nilli i 
 
* OCT 24 1911 *) 
 
 1910. ' ^^e^ander, i 
 ^^e secret of 
 
 826- 
 
 power 
 
THE SECRET OF POWER 
 
V 
 
 T 
 
 * OCT 24 
 
 HE S ECRE'r^'"^^ 
 OF POWER 
 
 AND OTHER, SERMONS bv 
 
 Alexander Maclaren d.d. 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
CONTENTS ' 
 
 SERMON I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE SECRET OF POWER \- 
 
 SERMON II 
 
 THE PATTERN OF SERVICE . . . . . .26 
 
 SERMON III 
 THE AWAKING OF ZION $8 
 
 SERMON IV 
 
 "TIME FOR THEE TO WORK" ' 8I 
 
 SERMON V 
 
 THE EXHORTATION OF BARNABAS IC7 
 
 SERMON VI 
 
 MEASURELESS POWER AND ENDLESS GLORY . . . I30 
 
 V 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 SERMON VII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 love's triumph 145 ^' 
 
 SERMON VIII 
 
 THE GRAVE OF THE DEAD JOHN AND THE GRAVE OF 
 
 THE LIVING JESUS . . . . . . I59 
 
 SERMON IX 
 
 THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH AND THE ASCENSION OF 
 
 CHRIST 174 
 
 SERMON X 
 
 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW? . . . . 187 
 
 SERMON XI 
 
 THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST IN HIS TEMPTATIONS . 20I 
 
 SERMON XII 
 
 THE WELLS OF SALVATION 212 
 
 SERMON XIII 
 
 SEEKING THE FACE OF .OD 222 
 
CONTENTS vii 
 
 SERMON XIV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CITIZENS OF HEAVEN 237 
 
 SERMON XV 
 
 MOSES AND HOBAB §^ — jt' 25 1 
 
 SERMON XVI 
 
 THE OBSCURE APOSTLES 265 
 
 SERMON XVII 
 
 THE soul's perfection 280 
 
 SERMON XVIII 
 
 THE first PREACHING AT ANTIOCH .... 294 
 
 SERMON XIX 
 
 THE MASTER AND HIS SLAVES 304 
 
 SERMON XX 
 
 A prisoner's DYING THOUGHTS . , . . > 313 
 
SERMON !.• 
 
 THE SECRET OF POWER. 
 
 St. Matthew xrii 19, aa 
 
 Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and laid. Why conld not 
 we cast him oat ? And Jesus said onto them. Because of your 
 anbelief. 
 
 * A ND when He had called unto Him Hia twelve dis- 
 •^^^ ciples, He gave them power against unclean spirits 
 to cast them out" That same power was bestowed, too, on 
 the wider circle of the seventy who retrimed again with 
 joy, saying, " Lord, even the devils are subject unto us 
 through Thy name." The ground of it was laid in the 
 solemn words with which Christ met their wonder at 
 their own strength, and told how He " beheld Satan as 
 lightning fall from heaven.'* Therefore had they 
 triumphed, showing the fruits of their Master's victory ] 
 and therefore had He a right to renew the gift, in the 
 still more comprehensive promise, " I give unto you 
 power — over all the power of the enemy." 
 
 What a commentary on such words this story affords 1 
 What has become of their supernatural might ? Has it 
 
 * Preached before the Directors and Friends of tkc London 
 liisuoDJU7 Society. 
 
2 THE SECRET OF POWER. [serm 
 
 ebbed away as suddenly as it flowed ? Is their Lord's 
 endowment a shadow — His assurances delusion ? Has He 
 taken back what He gave? Not so. And yet His 
 servants are ignominiously beaten. One poor devil- 
 ridden boy brings all their resources to nothing. He 
 stands before them writhing in the gripe of his tormentor, 
 but they cannot set him free. The importunity of the 
 father's prayers is vain, and the tension of expectancy in 
 his eager face relaxes into the old hopeless langi*or as he 
 slowly droops to the conviction that they could not cast 
 him out The malicious scorn in the eyes of the Scribes, 
 those hostile critics who "knew that it would be so," 
 helps to produce the failure which they anticipated. The 
 curious crowd buzz about them — and in the m»<ist of it 
 all the Uttle knot of baffled disciples, possessors of power 
 which seems to leave them when they need it most, with 
 the unavailing spells dying half spoken on their lips, and 
 their faint hearts longing that their Master would come 
 down from the mount, and cover their weakness with His 
 own great strength. 
 
 No wonder that, as soon as Christ and they are 
 alone, they want to know how their mortifying defeat 
 has come about And they get an answer which 
 they little expected, for the last place where men 
 look for the explanation of their failures is within ; 
 and they will ascend into the heavens, and descend into 
 the deeps for remote and recondite reasons, before they 
 listen to the voice which says, " The fault is nigh thee — 
 in thy heart" Christ's reply distinctly impUes that the 
 cause of their impotence lay wholly in themselves, not in 
 
L] THE SECRET OF POWER, f 
 
 any defect or withdrawal of power, but solely in that in 
 them which grasped the power. They little expected, too, 
 to be told that they had failed because they had not been 
 sure they would succeed. They had thought they believed 
 in their ability to cast out the demon. They had tried 
 with some kind of anticipation that they could. They 
 had been surprised when they found they could not 
 They had wonderingly asked why. And now Christ tells 
 them that all along they had had no real faith in Him 
 and in the reality of His gift So subtly may unbehef 
 steal into the heart, even while we fancy that we are 
 working in faith. And a further portion of our Lord's 
 reply points them to the great means by which this 
 conquering faith can be maintained — namely, prayer and 
 fasting. If, then, we put all these things together, we 
 get a series of considerations, very simple and common- 
 place indeed, but all the better and truer therefore, which 
 I venture to submit to you, as having a very important 
 bearing on all our Chnstian work, and especially on the 
 missionary work of the Church. The principles which the 
 text suggests touch the perpetual possession of the power 
 which conquers ; the condition of its victorious exercise by 
 us, as being our faith ; the subtle danger of unsuspected 
 unbelief to which we are exposed ; and the great means 
 of preserving our faith pure and strong. I ask your 
 attention to a few considerations on these points in their 
 order. 
 
 But first, let me say very briefly, that I would not be 
 understood as, by the selection of such a text, desiring to 
 suggest that we have failed in our work. Thank God 1 
 
 B t 
 
4 THE SECRET OF POWEIL [IKRM. 
 
 we can point to results far, its greater than we have 
 deserved, far greater than we have expected, however 
 they may be beneath our desires, and still further below 
 what the gospel was meant to accomphsh. It may suit 
 observers who have never done anything themselves, and 
 have not particularly clear eyes for appreciating spiritual 
 work, to talk of Christian missions as failures; but it 
 would ill become us to assent to the lie. Failures 
 indeed I with half a million of converts, with new forms 
 of Christian life budding in all the wilderness of the 
 peoples, with the consciousness of coming doom creep- 
 ing about the heart of every system of idolatry I Is the 
 green life in the hedges and in the sweet pastures starred 
 with rathe primroses, and in the hidden copses blue with 
 hyacinths a failure, because the east wind bites shrewdly, 
 and " the tender ash delays to clothe herself with green "? 
 No I no we have not failed Enough has been done to 
 vindicate the enterprise, more than enough to fill our 
 lips with thanksgiving, enough to entitle us to say to 
 all would-be critics — Do you the same with your enchant- 
 ments. But, on the other hand, we have to confess 
 that the success has been slow and small, chequered and 
 interrupted, that often we have been foiled, that we have 
 confronted many a demon whom we could not cast out, 
 and that at home and abroad the masses of evil seem to 
 close in around us, and we make but little impression 
 on their serried ranks. We have had success enough to 
 assure ns that we possess the treasure, and failures 
 enough to make us feel how weak are the earthen vessels 
 which hold it. 
 
L] THE SECRET OF POWER, ^ 
 
 And now let Qs turn to the principles which flow from 
 this text 
 
 L We have an unvarying pcwer^ 
 
 No doubt the explanation of their defeat which most 
 naturally suggested itself to these disciples would be that 
 somehow or other — perhaps because of Christ's absence 
 —they had lost the gift which they knew they once had. 
 And the same way of accounting for later want of succes* 
 Mngers among Christian people stilt You will sometimes 
 hear it said : — ** God sends forth His Spirit in special ftd- 
 ness at special times, according to His own soyereign 
 will ; and till then we can only wait and pray." Or 
 ••The miraculous powers which dwelt in the early Church 
 have been withdrawn, and therefore the progress is slow.** 
 The strong imaginative tendency to make an ideal perfect 
 in the past leads us to think of the primitive age of the 
 Church as golden, in opposition to the plain facts of the 
 case. We fimcy that because apostles were its teachers, 
 and the Cross within its memory, the infant society wa» 
 stronger, wiser, better than any age since, and had gifts 
 which we have lost What had it which we do not 
 possess? The power of working miracles. What have 
 we which it did not possess ? A completed Bible, and 
 tfie experience of eighteen centuries to teach us to under- 
 stand it, and to confirm by facts our confidence that 
 Christ's gospel is for all time and every land What 
 bave we in common with it ? The same mission to fulfil^ 
 the same wants in our brethren to meet, the same gospel, 
 the same spirit, the same immortal Lord. All that aa^ 
 
« THE SECRET OF POWER, [serm. 
 
 age has possessed to fit it for the task of witnessing for 
 Christ we too possess. The Church has in it a power 
 which is ever adequate to the conquest of the worid ; and 
 that power is constant through all time, whether we con- 
 sider it as recorded in an unvarying gospel, or as energized 
 by an abiding spirit, or as flowing from and centred in an 
 unchangeable Lord. 
 
 We have a gospel which never can grow old. Its adap- 
 tation to the deepest needs of men's souls remains con- 
 stant with these needs. These vary not from age to age. 
 No matter what may be the superficial differences of dress 
 the same human heart beats beneath every robe. The 
 great primal wants of men's spirits abide as the great 
 primal wants of their bodily life abide. Food and shelter 
 for the one, — a loving, pardoning God, to know and love, 
 for the other — else they perish. Wherever men go they 
 carry with them a conscience which needs cleansing, a 
 sense of separation from God jomed with a dim know- 
 ledge that union with Him is life, a will which is burdened 
 with its own self-hood, an imagination which paints the 
 misty walls of this earthly prison with awful shapes that 
 terrify and faint hopes that mock, a heart that hungers 
 for love, and a reason which pines in atrophy without 
 light And all these the gospel which is lodged in our 
 hands meets. It addresses itself to nothing in men that 
 is not in Man. Surface differences of position, culture, 
 chme, age, and the like, it brushes aside as unimportant 
 and it goes straight to the universal wants. People tell 
 us it has done its work, and much confident dogmatism 
 proclaims that the world has outgrown it We have a 
 
THE SECRET OF POWER. 
 
 right to be confident also, with a confidence bom of oitr 
 knowledge, that it has met and satisfied for us the wants 
 which are ours and every man's, and to believe that as 
 long as men live by bread, so long will this word which 
 proceedeth out of the mouth of God be the food of their 
 souls. Areopagus and Piccadilly, Benares and Oxford, 
 need the same message and will find the same response 
 to all their wants in the same word. 
 
 Much of the institutions in which Christendom has 
 embodied its conceptions of God's truth will crumble 
 away. Many of the conceptions will have to be modi- 
 fied, neglected truths will grow, to the dislocation ol 
 much systematic theology, and the Word better under- 
 stood will clear away many a portentous error with which 
 the Church has darkened the word. Be it so. Let ua 
 be glad when " the things which can be shaken are re- 
 moved," like mean huts built against the wall of some 
 cathedral, masking and marring the completeness of its 
 beauty; "that the things which cannot be shaken may 
 remain," and all the clustered shafts, and deep-arched 
 recesses, and sweet tracery may stand forth freed from 
 the excrescences which hid them. " The grass withereth, 
 and the flower thereof falleth away. But the word of the 
 Lord endureth for ever." 
 
 We have an abiding Spirit^ the Giver to us of a power 
 without variableness or the shadow of turning, " I will 
 pray the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, 
 that He may abide with you for ever." The manner of 
 His operations may vary, but the reality of His energy 
 abides. The " works " of wonder which Jesus did oa 
 
8 THE SECRET OF POWER, [skrm. 
 
 earth may no more be done, but the greater works than 
 these are still the sign of His presence, without whom no 
 spiritual life is possible. Prophecies may fail, tongues 
 may cease, but the more excellent gifts are poured out 
 now as richly as ever. We are apt to look back to 
 Pentecost and think that that marked a height to which 
 the tide has never reached since, and therefore we are 
 stranded amidst the ooze and mud But the river which 
 proceeds from the throne of God and of the Lamb is not 
 like one of our streams on earth, that leaps to the light 
 and dashes rejoicingly down the hillside, but creeps 
 along sluggish in its level course, and dies away at last in 
 the sands. It pours along the ages the same fiill volume 
 with which it gushed forth at first Rather, the source 
 goes with the Church in all ages, and we drink not of 
 water that came forth long ago in the history of the 
 world, and has reached us through the centuries, but of 
 that which wells out fresh every moment from the Rock 
 that follows us. The Giver of all power is with us. 
 
 We have a Lord^ the same yesterday^ and to-day^ and 
 for ever, " Lo, I am with you always, even to the end 
 of the world." We have not merely to look back to the 
 life and death of Christ in history, and recognise there 
 the work, the efficacy of which shall endure for ever. 
 But whilst we do this, we have also to think of the Christ 
 " that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, 
 who also maketh intercession for us." And the one 
 thought, as the other, should strengthen our confidence 
 in our possession of all the might that we need for bring- 
 ing the world back to our Lord. 
 
L] THE SECRET OF POWER. 9 
 
 A work in the past which can never be exhausted or 
 lose its power is the theme of our message. The mists of 
 gathering ages wrap in slowly thickening folds of forgetful- 
 ness all other men and events in history, and make them 
 ghostlike and shadowy ; but no distance has yet dimmed 
 or will ever dim that human form divine. Other names 
 are like those stars that blaze out for a while, and then 
 smoulder down into almost complete invisibiUty j but He 
 is the very Light itself, that bums and is not consumed. 
 Other landmarks sink below the horizon as the tribes of 
 men pursue their solemn march through the centuries, 
 but the Cross on Calvary " shall stand for an ensign of 
 the people, and to it shall the Gentiles seek." To pro- 
 claim that accomplished salvation, once for all lodged in 
 the heart of the world's history, and henceforth for ever 
 ^ralid, is our unalterable duty. The message carries in 
 itself its own immortal strength. 
 
