because He is our home. 
 
HOMESICKNESS OF THE SOUL 9 
 
 Now this homesickness of the soul for God 
 is one of our surest proofs of God. It is an 
 argument more powerful than any that philo- 
 sophy affords to convince me that there is a 
 God. We are all grateful when a prince of 
 science like Lord Kelvin tells us he is forced to 
 believe in a directive power. But in a day or 
 two you will have some one writing to the Times 
 denying the validity of that induction. But no 
 one denies that souls still pant for God. And 
 hearts to-day and here still thirst for Him, as 
 truly as the exiled psalmist did. And unless life 
 be a sham, and unless we were born and fashioned 
 to be mocked, there cannot be homesickness 
 without a home. I crave for food, and mother- 
 earth holds out her hands to me and says, * Yes, 
 child, there is food.* I crave for happiness ; and 
 the shining of the sun, and the song of birds, 
 and the sound of music, and the laughter of 
 children, come to my heart and say to me, * There 
 it is/ I crave for God. And will the universe 
 reverse its order now } Will it provide for every 
 other instinct, and call the noblest of them all a 
 mockery ^. It is impossible. Without a home, 
 homesickness is inexplicable. My craving for 
 
lo HOMESICKNESS OF THE SOUL 
 
 God assures me that God is. All other argu- 
 ments may fail me. When my mind is wearied, 
 and my memory tired, I forget them. But this 
 one, knit with my heart, and part and parcel of 
 my truest manhood, survives all moods, is strong 
 when I am weak, and brings me to the door of 
 God my home. 
 
 One of the saddest letters in all literature is 
 a letter written by our own poet, David Gray. 
 David Gray was born eight miles from Glasgow ; 
 he went to the Free Church Normal in this city. 
 His honest father would have made a preacher 
 of him, but God forestalled that by making him 
 a poet. Well, nothing would satisfy David but 
 he must go to London. He suffered much there 
 and fell into consumption. And this is one of 
 his last letters home : — * Torquay, Jan. 6, 1861. 
 Dear Parents, — I am coming home — home- 
 sick. I cannot stay from home any longer. 
 What's the good of me being so far from home 
 and sick and ill ^. O God 1 I wish I were home 
 never to leave it more ! Tell everybody that I am 
 coming back — no better : worse, worse. What's 
 about climate, about frost or snow or cold 
 weather, when one 's at home ? I wish I had 
 
HOMESICKNESS OF THE SOUL n 
 
 never left it. ... I have no money, and I want 
 to get home, home, home. What shall I do, O 
 God ! Father, I shall steal to you again, because 
 I did not use you rightly. . . . Will you forgive 
 me ? Do I ask that ? , . , I have come through 
 things that would make your hearts ache for me 
 — things that I shall never tell to anybody but 
 you, and you shall keep them secret as the grave. 
 Get my own little room ready quick, quick ; 
 have it all tidy, and clean, and cosy, against my 
 homecoming. I wish to die there, and nobody 
 shall nurse me except my own dear mother, ever, 
 ever again. O home, home, home ! ' 
 
 I will arise and go unto my Father. Thank 
 God we need no money for that journey. Is there 
 no one here who has been far away, who is going 
 to come home — to God — this very hour ^ 
 
MYSTERY 
 
 Now I know In part. — i Cor. xiii. 12. 
 
 It has ever been a mark of Christianity that it 
 kept men alive to the mysteries around them. 
 The souls that have drunk most deeply of the 
 Christian doctrine are the souls who have most 
 felt the mystery of life. You may gather up 
 the Christian teaching in confessions, and it is 
 vitally necessary that that should be done. But 
 when everything is tabulated and reduced to 
 system, we are still haunted by a sense of the 
 inexplicable — more is meant than meets the ear. 
 I dare say a chemist could explain to me the causes 
 of all the colours in a sunset. And yet in the 
 blending glories of a sunset there is something 
 that no man shall ever analyse. So men have 
 gathered up and set in order the contents of the 
 Christian revelation, but the great secrets have 
 not ceased to baffle them. 
 
 And yet, perhaps, there never was a time in 
 
MYSTERY 13 
 
 which the sense of mystery was less present than 
 to-day. * We have not any mysteries to-day,' 
 said a French writer whom I chanced on lately. 
 How far that dying out of the mysterious may be 
 traced to the decline of living faith is a question 
 that might admit of much discussion. B-it there 
 are other causes which I should like to indicate. 
 
 One is the tyranny of facts under which we live. 
 I suppose there was never a time in the world's 
 history when there was such a craving for 
 scientific truth. There is no man more apt to be 
 blind to the great mysteries than the specialist, 
 and this is pre-eminently the age of specialism. 
 Tennyson is most wonderfully accurate in every 
 reference he makes to nature, and in this, as in so 
 many other points, he interprets the spirit of the 
 age he lived in. Now no one will question the 
 value of that spirit, nor the immense gains which 
 it has won for us. I only suggest that an age 
 with that dominant note is not likely to be 
 haunted by the mystery of things. 
 
 And then again this is an age of machinery, 
 and there is litde mystery in a machine. We are 
 likely to grow dull to many wonders, when we 
 take to calculating by /zon^-power. 'So many 
 
14 MYSTERY 
 
 hundred hands in this mill/ says Charles Dickens 
 in that powerful little story of his, Hard Times, 
 ' so many hundred horse steam power. It is 
 known, to the force of a single pound-weight, 
 what the engine will do. . . . There is no mystery 
 in it.' And he means that when an age puts the 
 emphasis not on man but on machinery, we are 
 not likely to be troubled greatly by the strange 
 sense of the inexplicable. 
 
 And then this is an age of travel. The world 
 is explored into its darkest corners. We do not 
 expect now, as men expected once, to hear of 
 marvellous things from Africa or India. I love 
 to turn the pages of Sir John Mandeville, that 
 most amazing mediaeval wanderer. You had only 
 to cross the sea with Sir John Mandeville, and 
 you were in the midst of astounding mysteries at 
 once. But the world is very different to-day. 
 Its most distant countries have been mapped and 
 photographed. Knowledge has come, and per- 
 haps a little wisdom with it ; but the older sense 
 of the world's mystery has gone. * Ah me ! ' says 
 our Scottish poet Alexander Smith, in his most 
 delightful essay On Vagabonds, ' what a world this 
 was to live in two or three centuries ago, when it 
 was getting itself discovered. . . . Then were the 
 
MYSTERY 15 
 
 Arabian Nights commonplace, enchantments a 
 matter of course, and romance the most ordinary 
 thing in the world. Then man was courting 
 Nature, now he has married her. Every mystery 
 is dissipated.' 
 
 I think, then, that it is supremely important in 
 these times that we should endeavour to keep 
 alive the sense of mystery. And I am sure that 
 the Lord Jesus Christ always meant it to have 
 large room in His disciples' hearts. 
 
 Think, for example, of what our Lord meant 
 by unbelief. ' Why are ye fearful, O ye of little 
 faith ? ' That was the one rebuke which He used 
 to launch at His disciples, for there was nothing 
 that grieved Christ more than lack of faith. And 
 it was not lack of faith in any particular doctrines 
 — it was not (hat which called out the rebuke of 
 Christ. It was rather such a view of God's great 
 universe as left no room for any mystery in it. 
 Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith ? Is there 
 nothing else abroad but storm and cloud-rack ? 
 Had they only felt the mystery of the Divine, 
 touching and girding even the angry waters, they 
 had been less disquieted, out at sea. That was 
 what Jesus meant by unbeHef : not a mind that 
 denies, but a spirit that disowns. A heart that 
 
1 6 MYSTERY 
 
 will not recognise, amid things seen, the power, 
 the love, the mystery of God. You see, then, 
 that the disciple of Christ must have a spirit 
 that is alive to mystery. 
 
 And then you remember that other declaration : 
 * Except ye become as little children.' You can- 
 not even see the kingdom of God, unless within 
 you is the heart of childhood, and all things are 
 mysterious to the child. The children's world is 
 full of spiritual presences ; they never think of 
 God as far away. I do not think that any child 
 would be much surprised if it met God out in the 
 green fields. Flowers speak to them in voices we 
 have Jost, the night winds cry to them, the clouds 
 are still peopled countries. In the red depths of 
 the winter's fire on the hearth, they see ' mighty 
 castles towering to the moon.' The fear of 
 childhood is not the fear of cowardice ; the fear 
 of childhood is the fear of imagination. We 
 should all fear the darkness as the child does, if 
 we believed it was full of eyes and living things. 
 Now Jesus wants no disciple to be childish : when 
 we become men we put away childish things. 
 But the childlike spirit, that believes in possi- 
 bilities, that hungers for a world behind the world, 
 that cannot touch a flower or hear an echo but 
 
MYSTERY 17 
 
 there comes some suggestion of things mystical, 
 that spirit is the spirit of the Christian. You see, 
 then, that in the Christian temper Christ Jesus 
 insisted on a large place for mystery. * Except 
 ye become as little children.' 
 
 It is notable, too — 1 wish to impress this on 
 you — that Jesus deepened the mystery of every- 
 thing He touched. Things never become less 
 mysterious, always more, when they have passed 
 through the mind and heart of Jesus Christ. We 
 think of Jesus as the great explainer, and we 
 thank God for the rough places Christ has 
 made plain. He has given an answer to a 
 thousand problems. He has come like light into 
 our human darkness. But Jesus never explained 
 anything by lessening the mystery that clung to 
 it. He is a sorry teacher who shows the merely 
 obvious. Jesus enlarged the mystery of things, 
 intensified it, deepened it twentyfold. When 
 He wished to make men understand a matter. 
 He showed that there was more to be under- 
 stood than they had dreamed. 
 
 Take one of His leading words like life, for 
 instance. You say, and say rightly, that Christ 
 explains life to you. You understand it better, 
 
 B 
 
i8 MYSTERY 
 
 and you can live It better, in the light that Jesus 
 has cast upon its meaning. But when I think of 
 what life meant in the old pagan world, how 
 shallow it was, how sensuous and short, and when 
 I compare that with the life that is in Christ, with 
 its depth, its joy, its fulness, its infinite issues, I 
 feel at once how the mystery of life is deepened, 
 in passing through the hands of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Or take the thought of death. Christ has 
 illumined death. There is not a mourner here 
 but has felt, in the dark hour, how unutterably 
 glorious is the gospel teaching. It is when the 
 heart is empty, and the grave is open, that we 
 know the tenderness and power of Christian con- 
 solation. Christ has illumined death ; but has 
 He banished its mystery } He hath taken away 
 its sting, but deepened its mystery. There are 
 moral bearings in it : it is the wages of sin. 
 There are glorious hopes in it : the body shall be 
 raised. There are dim suggestions in the very 
 word, of eternal separations from love and joy and 
 God. And all this mystery of light, and mystery 
 of darkness, has been poured into the cup of 
 death by Jesus Christ. Death has strange mean- 
 ings for the humblest now, that it had not for the 
 
MYSTERY 19 
 
 wisest before Jesus came. Christ has intensified 
 its mystery a thousandfold. 
 
 Or not to multiply instances, take the thought 
 of God. You and 1 know God through the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. All that we know of God 
 from outward nature, and all that we gather from 
 the world's long history, is but the outwork and 
 flanking of that revelation which is ours through 
 the life and death of Jesus. Now tell me, is God 
 less mysterious to us in the light of that revela- 
 tion of Christ Jesus } ' God without mystery 
 were not good news.' God was a Sovereign once, 
 now He is Father, and there are more mysteries 
 in Fatherhood than in Kingship. God was a God 
 of power once ; He is a God of love now ; and 
 all the power of all the thunderbolts of Jove are 
 not so mysterious as the slightest spark of love. 
 And God was alone once, or there were many 
 Gods. Now, baffling comprehension, yet most 
 real, we have a vision of Three in One and One in 
 Three. Christ has intensified the mystery of God. 
 
 I trust that you see, then, how true it is, that 
 Jesus deepened the mystery of things. And I 
 trust that you begin to understand what the spirit 
 of Christ longs to achieve in you. The Christian 
 
20 MYSTERY 
 
 view is always the deepest view. The Lord who 
 inspired it saw kingdoms in mustard - seeds. 
 There is more in the world, and in man, and in 
 the Bible, than the nicest calculation can discover, 
 but we only see it through the eyes of Christ. 
 They tell us that to see the unusual we ought to 
 travel. But perhaps a better way to see it is to be 
 Christ's. For it is then that life, and death, and 
 human hearts, and all things, break into glories 
 of meaning unsuspected. It is then, too, that a 
 man becomes humble. Touched by a sense of 
 mystery, he must be reverent. And it is then 
 that he begins again to wonder ; and when a 
 man ceases to wonder, may God pity him ! 
 Do not be dogmatic. Do not be bigoted. 
 The world is too mysterious for that. Expect 
 surprises. Have an open eye. Believe that 
 there are more things in heaven and earth than 
 have been dreamed of in your philosophies. 
 And then, when common actions are irradiated, 
 and common lives flash into moral glories, 
 when the mysteries of life, and love, and death, 
 and God, so baffle us that we can only say 
 with Paul ' we know in part ' — we shall be nearer 
 the spirit of Jesus than we dreamed. 
 
'THE WONDER AND BLOOM OF 
 THE WORLD' 
 
 Consider the lilies of the field. — Matt. vi. 28. 
 
 In these glorious June days, when the world is 
 so full of light and joy, it is an unspeakable 
 satisfaction to remember that our Lord was 
 keenly alive to the message of nature. It is 
 part of the undying charm of the gospel-story 
 that while it sounds all the deeps of the human 
 spirit, it never forgets that we are living in a 
 world where the grass is green and where the 
 birds are singing. There are poets whose gift 
 is that of interpreting nature. There are others 
 whose genius works at its noblest in interpreting 
 the strange story of mankind. But the sublimest 
 masters are dowered with both these gifts — they 
 interpret nature and they interpret man. Now 
 Jesus Christ was far more than a poet ; He was 
 inspired as no poet ever was. Yet the twofold 
 gift of interpreting nature and man, the gift that 
 
22 *THE WONDER AND 
 
 Is the glory of our masterpieces, shines out most 
 cloudlessly upon the gospel-page. It is there 
 we read of the Samaritan woman. It is there 
 we read of the denial of Peter. But the mustard- 
 seed and the birds and the lilies are there too. 
 
 Now no doubt this love of nature which was 
 so strong in Jesus sprang partly from the circum- 
 stances of His birth. He was a Hebrew with a 
 Hebrew lineage, after the flesh, and nature was 
 eloquent with voices to the Hebrew. You can 
 often tell what a people gives its heart to by 
 the richness and copiousness of its vocabulary. 
 Where a nation's interests have been long and 
 deeply engaged, there it sooai wins for itself a 
 wealth of terms. Well, in the Hebrew language 
 there are some ten words for rain, and to the 
 understanding heart that is significant. Into that 
 heritage, then, Jesus of Nazareth entered. He 
 was the child of a race that had lived with open 
 eyes. And if the glory of the world lights up 
 the gospel-story — if there are sermons in stones, 
 and books in running brooks, there, we owe it 
 in some measure to God's ordering, when He 
 cradled Emmanuel in a Hebrew home. 
 
 But between the Hebrew outlook on nature 
 
BLOOM OF THE WORLD' 23 
 
 in the Old Testament, and the outlook of Jesus 
 as we find it in the gospels, there is one marked 
 difference that we cannot note too closely. There 
 is one contrast which no one can fail to remark, 
 who reads the prophets and the psalms and then 
 turns to the gospels. In the psalms the world 
 is magnificent and terrible. It is a mighty 
 pageant of grand and mysterious forces. We see 
 the sun there rejoicing like a strong man to run 
 his race ; we hear the rush of the storm as it 
 shatters the cedars of Lebanon. The sea is angry, 
 its waves mount up to heaven. There is the roll 
 of thunder ; there is the flash of lightning. You 
 feel that clouds and darkness are never far away. 
 It is a vast and glorious world — hardly a kindly 
 one. Now turn to the gospels, and do you note 
 the change ? Consider the lilies of the field, the 
 fowls of the air. Behold the sower goes forth to 
 sow in the spring morning. The kingdom of 
 heaven is like a mustard-seed. It is not that vast 
 and magnificent things are disregarded, and the 
 beauty of the small things recognised. That is 
 not what gives us the sense of contrast between the 
 nature of the psalmist and of Jesus. It is rather 
 that the world is a much kindlier place ; there is 
 
24 *THE WONDER AND 
 
 less menace in its terrific powers. It is still as 
 full of mystery as ever ; but it is the mystery of 
 love now, not of fear. 
 
 Now can we explain that deep and striking 
 change? It is quite clear that nature will not 
 explain it. Had Jesus lived under a sunnier sky 
 or amid fairer pastures than the old Hebrew 
 psalmists, we might think that the change was due 
 to change of scene. But the same stars looked 
 down on Jesus of Nazareth as touched into music 
 the craving heart of David ; and the same wild 
 storms leapt out of the blue heaven as have given 
 the fire and rush to Hebrew melody. And the 
 hills and the streams and the gleaming of the sea 
 far off, these were the same. It is clear, then, that 
 there is no explanation there. 
 
 Nor is there any — I speak with loving reverence 
 of One to whom I owe so much — nor is there any 
 explanation in the change of persons. I mean 
 that had the lot of Jesus been a kindly lot, I could 
 have fathomed His kindly view of nature. Has 
 not Tennyson sung very wisely and very well — 
 
 ' Gently comes the world to those 
 That are cast in gentle mould ' ? - 
 
 and had the life of Jesus been a life of ease and 
 
BLOOM OF THE WORLD' 25 
 
 tenderness, I think I could explain his view of 
 nature. But did He not come unto His own 
 and they received Him not ? Was He not 
 despised and rejected of men? Were there no 
 drops of sweat like blood in lone Gethsemane? 
 Was there no cup to drink, no cross to bear and 
 die on ? I do not think that bitter sorrows like 
 these make a man ready to consider the lilies. 
 In my own tragedies the world grows tragical. I 
 understand the storm when I am storm-tossed. 
 But to Jesus, misunderstood, cross-burdened, Man 
 of Sorrows, nature was genial, kindly, homelike, 
 to the end. 
 
 Here is the explanation of that contrast. It is 
 not change of scene, nor change of circumstance. 
 It is the changed thought of God that is the 
 secret. To prophet and psalmist, no less than to 
 Jesus, the world was alive and quivering with God. 
 But to prophet and .psalmist God was Jehovah ; 
 to Jesus of Nazareth God was Father. Twelve 
 times over in this sixth chapter of Matthew 
 Christ speaks of the Creator as * your Father.' 
 I have read of the child of a distinguished English 
 judge who was rebuked for prattling beside the 
 judge's knee. And the bairn answered : * Why 
 
26 *THE WONDER AND 
 
 should I not? He may be your judge, but he's 
 my father.' So when the thought of the Creator, 
 infinite in majesty, was deepened and softened and 
 glorified in Fatherhood, the mystery of fear was 
 swept out of the world, and the gentle mystery of 
 love came in. It was a Father who had reared 
 the mountains. There was a Father's hand upon 
 the storm. At the back of the thunder, no less 
 than in the lilies, there was a Father's heart, a 
 Father's love. It was that glorious truth filling 
 the heart of Jesus that made all nature what it 
 was for Him. Perfect love had cast out fear. 
 
 In the city of Florence there is an old building 
 now used as a museum. Six hundred years ago 
 it was a palace, and on the altar wall of its chapel, 
 sometime about 1300, Giotto painted a portrait 
 of the poet Dante. This portrait, the only one 
 painted during the poet's lifetime, is of inestim- 
 able value. But the building fell upon evil days ; 
 it was turned into a jail for common criminals ; 
 its walls were coated with whitewash. And for 
 centuries under this covering the face of Dante 
 was hidden, until its existence was wellnigh 
 forgotten. But in 1840 three gentlemen, one of 
 them an Englishman, set to work and discovered 
 
BLOOM OF THE WORLD* 27 
 
 the lost likeness. And now the old prison-wall is 
 full of glory because the lineaments of the great 
 poet shine out there. Ah, yes, if a common wall 
 is quite transfigured when the likeness of Dante 
 is discovered on it, no wonder that a common 
 flower is glorified when it reveals — as it did to 
 Christ — the Father. It is a great thing to be 
 alive to beauty ; but men were alive to beauty 
 before Jesus lived. It is a great thing to feel the 
 mystery of nature ; but men had felt all that in 
 paganism. What Jesus did was to take the truth 
 of Fatherhood, and touch every bird and every 
 lily with it, till beauty deepened into brotherhood, 
 and we and the world were mystically kin. ' When 
 I consider the heavens,' said the psalmist, * then 
 say I, what is man that Thou art mindful of him? ' 
 But Jesus, just to reassure us of God's mindful- 
 ness, says, ' Consider the lilies of the field.* 
 
 Such, then, was the secret of nature for our 
 Lord. And now I have a word to say upon one 
 other point. I want you to observe how con- 
 stantly and simply our Lord used nature in the 
 interests of morals. Our outlook on nature is 
 very largely emotional. We make it a mirror to 
 reflect our moods. If we are happy, then all the 
 
2 8 * THE WONDER AND 
 
 world is happy. But if we are sad, then even the 
 banks and braes o' bonny Doon ' mind me o' 
 departed joys, Departed — never to return.' Now 
 all that is very natural, I doubt not ; and it is a 
 witness to the grandeur of our human story that 
 we make every stream and every sunset echo it. 
 But in the life of Jesus there is little of that ; it 
 is the moral helpfulness of nature that He seizes. 
 Burns wondered how the flowers could bloom 
 when he was so weary. That is the emotional 
 outlook on the world. Tennyson said : ' Flower 
 in the crannied wall, could I but understand thee, 
 I should know what God and man is.' That is 
 the intellectual outlook on the world. But Jesus 
 said : ' Why take ye thought for raiment ? Con- 
 sider the lilies of the field,' and that is neither 
 emotional nor intellectual ; it is moral. I do not 
 mean that Jesus was blind to the other aspects ; 
 but I do mean that He centred His thought on 
 that. For the soul and the life and the individual 
 character — these things were so transcendently 
 important to Christ Jesus, that everything else 
 must be impressed into their service. In these 
 glorious June days we are apt to grow a little dull 
 to what is highest. Just to be alive is such a 
 
BLOOM OF THE WORLD' 29 
 
 sweet thing now, that the hope and the resolve of 
 sterner moods take to themselves wings and fly 
 away. Do not forget the earnestness of Christ. 
 Do not forget that out in the summer fields this 
 was His aim — to fashion noble, trustful, reverent 
 disciples. We must have room for the lilies of 
 the field no less than for Gethsemane ; we must 
 remember the birds not less than the bread 
 and wine, if the whole ministry of Christ is to 
 be operative in winning us to some likeness of 
 Himself. 
 
 It is notable, too, that as Jesus* life advanced, 
 and as the shadows upon His path grew darker, 
 we find no trace that Jesus outgrew nature, or 
 passed beyond the power of its teaching. I think 
 we have most of us had hours when nature seemed 
 to desert us. She became dumb and had no heal- 
 ing for us. It may have been the hour of a great 
 sorrow, or a great crisis in our life's career. And 
 I think that most of us have had moods and feel- 
 ings which we thought that nature was powerless 
 to interpret. She could not enter into our weary 
 problems. So as our life goes on we drift away 
 from nature, and nature silently drifts away from 
 us. But what I want you to note is that though 
 
30 
 
 THE WONDER AND 
 
 that happens with us, there is no trace that it ever 
 happened with Jesus. Here on the hillside He is 
 speaking of providence, and He says, ' Consider 
 the lilies of the field.' Then follows the preaching 
 of the kingdom throughout Galilee, and ' the 
 kingdom of heaven is like a mustard-seed.' Then 
 the shadow of Calvary falls, and the awful death 
 that is coming — can nature interpret and illuminate 
 that darkness ? * Except a corn of wheat fall into 
 the ground and die, it abideth alone.' And where 
 did Christ agonise ^ Was it in the upper room ^ 
 He went into a place where was a garden. And 
 in the exultant joy of resurrection morning, did 
 He hasten away into the city ^ He waited till 
 Mary supposed He was the gardener. Right 
 on, then, through the wealth of all His teaching, 
 right on through His suffering and death and 
 rising, the voices of the natural world appealed to 
 Jesus. Nature may seem to fail us before the 
 end, but it never deserted Jesus Christ. 
 
 And the reason is not very far to seek. * I came 
 to do Thy will, O God.' It was the childlike 
 heart, absolutely true, never swerving by a hair's- 
 breadth from the line of duty, it was His perfect 
 obedience to a Father's will that kept Jesus in 
 
BLOOM OF THE WORLD' 31 
 
 perfect touch with His Father's world. Do you 
 remember how Wordsworth, speaking of the 
 man who does his duty, says : 
 
 ' Flowers laugh before thee in their beds 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads' ? 
 
 He means that nature ceases to be musical when 
 we are anywhere else than on the path of duty. 
 Here, then, is the secret of a happy summer, in 
 which all the world and you shall be in comrade- 
 ship. It is to be patient, brave, unselfi>h, kind, 
 and loyal. It is to accept the cross. It is to be 
 true. To see the beautiful, you must be dutiful. 
 It is a most strange world. ' Blessed are the 
 pure in heart, for they shall see God ' — even in 
 the lilies of the field. 
 
MISTAKEN MAGNITUDES 
 
 Ve blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. — 
 Matt, xxiii. 24. 
 
 It was one great complaint of our Lord against 
 the Pharisees, that they had lost the relative 
 magnitude of things. They were very much in 
 earnest about that Jewish law ; but for all that 
 they had sadly misinterpreted the law. They 
 laid great stress upon the infinitely little, until 
 the weightier matters of it passed out of sight. 
 They magnified trifles — husbanded their rush- 
 lights till they forgot that the stars were in the 
 sky. It is that spirit which Jesus is rebuking in 
 the familiar proverb of our text. Ye blind guides, 
 (this is what He means) cannot you see that some 
 things are great and some are little ? If there are 
 larger and lesser lights in the great heavens, will 
 there not be kindred differences in God's other 
 firmaments ? It is the evil of not seeing things 
 in true proportion that is present to the mind of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
MISTAKEN MAGNITUDES 33 
 
 Now it is on that subject that I wish to speak 
 to-night ; for one of the great arts of worthy 
 living is to see things in their relative importance. 
 I have known so many who failed in what was 
 worthiest, not because they were weaker than 
 their neighbours — for the strongest of us is piti- 
 fully weak — they failed not because they were 
 weaker than the others, but because they never 
 seemed able to grasp the difference between things 
 that were really great and really little. Mr. 
 Froude, in his Spanish Story of the Armada, 
 makes a significant remark about the Spanish 
 king. He is showing the incompetence of 
 Philip II., and he says : ' the smallest thing and 
 the largest seemed to occupy him equally.' That 
 was one mark of Philip the Second's incompetence. 
 That gave the worst of all possible starts to the 
 Armada. And for the equipping of nobler vessels 
 than these galleons, and the fighting of sterner 
 battles than they fought, that spirit spells incom- 
 petency still. It is a great thing to know a trifle 
 when you meet it. It is a great thing to know that 
 gossamer is gossamer. It is equally great, when 
 the decisive moment comes, to seize it and use it 
 with every power of manhood. It is such swift 
 
 c 
 
34 MISTAKEN MAGNITUDES 
 
 distinguishing between the great and little, such 
 vision of the relative magnitude of things, that is 
 one secret of a quiet and conquering life. 
 
 Now I think that this gift of seeing things in 
 their true magnitudes is very difficult to exercise 
 to-day. We live in such a hurried fashion now, 
 that we have little leisure to take these moral 
 measurements. When I am travelling sixty miles 
 an hour in the express, I have very hazy thoughts 
 about the country. Villages, towns, meadows, 
 woods, go flashing by, but the speed is too fierce 
 for accurate observing. So with our lives to-day; 
 they hurry forward so. The morning paper has 
 hardly been unfolded, when the children are cry- 
 ing the evening paper in the streets. The wide 
 world's news comes crowding in on us ; we are 
 spectators of an endless panorama. And all this 
 change, and movement, and variety, while it makes 
 men more eager, more intense and responsive, 
 is not conducive to a well-balanced judgment. 
 We are a great deal sharper now than men were 
 once. I do not think we are a great deal deeper. 
 It is the still waters that run deep, and stillness 
 is hardly a characteristic of the city. I have often 
 been humbled, when I lived among them, at the 
 
MISTAKEN MAGNITUDES 35 
 
 wise judgment of some Highland shepherd. 
 The man was not clever ; he read little but his 
 Bible ; his brilliant son was home with his prizes 
 from college, and I dare say, in the eyes of his 
 brilliant son, the father was fifty years behind the 
 times. But you get the shepherd on to moral 
 questions, on to the relative magnitude of things, 
 and spite of all the Greek and Latin of the prize- 
 winner — and the father is infinitely proud of these 
 bright eyes — spite of the Greek and Latin of the 
 son, you recognise the father as the greater man. 
 Something has come to him amid the silent hills ; 
 the spirit of the lonely moor has touched him ; he 
 has wrestled with a few great truths, a few great 
 sorrows, alone, amid the rolling miles of heather. 
 And it is that discipline of thoughtful quietude, 
 controlling and purifying the moral judgment, 
 that puts the keenest intellect to shame. 
 
 This failure to see things in their true propor- 
 tions is often seen in relation to our grievances. 
 When a man has a grievance — and many men have 
 them — he is almost certain to have distorted vision. 
 You can block out the sun by the smallest coin if 
 you hold the coin near ©nough to the eye. And 
 we have a way of dwelling on our grievances, till 
 
26 MISTAKEN MAGNITUDES 
 
 we lose sight of the blue heaven above us. How 
 ready we are to brood on petty insults ! How 
 we take them home with us and nurse and fondle 
 them ! How we are stung by trifling neglects ! 
 A little discourtesy, and our soul begins to fester ! 
 And though hearts are just as warm to us to-day 
 as they were yesterday, when we responded to 
 them ; and though the great tides of the deep 
 love of God rise to their flood, still, on every 
 shore, it is strange how a man will be blind to all 
 the glory, when a little bitterness is rankling within. 
 We are all adepts at counting up our grievances. 
 Open a new column and count your mercies now. 
 It is supremely important to see things in their 
 magnitudes, and perhaps you have never learned 
 that lesson yet. The man who suspects is always 
 judging wrongly. A jealous woman sees every- 
 thing out of focus. If there be any virtue, if 
 there be any praise, think on these things, says the 
 apostle. 
 
 Of course I am aware that the failure to see 
 things in their true proportions has sometimes 
 got physical and not moral roots. There come 
 days when the grasshopper proves itself a burden, 
 and the simple reason is that we are weary. Let 
 
MISTAKEN MAGNITUDES 37 
 
 a man be vigorous, and strong, and well, and he 
 can take the measurement of his worries very 
 easily. But when he is fagged with the winter 
 toil of a great city we know what alarming pro- 
 portions trifles take. It is well that a man should 
 remember in such moments that this is the body 
 of our humiliation. Christ understood that matter 
 thoroughly — * Come ye apart,' He said, * and rest 
 awhile.' The disciples were overstrung and over- 
 wrought, and the tact and tenderness of Jesus 
 dealt with that. What the men wanted was a 
 little rest. Never accept the verdict of your 
 weariness. Never judge anything when you are 
 tired. We are so apt to be jaundiced and think 
 bitter things, when all that we want is a little rest 
 and sunshine. All that will come, the birds will 
 sing again ; the dew of May morning will sparkle 
 on the grass. We shall see things in their true 
 proportions then. Meantime trust thou in God, 
 and play the man. 
 
 In this connection, too, I find a gleam of glory 
 in the beneficent efl^ects of sleep. Of all the 
 secondary ministries of God for helping us to sec 
 things as they are, there is none quite so wonder- 
 ful as sleep. Wc go to rest troubled, perplexed, 
 
38 MISTAKEN MAGNITUDES 
 
 despondent. We cannot see how we shall get 
 through at all. But when we waken, how different 
 things are ! Sleep has knit up the ravelled sleeve 
 of care. Now, Jesus loved to speak of death as 
 sleep. He seems to have kept that word death 
 in reserve, as the name for something darker and 
 more terrible. Tennyson talks of ' the death that 
 cannot die,' and I think that is what Jesus meant 
 by death. Our ^ death/ for Christ, was sleep, and 
 sleep is the passage to a glad awaking. Shall 
 not that sleep do for us what to-night's will do, 
 and help us to see things truly in the morning } 
 Then we shall know even as we are known. 
 There will be no mistaken magnitudes in heaven. 
 There will be iio errors in proportion there. We 
 shall no longer be blind to the relative importance 
 of things that confused us when we fell asleep. 
 The love at home that we despised down here, 
 and the selfishness that made those whom we loved 
 unhappy, and the work we tried to do with so 
 much failure, and the exquisite joys, and the 
 bitterness of tears — all these we shall see at last 
 in their true magnitudes when we awaken in the 
 eternal morning. 
 
 Meantime we are on this side of the grave. 
 
MISTAKEN MAGNITUDES 39 
 
 There are heavy mists lying along the valley. I 
 want to ask, then^ what are the gospel powers that 
 help a man to see things as they are ? 
 
 First, then, remember that the gospel which we 
 preach puts love at the very centre of our life. 
 It makes all the difference what you put first and 
 foremost, and the gospel of Jesus Christ puts love 
 there. That was the tragedy of these poor 
 Pharisees. It is always a tragedy when love dies 
 out. When anything else than love is at the 
 centre, the gnats and the camels are certain to 
 get mixed. For love alone sees purely, clearly, 
 deeply. Love always seeks the best interpreta- 
 tion. Love never makes the most of petty faults. 
 The windows of love are of the finest glass. 
 And it is that spirit of loving interpretation that 
 helps a Christian to see things as they are. If 
 without love I never can know God, then without 
 love I never can know anything. For every 
 blackthorn that breaks into snow-white blossom, 
 and every bird that is winging its way from Africa, 
 and every human heart, however vile, has some- 
 thing of the Creator in its being. Take away 
 God, and things are chaos to me. And without 
 love, I never can know God. You understand. 
 
40 MISTAKEN MAGNITUDES 
 
 then, the wisdom of Jesus Christ in putting love 
 at the centre of our life. It focuses everything. 
 It links the little and the great with the Creator, 
 and brings things to their relative importance. 
 
 And then the gospel takes our threescore years 
 and ten and lays them against the background of 
 eternity. And a life is like a painting in this 
 respect, a great deal depends upon the back- 
 ground. Are there any artists here to-night ? 
 You have been charged with making your 
 colouring too strong. Men say it is a beautiful 
 and powerful picture, but the hill, and the sun- 
 set, and the breaking waves, were never so intense 
 and vivid as that. The likelihood is that they are 
 far more vivid ; but the hills and the sunsets are 
 not framed^ in nature. Your canvas has got to 
 end abruptly ; but nothing in nature ever ends 
 like that. Things stretch away into infinite dis- 
 tances there. There is not a tree and there is 
 not a wave but is part of the one grand colour- 
 scheme of God. And it is because you have to 
 isolate a little part, and take it out of its setting in 
 the expanse, that men will tell you sometimes it is 
 exaggerated. Do you not think the same charges 
 will be made when we isolate our threescore years 
 
MISTAKEN MAGNITUDES 41 
 
 and ten ? The colours will always be too bright, 
 too dark, unless we remember the eternal setting. 
 And it is because Christ has brought immortality 
 to light that the Christian sees things in their true 
 proportions. I bid you remember that eternal 
 prospect. The efforts and strivings of our three- 
 score years are not adjusted to the scale of seventy, 
 they are adjusted to the scale of immortality. 
 This life is not the opera, it is the overture. 
 It is not the book, it is the first chapter of the 
 book. A man must be wakeful to his eternal 
 destiny if he would know the magnitude of 
 things. 
 
 And then the gospel brings us into fellowship 
 with Christ, and that is our last great lesson in 
 proportion. The heart that takes its measure- 
 ments from Jesus is likely to be pretty near 
 the truth. A great deal depends on the kind 
 of company you keep, as to what things are 
 to be important to you, and what not. It is 
 one of the hardest tasks of every earnest man 
 quietly to scorn the measurements of the world, 
 and in that task we are mightily helped by Christ. 
 His comradeship reinforces the true standards. 
 There is a scale of worth in the teaching of Christ 
 
42 MISTAKEN MAGNITUDES 
 
 Jesus to which the spirit instantly responds. 
 Cherish that comradeship. Live in that glorious 
 presence. Take your measure of the worth of 
 things from the Redeemer. And when the 
 journey is over, and the hill is climbed, and 
 you look back out of the cloudless dawn, I 
 think you will find that in the fellowship of Christ 
 you have been saved from many a mistaken 
 magnitude. 
 
LAUGHTER AND SORROW 
 
 Even in laughtar the heart is sorrowful. — Prov. xiv, 13. 
 
 Few men have had larger experience of life than 
 Solomon, and few have directed a more penetrat- 
 ing gaze on the strange drama that was unfolding 
 round them. The court of kings is a proverbial 
 theatre of human nature, and Solomon was 
 familiar with court life all his days. He had 
 known saints of God like his own father David. 
 He had been in touch with men and women of 
 all nations. Our text, then, is not the utterance 
 of a recluse, but of one who had large experience 
 of humanity. 
 
 And it is notable that, for the writers of His 
 Bible, it was such men whom God generally chose. 
 It was not hermits, nor men who dwelt apart 
 from the great stir, who were honoured by Heaven 
 to be Heaven's penmen. It was men who had 
 known the strain and stress of living, who had 
 borne the burdens of that complex task, who 
 
 43 
 
44 LAUGHTER AND SORROW 
 
 had entered largely into the joy and sorrow that 
 blend in the light and shadow of the crowd. 
 Moses was no stranger to the rich life of Egypt. 
 David had passed from shepherding to kingship. 
 The prophets of Israel were inspired statesmen, 
 intensely alive to the needs and to the trend of 
 the national life in which they found themselves. 
 And Paul was at home in any company. 
 
 Now do you see the reason of this choice of 
 instruments ? I do not think that it is far to 
 seek. It is that we might catch the accent of a 
 brother's voice, and feel the impress of a brother's 
 hand, in the Word divine which comes to lead us 
 heavenward. The greatest books do not speak 
 to us as strangers. They are not voices from 
 regions where we have never journeyed. They 
 interpret and illuminate these inarticulate longings 
 in us, which crave for utterance yet cannot find it. 
 And the Bible is the greatest of the great in that 
 sense, that it pulsates and throbs with sweet and 
 mysterious brotherhood. It was vitally necessary, 
 if this book were to grip, that it should not reach 
 the heart as something alien. And one of God's 
 methods for making that impossible was to use 
 Solomon and the prophets and Paul as messengers. 
 
LAUGHTER AND SORROW 
 
 45 
 
 So to our text then. And there are three 
 truths that flash on me out of it. The first is 
 the difference between outward and inward life. 
 Even in laughter — Hark ! how it rings and 
 echoes ! Is it not the sign and index of a cloud- 
 less heart ? But even in laughter, says Solomon, 
 the heart is sorrowful. He is thinking of the 
 duality of life. 
 
 Now that is one of the discoveries we make 
 with growing intimacy. It is part of the joy, and 
 part of the pain, of friendship, that it comes to 
 find under the outward habit a world of things 
 it never suspected once. No men or women 
 worthy of the name would wear their heart upon 
 their sleeve * for daws to peck at.' There is a 
 reserve which is inseparable from true dignity, 
 in the common intercourse of daily life. But as 
 intimacy ripens the barriers are broken, glimpses 
 are had of things we never dreamed of ; there 
 are hills that reach heavenward, and valleys strewn 
 with boulders, there are ripening harvests, and 
 gardens with a grave in them, all in the mystical 
 country of the heart ; and we were walking in 
 darkness and we never saw them, till the sunrise 
 of friendship quickened in the east. You never 
 
46 LAUGHTER AND SORROW 
 
 would have thought, when you first met him, that 
 that rough and rude and somewhat boisterous 
 man had a heart as tender as a httle child's. 
 And you may meet a woman casually twenty 
 times, and she is always bright and always 
 interested ; it is only long afterwards that you 
 discover that there was a shrouded cross and a 
 hidden sorrow there. That, then, is one of the 
 gains and pains of friendship : it reveals to us the 
 / duality of life. 
 
 Now in all our Lord's dealing with men and 
 women we feel that this difference between the 
 outward and the inward was before Him. You 
 will not grasp the influence of Jesus, in all its 
 wonderful impact on mankind, unless you bear in 
 mind this strange duality. I do not refer to the 
 methods of our Saviour in dealing with those who 
 were consciously insincere. Christ unmasked 
 hypocrites instantly and terribly : the Light was 
 far too strong for that disguise. What I mean 
 is that under all outward seeming our Lord 
 discerned the struggle of the heart ; He was 
 never misled by laughter or by speech ; He 
 never ignored all that we cannot utter. And 
 if the woman of Samaria felt that she had found 
 
Laughter and sorrow 47 
 
 a friend ; if Zaccheus was not despised, nor 
 Matthew scorned ; if the lawless and intractable 
 zealot was redeemed ; if Peter was ransomed and 
 rescued from himself — there was the insight of 
 love in it, the genius of the heart ; there was 
 the knowledge that life is deeper, richer, sadder, 
 than is ever to be gathered from a surface- 
 view. 
 
 Tliat, then, is the first truth in our text. The 
 second is this : Sorrow and joy are strangely knit 
 together. Even in laughter the heart is sorrow- 
 ful. 
 
 If you have ever lived in a little town or 
 village you know how life is intermingled there. 
 The classes are not separated as in the cities ; 
 they blend insensibly into one another. Children 
 of all stations go to school together ; the better- 
 off have companions in very humble homes ; 
 the banker and the blacksmith will be excellent 
 friends. 
 
 Now all that intermingling of a more primitive 
 life resembles the intermingling of our being. 
 We are each of us knit together into unity by 
 bonds too subtle for any to detect. How often 
 a man's faults are virtues in excess ! How all 
 
48 LAUGHTER AND SORROW 
 
 that is darkest interweaves with what is brightest ! 
 It is that intermingling of the light and shadow 
 that makes the moral government of life so 
 intricate. And could anything be more opposed 
 than joy to sorrow ? There seems to be a broad 
 world between the two. The one is sunshine, 
 the other is cloud. The one is music, the other 
 is a cry. The one is the summer-time bathed in 
 warmth and light, the other is the wailing of the 
 wind in the late autumn. Surely there can be 
 no kinship of these two.'' Ah, yes ! even in 
 laughter the heart is sorrowful. There is a 
 mystical union between our smiles and tears. 
 Solomon saw, what you and I have seen, that 
 sorrow and joy are strangely knit together. 
 
 We see this in the lives of our greatest men, 
 for instance. It is one of the lessons we learn 
 from great biographies. The greatest are very 
 seldom solemn, and certainly they are almost 
 never joyless. Mohammed had drunk deep of 
 the sorrows of mankind, yet ' Mohammed,' says 
 a Scottish professor in a very charming essay, 
 ' Mohammed had that indispensable requisite of 
 a great man, he could laugh.* Luther was 
 plunged into a sea of trouble, yet the laughter 
 
LAUGHTER AND SORROW 49 
 
 of Luther was notoriously boisterous. The latest 
 biographer of Lord Tennyson — Sir Alfred Lyall 
 — says that the laughter of Tennyson was 
 triumphant ; yet it was Tennyson who wrote 
 the In Memoriam. True joy is not the mere 
 escape from sorrow. It may be that the capacity 
 for gladness is but the other side of the capacity 
 for pain. In the lives of the greatest, then, we 
 learn this lesson, that sorrow and joy are strangely 
 knit together. 
 
 We find this also in our own greatest moments, 
 when the fire of life flashes up in some fierce 
 intensity. When the heart throbs, and feeling is 
 enkindled, and every nerve is quivering with 
 emotion, we scarcely know if we are sorry or 
 glad. It is a master-touch of our master 
 dramatist that in the very heart of his tragedies 
 you will have some fool or jester. It means far 
 more than a mere relief from the agony ; it means 
 that the light and the shadow are akin. Has no 
 one, after some great hour, said this to you : ' I 
 did not know whether to laugh or cry * ^ It 
 ought to have been an hour of exquisite gladness, 
 and in the midst of the gladness came the tears. 
 I see from the newspapers that this is a great 
 
 D 
 
50 LAUGHTER AND SORROW 
 
 time for marriages ; and if there is any day in 
 life that should be cloudless, would you not 
 expect it to be the day of bridal ? Yet even in 
 the marriage-service comes the shadow, * Until 
 God shall separate the twain by death.' That, 
 then, is one mark of our greatest hours. They 
 intermingle and interfuse these opposites. There 
 have come moments to every one of us, 
 when sorrow and joy were strangely knit 
 together. 
 
 And do you not think that is true of Jesus 
 Christ ^ It is one of the mysteries of that 
 perfect life. He was a Man of sorrows and 
 acquainted with grief; His soul was exceeding 
 sorrowful, even unto death. Yet through it all, 
 and in the midst of it, our adorable Lord is 
 talking of His joy. Do you remember the 
 Mount of Transfiguration ^ Was it not an hour 
 of spiritual glory? Whatever else it was, and 
 it was much else, it was the herald and harbinger 
 of resurrection gladness. Yet even in that hour 
 there was the agony : they spake of the decease 
 He should accomplish at Jerusalem. * My joy' 
 — and yet He was the Man of sorrows. ' My 
 peace ' — and yet * Why hast Thou forsaken Me ? ' 
 
LAUGHTER AND SORROW 51 
 
 Sorrow and joy are strangely knit together in the 
 human experience of Jesus Christ. 
 
 That, then, is the second truth. And now, very 
 briefly, the third and the deepest is this. Sorrow 
 lies nearer to the heart of life than joy. Even in 
 laughter the heart is sorrowful : at the back of all 
 there is the hearths unrest. 
 
 Now I think that even language bears this out; 
 and language becomes very illuminative when we 
 study it. We never talk about a heavy joy : we 
 only talk about a heavy grief. Happiness bubbles 
 up or ripples over ; there is some suggestion of 
 the surface in it. But sorrow is heavy, and what 
 that implies is this, that when God casts it into 
 the sea of life it sinks by its own weight into the 
 deeps. Joy is most real, thank God, intensely 
 real. It is only the pessimist who would call joy 
 a mockery. But underneath all laughter is a pain, 
 a craving that gnaws, a sorrow we cannot baffle ; 
 even in our language there is the sad suggestion 
 that sorrow lies nearer to the heart of life than joy. 
 
 I sometimes think that our Lord had this in 
 mind when He said in His sermon, * Blessed are 
 they that mourn.* They were to be comforted in 
 far other and nobler ways than any one on that 
 
52 LAUGHTER AND SORROW 
 
 hillside understood. The mourner is blessed, not 
 merely because hands may be held out to him, and 
 not because the roughest may grow kind. But 
 he is blessed because sorrow sounds the deeps, and 
 if rightly taken makes the surface-life impossible. 
 For sorrow lies nearer to the heart of life than joy, 
 and to get near life's heart is always blessed. 
 
 But whether that be so or not, this one thing 
 I see clearly. Unless this proverb of Solomon 
 prove itself true, the cross is not life's true inter- 
 pretation. In the centre of history stands the 
 cross of Calvary, and the cross is the epitome of 
 woe. And if life's deepest secret be gladness and 
 not sorrow, if laughter run deeper into the heart 
 than tears, then the cross, that professes to touch 
 the deepest depths, can be nothing but a tragical 
 mistake. I do not think that we have found it 
 so. I do not think that the cross has ever failed 
 us. The deepest music that our heart ever uttered 
 has blended and chimed with the sad strain of 
 Calvary. It is a great thing to have a man like 
 Solomon telling us that even in laughter the 
 heart is sorrowful. But it is greater still to have 
 a risen Saviour, who sealed that in the sorrow 
 of the Cross. 
 
THE PAGAN DUTY OF DISDAIN 
 
 Take heed that ye despise not one of these littJe ones. — 
 Matt, xviii. lo. 
 
 It has often been noticed that the spirit of 
 contempt is very strongly developed among 
 savage races. A savage is nurtured to hate or 
 to despise. Between his own tribe and every 
 other tribe there is a deep and quite impassable 
 gulf, and it has never entered into the savage 
 heart that love or kindness should seek to bridge 
 that chasm. If other tribes are powerful they 
 must be hated. If they are weak they must be 
 treated with contempt. It is one article, then, 
 in the sad creed of every savage, that there is 
 virtue in despising others. 
 
 And when we pass from the wild life of 
 savagery to the civilisations of the ancient 
 world, the remarkable thing is that we are im- 
 mediately confronted with the same spirit of 
 contemptuous disdain. We might have hoped 
 
 63 
 
54 THE PAGAN DUTY OF DISDAIN 
 
 that the culture of the Greek, and his swift 
 appreciation of all things of beauty, would have 
 given him a large sympathy with mankind. We 
 might have expected that the world-conquering 
 Roman, strong in his masculine sense of law and 
 order, would have been too large-hearted to be- 
 little. And above all, we might have trusted 
 that the Jew, to whom had been granted the 
 vision of the eternal, would have learned in the 
 great glory of that vision to call nothing common 
 or unclean. But history tells us a very different 
 story. The old world is flooded with the spirit 
 of contempt. And we do not need to go beyond 
 the Bible story to learn how the Greek looked 
 down on the barbarian, or how the Jew disdained 
 the Gentile world. Everywhere, then, where the 
 spirit of Christ is not, we are confronted with 
 the spirit that contemns. A Christless world, if 
 it believes in anything, believes in the holy duty 
 of disdaining. And it is like the courage of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ that He dared to Hft up His 
 voice against the past, to charge it with error in 
 its cherished virtues, to tell it it had gone utterly 
 astray. For all this our blessed Lord was doing, 
 when He taught the lesson of not despising others. 
 
THE PAGAN DUTY OF DISDAIN 55 
 
 Of course we must distinguish this despising 
 from what I might call the passion of noble scorn. 
 A man is a poor creature and a poorer Christian, 
 if he has lost his capacity for scorn. There are 
 deeds that a right-thinking man will scorn to do. 
 There are books that an earnest heart will scorn 
 to read. And there are men and women whom 
 a heaven-touched soul would scorn to number in 
 its list of friends. A man is out of line with 
 Jesus Christ who cannot kindle into scorn of 
 anything. For if ever in the world there was 
 the passion of scorn, it was in the heart of Jesus 
 in the Temple, when He raised His whip and 
 drove the traders out. Such scorn as that is a 
 very holy thing. It is the kindling of a man's 
 best into a flame. It is all that is purest and 
 most divine within us raised to white-heat by 
 intolerable evil. And a man must be very luke- 
 warm for the right, and have sadly confused 
 weakness with charity, who is never stirred so 
 in a world like this. But to despise is something 
 very different. There is nothing of moral passion 
 in despising. It does not spring from any love 
 of goodness. It is not rooted in any hate of 
 wrong. True scorn is an utterly self-forgetful 
 
S6 THE PAGAN DUTY OF DISDAIN 
 
 thing. But the man who despises is always full of 
 self 
 
 And I think it is not difficult to see the evil 
 that is wrought by the spirit of contempt. It was 
 as the champion of the weak and the oppressed, 
 and that they might have an atmosphere to grow 
 in, that our Lord spoke so sternly of despising. 
 It is easy to be good when we are loved. It is 
 not very hard to play the man when we are hated. 
 But to be courteous, charitable, gentle, loving, 
 kind, when all the time we know we are despised, 
 is a task that would try the powers of an angel. 
 There is nothing so likely to make a brother 
 despicable, as just to let him see that you despise 
 him. There is nothing so certain to touch the 
 flowers with frost-bite, and chill the air, and make 
 the spirit bitter. And I think that Jesus Christ 
 hated contempt, and banished it imperiously from 
 the kingdom, that chilled and suppressed hearts 
 might have a chance. There is only one thing 
 worse than being despised by others. And that 
 is to be despised by one's own self. 
 
 And let me say in passing that we must bear 
 that in mind if we would really know the beauty 
 of Christ*s character. The wonder of it is 
 
THE PAGAN DUTY OF DlplMlN 57 
 
 deepened a thousandfold for me, when I re- 
 member that He was despised. If it is hard for 
 you to hold fast to lovely and lowly things, if 
 it is difficult to be good and to be tender, when 
 in the eyes that look on you you see contempt, 
 you may be sure it was not less hard for Jesus. 
 Nay, on the contrary, it was far harder ; for 
 Jesus was far more sensitive than you. We 
 have all been dulled and coarsened by our sin ; 
 Jesus alone knew nothing of that coarsening. 
 In looks that we could never have interpreted, 
 in words whose sting we never should have felt, 
 Christ felt in its bitterness that He was despised : 
 yet what can match the beauty of His character ? 
 Had it been only antagonism that confronted 
 Him, I think I could understand Christ Jesus 
 better. For a man is often roused by fierce 
 antagonism till all his slumbering powers take the 
 field. But that Jesus of Nazareth should have 
 wakened every morning and said to His heart, 
 I shall be despised to-day ; that He should 
 have gone every evening to His rest saying 
 to His heart. To-day I was despised ; and that 
 in spite of that He should have moved on to 
 the cross, brave, tender, loving — that is the great 
 
58 THE PAGAN DUTY OF DISDAIN 
 
 mystery for me. May it not have been because 
 our Lord knew to its uttermost the temptations 
 of the soul that is despised, that He spoke so 
 strongly on not despising others ? 
 
 Now what are the sources of this contemptuous 
 spirit? Why is it we are so ready to despise? 
 Well, I take it that contempt has two main roots, 
 and the first of them is want of understanding. 
 There is a great text in Job of which I often think ; 
 it occurs where Elihu is justifying God to men. 
 And he says, * God is mighty and despiseth not 
 any; He is great in strength of understanding.' 
 Now Elihu was not a very brilliant person ; one 
 can hardly imagine even patient Job listening 
 patiently to Elihu's preaching. But I could 
 forgive Elihu a whole volume of commonplace 
 for this one thought that flashed on his poor 
 brain. For Elihu means that just because God 
 is great, and knows each separate heart with 
 perfect knowledge, and reads, without an error 
 in one syllable, the intricate story of the worst 
 and weakest, because of that^ God is a God of 
 pity : ' He is mighty and despiseth not any.' 
 That means that if we knew our brother as God 
 knows him, we should never dare to despise him 
 
THE PAGAN DUTY OF DISDAIN 59 
 
 any more. In the last analysis man may be a 
 sinner, but in the last analysis — thank God — 
 man is not despicable. If only we knew what 
 the weakest and worst had borne, if only we 
 understood how they were tempted, if we could 
 read the story of their secret battle, could fathom 
 their wretchedness, could hear their cry ; if 
 only we realised that under that dull exterior 
 there are heaven, hell, loneliness, cravings, love, 
 I think we should cease despising in that 
 hour. God understands all that, and therefore 
 despises no one. We despise because we do not 
 know. 
 
 And then the other root is want of love. 
 Where love is, there can be no contempt. 
 A man may have twenty despicable traits, but 
 to the one who loves him he is still a hero. 
 And that is why, in the love of Christian homes, 
 men who are not thought much of in the city 
 are sometimes wonderfully good and gentle. 
 They are not hypocrites. It is the absence of 
 even the suspicion of contempt at home that 
 brings out all that is best and brightest in them. 
 I have se«n a deformed or crippled little boy or 
 girl sadly despised in the playground and the 
 
So THE PAGAN DUTY OF DISDAIN 
 
 street. They have had to stand many a bitter 
 jest — for children can be terribly cruel. But 
 though all the playground despise the shrunken 
 limbs, and make very merry at the arrested brain, 
 there is one at home who would sooner lie down 
 in her grave, than think of despising that little 
 shattered frame. Where a mother's love is, there 
 is no contempt. It is want of love, then, and 
 want of understanding, that lie at the roots of 
 most of our despising. And the question I wish 
 to ask in closing is this : How does the gospel of 
 Jesus combat that ? Christ never says do this, and 
 leaves us there. When He commands, He gives 
 the power to fulfil. And I wish to ask what are 
 these powers, that have been called into action by 
 the Christian gospel, to banish the contemptuous 
 spirit from the kingdom '^ 
 
 First, then, there is the height of the ideal that 
 dawns on a man when he becomes a Christian. 
 In his new standards of the measurements of 
 things, there is less difference between him and 
 others than he thought. A little green hillock 
 of some thirty feet high might well despise the 
 molehill in the field. But place them both under 
 the shadow of Ben Nevis, and there is little room 
 
THE PAGAN DUTY OF DISDAIN 6i 
 
 for boasting or contempt. The schoolboy who 
 has mastered Cassar despises his junior still strug- 
 gling with the rudiments. But in the presence 
 of a ripe Latin scholar there is not so much 
 difference between the brothers after all. Just 
 so when a man sees little higher than himself, it 
 is tolerably easy to despise. But when the ideal 
 is lifted into the glory of Christ our superiority 
 has a strange trick of vanishing. It was the 
 Pharisee, whose standard of all things was the 
 Pharisee, who thanked God that he was not as 
 other men. But the poor publican, with his 
 God-touched conscience, and his vision of the 
 splendour and purity of heaven, could only cry^ 
 ' God be merciful to me the sinner.' With 
 such heights to scale, and with such depths to 
 loathe, it was impossible to despise the sorriest 
 brother. And every man who has been wakened 
 to the eternal has been wakened to the sight of 
 heights and depths like that. It is that heighten- 
 ing and deepening that comes through Christ 
 that robs a man of shallow self-content. And 
 to -rob a man of shallow self-content is a sure 
 way to guard him from despising. 
 
 And then the gospel insists on human brother- 
 
62 THE PAGAN DUTY OF DISDAIN 
 
 hood. * Our Father which art in heaven ' is its 
 prayer. Did the cultured Greek look down on 
 the barbarian ? Did the elect and covenanted 
 Jew despise the Gentile ? Did the free man 
 look with an infinite disdain upon the slave ? 
 Clear as a trumpet, strong as the voice of God, 
 there rang this message on a dying world : There 
 is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, 
 bond nor free, but all are one in Christ. Yes, 
 and when that word of command was obeyed, 
 and the gospel of Jesus was carried to the heathen, 
 and when the peace and hope and joy and com- 
 fort of it was offered in all its fulness to the 
 slave, slowly, like a dark cloud, the contemptuous 
 spirit of paganism scattered, and the star of 
 brotherhood rose in the sky. It is our kinship 
 in Christ, then, that is blotting out contempt. 
 It is our brotherhood that has lightened that 
 burden of despising. God meant us to be 
 like that tiny lass in Edinburgh who was carry- 
 ing a strapping infant in her arms, and when a 
 stranger said, ' Why, what a burden for you,* 
 Rhc answered, ' Please, sir, he 's no a burden, he *s 
 my brother.' 
 
 But the greatest power ®f all has still to be 
 
THE PAGAN DUTY OF DISDAIN 63 
 
 named. It is the life and death of our Saviour 
 Jesus Christ. No man can struggle to be true 
 to that ideal, nor feel the love that brought Him 
 to the cross, but the contemptuous spirit we are 
 all so prone to will take to itself wings and fly- 
 away. I ask you to trace the story of that life, 
 and tell me if you find a trace of despising there. 
 The fact is, Christ was despised for not despising : 
 the Jew could never understand His charity. 
 Did He despise the woman of Samaria though 
 all her village held her in contempt ? Did He 
 despise the publican, the harlot ? Did He ever 
 look with disdain on little children ^ Christ saw 
 the worst as you have never seen it — felt all the 
 loathsomeness and guilt of sin — yet for the worst 
 aU things were possible yet ; there was some chord 
 still capable of music. The sorriest sinner was 
 good enough to live for. The sorriest sinner 
 was good enough to die for. A man may be 
 poor, unsuccessful, vulgar, very dull ; but if he 
 can say ' Christ Jesus died for me,* I do not think 
 I shall despise that man again. 
 
NEAR-CUTS NOT GOD'S 
 
 God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, 
 although that was near. — Ex. xiii. 17. 
 
 It is strange to think that by the straight road it 
 was a tolerably brief journey from Egypt to 
 Palestine. Four or five days' hard marching, by 
 the route that is now common with the traders, 
 would have brought the children of Israel to the 
 promised land. Four or five days would have 
 done it comfortably ; yet Israel took forty years 
 to do it. And we know the hardships, and the 
 sorrows, and the battlings, that filled with bitter- 
 ness these forty years. Yet for all that, the 
 leadership was God's. The pillar of cloud and 
 fire led the advance. The longest way round was 
 the shortest way home. There was a near-cut, 
 certainly ; but here, at any rate, the near-cut was 
 not God's. 
 
 And it is not difficult to see with sufficient clear- 
 ness some of God's reasons for this roundabout. 
 
 64 
 
NEAR-CUTS NOT GOD'S, 65 
 
 The Bible uplifts the veil a little, and we find first 
 that there was compassion in it. That near way 
 was through the land of the Philistines, and the 
 Philistines were skilled and subtle in the arts of 
 war. To have brought Israel face to face with 
 them — Israel, fresh from the stubble-field, and 
 with the broken spirit of the slave still in them — 
 to have done that might have been to have spoiled 
 everything, and to have sent them scattering and 
 headlong back to Egypt. The time was coming 
 when the armies of Israel would be more than a 
 match for any ranks of Philistines. The time was 
 coming — the Almighty was hastening it ; only the 
 time for that had not come yet. So by a thousand 
 lesser trials and combats, sharp brushes, unex- 
 pected difficulties, an all-compassionate God pre- 
 pared the rabble to be a disciplined army of the 
 Lord. And it took forty years to do that 
 thoroughly. It was a very compassionate pro- 
 traction. The road was very roundabout, granted. 
 But it was the right road for all that. 
 
 But there was more than compassion in it ; there 
 was education, and true compassion is generally 
 educative. We hardly realise what we should 
 have lost, nor how incalculably poorer the human 
 
 ' E 
 
66 ^EAR-CUTS NOT GOD'S 
 
 race would have been, if Israel had been permitted 
 the near-cut. Five days by the power of God 
 might have brought them to Canaan, but still 
 with Egypt and its bondage in their blood. It 
 took one night to take Israel out of Egypt, but 
 forty years to take Egypt out of Israel. And 
 when I think of all that Israel learned, in the 
 storm and the shadow of that devious journey ; 
 when I remember how it enriched and deepened 
 their knowledge of themselves, and of their God, 
 I feel that the purpose of the Divine was in it : 
 they were being educated for your sake and mine. 
 God led them not through the way of the 
 Philistines, though that was near. And we are 
 all debtors to that leadership. 
 
 That, then, was one feature of God's guidance. 
 It shunned the near road, and it took the round- 
 about ; and if you have been living with the 
 open eye, and watching the method of the Divine 
 in things, you have seen much that is analogous 
 to this. But we forget so readily, that it is part 
 of a preacher's office just to recall parallels at 
 times. Let us name, then, some of the larger 
 spheres, where again the near-cut was not 
 God's. 
 
NEAR-CUTS NOT GOD'S 67 
 
 Think of the discovery of nature's secrets : of 
 coal, of iron, of steam, of electricity. God formed 
 this world to be inhabited, said the prophet ; and 
 these great powers, or instruments of power, have 
 slumbered or flashed since the world was. And 
 a single whisper from God would have communi- 
 cated everything, and put mankind in possession 
 of the secrets. Five days ? — five moments might 
 have done it ; the world would have been at its 
 Canaan, so to speak. But God never led us that 
 way, though that way was near. There have been 
 centuries of patient toil and striving ; endless 
 mistake, long gropings in the dark ; there have 
 been sufferings and sacrifices in the cause of science, 
 as great as any of Israel in the desert ; and then, 
 and not till then, at that long last, did the secrets 
 of the world begin to dawn. It has been very 
 roundabout, that road to power ; but it has been 
 the right road, spite of its devious windings. 
 For the powers of nature would have mastered 
 us ; we should have been their slaves and not 
 their lords had we been faced by them, just after 
 Egypt. And in the efforts to know, to under- 
 stand, and to see, we have learned so much, and 
 have been so ennobled, that the roundabout has 
 
68 NEAR-CUTS NOT GOD'S 
 
 been a priceless blessing, and we are all debtors 
 to that leadership. 
 
 Or rising upward, think of the coming of 
 Jesus. I detect the same leadership of God in 
 that. I see in it the action of that Hand that 
 took Israel to Canaan by a circuit. What is the 
 meaning of all the old religions ? of the primitive 
 faiths that were old when Christ was born ? And 
 what is the meaning of these thousand sacrifices 
 that smoked on the altar of Gentile and of Jew .? 
 They mean that from the first dawn of history 
 man has been crying for a Saviour-God. Yet the 
 ages passed, and the Saviour never came. And 
 empires arose, and kingdoms passed away, and 
 philosophies were born and flowered and perished, 
 and the prophets prophesied and the psalmists 
 sung : and the world was dying, and all for want 
 of God. Surely, in response to the world's 
 need. He might have come a thousand years 
 before ! But God had no near way to Beth- 
 lehem. He led the world about ; and through 
 the desert, before He brought it to the king 
 at Nazareth. We see now that there was a 
 fulness of the time. There was kindness and 
 education on the road. The world had to be 
 
NEAR-CUTS NOT GOD'S 69 
 
 led so to be ready, and we are all debtors to that 
 leadership. 
 
 There is one other region where a similar 
 guidance of God is very evident. I refer to the 
 evangelising of the world. We talk of the 
 difficulties men feel about foreign missions. I 
 believe that one of the greatest of them all, when 
 one seriously thinks about the matter, is the 
 slow progress that missions seem to make. After 
 the resurrection, on that glad summer morning, 
 men bowed to the gospel Hke a field of corn. And 
 Jesus Christ is still the power of God : why, then, 
 are the nations not yielding to His love ? Is there 
 no near road to the heathen ? No thrill from the 
 Infinite that might tingle through Africa till twice 
 ten thousand cried aloud for Jesus ? Ah, it would 
 be exquisitely pleasing ; but you must remember 
 near-cuts are not God's. Slowly, along the roads 
 that commerce has opened, and by the highways 
 along which battle marched, leaving them blood- 
 red in her own grim way ; slowly, by a man here, 
 and by a woman there, and the men not saints, 
 but of like passions with ourselves — and by 
 unceasing labour, and by unrecorded sacrifice, the 
 world is being led to know of Jesus. And we 
 
70 NEAR-CUTS NOT GOD'S 
 
 have learned so much in that hard struggle, so 
 much of the world, so much of human nature ; 
 we have seen such love evolved, such courage and 
 such heroism, that we are all debtors to that 
 leadership. 
 
 Now so far I have been dwelling on larger 
 spheres ; but I should be sorry ever to close a 
 sermon without having a cast for individual souls. 
 I wish to tell you, then, of one thing I have 
 noticed in the Bible (and when a matter occurs 
 often there, you may be sure there is need for such 
 iteration), I have noticed that most of the high 
 and generous souls — the gallant spirits of the two 
 covenants, let me say — have been tempted with 
 the temptation to take the near-cut, and in the 
 power of God have conquered it. 
 
 Take Abraham, for instance. God had made 
 a promise to Abraham that all the land of Canaan 
 should be his. And Abraham dwelt in Canaan, 
 and he grew rich in it, and he owned not a foot of 
 it save his wife's grave. Do not you think he 
 had counsellors in his tent, and in his bosom, to 
 whisper to him, ' Abraham, arise ! thou hast a 
 host of followers ; go out and win the land ' ? 
 And Abraham could fight and conquer when he 
 
NEAR-CUTS NOT GOD'S 71 
 
 liked — witness his battle with the five kings for 
 Lot's sake. But he refused that near-cut to the 
 promise; scorned it: said God must fulfil, not I ; 
 and died in a strange country, dwelling in tents, 
 though God had pledged him Canaan for his own. 
 Tempted by the near road, he refused it. He felt 
 by faith that God's ways were roundabout. And 
 when he opened his eyes on the other side of Jordan, 
 and in the true Canaan saw the King in his beauty, 
 I warrant you he knew that God's road was best. 
 
 Or think of David. God had made a promise 
 to David, that the Kingdom of Israel would be 
 his. And David was persecuted and hunted in 
 the hills, till there came that never-to-be-forgotten 
 morning by the sheep-cotes, when Saul went into 
 the cave to cover his feet. And the men of David 
 said unto him, ' Behold the day of which the Lord 
 said unto thee : I will deliver thine enemy into 
 thine hand.' One stab, and his great enemy was 
 dead. The times were rough, and no one would 
 have blamed him. One cut — yes, a near-cut to 
 the throne. But * the Lord forbid that I should 
 do this thing ! ' David refused it ; put the thought 
 from him like poison. And when at last, after 
 Mount Gilboa, he came to his throne by the way 
 
72 NEAR-CUTS NOT GOD'S 
 
 that God appointed, I warrant you he felt God's 
 ways were best. 
 
 Or think with all reverence of Jesus Christ, 
 tempted in all points like as we are, yet without 
 sin. Why did He come to earth to live and die 
 for us, but that the kingdoms of this world 
 might become His ? And the devil taketh Him 
 up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth 
 Him all the kingdoms of the world, and saith to 
 Him : * All these things will I give Thee, if Thou 
 wilt fall down and worship me/ It was the old 
 temptation. I speak with utmost reverence — it 
 was Jesus being tempted by near ways. There 
 was a quicker and an easier road than Calvary. 
 * Ally Thyself, Jesus, in Thy magnificent powers 
 — ally Thyself with the spirit of the world, and 
 triumph is certain ; there need be no Gethsemane ; 
 men will be quick to feel the King in Thee, and 
 crown Thee.' Then saith Jesus unto him : ' Get 
 thee hence, Satan, for it is written thou shalt 
 worship the Lord thy God.' And when I think 
 of the long road of Jesus, round by the villages, 
 and through the Garden, and on to the cross, and 
 into the grave, I feel, if I never felt it in my life 
 before, that near-cuts are not God's. 
 
NEAR-CUTS NOT GOD'S 73 
 
 Now I want you to carry out that doctrine. 
 You want to be prosperous ? There is no near 
 road to that, consistent with Christian principle 
 and God. I often think of the gentleman who 
 said that the strongest temptation in his earlier 
 years was when the devil took him up into an 
 exceeding high mountain and showed him ten per 
 cent. And there is no near road to joy, nor to 
 Christian character ; you must go round by the 
 desert to that Canaan. Be patient. Do not be 
 showy, flashy. Hold to it, dourly, in the dark, 
 and go ahead. And though the way is strangely 
 roundabout, full of mistake and struggle and 
 secret cry, it will emerge, in the good time of God, 
 into the land that flows with milk and honey. 
 
THE DEPARTING OF THE ANGEL 
 
 And they went out, and passed on through one street, and forth- 
 with the angel departed from him. — Acts xli. lo. 
 
 In the verses that precede our text we have the 
 familiar story of Peter's release from prison. 
 Perhaps the story would have been still more 
 familiar, and would have impressed itself still 
 more vividly on Christendom, had it not been 
 overshadowed by that other scene, when Paul 
 and Silas sang in the gaol at Philippi. The world 
 would have been a great deal poorer but for its 
 prisons. We owe more to our prisons than we 
 think. Shining virtues have been developed in 
 them ; miracles of heaven have been wrought in 
 them; immortal literature has been written 
 in them, and these are things we could ill do 
 without. And we could not do without that 
 word of Jesus either — -Sick and in prison, and ye 
 visited Me. 
 
 Peter, then, had been imprisoned by Herod. 
 
 74 
 
THE DEPARTING OF THE ANGEL 75 
 
 He had been cast into the inmost ward. You 
 can hear door after door shut-to behind him, 
 with a re-echoing clang. And then, to make 
 assurance doubly sure, he is chained to two 
 soldiers as Paul was, afterwards, in Rome. Per- 
 haps Herod thought that if Peter *s Master, when 
 He was left for dead, had burst from the sealed 
 grave, it were well to make assurance doubly- 
 sure, when the prisoner was one of Jesus' hench- 
 men. But there were some truths that Herod 
 had yet to learn. And one of them was that 
 when God Almighty works, ' stone walls do not 
 a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.' Behold the 
 angel of the Lord came upon Peter, and a light 
 shined in the prison. You can shut out a man's 
 nearest and dearest from him, but no authority 
 can shut the angels out. And the angel touched 
 Peter, and the chains fell off him. And the angel 
 led him out from ward to ward. And the iron 
 gate swung back upon its hinges, and Peter was 
 out under the stars again. And the angel and 
 Peter passed on through one street, we read, and 
 forthwith the angel departed from him. 
 
 Now, do you see why the angel left the disciple 
 then ? There is strong doctrine in the departing 
 
76 THE DEPARTING OF THE ANGEL 
 
 of the angel. Sometimes the angels leave us for 
 our sin. We are so coarse, and evil-inclined and 
 worldly, it would stain and sully their white robes 
 to walk with us. They try it for one street — for 
 we have all our chance ; but it does not prove ' the 
 street which is called Straight.' There is always a 
 dying out of vision when a man or woman loses 
 the childlike heart, and the dying of vision is the 
 departing angel. Sometimes, then, the angel leaves 
 the soul — the brightness fades, the heavenlies 
 disappear, the presence of white-robed purity is 
 lost — and all because a man is growing worldly. 
 
 But that was clearly not the case with Peter. 
 Right to the end, through all the struggle and 
 the storm of life, Peter preserved, as only the 
 greatest do, the great heart of a little child. If 
 every child has got its guardian angel, I do not 
 think that Simon's would be lacking. Yet for all 
 that, when they had passed through one street, 
 forthwith the angel departed from Simon Peter. 
 And I think it is not difficult to see why. The 
 angel's work was done ; that is the point. There 
 was no more need for the ministry of miracle. 
 Peter was a man among men now ; in the familiar 
 streets, freed from his shackles, and with friends 
 
THE DEPARTING OF THE ANGEL 77 
 
 to go to — it was at that point the angel went 
 away. There was the presence of Christ for 
 Simon Peter now ; there was God in His eternal 
 law and love ; but there was no need for the 
 angel any more. His task was over when the 
 chains were snapt, and the last gate between Peter 
 and liberty swung wide. 
 
 I wonder if you grasp, then, what I should 
 venture to call the helpful doctrine of the depart- 
 ing angel ? I think it is a feature of God*s 
 dealing that has been somewhat neglected in 
 our thought. It means that in extraordinary 
 difficulties we may reasonably look for extra- 
 ordinary help. It means that when we are shut 
 in prison walls, and utterly helpless to extricate 
 ourselves, God has unusual powers in reserve, 
 that He is willing to dispatch to aid His own. But 
 when the clamant need goes, so does the angel. 
 In the open street, under the common sky, do 
 not expect miraculous intervention. It was better 
 for Peter's manhood, and it is better for yours, that 
 only the hour of the dungeon should bring that. 
 The angel departs, but the law of God abides. 
 The angel departs^ but the love of Christ remains. 
 And I think that all God's leading of His people, 
 
78 THE DEPARTING OF THE ANGEL 
 
 and all the experience of the Christian heart, might 
 be summed up, with not a little gain, in the 
 departing angel and the remaining Lord. 
 
 I want then to take that suggestion to-night 
 and bring it to bear on various spheres of life. 
 And first we shall think of Israel in the wilder- 
 ness. There was a helplessness about Israel in 
 the wilderness, like the helplessness of Peter in 
 the prison. It was a terrible journey through 
 that gloomy desert, twice terrible for these newly 
 emancipated slaves. There were mighty barriers 
 between them and Palestine quite as impassable 
 as any prison-doors. They would all have 
 perished but for angelic help. Hungry, the 
 flight of quails came from the sea, and the ground 
 was covered, in the red dawn, with manna. 
 Thirsty, there flowed a stream of water from the 
 rock, and they drank of the spiritual rock which 
 followed them. The Red Sea became a highway 
 for their feet, and they found a road right through 
 the swellings of Jordan. It was the angel of God 
 smiting their fetters off. It was the angel of 
 God bursting the gates before them. Out of the 
 dungeon and prison-house of Egypt they were 
 carried by the constraint of irresistible power. 
 
THE DEPARTING OF THE ANGEL 79 
 
 But then, when they reached Canaan and had, as 
 it were, passed through one street of it, forthwith 
 the angel departed from them. The manna 
 ceased to fall after one harvest. They drank no 
 more of the water from the rock. There came 
 days when they were hunted down by enemies, 
 yet the Jordan never stayed its flood again. 
 Jehovah was with them still in love and law ; the 
 mystical presence of Jesus was their shield. But 
 the need was past, the prison gates were broken, 
 and they learned the doctrine of the departing 
 angel. 
 
 Or we might think of the history of the 
 Christian church in this light. We might com- 
 pare Pentecost with after centuries. There was 
 a radiance and a spiritual glory about Pentecost, 
 that remind us at once of Peter and the angel. 
 There were tongues, as it were of fire, on every 
 head ; the doors of that upper room were opened 
 wide : the bonds of that little company were 
 loosed ; they were filled with joy, they got new 
 gifts of speech. It was a season of wonder and 
 of miracle ; it was the intervention of heaven for 
 an hour. And then the church passed on through 
 one street mystical, and forthwith the angel 
 
8o THE DEPARTING OF THE ANGEL 
 
 departed from them. Could Justin or Jerome or 
 Augustine work miracles ? Does God give any 
 missionary now the gift of tongues? Can we 
 heal the lame with a word as Peter did ? Can we 
 shake off the serpent as Paul did at Malta? 
 There are some men who would have us believe 
 we can ; and there are more who, knowing that 
 we cannot, think it impossible that it was ever 
 done. I beseech you to avoid these two mistakes. 
 Remember the doctrine of the departing angel. 
 We are out in the streets now, under the stars of 
 heaven ; miraculous ministries would simply ruin 
 our manhood. Once, when there were prison 
 gates to open, the angel came and gave the church 
 her liberty. But now the Lord is our shepherd 
 and our stay ; the grace of an abiding Christ 
 suffices. The angel has been summoned home to 
 God. 
 
 I think, too, that we become conscious of this 
 truth in the unfolding of our individual life. 
 There comes a time in the life of every one of us 
 when, not for our sin but for our deepest good, 
 the angel leaves us as he left Simon Peter. In 
 childhood we were very near the angels ; we 
 heard the beating of their wings sometimes, when 
 
THE DEPARTING OF THE ANGEL 8i 
 
 the world was hushed and everything was dark. 
 We never thought of law or will or character ; 
 we lived in a dreamland, and the great dream was 
 God. ' Heaven lies about us in our infancy.' 
 In my church in the far north — and a beautiful 
 church it was — we had curtains on each side of 
 the pulpit. The way into the pulpit was through 
 the curtains. And I often used to notice a tiny 
 girl gazing at these curtains with very eager eyes. 
 It was quite clear it was not the minister she was 
 looking at. It was whenever the curtains moved 
 that she would start and stare. I found out after- 
 wards what all the interest was. The little child 
 thought that heaven was behind the curtains. It 
 was only a wilderness of joists and planks ; but 
 she thought that Christ was there, she thought 
 that God was there ; she thought that the minister 
 stepped out from God into the pulpit, and every 
 time the curtain rustled — little heart, little eager, 
 beating hearf. ! who could tell but thou mightst 
 catch the shimmer of an angel there ? Ah, well, 
 she has passed on through one street since then, 
 and forthwith the angel has departed from her. 
 She will never mistake an organ-loft for heaven 
 again. She never expects to see the gleam of 
 
 F 
 
82 THE DEPARTING OF THE ANGEL 
 
 wings now. And it may be that she looks back 
 half wistfully to the day of glory in the grass and 
 splendour in the flower. But my point is that 
 the angel must depart, if we are to walk the street 
 of life in our true dignity. We are not here to 
 dream that heaven is near us ; we are here so to 
 live that heaven shall be within us. And if at 
 every turn the angel met us, and the vision of a 
 dream enchanted us, we should lose heart and 
 nerve and power for the struggle, and be like the 
 lotos-eaters in ignoble quietude. The angel may 
 go, but duty still remains. The vision may 
 disappear, but truth abides. We never under- 
 stand what will is, we never realise what we can 
 do, we never feel the worth of personality moved 
 by the spirit of an ascended Lord, till the hour 
 when the angel goes away. Therefore, in the 
 interests of highest and holiest manhood, we shall 
 thank God for the angel-atmosphere of childhood, 
 and thank Him none the less that when we have 
 passed through one street, forthwith the angel has 
 departed from us. 
 