 A living Saviour in the present, who works with ns, 
 confirming the word with signs following, is the source of 
 our power. Not till He is impotent shall we be weak. 
 The unmeasurable measure of the gift of Christ defines 
 the degree, and the unending duration of His life who 
 continueth for ever sets the period, of our possession of 
 the grace which is given to every one of us. He is ever 
 bestowing. He never withdraws what He once gives. 
 The fountain sinks not a hair's breadth, though eighteen 
 centuries have drawn from it Modem astronomy begins 
 to believe that the sun itself by long expense of light will 
 be shorn of its beams and wander darkling in space, 
 circled no more by its daughter planets. But this Sunol 
 
lo THE SECRET OF POWER. [SERM, 
 
 our souls rays out for ever the energies of life and light 
 and love, and after all communication possesses the in- 
 finite fulness of them all " His name shall be continued 
 as long as the sun, all nations shall call Him blessed.** 
 
 Here then, brethren, are the perpetual elements of our 
 constant power, an eternal Word, an abiding Spirit, an 
 unchanging Lord. 
 
 n. The condition of exercising this power is Faith, 
 
 With such a force at our command — 2l force that could 
 shake the mountains and break the rocks — ^how come we 
 ever to fail ? So the disciples asked, and Christ's answer 
 cuts to the very heart of the matter. Why could you not 
 cast him out ? For one reason only, because you had 
 lost your hold of My strength, and therefore had lost 
 your confidence in your own derived power, or had 
 forgotten that it was derived, and essayed to wield it as 
 if it were your own. You did not trust Me, so you did not 
 beheve that you could cast him out ; or you believed that 
 you could by your own might, therefore you failed. He 
 throws them back decisively on themselves as solely 
 responsible. Nowhere else, in heaven or in earth or 
 hell, but only in us, does the reason lie for our break- 
 down, if we have broken down. Not in God, who is ever 
 with us, ready to make all grace abound in us, whose 
 will is that all men should be saved and come to the 
 knowledge of the truth; not in the gospel which we 
 preach, for " it is the power of God unto salvation ; " not 
 in the demon might which has overcome us, for " greater 
 is He that is in us than he that is in the world.'* We an 
 
L] THE SECRET OF POWER, H 
 
 driven from all other explanations to the bitterest and 
 yet the most hopeful of all, that we only are to blame. 
 
 And what in us is to blame ? Some of us will answer 
 — Our mode^ of working; they have not been free 
 enough, or not orderly enough, or in some way or other 
 not wisely adapted to our ends. Some will answer — Our 
 forms of presenting the truth ; they have not been flexible 
 enough, or not fixed enough ; they have been too much a 
 reproduction of the old ; they have been too licentious a 
 departure from the old. Some will answer — Our eccle- 
 siastical arrangements ; they have been too democratic ; 
 they have been too priestly. Some will answer — Our 
 intellectual culture ; it has been too great, obscuring the 
 simplicity that is in Christ ; it has been too small, sending 
 poorly fiirnished men into the field to fight with ordered 
 systems of idolatry which rest upon a philosophical basis, 
 and can only be overturned by undermining that It is 
 no part of ray present duty to discuss these varying answers. 
 No doubt there is room for improvement in all the fields 
 which they indicate. But does not the spirit of our Lord's 
 words here beckon us away from these purely secondary 
 subjects to fix our self-examination on the depth and 
 strength of our faith, as incomparably the most important 
 element in the conditions which determine our success or 
 our failure? I do not undervalue the worth of wise 
 methods of action, but the history of the Church tells us 
 that pretty nearly any methods of action are fruitful in 
 the right hands, and that without living faith the best of 
 them become hke the heavy armour which half-smothered 
 a feeble man. I do not pretend to that sublime indif- 
 
IS THE SECRET OF POWER. [serm 
 
 ference to dogma which is the modem fonn of supreme 
 devotion to truth, but experience has taught us that 
 wherever the name of Christ, as the Saviour of the world, 
 has been lovingly proclaimed, there devils have been cast 
 out, whatever private and sectional doctrines the exor- 
 ciser has added to it I do not disparage organisation, 
 but courage is more than drill ; and there is such a thing 
 as the very perfection of arrangement without life, like 
 cabinets in a museum, where all the specimens are duly 
 classified, and dead. I believe, with the old preacher, 
 that if God can do without our learning. He needs our 
 ignorance still less, but it is of comparatively little 
 importance whether the draught of living water be brought 
 to thirsty lips in an earthen cup or a golden vase, 
 
 "The main thing is, does it hold good measuitt 
 Heaven soon sets right all other matters.*' 
 
 And therefore, while leaving full scope for all im- 
 provements in these subordinate conditions, let me urge 
 upon you that the main thing which makes us strong for 
 our Christian work is the grasp of living faith, which holds 
 fest the strength of God. There is no need to plunge 
 into the jungle of metaphysical theology here. Is it not 
 a fact that the might with which the power of God has 
 wrought for men's salvation has corresponded with the 
 strength of the Church's desire and the purity of its trust 
 in His power ? Is it not a truth plainly spoken in Scrip- 
 ture and confirmed by experience, that we have the 
 awfiil prerogative of limiting the Holy One of Israel, and 
 quenching the Spirit ? Was there not a time in Christ'i 
 
Lj THE SECRET OF POWER. 13 
 
 life on earth when He could do no mighty works because 
 of their unbelief? We receive all spiritual gifts in 
 proportion to our capacity, and the chief factor in settling 
 the measure of our capacity is our faith. Here on the 
 one hand is the boundless ocean of the Divine strength, 
 unfathomable in its depth, fiill after all draughts, tideless 
 and calm, in all its movement never troubled, in all its 
 repose never stagnating; and on the other side is the 
 empty aridity of our poor weak natures. Faith opens 
 these to the influx of that great sea, and " according to 
 our faith," in the exact measure of our receptivity, does it 
 enter our hearts. In itself the gift is boundless. It has 
 no limit except the infinite fulness of the power which 
 worketh in us. But in reference to our possession it is 
 bounded by our capacity, and though that capacity en- 
 larges by the very fact of being filled, and so every 
 moment becomes greater through fruition, yet at each 
 moment it is the measure of our possession, and our faith 
 is the measure of our capacity. Our power is God's 
 power in us, and our faith is the power with which we 
 grasp God's power and make it ours. So then, in regard 
 to God, our faith is the condition of our being strengthened 
 with might by His Spirit 
 
 Consider, too, how the same faith has a natural opera^ 
 Hon on ourselves which tends to fit us for casting out the 
 evil spirits. Given a man full of faith, you will have a 
 man tenacious in purpose, absorbed in one grand object, 
 simple in his motives, in whom selfishness has been 
 driven out by the power of a mightier love, and indolence 
 stirred into unwearied energy. Such a man will be made 
 
14 THE SECRET OF POWER. [serm 
 
 wise to devise, gentle to attract, bold to rebuke, fertile 
 in expedients, and ready to be anything that may help 
 the aim of his life. Fear will be dead in him, for faith 
 is the true anaesthesia of the soul ; and the knife may 
 cut into the quivering flesh, and the spirit be scarce 
 conscious of a pang. Love, ambition, and all the 
 swarm of distracting desires will be driven from the soul 
 in which the lamp of faith bums bright Ordinary 
 human motives will appeal in vain to the ears which have 
 heard the tones of the heavenly music, and all the pomps 
 of life will show poor and tawdry to the sight that has 
 gazed on the vision of the great white throne and the 
 crystal sea. The most ignorant and erroneous " religious 
 sentiment " — to use a modem phrase — is mightier than 
 all other forces in the world's history. It is like some 
 of those terrible compounds of modem chemistry, an 
 inert, innocuous-looking drop of liquid. Shake it, and 
 it flames heaven high, shattering the rocks and ploughing 
 up the soiL Put even an adulterated and camalised 
 faith into the hearts of a mob of wild Arabs, and in a 
 century they will stream from their deserts, and blaze 
 from tiie mountains of Spain to the plains of Bengal 
 Put a living faith in Christ and a heroic confidence in the 
 power of His gospel to reclaim the worst sinners into a 
 man's heart, and he will out of weakness be made strong, 
 and plough his way through obstacles with the compact 
 force and crashing directness of lightning. There have 
 been men of all sorts who have been honoured to do 
 much in this world for Christ Wise and fooUsh, learned 
 and ignorant, differing in tone, temper, creed, forms ol 
 
i. THE SECRET OF POWER. 15 
 
 thought, and manner of working, in every conceivable 
 degree; — but one thing, and perhaps one thing only, 
 they have all had — a passion of enthusiastic personal 
 devotion to their Lord, a profound and living faith in 
 Him and in His salvation. All in which they differed 
 is but the gay gilding on the soldier's coat That in 
 which they were alike is as the strong arm which grasps 
 the sword, and has its muscles braced by the very clutch. 
 Faith is itself a source of strength, as well as the condition 
 of drawing might from heaven. 
 
 Consider, too, how faith has power over mm wh» see 
 it The exhibition of our own personal convictions has 
 more to do in spreading them than all the arguments 
 which we use. There is a magnetism and a contagious 
 energy in the sight of a brother's faith which few men 
 can wholly resist If you wish me to weep, your own 
 tears must flow ; and if you would have me believe, let 
 me see your soul heaving under the emotion which you 
 desire me to feel The arrow may be keen and true, the 
 shafl rounded and straight, the bow strong, and the arm 
 sinewy ; b\it unless the steel be winged it will fall to the 
 ground long before it strikes the butt Your arrows 
 must be winged with faith, else orthodoxy, and wise 
 arrangements, and force and zeal, will avail nothing. 
 No man will believe in, and no demon will obey, spells 
 which the would-be exorcist only half believes himself. 
 Even if he speak the name of Christ, unless he speak it 
 with unfaltering confidence, all the answer: he will get 
 will only be the fierce and taunting question, " Jesus I 
 know, and Pau. I know, but who are ye?" BrethreD^ 
 
i6 THE SECRET OF POWER. [SERii. 
 
 let us give heed to the solemn rebuke which our Master 
 lovingly reads to us in these words, and while we aim at 
 the utmost possible perfection in all subordinate matters, 
 let us remember that they all without faith are weak, 
 as an empty suit of armour with no life beneath the 
 corslet; and that faith without them all is strong, like 
 the knight of old, who rode into the bloody field in 
 simple silken vest, and conquered. That which deter- 
 mines our success or fiailure in the work of our Lord 
 is our faith. 
 
 IIL Our faith is ever threatened by subtle unbelief. 
 It would appear that the disciples were ignorant of the 
 imbelief that had made them weak. They fancied that 
 they had confidence in their Christ-given power, and 
 they certainly had in some dull kind of fashion expected 
 to succeed in their attempt But He who sees the heart 
 knew that there was no real living confidence in their 
 souls ; and His words are a solemn warning to us all, 
 of how possible it is for us to have our faith all honey- 
 combed by gnawing doubt while we suspect it not, 
 like some piece of wood apparently sound, the whole 
 substance of which has been eaten away by hidden 
 worms. We may be going on with Christian work, 
 and may even be looking for spiritual results. We may 
 fancy ourselves faithful stewards of the gospel, and all 
 the while there may be an utter absence of the one thing 
 which makes our words more than so much wind whist- 
 ling through an archway. The shorn Samson went out 
 ** to shake himself as at other times," and knew not thai 
 
L] THE SECRET OF POWER. ly 
 
 the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him. Who 
 among us is not exposed to the assaults of that pestilence 
 that walketh in darkness ? and, alas ! who among us can 
 say that he has repelled the contagion ? Subtly it creeps 
 over us all, the stealthy intangible vapour, unfelt till it 
 has quenched the lamp which alone lights the darkness 
 of the mine, and clogged to suffocation the labouring 
 lungs. 
 
 Our time, and the object in yi«w, preclude my speaking 
 of the general sources of danger to our faith, which are 
 always in operation with a retarding force as constant as 
 friction, as certain as the gravitation which pulls the 
 pendulum to rest at its lowest point But I may very 
 briefly particularize two of the enemies of that fakl^ 
 which have a special bearing on our missionary work, 
 and may be illustrated from the narrative before us. 
 
 First, all our activity in spreading the gospel, whether 
 by personal effort or by our gifts, like every form of 
 outward action, tends to become mechanical^ and to lose 
 its connection with the motive which originated it Of 
 course it is also true, on the other side, that all outward 
 action also tends to strengthen the motive from which it 
 flows. But our Christian work will not do so, unless it 
 be carefully watched, and pains be taken to keep it 
 from slipping off its original foundation, and so altering 
 its whole character. We may very easily become so 
 occupied with the mere external occupation as to be 
 quite unconscious that it has ceased to be faithful work, 
 and has become routine, dull mechanism, or the result 
 of confidence, not in Christ, whose power once flowed 
 
 e 
 
1 8 THE SECRET OF POWER, [serm. 
 
 through us, but in ourselves the doers. So these dis- 
 ciples may have thought, " We can cast out this devil, 
 for we have done the like already," and have forgotten that 
 it was not they, but Christ in them, who had done it 
 
 How widely this foe to our faith operates amid the 
 multiplied activities of this busy age one trembles to think. 
 We see all around us a Church toiUng with unexampled 
 expenditure of wealth, and effort, and time. It is diffi- 
 cult to repress the suspicion that the work is out of 
 proportion to the life. Ah, brethren, how much of all 
 this energy of effort, so admirable in many respects, will 
 He whose fan is in His hand accept as true service — 
 how much of it will be wheat for the garner, how much 
 chaff for the fire ? It is not for us to divide between the 
 two, but it is for us to remember that it is not impossible to 
 make of our labours the most dangerous enemy to the 
 depth of our still life hidden with Christ in God, and 
 that every deed of apparent service which is not the real 
 issue of living faith is powerless for good to others, and 
 heavy with hurt to ourselves. Brethren and fathers in 
 the ministry I how many of us know what it is to talk 
 and toil away our early devotion ; and all at once to 
 discover that for years perhaps we have been preaching 
 and labouring from mere habit and routine, like corpses 
 galvanised into some ghastly and transient caricature of 
 life. Christian men and women, beware lest this great 
 enterprise of missions, which our fathers began from the 
 holiest motives and in the simplest faith, should in our 
 hand, be wrenched away from its only true basis, and be 
 done with languid expectation and more languid desires of 
 
I.] THE SECRET OF POWER, 19 
 
 success, from no higher motive than that we found it in 
 existence, and have become accustomed to carry it on. 
 If that be our reason, then we harm ourselves, and 
 mask from our own sight our own unbelief. If that 
 be the case the work may go on for a while, like a 
 clock ticking with fainter and fainter beats for a minute 
 after it has run down ; but it will soon cease, and 
 neither heaven nor earth will be much the poorer for its 
 ending. 
 
 Again, the atmosphere of scornful disbelief which sur- 
 rounded the disciples made their faith falter. It was too 
 weak to sustain itself in the face of the consciousness 
 that not a man in all that crowd believed in their power ; 
 and it melted away before the contempt of the scribes 
 and the incredulous curiosity of the bystanders, without 
 any reason except the subtle influence which the opinions 
 and characters of those around us have on us all 
 
 And, brethren, are not we in danger to-day of losing 
 the firmness of our grasp on Christ, as our Saviour and 
 the world's, from a precisely similar cause ? We live in 
 an atmosphere of hesitancy and doubt, of scornful rejec- 
 tion of His claims, of contemptuous disbelief in anything 
 which a scalpel cannot cut We cannot but be conscious 
 that to hold by Jesus Christ as the Incarnate God, the 
 supernatural Beginning of a new life, the sole Hope of 
 the world, is to expose ourselves to the contempt of so- 
 called advanced and liberal thinkers, and to be out of 
 harmony with the prevailing set of opinions. The 
 current of educated thought runs strongly against such 
 beliefs, and I suppose that every thoughtful man 
 
 G % 
 
90 THE SECRET OF POWER, [SBUi. 
 
 among us feels that a great danger to our faith to-daj 
 comes from the force with which that current swings 
 us round, and threatens to make some of us drag 
 our anchors, and drift, and strike and go to pieces 
 on the sands. For one man who is led by the sheer 
 force of reason to yield to the intellectual grounds 
 on which modem unbelief reposes, there are twenty 
 who simply catch the infection in the atmosphere. They 
 find that their early convictions have evaporated, 
 they know not how ; only that once the fleece was wet 
 with dew and now it is dry. For unbelief has a conta> 
 gious energy wholly independent of reason, no less than 
 has faith, and affects multitudes who know nothing of 
 its grounds, as the iceberg chills the summer air for 
 leagues, and makes the sailors shiver long before they see 
 its barren peaks. 
 