 I think, too, and with this I close, I think we 
 may swing this thought like a lamp over the dark 
 chamber of the grave. In a great congregation 
 
THE DEPARTING OF THE ANGEL 83 
 
 there are always mourners, and I do not like to 
 close without a word for them. It may be there 
 is some one here to-night who, looking backward, 
 remembers an angel presence. Perhaps it was 
 a mother, perhaps a sister ; but they were so 
 gracious, so gentle, and so patient, that you see 
 now it was of heaven, not of earth. And you 
 thought it was going to be a lifelong comrade- 
 ship ; you would travel on through all life's 
 streets together. But you only passed on through 
 one street, and forthwith the angel departed 
 from you. And you are not yourself yet, any 
 more than Simon was. The streets seem 
 strangely unreal ; how the wind bites ! But like 
 Peter when he came to himself, you too shall say, 
 * It was the Lord who sent His angel to deliver 
 me.' There was some work to do, and it was 
 done. There was some help to give, and it was 
 given. There were chains to break and prison 
 doors to open, and you can bear witness that it 
 was all accomplished. Remember the doctrine 
 of the departing angel, when the heart is empty 
 and the grave is full. 
 
UNDEVELOPED LIVES 
 
 Except a com of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth 
 alone. — John xii. 24. 
 
 In this summer season, when the world Is at its 
 fairest, one thing that impresses us very strongly 
 is what I might call the prodigality of nature. 
 Every flower is busy fashioning its seeds ; there 
 are trees with thousands of seed-vessels upon 
 them ; and we know that of all these millions of 
 seeds that are now forming, not one in ten 
 thousand will ever come to anything. Now, I 
 am not going to speak of the problems suggested 
 by that wastefulness : I have touched upon that 
 topic elsewhere.-^ I wish rather to say a word or 
 two upon the subject of undeveloped lives. In 
 every corn of wheat that finds no congenial soil, 
 there are undeveloped possibilities of harvest ; 
 and that suggests to me the question that often 
 vexes us, the question of undeveloped lives. 
 
 1 ' Love's Wastefulness,' in fwod-Tidi. 
 84 
 
UNDEVELOPED LIVES 85 
 
 There are some seasons when we feel this more 
 acutely. Allow me to recall some of these times 
 to you. One is the hour when we are brought 
 into contact with a strong and radiant personality. 
 There is something very stimulating in such 
 company, but often there is something strangely 
 depressing too. Most of us have felt some 
 sinking of the heart in the presence of exuberant 
 vitality. I do not mean that we are repressed or 
 chilled ; it is not the great souls, it is the little 
 souls, that chill us. But I mean that the possi- 
 bilities of life so overwhelm us, in the splendid 
 outflow of a radiant nature, that we feel 
 immediately, perhaps to the point of heart- 
 sinking, how undeveloped our own life must be. 
 
 Again, we feel it in these rarer moments that 
 come to us all sometimes, we know not how — 
 moments when life ceases to be a tangle, and 
 flashes up into a glorious unity. In such hours 
 it is a joy to be alive ; thought is intense ; 
 things quiver with significance. There is a 
 passing expansion of every power and faculty, 
 touched by mysterious influences we cannot 
 gauge. I think that for Jesus every hour was 
 like that. For us, such hours are like angels' 
 
86 UNDEVELOPED LIVES 
 
 visits. But when they come they bring such 
 visions of the possible, that we feel bitterly how 
 poor are our common days. If this be our 
 measure we are not living to scale. If this be 
 our waking, is not our life a sleep ? It is in the 
 rarer and loftier moments, then, that we apprehend 
 the meaning of undeveloped life. 
 
 But perhaps it is in the presence of early 
 death that the thought reaches us with its full 
 pressure. For the tragedy of early death is not 
 its suffering : it is the blighted promise and the 
 hope that is never crowned. I scarcely wonder 
 that in wellnigh every cemetery you shall see a 
 broken column as a monument. It is hardly 
 Christian, but it is very human, and I do not 
 think God will be hard on what is human. Wher- 
 ever death is there you have mystery. But in 
 the death of the young the mystery is doubled. 
 And when there were high gifts of heart and 
 intellect the mystery is deepened a thousandfold. 
 Why all this promise? Why this noble over- 
 ture ? Why, when the pattern is just beginning 
 to show — 
 
 ' Comes the blind fury with th' abhorred shears 
 And slits the thin-spun life ' ? 
 
UNDEVELOPED LIVES 87 
 
 The great mystery of the early grave is the 
 sorrow of undeveloped lives. 
 
 Now there is one thing that I should like to 
 say in passing. It is that in the light of un- 
 developed lives there must be infinite pain in 
 the omniscience of God. Do you remember how 
 Robert Browning sang, 
 
 * All, I could never be 
 All, men ignored in me 
 Thts^ I was worth to God' ? 
 
 God recognises the value and the power of the 
 possibilities we never even see. We take men as 
 we find them, very largely. We do not trouble 
 about latent powers. If our eyes were opened, 
 in the city street, to the undeveloped love and 
 gifts and character in the crowd, what a new 
 sense of hopelessness would strike us ! But the 
 hungering of love we never dream of, and the 
 craving of hearts, and the gifts that cannot 
 blossom, all these are clear as a star to the 
 Eternal, and that is one sorrow of divine 
 omniscience. 
 
 Now one of the first things to arrest me in 
 Christ Jesus is His influence in developing the 
 lives He touched. It is as if God, in that 
 
88 UNDEVELOPED LIVES 
 
 sorrow of omniscience, had charged His son to 
 call forth all possibilities. I doubt not there 
 were other publicans with gifts as good as 
 Matthew's, and other doctors quite as sincere as 
 Luke ; but under the influence of Jesus Christ 
 the gifts of these men so leapt into noble exercise, 
 that they have made all Christendom their 
 debtors, while the rest are sleeping in unrecorded 
 graves. When Simon Peter first steps upon the 
 scene he is a rash, impulsive, and impetuous man. 
 One recognises the slumbering greatness of him ; 
 but one feels the boundless possibilities of evil. 
 But Jesus handles him and plays upon him as 
 a master musician might play on his loved instru- 
 ment, till the chords are wakened into such 
 glorious music that the centuries are ringing 
 with it still. Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit : Jesus 
 touched nothing which He did not adorn. And 
 He adorned, not as we decorate our streets, but 
 as God adorns the lilies of the field. He drew 
 from the worst their unsuspected best. He 
 kindled the love and pity that were sleeping. 
 He roused into most effectual exercise whatsoever 
 gift or talent was concealed. And if to-day the 
 aggregate life of Christendom is infinitely deeper, 
 
UNDEVELOPED LIVES 89 
 
 fuller, and more complex, than any life the 
 world has ever known, we largely owe it to the 
 influence of Jesus in the development of human 
 life. 
 
 The question, then, which I desire to ask is 
 this : What were the forces that Jesus used in 
 this great work? And I wish you to notice, 
 as it were by way of preface, how the historical 
 career of Jesus makes the thought of development 
 independent of the years. We say that the days 
 of our years are threescore years and ten. We 
 get to think that threescore years are needed, 
 if human life is to come to its fruition. And 
 then we are confronted with the life of Jesus, 
 a life symmetrical, proportioned, perfect, and Jesus 
 of Nazareth died at thirty-three. Most lives 
 are just awaking into power then; but the life 
 of Jesus was perfect in its fulness. Most of us 
 would cry at thirty-three, * It is beginning ' ; but 
 Jesus upon the cross cried, * It is finished.' And 
 the great lesson which that carries for every one of 
 us is that we must not measure development by 
 time. There may be years in which every power 
 in us is stagnant. We live in a dull and most 
 mechanical way. Then comes an hour of call or 
 
90 UNDEVELOPED LIVES 
 
 inspiration, and our whole being deepens and 
 expands. A crushing sorrow, a crisis, or a joy, 
 develops manhood with wonderful rapidity, and 
 may do the work of a twelvemonth in a week. 
 Let us remember, looking unto Jesus, and noting 
 the shortness of that perfect life, that the scale of 
 development is not the scale of years. 
 
 What, then, were the great forces Jesus used in 
 developing undeveloped life ? The first was His 
 central truth that God Is love. He taught men 
 that In heaven was a Father ; that the heart that 
 fashioned them and ruled them, loved them ; 
 and in that vision of the love of God men found 
 magnificent environment for growth. I think 
 we all know how love develops character. I 
 think most of us have known that in our hom.es. 
 If In our childhood we were despised or hated, 
 the most expensive schooling will not right things. 
 A mother's love is the finest education. When 
 a man is afraid he never shows his best. When 
 all the faces around him are indifferent, there is 
 no call upon his powers to stir. But when love 
 comes, then all the deeps are opened, and life 
 becomes doubly rich and doubly painful, and 
 every hope is quickened, and every desire 
 
UNDEVELOPED LIVES 91 
 
 enlarged, and common duties become royal 
 services, and common words take a new depth 
 of meaning. We all know how love develops 
 character. That was the first power that Jesus 
 used. He said to a repressed and fearful world, 
 ' God loves you.' And if human life has been 
 developing in Christendom into amazing and 
 undreamed-of amplitude, it is primarily a response 
 to that appeal. 
 
 But there was another power that Jesus used. 
 It was the human instinct of self-surrender. It is 
 the glory of Jesus that He called self-surrender 
 into the service of our self-development. 
 
 There was one religion in the ancient world 
 that strove with all its power to make man 
 complete. It was the beautiful religion of the 
 Greeks, and its aim was to make life a thing ot 
 beauty. It did not fail; but it slowly passed away. 
 It proved unequal to the terrible strain of life. 
 And one reason of its decadence was just this, 
 it had no place for the grandeur of self-sacrifice. 
 Then rose the noble philosophy of Stoicism, and 
 it grasped with both hands the truth of self- 
 surrender. It said the first duty of man is to 
 surrender, till he has steeled himself into impreg- 
 
92 UNDEVELOPED LIVES 
 
 nable manhood. It failed, because life insisted 
 on expansion. It failed, as every philosophy 
 and creed must fail, that says to the God-touched 
 soul, * Thus far thou shalt come and no farther.' 
 It had grasped the vital need of self-surrender, 
 but by self-surrender it meant self-suppression. 
 
 And then came Jesus of Nazareth, Son of 
 God. And He said, ' If thine eye offend thee, 
 pluck it out.' Surrender thy sight, if need be ; 
 but then why ? That the glories of heaven may 
 break upon the soul. And if thou hast ten 
 talents, give them out ; and why } That thou 
 mayst have thine own with usury. And if thou 
 art a rich young ruler, sell all thou hast ; and 
 why ? That thou mayst enter into the deeper, 
 larger life, that comes from whole-hearted follow- 
 ing of the Lord. The Greek had said, 'Develop 
 and be happy.' The Stoic had said, 'Surrender 
 and be strong.' But Jesus said, * You never shall 
 develop till you have learned the secret of sur- 
 rendering.' I think, then, that that was Jesus' 
 second power in advancing the development of 
 life. He did not only say, ' Take up thy cross.' 
 There were other teachers who might have said 
 that too. But He said, ' Take up thy cross that 
 
UNDEVELOPED LIVES 93 
 
 thou mayst follow Me ' ; and He is life abundant 
 and complete. 
 
 Lastly, and this is the crowning inspiration, 
 our Lord expanded life into eternity. Our life 
 shall go on developing for ever, under the 
 sunshine and in the love of God. ' I go to 
 prepare a place for you,' He said. The environ- 
 ment of heaven shall be perfect. Love is at 
 work making things ready for us that we may 
 ripen in the light for evermore. I know no 
 thought more depressing, as life advances, than 
 the thought that a)l effort is to be crushed at 
 death. It hangs like a weight of lead upon 
 the will, when a man would launch into some new 
 endeavour. But if death is an incident and not 
 an end, if every baffled striving shall be crowned, 
 if * All, I could never be. All, men ignored in me,' 
 is to expand into actuaUty when I awake, I can 
 renew my struggle after every failure. It is that 
 knowledge, given us by Jesus, that has inspired 
 the development of Christendom. I affectionately 
 plead with you to make it yours. 
 
THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 Happy art thou, O Israel. — Deut. xxxiii. 29. 
 
 It has often been noted that we bestow least 
 thought upon our greatest blessings. We are 
 hardly conscious of some of our greatest mercies, 
 so long as God spares us the enjoyment of them. 
 When a man is healthy, he thinks very little of 
 health. He enjoys it, but he seldom dwells on 
 it. And it is only when the day of pain arrives, 
 or when the contrast between his own immunity 
 and the sufferings of some neighbour grows 
 accentuated, it is only then that a man truly 
 wakens to the worth of the gift that has been 
 his for years. 
 
 Now as it is with health, so is it with happiness. 
 The happy man seldom thinks how happy he is. 
 Other men see it ; perhaps feel a little envious. 
 It is hard to be hving in the mist and rain, when 
 over the hill the sun is shining. But the heart 
 that is happy is rarely introspective. There is a 
 
THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS 95 
 
 childlike unconsciousness in its enjoyment. And 
 it is only when the happiness removes — when the 
 rose withers, when the sun is darkened — it is only 
 then that the mind appreciates the pricelessness of 
 what was held and lost. I think, then, that all the 
 world's talk of happiness is a proof that unhappi- 
 ness is abroad. I think that in heaven, where 
 every one is happy, the question of happiness is 
 never raised at all. It is the unrest of life, it is 
 life's recurring agony, it i§ the shadow of it and 
 its pain, that make men eager when happiness is 
 mooted. 
 
 Now it is one of the strange contradictions of 
 our faith — and life and the universe are full of 
 such contradictions — that the gospel should have 
 proved itself, unquestionably, a powerful factor in 
 creating happiness ; and yet the central figure of 
 the gospel was a Man of sorrows and acquainted 
 with grief. The essence of Christianity — said the 
 great German poet — the essence of Christianity is 
 the worship of sorrow. And though that is false 
 in the sense in which he meant it, it is true that 
 sorrow lies bleeding at its centre. It cannot be 
 otnerwise if Gethsemane is there. It cannot be 
 otherwise if the centre be the cross. Yet out of 
 
96 THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 that gospel, where grief seems to be crowned, has 
 come, in the mystery of God, our happiness. Out 
 of the cloud has come the call. Rejoice ! One of 
 the powerful influences in history making for happi- 
 ness, without a doubt has been the Christian faith. 
 I wish then to note some gospel elements that 
 have helped to make Christendom a little happier. 
 I wish to show that faith in Jesus Christ is meant 
 to give us what all the world 's a-seeking. 
 
 First, then, it is commonly admitted that 
 happiness is only gained as a by-product. I mean 
 that if a man makes it the business of his life to 
 extract happiness from any ore, he is almost 
 certain to have his toil in vain. Let a man 
 deliberately say, I will be happy : I am determined 
 at every cost to lead a happy life ; the chances 
 are he will be miserable. It is when we do not 
 seek happiness that we find it. It is when we 
 strive to overcome life's gloom, not by new 
 pleasures, but by nobler interests ; it is when 
 we aim at something higher than happiness, that 
 happiness steals out and joins us on the road. 
 Make it your all in all, it vanishes. Forget it, in 
 the passion for sublimer things, it comes. That is 
 one of the simple lessons of experience. 
 
THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS 97 
 
 Now I want you to note that the gospel of 
 Jesus Christ deals with happiness along these very 
 lines. I have read the Bible from the first page 
 to the last, but I have never found that the chief 
 end of man was to be happy. There have been 
 philosophies which have made that their goal. 
 They have said that the first great end in life was 
 to enjoy. But that is so false to the dictates of 
 the heart, and to the sore-bought experience of 
 every traveller, that I do not marvel these philo- 
 sophies died. The gospel of Jesus never says, 
 Be happy. The gospel does not deal in little 
 ironies. But the gospel of Jesus says, Be holy ; 
 aim at the highest and happiness will come. 
 Forget it ; trust in God ; do the next duty ; go 
 round by Calvary, if the road lies there ; and 
 like sweet music falling among the hills, or like a 
 fragrance wafted we know not whence ; like the 
 springing of water where we never looked for 
 it ; like the shaft of light breaking the cloud above 
 us ; like an angel unbidden, happiness will come. 
 Like its Lord, we shall find it when we sought 
 it not. Seek happiness first, says Jesus, and be 
 baffled. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, 
 and all these things shall be added unto you. 
 
98 THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 And it is because the gospel is true to the heart's 
 teaching, carries it forward and gives the higher 
 motive, that it is such a powerful ally in the 
 search. 
 
 Once more, it has been commonly recognised 
 that human happiness has two great enemies. 
 No doubt it has a hundred enemies ; but there 
 seem to be two who are its master- foes. What 
 are they ? Well, the one is Anxiety, and the 
 other is Ennui or Listlessness. 'Anxiety and 
 Ennui,* says a great writer,^ in a book that is full 
 of wisdom on the subject, * are the Scylla and 
 Charybdis on which the barque of human happi- 
 ness is wrecked.' Are there not many in the 
 church this evening who would be happy if they 
 could slay anxiety ^ Is it not to-morrow that is 
 their sword of Damocles, hanging suspended over 
 life's feast to-day .? And surely we know, or at 
 least we ought to know — it would make us less 
 envious of the idle rich if we remembered it — that 
 where there is no purpose in the life, no work to 
 grip the rebellious days together ; then no wealth, 
 
 1 This address was delivered on finding how many of our young 
 men were absorbed in Professor Lecky's Map of Life. My indebted- 
 ness to that noble book, and my aim in so using it, will be at once 
 apparent, 
 
THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS 99 
 
 no luxury, no travel, no dissipation, can ever 
 make the heart a happy one. * Mount into your 
 railways,' says Carlyle, in his own strong dramatic 
 way, ' mount into your railways, and whirl from 
 place to place at the rate of fifty, or if you like 
 of five hundred miles an hour, you cannot escape 
 from that inexorable, all-encircling ocean moan of 
 ennui.' Anxiety, then, and Ennui — listless weari- 
 ness — these are the Scylla and Charybdis of our 
 happiness. 
 
 Now did it ever strike you that the gospel of 
 Jesus is marvellously equipped to fight these foes? 
 If there are two evils in the whole list of evils 
 that the gospel can unhorse and hurl on to the 
 sand, I think they are just Anxiety and Ennui. 
 Anxiety.^ The very hairs of your head are 
 numbered. Are not two sparrows sold for a 
 farthing, and not one of them can fall without 
 your Father? Cast thy burden on the Lord, 
 He will sustain thee. The everlasting arms are 
 underneath thee. Anxiety? Shame on our faith- 
 lessness ! And ennui ? — I cannot for the life of 
 me conceive how any Christian can be a listless 
 character. With a soul to save, and a character 
 to build, with passions to master and virtues to 
 
loo THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 achieve, with men to help and with a Christ to 
 know, I think there Is enough work for the Idlest. 
 That means, I take It, that the two great enemies 
 of happiness have no such conqueror as Jesus 
 Christ. It means that a living and true faith 
 in Jesus helps men to what all the world 's 
 a-seeking. 
 
 But once again, it has been commonly admitted 
 that happiness is to be found among Hfe's common 
 things. It is not the rare gifts, the possessions 
 of the few ; it is not great wealth, great learning, 
 great genius, or great power ; it Is not these things 
 that make the possessors happy. It Is health, it 
 is friendship, it is love at home ; it is the voices 
 of children, it is sunshine. It is the blessings that 
 are commonest, not those that are rarest ; it Is 
 the gifts that God has scattered everywhere. 
 Professor Lecky speaks of a great writer who 
 had devoted almost his whole life to one gigantic 
 task. And at last, to his own surprise, his work 
 was ended, and congratulations came pouring in 
 on him from every side. Should he not have 
 been supremely happy In that P Should he not 
 have been thrilled with a strong sense of triumph } 
 It was nothing, the writer said, nothing at all, 
 
THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS loi 
 
 compared with the joy he felt on hearing the 
 approaching footsteps of some little children whom 
 he had taught to love him. The greatest hour of 
 his life, and the glory of it, could not make him 
 so happy as the pattering footsteps. 
 
 And now comes in the gospel of Jesus, with 
 its great power to consecrate the commonplace. 
 For is it not the glory of Christ Jesus that He 
 hath exalted them of low degree ? It is not on 
 the rare gifts that the gospel puts the emphasis. 
 It is on the worth and power of lowly blessings. 
 A Christian, as one has said, is not a man 
 who does extraordinary things ; he is a man who 
 does the ordinary things, but he does them in an 
 extraordinary way. He brings the greatest to 
 bear upon the least. He flashes on the very 
 humblest task the light that never was on land or 
 sea. He links his commonest joy on to the chain 
 that runs right up to the throne of the eternal. 
 In other words, the gospel gives added meaning 
 to the very elements in life that make us happy. 
 It lays its stress not on the rarities, but on the 
 common blessings that are the source of happi- 
 ness. And so emphasising them, so guarding and 
 crowning them, it vastly increases the possibilities 
 
102 THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 of happiness, and helps men to what all the 
 world 's a-seeking. 
 
 Lastly, I was much impressed by a word quoted 
 from a modern novelist ; and a true novelist 
 should know something of this matter, for it is 
 the distinctive genius of the novelist to interpret 
 the joys and sorrows of the heart. Well, one of 
 our modern novelists defines happiness thus : 
 ' Happiness is a great love and much service.' 
 Love without service is a dream, a sentiment. 
 And service without love is taskwork always. 
 But happiness is a great love and much 
 service : that is the dictum of one who ought to 
 know. 
 
 Now the remarkable thing is that if any one 
 asked me to define Christianity, I think these are 
 the very words that I should use. If any one 
 said to me, ' What is Christianity — I mean what 
 is living and experienced Christianity ? ' I should 
 answer, 'It is a great love and much service.' 
 For Christianity is more than love. It is love 
 militant, love going out to serve. And Christianity 
 is more than service. It is service rooted in the 
 love of Christ. Now I do not suppose that 
 the novelist was thinking of Christ when she 
 
THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS 103 
 
 defined happiness so. She just wanted to tell 
 what happiness was, and she stumbled on the 
 gospel by mistake. Christ known, Christ loved, 
 Christ served — yes ! that is happiness. There 
 is none other like it in the world. 
 
CURIOSITY 
 
 And He smote the men of Bethshemesh because they had looked 
 into the ark of the Lord. — i Sam. vi. 19. 
 
 It was a great day for the men of Bethshemesh 
 when the kine came lowing along the highway, 
 and the ark of God was restored to them again. 
 It was like the restoration of nationality, when 
 they spied that symbol of God upon the cart. 
 The ark had been a prisoner with the Philistines. 
 Now it was back again, and there was hope. 
 I do not wonder that they rejoiced to see it, as 
 they were reaping their wheat harvest in the 
 valley. 
 
 But joy has got its perils as well as sorrow. 
 To be too glad is sometimes dangerous. The 
 heavens are all blue ; the only cloud on the 
 infinite expanse is but a speck no bigger than a 
 man's hand ; but elements of storm and thunder 
 may be in it. So was it at Bethshemesh as they 
 rejoiced while they were reaping their wheat 
 
CURIOSITY 105 
 
 harvest in the valley. They were so happy, they 
 forgot themselves ; somethhig of reverence and 
 awe had passed away. Here was the ark ; but 
 were the old tables of stone inside the ark ? Or 
 had the Philistines, with their impious hands, 
 made havoc of that writing of God's finger ? 
 Oh how they longed to know ! Until at last, 
 somewhat unhinged by joy, and it may be a 
 little flushed with wine, their burning curiosity 
 overmastered them, and they looked into the 
 ark of the Lord. And God was angry at that 
 rude impertinence, and He smote the men of 
 Bethshemesh that they died. And the joy of 
 harvest was turned into a dirge, because the 
 Lord had smitten many of the people. 
 
 You see, then, what the sin of Bethshemesh 
 was. It was the sin of unlawful curiosity. It 
 was the irreverent prying of the thoughtless 
 into the secret place of the Creator. Now do 
 you think the circumstance exceptional ? A tale 
 of some old and Oriental history ^ O friend, 
 although there are no golden cherubim with 
 touching wings over the mercy-seat, although 
 there are no staves to bear it by, no tables of 
 grey stone from Sinai in it, remember there is 
 
io6 CURIOSITY 
 
 still an ark of God ! There is an ark of God 
 wherever man is, for the presence of the Infinite 
 is there. There is an ark of God wherever 
 Christ is, for in Him dwelleth the fulness of 
 the Godhead bodily. And when I peer love- 
 lessly into my neighbour's character, and when 
 I gaze irreverently on the heart-mysteries of 
 Immanuel, I do not know but that in the sight 
 of God I am as guilty as Bethshemesh was. 
 
 Of course there is a curiosity which is lawful ; 
 there is a curiosity which is really noble. We 
 should never have reached our present heights 
 of knowledge — the race would have been station- 
 ary and stagnant — but for the fierce inquisitive- 
 ness to know. Whenever I hear the questions 
 of my child, I am carried back to the childhood 
 of the race. And in the boundless curiosity of 
 the raggedest bairn, I am near the secret of 
 intellectual progress. And yet the noblest 
 curiosity is seldom wholly and solely intellectual. 
 It has roots in the heart ; it moves in a moral 
 atmosphere ; it has visions of larger life and 
 holier conduct. Far off, it does not culminate 
 in self. It culminates and finds its crown in 
 God. 
 
CURIOSITY 107 
 
 A recent writer has illustrated this well, and 
 shown us this difference between lawful and un- 
 lawful curiosity, by distinguishing the two different 
 kinds of knowledge that a son may wish to 
 have of his father. One son might be intensely 
 curious to know his father's mind, his father's 
 heart. He is eager to learn what his father loves 
 and hates, that he may love what takes his father's 
 love, and hate the objects of his father's hate. 
 He wants to be like his father in his character. 
 That son is nobly and lawfully inquisitive. But 
 another son is curious to know what his father 
 is worth, and how much he will likely leave. 
 He wants to know if he can plunge into debt, 
 and if he can count on a life of pleasure 
 afterwards. And there is nothing moral, 
 nothing fine in that. It is a poor and worthless 
 curiosity. 
 
 Now which is your curiosity about God ? That 
 is the question, children of the King ! All idle 
 curiosity ends in self It is myself, and my self- 
 love, it wants to gratify. But the curiosity that 
 is a moral power rests in the infinite providence 
 of God ; prys not, for the mere sake of prying, 
 in the dark ; believes that even in mystery is 
 
io8 CURIOSITY 
 
 good news ; then asks, and seeks, and knocks, 
 wherever God is, for it knows that love and life 
 and power are there. In other words, it is faith 
 that makes the difference. It is trust that deter- 
 mines the virtue or the sin. There is a kind 
 of curiosity that dies, the moment I trust my 
 brother or my God. It is not when I believe, 
 it is when I disbelieve, that I become imperti- 
 nently curious. Had Eve but trusted God with 
 all her heart, she had never been curious about 
 the fatal tree. Had the men of Bethshemesh 
 but trusted in Jehovah, and that He could guard 
 His own among the Philistines, they had never 
 been so curious about the ark. Had you and I 
 faith as a grain of mustard-seed, there would be 
 less impertinence abroad. O brother, we need a 
 deeper trust ; trust in the possibilities of every 
 man, trust in the intellect that plans and guides. 
 It is on that that the reverent, earnest curiosity 
 is built which carries a man to his noblest and 
 his best ! 
 
 So necessary is this lawful curiosity, and so 
 useful for the enriching of humanity, that it is 
 quite clear to any fair observer that God is at great 
 pains to rouse it in us. It is one of the arts of 
 
CURIOSITY 109 
 
 a loving and kindly God, to excite the curiosity 
 of His dull children. 
 
 Think of the world, for instance. Did it 
 ever occur to you how the wonderful beauty of 
 the world stirs a strange curiosity in the soul 
 about the Eternal ? It is the veiled figure in the 
 crowd that rouses interest, and the beauty of 
 nature is the veil of God. A man may be a 
 chemist or a scientist, and be so engrossed in 
 his particular study, that he never feels the 
 pressure of the infinite. But in the presence of 
 some glorious sunset, the noisiest chatterer grows 
 still a moment : it is as if it cried to him, ^ Be 
 still, thou noisy one ; this splendour is the evening 
 garment of thy God.' So beauty, whatever other 
 ends it serves, helps to awaken the mystical in 
 man ; suggests far more than it can ever prove ; 
 hints that beyond the logic of the creed there is 
 something we cannot grasp and cannot utter. It 
 is the veil of the eternal figure. It keeps us 
 curious, eager, childlike till the end. 
 
 Or think of the great fact of personality. Is 
 not God at pains to make us lovingly curious 
 there ? There is not a soul but is wrapped in 
 strange disguises ; there is not a heart but is 
 
no CURIOSITY 
 
 veiled and hidden somehow ; all which, through 
 the ceaseless interactions of mankind, is one of 
 the ways of God to keep us curious. If I could 
 read my brother like a book ; if I could see into 
 his very depths ; if I could reckon him up, and 
 take his measure ; if there were nothing veiled 
 and hidden in him — I should never be curious 
 about my brother again. But in every man 
 there is an unexpected : something of mystery, 
 a veil, a problem ; and just because we have been 
 fashioned so, we are all and always of interest to 
 each other. It is that interest, degenerate and 
 corrupt, that makes the busybody and the scandal- 
 bearer. It is that same interest, touched by the 
 spirit of God, that breaks into sympathy and 
 brotherly kindness. Without it, we should all 
 be indifferent to each other. 
 
 Think of the Bible. Is there any book that 
 was ever given to man that stimulates curiosity 
 like that.^ It has been read, and studied, and 
 fed upon, and prayed through, for nineteen 
 centuries of growth and change, and the world 
 is curious about the Bible still. No man is 
 curious about the Shorter Catechism. The Con- 
 fession of Faith excites no curiosity. Yet the 
 
CURIOSITY 1 1 1 
 
 truths of the Bible are gathered up in these, and 
 they are a noble part of our inheritance. But the 
 Bible is so simple, yet so deep ; so stern and 
 majestic, yet so beautiful : it has the secret of 
 such a sweet reserve ; it casts the veil of silence 
 with such delicacy, and just at the point where 
 we should give worlds for more ; that like the 
 beauty of nature and the fact of character, it 
 leaves us eager, stimulated, longing, curious. 
 O restless, curious heart, be not discouraged ! 
 That craving has been stirred by the Almighty. 
 Do not degrade it. Consecrate it. Trust it. 
 You shall be satisfied when you awake. 
 
 In closing, let me speak a word about Jesus' 
 treatment of the curious spirit. And we cannot 
 study the gospels without seeing — and it is very 
 important that we see it — that Jesus was fully 
 alive to the difference between lawful and un- 
 lawful curiosity. When we remember how He 
 hid Himself ; when we think that in every miracle 
 there is some reserve, so that there is always 
 ample room for curiosity, and no man is ab- 
 solutely compelled to believe ; above all, when 
 we recall the parables, and think how they sug- 
 gested, stimulated, roused, and sent men home 
 
112 CURIOSITY 
 
 to question and to wonder — we see at once that 
 Jesus recognised the place of curiosity as a re- 
 ligious force. 
 
 But then, on the other hand, remember this. 
 One day there came an idly-curious man to Jesus, 
 and he asked, ' Lord, are there few that be saved ^ ' 
 And Jesus, turning to him sharply, said, ' Strive 
 ye to enter in at the strait gate.' And another 
 day, after He had risen from the grave, you 
 remember how Peter came, all curiosity, and said, 
 * Lord, and what shall this man do ? ' And Jesus 
 said to him, ' What is that to thee : follow thou 
 Me.' In both, the curiosity was idle. In both, it 
 was met in the same way by Christ. They were 
 recalled from questioning to quest. They were 
 brought back to action and to duty. There was 
 something for them to do — then let them do it. 
 The other matters may be left to God. 
 
 So when thou art tempted to be idly curious, 
 tempted to pry into forbidden things, I bid thee 
 remember that brief command of Jesus, ' What 
 is that to thee : follow thou Me.' Thou hast 
 a soul to save. Thou hast a life to sweeten. 
 Thou hast a cross to carry. Thou hast a heaven 
 to win. There is really no time to be nastily 
 
CURIOSITY I 
 
 3 
 
 inquisitive. Call home that utterly unworthy 
 curiosity. Do your own work to your own 
 music. And when this little sleep is over and 
 we waken, we shall have such a long and steady 
 look into the Ark, that we shall say it was worth 
 waiting for. 
 
SEEMING TO HAVE 
 
 From him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have. — 
 Luke viii. i8. 
 
 You will observe that when our Lord speaks of 
 the man who seems to have, He is not referring 
 to the hypocrite. Our Lord poured out the vials 
 of His wrath upon the hypocrite, but it is not 
 the hypocrite who is in question here. There is 
 a sense in which every hypocrite seems to have. 
 He makes pretensions to virtues or to graces 
 that he does not in reality possess. But then he 
 is aware, more or less clearly, that he lacks them. 
 The hypocrite deceives others, not himself. But 
 this is a case of genuine self-deception. The man 
 is not practising trickery on anybody. There are 
 things that a man may imagine that he has, and 
 Jesus says he only seems to have them. 
 
 There are one or two notable instances of this 
 in the New Testament. For example, there is 
 the Pharisee in the parable. We quite mistake 
 
 lU 
 
SEEMING TO HAVE ii 
 
 the meaning of that parable if we think that the 
 Pharisee was consciously a hypocrite. The moral 
 of the story lay in this, that it was spoken to those 
 who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. 
 The Pharisee thanked God quite sincerely that he 
 was a great deal better than his neighbour. He 
 b'eheved most genuinely in his superior self. 
 There was no question in his own mind of his 
 possessions. And the tragedy of the man's career 
 is found in this, that he only seemed to have. 
 
 On a larger stage we are faced by the same 
 spirit in the Church of Laodicea in the Apoca- 
 lypse. It was a very prosperous and comfortable 
 church. I am rich, it said. I am increased with 
 goods, I have need of nothing. An exceedingly 
 snug and smug society, with its own peculiar 
 Laodicean smile. Yet thou art wretched, said 
 the spirit of God ; and thou art miserable, and 
 poor and blind and naked ! The tragedy of 
 that church's career is found in this, that it, too, 
 only seemed to have. 
 
 I venture, then, to speak for a little this evening 
 on that most subtle form of self-deceit. There is 
 probably not one of us, in pew or pulpit, but is 
 giving himself credit for what he does not possess. 
 
ii6 SEEMING TO HAVE 
 
 Now, how is this ? Can we detect the causes of 
 this delusion ? I shall endeavour to touch on 
 some of them. 
 
 The first and the most innocent of all is in- 
 experience. In all inexperience there is a seeming 
 to have, which the rough and pushing world helps 
 to dispel. I take it that every rightly constituted 
 youth has a kind of lurking scorn for all his 
 ancestors. All things are possible to faith, says 
 the apostle. And all things are possible to one- 
 and-twenty also. Unmatched with the intellect 
 and power of the great world, untried by the 
 searching discipline of life, we seem to have 
 aptitudes, touches of heaven within us, that will 
 carry us to the front imperiously. And then we 
 are launched into the great deeps of life, and we 
 find there were brave men before Agamemnon. 
 It is a humbling and sobering experience. We 
 have to recast everything, before we are through. 
 But at least we come to know what we possess. 
 We learn what we can do, and what we cannot. 
 When we were immature and inexperienced, 
 before we had come to grips with actuality — ah, 
 then we seemed to have. To-day we have far less, 
 but it is ours. 
 
SEEMING TO HAVE 117 
 
 Again, this strange deception is intimately 
 connected with self-love. We seem to have much 
 that we do not really have, simply because we 
 love ourselves so well. In all love, even the 
 very purest, there is a subtle and most exquisite 
 flattery. Love is not worthy of its name at all, 
 unless it clothes its object with a thousand graces. 
 You who are fathers and you who are mothers here 
 — you don't know how much you seem to have to 
 your young children. It is enough to make the 
 hardest of us cry to God for mercy when we 
 remember that, to our child of five, we are still 
 perfect. You know the kind of week you spent 
 last week ; yet to your little family there is not 
 a stain on you. Such love is wonderful, passing 
 the love of women. And was there ever a mother 
 who was not quite convinced that her one-year- 
 old was a most marvellous child ? He seems to 
 have, because she loves him so. I think you see, 
 then, the point I wish to make. Love can make 
 any wilderness blossom as the rose. And never a 
 child loved the most honoured father, and never 
 a mother loved the dearest child, more passion- 
 ately than most men love themselves. It is thus 
 that to the end we seem to have, just because self- 
 
ii8 SEEMING TO HAVE 
 
 love is dominant. It is thus that he that hateth 
 his life for Christ's sake begins to learn the secret 
 of self-knowledge. 
 
 Often, again, we imagine we possess, because of 
 the pressure of the general life around us. We 
 move in certain circles of society ; we are sur- 
 rounded by what we call public opinion ; and by 
 the pressure of our environment upon us, our life 
 takes its colour and its trend. Now I am far 
 from saying that these outward influences may 
 not have a very real efi^ect on a man's character. 
 Some of the most useful habits we can form may 
 be formed through compliance with social con- 
 vention. But there is always the danger of 
 mistaking for our own the support we get from 
 the society we move in. And it is only when 
 that external pressure is removed that we discover 
 how we only seemed to have. Put any man of 
 average sensibility into the company of born 
 enthusiasts, and in a week's time you shall have 
 him enthusiastic. There are hours when the 
 dullest talker feels that he is getting on excellently 
 in conversation, and it is not till afterwards that 
 it begins to dawn on him that some one else had 
 the magnetic charm. We seem to have, we 
 
SEEMING TO HAVE 119 
 
 think that we possess ; but the possession is not 
 really ours. Here is a man living at home in 
 Scotland, a man of correct, perhaps exemplary 
 conduct. He is a regular churchgoer at home ; 
 he is quite interested in church affairs. But he 
 goes abroad to China or to India, and there is 
 little of the old Scottish feeling round him now ; 
 and gradually, almost insensibly, he drifts away 
 from the old reverence, till the kindliest critic 
 dare not call him religious. What I want you to 
 note is that that man was not a hypocrite. He 
 was not consciously deceiving anybody when he 
 lived that exemplary life at home. He never 
 possessed his possessions, that was all. He 
 was guided and moulded by an outward pres- 
 sure. He seemed to have the root of the matter 
 in himself, and it lay in his surroundings all the 
 time. 
 
 Now our Lord tells us the fate of these fancied 
 possessions. From him shall be taken even that 
 which he seemeth to have. Sooner or later, as 
 our life advances, we shall have our eyes opened 
 to these fond delusions. We are to be so led, 
 each one of us, that there will be no mistaking 
 what is really ours. I want to ask, then, what 
 
120 SEEMING TO HAVE 
 
 are God's commoner methods for making clear to 
 us what we only seem to have. 
 
 One of the commonest of them all is action. 
 We learn what we possess by what we do. 
 There are powers within each of us waiting to be 
 developed ; there are dreams within each of us 
 waiting to be dispelled, and it is by going forward 
 in the strength of God that we learn our limita- 
 tion and our gift. I am sure there is not one 
 man in middle life here but has been surprised 
 by the revelations of his past. He has been 
 called to work he never dreamed of doing ; his 
 way has led him far differently from his wish. 
 There were gifts which you were quite certain 
 that you had ; but the years have gone, and you 
 are not so certain now. Meantime, out of the 
 depths of self, some unsuspected powers have 
 been emerging, and the hand that has quickened 
 them into life is duty. The men who do nothing, 
 always seem to have. So-and-so is a genius, we 
 say ; if he would only exert himself, what he might 
 do ! Well, probably he would cease to be called 
 a genius if he did, and, therefore, he is wise in 
 doing nothing. I do not call that genius. I call it 
 cowardice. Life is given us just to find out what 
 
SEEMING TO HAVE 121 
 
 we can do. And it is through a thousand tryings 
 and a thousand failures that we come to find 
 what is really our own. That is one of the great 
 gains of earnest duty. We learn from it the 
 confines of our kingdom. It is by action that 
 there is taken from us that which we only seem 
 to have. 
 