 Therefore, brethren, let us all take heed to ourselves, 
 lest we suffer our grasp of our dear Lord's hand to relax 
 for no better reason than because so many have left His 
 side. To us all His pleading love, which knows how 
 much we are moulded by the example of others, is 
 saying, in view of the fashion of unbelief, " Will ye also 
 go away ? ** Let us answer, with a clasp that clings the 
 tighter for our danger of being sucked in by the strong 
 current, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the 
 words of eternal Hfe." We cannot help seeing that the 
 creeping paralysis of hesitancy and doubt about even the 
 power of Christ's name is stealing over portions ot the 
 Church, and stiffening the arm of its activity. Lips that 
 once spoke with full confidence the words that cast out 
 
I ] THE SECRET OF PO WER, si 
 
 devils, mutter them now languidly with half belief. 
 Hearts that were once full of sympathy with the great 
 purpose for which Christ died are growing cold to the work 
 of preaching the gospel to the heathen, because they are 
 growing to doubt whether, after all, there is any gospel 
 at alL This icy breath, dear brethren, is blowing over 
 our Churches and over our hearts. And wherever it 
 reaches, there labour for Jesus and for men languishes, 
 and we recoil baffled with unavailing exorcisms dying in 
 our throats, and the rod of our power broken in our 
 hands. " Why could not we cast him out ? Because of 
 your unbelief" 
 
 IV. Our faith can only be maintained hy constant devo- 
 tion and rigid self -denial, 
 
 I have already detained you far too long, and can 
 touch but very lightly on that solemn thought in which 
 our Lord sets forth the condition of our faith, and there- 
 fore of our power. This kind goeth not out but by prayer 
 and fasting. The discipline then which nurtures faith is 
 mainly moral and spiritual — not as a substitute for, or to 
 the exclusion of, the intellectual discipline, which is pre- 
 supposed, not neglected, in these words. 
 
 The first condition of the freshness and energy of faith 
 is constant devotion. The attrition of the world wears 
 it thin, the distractions of life draw it from its clinging 
 hold on Christ, the very toil for Him is apt to entice 
 our thoughts from out of the secret place of the most 
 High into the busy arena of our strife. Therefore we 
 have ever need to refresh the drooping flowers of the 
 
23 THE SECRET OF POWER, [serm. 
 
 chaplet by bathing them in the Fountain of Life, to rise 
 above all the fevered toil of earth to the calm heights 
 where God dwells, and in still communion with Him tc 
 replenish our emptied vessels and fill our dimly burning 
 lamps with His golden oiL The sister of the cumbered 
 Martha is the contemplative Mary, who sits in silence at 
 the Master's feet and lets His words sink into her soul : 
 the closest friend of Peter the apostle of action is John 
 the Apostle of love. If our work is to be worthy, it 
 must ever be freshened anew by our gaze into His face ; 
 if our communion with Him is to be deep, it must never 
 be parted from outward service. Our Master has left us 
 the example, in that, when the night fell and every man 
 went to his own home, Jesus went to the Mount of 
 Olives ; and thence, after His night of prayer, came very 
 early in the morning, to the temple, and taught. The 
 stream that is to flow broad and life-giving through many 
 lands must have its hidden source high among the pure 
 snows that cap the mount of God. The man that would 
 work for God must live with God. It was from the 
 height of transfiguration that He came, before whom 
 the demon that baffled the disciples quailed and slunk 
 away like a whipped hound. This kind goeth not out 
 but by prayer. 
 
 The second condition is rigid self-denial. Fasting is 
 the expression of the purpose to control the lower life, 
 and to abstain from its delights in order that the life of 
 the spirit may be strengthened. As to the outward fact, 
 it is nothing — it may be practised or not. If it be, it 
 will be valuable only in so far as it flows from and 
 
L] THE SECRET OF POWER. 
 
 33 
 
 strengthens that purpose. And such vigorous subordi- 
 nation of all the lower powers, and abstinence from many 
 an inferior good, both material and immaterial, is abso- 
 lutely necessary if we are to have any wholesome 
 strength of faith in our souls. In the recoil from the false 
 asceticism of Roman Catholicism and Puritanism, 
 has not this generation of the Church gone too far in 
 the opposite direction? and in the true belief that 
 Christianity can sanctify all joys, and ensure the har- 
 monious development of all our powers, have we not 
 been forgetting that hand and foot may cause us to 
 , stumble, and that we had better live maimed than die 
 with all our limbs ? There is a true asceticism, a disci- 
 pline—a "gymnastic unto godliness," as Paul calls it 
 And if our faith is to grow high and bear rich clusters 
 on the topmost boughs that look up to the sky, we 
 must keep the wild lower shoots close nipped. Withoul 
 rigid self-control and self-limitation, no vigorous faith. 
 
 And without them no effectual work 1 It is no holi- 
 day task to cast out devils. Self-indulgent men will 
 never do it Loose-braced, easy souls, that lie open to 
 aU the pleasurable influences of ordinary life, are no more 
 fit for God's weapons than a reed for a lance, or a bit 
 of flexible lead for a spear-point The wood must be 
 tough and compact, the metal hard and close-grained, 
 out of which God makes His shafts. The brand that is 
 to guide men through the darkness to their Father's home 
 must glow with a pallor of consuming flame that purges 
 fts whole substance into hght This kind goeth not ouc 
 but by prayer and fasting. - 
 
14 THE SECRET OF POWER. [serm. 
 
 Dear brethren, what solemn rebuke these words have 
 for us all to-day! How they winnow these works of 
 Christian activity which bring us here this morning I 
 How they show us the hoUowness of our services, the self- 
 indulgence of our lives, the coldness of our devotion, the 
 cowardice of our faith ! How marvellous they make the 
 fruits which God's great goodness has permitted us to see 
 even from our doubting service I Let us turn to Him 
 with fresh thankftilness that unto us, who are " less than 
 the least of all saints, is this grace given, that we 
 ihould preach among the nations the imsearchable riches 
 of Christ* Let us not be driven from our confidence 
 that we have a gospel to preach for all the world ; but 
 strong in the faith which rests on impregnable historical 
 grounds, on our own experience of what Christ has done 
 for us, and on eighteen centuries of growing power and 
 unfolding wisdom, let us thankfully welcome all that 
 modem thought may supply for the correction of errors in 
 belief, in organization, and in life, that may have gathered 
 round His perfect and eternal gospel — being assured, as 
 we have a right to be, that all will but lift higher the Name 
 which is above every name, and set forth more plainly 
 that Cross which is the true tree of life to all the 
 families of men. Let us cast ourselves before Him with 
 penitent confession, and say,— O Lord, our strength I we 
 have not wrought any deliverance on earth ; we have 
 been weak when all Thy power was at our command ; we 
 have spoken Thy word as if it were an experiment and a 
 peradventure whether it had might ; we have let go Thy 
 kand and lost Thy garment's hem from our slack grasp ; 
 
L] THE SECRET OF POWER. %\ 
 
 we hare been prayerless and self-indulgent Therefore 
 Thou hast put us to shame before our foet, and "our 
 enemies laugh among themselves. Thou that dwellest 
 between the cherubim shine forth; stir up Thy 
 strength and come and save us 1 " Then will the last 
 words that He spoke on earth ring out again from the 
 throne : ** All power is given unto Me in heaven and in 
 earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations ; and lo» I 
 am with you alway, even unto the end of the worldt* 
 
SERMON II.* 
 
 THE PATTERN OF SERVICKi 
 
 St. Mark tIL 33, 34. 
 
 He touched his tongue ; and looking up to heaven. He lighed, and 
 saith, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. 
 
 T70R what reason was there this unwonted slowness 
 ^ in Christ's healing works ? For what reason was 
 there this unusual emotion ere He spoke the word which 
 cleansed. 
 
 As to the former question, a partial answer may 
 perhaps be that our Lord is here on half-heathen ground, 
 where aids to faith were much needed, and His power had 
 to be veiled that it might be beheld. Hence the miracle 
 is a process rather than an act ; and, advancing as it does 
 by distinct stages, is conformed in appearance to men's 
 works of mercy, which have to adapt means to ends, and 
 creep to their goal by persevering toil As to the latter 
 we know not why the sight of this one poor sufferer 
 should have struck so strongly on the ever-tremulous 
 chords of Christ's pitying heart ; but we do know that it 
 was the vision brought before His spirit by this single 
 
 ^ Preached before the Wedeyan Miisiooaiy Sodetj. 
 
SKRM. II.J THE PATTERN OF SERVICE, vj 
 
 instance of the world's griefs and sicknesses, in which 
 Diass, however, the special case before Him wai by no 
 means lost, that raised His eyes to heaven kk mute 
 appeal, and forced the groan from His breast 
 
 The " Missionary spirit " is but one aspect of the Chris- 
 tian spirit We shall only strengthen the former as we 
 invigorate the latter. Harm has been done, both to our- 
 selves and to this great cause, by seeking to stimulate 
 compassion and efforts for heathen lands by the use of 
 other excitements, which have tended to vitiate even the 
 emotions they have aroused, and are apt to fail us when 
 we need them most It may therefore be profitable if we 
 turn to Christ's own manner of working, and His own 
 emotions in his merciful deeds, set forth in this remark- 
 able narrative, as containing lessons for us in our 
 missionary and evangelistic work. I must necessarily 
 omit more than a passing reference to the slow process of 
 healing which this miracle exhibits. But that, too, has its 
 teaching for us, who are so often tempted to think our- 
 selves badly used, unless the fruit of our toil grows up, 
 like Jonah's gourd, before our eyes. If our Lord was 
 content to reach His end of blessing step by step, we may 
 well accept patient continuance in well-doing as the con- 
 dition indispensable to reaping in due season. 
 
 But there are other thoughts still more needful which 
 suggest themselves. Those minute details which this 
 evangelist ever delights to give of our Lord's gestures, 
 words, looks, and emotions, not only add graphic force 
 to the narrative but are precious glimpses of the very 
 heart of Christ That fixed gare into heaven, that groan 
 
THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE, [serm 
 
 irhich neither the glories seen above nor the conscious 
 power to heal could stifle, that most gentle touch, as ii 
 removing material obstacles from the deaf ears, and 
 moistening the stiflf tongue that it might move more 
 freely in the parched mouth, that word of authority 
 which could not be wanting even when His working 
 seemed likest a servant's, do surely carry large lessons for 
 us. The condition of all service, the cost of feeling at 
 which our work must be done, the need that the helpers 
 should identify themselves with the sufferers, and the 
 victorious power of Christ's word over all deaf ears — 
 these are the thoughts which I desire to connect with our 
 text, and to commend to your meditation to<lay. 
 
 L We have here set forth the foundation and condition 
 of all true work for God in the Lor^s heavenward look. 
 
 The profound questions which are involved in the fact 
 that, as man, Christ held communion with God in the 
 exercise of faith and aspiration, the same in kind as ours, 
 do not concern us here. I speak to those who beheve 
 that Jesus is for us the perfect example of complete man- 
 hood, and who therefore believe that He is " the leader 
 of faith," the head of the long procession of those who in 
 every age have trusted in God and been lightened. But, 
 perhaps, though that conviction holds its place in our 
 creeds, it has not been as completely incorporated with 
 our thoughts as it should have been. There has, no 
 doubt been a tendency, operating in much of our evan- 
 gelical teaciing, and in the common stream of orthodox 
 opinion, to except, half unconsciously, the exercises of 
 
II.] THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE, 29 
 
 the religious life from the sphere of Christ's example, and 
 we need to be reminded that Scripture presents His vow, 
 " I will put my trust in Him," as the crowning proof of 
 His brotherhood, and that the prints of His kneeling 
 limbs have left their impressions where we kneel before 
 the throne. True, the relation of the Son to the Father 
 involves more than communion — namely, unity. But if 
 we follow the teaching of the Bible, we shall not presume 
 that the latter excludes the former, but understand that 
 the unity is the foundation of perfect communion, and the 
 communion the manifestation, so faj as it can be mani- 
 fested, of the unspeakable unity. The solemn words 
 which shine like stars — starlike in that their height above 
 us shrinks their magnitude and dims their brightness, and 
 jn that they are points of radiance partially disclosing, 
 and separated by, abysses of unlighted infinitude — tell us 
 that in the order of eternity, before creatures were, there 
 was communion, for " the Word was with God," and there 
 was unity, for " the Word was God." And in the records 
 of the life manifested on earth the consciousness of unity 
 loftily utters itself in the unfathomable declaration, " I 
 and my Father are one ; " whilst the consciousness of 
 communion, dependent like ours on harmony of will and 
 true obedience, breathes peacefully in the witness which 
 He leaves to Himself : " The Father has not left Me alone 
 for I do always the things that please Him.'* 
 
 We are fully warranted, then, in supposing that that 
 wistful gaze to heaven means, and may be taken to sym- 
 boHze, our Lord's conscious direction of thought and 
 spin* to God as He wrought His work of mercy. There 
 
30 THE PA TTERN OF SER VICE. [serm. 
 
 are two distinctions to be noted between His communion 
 with God and ours before we can apply the lesson to our- 
 selves. His heavenward look was not the renewal of 
 interrupted fellowship, but rather, as a man standing 
 firmly on firm rock may yet lift his foot to plant it again 
 where it was before, and settle himself in his attitude 
 before he strikes with all his might; so we may say 
 Christ fixes Himself where He always stood, and grasps 
 anew the hand that He always held, before He does the 
 deed of power. The communion that had never been 
 broken was renewed ; how much more the need that in 
 our work for God the renewal of the — alas 1 too sadly 
 sundered — fellowship should ever precede and always 
 accompany our efiforts ! And again, Christ's fellowship 
 was with the Father. Ours must be with the Father 
 through the Son. The communion to which we are called 
 is with Jesus Christ, in whom we find God. 
 
 The manner of that intercourse, and the various disci- 
 pline of ourselves with a view to its perfecting, which 
 Christian prudence prescribes, need not concern us here. 
 As for the latter, let us not forget that a wholesome 
 and iiide-reaching self-denial cannot be dispensed with. 
 Hands that are full of gilded toys and glass beads cannot 
 grasp durable riches, and eyes that have been accustomed 
 to glaring lights see only darkness when they look up tc^ 
 the violet heaven with all its stars. As to the former, 
 every part of our nature above the simply animal is 
 capable of God, and the communion ought to include 
 our whole being. 
 
 Christ if truth for the understanding, authority for the 
 
THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. 
 
 31 
 
 wrill, love for the heart, certainty for the hope, fruition for 
 all the desires, and for the conscience at once cleansing 
 and law. Fellowship with Him is no indolent passive- 
 ness, nor the luxurious exercise of certain emotions, but 
 the contact of the whole nature with its sole adequate 
 object and rightful Lord. 
 
 Such intercourse, brethren, lies at the foundation of 
 all work for God. It is the condition of all our power. 
 It is the measure of all our success. Without it we may 
 seem to realize the externals of prosperity, but it will be 
 all illusion. With it we may perchance seem to spend 
 our strength for naught ; but heaven has its surprises ; and 
 those who toiled, nor left their hold of their Lord in all 
 their work, will have to say at last with wonder, as they 
 see the results of their poor efforts, ** Who hath begotten 
 me these? behold, I was left alone; these, where had 
 they been ? ** 
 
 Consider in few words the manifold ways in which the 
 indispensable pre-requisite of all right effort for Christ 
 may be shown to be communion with Christ 
 
 The heavenward look is the renewal of our own vision' 
 of the calm verities in which we trust, the recourse for 
 ourselves to the realities which we desire that others 
 should see. And what is equal in persuasive power to 
 the simple utteraace of your own intense conviction? 
 He only will infuse his own religion into other minds, 
 whose religion is not a set of hard dogmas, but is fused 
 by the heat of personal experience into a river of living 
 fire. It will flow then, not otherwise. The only claim 
 which the hearts of men will listen to, in those who would 
 
31 THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE, [serm. 
 
 win them to spiritual beliefs, is that ancient one i ** That 
 which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked 
 upon, declare we unto you." Mightier than all argu- 
 ments, than all " proofs of the truth of the Christian re- 
 ligion/* and penetrating into a sphere deeper than that 
 of the understanding, is the simple proclamation, " We 
 have found the Messias." If we would give sight to the 
 bUnd, we must ourselves be gazing into heaven. Only 
 when we testify of that which we see, as one might who, 
 standing in a beleaguered city, discerned on the horizon 
 the filmy dust-cloud through which the spearheads of the 
 deliverers flashed at intervals, shall we win any to gaze 
 with us till they too behold and know themselves set 
 free. 
 