 This, too, is one great gain of life's variety. 
 It shows us what is really our own. We are 
 tested on every side as life proceeds, and every 
 mood and change and tear is needed, if we are to 
 be wakened to what we seem to have. It is so 
 easy to be patient when there is no worry. When 
 there is no peril, it is so easy to be brave. It is 
 when the whirhgig of time brings its revenges 
 that we discover more exactly what we own. If 
 I want to know the value of an army, I must wait 
 till the campaign has tested it. It may seem to 
 be perfectly equipped for service, yet a month on 
 the field may teach us other things. So you and 
 I, seeming to have so much, are marched into 
 battle, led over weary miles ; we are kept waiting, 
 we are bafHed, wounded ; till out of all that 
 changeful discipline, that which we seemed to have 
 is taken from us. One of the functions of our 
 
122 SEEMING TO HAVE 
 
 vicissitudes is to strip us bare of what we seemed 
 to have. Life is so ordered for us in its heights 
 and depths, its changes, its hopes, its sufferings, 
 its fears, that, unless we are blind, we shall dis- 
 cover gradually all that is ours and all that only 
 seems so. 
 
 And if life fails, remember death is left. 
 Death is the great touchstone of the man. We 
 may be self-deceived for threescore years and ten, 
 but the deception ceases on the other side. There 
 we shall know even as we are known. Know 
 what? Among other things, ourselves. There 
 will be no delusions concerning our possessions 
 when our eyes open on that eternal dawn. I bid 
 you remember there will be no seeming to have, 
 before the great white throne and Him who sits 
 on it. All that is accidental and imaginary will 
 be revealed in the light of that great day. If we 
 have never let action do its work, and never seen 
 ourselves amid life's changes, we have not escaped 
 the judgment of the Christ. 
 
 I have sometimes thought, too, and with this I 
 close, that the words might apply even to those 
 we love. Is it not true, in the realm of the 
 affections, that sometimes we have and some- 
 
SEEMING TO HAVE 123 
 
 times we seem to have P We are thrown into 
 close relationship with others ; we are bound to 
 them with this tie and with that. We call them 
 friends ; we think we love them, perhaps. Is it 
 real, or is it only seeming ^ Nothing can tell 
 that but the strain of life, and the testing of friend- 
 ship through its lights and shadows. Nothing 
 can tell that finally but death. All that seemed 
 love, and was not really love ; all that we fancied 
 or mistook for friendship ; all thai is taken from 
 us, passes away, in the hour and the separation of 
 the grave. But true affection is an immortal 
 thing ; nothing can separate us from love indeed. 
 Where hearts unite, there is eternity. And in 
 eternity partings are unknown. 
 
A PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY 
 
 The simplicity that is in Christ. — 2 Cor. xi. 3. 
 
 There are some words that have a tragic history. 
 To the hearing ear and to the understanding 
 heart they whisper strange secrets about human 
 progress. If we could follow them through all 
 their changing meanings we should be reading 
 the story of mankind. Nor, indeed, when we 
 think of it, is this to be wondered at. For 
 language is the echo of the soul. And whenever 
 the soul of man has struggled heavenward I shall 
 hear its echo high among the hills. The man 
 who thoroughly knew the English tongue could 
 almost sit down and write an English history. 
 It is because we now rise and now fall that words 
 become ennobled or debased. 
 
 Now one of the words that has a pitiful history 
 is that word simple. It has wandered far from 
 the simplicity of Christ. It has so changed its 
 dress, and lost its early character, that we are 
 
 124 
 
A PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY 125 
 
 almost ashamed to keep it company. Once, to 
 be simple meant to be free from guile. Sim- 
 plicity was the opposite of duplicity. But in the 
 struggle with the world's sharp wits the guileless 
 man has generally fared so badly, that the simple 
 man has become the simpleton. I warrant you 
 there was a world of holy meaning in the word 
 innocent, when Adam and Eve first felt the taint 
 of sin. Yet now we look at the idiot, and we 
 pity him, and we say, ' He is an innocent.' So 
 once to be simple meant to be a Nathanael. And 
 now it almost means to be a fool. 
 
 And yet, if we have ever studied history at all, 
 we must have been struck with a certain sweet 
 simplicity about the characters of the very greatest 
 men. There is something of the child about the 
 greatest; a certain freshness, a kind of sweet 
 unconsciousness ; a happy taking of themselves 
 on trust ; a sort of play-element throughout the 
 drama. And all the time, powerfully, perhaps 
 silently, they were swaying and steering this poor 
 tossed world. Did you never feel that simplicity 
 in Martin Luther ? And did it never arrest you 
 in George Washington.'^ And did you never 
 mark it in the great Duke of Wellington ? One 
 
126 A PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY 
 
 of the finest odes Tennyson ever wrote was his 
 ode upon the death of that great duke. And I 
 know not if in all the noble verse of it, it rises 
 to anything loftier than this : — 
 
 Foremost captain of his time, 
 Rich in saving common-sense, 
 And, as the greatest only are, 
 In his simplicity sublime. 
 
 The greatest souls, then, have been truly simple. 
 It is that simple element that has charmed the 
 world. And I cannot think of any better witness 
 to the abiding charm of true simplicity, than the 
 way in which vice has always tried to imitate it. 
 Make up your mind clearly on this point : that 
 sin is never simple, it is subtle. You may reject 
 the story of Eden if you will, but the insinuating 
 serpent is still sin. All sin is subtle, intricate, 
 involved ; leading a man into an infinite maze. 
 It can give a hundred reasons for its counsel, 
 when a good conscience is content with one. Do 
 you remember how the great poet of Germany in 
 his immortal tragedy of Faust — do you remember 
 how he pictures Mephistopheles as the master of 
 a consummate subtilty ? He is always changing, 
 that evil incarnation. He is always compliant : 
 
A PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY 12; 
 
 he is never the same. To Margaret he is one 
 thing, and to Faust another. He is exquisitely 
 accommodating everywhere — until we feel afresh 
 how subtle sin is, what an utter stranger to 
 genuine simplicity ! And when sin shams that 
 it is very simple — and it is very fond of that 
 device — we learn how attractive simplicity must 
 be. It is a well-known practice of the hypocrite 
 to make believe he is unusually candid. One of 
 the last arts of an abandoned woman is to act 
 like an innocent young girl again. It is the 
 unwilling tribute of the bad to that simplicity 
 of soul that charms the world, but which is lost 
 when the eye ceases to be single, and when the 
 conscience ceases to be true. 
 
 Now the most casual student of the life of 
 Jesus must have noted the simplicity of Christ. 
 In a sense far deeper than any other captain, our 
 Lord is in His simplicity sublime. His name 
 shall be called Wonderful, it is quite true. He 
 was the Counsellor, the everlasting King. But 
 He was holy, harmless, undefiled ; and a little 
 child shall lead them, said the prophet. 
 
 Think of His mode of life : was it not simple .^^ 
 It puts our artificial lives to shame. There is a 
 
128 A PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY 
 
 music in it, not like the music of the orchestra, 
 but like the music of the brook under the trees. 
 He loved John and Peter, not the Pharisee ; and 
 He drew to the children, not to the scribe ; and 
 it was all so natural and simple, that the blind 
 Jews said, this is not the Christ. Had He come 
 greatly, with some sound of trumpet, they would 
 have hailed Him and cried. Behold ! Messiah 
 Cometh. But they missed the divinity of what 
 was simple, and He came unto His own and 
 they received Him not. 
 
 Think of His teaching : was not that simple 
 too ? It puts our sermons and our books to 
 shame. There is a false simplicity that springs 
 from lack of thought — and there is a spurious 
 and forced simplicity that I have heard some 
 ministers adopt when they began, with a smile, 
 to preach to the children — and how the children 
 hate it ! But true simplicity is the first-born 
 child of earnestness ; and of a deep and certain 
 knowledge of the theme ; and it was that, irra- 
 diated with divine compassion, which inspired the 
 simplicity of Christ the teacher. Some cynic once 
 said a very bitter thing about the style of Gibbon 
 the historian. He said that the style of Gibbon 
 
A PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY 129 
 
 was a style in which it was impossible to tell the 
 truth. With the deepest reverence for our 
 ascended Lord, I should venture to say just the 
 opposite of Him — the style of Jesus the Teacher 
 was a style in which it was impossible to tell a lie. 
 It was so clear, so pure, so exquisitely truthful. 
 It was so urgent in its invitation. It was so 
 sharp and straight in its rebuke. It rang so true 
 to their own village accent, and was so fragrant 
 with the sweet scent of their own hills, that men 
 did not realise in that simplicity the wisdom and 
 power of the Eternal God. 
 
 But the simplicity of Christ comes to its crown 
 in the feast of the Lord's Supper. There is no 
 gorgeous rite or showy ceremonial. There is 
 nothing of that many-coloured pageantry that 
 had once been needful to attract the world. 
 A cup of wine and a piece of broken bread — 
 these are the seals and symbols of the gospel. 
 And I never feel the simplicity of God and of 
 God's great plan for rescuing the world — I never 
 feel it so powerfully and so freshly as when I 
 sit at the Communion Table. There are great 
 mysteries in our Redemption. There are deep 
 things that even the angels cannot fathom. But 
 
 I 
 
I30 A PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY 
 
 in the centre Is a fact so simple that its best ritual 
 is bread and wine. 
 
 Indeed that very simplicity, I take it, is part of 
 the offence of the Cross. For such a complicated 
 curse as self we should dearly love a complicated 
 cure. We are like Naaman, the leprous captain 
 of Assyria, who came to Israel to be cured of 
 leprosy. And Naaman was mightily vexed and 
 indignant when he was told to wash in Jordan 
 seven times. I recall how M'Crie in his great 
 Life of Knox — and a recent historian has said 
 about that book that the man who has studied the 
 period most deeply will feel most deeply how 
 much he owes to it — well, M'Crie in his Life of 
 Knox mentions among the things that hindered 
 the progress of the Reformation, the great sim- 
 plicity of the pure gospel. There was something 
 fascinating to the youthful mind in the intricate 
 subtleties of mediaeval logic. There was a certain 
 appeal for them in that vast rambling structure, 
 that had been built by the schoolmen and called 
 theology. And when the evangel came with its 
 glad news of pardon, and out of the mists and 
 chaos of the ages stept Jesus with the dew of His 
 youth still on His brow, it was ail so simple that 
 
A PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY 131 
 
 they took offence. O friend, do not thou take 
 offence ! Remember that ours is a universal 
 gospel. It has been preached this summer 
 Sunday by the grave of Livingstone. It has 
 been sung in the villages of India. It has been 
 spoken beside the Tigris and Euphrates. It was 
 declared to-day in the Pacific Islands. It has 
 cheered the sick, it has comforted the dying, it 
 has done that, and a thousand times more, this 
 summer day — and you do not want an intricate 
 gospel to do that. I have a Saviour who looked 
 on life as life ; and never thought of it as some 
 quiet academy. I have a gospel that in its great 
 simplicity is level with the strain of life and 
 death. It is worth preaching. It is worth be- 
 lieving. An intricate faith in such a world is 
 self-condemned. The Cross is, as the greatest 
 only are, in its simplicity sublime. 
 
 I want you all then to feel again, still more I 
 want you all to practise, the true simplicity that 
 is in Jesus Christ. And what we need is a little 
 more faith in God ; a little more independence 
 of the world ; a little more trust in an indwelling 
 Holy Ghost, and the separate guidance He is 
 giving to each. One of the foremost of our living 
 
1^2 A PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY 
 
 critics says a beautiful thing about the songs of 
 Shakespeare — the songs that we find scattered 
 through his plays. He says that the songs of 
 Shakespeare are the only perfectly simple songs 
 in English, and they are that because of Shake- 
 speare's faith. Other men halted, hesitated, and 
 were afraid. They said, * That will look foolish, 
 and what will men think of this ? ' until the touch 
 of simplicity was gone. But Shakespeare, think- 
 ing of no man, sang like a bird ; trusted his 
 genius, and was very simple. And so I want 
 you to trust your God. And if we hold to 
 it, quietly, without fret, that it is always better 
 to be good than bad, that it is always better 
 to be pure than impure, that duty is duty, 
 that conscience is supreme, that God is living, 
 that Jesus died for us ; then, spite of all the 
 genius of Shakespeare, our song, our life-lilt, our 
 music of the soul, may come to be just as simple 
 as was his. 
 
* AFTER THAT, THE DARK' 
 
 He knoweth what is in the darkness. — Dan, ii. 22. 
 
 These words occur in a prayer of thanksgiving 
 uttered by Daniel, and we must remember the 
 strange circumstances that had moved the prophet 
 to this prayer. Nebuchadnezzar had dreamed a 
 dream : it had troubled his spirit till he started 
 up, awake. In the language of Scripture, his sleep 
 brake from him ' even as a bird out of the fowler's 
 snare.' But when the king woke his dream had 
 vanished from him. He could not recall it; it 
 was quite gone from memory. There only 
 remained the haunting consciousness that some- 
 thing portentous had loomed up in sleep. So the 
 king called for the magicians of his court. They 
 must tell him his dream ; they must find out 
 what he dreamed of ; they must declare not only 
 the interpretation, but the matter and substance 
 of the vision as well. It is little wonder the 
 Chaldeans answered, ' There is not a man on 
 earth that can show the king's matter.' Then 
 
 188 
 
134 * AFTER THAT, THE DARK' 
 
 Daniel heard the command of Nebuchadnezzar. 
 And he went apart with his three friends, and they 
 prayed about it. He pled with God to tell him 
 what the dream was, and God was graciously 
 pleased to hear His child. Then was the secret 
 revealed to Daniel in a night-vision, and Daniel 
 blessed the God of heaven. Blessed be the name 
 of God for ever and ever, said Daniel, for wisdom 
 and might are His. He giveth wisdom to the 
 wise, and knowledge to them that know under- 
 standing. He revealeth the deep and secret 
 things. He knoweth what is in the darkness. 
 
 Now when the Bible tells us that God knows 
 a thing, we have to widen the thought of know- 
 ledge a great deal. So much of our knowledge is 
 merely speculative, not vitally linked with life 
 and character, that we are apt to forget that 
 all God's thought and love really lie latent in 
 what He knows. Sometimes when we have done 
 anything unworthy the vision of a good woman 
 comes before us, and we say in our hearts, or 
 perhaps we say to our neighbour, ' I would not for 
 worlds that she should know it.' We mean that 
 there are some men and women whom we might 
 tell it to, and the knowledge would make little 
 
'AFTER THAT, THE DARK' 135 
 
 difference to them. But there is one so sensitive, 
 so true, so good, that to know it would wound 
 her to the very heart. It is a great thing to have 
 a friend like that. Now something like that, only 
 infinitely higher, should be in our minds when- 
 ever we say ' God knows.' There is thought, love, 
 wisdom, preparation, action, in the bosom of the 
 knowledge of the Eternal. He knoweth our 
 frame : that means that He will pity us. He 
 knoweth the way that I take : that means that 
 He will guide me. He knoweth what is in the 
 darkness : then He will use it for Daniel, whom 
 He loves. 
 
 Now I want to take this great thought of our 
 text and run it out along three lines to-night. 
 Firstly, He knoweth what is in the darkness of 
 the heart. Secondly, He knoweth what is in the 
 darkness of the lot. And thirdly, He knoweth 
 what is in the darkness of the future. 
 
 First, then, He knoweth what is in the darkness 
 of the heart. 
 
 There is a well-known passage in that gentle 
 and wise book, 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 
 in which the autocrat startles the breakfast-table 
 
1^6 * AFTER THAT, THE DARK' 
 
 by a remark on two men in conversation. He 
 says that whenever two men are engaged in con- 
 versation, there are really six men present and not 
 two. There is the man as his friend pictures him 
 to be. There is the man as he pictures himself 
 to be. And thirdly — though the writer puts it 
 first — there is the real man, known only to his 
 Maker. The other men in each case are ideal. 
 Self-love touches up the picture, or the love of 
 friendship puts a halo round it. But the man 
 as he is in himself — the real man — that man is 
 known only to his Maker : He knoweth what is 
 in the darkness. 
 
 And the more we study that strange problem 
 of self, the more we feel that Dr. Holmes is 
 right. In the most ordinary life are deeps you 
 cannot fathom. In your own heart is a darkness 
 that you never penetrated. If we could only see 
 into the gloom as God sees, we should not surprise 
 each other as we do. Who knows what dreams 
 are thronging in the brain when the fingers are 
 busy with the daily work ^ Who knows what 
 unrest, dissatisfaction, craving are cloaked and 
 masked by that sweet face ? Who knows what 
 suggestions of evil may have risen even in this 
 
WYFTER THAT, THE DARK' 137 
 
 sanctuary where God is present to-night ? We 
 are all far more mysterious than we know. The 
 roots of our best and our worst are in the dark- 
 ness. It is that that makes a man lean hard on 
 God, and say He knows what is in the darkness. 
 In that vast world which is beneath our conscious- 
 ness, where life has its spring and the desires are 
 born, where far beneath our touch or sight are the 
 primary impulses that shall determine everything, 
 it is there that prayer and faith and trust work 
 miracles, for they are our appeal to the only 
 Being in the universe who knoweth what is in the 
 dark. 
 
 Now no man can doubt God's knowledge of 
 that realm, who will seriously read the life of 
 Jesus Christ. Few things arrest us more in that 
 high story than how Jesus explained men and 
 women to themselves. I don't think you and I 
 would have given our best to that poor and half- 
 wrecked woman of Samaria. I don't think you 
 and I would ever have dreamed of finding a 
 magnificent apostle in Simon Peter. But Jesus 
 Christ knew what was in the darkness, and twenty 
 centuries have justified His choice. Why, too, 
 when they asked Him one thing, would He some- 
 
138 'AFTER THAT, THE DARK' 
 
 times answer as it were another thing ? Why did 
 He say about Herod, * Go tell that fox'; or to 
 the crowd that was gathered round the woman, 
 ' Let him that is without sin throw the first stone 
 at her ' ? It was Christ finding His way into the 
 gloom. It was the Son of God touching the 
 secret soul. It was the witness and proof, upon 
 the stage of history, that He knoweth what is in 
 the darkness of the heart. 
 
 This thought has a twofold bearing upon 
 practice. It is, first, a great comfort when we 
 are misunderstood. I am not speaking so much 
 of great misunderstandings ; it is a man's duty to 
 get these explained at once. Lives have been 
 ruined through great misunderstandings, hearts 
 have been made unutterably miserable, when half 
 an hour, face to face and eye to eye — and the 
 birds would have been singing in the trees again. 
 But apart from these there are the lesser misunder- 
 standings, that fret a man's spirit every day he 
 lives. The things we try to do, and do so badly ; 
 the kindnesses we mismanage so wofully ; the 
 words we would fain speak and sometimes cannot. 
 The fact is that all expression is clumsy ; we 
 cannot adjust it to the spiritual movement ; we 
 
'AFTER THAT, THE DARK' 139 
 
 grope and stumble to explain ourselves, and per- 
 haps we are never really understood. And it is 
 then that, with a sense of restful comfort, we 
 remember He knoweth what is in the dark- 
 ness. Do you recall how Dr. Newman put that 
 thought ? 
 
 * Time was I shrank from what was right 
 From fear of what was wrong. 
 I would not brave the sacred fight 
 Because the foe was strong. 
 
 But now I cast that finer sense 
 
 And sorer shame aside. 
 Such dread of sin was indolence, 
 
 Such aim at heaven was pride. 
 
 So when my Saviour calls, I rise 
 
 And calmly do my best, 
 Leaving to Him with silent eyes 
 
 Of hope and fear, the rest. 
 
 I step, I mount where He has led. 
 
 Men count my haltings o'er. 
 I know them ; yet tho' self 1 dread, 
 
 I love His precept more.' 
 
 But the thought is more than a comfort when 
 we are misunderstood. It is a caution against 
 judging others. I think we would be very loth 
 to judge a man if we only remembered that 
 doctrine of the text. Tennyson makes Merlin 
 
HO 'AFTER THAT, THE DARK' 
 
 speak ' of that foul bird of rapine whose whole 
 prey is man's good name/ and nothing is more 
 amazing than the recklessness with which we pass 
 judgment upon a brother's action. I want you to 
 remember that behind every action there is a 
 darkness into which no one sees but God. I 
 want you to remember that for the simplest deed, 
 motives are intricate, involved, entangled. I want 
 you lo feel that unless you unravel motive, the 
 judgment is bound to be inadequate. It is 
 always wiser, and it is always kinder, to regard 
 judgment as the prerogative of Heaven. Judge 
 not that ye be not judged. You do not know — 
 He knows — what is in the darkness of the heart. 
 
 Secondly : He knoweth what is in the darkness 
 of the lot. 
 
 There are two words that sum up the trials of 
 human life. The one is shadow and the other is 
 cross. The one suggests the thought of darkness ; 
 the other hints at the burdens we must bear. I 
 sometimes think we should handle our lives better 
 if we learned to distinguish the shadow from the 
 cross. Christ says to every disciple, * Take up 
 thy cross '; but no man would dream of taking 
 
'AFTER THAT, THE DARK' 141 
 
 up a shadow. We walk into it as bravely as we 
 may, and by and by we shall reach the other 
 border. We are prone to say, ' What a dark 
 shadow this is,' when it is really a cross given 
 us by God to carry. And sometimes we say, 
 * This is a heavy cross,' when it is only a shadow 
 we shall leave to-morrow morning. Learn to 
 distinguish, to separate a little. * Divide and 
 conquer ' holds in the spirit world. The dark- 
 ness of life is dark enough, God knows, without 
 the added darkness of confusion. 
 
 Now if there is one thing on earth that is hard 
 to understand, it is the meaning and the content 
 of life's darkness. It has been the stumbling- 
 block to countless feet ; it has tried the faith of 
 innumerable hearts. The world has been asking 
 what is the meaning of pain, and what is the 
 meaning of trial and of tragedy, ever since man 
 began to ask at all ; but when trial and sorrow 
 knock at your own door, the answers of all the 
 ages shall not satisfy. There is an element of 
 surprise in all affliction. There is something 
 different from all we ever heard of. If every joy 
 is different from every other joy, every separate 
 sorrow is a new thing too. Darkness may have 
 
142 * AFTER THAT, THE DARK' 
 
 enwrapped ten thousand hearts, but in our dark- 
 ness somehow we stand alone. And then we 
 crave to understand the thing. We do not want 
 sympathy, so much as explanation. We want to 
 know the content of that darkness, and we come 
 home from the world saying, * The world does not 
 know.' And it is then, finding that flesh is vain, 
 and turning full-faced to the Eternal God, we 
 hear the exquisite music of our text, ' He knoweth 
 what is in the darkness.* He knoweth, and His 
 name is Love. He knoweth, and He so loved 
 the world that He gave His only begotten Son 
 to die for us. He knoweth, and we are His 
 ignorant children, but by and by we shall know 
 as we are known. There is a Christian agnos- 
 ticism and a Christian stoicism that find their 
 charter in this noble text. Until the day break, 
 and the shadows flee away, it is enough that He 
 knoweth what is in the darkness. 
 
 And is not all that exemplified most powerfully 
 in the sufferings of our Saviour Jesus Christ ^ I 
 think that Jesus in His agony in the Garden is 
 the loneliest figure in all history. Peter and 
 James were there, and John was there ; and 
 Peter and James and John loved Jesus fervently. 
 
* AFTER THAT, THE DARK' 143 
 
 But they all slept, they could not watch one hour; 
 they never guessed what was in the darkness. And 
 the other nine knew nothing of it all, and the 
 children in every cottage were asleep. None 
 knew but God, the Eternal God in glory, stooping 
 in infinite pity to the earth— none but the Father 
 knew what was in the darkness when the bloody 
 sweat dropped, and the hands were pierced. All 
 Christendom knows now ; for it has saved us. 
 That blood speaks better things than that of Abel. 
 In the darkness of Christ's lot there was untold 
 treasure. Who knows how it shall be with you 
 and me? 
 
 Thirdly, and lastly : He knoweth what is in the 
 darkness of the future. 
 
 I think we are all agreed that it is a very 
 merciful provision that God has hidden the 
 to-morrow from us. I think we all feel that it 
 is infinite kindness that has hung that veil over the 
 coming days. Did you ever think how life's 
 novelty would go, and how the zest and charm of 
 it would pass, if we could see every to-morrow 
 perfectly ? Even in the best company a road 
 grows weary, when we see the levels for long 
 
144 * AFTER THAT, THE DARK' 
 
 miles ahead. I fancy, too, there have been hours 
 for most of us of such unutterable strain and 
 agony, that had we foreseen them ten years before, 
 we should have given up life's battle altogether. 
 I do not wonder that the great prophets of Israel 
 were men bowed under a certain noble melan- 
 choly. The bravest hearts could not escape that 
 shadow, if God revealed to them things of the 
 future. And who can tell how the sufferings of 
 Christ were deepened — touched to an intensity we 
 cannot conceive — by His knowledge of the cross 
 that was in store ! 
 
 Of course, to a certain limited extent, we do see 
 into the darkness of to-morrow. We live in a 
 world of most inflexible law, and as a man soweth 
 so also shall he reap. They say that in the con- 
 volutions of the acorn the microscope sees all the 
 promise of the oak ; and in the bosom of a man's 
 to-day^ with its struggle and conquest, or idleness 
 and waste, it takes no prophet to discern to- 
 morrow. The pity of the ill-regulated hour is 
 that the hours yet to strike shall feel its pressure. 
 The joy of an earnest morning is just this, that it 
 shall be easier to be earnest when a new morning 
 dawns. If we could separate life into isolated 
 
* AFTER THAT, THE DARK* 145 
 
 seasons, the task of living would be infinitely 
 simpler. It is the fact that every hour Hves on, 
 to influence every other hour, that makes the joys 
 of life so stern and glorious, and the failures of 
 life so exquisitely sad. To a certain extent, then, 
 and in the moral sphere, each of us does see what 
 is in the darkness. We are fellow-workers with 
 God, and share His vision. 
 
 But after all it is a limited vision. It is only 
 one little corner of the veil that is removed. 
 The fact remains that in His infinite pity we are 
 shielded and safeguarded by our ignorance ; and 
 the quiet thinker will waken every morning saying 
 to his own heart, ' God knows.' It is one great 
 secret of a well-spent life to live not by the year 
 or by the month, but by the day. And the secret 
 of that secret is to trust that God, who is Love, 
 knows what is in the darkness. Is there a father 
 here anxious about his son } Is there a mother 
 who cannot bend over her little children but the 
 thought of coming years hurts like a pain } Am 
 I speaking to any man this evening, present per- 
 haps for the first time in this church, who would 
 give himself to God wholeheartedly but for the 
 haunting dread of after days } Is there any one 
 
 K 
 
146 'AFTER THAT, THE DARK* 
 
 nerveless and worried so that he cannot worship, 
 cannot be happy at home, perhaps cannot sleep ? 
 My brother or sister, ' God is love, and He 
 knoweth what is in the darkness.' The secret of 
 strength and quietness is there. 
 
COUNTING THE COST 
 
 For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not 
 down first and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to 
 finish it ? 
 
 Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to 
 finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, 
 
 Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. 
 
 Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth 
 not down first, and consulteth, whether he be able with ten thousand 
 to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand ? 
 
 Luke xiv. 28-31. 
 
 It is notable that in these two little parables, 
 which deal with the great endeavours of the 
 human soul, our Lord brings in the figure of 
 the builder, and of a king making war upon 
 another king. Christ always took human life at 
 its best and kingliest, and even his illustrations* 
 have a royal touch. But the point to note is 
 that Christ compared life to building. Life was 
 like architecture or like war. Building and 
 battling — these are the Master's figures ; and I 
 do not think the world has ever bettered them. 
 
 U7 
 
148 COUNTING THE COST 
 
 There are rare souls that seem to grow, not 
 build. And it may be some of us have known 
 one saint — our mother perhaps — who bore no 
 marks of conflict anywhere, and seemed to have 
 reached the highest without a struggle. But for 
 most of us it is the other way. Effort on effort, 
 failure after failure, we have to forge and hammer 
 ourselves towards what is honourable. And there 
 are days when we seem to be building up a 
 prison-house, until God in His mercy shatters 
 that to fragments. Just note, then, that it is in 
 a little parable of building that our Saviour 
 teaches us to count the cost. 
 
 Now, any one who has read much in religious 
 literature must have been struck by a kind of 
 contradiction in it. He must have been arrested 
 by two opposite conceptions of what religion really 
 demands. I read some sermons, or I listen to 
 some preaching, and religion seems exquisitely 
 sweet and easy. I thought there was a cross in 
 our religion, but when I read some of our 
 current literature — if there be a cross it is so 
 wreathed with honeysuckle that a poor soul can 
 stumble past it easily. The valley of the shadow 
 seems to have grown antiquated ; we are to walk 
 
COUNTING THE COST 149 
 
 on the delectable mountains all the way. Mark 
 you, we never can insist enough on the true joy of 
 the religious life. We never can forget that to the 
 heavy-laden, Christ said, and says for ever, ' My 
 yoke is easy.' But that is so interpreted some- 
 times, and the harder and sterner sayings are 
 so evaded, that religion seems to walk in silver 
 slippers. 
 
 But when I turn to another class of teachers — 
 and some of the greatest of every age are in it — 
 what impresses me is not the ease of things, but 
 the depth and difficulty of religion. The gate 
 is narrow ; the way is strait and mountainous ; 
 the cross is heavy, and the flesh cries out against 
 it. Let every student read Dr. Newman's 
 sermons if he would see that view of the religious 
 life expressed in matchless English. That, then, 
 is the seeming contradiction. These are the 
 two opposite conceptions. The one says, ' If I 
 come to Jesus, happy shall I be.' The other 
 says, ' If I find Him, if I follow, what His 
 guerdon here ? Many a sorrow, many a labour, 
 many a tear.' 
 
 Well, in our text there can be little question 
 that our Lord leans to the latter of these views. 
 
I50 COUNTING THE COST 
 
 It is a great thing to be an earnest Christian, it is 
 a high calling to be a knight of that round table ; 
 let a man, says Jesus, deliberately sit down and 
 count the cost, lest the fair fame of it be 
 smirched and sullied by him. Nothing impresses 
 us more in Jesus Christ than His insistence on 
 quality, not quantity. He never hesitated to set 
 the standard high, even though men should be 
 offended at Him. It is better to be served by 
 twenty loyal hearts, than by half a hundred 
 undisciplined adventurers. Think it all out, 
 says Christ. Sit down, count up the cost, find 
 what it comes to. Rash promising is certain to 
 make shipwreck. I want you to be still, and 
 know that I am God. 
 
 Now I think it immensely increases our 
 reverence for Jesus to find Him dealing thus 
 with human souls. He never veils the hardship 
 of His calHng, He is so absolutely certain of its 
 glory. When Drake and the gallant captains of 
 Queen Elizabeth's time went out into the streets 
 of Plymouth to get sailors, they told them quite 
 frankly of the storms of the Pacific, and of the 
 reefs in it, and of the fevers of Panama. They 
 honoured their brave Devonshire comrades far 
 
COUNTING THE COST 
 
 15 
 
 too much to get them to sign on under any false 
 pretences. But then there was the Spanish gold 
 and treasure, and the glory of it, and all England 
 to ring with it. And the men counted the cost 
 and signed for that daring service, in the spacious 
 times of great Elizabeth. And I honour our 
 Captain for dealing with men like that — the 
 press-gang is an un-Christlike instrument. Christ 
 says : You are a free man ; count the cost. 
 Life is before you : choose whom you will 
 serve. I offer you a cross, also a crown. I 
 offer you struggle, but there shall be victory. 
 You shall be lonely, yet lo, I am with you 
 always. You shall be restless, yet I will give 
 you rest. Was there ever a leader so frank, 
 so open, so brave, as the Master who is claim- 
 ing you to-night ? 
 
 And it is just here that the service of our 
 Lord stands at opposite poles from the service 
 of sin. For the one thing that sin can never do 
 is to say to a man, ' Sit down and count the cost 
 of it.' Do you think that to-night's drunkard 
 ever counted the cost when men called him such 
 splendid company twenty years ago? Do you 
 think that the man who has tried for, and missed. 
 
152 
 
 COUNTING THE COST 
 
 life's prizes counted the cost when he was sowing 
 his wild oats ? Sin is too subtle, too sweet, too 
 masterfully urgent, to give a man time for that 
 arithmetic. * Evil is wrought by want of thought, 
 as well as want of heart.' If that young student 
 who has come up for the Winter Session, and 
 who has dropped in here, will only deliberately 
 count the cost this evening ; if he will only 
 remember he is in the grip of law that no 
 repentance ever can annul ; if he will think that 
 as he sows this winter, so every coming winter 
 will he reap, I think he will shake himself and 
 say, * Get thee behind me, Satan.' It is true that 
 you cannot put old heads upon young shoulders. 
 But don't we begin counting when we are little 
 children ? And half the battle of a man's life is 
 won when he sits down and counts the cost. 
 Sin will keep a man from that, by hook or 
 crook. But ' come and let us reason together,' 
 saith the Lord. 
 
 Of course we must distinguish this wise delibera- 
 tion from a merely calculating and cowardly 
 prudence. It is often the man who has counted 
 the cost most earnestly, who shows a kind of 
 splendid imprudence to the world. I mean that 
 
COUNTING THE COST 153 
 
 what the world calls prudence is very often a 
 somewhat shallow thing. It does not run its 
 roots into the deeps ; it is really a kindlier name 
 for selfishness. And the man who has dwelt 
 alone with the great things, and who has been 
 touched by the hand of the Eternal, is not likely 
 in that sense to be worldly wise. I dare say 
 that everybody thought John Knox imprudent 
 when he insisted on preaching in St. Andrews, 
 though the Archbishop had warned him he 
 would slay him. I dare say everybody thought 
 Martin Luther imprudent, when he said he 
 would go to the Diet though every tile on the 
 housetops were a devil. But Knox and Luther 
 had been alone with God ; it was deliberate 
 action, and not reckless folly. They had counted 
 the cost for Scotland and for Christendom. 
 
 The fact is, that in all the highest courage 
 there is the element of quiet calculation. The 
 truest heroism always counts the cost. The 
 bravery of passion is not a shining virtue. 
 I think that a very ordinary man could storm 
 a rampart, if he were a soldier. They tell us 
 there is a wild forgetfulness of self in that last 
 rush that would fire the blood and thrill the 
 
154 COUNTING THE COST 
 
 most timid. The test of courage is the long night 
 march, under the fire of invisible guns ; it is 
 the sentry duty in the darkness, when the 
 shadows and silence might shatter the strongest 
 nerve : I think that the man who deliberately 
 faces that, who goes through it quietly because 
 it is his duty, is just as worthy of the Victoria 
 Cross as the man who has won it in some more 
 splendid moment. No man, said one of Oliver 
 Cromwell, no man was a better judge than 
 Oliver of what might be achieved by daring. 
 Yet the true heroism of that noble soul was not 
 the heroism of the rash adventurer. He never 
 let texts do duty for tactics, says Mr. Morley. 
 I always admired the answer of that man who 
 was going forward with a comrade to some 
 dungerous duty. And his comrade looked at 
 him, and saw that his cheek was blanched. And 
 he laughed and said, ' I believe you are afraid.' 
 And the other, looking straight forward, said, 
 * Yes, I am afraid, and if you were half as afraid 
 as I am, you would go home.' Do not forget, 
 then, that when Jesus says, ' Count the cost,' He 
 is really sounding the note of the heroic. He 
 does not want any one on false pretences 
 
COUNTING THE COST 155 
 
 He will not issue any lying prospectus. He comes 
 to vou and says, You are a thinking man, with 
 powers that it will take eternity to ripen. Look 
 life in the face. Look death in the face. Sum 
 it all up, measure the value of things. And if 
 you do that quietly and earnestly, with sincere 
 prayer to God to enlighten you, My claims, Christ 
 means, shall so tower above all others, that I 
 shall have your heart and your service from that 
 hour. 
 
 I have been struck, too, in studying the 
 Scriptures, to note how the great men there 
 learned to count the cost. They were not sud- 
 denly dragged into the service. There was no 
 unthinking and unreasoning excitement. God 
 gave to every one of them a time of silence 
 before their high endeavour. It was as if He 
 laid His hand upon them and said, ' My child, 
 go apart for a little, and count the cost.' Moses 
 was forty days alone with God. Elijah was in 
 the wilderness alone. Paul, touched by the finger 
 of the Lord whom he had persecuted, took 
 counsel of no flesh, but departed into the loneli- 
 ness of Arabia. Moses, Elijah, Paul — yes, even 
 Simon Peter going out into the night — were 
 
156 COUNTING THE COST 
 
 learning the deep lesson of our parable. And 
 whenever I read of the temptations of Jesus, and 
 of how the Spirit of God drove Him apart, 
 and how Satan came and showed Him all the 
 kingdoms, and taught Him a less costly way 
 to sovereignty than by the sweat of Gethsemane 
 and the water and blood of Calvary — whenever 
 I read that and recall how He stood fast, I feel 
 that our Saviour had counted the cost Himself. 
 We shall never understand the calm persistence 
 of the glorious company of martyrs and of saints 
 till we go back to that quiet hour at the beginning 
 when they faced every difficulty, weighed every 
 cross, forecast the future, looked at life whole, 
 and then, having counted the cost like reason- 
 able men, took up their stand upon the side 
 of God. A blind acceptance may be justifiable 
 sometimes. But the great hearts were never 
 led that way. 
 
 Now I want you to join that reasonable 
 company. I do not know that that is popular 
 doctrine, but I want to get the young men back 
 to the Church of Christ again, and I am willing 
 to risk unpopularity for that. ' Come, let us 
 reason together,' saith the Lord. * Sit down and 
 
COUNTING THE COST 157 
 
 count the cost,' says Jesus Christ. I do not ask 
 any man to become a Christian blindly. It is 
 the most reasonable act in the whole world. For 
 the sake of a saved life and of a rich eternity 
 you ought to make that reckoning immediately. 
 
THE SENDING OF THE SWORD 
 
 I came not to send peace, but a sword. — Matt, x, 34. 
 
 There seems to be a glaring contradiction 
 between this word and some other words of 
 Jesus. Some of the most familiar gospel-words 
 — words that shine down like stars on the world's 
 darkness — speak of Jesus as the great peace- 
 bringer. * Peace I leave with you. My peace I 
 give unto you. Not as the world giveth give I 
 unto you.' Yet here, ' I came not to send peace, 
 but a sword.' The point I wish you to observe 
 in passing is Christ's disregard for superficial 
 consistency. Life proves many a proposition to 
 be true that logic would readily demonstrate as 
 false. And the strange thing about the words of 
 Christ is, that while they seem to contradict each 
 other at the bar of reason, they link themselves 
 together into perfect harmony when we go for- 
 ward in the strength of them. Are you fond 
 of arguing about Christ's teachings ? You may 
 
 168 
 
THE SENDING OF THE SWORD 159 
 
 argue till doomsday and never find their power. 
 They are words of life ; meant to be lived out ; 
 there is no argument in all the armoury like 
 action. And it is only as we set our faces 
 heavenward, making these statutes our song in 
 the house of our pilgrimage : only as we view 
 every new morning as a new opportunity of 
 putting Christ to proof ; it is only thus, through 
 the gathering experience of days, that we awaken 
 to their power and truth. I notice in the engines 
 of our river-steamers that there are rods that 
 move backward as well as rods that move for- 
 ward. A child would say they were fighting 
 with each other, and that half of the engines were 
 going the wrong way. But though half the 
 engines seem to go the wrong way, there is no 
 question that the ship is going the right way : 
 out of the smoke and stir of the great city into 
 the bays where the peace of God is resting. So 
 with the words of Christ that seem to oppose each 
 other. Make them the driving power of the soul : 
 and the oppositions will not hinder progress, and 
 the contradictions will reveal their unity, and you 
 shall be brought to your desired haven. 
 