 The heavenward look draws new strength from the 
 source of all our might In our work, dear brethren, 
 contemplating as it ought to do exclusively spiritual 
 results, what we do depends largely on what we are, and 
 what we are depends on what we receive, and what we 
 receive depends on the depth and constancy of our com- 
 munion with God. " The help which is done upon earth 
 He doeth it all Himselfl" We and our organisations are 
 but the channels through which this might is poured; 
 and if we choke the bed with turbid masses of drift and 
 heavy rocks of earthly thoughts, or build from bank to 
 bank thick dams of worldliness compact with slime of sin, 
 how shall the full tide flow through us for the healing of 
 the salt and barren places ? Will it not leave its formei 
 course silted up with sand, and cut for itself new outlets, 
 wkile the useless quays that once rang with busy life 
 
ILI THE PATTERN OF SERVICE, 33 
 
 stand lilent, and *' the cities are solitary that were full of 
 people"? We are 
 
 " The trumpet at thy lips, the clarion 
 Ftill of thy cry, sonorous with thy breath.** 
 
 Let us see to it that by fellowship with Christ we keep 
 the passage clear, and become recipients of the inspiration 
 which shall thrill our else-silent spirits into the blast of 
 loud alarum and the ringing proclamation of the true King. 
 
 The heavenward look will guard us from the tempta- 
 tions which surround all our service, and the distractions 
 which lay waste our lives. It is habitual communion 
 with Christ alone that will give the persistency tliat 
 makes systematic, continuous eflforts for Him possible, and 
 yet will keep systematic work from degenerating, as Jl 
 ever tends to do, into mechanical work. There is no 
 greater virtue in irregular desultory service than in syste^ 
 matized labour. The one is not freer from besetting tempta- 
 tions than the other, only the temptations are of different 
 sorts. Machinery saves manual toil, and multiplies force. 
 But we may have too heavy machinery for what engineers 
 call the boiler power, — too many wheels and shafts for 
 the steam we have to drive them with. What we want is 
 not less organisation, or other sorts of it, but more force. 
 Any organisation will do if we have God's Spirit breath- 
 ing through it None will be better than so much old 
 iron if we have not 
 
 We are ever apt to trust to our work, to do it without 
 a distinct recurrence at each moment to the principles on 
 which it rests, and the motives by which it should be 
 
34 THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. [serm. 
 
 actuated, — to become so absorbed in details that we 
 forget the purpose which alone gives them meaning, to 
 over-estimate the external aspects of it, to lose sight of 
 the solemn truths which make it so grand, and to think 
 of it as common-place because it is common, as ordinary 
 because it is familiar. And from these most real dangers, 
 which beset us all, there is no refuge but the frequent, the 
 habitual, gaze into the open heavens, which will show us 
 again the reahties of things, and bring to our spirits, 
 dwarfed even by habits of goodness, the freshening of 
 former motives by the vision of Jesus Christ 
 
 Such constant communion will further surround uf 
 with an atmosphere through which none of the many 
 influences which threaten our Christian life and our 
 Christian work can penetrate. As the diver in his bell 
 sits dry at the bottom of the sea, and draws a pure air 
 from the free heavens far above him, and is parted from 
 that murderous waste of green death that clings so closely 
 round the translucent crystal walls which keep him safe ; 
 so we, enclosed in God, shall repel from ourselves all 
 that would overflow to destroy us and our work, and may 
 by His grace lay deeper than the waters some courses in 
 the great building that shall one day rise, stately and 
 -nany-mansioned, from out of the conquered waves. For 
 ourselves, and for all that we do for Him, living com- 
 munion with God is the means of power and peace, of 
 security and success. 
 
 It was never more needful than now. Feverish activ- 
 ity rules in all spheres of life. The iron wheels of the 
 car which bears the modem idol of material progress 
 
il] the pattern of service. 35 
 
 whirl fast, and crush remorselessly all who cannot keep 
 up the pace. Christian effort is multiplied and systema- 
 tized beyond all precedent And all these things make 
 calm fellowship with God hard to compass. The measure 
 of the difficulty is the measure of the need. I, for my 
 part, believe that there are few Christian duties more 
 neglected than that of meditation, the very name of 
 which has fallen of late into comparative disuse, — that 
 iugurs ill for the frequency of the thing. We are so busy 
 thinking, discussing, defending, inquiring ; or preaching, 
 and teaching, and working, that we have no time and no 
 leisure of heart for quiet contemplation, without which 
 the exercise of the intellect upon Christ's truth will not 
 feed, and busy acti-vity in Christ's cause may starve the 
 souL There are few things which the Church of this day 
 in all its parts needs more than to obey the invitation, 
 " Come ye yourselves apart into a lonely place, and rest 
 awhile." 
 
 Christ has set us the example. Let our prayers ascend 
 as His did, and in our measure the answers which came 
 to Him will not fail us. For us, too, " praying, the 
 heavens " shall be " opened," and the peace-bringing 
 spirit fall dove-like on our meek hearts. For us, too, 
 when the shadow of our cross lies black and gaunt upon 
 our paths, and our souls are troubled, communion with 
 heaven will bring the assurance, audible to our cars at 
 least, that God will glorify Himself even in us. If, after 
 many a weary day, we seek to hold fellowship with God 
 as He sought it on the Mount of Olives, or among the 
 tohtudes of the midnight hills, or out in the morning 
 
 D fl 
 
56 THE PATTERN OF SERVICE, [serm. 
 
 freshness of the silent wilderness, like Him we shall have 
 men gathering around us to hear us speak when we come 
 forth from the secret place of the Most High. If our 
 prayer, Uke His, goes before our mighty deeds, the voice 
 that first pierced the skies will penetrate the tomb^ and 
 make the dead stir in their grav^-clothes. If ©ur longing 
 trustful look is turned to the heavens, we shall not speak 
 in vain on earth when we say, " Be opened." 
 
 Brethren, we cannot do without the communion which 
 our Master needed. Do we dehght in what strengthened 
 Him ? Docs our work rest upon the basis of inward 
 %llowship with God which underlay His ? Alas ! that 
 )ur Pattern should be our Rebuke, and the readiest way 
 CO force home our faults on our consciences should be 
 \he contemplation of the life which we say that we try 
 V) copy 1 
 
 II. We have here pity for the evils we would remove 
 set forth by the Lorcts sigh. 
 
 The frequency with which this Evangelist records our 
 Lord's emotions on the sight of sin and sorrow has been 
 often noticed. In his pages we read of Christ's grief at 
 the hardness of men's hearts, of His marvelling because 
 of theu- unbelief, of His being moved with compassion for 
 an outcast leper and a hungry multitude, of His sighing 
 deeply in His spirit when prejudiced hostility, assuming 
 the appearance of candid inquiry, asked of Him a sign 
 from heaven. All these instances of true human feeling, 
 like His tears at the grave of Lazarus, and His weari- 
 ness as He sat on the well, and His tired sleep in th« 
 
II.] THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. 37 
 
 stern of the little fishing-boat, and Hii hunger and His 
 thirst, are very precious as aids in realizing His perfect 
 manhood ; but they have a worth beyond even that. 
 They show us how the manifold ills and evils of man's 
 fate and conduct appealed to the only pure heart that 
 ever beat, and how quickly and warmly it, by reason of 
 its purity, throbbed in sympathy with all the woe. One 
 might have thought that in the present case the conscious- 
 ness that His help was so near would have been sufficient 
 to repress the sigh. One might have thought that the 
 heavenward look would hare stayed the tears. But 
 neither the happiness of active beneficence, nor the 
 knowledge of immediate cure, nor the glories abore 
 flooding His vision, could lift the burden fi'om the 
 labouring breast And surely in this, too, we may discern 
 a law for aU our eflforts, that their worth shall be in pro- 
 portion to the expense of feeling at which they are done. 
 They predict the harvests in Egypt by the height whick 
 the river marks on the gauge of the inundation. So 
 many feet there represents so much fertility. Tell me 
 the depth of a Christian man's compassion, and I will tell 
 you the measure of his fiiiitfulness. 
 
 What was it that drew that sigh from the heart of 
 Jesus ? One poor man stood before him, by no means 
 the most sorely afllicted of the many wretched ones 
 whom He healed. But He saw in him more than a 
 solitary instance of physical infirmities. Did there not 
 roll darkly before His thoughts that whole weltering sea 
 of sorrow that moans round the world, of which here is 
 but one drop that He could dry up ? Did there not rise 
 
3S THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. [serm. 
 
 black and solid against the clear blue to which He had 
 been looking, the mass of man's sin, of which these bodily 
 infinnities were but a poor symbol as well as a conse- 
 quence 1 He saw as none but He could bear to see, the 
 miserable realities of human life. His knowledge of all 
 that man might be, of all that the most of men were 
 becoming, His power of contemplating in one awful 
 aggregate the entire sum of sorrows and sms, laid upon 
 His heart a burden which none but He have ever endured. 
 His communion with Heaven deepened the dark 
 shadow on earth, and the eyes that looked up to God 
 and saw Him, could not but see foulness where others sus- 
 pected none, and murderous messengers of hell walking 
 in darkness unpenetrated by mortal sight And all that 
 pain of clearer knowledge of the sorrowfulness of sorrow, 
 and the sinfulness of sin, was laid upon a heart in which 
 was no selfishness to blunt the sharp edge of the pain nor 
 any sin to stagnate the pity that flowed from the wound. 
 To Jesus Christ, life was a daily martyrdom before death 
 had "made the sacrifice complete," and He bore our 
 griefs, and carried our sorrows through many a weary 
 hour before He "bare them in His own body on the tree,'* 
 Therefore, " Bear ye one another's burden, and so fulfil 
 the law " which Christ obeyed, becomes a command for 
 all who would draw men to Him. And true sorrow, a 
 sharp and real sense of pain, becomes indispensable as 
 preparation for, and accompaniment to, our work. 
 
 Mark how in us, as in our Lord, the sigh of compassion 
 u connected with the look to heaven. It follows upon 
 that gaze. The evils are more real, more terrible, by 
 
IL] THE PATTERN OF SERVICE, 39 
 
 their startling contrast with the unshadowed light which 
 lives above cloudracks and mists. It is a sharp shock 
 to turn from the free sweep of the heavens, starry and 
 radiant, to the sights that meet us in " this dim spot 
 which men call earth." Thus habitual communion witli 
 God is the root of the truest and purest compassion. It 
 does not withdraw us from our fellow feehng with our 
 brethren, it cultivates no isolation for undisturbed be- 
 holding of God. It at once supplies a standard by which 
 lo measure the greatness of man's godlessness, and there- 
 fore of his gloom, and a motive for laying the pain of 
 these upon our hearts, as if they were our own. He has 
 looked into the heavens to little purpose who has not 
 learned how bad and how sad the world now is, and 
 how God bends over it in pitying love. 
 
 And that same fellowship which will clear our eyes and 
 soften our hearts, is also the one consolation which we 
 have when our sense of all the ills that flesh is heir to 
 becomes deep to near despair. When one thinks of the 
 Teal facts of human life, and tries to conceive of the 
 frightful meanness and passion and hate and wretched- 
 ness that has been howling and shrieking and gibbering 
 and groaning through dreary millenniums, one's brain 
 reels, and hope seems to be absurdity, and joy a sin 
 against our fellows, as a feast would be in a house next 
 door to where was a funeral I do not wonder at settled 
 sorrow faUing upon men of vivid imagination, keen moral 
 sense, and ordinary sensitiveness, when they brood long 
 on the world as it is. But I do wonder at the superficial 
 optimism which goes on with its Lttle prophecies about 
 
40 THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE [serm. 
 
 human progress, and its rose-coloured pictures of human 
 life, and sees nothing to strike it dumb for ever ir menu 
 ^thing miseries, blank failures, and hopeless end. 
 Ah ! brethren, if it were not for the heavenward look, how 
 could we bear the sight of earth ! ** We see not yet all 
 things put under Him." No, God knows, far enough 
 off from that Man's folly, man's submission to the 
 creatures he should rule, man's agonies, and man's trans- 
 gression, are a grim contrast to the Psalmist's vision. 
 If we had only earth to look to, despair of the race, ex- 
 pressed in settled melancholy apathy, or in fierce cynicism, 
 were the wisest attitude. But there is more within our 
 view .than earth ; " we see Jesus ; " wc look to the heaven, 
 and as we behold the true man, we see more than ever, 
 indeed, how far from that pattern we all are ; but we can 
 bear the thought of what men as yet have been, when we 
 see that perfect example of what men shall be. The 
 root and the consolation of our sorrow for men's evils is 
 communion with God. 
 
 Let me remind you, too, that still more dangerous than 
 the pity which is not based upon, and corrected by, the 
 look to heaven, is the pity which does not issue in 
 strenuous work. It is easy to excite people's emotions ; 
 but it is perilous for both the operator and the subject, 
 unless they be excited through the understanding, and 
 pass on the impulse to the will and the practical powers. 
 The surest way to petrify a heart is to stimulate the 
 feelings, and give them nothing to do. They will never 
 recover their original elasticity if they have been wantonlj 
 drawn forth thus. Coldness, hypocrisy, q;>uriottS sen- 
 
u.] THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. 41 
 
 timentalism, and a whole train of affectations and false- 
 hoods follow the steps of an emotional religion, which 
 divorces itself from active work. Pity is meant to impel 
 to help. Let us not be content with painting sad and 
 true pictures of men's woes, — of the gloomy hopelessness 
 of idolatry, for instance, — but let us remember that every 
 time our compassion is stirred, and no action ensues, our 
 hearts are in some measure indurated, and the sincerity 
 of our religion in some degree impaired The white-robed 
 Pity is meant to guide the strong powers of practical help 
 to their work. She is to them as eyes to go before them 
 and point their tasks. They are to her as hands to 
 execute her gentle will Let us see to it that we rend 
 them not apart ; for idle pity is unblessed and fruitless 
 as a sigh cast into the fragrant air, and unpitying work is 
 more unblessed and fruitless stilL Let us remember, too, 
 that Christlike and indispensable as Pity is, she is second, 
 and not first Let us take heed that we preserve that order 
 in our own minds, and in our endeavours to stimulate one 
 another. For if we reverse it, we shall surely find the foun- 
 tains of compassion drying up long before the wide stretches 
 of thirsty land are watered, and the enterprises which we 
 have sought to carry on by appealing to a secondary motive, 
 languishing when there is most need for vigour. Here is the 
 true sequence which must be observed in our missionary 
 and evangelistic work, " Looking up to heaven He sighed." 
 Dear brethren ! must we not all acknowledge woful 
 failures in this regard ? How much of our service, our 
 giving, our preaching, our planning, has been carried on 
 without one thought of the ills and godlessness we profesi 
 
49 THE PA TTERN OF SER VICE. [SERi 
 
 to be seeking to cure ! If some angel's touch could 
 annihilate all that portion of our activity, what gaps would 
 be left in all our subscription lists, our sermons, and our 
 labours both at home and abroad ! Annihilate, do I say ? 
 It is done already. Such work is nothing, and comes to 
 nothing. ** Yea, it shall not be planted ; yea, it shall not 
 be sown ; and He shall also blow upon it, and it shaU 
 wither." 
 
 The hindrances to such abiding consciousness of and 
 pity for the world's woes run all down to the one tap-root 
 of all sin, selfishness. The remedies run all up to the 
 common form of all goodness, the self-absorbing com- 
 munion with Jesus Christ And besides that mother- 
 tincture of everything wrong, subsidiary impediments may 
 be found in the small amount of time and effort which 
 any of us give to bring the facts of the world's condition 
 vividly before our minds. The destruction of all emotion 
 is the indolent acquiescence in general statements which 
 we are too lazy or busy to break up into individual cases. 
 To talk about hundreds of millions of idolaters leaves 
 the heart untouched. But take one soul out of all that 
 mass, and try to feel what his life is in its pitchy darkness, 
 broken only by lurid lights of fear and sickly gleams of 
 hope, in its passions ungovemed by love, its remorse 
 uncalmed by pardon, its affections feeling like the tendrils 
 of some climbing plant for the stay they cannot find, and 
 in the cruel blackness that swallows it up irrevocable at 
 last. Follow him fi-om the childhood that knows no 
 discipline to the grave that knows no waking, and will 
 not the solitary instance come nearer our hearts than the 
 
IL] THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. 43 
 
 millions ? But however that may be, the sluggishness 01 
 our imaginations, the very familiarity with the awful facts, 
 our own feeble hold on Christ, our absorption in personal 
 interests, the incompleteness and desultoriness of our 
 communion with our Lord, do all concur with our natural 
 selfishness to make a sadly large proportion of oui 
 apparent labours for God and men utterly cold and 
 unfeeling, and therefore utterly worthless. Has the 
 benighted world ever caused us as much pain as some 
 trivial pecuniary loss has done ? Have we ever felt the 
 smart of the gaping wounds through which our brothers* 
 blood is pouring forth as much as we do the tiniest 
 scratch on our own fingers ? Does it sound to us like 
 exaggerated rhetoric when a prophet breaks out, "Oh 
 that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of 
 tears, that I might weep night and day 1 " or when an 
 apostle in calmer tones declares, " I have great heaviness 
 and continual sorrow of heart " ? Some seeds are put to 
 steep and swell in water, that tney may be tested before 
 lowing. The seed which we sow will not germinate 
 unless it be saturated with our tears. And yet the sorrow 
 must be blended with joy ; for it is glad labour which is 
 ordinarily productive labour — ^just as the growing time is 
 the changeful April, and one knows not whether the 
 promise of harvest is most sure in the clouds that drop 
 fatness, or in the sunshine that makes their depths throb 
 with whitest light, and touches the moist-springing blades 
 into emeralds and diamonds. The gladness comes from 
 the heavenward look, the pain is breathed in the deep- 
 drawn sigh; both must be united in us if wc would 
 
44 THE PATTERN OF SERVICE, [serm. 
 
 " approve ourselves as the servants of God — as sorrowful, 
 yet always rejoicing." 
 
 III. We have here loving contact with those whom 
 we would help set forth in the Lord's touch. 
 
 The reasons for the variety observable in Christ's 
 method of communicating supernatural blessing were, 
 probably, too closely connected with unrecorded differ- 
 ences in the spiritual conditions of the recipients to 
 be distinctly traceable by us. But though we cannot 
 tell why a particular method was employed in a given 
 case, why now ^ word, and now a symbolic action, 
 now the touch of His hand, and now the hem of His 
 garment, appeared to be the vehicles of His power we 
 can discern the significance of these divers ways, and 
 learn great lessons from them all. 
 
 His touch was sometimes obviously the result of 
 what one may venture to call instinctive tenderness, 
 as when He lifted the little children in His arms and 
 laid His hands upon their heads. It was, I suppose, 
 always the spontaneous expression of love and com- 
 passion, even when it was something more. 
 
 The touch of His hand on the ghastly glossiness 
 of the leper's skin was, no doubt. His assertion of 
 priestly functions, and of elevation above all laws of 
 defilement; but what was it to the poor outcast, who 
 for years had never felt the warm contact of flesh 
 and blood? It always indicated that He Himself was 
 the source of healing and life. It always expressed 
 His identification of Himself with sorrow and sick- 
 
II.] THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE, 45 
 
 ness. So that it is in principle analogous to, and 
 may be taken as illustrative of, that transcendent act 
 whereby He became flesh, and dwelt among us. In- 
 deed, the very word by which our Lord 's taking the 
 blind man by the hand is described in the chapter 
 following our text, is that employed in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews when, dealing with the true brotherhood of 
 Jesus, the writer says, " He took not hold of angels, but 
 of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold," Chriit'i 
 touch is His willing contact with man's infirmities and 
 sins, that He may strengthen and hallow- 
 
 And the lesson is one of universal application. 
 Wherever men would help their fellows, this is a 
 prime requisite, that the would-be helper should come 
 down to the level of those whom he desires to aid. If 
 we wish to teach, we must stoop to think the scholar's 
 thoughts. The master who has forgotten his boyhood will 
 have poor success. If we would lead to purer emotions, 
 we must try to enter into the lower feelings which we 
 labour to elevate. It is of no use to stand at the mouth 
 of the alleys we wish to cleanse, with our skirts daintily 
 gathered about us, and smelling-bottle in hand, to preach 
 homilies, on the virtues of cleanliness. We must go in 
 among the filth, and handle it, if we want to have it 
 cleared away. The degraded must feel that we do not 
 shrink from them, or we shall do them no good. The 
 leper, shunned by all, and ashamed of himself because 
 everybody loathes him, hungers in his hovel for the grasp 
 of a hand that does not care for defilement, if it can 
 bring cleansing. Even in regard to common materia] 
 
46 THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. [serjm. 
 
 helps the principle holds good We arc too apt to cast 
 our doles to the poor like the bones to a dog, and then 
 to wonder at what we are pleased to think men's ingrati- 
 tude. A benefit may be so conferred as to hurt more than 
 a blow ; and we cannot be surprised if so-called charity 
 which is given with contempt and a sense of superiority, 
 should be received with a scowl, and chafe a man's spirit 
 like a fetter. Such gifts bless neither him who gives nor 
 him who takes. We must put our hearts into them, ii 
 we would win hearts by them. We must be ready, like 
 our Master, to take blind beggars by the hand, if we 
 would bless or help them. The despair and opprobrium 
 of our modem civilization, the gulf growing wider and 
 deeper between Dives and Lazarus, between Belgravia 
 and Whitechapel, the mournful failure of legalized help, 
 and of delegated efforts to bridge it over, the darkening 
 ignorance, the animal sensuousness, the utter heathenism 
 that lives in every town of England, within a stone's 
 throw of Christian houses, and near enough to hear the 
 sound of public worship, will yield to nothing but that 
 sadly forgotten law which enjoins personal contact with 
 the sinful and the suffering, as one chief condition of 
 rasing them from the bladt mire in which they welter. 
 
 But the same law has its special application in regard 
 to the enterprise which summons us together to-day. 
 
 It defines the spirit in which Christian men should 
 proclaim the Gospel The effect of much well-meant 
 Christian effort is simply to irritate. People are very 
 quick to catch delicate intonations which reveal a secret 
 sense, " how much better, wiser, more devout I am than 
 
IL] THE PA TTERN OF SER VICE. 47 
 
 these people 1 " and wherever a trace of that appears in 
 our work, the good of it is apt to be marred. We all 
 know how hackneyed the charge of spiritual pride and 
 Pharisaic self-complacency is, and, thank God, how 
 unjust it often is. But averse as men may be to the 
 truths which humble, and willing as they may be to 
 assume that the very eflfort to present these to others on 
 our parts implies a claim which mortifies, we may at least 
 learn from the threadbare calumny, what strikes men 
 about our position, and what rouses their antagonism to 
 us. It is allowable to be taught by our enemies, 
 especially when it is such a lesson as this, that we must 
 carefully divest our evangelistic work of apparent pre- 
 tensions to superiority, and take our stand by the side of 
 those to whom we speak. We cannot lecture men into 
 the love of Christ We can but win them to it by show- 
 ing Christ's love to them ; and not the least important 
 element in that process is the exhibition of our own love. 
 We have a Gospel to speak of which the very heart is, 
 that the Son of God stooped to become one with the 
 lowliest and most sinful ; and how can that Gospel be 
 spoken with power unless we, too, stoop like Him ? 
 
 We have to echo the invitation, " Learn of me, for 
 I am lowly in heart ; " and how can such divine words 
 flow from lips into which like grace has not been poured ? 
 Our theme is a Saviour who shrunk from no sinner, who 
 gladly consorted with publicans and harlots, who laid His 
 hand on pollution, and Hi -. heart, full of God and of love, 
 on hearts reeking with sin and how can our message 
 correspond with our theme if, even in delivering it, we 
 
4S THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. [serm. 
 
 are saying to ourselves, " The Temple of the Lord are 
 we : this people which knoweth not the law is cursed " ? 
 Let us beware of the very real danger which besets us in 
 this matter, and earnestly seek to make ourselves one with 
 those whom we would gather into Christ, by actual 
 familiarity with their condition, and by identification of 
 ourselves in feeling with them, after the example of that 
 greatest of Christian teachers who became " all things to 
 all men, that by all means he might gain some ; " after 
 the higher example, which Paul followed, of that dear 
 Lord who, being highest, descended to the lowest, and in 
 the days of his humiliation was not content with speaking 
 words of power from afar, nor abhorred the contact of 
 mortality and disease and loathsome corruption ; but laid 
 His hands upon death, and it lived ; upon sickness, and it 
 was whole ; on rotting leprosy, and it was sweet as the 
 flesh of a little child. 
 
 The same principle might be further applied to our 
 Christian work, as affecting the form in which we should 
 present the truth. The sympathetic identification of our- 
 selves with those to whom we try to carry the Gospel will 
 certainly make us wise to know how to shape our message. 
 Seeing with their eyes, we shall be able to graduate the 
 light. Thinking their thoughts, and having in some 
 measure succeeded, by force of sheer community of feeling, 
 in having as it were got inside their minds, we shall 
 unconsciously, and without effort, be led to such aspects 
 of Christ's all-comprehensive truth as they most need 
 There will be no shooting over people's heads, if we love 
 them well enough to understand them. There will be n*^ 
 
II.] THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE, 49 
 
 toothless generalities, when our interest in men keeps their 
 actual condition and temptations clear before us. There 
 will be no flinging fossil doctrines at them from a height, 
 as if Christ's blessed Gospel were, in another than the 
 literal sense, " a stone of offence," if we have taken our 
 place on their level. And without such sympathy, these 
 and a thousand other weaknesses and faults will certainly 
 vitiate much of our Christian effort 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood when I speak of adapting 
 our presentation of the Gospel to the wants of those to 
 whom we carry it That general statement may express 
 the plainest dictate of Christian prudence or the most 
 dangerous practical error. The one great truth of the 
 Gospel wants no adaptation by our handling to any soul 
 of man. It is fitted for all, and demands only plain, loving, 
 earnest statement. There must be no tampering with cen- 
 tral verities, nor any diplomatic reserve on the plea of 
 consulting the needs of the men whom we address. Everr 
 sinful spirit needs the simple Gospel of salvation by Jesu) 
 Christ more than it needs anything else. Nor does adap- 
 tation mean deferential stretching a point to meet man's 
 wishes in our presentation of the truth. Their wishes have 
 to be contravened, that their wants maybe met The 
 truth which a man or a generation requires most is the 
 truth which he or they like least ; and the true Christian 
 teacher's adaptation of his message will consist quite as 
 much in opposing the desires and contradicting the lies, ai 
 in seeking to meet the felt wants of the world. Nauseous 
 medicines or sharp lancets are adapted to the sick man, 
 quite as truly as pleasant food and soothing ointment 
 
so THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE, [serm. 
 
 But remembering all this, we still have a wide field for 
 the operation of practical wisdom and loving common 
 sense, in determining the form of our message and the 
 manner of our action. And not the least important of 
 qualifications for solving the problems connected there- 
 with is cheerful identification of ourselves with the 
 thoughts and feelings of those whom we would fain draw 
 to the love of God. Such contact with men will win 
 their hearts, as well as soften ours. It will make them 
 willing to hear, as Well as us wise to speak. It will enrich 
 our own lives with wide experience and multiplied interests. 
 It will lift us out of the enchanted circle which selfishness 
 draws around us. It will silently proclaim the Lord from 
 whom we have learnt it The clasp of the hand will be 
 precious, even apart from the virtue that may flow from 
 it, and may be to many a soul burdened with a con- 
 sciousness of corruption, the dawning of belief in a love 
 that does not shrink even from its foulness. Let us 
 preach the Lofd's touch as the source of all cleans- 
 ing. Let us imitate it in our lives, that "if any will 
 not hear the word, they may without the word be 
 won.** 
 
 IV. We l«ve here the true healing power and the 
 consciousness of wielding it set forth in the Lords 
 
 autheritative word. 
 
 All the rest of His action was either the spontaneous 
 expression of His true participation in human sorrow, 
 or a merciful veiling of His glory that sense-bound eyei 
 might see it the better. But the word was the utteranot 
 
II.] THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE, f I 
 
 of His will, and that was omnipotent The hand laid on 
 the sick, the blind or the deaf was not even the channel 
 of His power. The bare putting forth of His energy 
 was all-sufficient In these we see the loving, pitying 
 man. In this blazes forth, yet more loving, yet more 
 compassionate, the effulgence of manifest God There- 
 fore so often do we read the very syllables with which 
 His " voice then shook the earth," vibrating through all 
 the framework of the materiail universe. Therefore do 
 the Gospels bid us listen when He rebukes the fever, 
 and it departs ; when He says to the demons, " Go," and 
 they go ; when one word louder in its human articulation 
 than the howhng wind hushes the surges ; when " TaUtha 
 cumi" brings back the fair young spirit from dreary 
 wanderings among the shades of death. Therefore was 
 it a height of faith not found in Israel when the Gentile 
 soldier, whose training had taught him the power of 
 absolute authority, as heathenism had driven him to long 
 for a man who should speak with the imperial sway of a 
 god, recognised in His voice an all-commanding power. 
 From of old, the very signature of divinity has been 
 declared to be, " He spake, and it was done ; " and He, 
 the breath of whose lips could set in motion material 
 changes, is that Eternal Word, by whom all things wert 
 made. 
 
 What unlimited consciousness of sovereign dominion 
 sounds in that imperative from His autocratic Ups 1 It 
 is spoken in deaf ears, but He knows that it will be 
 heard. He speaks as the fontal source, not as th« 
 recipient channel of healing. He anticipates no delay, 
 
 ■ s 
 
52 THE PATTERN OF SERVICE, [serm. 
 
 no resistance. There is neither effort nor uncertamty 
 in the curt command. He is sure that He has power, 
 and He is sure that the power is His own. 
 
 There is no analogy here between us and Him. Alone, 
 fronting the whole race of man, He stands — utterer of 
 a word which none can say after Him, possessor of 
 unshared might, " and of His fulness do all we receive." 
 But even from that Divine authority and soUtary sovereign 
 consciousness we may gather lessons not altogether aside 
 from the purpose of our meeting here to-day. Of His 
 fulness we have received, and the power of the word on 
 His lips may teach us that of His word even on ours, as 
 the victorious certainty with which He spake His will of 
 healing may remind us of the confidence with which it 
 becomes us to proclaim His name. 
 