 So to our text ; and there are two lights in 
 
i6o THE SENDING OF THE SWORD 
 
 which I wish to set it. (i) The coming of Christ 
 sends a sword into the heart. (2) The coming of 
 Christ sends a sword into the home. 
 
 First, then : The coming of Christ sends a 
 sword into the heart. 
 
 Now this is exactly what I should have ex- 
 pected when I remembered the penalties of gain. 
 For everything a man achieves there is a price to 
 pay. There comes a wound with everything we 
 win. Think of the knowledge of nature that 
 we now possess, thanks to the genius and toil of 
 Darwin. It has thrown a flood of light upon the 
 world and brought us nearer to the ways of God. 
 Yet it has shown us the struggle for existence, 
 raging with a ferocity our fathers never dreamed 
 of; it has revealed to us nature red in tooth and 
 claw ; it has given us ears for the sound of 
 deadly battle back of the glory of the summer's 
 evening, so that for many of us the world can 
 never seem so fair again, nor the song of birds so 
 innocently sweet. All knowledge, whatever joy 
 it brings with it, brings with it in the other hand 
 a sword. All love, though it kindles the world 
 into undreamed-of brightness, has a note in its 
 music of unrest and agony. Every advance 
 
THE SENDING OF THE SWORD i6i 
 
 mankind has ever made, every new gift or 
 endowment man has won, holds in its grasp 
 new possibilities of pain. 
 
 It is through thoughts like these that I come to 
 understand how the coming of Christ into the 
 heart must send a sword there. To receive 
 Christ is to receive the Truth ; it is to have the 
 Spirit of Love breathing within us : and if truth 
 and love always bring sorrow with them, I shall 
 expect the coming of Christ to be with pain. I 
 have no doubt there are some here to-night to 
 whom Christ came, and made them very happy. 
 You will never forget the hour of your con- 
 version, when, as by the rending of a veil, the 
 night was gone, and the trees in the forest clapped 
 their hands before you, and every star in the 
 heavens shone more brightly. A true experience; 
 a very real experience : there are those here who 
 look back on such an hour. But Jesus does not 
 always come that way. He comes with the 
 sword as well as with the song. He comes to 
 banish the old shallow happiness ; to break the 
 ice that was over the deep waters ; to touch the 
 chords that had never given their music ; to open 
 the eyes to the hills above the cloud. And if He 
 
 L 
 
1 62 THE SENDING OF THE SWORD 
 
 has come to you thus, so that you are not happier 
 but consumed with a passion of divine discontent, 
 I bid you in God's name go forward — it is Christ 
 with the sword, but it is still the Christ. It is 
 a great thing to feel like singing. Perhaps it is 
 greater still to feel like struggling. This one 
 thing I do, forgetting the things that are behind, 
 I press towards the mark. 
 
 There are three ways in which the coming of 
 Christ into the heart sends a sword there. I can 
 only briefly touch on these three ways to-night. 
 Christ opens up the depths of sin within us ; that 
 is one. We see what we are in the light of His 
 perfection. We were tolerably contented with 
 our character once, but when Christ comes we 
 are never that again. Like the sheep that look 
 clean enough among the summer grass, but 
 against the background of the virgin snow look 
 foul ; so you and I never know how vile we are 
 until the background of our life is Christ. You 
 would have thought that when Christ filled Peter's 
 net, Peter would have been ecstatically happy ; 
 but instead of that you have Simon Peter crying, 
 ' Depart from me, O Lord, I am a sinful man.' 
 Christ came to Simon Peter with the sword ; 
 
THE SENDING OF THE SWORD 163 
 
 showed him himself; taught him how dark he 
 was. And whenever the sword-stroke of an 
 indweUing Saviour cuts into the deeps of a man's 
 heart, the wound is very Hkely to be sore. 
 
 And then Christ calls us to a lifelong warfare. 
 The note of warfare rings through the whole 
 New Testament. The spirit is quickened now 
 to crave for spiritual things, and the flesh and 
 the spirit must battle till the grave. I knew a 
 student who had been to Keswick and had drunk 
 deep of the teaching of that school. And very 
 noble teaching it is when nobly grasped. And he 
 came back to Scotland in a kind of rapture ; 
 everything was to be easy evermore. And he went 
 to one of our most saintly and notable ministers 
 to tell him about this new-found way to holiness, 
 and the minister (with his beautiful smile) looked 
 at him and said, ' Ah, sir, it will be a sore warstle 
 till the end.' For we wrestle not against flesh 
 and blood, but against principalities and powers 
 and spiritual darkness. And the evil that I 
 would not, that I do, and the good I would that 
 do I not. Paul knew the peace of God that passed 
 all understanding, yet to Paul the Saviour came 
 bearing the sword. 
 
1 64 THE SENDING OF THE SWORD 
 
 But above all, it is by heightening our ideal 
 that the old peace goes and the pain begins. It 
 is in the new conception of what life may be that 
 the sword-stroke cuts into the heart. We are 
 no more the children of time and space. We 
 are the children of glorious immortality. We 
 are launching out on to a career that will advance 
 and deepen for ever and for ever. And do you 
 think that the birth of a mighty thought like that 
 can be accomplished without wound or pain ? 
 Whenever the horizon widens there is sorrow. 
 The sword of Christ smites through the thongs 
 that bind us. The sword of Christ cuts down 
 the veil that shadows us. The sword of Christ 
 makes free play for our manhood ; we step into 
 our liberty through Him. And if, with all that, 
 there comes a haunting pain and an unrest that 
 may become an agony, remember that Christ 
 came to send the sword. 
 
 But I pass on now : so, secondly and lastly, 
 Christ comes to send a sword into the home. 
 
 Did you ever think how true that was of' 
 Nazareth ? Did you ever reflect on our text in 
 the light of that home } There was not a cottager 
 in all the village but would think of one home 
 
THE SENDING OF THE SWORD 165 
 
 they knew when they heard this. Joseph and 
 Mary — was there any home in Nazareth on 
 which the sunshine of heaven seemed to rest so 
 sweetly ? The peace of mutual love and trust 
 lay on it, like a benediction from the green hills 
 that sheltered it. Then into that quiet home 
 came Jesus Christ, and the point of the sword 
 has touched the heart of Joseph. And he was 
 minded to put Mary away quietly, for the great 
 love he had to her. Then came the flight to 
 Egypt ; then Jesus in the Temple — ah, yes ! 
 the sword is going deeper now. And when the 
 public ministry began, and He was put to sgorn, 
 rejected, crucified, I think the sword had smitten 
 that quiet home. It might have been so peaceful 
 and so happy, with the laughter of children and 
 the joy of motherhood. It might have been so 
 peaceful and so happy if God had never honoured 
 it like this. But Jesus was born there, and that 
 made all the difference. It could never be the 
 quiet home again. Gethsemane was coming, 
 Calvary was coming ; a sword was going to 
 pierce through Mary's heart. He came not to 
 send peace, but a sword. 
 
 Now I think that still in many and many a 
 
1 66 THE SENDING OF THE SWORD 
 
 home the coming of Jesus spells out unrest like 
 that. When a young man or woman in a 
 worldly home takes a definite stand, comes out 
 and out for Christ, then the father and mother 
 and every brother and sister will understand the 
 meaning of this text. There is no outward 
 quarrelling — how could there be when all the 
 family are members of the Church ? But the 
 new enthusiasm and the new consecration and the 
 new wholeheartedness for Jesus Christ — all well 
 enough at the distance of the pulpit, but now 
 brought into the bosom of the family — cause unrest, 
 uneasiness, and irritation there, and that is Christ 
 coming with the sword. I quite admit the sword 
 is needlessly sharpened sometimes by the pride 
 and arrogance of the young convert. I have had 
 cases in my ministry where all my sympathy went 
 out to the unconverted brothers. But this I 
 want to say. Is there any young man or woman 
 here whose difficulty in deciding for Christ is the 
 life at home ? Well, then, be very humble ; do 
 not obtrude yourself; remember your ignorance, 
 remember your youth ; but as you have a life to 
 live, and as you have a death to die, and as you 
 have a God to meet before the Throne, do not let 
 
THE SENDING OF THE SWORD 167 
 
 father or mother or the happiest home that ever 
 cradled man keep you from closing with the call 
 of God. If there must be trouble, then trouble 
 there must be. To thine own self be true. 
 As man to man Christ says to you to-night, 
 ' I come not to send peace, but a sword.' 
 
 A word to the children of sorrow as I close. 
 A word to the fathers and to the mothers here. 
 I want you to remember there is another way in 
 which Christ has brought the sword into the 
 home. For home itself has a wealth of meaning 
 in it, that it never would have had save for the 
 Gospel. And the natural love of the mother for 
 her child has been deepened and glorified since 
 Jesus came. Brotherhood, sisterhood, father- 
 hood, motherhood, childhood, you do not know 
 how little these words meant once. And if now 
 they speak to us of what is truest and tenderest, 
 of ties unsurpassably delicate and strong, it is the 
 love of Christ, it is the revelation of the Father, 
 it is the touch of our Brother that has achieved the 
 change. And what is the other side of that rich 
 heritage } Ask any Christian mother for the 
 answer. Find out if her heart never bleeds over 
 her child ; if she has not hours of haunting and 
 
1 68 THE SENDING OF THE SWORD 
 
 torturing fears. Develop love, and you develop 
 sorrow. Deepen the heart-life, and you deepen 
 suffering. It is by doing that, through all the 
 centuries, that Christ has brought the sword into 
 our homes. The Stoic said, * Dry up these 
 fountains of feeling ' ; so he made a solitude and 
 called it peace. But Christ deepened and cleansed 
 life's well-springs here, and that very deepening 
 has brought the sword. I think it is worth it. 
 I would not be a Stoic. It is better to live 
 vividly, spite of the pain, than to have the finger- 
 tips of all the angels grope at a heart of steel. 
 After all, if He smiteth. He will bind up again. 
 If He woundeth, yet He will make us whole. 
 The sword, like Excalibur swung by the arm 
 of Bedivere, shall flash and sink into the deeps 
 for ever, when we wake in the eternal morning 
 of the Lord. 
 
WASTED GAINS 
 
 The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting. — 
 Prov. xii. 27. 
 
 A PROVERB is wisdom crystallised. It is the 
 effort to sum up in a few homely words what 
 all feel to be true. Men like to hear their own 
 thoughts in pithy speech, and that is what a true 
 proverb achieves. That is the secret of its hold, 
 at certain stages of a people's life. A proverb is 
 not philosophy, nor is it poetry ; yet both philo- 
 sophy and poetry meet in the proverb. It takes 
 a philosophic view, then clothes it in poetic speech ; 
 it does not want to preach, it wants to picture. 
 There is a stage in every life when we almost 
 need to have our wisdom so. And in the life 
 of peoples comes a period when proverbs rule 
 like autocrats, only more wisely. 
 
 Our text then is a proverb, a compressed 
 parable. First let us see the picture in it 
 
 169 
 
lyo WASTED GAINS 
 
 The slothful man roasteth not what he took in 
 hunting. It is the picture of a hunter — he is 
 a sportsman, but a lazy fellow. But some fine 
 autumn morning this hunter wakens early. The 
 air is keen ; the dogs are baying ; the old en- 
 thusiasm of the chase stirs in his heart. He will 
 go forth and hunt to-day, and his right hand has 
 not lost its cunning. So far all is well. Laden 
 with bird and beast he gets back to his tent. 
 Then comes the waste, the sin. The impulse 
 is gone ; the morning's glow is dead — he cannot 
 be troubled cooking what he caught. So bird 
 and beast lie there, day after day ; until for very 
 shame the hunter casts them out. Unused, they 
 become useless. It is a case of wasted gains. 
 For all the good he gets from them, he might 
 as well have stayed at home, and left his bow 
 hanging upon the wall. 
 
 Such is the picture. Now do you see the 
 meaning of it .? It may be, that huntsman is not 
 far away. By toil, by tears, by sharing in the 
 toil and tears of others, our life is rich in gains. 
 Trophies have fallen to our bow, and to the bow 
 of the nation with which we are one, and to the 
 bow of the gospel we believe ; and we have never 
 
WASTED GAINS 171 
 
 roasted what we took in hunting. The gains are 
 wasted ; the trophies are unused. 
 
 I want to run that thought out into various 
 spheres of Hfe ; and first, the wasted gains in 
 bodily life. Take speech or sight. We talk 
 sometimes of speech and sight as gifts. And 
 in a deep sense they are gifts — gifts of God. But 
 for His touch, so exquisitely skilful, these powers 
 could never link us in such mystic harmony to 
 the great world without. But do not forget that 
 if speech and sight are gifts, they are also gains. 
 It took the exercise of weeks in infancy before 
 that eye of yours distinguished this from that. It 
 took the lispings and babblings of months before 
 your tongue fashioned a single word. And for 
 years more there dawned never a day but you 
 were practising the mystery of speech. And now.^ 
 Compare the possibilities of sight with what you 
 see. Contrast the possibilities of speech with 
 what you say ; and are not speech and sight 
 terribly wasted gains ^ Was it worth while 
 toiling through childish years only to see and 
 say what you saw and said to-day ? 1 think we 
 shall all be ready to confess that we have not 
 roasted what we took in hunting. 
 
172 WASTED GAINS 
 
 Again, there are wasted gains in our social 
 life. Take friendship, for example. Think for 
 a moment of the toil it cost to make a single 
 friend. Have you forgotten the first approaches, 
 the long misunderstanding, the failures and the 
 tears, the gradual dawn ? Don't you recall how 
 painfully you won your way into that other life, 
 fighting each step under the banner of friendship, 
 gaining this rampart and now that, until you 
 stood alone, victorious, within the secret room ? 
 It was a gain, that friendship ; won after toil as 
 strenuous as any hunter's. It was a spoil, a 
 trophy, of the like of which life has but few. 
 And it was yours to use and to enjoy, till God 
 should separate the twain by death. 
 
 Ah wasted gains ! That friendship, built like 
 some cathedral, to-night is lying in ruins. New 
 interests have so thronged into your life, and 
 business has so engrossed you in these eager days, 
 that you have had no time, nor any heart, this 
 many a day, to keep your friendships in repair. 
 Think of your home, sir ! Think of your wife ! 
 Life was once full of these little kindnesses that 
 are far more to some hearts than gold or silver. 
 Where are they now .'^ Have you no time now 
 
WASTED GAINS 173 
 
 from your business and your paper and your golf 
 for your wife at all ? These wasted gains are the 
 tragedy of home. Not sorrow and not poverty 
 and not the white coffin of your little child — that 
 is no tragedy. God may bless that to bring the 
 sunshine back, and link the separating hearts 
 again. The tragedy is the passing of love's 
 kindness ; the sloth that lets us squander what 
 we won ; the waste of the sweet gains of golden 
 days. 
 
 Once more, there are wasted gains in our public 
 and our national life. It is a commonplace to say 
 that all our privileges and rights as citizens have 
 been dearly bought. But after all, half of our 
 life is spent in finding out that commonplaces 
 are true, so let us hear this commonplace again. 
 Our privileges were bought for us at a great price. 
 Our humblest liberties were won in battle. The 
 charters of our rights are written in blood. Men 
 have been labouring, battling, dying since ever 
 Britain was a nation, to give us whatsoever of 
 liberty we enjoy. Read over your history again 
 — what is it all ? Is it the record of the corona- 
 tion of the kings and of the deaths of queens .^^ 
 It is the story of man's spirit, hampered, op- 
 
174 WASTED GAINS 
 
 pressed, confined, yet always struggling for its 
 own. It is the record of the soul, crying and not 
 to be denied, for its God-given rights. That is 
 what history means, if it means anything. It is 
 the tale of how our gains were won. And every 
 one of them, I shall make no exception, is marked 
 with struggle and is wet with tears. And oh, the 
 pity of it, how we waste them ! 
 
 There is our restful Sunday, and it was dearly 
 bought. But every country road and country 
 inn on Sunday is thronged with men who never 
 think of God. There is the open Bible, and it 
 was dearly bought, yet now it is every book before 
 the Bible. There is our liberty of worship, and 
 it was dearly bought, yet, come a rainy Sunday, 
 and half the churches in the city are unfilled. 
 
 And there is our right of voting too, of 
 moulding public life and sharing in it, and that 
 was dearly bought. And hundreds of men and 
 women are so careless that they will sit at 
 home, or visit, or go to work, and never trouble 
 to record their vote. We understand all ages 
 but our own. We grapple with all problems but 
 the problems at our doors. We hear all cries 
 except the cries that rise to-day from a great 
 
WASTED GAINS 175 
 
 city's need. It is not right. We are not roasting 
 what we took in hunting. 
 
 Lastly, in our moral and spiritual life there is 
 the same tale of wasted gains. Had we but used 
 all we have learned ; had we but held by all that 
 suffering taught us ; had we but clung to what 
 we wrestled for, we should be nearer heaven to- 
 night. But we have squandered it like any 
 prodigal, and flung it to the winds, and almost 
 all the lessons are to learn again ! 
 
 Here is a man who had a serious illness once. 
 It brought him to the gates of death. And lying 
 there things looked very different from what they 
 had looked before. He caught some glimpses of 
 God then, and of the infinite worth of eternal 
 things, and of the value of the soul. It was a 
 gain inestimable. And now to-night that man is 
 better. That man is here — in church. And what 
 of God ? Forgotten. What of eternal things ? 
 Forgotten. What of the soul ? Forgotten. The 
 tides of the world's life have swept them out. 
 It is a wasted gain. 
 
 Here is a father who lost his child once. And 
 in that first great woe he knelt, and broken- 
 hearted asked for pardon for his sin, and vowed 
 
176 WASTED GAINS 
 
 his life to God till the day brake. And he is here, 
 that father — with lips as careless, and with life 
 as worldly, as though the child he loved had 
 never died. 
 
 Here is a young fellow who set himself once to 
 master his besetting sin. And he did master it, 
 thanks be to God. He cast it out, and trod it 
 under foot, and walked with a new light upon 
 his face — and we all saw it. That was five years 
 ago, five months ago. And now, slowly and 
 silently in the unguarded moments, the serpent 
 has been creeping back to its place again. The 
 gain of that great effort has been wasted, and 
 the old habit is the master still ! 
 
 Brethren and sisters ! I charge you to remem- 
 ber this. Squander your gains, and God will 
 take them from you. Neglect your talents, and 
 God will take your talents back. Misuse your 
 sight, and God will rob you of the power to see. 
 Despise your teachings, and God will not teach 
 you any more. 
 
 Only not yet ! not yet ! God is still gracious ! 
 Man of one talent, of one gain, God has not 
 reached His hand out yet, and taken that gain 
 away. Out of all waste and failure thou mayst 
 
WASTED GAINS 177 
 
 yet organise victory. 'I can do all things through 
 Christ who strengtheneth me/ What, Paul ! 
 could St thou do that, a man of like passions with 
 ourselves ? Then so may we. We can still use, 
 thanks to the grace that saves us, the spoils that 
 were dearly taken in the hunting. 
 
 M 
 
UNDETECTED LOSSES 
 
 Grey hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not. — 
 Hos. vii. 9. 
 
 Our text refers to the northern kingdom of 
 Israel whose decay was so keenly felt by Hosea. 
 That kingdom — the kingdom of the tribes — had 
 started well. It was a protest on behalf of 
 liberty. It had the benediction of prophets at 
 its birth, it had Elijah and Elisha to inspire it. 
 Cradled in the fairest part of Palestine, enjoying 
 a freedom to which Judah was a stranger, the 
 possibilities of such a state seemed boundless ; 
 yet when Hosea wrote, the dream was dying; 
 the possibilities had passed away. Israel had lost 
 the energy of youth. The quick eye and the 
 strong hand were gone. Israel was falling into 
 sad descrepitude. There was a touch of moral 
 senility in Israel. And the worst of it was that 
 Israel did not know it, she was unconscious of 
 the tremendous drop. The nation had suffered 
 
 178 
 
UNDETECTED LOSSES 179 
 
 the worst of all national losses, and the losses 
 were undetected losses. Grey hairs were here 
 and there upon him, yet he knew it not. 
 
 Our text, then, leads us very naturally to the 
 general thought of undetected losses. And it is 
 on that subject — the things we lose without 
 knowing we are losing them — that I wish to 
 speak a little to-night. Some losses reveal 
 themselves at once. There are things which, 
 lost, leave the heart blank and desolate. We 
 see at a glance, by the naked gap among the 
 grass, that some tree has been uprooted there ; 
 but many of life's worst losses are not so. 
 There is loss, but there is no sense of loss. 
 Virtues, ideals, things bright and strong and 
 beautiful, steal away silently from us in the 
 dark. They used to say, ' The gods have feet 
 of wool ' — and what is divine departs on feet of 
 wool. If we could only see our own deterioration, 
 perhaps we would cry to God about it more. But 
 our best goes without any sound of trumpet, 
 and we never dream how poor we have become. 
 ' Grey hairs are here and there upon us, and we 
 know it not.* 
 
 Of course I know that the other side is true. 
 
i8o UNDETECTED LOSSES 
 
 If some of our worst losses are unnoticed, some 
 of our gains are undetected also. The fact is 
 that all that makes life rich has a way of coming, 
 as of going, silently. The kingdom of Christ 
 is the very highest manhood, and the kingdom 
 cometh not with observation. It is very perilous 
 to be sure we are growing good. Moses wist 
 not that his face shone. I think that no one 
 would have been more surprised than David had 
 he been told he was the man after God's own 
 heart. Life is not all a battle or a race ; life 
 is a walk with God, life is a growth. And as in 
 walking with somfe pure-souled friend we are won 
 towards purity and do not know it, and as in all 
 growth from the seed to summer beauty, there 
 is, as it were, an undetected movement, so in the 
 truest life there is a sweet unconsciousness — except 
 ye become as little children. Like Milton, we are 
 blind to our own poem. Like Beethoven, we are 
 deaf to our own music. We reach the highest, 
 and we lose the highest, and we know it not. 
 
 I think our Lord was voicing that deep truth 
 when He said, ' If the salt have lost its savour.' 
 All loss of character, loss of a fair name, all loss 
 of influence, ideal, spirituality, is typified in the 
 
UNDETECTED LOSSES i8i 
 
 salt that has lost its savour. The salt was white 
 yesterday : is it less white to-day ? And it 
 weighed five ounces when you measured it last 
 week. Will it weigh one scruple less to-morrow ? 
 Look at it, handle it, take it externally, and 
 measure it : it has not changed or altered in 
 the least, has it ? Yet yesterday it was fit for 
 the food of man, and to-day it is only fit to 
 be trodden under foot. Something has gone 
 from it that no balance can measure. Some- 
 thing impalpable, invisible, imponderable. You 
 might have watched all night into the morning, 
 and you would never have seen the savour go. 
 And our Lord means that as the salt loses its 
 savour, so you and I lose what is best and 
 brightest. The best and the brightest never 
 says good-bye. It does not touch us on the 
 brow when we are sleeping, and tell us the ship 
 is ready : it must go. Under the pressure of a 
 worldly city, and by the gradual slackening of a 
 man's grasp of God, through minute failures and 
 infinitesimal cowardices, by yieldings that are 
 almost imperceptible, it is thus that the ideal 
 dies away, it is thus that influence, power, 
 womanhood are lost. I wonder if that is going 
 
1 82 UNDETECTED LOSSES 
 
 on to-night, here ? ' Grey hairs are here and 
 there upon him, and he knows not.' 
 
 Now, can we explain these undetected losses ? 
 Is it possible to discover why we are thus blind ? 
 Well, I think that often our losses go unnoticed 
 because of the stir and excitement of our life. 
 Just as the soldier in the rush of battle, when the 
 bugle has sounded and the bayonet is fixed — just 
 as that soldier, charging with a cheer, is struck, 
 and hardly feels that he is wounded ; so it may 
 be that in the busy city, where many a man is 
 fighting just as keenly as they ever fought at 
 Alma or at Inkerman, it may be that there too 
 men hardly feel that the life-blood has begun 
 to ebb away. We very readily forget ourselves 
 when we are privileged to listen to exquisite 
 music ; and when the music of life and of the 
 world is sweet, it is easy to forget the still small 
 voice. Do you think that the prodigal felt his 
 loss of home so long as his money lasted in the 
 far country? His new-found liberty was far too 
 sweet for that — the dicing and the dancing and 
 the wine. "^ I mean that when life is crowded and 
 tumultuous, whether it be with business or with 
 pleasure, a man may lose much and never feel 
 
UNDETECTED LOSSES 183 
 
 the loss. Hence one of the great ministries of 
 sickness. It says to us, ' Come ye apart and rest 
 a while.' We recognise ourselves in the dark 
 hours of suffering, when the drearier night 
 succeeds the dreary day. It is only then the 
 truth breaks in on us. We see what we have 
 been, what we have lost. Alone with his 
 conscience and alone with God, a man's losses 
 are not unnoticed any more. 
 
 I think, too, that a reason for our blindness 
 lies in this, that with all loss there comes some 
 kind of gain. There is no such thing as dead 
 loss in the universe. We live in a universe of 
 compensation. Spring goes, but the glory of 
 Summer comes. Summer departs, but the wealth 
 of Autumn is left. We should be blind to half 
 the glories of the forest if the gale did not 
 sweep its million leaves away. Poor Lot, when 
 he made his foolish choice, lost Abraham's com- 
 pany ; but he gained Sodom, and Sodom was 
 choicely situated. And the prodigal gained liberty 
 and pleasure, and the gain made him oblivious of 
 his home. Ah, brother, if all that was best and 
 highest passed from our life and left a dead 
 blank behind it, then in that very moment we 
 
1 84 UNDETECTED LOSSES 
 
 should feel the loss, and crave to have the 
 highest back again. But life is far more intricate 
 than that, thanks to its principle of loss and 
 gain. You lose an Abraham, and gain a Sodom. 
 You lose the saintly purity of wifehood, and gain 
 the stolen waters that are sweet. You lose a 
 father, but you gain your liberty. You lose 
 a conscience, but you gain a fortune. And the 
 point I want to impress on you is this, that 
 often these lower gains are so alluring, so sweet, 
 so satisfying to every sense, that we never see 
 how the best is dying out of us. ' Grey hairs are 
 on us, and we know it not.' 
 
 But the great cause of our neglected losses 
 lies in the gradual and slow method of the loss. 
 There are men whose hair has whitened in a 
 night. I warrant you they saw that in the 
 morning. But it is not of that Hosea speaks, 
 when he uses the happy figure of our text. 
 All that was best had perished out of Israel. 
 Why was Israel ignorant of that ? The loss had 
 come so slowly, surely, silently, Israel had failed 
 to detect it when it came. If all the birds ceased 
 singing in the summer, the dullest city ear would 
 note the silence. If the forest were swept bare 
 
UNDETECTED LOSSES 185 
 
 by one swift gale, the blindest of us would find 
 cause for wonder. But the music of the woods 
 ceases so gradually, and the trees are stripped 
 so silently and slowly, that winter is with us, 
 songless and desolate, before we have eyes for 
 what is being lost. Some sins carry immediate 
 penalties ; their consequences leap into light at 
 once. The moment a man commits them he 
 is ruined. And we know that : perhaps there- 
 fore we avoid them. But there is another ruin 
 quite as sure as that, wrought silently through 
 deterioration of the years, and it steals on the 
 spirit of a man so gradually that grey hairs are 
 on him and he knows it not. In one of the 
 most charming of Charles Dickens's stories, the 
 heroine — Esther Summerson — had a fever. And 
 when she rose from the bed of fever the sweet, 
 pure beauty of her face was gone. She saw it at 
 once. It was too evident to miss. She had to 
 accept it as a cross from God. But there are 
 other ways in which beauty disappears. Ten 
 years of worldliness, and utter thoughtlessness, 
 and frivolous selfishness, and an unkindly heart — 
 all that will do it quite as well as fever. And yet 
 the woman hardly understands why no one ever 
 
1 86 UNDETECTED LOSSES 
 
 calls her beautiful now. I tell you that is a 
 parable of character. It is the silent dying away 
 of what is best that is the great tragedy in this 
 great city. Lightning is dangerous. So is dry 
 rot, remember. * Grey hairs are here and there 
 upon him, and he knows not.* 
 
 Now just remember — and with this I close — 
 that sooner or later all losses will be known. 
 How you are living, whether or not you pray, 
 the secret carelessness, the buried sin — the day 
 is coming, far sooner than you think, when that 
 shall not be a secret any more. Sudden tempta- 
 tion comes, or change of circumstances ; a call, 
 or a crisis perhaps, or if not these, eternity ; and 
 all that we have made of common days, and all 
 the sappings of principle we shrouded, will be 
 written out so that he that runs may read. 
 Samson arose and shook himself as at other times, 
 and he wist not that his strength was gone 
 from him : but * the Philistines are upon thee, 
 Samson,' and he learned his undetected losses 
 then. Be not deceived ; God is not mocked ; 
 whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 
 
WHEN THE CHILD-SPIRIT DIES 
 
 Of such is the kingdom of heaven. — Matt. xix. 14. 
 
 It is a beautiful thought, of such are the kingdom 
 of heaven. It is a beautiful conception, daring 
 and fresh as it is beautiful, that the one attribute 
 of all the citizens of God must be the possession 
 of the childlike heart. We need not be learned, 
 though it is sweet to be learned ; we need not 
 be gifted, though God be thanked for gifts. But 
 we must be childlike ; that is the one necessity. 
 Christ takes an unalterable stand on that. 
 
 Now of course to be childlike is one thing ; 
 and it is quite another to be childish. I some- 
 times fear we have so confused the two, that a 
 certain contempt has touched the nobler of them 
 — we use our common words so carelessly, and 
 treat that magnificent instrument of speech so 
 lightly. To be childlike is to have the spirit of 
 the child, to have the touch of the divine about 
 us still. It is to live freshly in a glad fresh 
 
 187 
 
i88 WHEN THE CHILD-SPIRIT DIES 
 
 world, with a thousand avenues into the every- 
 where out of this dull spot that we call now. 
 But to be childish is to be immature ; to have no 
 grip of things, never to face facts squarely ; and 
 he is a poor Christian who lives so. In under- 
 standing, says the apostle, I would have you men. 
 It is one distinguishing glory of our Lord that 
 He looked the worst in the face, and called it 
 bad. But the guileless heart, and the soul that 
 can serve and sing, because there is love and home 
 and fatherland about it — all that is childlike — 
 like the children — and of such is the kingdom cf 
 heaven. 
 
 There can be little doubt, too, that in claiming 
 the child-spirit Jesus was reaching up to the very 
 highest in man. ' Wisdom,' says Wordsworth in 
 his own quiet way — so helpful in these noisy days 
 — ' Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop, 
 than when we soar,' and Jesus, stooping to the 
 little children, was really rising to the crown of 
 life. Show me the greatest men in human history 
 — the men who were morally and nobly great — 
 and I shall show you in every one of them tokens 
 and traces of the childlike heart. It is the 
 middle-men, the worldly middle-men, the men of 
 
WHEN THE CHILD-SPIRIT DIES 189 
 
 one talent who bury it in the napkin, it is these 
 who are locked into their prison-house, and have 
 lost the happy daring of the child. Great souls, 
 with the ten talents flaming into genius, live in a 
 world that is so full of God, that men say they 
 are imprudent, careless ; and Jesus sees that they 
 are little children. Who was it that defined a 
 genius as a man who keeps unsullied through 
 the stern teaching of the years the spirit of the 
 child ? I think that Christ would have liked that 
 definition. There is genius in childhood ; there 
 is childhood in genius too. ' He hath put down 
 the mighty from their seats, and exalted them 
 of low degree.' 
 
 And you cannot read the story of Jesus Christ 
 without feeling that to the very close of it the 
 child-spirit was alive in Him. 'A little child 
 shall lead them,' said the prophet ; do you think 
 it was only a poetic fancy.? The Bible is too 
 terribly in earnest to have any margin for poetic 
 fancies. When I study the records of the life of 
 Jesus, and stumble on some unfathomable mystery, 
 immediately I find my heart responding, ' This is 
 the Son of God.' And when I find Him healing 
 the Syrophenician's daughter, raising the widow's 
 
190 WHEN THE CHILD-SPIRIT DIES 
 
 son, or weeping in infinite pity by the grave — ' This 
 is the Son of Man.' But when I light on these 
 passages about the lilies ; about the sparrow fall- 
 ing, and the raven who toiled not ; then, in a 
 thousand touches such as these, fresh, penetrating, 
 wonderful, I feel that after all the prophet was 
 right — a little child shall lead them. No scoffing 
 hardened Him. No disappointment soured Him. 
 No pain dulled the keen edge of His love. He 
 still believed, spite of Iscariot. He had still a 
 Father, spite of Calvary. And that sweet spirit, 
 as of a little child, has been the dew of heaven to 
 the world. 
 
 The spirit of the child, then, never died in 
 Jesus. I wonder if it has died in you ^ It dies 
 away so slowly and so gradually, under the 
 pressure of a worldly city, that we hfirdly notice 
 how far we have drifted. But the greatest losses 
 are the losses we never observe ; the crumiblings in 
 secret till this or that is ruined ; the stealing away 
 of the dearest in the dark ; and there is no loss 
 more tragic for a soul than the loss of that spirit 
 of the child. 
 
 You ask me why.^ I think there are three 
 reasons ; there are three penalties that follow 
 
WHEN THE CHILD-SPIRIT DIES 191 
 
 when the child-spirit dies, and the first is, that we 
 cease to be receptive. The joy of childhood is its 
 receptivity. The greatest duty of it is to receive. 
 The child knows nothing of a haunting past yet, 
 and it is not yet anxious about the future. Its 
 time is now^ with its magnificent content, and now 
 is God's time too, do not forget. But you and I 
 have so overlaid this present with yesterday's sin 
 and with to-morrow's project, that we have little 
 heart for the message that comes to-day. We 
 are not receptive as the little child is, we do 
 not welcome impressions and angels now. And 
 so we grow very commonplace and dull ; there 
 is plenty of dust about us, and no dew. O 
 brother, let the dead past bury its dead ! Do not 
 be living in a quenched yesterday. And take no 
 anxious thought about to-morrow. Consider the 
 lilies ; be a child again. To feel the eternal in 
 this passing moment, to catch the rustle of God's 
 garment now, not to be burdened with a vain 
 regret, not to be peering forward through the 
 curtain ; all that, with the open eye and feeling 
 heart, is to be childlike. And of such is the 
 kingdom of heaven. 
 
 No doubt it is that very receptivity that makes 
 
192 WHEN THE CHILD-SPIRIT DIES 
 
 the little children dwell apart. I have long 
 thought that the aloofness of the Christian, his 
 isolation in the busiest life, was closely akin 
 to the aloofness of the child. You talk of 
 loneliness ? — I tell you there are few such lonely 
 creatures as little children. And they are lonely, 
 not because of sorrow ; and not, thank God, 
 because their lives are empty. They dwell apart, 
 because they live in their own world, bright, 
 wonderful, with its own visions and voices, and 
 you and I never touch even with our finger-tips 
 these ivory gates and golden. What I suggest is 
 that the isolation of the saint is like the isolation 
 of the child. For the Christian also dwells apart, 
 but not in the solitude of emptiness. He has his 
 world, just as the children have ; old things have 
 passed away from him in Christ. And in that 
 new creation where the Saviour reigns, and which 
 the worldly heart has never seen, there is a 
 peopled isolation like that of the little children, 
 for of such is the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 Once more, when the child-spirit dies, then the 
 simplicity of faith is gone. There is an exquisite 
 purity about the faith of children ; sometimes 
 they make us blush — they trust us so. Intensely 
 
WHEN THE CHILD-SPIRIT DIES 193 
 
 eager, inquisitively curious ; why ? why ? from 
 the sunrise, to the sunset — but all the time how 
 they are trusting us ! Ah, if we had only trusted 
 God like that ! It is something to be trusted, 
 if only by a helpless babe, and even God is 
 happier when we trust Him. But better than 
 to be trusted, is to trust ; to walk by faith and 
 not by sight ; and when the spirit of the child 
 dies out, it is not possible to walk that way again. 
 For when we cease to be childlike we grow 
 worldly, and to be worldly is always to be faith- 
 less ; and one great danger of this commercial 
 city is to develop faithless worldly men. I have 
 no doubt you call me an idle dreamer because I 
 plead for the child-spirit in the city. But it is 
 better to be a dreamer than a coward, and woe 
 is me if I preach not the gospel. ' Of such is the 
 kingdom of heaven ' — minister ! ' Of such is the 
 kingdom of heaven ' — merchant ! ' Of such is 
 the kingdom of heaven ' — schoolmaster, doctor, 
 workman, servant ! Are you of such. ^ It is not 
 my question. I only pass it on from Jesus 
 Christ ! 
 
 Lastly, when the child-spirit dies, then the 
 feeling of wonder disappears. For the child is 
 
 N 
 
194 WHEN THE CHILD-SPIRIT DIES 
 
 above all else a wonderer, and is set in the centre 
 of a wonderful world. There is nothing common 
 or unclean for children ; all things are big with 
 wonder for the bairn. The rolling of the wagon 
 in the street, and the gathering banks of cloud 
 down by the sunset ; and the opening flower, and 
 the father's morning kindness, and the mother's 
 stories, and the birthday joy — the little magicians 
 so trick them out with glory, that they make 
 the pomp of emperors ridiculous. Childhood, as 
 of one our poets sang, is — 
 
 ' The hour 
 Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower.' 
 
 What a poor thing is life when the wonder of 
 it all passes away ! I remember a magnificent 
 sermon by John Ker, that master in the great art 
 of spiritual preaching, and this is the title of it, 
 ' God's word suited to man's sense of wonder.' 
 *I had rather,' said Ruskin, *live in a cottage and 
 wonder at everything, than live in Warwick 
 Castle and wonder at nothing.' You have all 
 felt the trials of existence, I want you to feel the 
 wonder of it now ; and the great wonder that the 
 Lord should be your Shepherd, and should have 
 
WHEN THE CHILD-SPIRIT DIES 195 
 
 died upon Calvary for you. His name shall be 
 called Wonderful— become a child again, and feel 
 it so. For except ye be born again, ye cannot 
 see the kingdom ; and of such is the kingdom 
 of heaven. 
 
THE LEISURE OF FAITH 
 
 He that believeth shall not make haste.— Is. xxviii. i6. 
 
 I THINK we shall all agree that in the life of our 
 modern city there is recognisable the note of 
 haste. One has only to watch one of our crowded 
 streets to detect the pressure at the back of life. 
 Life is more urgent than it used to be, the 
 quietude of an older day is passing. The stream 
 had still and shadowed reaches in it once, but 
 to-day it hurries forward very swiftly. 
 
 Now it is notable that with that greater haste 
 there is found, without any question, a lesser faith. 
 There is a certain shrinking of the faculty of 
 faith in the organism of our complex life. I am 
 no pessimist, and I trust that none of you are. 
 Life, for all its sorrow, is too real, too deep, too 
 rich, to write that name of failure on its brow. 
 But the most cheerful optimist cannot be blind to 
 this, that faith, and reverence which is the child of 
 faith, are not conspicuous in our modern city ; 
 
 196 
 
THE LEISURE OF FAITH 197 
 
 and the singular thing is, that with that decline 
 of faith we should have witnessed the increase of 
 hurry. Did you ever think that these features 
 were connected ? The Bible affirms it in the 
 clearest manner. You say that the absence of 
 restfulness in modern life springs from the fiercer 
 struggle for existence. But the Bible goes a 
 great deal deeper than that : the want of rest 
 is rooted in want of trust. Depend upon it, he 
 that believeth not is always in danger of feverish 
 impatience. Depend upon it, that to the end of 
 time, he that believeth shall not make haste. 
 
 Of course, it is very necessary for clear think- 
 ing to distinguish the haste of our text from 
 strenuous speed. Every one who is at all in 
 earnest about things feels the push and the pull 
 to get his life-work done ; but a strenuous and 
 resolute forwardness such as that is very different 
 from the spirit of haste. * Unhasting but unrest- 
 ing * should be the motto on every Christian's 
 coat of arms. It is impossible that a true 
 Christian should be a sluggard. Such new con- 
 ceptions of life have dawned on him ; duty, and 
 service, and the building up of character, are so 
 expanded when God has touched the soul, that as 
 
198 THE LEISURE OF FAITH 
 
 with the stirring music of the trumpet we are 
 called to redeem the time because the days are 
 evil. But the man who hastes never redeems the 
 time. You never redeem anything by hurrying 
 up. And it is of that impatience, so closely akin to 
 fickleness — and an age of hurry is extraordinarily 
 fickle — it is of that impatience which knows no 
 inward quietude, and which robs life of its music 
 and its march, that the prophet is speaking 
 here. He that believeth shall run and not be 
 weary. He that believeth shall press toward the 
 mark. He that believeth — God to his tardy feet 
 has promised to lend the swiftness of the roe. 
 But spite of that — nay, because of that — he that 
 believeth shall not make haste. 
 
 I like to apply our text to hasty judgments. 
 He that believeth shall not make haste to judge. 
 It is amazing how rashly and how recklessly we 
 pass severe judgments on each other. There is 
 nothing harder than suspense of judgment in our 
 daily intercourse with men and women. Even 
 the kindliest are in danger of prejudging, and 
 those who are not kindly do so constantly. Now 
 do you see how we are to escape that sin ? Do 
 you observe the secret of suspended judgment ? 
 
THE LEISURE OF FAITH 199 
 
 It is not a matter of caution after all — he that 
 believeth shall not make haste to judge. In all 
 disparagement there is a lack of faith. In every 
 hasty summing up of character what is really 
 revealed is our own want of trust. If we only 
 believed in our brother a little more, if we only 
 credited the divine within him ; if we only realised 
 that under the outward man there is a hidden man 
 of the heart striving and struggling, we should 
 be readier to think more kindly than we do. I 
 want you to believe that under all disguise there 
 is a spark of the divine fire in every heart. I 
 want you to believe that God is not far away even 
 from the life that you and I call godless. He 
 that believeth in the love and patience of Heaven, 
 and in the image of God, defaced but not de- 
 stroyed, will not make haste to judge. 
 
 Again, I think our text is full of meaning for 
 those who are in a great hurry to enjoy, and 
 perhaps the haste to be rich and taste life's 
 pleasures was never so markedly felt as it is now. 
 It is always a difficult thing to wait. David was 
 never more saintly in his life than just when he 
 waited patiently for God. But to-day, when the 
 means of enjoyment are so multiplied and the 
 
200 THE LEISURE OF FAITH 
 
 music of the world is doubly sweet, the monotony 
 of duty has become doubly irksome. It is very 
 hard to be bound to that desk all day, while the 
 golden hours of youth are flying so quickly. It is 
 very hard from morning till weary night to be 
 standing behind the counter in that warehouse, 
 when life might be so rich and many-coloured if 
 only there were a litde liberty and leisure. Has 
 not one of our own poets, himself a minister of 
 the gospel, sung, * Gather the rosebuds while ye 
 may, old time is still aflying ' ? Hence springs a 
 certain rebellion at our lot, a craving for im- 
 mediate satisfaction ; a bitter willingness to 
 forget the morrow if only we can snatch some 
 pleasure now ; and to all men and women who 
 are tempted so — and multitudes are tempted so 
 to-day — comes the stern word of the eternal 
 God, * He that believeth shall not make haste.' 
 The modern catechism asks ' What is man's chief 
 end ? ' and the answer it gives is * Man's chief 
 end is to enjoy life.' But the older catechism was 
 wiser when it answered * Man's chief end is to 
 enjoy Gt?^,' and God can only be enjoyed, be sure 
 of it, in the sphere of duty and along the line of 
 work. Outside of that, the presence of God is 
 
THE LEISURE OF FAITH 20J 
 
 lost, and the cup is always bitter when that is lost. 
 Life has not been given us to enjoy, life has 
 been given us to use ; and I fancy you can use 
 it better where you are, than if you had your own 
 sweet will to-morrow. However grey and cheer- 
 less duty be, a man must trample down his moods 
 and do it. Then, in God's time, far sooner than 
 we dream, the richest joys will reach us unex- 
 pectedly, and life will unfold itself, out of the 
 mists, into a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. 
 He that believeth can say * Get thee behind me, 
 Satan.* He that believeth will not make haste. 
 
 Again, I keep whispering this text within my 
 heart, when I observe our common haste to see 
 results. The man who believes in himself and in 
 his message is never in a hurry to see results. 
 The army general who cannot trust himself grows 
 feverish for some brilHant deed of arms. But 
 Lord Kitchener will wait and plan and scheme 
 till the whole nation grows restless and impatient ; 
 he believes in himself, and he will not make 
 haste. It is always a mark of inferior capacity to 
 be in a feverish hurry to be recognised. No 
 genius ever goes to sleep with the wild hope that 
 to-morrow he may wake up famous. Genius is 
 
202 THE LEISURE OF FAITH 
 
 sublimely confident and easy ; with the touch 
 of God-given power comes sweet assurance. 
 What I feel is that if the church of Christ 
 really believes in her mission and her message, 
 she must not be feverish about results. I think 
 it is oftener faithlessness than faith that clamours 
 for immediate statistics. The purposes of Heaven 
 are very long, and God fulfils Himself in many 
 ways. The soul of man is infinitely delicate, and 
 you can never tabulate the powers that touch it. 
 Be not weary in well-doing. You see no fruit ? 
 So be it. Remember that with your covenanted 
 Lord a thousand years are as a single day. He 
 that believeth is strong to sow in tears, but he 
 shall not make haste to reap in joy. 
 
 Now when we turn to the dealings of God 
 with men there is one thing that impresses us 
 very deeply. It is the slowness of all God's 
 procedure in guiding and blessing our humanity. 
 God never hurries ; He moves with infinite ease. 
 He takes an age to perfect one of His thoughts 
 within us. What I might call the leisureliness of 
 providence is written large on human history. 
 Think of the weary discipline of Israel till they 
 had grasped the mighty truth that God is one ; 
 
THE LEISURE OF FAITH 203 
 
 remember how men had to wait for centuries 
 before the world was ready for Christ Jesus ; 
 reflect that nineteen centuries have gone, and we 
 seem only to be touching the hem of Christ's 
 garment yet — and you will apprehend the leisure- 
 liness of heaven. In all God's dealings with the 
 human race, and in all God's dealings with the 
 human soul, there is purpose, urgency, infinite 
 persistence ; but I think no man will detect 
 hurry there. 
 
 Now take our text and let it illuminate that 
 thought. It is because God believes in man that 
 He refuses to hurry his development. If there 
 were no potentiality in human nature, no promise 
 of a divine ideal at its core, a single season might 
 be enough to ripen it, as it ripens the corn that 
 rustles in the field. There are creatures that 
 dance and die all in one summer's evening ; and 
 a summer's evening is long enough for them. 
 But a thousand evenings are not enough for 
 man, there is such promise in the sorriest life. 
 When I think how long a little child is helpless, 
 absolutely dependent on another's love ; when I 
 think of the slow stages of our growth up the 
 steep slope to moral and spiritual manhood ; when 
 
204 THE LEISURE OF FAITH 
 
 I remember that every vision that beckons us, 
 and every hope that fires us, and every truth that 
 illuminates and saves us, was won out of the riches 
 of God, through the discipline and the chastise- 
 ment of ages, I feel that the belief of God in 
 man is wonderful : He hath believed in us, and 
 therefore hath made no haste. We speak a great 
 deal about our faith in God. Never forget God's 
 glorious faith in us. 
 
 And when I pass to the earthly life of Jesus, 
 I am arrested by the same procedure there. He 
 was leisurely, just because He trusted men. He 
 did not despair of them when they were back- 
 ward ; He did not reject them because they were 
 slow to learn. When He had chosen a heart. He 
 trained it with infinite patience, and just because 
 He believed in it, He would not hurry. Com- 
 pare His treatment of Judas with that of Peter. 
 Christ did not believe in the sincerity of Judas. 
 He knew him to be a hypocrite, and a traitor, and 
 * what thou doest do quickly ' — haste ! get done 
 with it ! But Peter ! Christ thoroughly believed 
 in Peter. He saw the possibilities in Peter. He 
 knew that underneath the sand, driven by the 
 wind, there was bed-rock to build a church upon. 
 
THE LEISURE OF FAITH 205 
 
 So Peter was allowed to go out into the night, 
 and to weep bitter tears under the look of Christ. 
 There was no hurry. Let him weep his eyes out. 
 Jesus believed in Peter, and let him alone. And 
 Jesus was scourged and hung upon the cross, and 
 lay in the grave, and rose on the third day, and 
 the hours seemed endless to the fallen disciple, 
 yet never a word of comfort came from his Lord. 
 Then at long last, * Simon, son of Jonas, lovest 
 thou Me ? ' ' Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I 
 love Thee.* The wheels of the chariot of Christ 
 had tarried, just because He trusted that great 
 heart. 
 
 And so we come back to where we started 
 from — the freedom from feverishness that is a 
 mark of faith. Do you believe ? Then the 
 peace that passes understanding shall keep your 
 heart and mind through Jesus Christ. Do you 
 believe — but let me use a little illustration that 
 may help to make clearer what I mean. 
 
 I notice that in these flimsy tenements which 
 are being run up in various quarters of the city, 
 there is a great hurry to get all finished by the 
 term. There is a feverish eagerness apparent to 
 have everything ready and complete by Whitsun- 
 
2o6 THE LEISURE OF FAITH 
 
 day. But the old cathedrals were not built that 
 way. The old cathedrals took hundreds of years 
 to build. Men lived and died, and handed on the 
 work, and there was plenty of time, for was not 
 the work God's ? And every finial and turret was 
 perfected, for the builders said the ' eyes of God 
 were there.' Are ye not temples of the living 
 God.^ Shall not the work go on through all 
 eternity ? Be zealous, strenuous ! Give thy 
 whole heart to things ! But he that believeth 
 shall not make haste. 
 
THE OPENED WINDOWS 
 
 His windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem. — 
 Daniel vi. lo. 
 
 It was in an hour of very sore distress that 
 Daniel acted in the manner of which our text 
 speaks. The crisis had come which he had long 
 expected, and the crisis drove him to the feet of 
 God. In the years that immediately preceded 
 the Scottish Reformation, there was one thing 
 that rankled in the breast of all true Scotsmen. 
 It was the presence and the power of Frenchmen 
 in almost all the high offices of state in Scotland. 
 In much the same way there was widespread 
 irritation, rising at times into very bitter envy, « 
 among the aristocratic patriots of Babylon at the 
 powerful eminence of foreigners like Daniel. In 
 Scotland, David Rizzio was assassinated ; but 
 Babylon was more advanced in civilisation than 
 Scotland. The presidents and the princes and 
 the counsellors took a more politic way of accom-i 
 
 207 
 
2o8 THE OPENED WINDOWS 
 
 plishing their designs. Men were forbidden to 
 pray for thirty days. They must ask no petition 
 of any God or man, save of Darius. And it was 
 then, when the royal decree was signed, and when 
 Daniel fully recognised his peril, that he went 
 into his house to pray, his windows being open 
 toward Jerusalem. 
 
 So much for the historical setting of the words. 
 Now, bringing them into a larger environment, 
 I find that they carry three suggestions. The 
 first is the moral significance of indifferent actions. 
 The second is the true relationship of the unseen 
 and the seen. The third is the right attitude 
 towards the unattainable. Allow me to dwell 
 on each for a few nioments. 
 
 First, then, whenever I think of Daniel's pro- 
 cedure, it reminds me of the moral significance of 
 indifferent actions. There was nothing remark- 
 able in opening a window. It is one of those 
 common acts which we do without a thought. 
 The Babylonian slaves in Daniel's house would 
 not attach the slightest importance to it. Yet, 
 every time that Daniel opened that lattice, it 
 spoke of a heart that was travelling to Jerusalem. 
 Jt was the index of a soul that in seductive 
 
THE OPENED WINDOWS 209 
 
 Babylon was true to the God and the Temple 
 of its race. It revealed a spirit which honours 
 could not destroy ; a love which distance was 
 powerless to quench; a heroism which no im- 
 pending doom could shake. The action in itself 
 was immaterial, but we see how full of signifi- 
 cance it was. 
 
 There is another verse in the Old Testament 
 that I should like you to note in connection with 
 our text. I read in Genesis that when Abram 
 and Lot parted, Lot pitched his tent towards 
 Sodom (xiii. 12). There was no fault to be 
 found with the actual place of pitching ; it was 
 just like a hundred other scenes of bivouac. 
 There was good pasture for the weary flocks, 
 a brook to wash off the soiling of the day, and 
 sufl^cient shelter from the keen night winds. 
 Viewed in itself, the choice was immaterial. It 
 was like the opening and closing of a lattice. 
 The moral significance lies in the word toward — 
 Lot pitched his tent that night toward Sodom. 
 It was the direction, hot the place, that was 
 important. It was the trend of the journey, 
 not the actual pitch. Had Lot been travelling 
 away from Sodom, the site would presumably 
 
2IO THE OPENED WINDOWS 
 
 have been ideal. But Daniel opened his windows 
 toward Jerusalem, and so doing revealed a heart 
 true to the highest. Lot pitched his tent toward 
 Sodom, and the tragedy lay in the direction. 
 
 The truth, then, which I wish to impress on 
 you is this, that there are actions which are quite 
 indifferent in themselves, and which in them- 
 selves, when viewed in isolation, may have no 
 moral importance whatsoever ; and yet if they 
 reveal the trend of character, and the direction 
 that our thoughts and wishes and feelings are 
 setting in, no man dare say that they are imma- 
 terial. It is not the actual achievement of my 
 life, it is my life's direction that is of supreme 
 importance ; and as the handful of grass thrown 
 up into the wind will tell whence the wind comes 
 and whither it is going, and as the straw will show 
 which way the current runs, so deeds, intrinsically 
 insignificant, may be big with meaning, if they 
 disclose the movement of a life. There are some 
 things that are always and everywhere right. 
 There are other things that in all circumstances 
 are wrong. It is impossible to conceive a state 
 of being, for instance, in which falsehood should 
 be a virtue or bravery a vice. But in between 
 
THE OPENED WINDOWS 211 
 
 these everlasting fixities, there lies a whole world 
 of endeavour and of action, and the moral value 
 of the action is determined by the trend and 
 purpose of the underlying character. A score of 
 lattices might be flung wide in Babylon, and 
 might indicate nothing save that the heat was 
 lessening. But the lattice of Daniel, open toward 
 Jerusalem, was the witness of an heroic heart. 
 And a score of tents might be pitched in the 
 plains where Lot was, and might mean no more 
 than that the pasturage was good. But the tent 
 of Lot, pitched there towards Sodom, told of a 
 character hurrying to ruin. 
 
 I read the other day a characteristic anecdote 
 about Professor Faraday. The lecture was over, 
 and he was leaving the class-room, when some 
 little article dropped from his hand on the floor. 
 The Professor searched for it, but it was nowhere 
 to be found ; it is extraordinary how things will 
 hide themselves on a level floor. And one of 
 his students who was with him said, ' Never 
 mind, sir, it is of no consequence whether we 
 find it to-night or no.' ' That is quite true,' 
 said the Professor, ' but it is of the gravest con- 
 sequence to me that I be not baffled in my 
 
212 THE OPENED WINDOWS 
 
 determination to find it' — he knew the moral 
 value of such actions. We are all too ready to 
 say, * It does not matter.' We are too fond of 
 thinking, ' What 's the harm ? ' We isolate our 
 actions, view them abstractly, judge them by 
 inexorable codes of right and wrong. But the 
 man who is in earnest about moral excellence will 
 never forget the complexity of character; he will 
 feel that what for other men is harmless, for him 
 may be a step towards degradation. The supreme 
 question is whither is he tending — is it towards 
 Sodom or is it towards Jerusalem ? 
 
 In the second place, I catch a glimpse in our 
 text of the true relationship of the unseen and 
 the seen. 
 
 When Daniel opened his window, as his custom 
 was, it was not Babylon that he desired to see : 
 his heart was far away in his own country. Just 
 as the Scottish emigrant in Canada dreams of the 
 mountains and moors where he was born, and sees 
 the glen again, and the burn swollen with the rain, 
 and the dripping bracken, and the glory of purple 
 heather : so Daniel in exile, heartsick if not 
 homesick, craved for the land and the Temple 
 that he loved. He could not see them ; they 
 
THE OPENED WINDOWS 213 
 
 were beyond his vision. It would bring them no 
 nearer to fling wide the lattice. Yet an instinct 
 that every one of us can understand moved him 
 to open the window towards Jerusalem. He 
 could brook no barrier betwixt him and the 
 unseen. 
 
 And then, what happened when the window was 
 opened ? Why, the life in Babylon broke in on 
 Daniel noisily. It had been dulled and deadened 
 and indistinct before ; but now it rolled like a 
 tide into the room. He heard the wagon labour- 
 ing through the street, and the wagoners shouting 
 in their upland dialect. He heard the angry 
 chafl^ering in the market, and the voices of children 
 romping in the squares. He saw the aged resting 
 in the shadow, and the mothers with their infants 
 in their arms. And now a soldier, and now a 
 laden country-woman, and now a beggar, and 
 now a Chaldean priest, passed by under the open 
 lattice. It was not to see all this that Daniel 
 opened his window. His window was open to 
 the unseen Jerusalem. But in the very instant 
 of his opening it so, the life around him became 
 doubly real. 
 
 Now that is like a little parable of something 
 
214 THE OPENED WINDOWS 
 
 that happens to the truly religious man. Let him 
 open the window of his heart on the unseen, and 
 the life at his door grows doubly real to him. It 
 is not true that a heart-hunger for the unseen 
 robs the life round us of its charm and import. 
 The surging and strange life of common streets, 
 the crooning of motherhood, the song of children, 
 are touched into meanings hitherto undreamed of, 
 when the lattice of the soul is opened Christwards. 
 When the gaze of the heart is towards its unseen 
 Saviour, then do we love, because He first loved 
 us. And slowly but surely, kindled by love's 
 insight, there grows the vision of the worth of 
 life. We cannot despise men for whom Jesus 
 lived. We cannot scorn men for whom Jesus 
 died. We cannot be indifferent to human suffer- 
 ing, when we remember the compassion of the 
 Saviour. We cannot think lightly of mother- 
 hood or childhood, when we recall the home at 
 Nazareth. The life in the street, so coloured 
 and so changeful ; and the life in the cottage, 
 with its joy and pain ; childhood and age, suffer- 
 ing and sorrow — all are enriched and illumined 
 and transfigured, when the soul's window is 
 opened toward Jerusalem. 
 
THE OPENED WINDOWS 215 
 
 There is no such instance in history of this 
 as the life of Jesus Christ Himself. He is the 
 peerless example of that true relationship that is 
 suggested to us by the text. He lived and moved 
 among eternal things. He enjoyed unbroken 
 fellowship with God. His heart was in heaven 
 where His Father dwelt, as truly as the heart of 
 Daniel was in Jerusalem. Yet, though all the 
 windows of His soul were opened heavenward, 
 the life around Him was infinitely precious ; the 
 meanest villager ceased to be insignificant, to a 
 heart whose lattice was thrown wide on God. 
 He could not disown the woman at the well ; 
 He dare not spurn the woman who was a sinner. 
 He was moved with compassion for the widow of 
 Nain, and he wept before the grave of Lazarus. 
 There was never an anger like the anger of 
 Jesus ; there was never a pity so resourceful and 
 so strong. No man could charge our Lord with 
 other-worldliness. His vision of God was no 
 ecstatic rapture. All things around Him were 
 more real and near, because the window was open 
 toward Jerusalem. 
 
 Lastly, and very briefly, our text suggests the 
 right attitude towards the unattainable. Daniel 
 
2i6 THE OPENED WINDOWS 
 
 had thriven very well in exile, and had risen to 
 quite remarkable power ; but chains are still 
 chains however they be gilded, and Daniel was 
 a prisoner in Babylon. He would never again 
 cross the fords of Jordan, nor ever look upon 
 the Holy City. His prospects of return were 
 hopeless ; 'he was doomed to a perpetual separa- 
 tion. Yet, though all hope of seeing Jerusalem 
 was banished, we read that he opened his windows 
 toward Jerusalem, and that suggests to me the 
 right attitude towards the unattainable. 
 
 For every man, who is striving to live nobly, 
 is struggling after things he cannot reach. He 
 has his Jerusalem, but it is far away, and he 
 knows that on this side of the grave he will not 
 see it. Dimly, and as in the mystical distance, 
 he has grown conscious of an ideal character ; but 
 the failure and the flaw of every day, and the 
 recurrent weakness, and the unbridled heart, tell 
 him too plainly that he is far off from it. It is 
 when we feel that deeply that we are tempted to 
 despair. It is in such hours that we fall to lower 
 levels. We grow heartsick ; we shall never see 
 Jerusalem ; let us be contented with our little 
 room. But, I say to you, dare to be a Daniel. 
 
THE OPENED WINDOWS 217 
 
 Fling wide the lattice towards what you can never 
 reach. Have the casement open towards the 
 unattainable ; and by the open casement be in 
 prayer. And though the love and purity you 
 long for, and all the depth and strength of perfect 
 character be as far distant from your hungry 
 heart as Judea from the yearning heart of 
 Daniel, yet in the very craving lies nobility, 
 and the pledge of attainment in the tearless 
 morn. Daniel to-day, in the sunshine and love 
 of God, in the land where they fear no death, 
 and need no Temple, possesses and enjoys all that 
 he craved for once, — when he opened his windows 
 toward Jerusalem. 
 
IS LIFE A TRAGEDY? 
 
 At a meeting of our Literary Society on Tuesday 
 night, a young man read an essay on the Tragedy 
 of Life. I did not hear the essay, but I gathered 
 from the subsequent discussion, which I did hear, 
 that it was an able paper. Now there was one 
 thing in that discussion which impressed me very 
 much. One speaker remarked that in the essay 
 there had been no reference to Jesus Christ. 
 The essayist replied that if the minister was doing 
 his duty in the pulpit, that argument should be. 
 familiar to them all. I thought the whole discus- 
 sion very significant of the trend and the temper 
 of these present times. And I should like there- 
 fore to speak for a little on what the writer called 
 Life's Tragedy, viewed from the standpoint of 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 Now we all admit that there are tragedies in 
 life. We cannot live very long without observing 
 that. What does impress us as our life advances 
 
 218 
 
IS LIFE A TRAGEDY? 219 
 
 IS how men try to conceal the tragedies, and 
 how the secret breaks through all disguise, and 
 gets written out so that he who runs may 
 read. It is thus that we grow more charitable 
 with the years. We learn to read the signs 
 of the times more fluently. We might have 
 been bitter, too, had we had that to bear 
 It is so easy to be unkind, when we are un- 
 happy. 
 
 But it is one thing to say that life has tragedies 
 and another to talk of the tragedy of life. The 
 depths of the heavens may be of cloudless azure, 
 though thunderous clouds are moving in the sky. 
 What then is tragedy.^ It is a play, or drama, 
 that marches with stately movement to calamity. 
 Dante called his great epic a comedy because it 
 closed in the glorious vision of God. But in 
 tragedy the characters move onward, through 
 love, and hate, and the passions of joy and 
 sorrow, to an end that is shadowed, and an 
 issue that is dark ; and when above the char- 
 acters is seen the hand of Fate, moving them 
 irresistibly to their doom, then we have tragedy 
 in the full meaning of the term. When men 
 speak of the tragedy of life, I take it that that 
 
220 IS LIFE A TRAGEDY? 
 
 is exactly what they mean. No one denies 
 that life has exquisite joys. No one denies that 
 there are days of sunshine, seasons when all the 
 trees in the forest clap their hands. But if life 
 is tragedy, its ultimate end is darkness ; the play 
 is progressing sorrow-ward, not joyward. We 
 have to cross the bar into the boundless deep, 
 but we dare not hope to see our Pilot there. No 
 matter what the struggle and the strain, life is not 
 tragedy if the end be happy. It is only when 
 we believe that human life is moving towards a 
 climax of unhappiness, that we can talk of the 
 tragedy of life. 
 
 Now the mood or temper which interprets the 
 world so goes by the familiar name of pessimism. 
 A pessimist is one who says life is a tragedy. 
 And I call pessimism a mood or temper because 
 it reveals itself in every human activity. It bursts 
 out into poetry in Byron. It creeps into politics 
 under the name of Nihilism. It becomes a religion 
 in the great creed of Buddha. It has its philo- 
 sophers in men like Schopenhauer. Had you 
 asked Byron what he thought of life, he would 
 have answered that for all its glories it was 
 tragedy. If you travelled to the dreamy East 
 
IS LIFE A TRAGEDY? 221 
 
 and asked the Buddhist what he thought of 
 life, he too would tell you that human life is 
 tragedy, and that the great aim of Hfe is to get 
 rid of selfhood. Millions believe, then, that life 
 is a tragedy, and all who believe that, we call 
 pessimists. 
 
 And I think it is one marked feature of to-day 
 that that mood has crept into our popular litera- 
 ture. The pessimistic spirit has been popularised 
 in a way that the world has never seen before. 
 I do not forget that the consummate masters 
 have never accepted that gospel of despair. I do 
 not forget the magnificent faith of Browning, nor 
 the quiet and luminous hope of Tennyson, though 
 even Tennyson, as his life advanced, seems to 
 have lost some of his strong assurance. But the 
 fact remains that the plays and novels and stories 
 that are greedily devoured by hundreds of thou- 
 sands to-day are largely tinged with the pessimistic 
 temper. Once, a novel would hardly have been 
 called a novel, unless it closed with the ringing of 
 marriage bells. But now it is quite allowable to 
 close with the blighting of hope in a wild and 
 stormy sunset. The belief that life for all its 
 effort is but tragedy, that the world is hurrying 
 
222 IS LIFE A TRAGEDY? 
 
 forward to the dark, that man is the powerless 
 instrument of fate, a helpless pawn on the chess- 
 board of the universe — this thought, subtly and 
 stealthily, is finding its way into the hearts of 
 thousands in the leisure hours they give to lighter 
 reading. 
 
 Now I wonder if we can explain at all the 
 prevalence of this pessimistic temper. I think 
 there are three things that help us to account 
 for it. 
 
 Firstly, there is a very noble reason. It is that 
 we take life very seriously now. We are all in- 
 terested in the great social problems, and that has 
 opened our eyes to the miseries abroad. It was 
 all very well for the poet Pope, for instance, to 
 pen that famous line, ' Whatever is, is right.' 
 But that was the optimism of ignorance, not of 
 knowledge, the faith of an age that shut its eyes 
 to facts ; and I think a recoil from that was quite 
 inevitable : brave hearts were bound to rise up 
 and deny it. Depend upon it, that if one century 
 says * Whatever is, is right,' the next century 
 will take its own revenge and say * Whatever is, 
 is wrong.' The world advances as the pendulum 
 swings, and through extremes we come to the 
 
IS LIFE A TRAGEDY? 223 
 
 mean at last. I think, then, there is something 
 noble in our pessimism. It at least means that we 
 have begun to see and feel. We are taking life 
 so seriously now, and we are feeling the pressure 
 of its burden so, that the shallow optimist who 
 refuses to face facts is out of date by half a 
 century. 
 
 But then again this is a time of contrasts, and 
 a time of sharp contrasts is almost always pessi- 
 mistic. It is when class is separated from class, 
 that men begin to feel the hopelessness of things. 
 In a little village you rarely find a pessimist ; 
 the lawyer and the cobbler are too good friends 
 for that. I mean that the rich are not so very 
 rich, and the poor are not so very poor ; they 
 mix and mingle in a common brotherhood, 
 and there is nothing like that for keeping the 
 heart sweet. But it is not village-life that is 
 prominent to-day. It is the life of the great and 
 crowded city. And in a city the rich are a great 
 deal richer, and the poor in a score of senses are 
 far poorer ; and the separation and conflict inevit- 
 ably engendered carry the iron into innumerable 
 souls. Our modern pessimism is not the child of 
 the country. There is no glory of the Highland 
 
224 IS LIFE A TRAGEDY? 
 
 heather in it ; no music of the burn, nor any 
 hit of birds. It is the child of the city, that 
 place of glaring contrasts, of downcrushing, of 
 seething discontent. It is there that men speak 
 of the tragedy of life. 
 
 But perhaps there is a deeper reason still. 
 I refer to the materialism that is current. There 
 is a strong tendency abroad that meets us con- 
 stantly, to explain man in terms of force and 
 matter. In some quarters the great thought of 
 evolution has been pushed so far, and the doctrine 
 of heredity has been so strained, that man is 
 practically an automaton, and what we call free- 
 will a sweet delusion. Such teaching is but 
 fatalism in disguise. It is John Calvin without 
 the grace of God. And Calvinism with God's 
 grace was stern enough ; but without it, it is 
 the nursing-mother of despair. If I thought 
 there was no reality in my free-will, I should 
 become a pessimist to-morrow. If I am only 
 impelled towards the inevitable by the pres- 
 sure of the long past that is within me, life 
 immediately becomes a tragedy for me. And 
 I doubt not that it is some dim sense of that, 
 moving in what is called the spirit of the age, 
 
IS LIFE A TRAGEDY? 225 
 
 that gives what I have named the pessimistic 
 note to so many books that are being widely 
 read. 
 
 Now (and I speak with reverence and adora- 
 tion and under a deep sense of what I owe to 
 Christ), if there ever was a man in history who 
 had ample cause to be a pessimist, I think it was 
 our Saviour Jesus Christ. Whatever life may be 
 for you and me, life was no sweet paradise for 
 Him ; and if all experience was summed up in 
 His experience. He had some right to talk of 
 the tragedy of life. He was filled with the 
 passion to love and to serve His fellows, yet 
 they cried ' Crucify Him, crucify Him ! Not 
 this man, but Barabbas.' From the hour of 
 His baptism, right along all His ministry, 
 there lay the shadow of the cross to come. 
 A tragedy moves with lofty march towards 
 calamity. Christ moved with supreme nobility 
 to Calvary. Shall He not talk of the tragedy of 
 life ? 
 
 Instead of that, Christ talked about His joy ; 
 He looked facts in the face and yet was joyful. 
 Instead of that, Christ talked about His peace; 
 a peace that passed all understanding filled His 
 
226 IS LIFE A TRAGEDY ? 
 
 heart. But, most significant of all, He turned to 
 men and said, ' I am come that they might have 
 life and might have it more abundantly.' This, 
 then, was the very object of Christ's coming ; 
 that men might enjoy a larger measure of life. 
 Had life been a tragedy to Jesus Christ, I do 
 not think He would have wished to add to it. 
 Buddha looked out on life and saw its sorrow ; 
 and he said, ' Life is a tragedy, let us get done 
 with it.' But Jesus looked out on life, saw all 
 its sorrow, and felt it with an intensity Buddha 
 never knew, and yet in the face of it all He 
 dared to say, ' I am come that the world might 
 have more abundant life.' The question is, can 
 we discover the sources of this amazing optimism 
 of Jesus ? I wish to indicate one or two of them 
 and so close. 
 
 Well, in the first place, Christ was supremely 
 certain that His Father was present and working 
 in the world. Above all sorrow and sin, and 
 struggle and failure, Christ felt the pressure of a 
 sovereign power, and the movement of the in- 
 finite love of heaven. In the Old Testament 
 men had descried God's sovereignty, but it was 
 an awful and tremendous sovereignty. With 
 
IS LIFE A TRAGEDY ? 227 
 
 Jesus it has become a much more gentle attri- 
 bute ; it clothes the grass and sees the sparrow 
 fall. You remember the famous line of Robert 
 Browning, ' God *s in His heaven, all 's right with 
 the world ' ? That was one source of the optimism 
 of Browning ; but the optimism of Jesus went a 
 great deal deeper. It was the fact that God was 
 in His earthy so that the ravens were fed and the 
 lilies were adorned, and so that the very hairs 
 of a man's head are numbered — it was that which 
 gave a radiant quietude to Christ. 
 
 Then Jesus believed, with a faith that was 
 magnificent, in the freedom and the worth of 
 personality, and whenever a man comes to 
 believe in that, it is impossible to hold that life 
 is a tragedy. How tenderly and skilfully Jesus 
 dealt with men ! — it is clear that every man was a 
 new problem to Him. Were manhood forged and 
 fashioned by resistless influences, Christ would have 
 dealt with men upon the scale of the hundred ; 
 but Christ never dealt upon the scale of hundreds, 
 Christ always dealt upon the scale of one. That 
 means that personality is real. That means that 
 every life is a new thing. That means that in 
 the worst there is some possibility that can be 
 
228 IS LIFE A TRAGEDY? 
 
 touched by love and become conquering. And 
 it was that faith burning in the heart of Jesus 
 like a flame, which kept Him so calm and hopeful 
 in the world. 
 
 Then never forget that Jesus believed in 
 heaven ; He launched life out on to an endless 
 course. There may be many tears in the first 
 act of the play, but it is too soon yet to say 
 it is a tragedy. Who knows but that the master 
 brain which planned the drama may be going 
 to lead the action into sunlight ? I can 
 understand a man being a pessimist, if he really 
 believes that death is the end of all. The pes- 
 simist would have a strong case against the 
 Almighty, if the individual perished at the 
 grave. But if beyond that there is eternal life, 
 with its never-ending expansion of the soul, I 
 think it well to suspend judgment for a little. 
 We shall not lose our individuality in heaven — 
 * In My Father's house are many mansions.' And 
 we shall certainly not cease to work ; heaven 
 is the joy of the Lord, and the Lord is never 
 idle. All we have striven to be shall become 
 possible. All that we tried to do shall meet us 
 there. The cravings for better things we could 
 
IS LIFE A TRAGEDY ? 229 
 
 not realise, the longings that stirred us though 
 never a man knew of them, shall be the first 
 angels to kiss us in the glory. In the mighty 
 conception of that eternal destiny, time ceased 
 to be a tragedy for Christ. 
 
TO THE HALF-HEARTED 
 
 Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord. — Col. iii. 23. 
 
 I WANT you to note how our text is introduced ; 
 it has a very suggestive and illuminative con- 
 text. ' Servants, obey in all things your masters 
 according to the flesh,' that is verse twenty-two ; 
 and then, * Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as 
 to the Lord,' that is verse twenty-three. Now 
 the servants of whom Paul speaks in verse twenty - 
 two are not domestic servants in our sense. They 
 were slaves, bought for a little money ; the pro- 
 perty and the chattels of their master. Yet even 
 to slaves, who got no wages and who had no 
 rights, clear and imperious comes the command 
 of God, ' Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily.' 
 
 Now I think that is very suggestive for to- 
 day. I can hardly talk to a master-painter or 
 a master-baker, but I hear complaints about the 
 degeneracy of labour. Men are not faithful, they 
 have to be watched like children ; the loyal 
 
TO THE HALF-HEARTED 231 
 
 service of an older day is dead. So say the 
 masters ; and on the other hand the men say 
 that had they a more direct interest in their work, 
 and a more immediate concern in its prosperity, 
 they would throw themselves into it with doubled 
 zeal. Now all that may be true. But the point 
 is that if the Bible holds, and if this text be really 
 the word of God, nothing on earth, not even the 
 worst relationships of capital and labour, can ever 
 excuse half-hearted work. Your hours are long ? 
 — so were those of the Colossian slaves. Your 
 pay is poor? — the Colossian slave had none. 
 Your mistress is tyrannical and mean ? — but the 
 Colossian mistress lashed her servants. Yet 
 whatsoever ye do, ye slaves, cries Paul, do it all 
 heartily as to the Lord. 
 
 I want you to note, too, that this text was 
 never better illustrated than in the life of the 
 man who was inspired to pen it. There was an 
 enthusiasm and a concentration about Paul, which 
 have won the admiration of all time. * One thing 
 I do, forgetting the things that are behind, I 
 press towards the mark,' says the apostle ; and 
 whatsoever he did, he did it heartily, as unto 
 the Lord who loved him so. It is so easy to 
 
232 TO THE HALF-HEARTED 
 
 preach and never intend to practise. It is so hard 
 to practise first, and then to preach. It gives 
 a wonderful power to our text, and charges its 
 mandate with redoubled urgency, when we re- 
 member who the writer was. Men have brought 
 many charges against Paul, but I do not think 
 his bitterest enemy has ever charged him with 
 half-heartedness. There is a glow and fervour 
 in the man that marks in an instant the divine 
 enthusiast. Others might waver, Paul battled to 
 his goal. Others might yield, Paul was invincible. 
 And had you seen him working at his tentmaking, 
 in the late night when the city was asleep, you 
 would have found him plying the tentmaker's 
 needle, and singing, I doubt not, as in the prison 
 at Philippi, with the very heartiness and zeal that 
 filled his preaching of Christ crucified. 
 
 It is, then, of this whole-heartedness, of this 
 fine concentration or enthusiasm, that I want to 
 speak a little to-night. And I should like to say, 
 by way of caution, that true enthusiasm is not a 
 noisy thing. Whenever we think of an enthusi- 
 astic crowd, we think of uproar, tumult, wild 
 excitement. And I grant you that in the life of 
 congregated thousands, touched into unity by 
 
TO THE HALF-HEARTED 233 
 
 some great emotion, there seems to be some call 
 for loud expression. But just as there is a sorrow 
 that lies too deep for tears, there is an enthusiasm 
 far too deep for words ; and the intense purpose 
 of the whole-hearted man is never noisy. When 
 the children of Israel, defeated by the Philistines, 
 sent for the ark of God into the camp, do you 
 remember how, when the ark appeared, they 
 shouted till the earth rang and rent ? Yet spite 
 of that effervescence of emotion they were de- 
 feated, and the ark of God was captured. But 
 Jesus, in the enthusiasm of His kingly heart, 
 set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem ; and 
 yet He would not strive nor cry nor lift up His 
 voice in the streets. The noisiest are generally 
 shallow. There is a certain silence, as of an 
 under-purpose, wherever a man is working 
 heartily. 
 
 * Prune thou thy words, thy thoughts control 
 That o'er thee swell and throng ; 
 They shall condense within thy soul 
 And change to purpose strong.* 
 
 Whole-heartedness, then, is never a noisy virtue; 
 and I have thought it right to dwell on that, 
 that we may be on our guard against its counter- 
 
9.34 TO THE HALF-HEARTED 
 
 feits. But if it be not noisy, this at least is true 
 of it : it is one condition of the best success. 
 The chairman of the Congregational Union of 
 Scotland, in an address he delivered some time 
 ago at Glasgow, told us that a friend had met 
 him lately, and said to him, * I suppose you 
 have heard that Mr. So-and-so has failed ? ' The 
 chairman had not heard it. * Well he has,' said 
 his friend, ' and little wonder, for he starved his 
 business. He did not even put himself into it/ 
 He did not put himself into the work ; he did 
 not do it heartily as to the Lord. And could we 
 trace the history of failure — that long, sad story 
 of the world — I think we should find that for 
 one who went to the wall through want of intel- 
 lect, there were a score who reached that pass 
 through want of heart. To concentrate, as all 
 the apostles did ; to have the resolute enthusiasm 
 of Jesus, that spirit has something congenial to 
 success in it ; and I use success in its best and 
 noblest senses, some of which the world might 
 call defeat. 
 
 But the virtue of whole-heartedness is more than 
 that. It is one of the conditions of the truest 
 happiness. There comes a certain joy as of the 
 
TO THE HALF-HEARTED 235 
 
 morning, a certain zest and buoyancy of spirit, 
 when whatsoever we do is lone heartily, as to 
 the Lord. When we are ha f-hearted, the hours 
 have leaden feet. We becon e fretful, easily pro- 
 voked ; the very grasshopper becomes a burden. 
 But when, subduing feeling, we turn with our 
 whole energy of soul to grapple with our duty or 
 with our cross, it is wonderful how under the long 
 shadows we hear unexpectedly a sound of music. 
 To be half-hearted is to be half-happy. It is to 
 live in a lack-lustre kind of way. And so it is 
 to live in an un-Christlike way, it is to know 
 little of the joy of Jesus. Do you not think the 
 joy of Jesus Christ was linked, far down, with 
 His whole-hearted service ? He never could 
 have spoken of His joy but for His unswerving 
 fidelity to God. And when at last upon the 
 cross there rang out the loud, glad cry, * It is 
 finished,' there was joy in it because the stupen- 
 dous work of saving men had been carried 
 through to its triumph and its crown. 
 