 His will was almighty then. It is less mighty or less 
 loving now ? Does it not gather all the world in the 
 sweep of its mighty purpose of mercy? His voice 
 pierced then into the dull cold ear of death, and has 
 it become weaker since? His word spoken by Him 
 was enough to banish the foul spirits that run riot, twine- 
 like, in the garden of God in man'i soul, trampling down 
 and eating up its flowers and fruitage ; is the word spoken 
 €f Him less potent to cast them out ? Were not all the 
 mighty deeds which He wrought by the breath of His 
 lips on men's bodies prophecies of the yet mightier which 
 His Will of love, and the utterance of that Will by 
 stammering lips, may work on men's souls. Let us not 
 in our laintheartedness number up our failures, the deaf 
 that will not hear, the dumb that will not speak His 
 
IL] THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. 53 
 
 praise, nor unbelievingly say Christ's own word was 
 mighty, but the word concerning Christ is weak on our 
 lips. Not so ; our lips are unclean, and our words arc 
 weak, but His word — the utterance of His loving Will 
 that men should be saved — is what it always was and 
 always will be. We have it, brethren, to proclaim. Did 
 our Master countenance the faithless contrast between 
 the living force of His word when He dwelt on earth, 
 and the feebleness of it as He speaks through his 
 servant ? If He did, what did He mean when He said, 
 *' He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he 
 do also, and greater works than these shall he do, 
 because I go unto the Father " ? 
 
 And the reflection of Christ's triumphant consciousness 
 of power should irradiate our spirits as we do His work, 
 like the gleam from gazing on God's glory which shone 
 on the lawgiver's stem face while he talked with men. 
 We have everything to assure us that we cannot fail. 
 The manifest fitness of the Gospel to be the food of aU 
 souls ; the victories of eighteen centuries, which at least 
 prove that all conditions of society, all classes of civiliza- 
 tion, all varieties of race, all peculiarities of individual 
 temperament, all depths of degradation and distances of 
 alienation, are capable of receiving the word, which, like 
 com, can grow in every latitude, and though it be an 
 exotic everywhere, can everywhere be naturalized ; the 
 firm promises of unchanging faithfiilness, the universal 
 aspect of Christ's work, the prevalence of His continual 
 intercession, the indwelling of His abiding Spirit, and, 
 not least, the imerring voice of our own experience of 
 
54 THE PATTERN OF SERVICE, [serm. 
 
 the power of the truth to bless and save,— all these are 
 ours. In view of these, what have we to doubt ? Un- 
 wavering confidence is the only attitude that corresponds 
 to such certainties. We have a rock to build on ; let us 
 build on it with rock. Putting fear and hesitancy far 
 from us, let us gird ourselves with the joyful strength of 
 assured victory, striking as those who know that conquest 
 is bound to their standard, and through all the dust of 
 the field seeing the fair vision of the final triumph. The 
 work is done before we begin it " It is finished," was a 
 darion blast proclaiming that all was won when all 
 feemed lost. Weary ages have indeed to roll away 
 before the great voice from heaven shall declare "It is 
 done;" but all that lies between the two is but the 
 gradual unfolding and appropriating of the results which 
 are already secured. The strong man is bound; what 
 remains is but the spoiling of his house. The head is 
 bruised ; what remains is but the dying lashing of the 
 •naky horror's powerless coUs. " I send you to reap 
 that whereon ye bestowed no labour." The tearful 
 sowing in the stormy winter's day has been done by the 
 Son of man. For us there remains the joy of harvest — 
 hot and hard work, indeed, but gladsome too. 
 
 Then, however languor and despondency may some- 
 times tempt us, thinking of slow advancement, and dying 
 men who fade from the place of the living before the 
 gradual light has reached their eyes, our duty is plain — 
 to be sure that the word we carry cannot fail You 
 remember the old story, how when Jerusalem was in her 
 hour of direst need, and llw army of Babylon lay around 
 
IL] THE PA TTERN OF SER VICE, $5 
 
 her battered walls, the prophet was bid to buy " the field 
 that is in Anathoth, in the country of Benjamin," for a 
 sign that the transient fury of the invader would be 
 beaten back, that Israel might again dwell safely in the 
 land. So with us, the hosts of our king's enemies come 
 up like a river strong and mighty; but all this world, 
 held though it be by the usurper, is still " Thy land, O 
 Immanuel," and over it all Thy peaceful rule shall be 
 established I 
 
 Many things in this day tempt the witnesses of God to 
 speak with doubting voice. Angry opposition, contemp- 
 tuous denial, complacent assumption that a belief in 
 old-fashioned evangelical truth is, ipte facto^ a proof of 
 mental weakness, abound Let them not rob us of our 
 confidence. Shame on us if we let ourselves be frightened 
 firom it by a sarcasm or a laugh I Do you fall back on 
 all these grounds for assured reliance to which I have 
 referred, and make the good old answer, yours, " Why, 
 herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not whence 
 He is, and yet — He hath opened mine eyes ? ** 
 
 Trust the word you have to speak. Speak it and work 
 for its diffusion as if you did trust it Do not preach it 
 as if it were a notion of your own. In so far as it is, it will 
 share the fate of all human conceptions of Divine realities 
 — " will have its day, and cease to be." Do not speak 
 it as if it were some new nostrum for curing the ills of 
 humanity, which might answer or might not Speak it as 
 if it were what it is — the word of God, which liveth and 
 abideth for ever. Speak it as if you were what you are> 
 neither its mventors nor its discoverers, but only its mes- 
 
56 THE PATTERN OF SERVICE, [serm. 
 
 sengers, who have but to " preach the preaching which 
 He bids " you. And to all the wide-spread questionings 
 of this day, filmy and air-filling as the gossamers of an 
 autumn evening, to all the theories of speculation, and 
 all the panaceas of unbelieving philanthropy, present the 
 solid certainties of our inmost experience, the yet more 
 solid certainty of that all-loving name and all-sufficient 
 work on which these repose. " W^ know that we are of 
 God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we 
 know that the Son of God is come." Then our pro- 
 clamation, " This is the true God and eternal life," will 
 not be in vain ; and our loving entreaty, " Keep your- 
 selves firom idols," will be heard and yielded to in many 
 aland. 
 
 The sum of the whole matter is briefly this. The root 
 of all our efficiency in this great task to which we, un- 
 worthy, have been called, is in fellowship with Jesus 
 Christ " The branch cannot bear fruit of itself; with- 
 out me ye are nothing." Living near Him, and growing 
 like Him by gazing upon him. His beauty shall pass inta 
 our faces, His tender pity into our hearts, his loviny 
 identification of Himself with men's pains and sins wiU 
 fashion our lives; and the word which He spoke with 
 authority and assured confidence will be strong when we 
 ipeak it with like calmness of certain victory. If the 
 Church of Christ will but draw close to its Lord till the 
 fiilness of His life and the gentleness of His pity flow into 
 heart and limbs, she wiU then be able to breathe the 
 life which she has received into the prostrate bulk of a 
 iead world. Only she must do, as the meekest of the 
 
II.] THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. $7 
 
 prophets did in a like miracle, she must not shrink from 
 the touch of the cold clay, nor the odour of incipient 
 corruption, but, lip to lip, and heart to heart, must lay 
 herself upon the dead, and he will live. 
 
 The pattern for our work, dear brethren, is before us 
 in the Lord's look. His sigh, His touch, His word. If we 
 take Him for the example, and Him for the motive. Him 
 for the strength. Him for the theme. Him for the reward of 
 our service, we may venture to look to Him as the pro- 
 phecy of our success, and to be sure that when our own 
 faint hearts or an unbelieving world question the wisdom 
 of our enterprise, or the worth of our eflforts, we may answer 
 as He did, ** Go and show again those things which ye do 
 hear and see ; the bhnd receive their sight, and the lame 
 walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead 
 are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached 
 unto them." 
 
SERMON III. 
 
 THE AWAKING OF ZION .• 
 
 Isaiah IL 9k 
 
 Awike, awake, put on strength, O ann of tiie Lord | awake^ at iA 
 tiie ancient dayi, in the generations of old, 
 
 Isaiah liL i. 
 
 Awake, awake ; pat on thj strength, O Zioa. 
 
 "D OTH these verses are, I think, to be regarded as spoken 
 ^ by one voice, that of the servant of the Lord. His 
 majestic figure, wrapped in a light veil of obscurity, fills 
 the eye in all these latter prophecies of Isaiah. It is some- 
 times clothed with divine power, sometimes girded with 
 the towel of human weakness, sometimes appearing like 
 the collective Israel, sometimes plainly a single person. 
 
 We have no difficulty in solving the riddle of the 
 prophecy by the light of history. Our faith knows One 
 who unites these diverse characteristics, being God and 
 man, being the Saviour of the body, which is part of 
 Himself and instinct with His life. If we may suppose 
 that He speaks in both verses, then, in the one, as priest 
 
 * Preached before the Baptist Missionary Sodetj^ 
 
sx&if. III.] THE A WAKING OF ZION, 59 
 
 &nd intercessor, He lifts the prayers of earth to heaven 
 ic His own holy hands — and in the other, as messenger 
 and Word of God, He brings the answer and command 
 of heaven to earth on His own authoritative lips — thus 
 setting forth the deep mystery of His person and double 
 office as mediator between man and God. But even if we 
 set aside that thought, the correspondence and relation of 
 the two passages remain the same. In any case they are 
 intentionally parallel in form and connected in substance. 
 The latter is the answer to the former. The cry of Zion 
 is responded to by the call of God. The awaking of the 
 arm of the Lord is followed by the awaking of the 
 Church. He puts on strength m clothing us with His 
 might, which becomes ours. 
 
 The mere juxtaposition of these verses suggests the 
 point of view from which I wish to treat them on this 
 occasion. I hope that the thoughts to which they lead may 
 help to further that quickened earnestness and expectancy 
 of blessing, without which Christian work is a toil and a 
 fiulure. 
 
 We have here a common principle underlying both the 
 clauses of our text, to which I must first briefly ask your 
 attention, namely — 
 
 L The occurrence in the ChurcKt history of successive 
 periods 0/ energy cmd of languor. 
 
 It it freely admitted that such alternation is not the 
 highest ideal of growth, either in the individual or in the 
 community. Our Lord's own parables set forth a more 
 taccUtnt way — the way of uninterrupted increase, wherein 
 
6o THE AWAKING OF ZION, [serm. 
 
 the type is the springing com, which puts forth " first the 
 blade, then the ear, after that the fiill com in the ear," 
 and passes through all the stages from the tender green 
 spikelets that gleam over the fields in the spring-tide 
 to the yellow abundance of autumn, in one unbroken 
 season of genial months. So would our growth be 
 best, healthiest, happiest So mig?U our growth be, if 
 the mysterious life in the seed met no checks. But, as 
 a matter of fact, the Church has not thus grown. Rather 
 at the best, its emblem is to be looked for, not in com, 
 but in the forest tree — the very rings in whose trunk tell 
 of recurring seasons when the sap has risen at the call of 
 spring, and sunk again before the firowns of winter. I have 
 not to do now with the causes of this. These will fall to 
 be considered presently. Nor am I saying that such a 
 manner of growth is inevitable. I am only pointing out a 
 (act, capable of easy verification and familiar to us alL 
 Our years have had summerand winter. The evening and 
 the morning have completed all the days since the first 
 
 We all know it only too well In our own hearts we 
 have known such times, when some cold chnging mist 
 wrapped us round and hid all the heaven of God's love 
 and the starry lights of His tmth ; when the visible was 
 the only real, and He seemed far away and shadowy ; 
 when there was neither confidence in our belief, nor heat 
 in our love, nor enthusiasm in our service; when the 
 shackles of conventionalism bound our souls, and the 
 fetters of the firost imprisoned all their springs. And we 
 have seen a Uke palsy smite whole regions and ages of the 
 Church of God, so that even the sensation of impotence 
 
III.] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 6i 
 
 was dead like all the rest, and the very tradition of 
 spiritual power had faded away. I need not point to the 
 signal historical examples of such times in the past 
 Remember England a hundred years ago — but what need 
 to travel so far. May I venture to draw my example 
 from nearer home, and ask, have we not been in such 
 an epoch? I beseech you, think whether the power 
 which the Gospel preached by us wields on ourselves, 
 on our -churches, on the world, is what Christ meant it 
 and fitted to exercise. Why, if we hold our own in 
 respect to the material growth of our population, it is 
 as much as we do. Where is the joyful buoyancy and 
 expansive power with which the Gospel burst into the 
 world? It looks like some stream that leaps from the 
 hills, and at first hurries from cliff to cliflf full of light 
 and music, but flows slower and more sluggish as it 
 advances, and at last almost stagnates in its flat marshes. 
 Here we are with all our machinery, our culture, money, 
 organizations — and the net result of it all at the year's end 
 is but a poor handful of ears. " Ye sow much and bring 
 home little." Well may we take up the wail of the old 
 Psalm, " We see not our signs. There is no more any 
 prophet; neither is there any among us that knoweth 
 how long — arise, O Lord, plead Thine own cause." 
 
 If then there be such recurring seasons of languor, they 
 must either go on deepening till sleep becomes death, or 
 they must be broken by a new outburst of vigorous life. 
 It would be better if we did not need the latter. The 
 nninteiTupted growth would be best ; but if that has not 
 been, then the ending of winter by spring, and the 
 
6a THE A WAKING OF ZION, [serm. 
 
 suppling of the dry branches, and the resumption of the 
 arrested growth is the next best, and the only alternative 
 to rotting away. 
 
 And it is by such times that the Kingdom of Christ 
 always has grown. Its history has been one of successive 
 impulses gradually exhausted, as by friction and gravity, 
 and mercifully repeated just at the moment when it was 
 ceasing to advance and had begun to slide downwards. 
 And in such a manner of progress, the Church's history 
 has been in full analogy with that of all other forms of 
 human association and activity. It is not in religion 
 alone that there are " revivals," to use the word of which 
 some people have such a dread. You see analogous 
 phenomena in the field of literature, arts, social and 
 pohtical life. In them all there come times of awak- 
 ened interest in long-neglected principles. Truths which 
 for many years had been left to bum unheeded, save by 
 a faithful few watchers of the beacon, flame up all at once 
 the guiding pillars of a nation's march, and a whole 
 people strike their tents and follow where they lead. A 
 mysterious quickening thrills through society. A con- 
 tagion of enthusiasm spreads Uke fire, fusing all hearts in 
 one. The air is electric with change. Some great ad- 
 vance is secured at a stride ; and before and after that 
 supreme efifort are years of comparative quiescence ; on 
 the farther side perhaps of preparation, on the nearer 
 side possibly of fruition and exhaustion — but slow and 
 languid compared with the joyous energy of that moment 
 One day may be as a thousand years in the history of a 
 people, and a nation may be bom in a day. 
 
IIL] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 63 
 
 So also is the history of the Church. And thank God 
 it is so, for if it had not been for the dawning of these 
 times of refreshing, the steady operation of the Church's 
 worldUness would have killed it long ago. 
 
 Surely, dear brethren, we ought to desire such a merci- 
 ful interruption of the sad continuity of our languor and 
 decay. The surest sign of its coming would be a wide- 
 spread desire and expectation of its coming, joined with 
 a penitent consciousness of our heavy and sinful slumber. 
 For we beheve in a God who never sends mouths but 
 He sends meat to fill them, and in whose merciful provi- 
 dence every desire is a prophecy of its own fruition. 
 This attitude of quickened anticipation, diffusing itself 
 silently through many hearts, is like the light air that 
 springs up before sunrise, or like the solemn hush that 
 holds all nature listening before the voice of the Lord in 
 the thunder. 
 
 And another sign of its approach is the extremity of the 
 need. " If winter come, can spring be far behind ? " For 
 He who is always with Zion strikes in with His help when 
 the want is at its highest His " right early *' is often the 
 latest moment before destruction. And though we are 
 all apt to exaggerate the need of tne moment and the 
 severity of wr conflict, it certainly does seem that, whether 
 we regard the languor of the Church or the strength of 
 our adversaries, succour delayed a Uttle longer would 
 be succour too late. " The tumult of those that rise up 
 against Thee increaseth continually. It is time for Thee 
 to work.** 
 
 The juxtaposition of these passages suggests for 
 
64 THE AWAKING OF ZION, [serm 
 
 II. TTie twofold explanation of these variations. 
 
 That bold metaphor of God sleeping and waking is 
 often found in Scripture, and generally expresses the 
 contrast between the long years of patient forbearance, 
 during which evil things and evil men go on their rebel- 
 lious road unchecked but by Love, and the dread moment 
 when some throne of iniquity, some Babylon cemented by 
 blood, is smitten to the dust Such is the original ap- 
 plication of the expression here. But the contrast may 
 fairly be widened beyond that specific form of it, and 
 taken to express any apparent variations in the forth- 
 putting of His power The prophet carefully avoids 
 seeming to suggest that there are changes in God Him- 
 self. It is not He but His arm, that is to say, His active 
 energy, that is invoked to awake. The captive Church 
 prays that the dormant might which could so easily shiver 
 Her prison-house would flame forth into action. 
 
 We may, then, see here implied the cause of these 
 alternations of which we have been speaking on its Divine 
 side, and then, in the corresponding verse addressed to 
 the Church, the cause on the human side. 
 
 As to the former. It is true that God's arm slumbers, 
 and is not clothed with power. There are, as a fact, 
 apparent variations in the energy with which He works 
 in the Church and in the world. And they are real 
 variations, not merely apparent. But we have to dis- 
 tinguish between the power, and what Paul calls " the 
 might of the power." The one is final, constant, un- 
 changeable. It does not necessarily follow that the other 
 is. The rate of operation, so to speak, and the amount 
 
IIL] THE A WAKING OF ZION, 6s 
 
 of energy actually brought into play may vary, though the 
 force remains the same. 
 
 It is clear from experience that there are these varia 
 tions; and the only question with which we are con 
 cerned is, are they mere arbitrary jets and spurts of a 
 Divine power, sometimes gushing out in full flood, some- 
 times trickling in pamfiil drops, at the unknown will 
 of the unseen hand which controls the flow? Is the 
 " law of the Spirit of Life " at all revealed to us ; or are 
 the reasons occult, if there be any reasons at all other 
 than a mere will that it shall be so ? Surely, whilst we 
 never can know all the depths of His counsels and all the 
 solemn concourse of reasons which, to speak in man's 
 language, determine the energy of His manifested power, 
 He has left us in no doubt that this is the weightiest 
 part of the law which it follows — the might with which 
 God works on the world through His Church varies 
 according to the Church's receptiveness and faithfulness. 
 
 Our second text tells us that if God's arm seems to 
 slumber, and really does so, it is because Zion sleeps. In 
 itself that immortal energy knows no variableness. " He 
 fainteth not, neither is weary." " The Lord's arm is not 
 shortened that He cannot save." " He that keepeth 
 Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." But He works 
 through us ; and we have the solemn and awful power 
 of checking the might which would flow through us j of 
 restraining and limiting the Holy One of Israel. It 
 avails nothing that the ocean stretches shoreless to the 
 horizon; a jar can only hold a jarful. The receiver's 
 capacity determines the amount received, and tht 
 
 r 
 
66 THE AWAKING OF ZION, [serm 
 
 receiver's desire determines his capacity. The law has 
 ever been, " according to your faith be it unto you." God 
 gives as much as we will, as much as we can hold, as 
 much as we use, and far more than we deserve. As 
 long as we will bring our vessels the golden oil will flow, 
 and after the last is filled, there yet remains more that we 
 might have had, if we could have held it, and might 
 have held if we would. " Ye are not straitened in Me, 
 ye are straitened in yourselves." 
 
 So, dear brethren, if we have to lament times of torpor 
 and small success, let us be honest with ourselves, and 
 recognise that all the blame lies with us. If God's arm 
 seems to slumber it is because we are asleep. His power 
 is invariable, and the gospel which is committed to our 
 trust has lost none of its ancient power, whatsoever men 
 may say. If there be variations, they cannot be traced to 
 the Divine element in the Church, which in itself is con- 
 stant, but altogether to the human, which shifts and fluc- 
 tuates, as we only too sadly know. The light in the 
 beacon tower is steady, and the same ; but the beam it 
 throws across the waters sometimes fades to a speck, and 
 sometimes flames out clear and far across the heaving 
 waves, according to the position of the glasses and shadea 
 around it The sun pours out heat as profiisely and aa 
 long on the 22nd of December as on Midsummer-day, and 
 all the difference between the frost and darkness and 
 glowing brightness and flowering life, is simply owing to 
 the earth's place in its orbit and angle at which tKe 
 unalterable ray« fall upon it The changes are in the ter- 
 restrial sphere ; the heavenly is fixed for ever the same. 
 
IIL] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 67 
 
 May I not venture to point an earnest and solemn 
 appeal with these truths ? Has there not been poured 
 over us the spirit of slumber ? Does it not seem as if 
 an opium sky had been raining soporifics on our heads ? 
 We have had but litde experience of the might of God 
 amongst us of late years, and we need not wonder at it 
 There is no occasion to look far for the reason. You 
 have only to regard the low ebb to which religious life 
 has been reduced amongst us to have it all and more 
 than all accounted for. I fully admit that there has been 
 plenty of activity, perhaps more than the amount of real 
 life warrants, not a little liberality, and many virtues. 
 But how languid and torpid the true Christian life has 
 been 1 bow little enthusiasm ! how little depth of com- 
 munion with God I how little unworldly elevation of soul I 
 how little glow of love 1 An improvement in social posi- 
 tion and circumstances, a freer blending with the national 
 life, a full share of civic and political honours, a higher 
 culture in our pulpits, fine chapels, and applauding con- 
 gregations — arc but poor substitutes for what many of us 
 have lost in racmg after them. We have the departed 
 prophets' mantle, the outward resemblance to the fathers 
 who have gone, but their fiery zeal has passed to heaven 
 with them ; and softer, weaker men, we stand timidly on 
 the river's brink, invoking the Lord God of Elijah, and 
 too often the flood that obeyed them has no ear for our 
 feebler voice. 
 
 I speak to you, brethren, who are in some sort repre- 
 sentatives of our churches throughout the land, and you 
 can tell whether my words are on the whole true or over- 
 
 f • 
 
68 THE AWAKING OF ZION, [SER^fc 
 
 strained. We who labour in our great cities, what say 
 we ? If one Of the number may speak for the rest, we 
 have to acknowledge that commercial prosperity and 
 business cares, the eagerness after pleasure and the exi- 
 gencies of pohtical strife, dififused doubt and wide-spread 
 artistic and literary culture, are eating the very life out oi 
 thousands in our churches, and loweriDg their fervour till, 
 like molten iron cooling in the air, what was once all 
 glowing with ruddy heat is crusted over with foul black 
 scoriae ever encroaching on the tiny central warmth. 
 You from our rural churches, what say you? Have 
 you not to speak of deepening torpor settling down on 
 quiet comers, of the passing away of grey heads leav- 
 ing no successors, of growing difficulties and lessened 
 power to meet them, that make you sometimes all but 
 despair? 
 
 I am not flinging indiscriminate censures. I know 
 there are lights as well as shades in the picture. I am 
 not flinging censures at all But I am giving voice to 
 the confessions of many hearts, that our consciousness 
 of our blame may be deepened, and we may hasten back 
 to that dear Lord whom we have left to serve alone, as 
 His first disciples left Him once to agonise alone under 
 the gnarled olives in Gethsemane, while they lay sleeping 
 in the moonlight Listen to His gentle rebuke, full of 
 pain and surprised love, " What, could ye not watch with 
 Me one hour ? " Listen to His warning call, loving as 
 the kiss with which a mother wakes her child, "Arise, let 
 us be going" — and let us shake the spirit of slumber 
 from our limbs^ and serve Him as those unsleeping spirits 
 
III.] THE AWAKING OF ZION, 69 
 
 do, who rest not day nor night from vision, and work, 
 and praise. 
 
 IIL Th^ beginning of all awaking is the ChurcKs earnest 
 cry tc God, 
 
 It is with tts as with infants, the first sign of whose 
 awaking is a cry. The mother's quick ear hears it through 
 all the household noises, and the poor little troubled 
 hfe that woke to a scared consciousness of loneliness and 
 darkness, is taken up into tender arms, and comforted 
 and cahned. So, when we dimly perceive how torpid we 
 have been, and start to find that we have lost our 
 Father's hand, the first instinct of that waking, which must 
 needs be partly painful, is to call to Him, whose ear 
 hears our feeble cry amid the sound of praise hke the 
 voice of many waters, that billows round His throne, and 
 whose folding arms keep us as one whom his mother 
 comforteth. The beginning of all true awaking must 
 needs be prayer. 
 
 For every such stirring of quickened religious life must 
 needs have in it bitter penitence and pain at the discovery 
 flashed upon us of the wretched deadness of our past — 
 and, as we gaze like some wakened sleep-walker into the 
 abyss where another step might have smashed us to atoms, 
 a shuddering terror seizes us that must cry, *' Hold Thou 
 me up, and I shall be safe." And every such stirring of 
 quickened life will have in it, too, desire for more of His 
 grace, and confidence in His sure bestowal of it, which 
 cannot but breathe itself in prayer. 
 
 Noi ii Zion'i ciy to God only the beginning and sigi^ 
 
TO THE A WAKING OF ZION, [SIEM. 
 
 of all true awaking ; it is also the condition and indis- 
 pensable precursor of all perfecting of recovery from 
 
 spiritual languor. 
 
 I have already pointed out the relation between the 
 waking of God and the waking of His Church, from 
 which that necessarily follows. God's power flows into our 
 weakness in the measure and on condition of our desires. 
 We are sometimes told that we err in praying for the 
 outpouring of His Holy Spirit, because ever since Pente- 
 cost His Church has had the gift The objection alleges 
 an unquestioned fact, but the conclusion drawn from it 
 rests on an altogether false conception of the manner 
 of that abiding gift. The Spirit of God, and the power 
 which comes from Him, are not given as a purse of money 
 might be put into a man's hand once and for all, but they 
 are given in a continuous impartation and communication 
 and are received and retained moment by moment, 
 according to the energy of our desires and the faithfulness 
 of our use. As well might we say. Why should I ask for 
 natural life, I received it half a century ago ? Yes, and 
 at every moment of that half-century I have continued 
 to Uve, not because of a past gift, but because at each 
 moment God is breathing into my nostrils the breath of 
 life. So is it with the life which comes from His Spirit 
 It is maintained by constant efflux from the fountain of 
 Life, by constant impartation of His quickening breath. 
 And as He must continually impart, so must we con- 
 tinually receive, else we perish Therefore, brethren, 
 the first step towards awaking, and the condition of all 
 true revival in our own sG'Uls and in oar churches, is this 
 
in.] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 71 
 
 earnest cry, " Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of 
 the Lord" 
 
 Thank God for the outpouring of a long unwonted 
 spirit of prayer in many places. It is like the melting of 
 the snows in the high Alps, at once the sign of spring 
 and the cause of filling the stony river beds with flashmg 
 waters, that bring verdure and growth wherever they 
 come. The winter has been long and hard We have 
 all to confess that we have been restraining prayer before 
 God Our work has been done with but little sense of 
 our need of His blessing, with but little ardour of desire 
 for His power. We have prayed lazily, scarcely believing 
 that answers would come ; we have not watched for the 
 reply, but have been like some heartless marksman who 
 draws his bow and does not care to look whether his 
 arrow strikes the target These mechanical words, these 
 conventional petitions, these syllables winged by no real 
 desire, inspired by no faith, these expressions of devotion, 
 far too wide for their real contents, which rattle in them 
 like a dried kernel in a nut, are these prayers ? Is there 
 any wonder that they have been dispersed in empty air, 
 and that we have been put to shame before our enemies ? 
 Brethren in the ministry, do we need to be surprised at 
 our fruitless work, when we think of our prayerless studies 
 and of our faithless prayers? Let us remember that 
 solemn word, "The pastors have become brutish, and 
 have not sought the Lord, therefore they shall not prosper, 
 and all their flocks shall be scattered." And let us all, 
 brethren, betake ourselves, with penitence and lowly 
 consciousness of our sore need, to prayer, earnest and 
 
72 THE AWAKING OF ZION, [serm. 
 
 importunate, believing and persistent, like this heaven- 
 piercing cry which captive Israel sent up from her weary 
 bondage. 
 
 Look at the passionate earnestness of it — expressed in 
 the short, sharp cry, thrice repeated, as from one in 
 mortal need ; and see to it that our drowsy prayers be 
 like it Look at the grand confidence with which it 
 founds itself on the past, recounting the mighty deeds of 
 ancient days, and lookmg back, not for despair, but for 
 joyful confidence on the generations of old ; and let our 
 faint-hearted faith be quickened by the example, to expect 
 great things of God. The age of miracles is not gone. 
 The mightiest manifestations of God's power in the spread 
 of the Gospel in the past remain as patterns for His 
 future. We have not to look back as from low-lying 
 plains to the blue peaks on the horizon, across which the 
 Church's path once lay, and sigh over changed conditions 
 of the journey. The highest water-mark that the river 
 in flood has ever reached will be reached and over- 
 passed again, though to^iay the waters may seem to have 
 hopelessly subsided. Greater triumphs and deliverances 
 shall crown the future than have signalised the past Let 
 our faithful prayer base itself on the prophecies of history 
 and on the unchangeableness of God. 
 
 Think, brethren, of the prayers of Christ Even He, 
 whose spirit needed not to be purged from stains or 
 calmed from excitement, who was ever in His Father*! 
 house whilst He was about His Father's business, blend- 
 ing in one, action and contemplation, had need to pray. 
 The moments of His life thus marked are very signifi- 
 
III.] THE A WAKING OF ZION, 73 
 
 cant When He began His ministry, the close of the 
 first day of toil and wonders saw Him, far from gratitude 
 and from want, m a desert place in prayer. When He 
 would send forth His apostles, that great step in advance, 
 in which lay the germ of so much, was preceded by 
 soUtary prayer. When the fickle crowd desired to make 
 Him the centre of political revolution, He passed from 
 their hands and beat back that earliest attempt to 
 secularize His work, by prayer. When the seventy 
 brought the first tidings of mighty works done in His 
 name. He showed us how to repel the dangers of success, 
 in that He thanked the Lord of heaven and earth who 
 had revealed these things to babes. When He stood by 
 the grave of Lazarus, the voice that waked the dead was 
 preceded by the voice of prayer, as it ever must be. 
 When He had said all that He could say to His disciples, 
 He crowned all with His wonderful prayer for Himself, 
 for them, and for us all When the horror of great 
 darkness fell upon His soul, the growing agony is marked 
 by His more fervent prayer, so wondrously compact of 
 shrinking fear and filial submission. When the cross was 
 hid in ^the darkness of eclipse, the only words fi-om the 
 gloom were words of prayer. When, Godlike, He dis- 
 missed His spirit, manlike He commended it to His 
 Father, and sent the prayer from His dying lips before 
 Him to herald His coming into the unseen world. 
 