 And there can be little question that the more 
 heartily we do our humble duty, the more v;c 
 feel we are doing it for God. It is one of the 
 secrets for bringing heaven near us, for feeling 
 
236 TO THE HALF-HEARTED 
 
 the Infinite with us and within us, to be whole- 
 hearted in the present task. Thinkers have often 
 noted this strange fact: that great enthusiasms 
 tend to become religious. Let a man be mastered 
 by any great idea, and sooner or later he will find 
 the shadow of God on it. But that is true not 
 of great enthusiasms alone ; it holds of whole- 
 heartedness in every sphere. When Luther said, 
 * Laborare est orare ' — to labour is to pray — you 
 may be sure that that great soul did not mean 
 that work could ever take the place of prayer. 
 He knew too well the value of devotion, and the 
 blessed uplifting of the quiet hour with God, ever 
 to think that toil could take its place. But just 
 as in earnest prayer the heavens are opened to us, 
 and we are led into the presence and glory of the 
 King, so in our earnest and whole-hearted toil, 
 clouds scatter, the mists of feelings and passions 
 are dispelled, and we are led into a peace and 
 strength and sweet detachment without which no 
 man shall see the Lord. It is in that sense that 
 to labour is to pray. To be whole-hearted is to 
 be facing heavenward. And the great loss of all 
 half-hearted men and women is this, that above 
 the dust, and the stress and strain of life, above 
 
TO THE HALF-HEARTED 237 
 
 the fret and weariness of things, they catch no 
 glimpse of the eternal purpose, nor of the love, 
 nor of the joy of God. 
 
 Indeed, if that old saying * like to like ' be true, 
 the men who are half-hearted must be blind. 
 For if there is one demonstrable fact, I think it 
 is this : we are the creatures of a whole-hearted 
 God. When I remember the thoroughness of 
 the Creator's workmanship ; when I think of the 
 consummate genius and care that He has lavished 
 on the tiniest weed ; when I recall the age-long 
 discipline that was preparing the world for Jesus 
 Christ ; I feel that the heart of God is in His 
 work. And I feel, too, that if my heart is not in 
 mine, I must be out of touch with the Creator. 
 The gods of savages are generally lazy, because 
 the savages themselves are lazy, and they have 
 spiritual sense enough to know that there cannot 
 be communion without kinship. But our God 
 is the infinite Creator ; the master-builder, the 
 thorough and perfect workman. And I know 
 not how a half-hearted servant can have any 
 kinship with a whole-hearted Lord. O brother, 
 whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, that you may 
 come into line with the eternal. It is the pity of 
 
238 TO THE HALF-HEARTED 
 
 all half-hearted men that they are out of harmony 
 with God. 
 
 One other word on our text and I have done. 
 I want you to note how the writer lays his hand 
 on the real secret of all the large enthusiasms. 
 He centres his appeal upon a person. Had Paul 
 been writing in some quiet academy, the text, I 
 dare say, might have read like this, * Whatsoever 
 ye do, do it heartily, for that is the road to 
 nobility of character ' ; or * Whatsoever ye do, 
 do it heartily, for the best work is always done 
 that way.' But Paul did not write in any quiet 
 academy. Paul wrote for the masses. Paul 
 wrote for the great world. And he knew that 
 nothing abstract, nothing cold, would ever inspire 
 the enthusiasm of thousands. A cause must be 
 concentrated in some powerful name, it must 
 live in the flesh and blood of personality, if the 
 hearts of the many are ever to be stirred, and 
 the lives of the many are ever to be won. So 
 Paul, with the true instinct of universal genius, 
 gathered all abstract arguments for zeal into the 
 living argument of Jesus. And whatsoever ye 
 do, do it heartily, as what ? as to the Lord. 
 
 And so by the roundabout road of this address, 
 
TO THE HALF-HEARTED 239 
 
 you see I have brought you back to the feet of 
 Christ, and wherever on these summer evenings we 
 may start from, I trust always to leave you there. 
 I believe that the secret of all noble living lies in 
 the company of Jesus Christ. And for making 
 us earnest, thorough, quietly resolute, no matter 
 what fickleness or cowardice we start with, 
 there is really nothing like fellowship with Him. 
 Do you want to be truer ? Get a little closer. 
 Are you ashamed of your half-heartedness ? 
 Get nearer. Then back to your work again, 
 alone yet not alone : for the time flies, and 
 eternity is near, and you shall pass this way but 
 once. 
 
THE UNLIKELY INSTRUMENTS 
 OF GOD 
 
 BaCbylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord's hand. — Jer. 11. 7. 
 
 If there was one city in the world that seemed to 
 be independent, it was that city of Babylon. It 
 was magnificent in its equipments, ruled with 
 consummate ability, strong with the most power- 
 ful army of the time. It worshipped its own 
 gods, and was contented with them ; it had 
 nothing but scorn for the poor deities of Israel. 
 Its cup was golden, there was no doubt of it. 
 There was not a boy playing about its avenues 
 but would have cried, * The cup of our city hath 
 been a golden cup ! ' But the prophet, inspired, 
 saw that there was a Hand grasping the cup. 
 ' Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord's 
 hand.' It was golden, but for all that it was 
 God's. It was He who had raised it up ; it was 
 He who held it ; it was He who would hurl it, 
 violently, to the ground. 
 
UNLIKELY INSTRUMENTS OF GOD 24J 
 
 Babylon, then, for all its power and all its in- 
 dependence, was an instrument of God, and no 
 one can deeply study the word of God without 
 coming to perceive the awful emphasis that it lays 
 on the fact of instrumentality. The Bible, like 
 Shakespeare, and yet in a sense far from Shake- 
 speare's, seems to have stamped on it 'All the 
 world 's a stage, and all the men and women 
 merely players.' We are not isolated ; we are 
 not independent. We are not drifting, rudder- 
 less, on shadowy seas. Somehow, mysteriously, 
 to an end we cannot see, and under a Provi- 
 dence that never errs, we all are instruments. 
 Even Babylon is a golden cup in the Lord's 
 hand. 
 
 This view of life fills all the Scripture, and if 
 I thought we really knew the Scripture, it would 
 be enough to indicate it and pass on. But are 
 we truly studying the Word of God ? Can we 
 name, for instance, the conqueror of whom God 
 said, * Thou art my battleaxe ' ? Or the tyrant 
 of whom God said, ' Thou art my servant ' ? 
 God says to Cyrus, Thou art my battleaxe ; God 
 says to Nebuchadnezzar, Thou art my servant. 
 These men were strangers to the promises, bow- 
 
242 UNLIKELY INSTRUMENTS OF GOD 
 
 ing in worship to the gods of heathendom ; yet 
 Vthou art My battleaxe, Cyrus ' ; ' thou art My 
 servant ' — they were all the instruments of 
 Almighty God. 
 
 I learn, then, that beyond the sphere of grace 
 stretches the wide sphere of instrumentality. 
 Outside the hearts that have been touched to 
 hoHness and won to the feet of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, God has ten thousand instruments at 
 work. They do not know it — Babylon did not 
 know it. Why rage the heathen and imagine 
 vain things } They do not know it — Cyrus did 
 not know it. He battled, but never dreamed he 
 was God's battleaxe. So brains are scheming, 
 statesmen are plotting, armies are marching and 
 camping in the world ; and you and I, taught in 
 the things of Scripture, are going to feel that 
 God is in it all. It was the prophet's outlook on 
 the world. We want the prophet's vision in 
 these times. We are summoned to think that all 
 that is meant by Babylon is a golden cup in the 
 Lord's hand. 
 
 Now sometimes the blindest eye can see how 
 exquisitely the instruments of God are fitted to 
 the task God has in hand. We feel that infinite 
 
UNLIKELY INSTRUMENTS OF GOD 243 
 
 wisdom is at work, the tool has been chosen 
 by a master-hand. In the story of our own 
 country, for example, go back for a moment 
 to Reformation times, and remember that 
 Scotland was a feudal country, a land where 
 kinship and blood and birth meant everything. 
 Then think of the exquisite choice of God in the 
 first preacher and martyr for the truth. The 
 blood of kings was in the veins of Patrick 
 Hamilton ; the greatest in the land were kin to 
 him ; and that gave an impulse to the gospel of 
 Jesus Christ that would have been wanting had 
 Hamilton been base-born. There, in the story 
 of our own dear country, is an example of the 
 perfect choice of God. And there is not a land, 
 and not a life, but could give signal instances 
 like that. 
 
 But is not the general rule the very opposite ? 
 I think it is the reverse that strikes us most. 
 Here or there starts up some striking instance 
 that reveals the perfect wisdom of God's choices. 
 But far more often we are arrested differently ; 
 we are staggered by the very strangeness of 
 God's instruments. He is using means we never 
 thought He would employ ; He is using' the last 
 
244 UNLIKELY INSTRUMENTS OF GOD 
 
 men we should have dreamed of. We are face 
 to face in the whole sweep of history with the 
 unlikely instruments of God. 
 
 Think, for example, of the instrument which 
 He used to keep alive the knowledge of His name. 
 A man could not do it, it required a nation ; 
 God's name is too great for one man to hold in 
 trust; but of all the unlikelv nations in the world, 
 I think Israel was the most unlikely. What ! 
 shall the vivifying truth of all the ages be com- 
 mitted to a horde of slaves in Egypt ? Is it 
 these men gathering the stubble yonder, and 
 crying out under the taskmaster's lash — is it they 
 who are to guard the knowledge of God that is 
 to be crowned in the great gift of a Redeemer ? 
 To a human eye that seems the worst of choices, 
 and yet that nation was the chosen of God. 
 Israel became the instrument of Heaven. It was 
 Israel that was the cradle of the Christ. Through 
 wandering and war, through storm and sunshine, 
 she was shaped and polished for most exalted use. 
 Surely a most unlikely instrument, but for all 
 that the instrument of God. 
 
 In other spheres, too, and in other ways, the 
 same thing constantly meets us in the Bible. 
 
UNLIKELY INSTRUMENTS OF GOD 245 
 
 Whenever I think of God's unlikely instruments, 
 I think of little Samuel in the temple. You 
 remember the message which God had to 
 announce ? A message of doom on Eli and his 
 house. A dark, dread curse, hurled from the 
 eternal throne at the wicked family of a weakly 
 father. And who shall God choose to bear that 
 message of woe ? Some heart of iron ? Some 
 prophet like the Baptist.'^ God chose a little 
 child to be His instrument. Ah, what rebukes 
 a little child can give ! for they all live in the 
 Temple, do they not ? What sudden reproaches 
 in their artless questionings ! What censures 
 and smitings of conscience in their innocence ! 
 A child may doom us. A little child shall 
 lead us. It is one of God's unlikely instru- 
 ments. 
 
 Now if Jesus of Nazareth be the Son of God, 
 I shall expect to find Him adopting the same 
 procedure. And Paul, in a passage of very lofty 
 eloquence, has preached this doctrine of unlikely 
 choices. For God, he says (and he is thinking of 
 the Gospel), hath chosen the foohsh things of the 
 world to confound the wise ; and the weak things 
 to confound those which are mighty ; and base 
 
246 UNLIKELY INSTRUMENTS OF GOD 
 
 things, yea the things that are not, to bring to 
 naught the things that are. And what that 
 means I cannot grasp or gather, unless this truth 
 that I am trying to bring home had been burned 
 into Paul's mind and heart. It is the wonder of 
 heaven's choice of instruments for winning the 
 triumphs of the Saviour's cause. 
 
 And tell me, has not the world wondered at it ? 
 It has been the perpetual marvel of the ages. 
 I surmise from His very methods that Christ 
 was Son of God, whenever I think of His choice 
 of the disciples. Twelve men, provincial and 
 unlettered — and all the world against them in 
 the battle. The poetry of Greece, the arms of 
 Rome, the institutions that had grown grey with 
 time, the thought that had taken centuries to 
 build, passions and vices, and the blight of 
 atheism — that was the world, and against a/l the 
 world, Peter and Andrew, and James and John, 
 and Thomas. It was a strange choice, yet it was 
 very Godlike. It was like the choice of the 
 slaves in the fields of Egypt ; like little Samuel 
 against the hierarchy. Yet by such men, in- 
 spired by the Holy Ghost, victories were won 
 that changed the world. 
 
UNLIKELY INSTRUMENTS OF GOD 247 
 
 That, then, is the doctrine of unlikely instru- 
 ments. Now every doctrine has its practical 
 bearings. What, then, does that inexplicable 
 feature of God's choice mean for you and 
 me ? 
 
 Well, first it guards us against putting limits 
 upon God. Who shall dare say what powers 
 may not be used by heaven, if even Babylon be 
 a golden cup in the Lord's hand ^ We are so apt 
 to have contracted views. We are so prone to 
 think that God will only work by means of 
 instruments we should have chosen, that when He 
 contradicts us, and works in other ways, we are 
 blind to the presence of the Divine in it. Give a 
 wide sweep to sovereignty. Remember that His 
 ways are not as ours. You think that He is 
 coming in the whirlwind ? Hark ! He is whis- 
 pering in the still small voice. You say that the 
 winnowing-fan is in His hand, and behold, the 
 bruised reed He will not break. That is the first 
 use of God's unlikely instruments. It makes us 
 watchful, open-hearted, very humble. We must 
 be alive to possibilities of usefulness, or the 
 chances are we may be missing God. Babylon, 
 mother of harlots ! drunk with the blood of the 
 
248 UNLIKELY INSTRUMENTS OF GOD 
 
 saints ! Out on thee, antichrist ! Yet Babylon 
 hath been a golden cup in the Lord's hand. 
 
 And lastly, it should make us very strong 
 when we are called to any little service. ' I am 
 not fit for it ; I am the last man in the world for 
 it ' — quite right, my brother, probably you are ; 
 but so was Israel, and the Lord called Israel ; and 
 so was Samuel, and the Lord called Samuel : it is 
 a kind of way God has of working. The men 
 who think that they are fit for anything are very 
 seldom fit for God's work. But the men who 
 cry, as Jeremiah cried, ' Ah, Lord God, I am a 
 child, and cannot speak' — it is such men whose 
 lips are touched with fire, whose hearts are 
 emboldened, and whose way is opened. For 
 God is not bent on glorifying you ; God is bent 
 on glorifying Jesus. And the more men see that 
 the power is all of Him ; the more men feel, 
 knowing your poor equipment, that this or that 
 is the doing of the Lord, the greater the praise to 
 an ascended Saviour. Let all the earth praise 
 Him ! Worthy is the Lamb that was slain ! I 
 take it that that is the deepest of all reasons for 
 the unlikely instruments of God. 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE OF FACT 
 
 Have ye not asked them that go by the way ? — Job xxi. 29. 
 
 The speaker of these words is Job, and it is not 
 difficult to understand their fitness. Job is pro- 
 testing against the shallow theories with which his 
 friends had been trying to console him. Their 
 view of providence was a singularly simple one. 
 It would have been admirable, had it only been 
 true. It was just that if a man is wicked he can 
 never be prosperous, and if he is prosperous he 
 cannot be wicked. Now Job had held that view 
 himself once. He would not have quarrelled with 
 it before his suffering. But when sorrow after 
 sorrow fell on him, till his life was ruined and all 
 his sky was dark, he was forced to look his old 
 theories in the face. He learned that there were 
 more mysteries abroad than he had ever dreamed 
 of in his old philosophy. He saw that men who 
 disowned and dishonoured God could be happy in 
 their life and untroubled in their death. And he 
 
 24» 
 
250 THE TOUCHSTONE OF FACT 
 
 knew now that one might be earnestly devoted to 
 the Highest, and yet might be beaten with the 
 most cruel blows. And so he turns sharply here 
 to his three friends, who were trying to console 
 him with these discarded theories. Why have ye 
 not asked them that go by the way : the men who 
 go up and down the world with open eyes ? They 
 would have brought you home a store of facts 
 that would have shattered your views of things to 
 atoms. Job means that the providential theories 
 of his three friends are worthless, because they are 
 false to the observed facts of life. 
 
 Two thoughts, then, are suggested to me by 
 this, and on these two I wish to dwell for a little, 
 (i) The temptation to give little answers to great 
 questions. (2) The duty of testing our theories 
 by facts. 
 
 First, then : The temptation to give little 
 answers to great questions. 
 
 There are some questions to the greatness of 
 which we are blind, till they enter the circle of our 
 own life-history — ' he jests at scars who never felt 
 a wound.' It was the wrecking of his home and 
 the ruin of his hopes that set Job deeply pondering 
 upon providence, and it was only then, in the 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE OF FACT 251 
 
 hour of his own great sorrow, that he felt how 
 terrible and vast was the problem. He had been 
 quite contented with his little answers once. 
 When the sun is shining it is sweet to have 
 compact theories. But from the moment that the 
 finger of God touched him, Job never gave, and 
 Job never accepted, little answers to great ques- 
 tions again. The problem was wider than he had 
 ever thought. God's ways were more intricate 
 than he had dreamed. The justice of heaven in 
 bestowing reward and punishment was not so 
 evident as it seemed once. The little ready-made 
 answers had been scattered, and Job was groping 
 in the darkness now. It was exquisitely painful, 
 but it was very blessed. It was the call of God to 
 him to launch into the deep. Whatever else Job's 
 suffering did for him, it banished his little answers 
 to great questions. 
 
 And are we not saved from shallowness, as Job 
 was, by the deeper and sterner experience of life ? 
 There is nothing hke sorrow for testing a man's 
 formulas, and if they are insufficient, for scattering 
 them. Many a little answer has been banished, 
 not by an argument, but by an illness. Many a 
 system that seemed quite impregnable when tried 
 
252 THE TOUCHSTONE OF FACT 
 
 and tested at the bar of logic, has simply crumbled 
 into dust and ashes when the coffin was open and 
 death was in the horne. Have ye not asked them 
 that go by the way ? They have been through 
 the deeps, and might have told you. The world 
 is too mysterious and awful to be explained by a 
 few pious commonplaces. Better be still, and 
 know that He is God. Clouds and darkness are 
 around His throne. Better than any glib answer 
 to the problems, is to say with Christ, ' Father, 
 Thy will be done.' 
 
 It has been noted as one of the great qualities of 
 Shakespeare that he never yielded to this subtle 
 temptation. It is no idle flattery to say of him, 
 that he saw life steadily and saw it whole. He 
 sent his heart out, up and down every way ; he 
 looked on all that men had dared and done and 
 suffered, until the mysteries of life and love and 
 death so overpowered him, that little answers died 
 upon his lips. * The thoughts of the wisest,' says 
 the author of Sesame and Lilies^ ' are but pertinent 
 questions,' and I know no 'thoughts of which that 
 is quite so true as the thoughts of the master- 
 genius of our literature. We come to Shakespeare 
 as the three friends came to Job. We have our 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE OF FACT 253 
 
 little solutions all cut and dry. And Shakespeare 
 turns on us, as Job turned on the three, and he 
 says, ' What ! have ye not asked them that go by 
 the way ? ' And then he takes us out into life's 
 way, and shows us such heights, such depths, such 
 glories, and such sorrows, that the answers we 
 should have given once are silenced ; it is all far 
 more mysterious than we dreamed. 
 
 And the same thing, in infinitely nobler ways, 
 meets me in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. I 
 think our Lord loved every little thing, with the 
 one exception of a little answer. Men came to 
 Him with the profoundest questions, about their 
 souls, their duty, their judgment, or their heaven. 
 What impresses me is that the profoundest 
 question always elicited a profounder answer. 
 ' Who is my neighbour ? ' He was asked that 
 once ; and the reply was the parable of the 
 Samaritan. Has not neighbourliness had a deeper 
 meaning ever since ? * Master, who did sin, this 
 man or his parents, that he was born blind ? ' 
 And the reply has lifted the problem to new 
 levels, and been like a cordial to a thousand 
 sufferers. * Tell us,' said the disciples, ' when 
 shall these things be P ' And the reply of Jesus 
 
254 THE TOUCHSTONE OF FACT 
 
 was sublime — ' I cannot.' ' Of that day and that 
 hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which 
 are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.' 
 It is the sublimest instance in all history, of the 
 refusal to give a little answer. 
 
 And I am perfectly certain that much of the 
 gospel's power in the world is to be found in a 
 similar refusal. If the gospel of Christ appeals 
 to men and women, and if its appeal has been 
 powerful through the chance and change of time, 
 one secret of its power has been this, that it has 
 dared to give great answers to the great questions 
 of the human heart. It is well to distrust solutions 
 that solve everything. I had a professor in my 
 university who made things so plain that we were 
 all perplexed. There is something lacking in 
 every creed and system that is too ready with 
 universal answers. But the gospel has no easy 
 explanations. It is good news, because it is great 
 news. It says : ' The questions of the soul are 
 mighty, and I shall furnish them with mighty 
 answers.' You say to it, * What must I do to 
 be saved ^ ' And does it bid you go and show 
 some little kindnesses ^ It says, ' Believe on the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,' and 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE OF FACT 255 
 
 belief is the whole manhood roused to heroism. 
 You say to it, * What about my sin ? ' And 
 does it bid you be happy, and do the best you 
 can ? It talks of Blood, and shows you a Saviour 
 crucified, and says, ' Though your sin be as 
 scarlet, it shall be white as snow ' — and that 
 appeals to the very depths of me. Beware of 
 cheap and easy substitutes for Christ. They will 
 not last, they do not satisfy. Ask those who 
 have gone by the way whether they do. I have 
 a gospel I shall never be ashamed of, for it scorns 
 to give little answers to great questions. 
 
 The second thought suggested by our text is 
 the duty of testing our theories by facts. 
 
 This was the complaint of Job against his 
 friends ; their views did not square with the 
 known facts of life. They had never really 
 tested their pet theories by the actual experience 
 of men and women. They were convinced that 
 if a man were righteous, he would prosper. And 
 they were equally convinced that when a man was 
 crushed to the earth, as Job was, it was the index 
 that heaven was angry with his sin. They had 
 been trained in this view of providential dealing, 
 and it had never occurred to them to question it. 
 
256 THE TOUCHSTONE OF FACT 
 
 But Job had found that their theories were inade- 
 quate. Taught by his own strange case, he had 
 looked abroad, and had grappled boldly with the 
 clear facts of life. And now he turns upon his 
 would-be comforters, and charges them with 
 shutting their eyes to facts. ' You have never 
 asked those who go by the way,' he says. You 
 have never brought your clear-cut doctrine to 
 the touchstone of the experience of men. Job 
 had been wakened to the great duty of testing 
 his theories by facts. 
 
 And is not the progress of Job through his 
 great agony a parable of the progress of the 
 human race .? Like Job's three friends, we all 
 start with mistakes, and in bringing these to the 
 touchstone of reality lies one great measure of 
 our moral advance. The savage believes that the 
 sun moves round the earth ; and when the thunder 
 rolls, he thinks the gods are fighting. The little 
 child firmly believes in fairies, and cannot picture 
 a king without his crown. But increase of know- 
 ledge comes, with increase of sorrow ; voices begin 
 to whisper to the heart, ^Have you not asked them 
 that go by the way ? ' until at last, in that widen- 
 ing experience, the errors of the savage are 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE OF FACT 257 
 
 detected, and the dreams that were childhood's 
 music are dispelled. It was a very painful pro- 
 gress for poor Job, and it has been very painful, 
 too, for poor humanity. The mightiest task of 
 history has not been to build theories ; the 
 mightiest task of history has been to shatter 
 them. We start with error. We start with 
 misconception. We start with views of God that 
 are all wrong. And only slowly, through the 
 pressure of sorrow, through the struggle of ages, 
 through the death of martyrs, does the race, like 
 this patriarch, reach these roomy thoughts that 
 can be tested and tried by every fact. 
 
 Think of this duty in relation to happiness. 
 We have all our dreams of happiness in life's 
 glad morning. We are as certain that we know 
 how to be happy, as Job's three friends were that 
 they knew God's ways. When we win this^ when 
 we get that, we shall be happy. The birds will 
 sing then, and all the day be golden. Have ye 
 not asked them that go by the way ? They could 
 have told vou that all that the world can give 
 may be poured into your lap to make you happy, 
 and yet in the core of it may be a pain, and a 
 heart that is half in love with easeful death. 
 
 R 
 
258 THE TOUCHSTONE OF FACT 
 
 They could have told you that * the mind is its 
 own place and of itself can make a heaven of 
 hell, a hell of heaven.' They could have told 
 you that not to win this or that, but to be 
 faithful, loving, gentle, and sincere, is the one 
 way to what the world 's a-seeking. 
 
 Think of this duty in relation to moral 
 responsibility. There are many influences at 
 work to-day to lighten that burden of respon- 
 sibility. We have learned something of the 
 evolution of conscience. We are all glamoured 
 by that magic word heredity. We are not so 
 sure as our forefathers were of the foundations 
 and the record of our faith. May we not, 
 then, take a little liberty ? Is sin after all so 
 exceeding sinful ^ Have ye not asked them that go 
 by the way ? Let them tell you if conscience has 
 ceased to be a torment. Let them tell you if 
 they have lost nothing by their sin. Let them 
 unfold the story of their lives, at the best 
 tarnished, and at the worst degraded, and you 
 will thank God that at the outset of manhood 
 you brought your theory to the great test of 
 facts. 
 
 Think of this duty in relation to religion. I 
 
THE TOUCHSTONE OF FACT 259 
 
 know what many young folk think about religion. 
 It is all well enough for the old and for the 
 sickly, but they are neither old nor sickly yet, 
 thank God. They are not going to be gloomy 
 and long-faced ; they want more exciting joys 
 than the prayer-meeting. They want their 
 liberty, and to become religious, they think, is 
 to sap the life-blood out of everything. Have 
 ye not asked them that go by the way? They 
 could have told you that to be a Christian is 
 freedom, power, manhood, vision, joy. / am the 
 way, says the Master whom we serve. The facts 
 are all in favour of Christ Jesus. 
 
THE GLORY AND THE GATE 
 
 And Mordecai came again to the king's gate. — Esther vi. 12. 
 
 A WORD or two will be sufficient to recall to you 
 this most fascinating and dramatic story. King 
 Ahasuerus, unable to sleep one night, had bidden 
 his attendants read to him. The book he chose 
 was the annals of his kingdom, and the passage 
 on which the reader lighted was a narrative of an 
 attempt on the king's life, which had been baffled 
 by the promptitude of Mordecai. The king had 
 known nothing of the plot ; he resolved to reward 
 Mordecai in the morning ; so in the morning, 
 summoning in Haman his grand-vizier, Ahasuerus 
 asked him, * What shall be done unto the man 
 whom the king delighteth to honour ? ' Now 
 Haman had an overweening conceit of himself, 
 and like other conceited persons, he could be very 
 stupid. Surely the man whom the king wished 
 to honour could be no one else than his own 
 important self ? Haman suggested a royal pro- 
 
THE GLORY AND THE GATE 261 
 
 cession through the town, assured that he would 
 be the central figure in it. Then the king told 
 him that the man was Mordecai, and if there was 
 one person in Persia whom Haman hated, that 
 person was none other than Mordecai. And the 
 king bade Haman lead the horse by the bridle, 
 and cry out the praises of Mordecai through the 
 city. It was a very agony of humiliation for 
 Haman ; but the word of the king would brook 
 no contradiction. So Mordecai, clothed in a robe 
 of state, and mounted on a richly caparisoned 
 palfrey from the royal mews, went in procession 
 through the streets of Shushan ; and Haman, at 
 his bridle-rein, kept crying before him, 'Thus 
 shall it be done unto the man whom the king 
 delighteth to honour.' 
 
 Now whether Mordecai was a gate-keeper, and 
 had some official post at the palace-door ; or 
 whether he was just a frequenter of that neigh- 
 bourhood where the Orientals pass so many of 
 their leisure hours, is a question of little moment 
 for my purpose. All I desire you to bear in 
 mind is this, that the king's gate was Mordecai's 
 station. It was here that he was commonly to 
 be found. It was his familiar and ordinary place. 
 
262 THE GLORY AND THE GATE 
 
 Such business as he had he would transact there. 
 There he would exchange news with his friends. 
 Then suddenly came that hour of exaltation. He 
 became the hero of ten thousand eyes. There 
 was not a square but was crowded with eager 
 citizens, there was not a window nor a housetop 
 but was thronged, as Mordecai moved forward 
 through the city. It was an hour of thrilling 
 and unexampled triumph for an exiled Jew in a 
 barbarian capital. How would it leave him ? 
 Would he be changed and spoiled ? Would the 
 strong current of his Jewish heart be stemmed ? 
 y^nd Mordecai came again to the king's gate. Here 
 was his place, here was his daily post. He had 
 not forgotten it in the re-echoing cheers. The 
 king might honour him, and he would accept the 
 honour, but the balance of his life must not be 
 destroyed. Mordecai was conspicuously great — 
 no one will doubt that who reads this little 
 book ; but he was never greater than when, after 
 a day of triumph, he came again to the king's 
 gate. 
 
 I trust, then, that you begin to see the thought 
 that underlies our simple text. When you strip 
 away the Oriental trapping, you get to the beating 
 
THE GLORY AND THE GATE 263 
 
 heart of all humanity. To every one of us come 
 hours of unsettlement, as there came this tumult- 
 uous day to Mordecai. Sometimes they leap on 
 us quite unexpectedly ; sometimes they are the 
 crown of years of striving. And how such hours 
 will leave us when they pass is one of the vital 
 questions of all life. Shall we be changed ? Will 
 the old peace be gone ? Will the religion that 
 guided us, and the work that satisfied us ; the 
 hopes that cheered us, and the friendships that 
 eased us — will these go by the board in that 
 tempestuous hour ? I pray God that it may not 
 be so. There is a certain stability of purpose 
 that is absolutely needful for all moral excellence. 
 ' And Mordecai came again to the king's gate.' 
 
 I wish to take that thought suggested by our 
 text, and to apply it in one or two spheres of our 
 experience. And first, I should like to say a word 
 on holidays. There are many thousands in this 
 city to-night who have just returned from a brief 
 annual holiday.^ There is not a glen in Scotland 
 so remote, and not a village or hamlet so secluded, 
 but has had some son or daughter home from 
 Glasgow. The mills were silent ; shipyards were 
 
 1 Preached on the Sunday after the Glasgow Fair Holidays. 
 
264 THE GLORY AND THE GATE 
 
 strangely still ; some of the streets had quite a 
 Sabbath quietude. For multitudes the routine 
 was broken, and the drudgery over for a little 
 time. That hard-won liberty is very sweet, in 
 the warmth of summer-time, and when the days 
 are golden ; but I think there are few who are 
 not unsettled by it, when the hour comes for 
 taking up work again. When Mordecai dis- 
 mounted from his charger, and handed back the 
 gorgeous robes he had worn, I dare say the king's 
 gate looked dustier and drearier than it had 
 seemed before the hour of glory. And life is never 
 more dusty and more dreary, nor is the routine of 
 toil ever more irksome, than after a few days 
 when all the bonds are broken, and when we 
 may wander at our own sweet will. I have 
 known men who would never take a holiday, 
 they felt it so unsettled and upset them. That 
 is a poor way of slipping through life. It was 
 not Mordecai's, and it should not be ours. By 
 every wave that breaks upon the shore, and by 
 every hill on which the sunshine rests, by the 
 reviving of sweet memories of childhood, by the 
 renewing of old and dear and precious ties, God 
 honours us more royally than Mordecai was 
 
THE GLORY AND THE GATE 265 
 
 honoured, and like Mordecai, we should accept 
 it all. Then, not in a fretful or rebellious spirit, 
 but cheerfully and bravely, we should return to 
 our task and to our cross, as Mordecai came to 
 the king's gate. 
 
 But there is another sphere where this is equally- 
 important. I refer to the trials and sorrows with 
 which we meet. I think that many of you will 
 understand my meaniiig when I talk of the un- 
 settlem.ent of a great sorrow. A man may live 
 in the sunshine many years, until he almost for- 
 gets what trouble is. Day succeeds day in an 
 unbroken happiness, and all the voices in the 
 world are music. Then suddenly, like a bolt 
 out of the blue, comes the dread moment of 
 which we never dreamed. Friendship is broken. 
 There is disgrace at home. Some one we loved 
 with all our heart is dead. Like one of these 
 storms so frequent in the tropics, that with in- 
 credible swiftness break from a cloudless sky, 
 tempests have swept on many a heart and home. 
 Such times are times of very strange unsettlement. 
 The world that we moved in seems very far away. 
 It seems incredible that only yesterday we were 
 talking and trafficking like other men. We have 
 
266 THE GLORY AND THE GATE 
 
 lived so intensely and have borne so much, that 
 a year has seemed to pass us in a day. 
 
 Now I do not mean even to suggest that one 
 can live through such seasons and emerge un- 
 changed. A stoical philosopher might have done 
 it, but the age of the stoic philosophers is gone. 
 It is told of one of them that when a friend 
 announced to him the death of his only son, he 
 said, * I never thought I had begotten an immortal/ 
 That was the ideal of manly courage once ; it is 
 not the ideal of manly courage now. Whatever 
 else the gospel of Christ has done, it has singularly 
 deepened the affections. Hearts are more tender 
 since Jesus lived and died, affections are deeper, 
 love is ennobled infinitely. And hence the 
 bitterness and sorrow of our tragic hours is 
 deeper than any that the pagan knew. How shall 
 we bear \t^ That is the vital question. How 
 shall we master it, that it do not overwhelm us 
 and leave us in the barren sorrow of despair } 
 I know no other answer than our text : And 
 Mordecai came again to the king's gate. Quietly 
 to resume the interrupted task, faithfully to get 
 back to daily duty, patiently to gather up the 
 threads again, silently to bury much and to be 
 
THE GLORY AND THE GATE 267 
 
 brave ; it is in that return to common life, and to 
 the common services that God demands of us, 
 that the cross and the burden are most wisely 
 borne. Jesus, having been tempted in the wilder- 
 ness, went back to Galilee to teach and heal. 
 Peter and John, being released from prison, did 
 not fly abroad : they went to their own company. 
 Mordecai came again to the king's gate. 
 
 There is an oft-quoted passage in a speech by 
 that most pure and single-hearted statesman, John 
 Bright. It refers to the period when Bright 
 had lost his young wife, and was plunged into 
 the depths of sorrow. His life seemed to be 
 shattered at his feet, hope had departed, all his 
 ambition was dead; and it was then that Cobden 
 came to see him. And Cobden might have 
 merely wept with him, and even that would have 
 been sympathy. Or Cobden might have proposed 
 a trip through Europe, and that, too, would have 
 been very kindly. But Cobden did a great deal 
 better than that. He said, * Bright, when the 
 first paroxysm of grief is over, we shall think of 
 the wives and the children throughout England, 
 and we shall go out and speak for them, and we 
 shall go out and fight for them, and we shall 
 
268 THE GLORY AND THE GATE 
 
 never rest till the corn-laws are repealed/ It was 
 a summons to service, a call to action ; and the 
 gallant heart began to beat again. It may be 
 that all suffering is honour. It may be that when 
 a man is decked in woe, invisible forms precede 
 him through the streets, crying to all who have 
 the ears to hear : ' Thus shall it be done to the 
 man whom the King delighteth to honour.' That 
 may be so. It is not for me to say. God wraps 
 His blessings up in strange disguises. But whether 
 or no, you will not forget now, that Mordecai 
 came again to the king's gate. 
 
 Then, lastly, I want to take our text and use 
 it in reference to the spiritual life. 
 
 It was a great honour that was done to 
 Mordecai. It was peculiarly consonant to Eastern 
 ideas of splendour. There was a picturesqueness 
 in it, and a wealth of colour, that were very dear 
 to the Oriental heart. There are thousands of 
 men and women in the East to-night, to whom 
 this dramatic and barbaric splendour is still the 
 epitome of exaltation. They would think that 
 their cup was running over, if shah or sultan 
 honoured them like that. Yet what a cheap and 
 childish honouring it was, matched with the favour 
 
THE GLORY AND THE GATE 269 
 
 of our King of kings ! The heart that is crowned 
 with the glory of the gospel is a thousand times 
 more honoured than Mordecai. His was an 
 outward glory, ours is an inward ; it is the 
 illumination of heart and will and conscience. 
 His was a passing glory, ours is a permanent ; 
 for neither height nor depth, nor life nor death, 
 shall separate us from the love of Christ. T^hus 
 shall it be done unto the man whom the King 
 delighteth to honour : he shall be called out of 
 bondage into spiritual liberty ; he shall be clad 
 in the garments of recreated manhood ; he shall 
 find life and love and duty rich in meaning ; he 
 shall move heavenward amid a cloud of witnesses. 
 The honour of Mordecai was remarkable, but the 
 honour of the humblest Christian far surpasses it. 
 Have you received that honour from the 
 King ? Then this shall be my closing word to 
 you. Welcome it joyfully, as Mordecai did, and 
 then get back to the king's gate again. It were 
 a great thing to be a mighty preacher, and to have 
 thousands swaying at your word. It were a noble 
 service to become a missionary, and preach the 
 gospel of Christ in darkest Africa. But if God 
 has got work like that in store for you, there will 
 
270 THE GLORY AND THE GATE 
 
 be no mistaking the summons when it comes. 
 Meantime there is the round of common duty ; 
 there is the daily burden, the ordinary Hfe. Bring 
 the new heart to bear upon all that, if you really 
 want to copy Mordecai. Be a better mother 
 among your growing children. Be a more 
 thoughtful husband ; be a sweeter wife. Be a 
 more considerate daughter in the home. Be a 
 more chivalrous brother to your sisters. It takes 
 the grace of God to do the least thing graciously, 
 and the grace of God is given us for that. If 
 there is any one here who has heard the call of 
 God to go and serve in the forefront of the 
 battle : then go, break every tie, be not dis- 
 obedient to the heavenly vision ! But as for the 
 rest of you — will you remember that Mordecai 
 came again to the king's gate ? 
 
A SOUL TO LET 
 
 "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through 
 dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. 
 
 Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came 
 out ; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. 
 — Matt. xii. 43-4. 
 
 Our Lord had a quick eye for moral tragedies, 
 and in the pictorial setting of these two verses He 
 has delineated one of the saddest of them all. One 
 marvels at the sure touch of Christ in dealing with 
 the disasters of the soul. Men felt instinctively 
 that He would understand them, and so they came 
 to Him when things were going wrong. And 
 one of the inexplicable wonders about Jesus is 
 this sure insight into secret failures. When we 
 have failed, we grasp a brother's failure, our 
 insight is the child of fellow-feeling. There are 
 whole ranks of tragedies we never suspect, just 
 because God has mercifully guarded us from 
 them. But Christ, in the panoply of perfect 
 manhood, was separated from every taint of sin, 
 
272 A SOUL TO LET 
 
 and yet had an exquisite understanding of the 
 sinner. It is something, my brother, to feel 
 that you are known. Your tragedy is not so 
 secret as you thought. You are haunted with 
 a dull sense to-night, that unless there is effort 
 and clearing of your feet, your last state is going 
 to be worse than your first ; and Christ has 
 spoken on that theme long ago. 
 
 Now what strikes us first in this man with an 
 unclean spirit is, that all his tragedy was under- 
 ground. I mean by that that his very nearest 
 and dearest never suspected what had been going 
 on. If you had asked some villager about him, 
 he would have answered, ' He is an unclean beast.' 
 And if ten years later you had asked again, you 
 would have been told he had been going down- 
 hill steadily. Steadily, gradually, so it had seemed 
 to everybody. Always a little worse, a little 
 lower. And only Christ knew that that view was 
 false — the man had been standing at the gates of 
 freedom once ! He had played the man against 
 his tyrannous vices. He had cast them out, and 
 cried to God to help him. He had breathed 
 liberty, and tasted the joy of triumph, and known 
 what a noble thing it was to live I And when 
 
A SOUL TO LET 273 
 
 the ousted tenants came back again, and the old 
 disorder began to reign within, none knew but 
 Christ the struggle, the cry, the passion to be 
 free, of the man whom all the village thought a 
 prisoner. 
 
 Are not many of our tragedies underground ? 
 They are transacted in the hidden sphere. There 
 are molten fires under the vines of Etna. There 
 are hidden graves among the garden-flowers. 
 And we sow and water the flowers in our garden, 
 just to conceal the sepulchre that is there. Who 
 knows how you have dreamed, how you have 
 struggled? — and men look at you and call you 
 contented, merry ! But there are memories of 
 prayer stored in your heart, and of days when 
 your life seemed utterly unworthy, and you stood 
 up and cast the devils out. And they are all back 
 again to-night, and never a soul in this city knows 
 of it, except yourself and Christ. 
 
 But there is another feature in this story besides 
 its secrecy. It is the story of an unused triumph. 
 This man did not fail because he never won ; 
 there was one morning when his heart was clean. 
 That was his day of victory, and the promise 
 of final conquest was in that, but he misused 
 
274 A SOUL TO LET 
 
 his victory and was lost. One of the saddest 
 stories ever written is just the story of our mis- 
 managed triumphs. It is our little victories that 
 curse us, because we have neither head nor heart 
 to manage them. We are so apt to be self-centred 
 in success ; so ready to forget how weak we are ; 
 so prone to think that the campaign is ours, 
 because in one skirmish the enemy has fled. Then 
 we grow careless, we do not walk with God ; 
 we do not garrison our heart against assault ; and 
 in an hour when we think not comes the old 
 temptation, strong, subtle, doubly sweet because 
 forsworn, and we are taken unawares and mastered, 
 and our last state is worse than our first. 
 
 I have often thought, on reading this little 
 parable, of the wonderful wisdom of Jesus in His 
 victory. I have often thought of the self-restraint 
 of Christ, when He triumphed over sin and over 
 death. If there was ever a triumph in the history 
 of earth used for the lasting blessing of mankind, 
 it was the triumph of Jesus when He rose. 
 There was a sweet restraint in resurrection joy. 
 There was no spectacle of a risen Saviour for the 
 crowd. There was a watchful reserve, a choosing 
 of times and companies, a holy management of 
 
A SOUL TO LET 
 
 275 
 
 the resurrection glory, that mark the risen 
 Saviour as divine. Even Christ was guarded in 
 His hour of triumph — how much more guarded 
 should the Christian be ? This man cast out the 
 unclean spirit, and said all 's well. And his last 
 state was worse than his first ! 
 
 And you see what his peculiar danger was ? 
 It was the peril of the empty heart. His soul 
 lay vacant, that was the pity of it. There was 
 room for the ousted devil to return. Some men 
 are tempted because their hearts are full. Life 
 is so rich, so strong in a thousand interests, there 
 is no room in it for Christ at all. But many are 
 tempted because their hearts are empty, and the 
 old ways creep back again to stay. It is not 
 sufficient to expel the wrong. We must fill the 
 emptied heart with nobler things. A tenantless 
 heart — a soul that is to let — is a standing invita- 
 tion to the devil. 
 
 It was there the man of our story failed. Have 
 you never failed just at that point.'* There 
 was struggle with evil, and momentary triumph, 
 there was an empty and swept and garnished 
 house. And that was something ; you were right 
 proud of it, after the moral disorder of the past. 
 
276 A SOUL TO LET 
 
 But you forgot that a habit expelled is not by any 
 means a habit slain. You forgot that new in- 
 terests must fill the life if the old interests are 
 never to lodge again. It was because no ruling 
 passion had been begotten, that you began to 
 hanker for the old again. It was because there 
 was no new enthusiasm, no worthier tenants to 
 occupy the soul, that you craved for the ousted 
 things and drew them back. Had the empty 
 house been filled with a new purpose, controlled 
 by a new hand and nobler will, the cast-out spirit 
 would have acknowledged defeat, and felt there 
 was no room in that soul for him. It was the 
 soul to let that did the harm. 
 
 And so I bring you face to face with the great 
 mystery of an indwelling Christ. I want you to 
 set that truth in the light of all I have been saying, 
 until you see how practical it is. These deepest 
 doctrines of the word of God were never meant 
 to be speculative vt^onders — it is when we live 
 them, we find how real they are — and it is Christ 
 in you the hope of glory, that saves you from the 
 peril of the empty heart. The gospel does not 
 merely come to you and say, ' My brother, my 
 sister, you must give up that sin.' It does not 
 
A SOUL TO LET 277 
 
 bid you empty your heart of evil, and leave it 
 empty and garnished to the end. It knows the 
 danger of a soul unoccupied ; the certain fall of a 
 heart without a tenant. And so the gospel is 
 prepared to give you something far better than 
 what it drives away. It is prepared to inhabit 
 the temple of your heart with the Holy Spirit 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ. Know ye not that 
 your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost who 
 dwelleth in you P That is the glad exchange 
 the gospel makes. In place of the unclean spirit 
 who is gone, the spirit of the Lord comes in to 
 dwell. 
 
 Now where the spirit of the Lord is, there is 
 liberty, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there 
 is life. And it is that new Hberty and life within 
 the heart that make us strong when old things 
 steal back again. 'I can do all things,' cried 
 the apostle — not through a barred door and an 
 empty heart — * I can do all things through Christ 
 which strengtheneth me ' ; his empty and swept 
 and garnished heart was full. O brother, you 
 have been fighting out your sin. But what you 
 want is a new enthusiasm in its place. And I 
 wish tD ask you seriously and simply, have you 
 
278 A SOUL TO LET 
 
 ever made room for Him to take Him in ? There 
 is love, there is power, there is liberty in Christ. 
 Open your heart. Receive the gift of God. It 
 is in the bitter hour of temptation that men find 
 the worth of an indwelling Saviour. 
 
 For our old sins are hungering to get back. 
 That truth is clearly written in our text. They 
 are houseless and homeless, and restless and ill at 
 ease. They crave their old shelter in our lives 
 again. And you do not mean to give it to them. 
 No ! you are done with the past for ever and a 
 day. But so was the hero of our text to-night, and 
 yet his last state was to be lost. Your cast-off 
 vices are not dead. They are going to return in 
 subtle ways. Do not pride yourself on a swept and 
 garnished house ; there is no pledge of victory 
 in that. But there is in a heart where dwells the 
 love of Christ, and something of the high power 
 of His passion. It is in Him that we are more 
 than conquerors. It is in Him that our last state 
 shall be our best. 
 
 'Oh! come to my heart, Lord Jesus, 
 There is room in my heart for Thee.' 
 
THE IRKSOMENESS OF RELIGION 
 
 There is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes. — 
 Numb. xi. 6. 
 
 We all know how after a certain time the chil- 
 dren of Israel began to loathe the manna. They 
 remembered the rich produce of their Egyptian 
 gardens, and began, In the desert, to crave for it 
 again. The manna tasted like fresh oil, we are 
 told, and In another passage we read that It was 
 like honey. Be sure It was wholesome, and 
 quite sufficiently palatable. If It came from God 
 for the sustenance of His children. He was their 
 Father, and when they asked for bread, you may 
 be certain they would not get a stone. Yet for 
 all that, Israel despised the manna. Their soul 
 rejected it, it was light food. It was bread from 
 heaven, says the psalmist — angels' bread — and yet 
 it proved distasteful to the camp. 
 
 Now had it proved distasteful to their enemies, 
 I think I could have understood it better. God 
 
 279 
 
28o THE IRKSOMENESS OF RELIGION 
 
 did not give it to support His enemies, He gave 
 it for the sustaining of His children. Had some 
 Amalekite boy stolen out at sunrise, when the 
 dew lay heavy, and the manna on the dew, and 
 had he gathered a handful of the substance, 
 tempted to do it by the Israelite children — had 
 some Amalekite boy done that, then tasted it, 
 and found it exceedingly unpleasant and bitter, I 
 could have taken that as the punishment of God 
 on him for laying his hands on covenanted mercies. 
 But the Israelites were a covenanted people — out 
 of Egypt have I called My son. They were being 
 led about by the Almighty ; they were on God's 
 highway to the land of promise. The strange 
 thing is that it was they — and not God's enemies 
 — who found the manna such a distasteful dish. 
 It was the children of Israel who felt the diet 
 irksome, and the children of Israel were the 
 people of God. 
 
 Now that leads me by quite a competent 
 spiritualising — for did not Jesus say *I am the 
 bread ' ? — to dwell on a very urgent matter, I mean 
 the irksomeness inherent in religion. I am not 
 talking of hypocrites to-night. I am handling 
 something far more delicate than the accepted 
 
THE IRKSOMENESS OF RELIGION 281 
 
 irksomeness of all hypocrisy. And I am not 
 talking of the ungodly, nor of the men who have 
 conceived false views about religion, nor of the 
 women who have been led to think of religion 
 as something other than it really is. All these 
 must picture religion as an irksome thing, and 
 it is perfectly natural that they should. But I 
 am talking of God's professing people, as the 
 children of Israel were out in the wilderness. I 
 am speaking to those who have really been 
 called out of Egypt, and are honestly struggling 
 heavenwards through the desert. And I 
 want to touch upon this strange, sad fact, that 
 to them religion should often be an irksome 
 thing. 
 
 Now at first glance, and from an external stand- 
 point, it might seem impossible that it should be 
 so. For to begin with (some one might say to 
 me), if religion is anything at all, it must be the 
 greatest concern in human life, and if anything be 
 that, it cannot be irksome. Yes, religion is the 
 chief concern in life. There is no relationship of 
 man to man, there is no relationship of man to 
 society — there is nothing on earth so paramount 
 and vital as the relationship of the human soul 
 
282 THE IRKSOMENESS OF RELIGION 
 
 to God. Yet men who have felt all that, and feel 
 it now — and wherever an awakened soul is, there 
 it is felt — such men and women, whensoever 
 they reveal their souls, confess to the seasons, 
 sometimes unbroken years, when religion was an 
 irksome thing to them. 
 
 Or again, one might say religion cannot be 
 irksome if the great key-words of the New 
 Testament be true. If there is any meaning in 
 these recurring notes that make the peculiar 
 music of the gospel, it is surely impossible that it 
 be irksome. What are these key-words ? One 
 of them is rest. Can there ever be any irksome- 
 ness in rest? And another is joy — the gospel 
 rings with joy. Can real joy ever grow distasteful.? 
 And love, that is another gospel note ; and 
 strength, and victory, and satisfaction. If these 
 be the gains and the heritage of Christians, how 
 can religion be an irksome thing ? Now all these 
 are the Christian's, certainly. There is rest, and 
 there is joy and love on the narrow path which 
 Jesus Christ hath trodden. But for all that, there 
 are few travellers on that path who have not felt 
 the irksomeness of their religion. 
 
 We detect it sometimes by the quiet relief we 
 
THE IRKSOMENESS OF RELIGION 283 
 
 feel when our religious exercises are concluded — 
 a certain secret sense of satisfaction when the 
 prayer is got over, and the worship done. Not 
 that we were not in earnest when we prayed ; we 
 gave our heart to it, it was no empty form. Still 
 it required an effort to make us pray, we had to 
 drag ourselves by sheer will-power to the throne, 
 and however truly and heartily we pled with God 
 and laid our case before Him in petition, when 
 the prayer was over we felt a kind of freedom, 
 as if a hard duty were honourably done. Now 
 prayer is the very climax of religion. It is the 
 soul at last in communion with its God. And if 
 we loved God with all our heart and soul, it 
 ought to be an exquisite joy to speak to Him. 
 Yet it is not always that — perhaps seldom so. 
 Read the biography of any saint. It took a 
 certain determination and doggedness, a quiet 
 mastery of impulse and desire, to preserve alive 
 the habit of devotion. And all that is a proof 
 that in the serious life there is something irksome 
 even to the saint. 
 
 We detect it again in the way in which many 
 try to put service in the place of personal religion. 
 I thank God for all the loyal service that is being 
 
284 THE IRKSOMENESS OF RELIGION 
 
 lavished on His church to-day. The body of 
 Christ is only beginning to realise that it has 
 come not to be ministered unto but to minister. 
 It is a lofty and a true conception, and it is 
 kindling the church into undreamed-of energy. 
 But when we see — and if we have eyes we see it 
 — how many noble men and loyal women are not 
 keeping the balance of the religious life, but 
 gradually, perhaps unconsciously, are giving less 
 thought to personal religion and more and more 
 to the service of their church — I say they are 
 yielding to one of the subtlest temptations of the 
 age, laying a false accent on the outward, and by 
 yielding to the echoing cry for work, shunning 
 the irksomeness of personal piety. But to shun 
 it — what is that but to confess it ? To acknow- 
 ledge that though they trust they are Christ's, 
 there is somewhat distasteful in the inward life ? 
 And then to make up, as it were, for the lack 
 of soul-religion, they become doubly feverish in 
 outward work. 
 
 But the irksomeness of a quiet and abiding 
 piety is seen above all in the love of religious 
 excitement. Excitement and novelty in religious 
 things could have no charm at all for any man, if 
 
THE IRKSOMENESS OF RELIGION 285 
 
 he were truly in love with personal religion, and 
 eager above all for a closer walk with God. 
 When a man is in love with his own quiet fire- 
 side, he can scarcely be tempted to go abroad of 
 an evening. In the gracious peace of his sweet if 
 humble home, and in his intercourse with the 
 glorious dead through books, he would as soon 
 think of going to the Pole as to the shallow 
 excitement of a third-rate theatre. Indeed, 
 when a man is always hurrying there, and hither 
 and thither to every showy function, we may be 
 sure that there is not much — what shall I call it ? — 
 not much heart-satisfaction by his hearth. And 
 as with the home, so is it with the soul. It is 
 ill at ease at home, and wants variety. And 
 all the love of excitement and of novelty, 
 and the foolish running to any new attrac- 
 tion, and the extraordinary sale of childish 
 books ; all this, with the growing demand for 
 sensational preaching — against which every true 
 preacher will set his face like a flint — is a token 
 of how irksome a thing deep, silent piety is. 
 If it were not so irksome, there would be no 
 call for novelty. 
 
 Now I wonder if wc can discern the grounds 
 
286 THE IRKSOMENESS OF RELIGION 
 
 of this element of irksomeness in heart-religion ? 
 Surely the first and the deepest is just this — 
 religion is spiritual, and we are carnal. At the 
 very best, we are but bruised reeds ; at our 
 noblest, we are but smoking flax. And religion, 
 in the full compass of her powers, has her dwell- 
 ing ' above the smoke and stir of this dim spot.' 
 She handles the things invisible and eternal, she 
 draws her warrants from remote transactions ; 
 she speaks of powers we cannot trace or measure, 
 she looks with a queenly scorn on sense and 
 time. And we are such creatures of the seen 
 and tangible, groping and clambering into the 
 clearer air with such infinite efix)rt and recurrent 
 failure that the unchanging calm of the ideal of 
 holiness strikes on us ofttimes as a barbed thing. 
 What is religion but to walk with God? 
 And for impurity to walk with purity, and sin 
 with holiness, and flesh with spirit — the elements 
 of an irksome journey are all there. It is 
 because we are far from Christlike yet ; it is 
 because God is holiness and love and purity 
 and truth, and because in religion we must 
 walk with God, that even to the saint it has its 
 irksomeness. 
 
THE IRKSOMEiNESS OF RELIGION 287 
 
 Another reason for that same feeHng is this, 
 we strive and seem to make so little progress. 
 We do not advance, as an army does to battle. 
 We often seem just to be marking time. There 
 are no habits, I believe, v^hich hold us so lightly- 
 as the habits of piety and of devotion. There 
 are none that snap more easily than they — and 
 the old life is back v^ith us again. A man 
 may have prayed in secret through a v^inter, yet 
 when summer comes the habit drops away. Or 
 he may long have read his Bible and attended 
 worship, but when some change of circumstances 
 overtakes him, how quickly he forgets his 
 honoured custom ! It is all this haunting sense 
 of unreality, this lack of steady progress to a 
 goal ; it is the fact that with every morning 
 as it comes we have just to begin the whole 
 thing over again — it is this, a kind of want of 
 continuity, that to the saintliest may make reli- 
 gion irksome. 
 
 But in our religion, I think it is the Cross above 
 all else that does it. It is the fact that in the 
 very centre there hangs the pallid figure on the 
 tree. In every mood and in every duty of the 
 Christian there lies the shadow of the cross of 
 
288 THE IRKSOMENESS OF RELIGION 
 
 Christ. What is discipleship ? — take up thy 
 cross and bear it. And who is worthy to be the 
 follower of Jesus ? — only he who bears his cross. 
 And to men and women such as we are, cross- 
 bearing will be irksome to the end. In other 
 words, it is the abnegation, it is the humility and 
 self-denial, it is the renunciation of much that 
 is sweet to us, and the eye fixed on a dying 
 and bleeding Saviour ; it is that^ when life is 
 sweet and full of music, and calling us as to 
 the freedom of a bird, that may keep an element 
 of irksomeness in all following of the blessed 
 Lord. 
 
 Now I have been preaching to myself to-night. 
 I have been writing down, for my own help and 
 comfort, my thoughts on a subject that have much 
 troubled me. You may have never felt religion 
 irksome. God has been very good to you ; praise 
 Him for it. But if you have felt it, and if you 
 feel it now, do not say you are not His, and do 
 not charge yourself with being a hypocrite, and 
 above all do not give in. What you are feeling, 
 the saints of God have felt. They too, like you, 
 have ' wrestled on towards heaven 'gainst storm 
 and wind and tide/ And be sure that when you 
 
THE IRKSOMENESS OF RELIGION 289 
 
 lay aside this body, and at the touch of death — 
 most kind and timely — the preparation for eternity 
 is done, be sure that then, in the presence and 
 love of God, all irksomeness will be gone for 
 evermore. 
 
THE PRE-REQUISITE OF VISION 
 
 When they were awake, they saw His glory. — Luke ix. 32. 
 
 It is very strange to find the disciples heavy with 
 sleep, even on the Mount of Transfiguration. 
 One would have thought that there, if anywhere, 
 there were things happening that would have 
 ' murdered sleep/ The glory of heaven was 
 shining forth from Jesus, like sunshine pouring 
 itself irresistibly through cloud ; there too, not in 
 any ghostly apparition, but in most strange reality, 
 were men who had been dead for centuries ; yet 
 in the presence of such scenes as these, Peter and 
 James and John were very sleepy. Then they 
 awoke, startled we know not how. Gradually, as 
 a swimmer might rise to the surface out of deep 
 waters, they came to themselves, and remembered 
 where they were. And then, and not till then, 
 when they were fully awake, the gospel tells us 
 that they saw His glory. 
 
 You see, then, that one of the penalties of living 
 
 290 
 
THE PRE-REQUISITE OF VISION 291 
 
 sleepily, is that we miss so much of what is 
 happening. The mightiest transactions may be 
 forward, and heaven be stooping down to touch 
 the mountain-tops, but we shall see nothing of it 
 all if we be drowsy. The latest biographer of 
 Principal Cairns, in his most satisfactory and 
 illuminative little volume, gives us a very charm- 
 ing account of Cairns's schooldays. He tells us 
 that very early in the morning, when the house 
 was still, Cairns was already busy with his books. 
 His brothers were fast asleep, so was his father ; 
 no one was stirring in the cottage save his mother. 
 She was already hard at work in her day's toils, 
 not grudgingly, but perhaps singing as she worked. 
 Now Cairns had a limitless admiration for his 
 mother ; she was his heroine and his saint right 
 to the end. And his biographer suggests that 
 this love and adoration might be traced, in part, 
 to these early morning hours. The cottage was 
 radiant with love and toil and sacrifice. But the 
 others were heavy with sleep, and did not see 
 it. None but the zealous young student were 
 awake ; but when he was awake, he saw her 
 glory. 
 
 Now it is one mark of every great awakening 
 
292 THE PRE-REQUISITE OF VISION 
 
 that it reveals to us unexpected glories. When 
 intellect is quickened and the feelings are moved ; 
 when the will is reinforced and conscience 
 purified, the world immediately ceases to be 
 commonplace, and clothes itself in unsuspected 
 splendour. You might play the noblest music to 
 a savage, and it would carry little meaning to his 
 ear. You might set him down before some 
 magnificent painting, and it would not stir one 
 chord in all his being. But when a man has 
 breathed the spirit of the West, and been enriched 
 by its heritage of feeling, there are thoughts that 
 wander off into eternity in every masterpiece of 
 art — we have been wakened, and we see the 
 glory. Do you think it is an idle figure of 
 speech when we talk of the long sleep of the 
 Middle Ages ? Do you imagine that we are only 
 using metaphor when we describe the Reforma- 
 tion as an awakening? I hardly think that we 
 could speak more literally than when we use such 
 simple terms as these. There is always a world 
 of glorious environment; but men were heavy 
 with sleep once, and they missed it. It was not 
 till powers and faculties were quickened in the 
 great movements of Renaissance and Reform, that 
 
THE PRE-REQUISITE OF VISION 293 
 
 the clouds scattered and the blue heaven was seen. 
 And if to-day there is larger meaning in our life, 
 if nature is richer in spiritual significance, if faith 
 and hope and love are far more worthy, if religion 
 is deeper and God more real and tender ; it can 
 all be interpreted in the language of the text : 
 When they were fully awake, they saw the 
 glory. 
 
 I think, too, that in spiritual awakening we 
 find that the suggestion of our text arrests us. 
 There are many glories which we never see, till the 
 call of our Lord has bidden us awake. There is 
 the Bible, for instance ; think of that a moment. 
 We have been taught out of its pages since we 
 were little children, and we can never be 
 grateful enough for this so priceless book, that is 
 alive with interest even to the child. It is the 
 noblest of all noble literature. It is fearless, and 
 frank, and eloquent, and simple. It faces life's 
 depths, yet it is always hopeful. It fronts life's 
 tragedies, yet it is always calm. A man may 
 refuse to believe it is inspired, yet may acknow- 
 ledge what a debt he owes it. But it is one thing 
 to feel the Bible's charm, and it is another thing 
 to see the Bible's glory ; and the glory of the 
 
2 94 THE PRE-REQUISITE OF VISION 
 
 Bible is a hidden glory> until a man is spiritually 
 awake. It is only then that it speaks as friend 
 with friend, and that it separates itself from 
 common voices. It is only then that it reaches us 
 apart, with a message and a music no one else 
 shall hear. It is only then, under the pressure of 
 sorrow, or in the darkness of failure, or beneath 
 the shadow of warring duties, that it touches us 
 as if we were alone in the whole world. That is 
 the glory of love, and of love's literature. And 
 we know much before we wake, but never that. 
 It is as true of us as of the three upon the 
 mountain — when they were fully awake, they saw 
 the glory. 
 
 Or think again of the life of our brother man. 
 Until we are awakened by the gospel, I question 
 if we ever see the full glory there. To most of 
 us the life of thousands of our fellows seems a 
 most dull and commonplace affair. There is little 
 radiance in it, and little hope ; it is as cheerless as 
 a grey sea in late November. But can imagination 
 not do anything ? Certainly, imagination can 
 work wonders. If you want to see the charm of 
 common lives ; the passion, the tenderness, the 
 joy, the strength of the persons whom you and I 
 
THE PRE-REQUISITE OR VISION 295 
 
 would brush past heedlessly, just read the Bleak 
 House of Charles Dickens again. 
 
 * The poem hangs on the berry-bush 
 Till comes the poet's eye; 
 And the whole street is a masquerade 
 When Shakespeare passes by.' 
 
 All that is true. And all that should make us 
 very grateful to God for the gift of every real 
 novelist and dramatist. But underneath all life 
 of passion and affection there are spiritual possi- 
 bilities for the meanest, and not till the world 
 is wakened by the gospel are the hidden 
 glories of humanity revealed. Why are we 
 carrying on home-mission work ? Is it merely 
 to employ our leisure energies } It is because 
 we have been wakened, and have seen the glory 
 of the poorest brother in the meanest street. 
 And why have we missionaries in India and in 
 Africa } Is it because we fear the heathen will 
 be damned for not having trusted One of whom 
 they never heard } It is because we have 
 been wakened, and have seen the glory of every 
 heart that beats in darkest Africa. Under all 
 vice there is still something true ; deeper than 
 the deepest degradation, there is still a hope 
 
296 THE PRE-REQUISI TE OF VISION 
 
 unspeakable and full of glory ; in the barren 
 desert the rose may blossom yet, and Jesus Christ 
 has wakened us to that. There was the ring of 
 the true faith about Chalmers of New Guinea 
 when, writing of a cannibal chief of that dark 
 island, he refers to him as ' that grand old 
 gentleman.' 
 
 And the same thing is true of our dear Lord 
 Himself. We must be spiritually wakened if we 
 would see His glory. It is only then that He 
 reveals Himself, in the full and glorious compass 
 of His grace. When a man approaches Christ 
 Jesus intellectually, he is humbled and stirred by 
 that wealth of spontaneous wisdom. And when 
 a man approaches Christ emotionally, the sym- 
 pathy of that matchless heart may overpower 
 him. But the brightest intellect and the most 
 delicate emotions may centre themselves for a 
 lifetime on the Saviour, yet the glory of the 
 Saviour may escape them ; it is always difficult 
 for the man who is spiritually dead to understand 
 the dominion of Christ in history. But the hour 
 comes when a man is spiritually roused. Out of 
 the infinite, the hand of God hath touched him. 
 The old content is gone like some sweet dream. 
 
THE PRE-REQUISITE OF VISION 297 
 
 He realises that things seen are temporal. He 
 is not satisfied any more, nor very happy ; sin 
 becomes real, the eternal is full of voices. And 
 it is then, in a vision fairer than any dawn, that 
 the glory of Christ first breaks upon the soul. 
 There is a depth of meaning in His wisdom 
 now, that the mere intellect was powerless to 
 grasp. There is a tenderness and a strength in 
 His compassion that mere emotion never under- 
 stood. There is a value and a nearness in His 
 death that once would have been quite inexplic- 
 able. When they were awake, they saw His 
 glory. 
 
 But to pass on from that great theme of 
 spiritual wakening, there is one feature of experi- 
 ence which I must not omit. It is part of God's 
 discipline with us in the years, that the years 
 should waken us to see glories which once we 
 missed. The value of our college education is 
 not the amount of raw knowledge which it gives 
 us. There are men whose minds are amazingly 
 full of facts, yet no one would call them educated 
 men. And there are others who have compara- 
 tively few facts at their command, yet you instinc- 
 tively recognise that they are educated. For true 
 
298 THE PRE-REQUISITE OF VISION 
 
 education is not meant to store us ; true education 
 is intended to awaken us ; and the joy of the 
 truly educated man is no poor pride in his 
 superior knowledge : it is that he has been so 
 wakened that in every realm and sphere he can 
 see glories unobserved before. 
 
 Now if this be true of our schools and of our 
 colleges, do you not think it holds also of God's 
 education ? It is a truth we should ever keep 
 clear before us. There are mysteries in life's 
 discipline we cannot fathom ; there are strange 
 happenings that have baffled every thinker ; but 
 at least we know that the change and the stress 
 of years, and the joys they bring with them, and 
 their losses and gains, waken us, perhaps rudely, 
 out of many a dream, and show us glories which 
 once we never saw. I do not think that the man 
 who has never been poor will be quick to see 
 the heroisms of quiet poverty. I do not think 
 that he who is always strong can ever appreciate 
 at its full moral value the dauntless cheerfulness 
 of the racked invalid. You must have been 
 tempted as your brother is, to know his magni- 
 ficent courage in resisting. To the man who 
 never loved, love is inscrutable. So the Almighty, 
 
THE PRE-REQUISITE OF VISION 299 
 
 in whose hands we are, disciplines us through the 
 deepening of the years, wakes us by change, by 
 love, by sorrow, by temptation, until the veils 
 are rent that shrouded other hearts. And we 
 say of humanity what these three said of Jesus : 
 ' When we were awake, we saw His glory.* 
 
 But the deepest interpretation of the text is 
 not of this world. It will come to its crown of 
 meaning in eternity. It is then that out of the 
 sleep of life we shall awaken, and we shall be 
 satisfied when we awake. We shall see the glory 
 of goodness and of truth then, as we never saw 
 it in our brightest hours. We shall see the glory 
 of having kept on struggling, when every voice 
 was bidding us give in. We shall see the glory 
 of the love we once despised, of insignificant and 
 unrewarded lives, of the silence that shielded and 
 the speech that cheered. We shall see the glory 
 of Jesus and of God. We are heavy with sleep 
 here, even at our best. It is going to take the 
 touch of death to waken us. But when we 
 waken in the eternal morning, I think we shall 
 truly see the glory then. 
 
THE NOTE OF THE HEROIC 
 
 His eyes were as a flame of fire. — Rev. i. 14. 
 
 It is notable that in this vision of the ascended 
 Saviour, the eyes should have been as it were a 
 flame of fire. That is hardly the characteristic 
 we should have expected after hearing of hair 
 that was as white as snow. The snow-white hair 
 suggests to us venerable age ; it hints at the 
 passing of unnumbered years, with the inevitable 
 quenching of the fire of youth ; but when we 
 should look for eyes that were very gentle, or 
 that were filled with the wise tenderness of age, 
 we find that His eyes were as a flame of fire. 
 Now that contrast at once suggests to me this 
 thought. In Christ there is not only a beauty as 
 of silvered age ; there is also a fire and a heroism 
 as of youth. And it is on that note of the heroic 
 that I wish to speak to-night. 
 
 I ask you, as we begin to think upon the 
 
THE NOTE OF THE HEROIC 301 
 
 matter, to bear in mind one very simple dis- 
 tinction. It is that the thoughts that cluster 
 round the heroic are not exactly those which the 
 word hero suggests. A hero is just the embodiment 
 of our ideal. He is the man who represents to 
 us all that we dream of, whom we can clothe in 
 every virtue and grace we reckon fine. There is 
 nothing fixed or defined, then, in the meaning of 
 hero; its import is relative to the qualities we 
 admire. The hero of an unscrupulous man of 
 business is often a man who is only more un- 
 scrupulous. The heroine of the woman of the 
 world is sometimes only a more worldly woman. 
 In a hero there may be absolutely nothing heroic ; 
 if we are degraded, so shall our ideals be. But 
 heroism is always lofty and disinterested; it is 
 courage touched into self-forgetfulness ; it is 
 enthusiasm with the crown of sacrifice upon its 
 brow ; it is the genius of the heart defying 
 prudence. A hero may have very evil eyes ; but 
 wherever the true heroic is, there the eyes are as 
 a flame of fire. 
 
 Now as civilisation advances and grows more 
 complex, there is one kind of heroism that is less 
 and less demanded. It is the heroism that may 
 
302 THE NOTE OF THE HEROIC 
 
 be described as physical, and that has for its basis 
 what we call animal courage. In a rough and 
 lawless and unsettled time, it might benefit a man 
 little to be gentle. The man who would live 
 must have a ready sword, and wield it valiantly, 
 sometimes, for wife and children. Such times, 
 then, in a nation's history — and we have had long 
 periods like that in Scotland — are times that call 
 out and develop physical heroism. It is always 
 an early epoch in a country that is known by 
 the name of its heroic age. But as civilisation 
 advances, life takes other aspects. The relations 
 of man to man become more intricate. The 
 sword that once was carried in the belt is handed 
 over to be wielded by the law ; life becomes 
 ordered, settled, and secure. There is con- 
 summate need to be intelligent and tactful ; there 
 is less need now than once for physical heroism. 
 We are never wakened of a morning now to hear 
 that the Highlands are ' out/ and are marching 
 on the city. And that implies that as civilisation 
 grows, and intercourse increases, and law becomes 
 supreme — and may I add as anaesthetics like 
 chloroform are discovered, that remove the 
 necessity of facing up to pain — the accent is 
 
THE NOTE OF THE HEROIC 303 
 
 shifted from merely physical heroism, and is 
 inevitably placed on other virtues. 
 
 But as the need of physical heroism declines, 
 the need of spiritual heroism steadily grows. 
 The very causes that have lessened the value of 
 the one have helped to heighten the value of the 
 other. We are in no danger now from Highland 
 caterans : the dangers that menace us are far 
 more subtle. They spring from that lowering 
 of moral standards that is unavoidable in our 
 complex intercourse. It is not easy to be oneself 
 now, we are so interlocked in what we call society. 
 We have lost a little liberty, with all our gains, 
 and are moulded more into a common pattern. 
 The pressure of public opinion is tremendous, 
 and public opinion makes for an average type. 
 It is, therefore, more difficult now to be honestly 
 true to oneself. It takes a little more heroism 
 than it did once. We are more tempted to con- 
 form to common standards, to barter our birth- 
 right of individuality, to be what a hundred 
 interests would have us be, rather than the men 
 God meant that we should be. And so the need 
 of spiritual heroism grows, as the need of physical 
 heroism lessens. The hair of His head was white 
 
304 THE NOTE OF THE HEROIC 
 
 as snow, we read — that does not even suggest a 
 young society. When time has mellowed the 
 spirit of a people, when age has tempered the 
 passion of its youth, when the riot of its blood 
 is somewhat cooled, and it is venerable, stately, 
 and august, it is then (if Jesus Christ be living) 
 that there will be eyes that are like a flame of 
 fire. 
 
 Now we cannot turn to the earthly life of 
 Jesus without being struck with one marvellous 
 union there. I refer to the union of what was 
 beautiful and gracious, with all that was in the 
 truest sense heroic. We know that a bruised 
 reed He would not break. We cannot fathom 
 the depths of His compassion. There was never 
 a patience like His patience with the twelve ; 
 there was never a pity like His pity of the sinner. 
 He was gentle, charitable, courteous, kind, a per- 
 fect pattern of moral beauty. But the wonder of 
 that beauty is magnified a hundredfold, when we 
 remember the heroism with which it went hand 
 in hand. If to be true to one's mission and to 
 stand alone ; if to be faithful, and joyful, and 
 quiet, and undaunted ; if to challenge all the 
 powers of hell to combat ; if to march forward 
 
THE NOTE OF THE HEROIC 305 
 
 without a falter to a cross — if that be heroism 
 in its noblest meaning, then Jesus of aNazareth 
 must have been heroic. Tenderness is great 
 and heroism is sublime. In Christ there 
 was tenderness infinite, and heroism matchless. 
 The eyes that wept beside the grave of 
 Lazarus were eyes that were like a flame of 
 fire. 
 
 Ill some degree, then, as we grow like to 
 Christ, that union of qualities will be found in 
 us. It is one distinctive mark of that new 
 character that has been built up through the 
 powers of the gospel, that there is ample room 
 in it for all that is gracious, and at the same 
 time for all that is heroic. There were two great 
 schools of philosophy in Rome in the age pre- 
 ceding the entrance of the gospel there. The 
 one was Stoicism and the other Epicureanism, 
 and each had its own ideal of human character. 
 The aim of the Stoic was to foster heroism ; he 
 crushed out the affections ruthlessly. The aim 
 of the Epicurean was not heroism, it was just 
 to fashion amiable gentlemen. But the needs of 
 the human heart broke down the first, for pity 
 and love demanded recognition. And the 
 
 u 
 
3o6 THE NOTE OF THE HEROIC 
 
 grandeur of the human heart broke down the 
 second, fbr there is that within each of us that 
 craves for self-sacrifice. What the world needed 
 was a type of character that could embrace and 
 glorify the two ideals, and I humbly submit that 
 the gospel gave us that. There is a place in it for 
 pity, there is room for love ; there is dew and 
 sunshine for the tenderest affections that nestle 
 in the shadow of the heart ; but there is room 
 for the heroic too. We have a cross to carry ; 
 we have a witness to bear. We have a life to 
 live ; we have a death to die. We are following 
 a hope that is sublime, and we fare ill without a 
 little heroism. We shall be poor disciples of a 
 compassionate Lord, unless we have eyes that can 
 soften into pity. But we shall be poor soldiers 
 in the warfare mystical, unless these eyes are as 
 a flame of fire. 
 
 It is notable, too, that as the spiritual life of 
 Christendom has deepened, as it has grown richer 
 with the passing of the ages, it has brought with 
 it a deeper and truer conception of what spiritual 
 heroism really is. There is a well-known poem 
 by Tennyson under the title of St. Simeon Styhtes. 
 Tt is a gruesome description of one of these pillar- 
 
THE NOTE OF THE HEROIC 307 
 
 saints whom people venerated in the Middle Ages. 
 St. Simeon spends his years on the top of a high 
 pillar ; he is scorched by the sun and is swept by 
 the storms of winter. He grows blind and deaf; 
 he is racked with intolerable agues. He is praying 
 night and morning for Heaven's pardon. And 
 round the base of the pillar people are ever 
 thronging to do reverence to this ascetic saint. 
 Now that is an extreme case, 1 grant you willingly ; 
 and it is almost repulsive, even in Tennyson's 
 hands. But the fact remains that, in the Middle 
 Ages, it was such lives that were the types of 
 moral heroism. Even St. Francis, the gentlest 
 of all mystics, was desperately cruel to himself. 
 It was very noble — I think we all feel that. It 
 was very noble ; but it was mistaken. And we 
 should thank God that we are living in a time 
 when the heroism of self-suppression is disowned, 
 to make room for the nobler heroism of service. 
 It is not on the tops of pillars that we look for 
 saints now. It is not in cell or monastery that 
 we search for heroism. I speak as a Protestant, 
 for the spiritual types of Roman Catholicism are 
 still very largely mediaeval. The Christian doctor 
 who in a London hospital sucked out the diph- 
 
JOB THE NOTE OF THE HEROIC 
 
 theric poison from a poor child's throat ; the 
 Christian student who will hold fast to truth, 
 though a score of voices denounce him as heretical ; 
 the Christian worker who goes down into the 
 slums and toils there, when all the novelty is 
 gone, for the poor and the fallen for whom Jesus 
 died ; the Christian girl, trained in a gentle home, 
 who volunteers for mission -work in Calabar — 
 it is these that are our types of the heroic. 
 The heroism of the hermitage is gone. We 
 have drunk more fully of Christ Jesus now. 
 We have seen more deeply into these wonderful 
 eyes, which John says were like a flame of 
 fire. 
 
 But I must close, and I do so with two remarks. 
 The first is that there is always danger for a 
 church when the note of the heroic passes from 
 its life. It is very pleasant to be very comfort- 
 able, and to talk about one's good-natured 
 congregation. But the eyes of the vision were not 
 good-natured eyes ; they were eyes that burned 
 as with a flame of fire. It was heroism that 
 made Christ's kirk in Scotland. And it was 
 heroism that saved Christ's kirk in Scotland. 
 It was secession, and deposition, and disruption. 
 
THE NOTE OF THE HEROIC 309 
 
 in the times that are well described as moderate. 
 And when that uncalculati ng enthusiasm passes 
 and leaves us comfortable and statistical, let 
 us beware lest a voice say to us also, * I 
 know thy works, that thou art neither cold 
 nor hot.' 
 
 And the second is : I appeal to the young men 
 on the ground of the heroism of Christ Jesus. 
 Mr. FitzGerald, the translator of Omar Khayyam, 
 in an exquisite little piece he calls * Euphranor,' 
 has some suggestive words on chivalry. He says 
 that the charm of chivalry was just its note of 
 heroism ; and if it appealed — as it certainly did 
 appeal — to the bravest and noblest and most 
 gallant men, it was just because it put the accent 
 there. May I not do the same with Jesus Christ ? 
 I think it is a true appeal to opening manhood. 
 Never forget the heroism of Jesus, nor the heroic 
 in the Christian calling. The time will come 
 when you will need Christ's tenderness. You 
 will want a gentle Lord, and you will find Him. 
 But to-day it is a call to the heroic that appeals, 
 and I thank God I can hear that call in Christ. 
 Go ! mother, bowed with a mother's sorrow — gc 
 to the graveside where Jesus wept. But eager, 
 
310 THE NOTE OF THE HEROIC 
 
 gallant, generous heart of youth — why should I 
 lead you to that scene of tears ? You crave a 
 heroic captain for the battle, and the eyes of 
 Christ are as a flame of fire. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty, 
 at the I'^dinburgh University Press 
 
DATE DUE 
 
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