 One instance remains, even more to our present 
 purpose than all these — " It came to pass, that Jesus 
 also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, 
 and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like 
 
74 THE A WAKING OF 2J0N, [serm. 
 
 a dove upon Him." Mighty mystery ! In Him, too, 
 the Son's desire is connected with the Father's gift, and 
 the unmeasured possession of the Spirit was an answer 
 to His prayer. 
 
 Then, brethren, let us lift our voices and our hearts. 
 That which ascends as prayer descends as blessing, like 
 the vapour that is drawn up by the kiss of the sun to fall 
 in freshening rain. " Call upon Me, and I will answer 
 thee, and show thee great and hidden things which 
 thou knowest not" 
 
 IV. The answering call from God to Zion^ 
 
 Our truest prayers are but the echo of God's pro 
 mises. God's best answers are the echo of our prayers. 
 As in two mirrors set opposite to each other, the same 
 image is repeated over and over again, the reflection of 
 a reflection, so here, within the prayer, gleams an earlier 
 promise, within the answer is mirrored the prayer. 
 
 And in that reverberation, and giving back to us of oui 
 petition transformed into a command, we are not to set 
 a dismissal of it as if we had misapprehended our true want 
 It is not tantamount to. Do not ask me to put on mj 
 strength, but array yourselves in your own. The very 
 opposite interpretation is the true one. The prayer of 
 Zion is heard and answered. God awakes, and clothei 
 Himself with might. Then, as some warrior king, him- 
 self roused from sleep and girded with flashing steel, bids 
 the clarion sound through the grey twilight to summon 
 the prostrate ranks that lie round his tent, so the sign of 
 Qod's awaking and the ^st act of His conquering might 
 
ilL] THE AWAKING OF ZION. 75 
 
 is this trumpet call—" The night is far spent, the day is 
 at hand " — " put oflf the works of darkness," the night gear 
 that was fit for slumber — "and put on the armour of 
 light," the mail of purity that gleams and glitters even in 
 the dim dawn, God's awaking is our awaking. He puts 
 on strength by making us strong ; for His arm works 
 through us, clothing itself, as it were, with our arm of 
 flesh, and perfecting itself even in our weakness. 
 
 Nor is it to be forgotten that this, Hke all God's 
 commands, carries in its heart a promise. That earliest 
 word of God's is the type of all His latter behests — " Let 
 there be light " — and the mighty syllables were creative iiiid. 
 self-fulfilling. So ever with Him, to enjoin and to bestow 
 are one and the same, and His command is His con- 
 veyance of power. He rouses us by His summons, He 
 clothes us with power in the very act of bidding us put 
 it on. So He answers the Church's cry by stimulating us 
 to quickened zeal, and making us more conscious of, and 
 confident in, the strength which, in answer to our cry. He 
 pours into our limbs. 
 
 But the main point which I would insist on for the few 
 moments that remain to me is the practical discipline 
 which this Divine summons requires firom us. 
 
 And first, let us remember that the chief means of 
 qaickened life and strength is deepened communion with 
 Christ. 
 
 As we have been saying, our strength is ours by con- 
 tinual derivation from Him. It has no independent 
 existence, any more than a sunbeam could have, severed 
 from the sun. It is ours only in the sense that it flows 
 
76 THE A WAKING OF ZION, [serm. 
 
 through us, as a river through the land which it enriches. 
 It is His whilst it is ours, it is ours when we know it to 
 be His. Then, clearly, the first thing to do must be to 
 keep the channels free by which it flows into our souls, 
 and to maintain the connection with the great Fountain 
 Head unimpaired. Put a dam across the stream, and 
 the effect will be like the drying up of Jordan before 
 Israel " The waters that were above rose up upon an 
 heap, and the waters that were beneath failed and were 
 cut off," and the foul oozy bed was disclosed to the 
 light of day. It is only by constant contact with Christ 
 that we have any strength to put on. 
 
 That communion with Him is no mere idle or passive 
 thing, but the active employment of our whole nature 
 with His truth, and with Him whom the truth reveals. 
 The understanding must be brought into contact with 
 the principles of His word, the heart must touch and 
 -beat against His heart, the will meekly lay the hand in 
 His, the conscience ever draw at once its anodyne and 
 its stimulus from His sacrifice, the passions know His 
 finger on the reins, and follow led in the silken leash of 
 love. Then, if I may so say, the prophet's miracle will 
 be repeated in nobler form, and from Himself, the Life, 
 thus touching all our being, life will flow into our dead- 
 ness. " He put his mouth upon his mouth, and his 
 eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands, and 
 he stretched himself upon the child, and the flesh of 
 the child waxed warm." 
 
 So, dear brethren, all our practical duty is summed up 
 in that one word, the measure of our obedience to which 
 
III.] THE A WAKING OF ZION, 77 
 
 is the measure of all our strength — " Abide in Me, and 1 
 in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, 
 except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye 
 abide in Me." 
 
 Again, this summons calls us to the faithful use of the 
 power which, on condition of that communion, we have. 
 
 There is no doubt a temptation, in all times like the 
 present, to look for some new and extraordinary forms of 
 blessing, and to substitute such expectation for present 
 work with our present strength. There is nothing new 
 to look for. There is no need to wait for anything more 
 than we possess. Remember the homely old proverb, 
 "You never know what you can do till you try," and 
 though we are conscious of much unfitness, and would 
 sometimes gladly wait till our limbs are stronger, let us 
 brace ourselves for the work, assured that in it strength 
 will be given to us that equals our desire. There is a 
 wonderful power in honest work to develop latent 
 energies and reveal a man to himself. I suppose, in 
 most cases, nobody is half so much surprised at a great 
 man's greatest deeds as he is himsel£ They say that 
 there is dormant electric energy enough to make a 
 thunderstorm in a few raindrops, and there is dormant 
 spiritual force enough in the weakest of us to flash into 
 beneficent light, and peal notes of awaking into 
 many a deaf ear. The effort to serve your Lord will 
 reveal to you strength that you know not # 
 
 And it will increase the strength which it brings into 
 play, as the used muscles grow like whipcord, and the 
 practised fingers become deft at their task, and every 
 
7% THE A IV A KING OF ZION, [serm. 
 
 fiiculty employed is increased, and every gift wrapped in 
 a napkin melts like ice folded in a cloth, according to 
 that solemn law, " To him that hath shall be given, and 
 from him that hath not shall be taken away even that 
 which he hath." 
 
 Then be sure that to its last particle you are using 
 the strength you have, ere you complain of not having 
 enough for your tasks. Take heed of the vagrant expec- 
 tations that wait for they know not what, and the apparent 
 prayers that are really substitutes for possible service. 
 ** Why licst thou on thy face ? Speak unto the children 
 of Israel that they go forward." 
 
 The Church's resources are sufficient for the Church's 
 work, if the resources were used. We are tempted to 
 doubt it, by reason of our experience of failure and our 
 consciousness of weakness. We are more than ever 
 tempted to doubt it to-day, when so many wise men are 
 telling us that our Christ is a phantom, our God a stream 
 of tendency, our Gospel a decaying error, our hope for 
 the world a dream, and our work in the world done. We 
 ftand before our Master with doubtful hearts, and, as 
 we look along the ranks sitting there on the green grass, 
 and then at the poor provisions which make all our store, 
 we are sometimes tempted almost to think that He errs 
 when He says with that strange calmness of His, " They 
 need not depart, give ye them to eat" 
 
 But go out among the crowds and give confidently 
 what you have, and you will find that you have enough 
 and to spare. If ever our stores seem inadequate, it is 
 because they are reckoned up by sense, which takes 
 
DL] THF AWAKING OF ZION. 79 
 
 cognizance of the visible, instead of faith which beholds 
 the real. Certainly five loaves and two small fishes are 
 not enough, but are not five loaves and two small fishes 
 and a miracle-working hand behind them, enough ? It 
 is poor calculation that leaves out Christ firom the estimate 
 of our forces. The weakest man and Jesus to back 
 him are more than all antagonism, more than sufficient 
 for all duty. Be not seduced into doubt of your power, 
 or of your success, by others' sneers, or by your own 
 faint-heartedness. The confidence of ability is ability. 
 " Screw your courage to the sticking place, and you will 
 not fail " — ^and see to it that you use the resources you 
 have, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. 
 " Put on thy strength, O Zion.* 
 
 So, dear brethren, to gather all up in a sentence, let us 
 confidently look for times of blessing, penitently acknow- 
 ledge that our own faithlessness has hindered the arm ol 
 the Lord, earnestly beseech Him to come in His rejoicing 
 strength, and, drawing ever fresh power from constant 
 communion with our dear Lord, use it to its last drop for 
 Him. 
 
 Then, like the mortal leader of Israel, as he pondered 
 doubtingly with sunken eyes on the hard task before his 
 untrained host, we shall look up and be aware of the 
 presence of the sworded angel, the immortal Captain of 
 the host of the Lord standing ready to save, " putting on 
 righteousness as a breastplate, an helmet of salvation 
 on His head, and clad with zeal as a cloak." From hit 
 lips, which give what they command, comes the call, 
 " Take unto you the whole armcui of God, that ye may 
 
8o THE A WAKING OF ZTON, [SERM. IXU 
 
 be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done 
 all, to stand." Hearkening to His voice, the city of the 
 strong ones shall be made an heap before our wondering 
 ranks, and the land open to our conquering march. 
 
 Wheresoever we lift up the cry, " Awake, awake, put 
 on strength, O arm of the Lord," there follows, swift 
 as the thunderclap on the lightning flash, the rousing 
 gummons, " Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion ; 
 put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem ! " Where- 
 soever it is obeyed there will follow in due time the 
 joyful chorus, as in this context, " Sing together, ye waste 
 places of Jerusalem; the Lord hath made bare His 
 holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends 
 of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.** 
 
SERMON IV, 
 
 •TIME FOR THEE TO WORK."* 
 
 Psalm cxix. 126-8. 
 
 'It if time for Thee, Lord, to work : for they have made void Thy 
 Law. Therefore I love Thy commandments above gold ; yea, 
 above fine gold. Therefore I esteem all Thy precepts concerning 
 all things to be right ; and I hate every false way. 
 
 T F much that we hear be true, a society to circulate Biblei 
 is a most irrational and wasteful expenditure of energy 
 and money. We cannot ignore the extent and severity 
 of the opposition to the very idea of Revelation even if 
 we would ; we should not if we could. We are told with 
 some exaggeration — the wish being father to the thought 
 — that the educated mind of the country has broken with 
 Christianity, — a statement which is equally remarkable 
 for its accuracy and for its modesty. But it has a basis 
 of truth in the widespread disbelief diffused through the 
 literary and so-called cultivated classes. There is no 
 need to spend your time in referring at length to facts 
 which are only too familiar to most of us. Every 
 sphere of knowledge, every form of literature, is enlisted 
 
 * Prcacked before the National Bible Society of Scotland. 
 
82 « TIME FOR THEE TO WORK:" [serm. 
 
 in the erusade. Periodicals that lie on all our tables, works 
 of imagination that your daughters read, newspapers that 
 go everywhere, are full of it Poetry, forgetting her 
 lineage and her sweetness, strains her voice in rhapsodies 
 of hostility. Science, leaping the hedge beyond which she 
 at all events is a trespasser, — or, in finer language, " pro- 
 longing its gaze backwards beyond the boundary of ex- 
 perimental evidence," — or, in still plainer terms, guessing^ 
 — affirms that she discerns in matter the promise and 
 potency of every form of hfe ; or presently, in a devouter 
 mood, looking on the budding glories of the spring, 
 declines to profess the creed of Atheism. Learned 
 criticism demonstrates the impossibility of supernatural 
 religion. The leader of an influential school leaves behind 
 him a voice hollow and sad, as from the great darkness, 
 in which we seem to hear the echoes of a life baffled in 
 the attempt to harmonize the logical and the spiritual 
 elements of a large soul : " There may be a God. The 
 evidence is insufficient for proof. It only amounts to one 
 of the lower degrees of probabihty.' He may have given 
 a revelation of His will There are grounds sufficient to 
 remove all antecedent improbability. The question is 
 wholly one of evidence ; but the evidence required has 
 not been, and cannot be, forthcoming. There is room 
 to hope for a future life, but theie is no assurance what- 
 ever. Therefore cultivate in the region of the imagina- 
 tion merely those hopes which can never become certain- 
 ties, for they are infinitely precious to mankind." 
 
 Ah, brethren, do we not hear in these dreary words tht 
 cry of the immortal hunger of the soul for God, for the 
 
IT.] ''TIME FOR THEE TO WORKr 83 
 
 living God? The concessions they make to Christian 
 apologists are noteworthy, but that unconscious con- 
 fession of need is the most noteworthy. Surely, as the eye 
 prophesies light, so the longing of the soul and the 
 capacity for forming such ideals is the token that He is 
 for whom heart and flesh do thus yearn. And how 
 blessed is it to set over against these dreary ghosts that 
 call themselves hopes, and that pathetic vain attempt to 
 find refuge in the green fields of the imagination from 
 the choking dust of the logical arena, the old faithful 
 words : ^ This is the record, that God hath given to us 
 •temal life, and that this life is in His Son " 1 
 
 But my object in referring to these forms of opinion 
 was merely to prepare the way for my subsequent obser- 
 vations ; I have no intention of dealing with any of them 
 by way of criticism or refutation. This is not the place 
 nor the audience, nor am I the person, for that task. 
 But I have thought that it might not be inappropriate to 
 tiiis occasion if I were to ask you to consider with me, 
 from these words, the attitude of mind and heart to God's 
 word which becomes the Christian in times of opposition. 
 
 The Psalmist was surrounded, as would appear, by 
 widespread defection from God's law. But instead of 
 trembling as if the sun were about to expire, he turns 
 himself to God, and in fellowship with Him sees in all the 
 antagonism but the premonition that He is about to act 
 for the vindication of His own work. That confidence 
 finds expression in the sublime invocation of our text 
 Then, with another movement of thought, the contempla- 
 tion of the departures makes him tighten his own hold 
 
84 " TIME FOR THEE TO WORKP [serm 
 
 on the law of the Lord, and the contempt of the gain- 
 sayers quicken his love : " Therefore I love," etc. And, as 
 must needs be the case, that love is the measure of his 
 abhorrence of the opposite : and because God's command- 
 ments are so dear to him, therefore he recoils with healthy 
 hatred from false ways. So, I think, we have a fourfold 
 representation here of our true attitude in the face oJ 
 existing antagonism, — calm confidence in God's work 
 for His law ; earnest prayer, which secures the forth- 
 putting of the divine energy : an increased intensity of 
 cleaving to the word ; and a decisive opposition to the 
 ways which make it void. 
 
 I ask your attention to some remarks on each of these 
 in their order. So, then, we have — 
 
 I. Calm confidence that times of antagonism, evoke GotTs 
 work for His word. 
 
 Now I daresay that some of you feel that is not the 
 first thought that should be excited by the opposition 
 aroundus. " We have no sort of doubt," you may say, 
 " that God will take care of His own word, if there be 
 such a thing ; but the question that presses is, Have we 
 it in this book ? Answer that for us, and we will thank 
 you ; but platitudes about God watching over His truth 
 are naught. The first thing to do is to meet these argu- 
 ments and establish the origin of Scripture. Then it will 
 follow of itself that it will not perish." 
 
 But I take leave to think we, as Christians, arc not 
 bound to revise the foundation belief of our lives at the 
 rail of every new antagonist Life is too short for that 
 
.v.] « TIME FOR THEE TO WORK.'* «5 
 
 There is too much work waiting, to suspend our activity 
 rill we have answered each denier. We do not hold oui 
 faith in the word of God, as the winners at a match do 
 their cups and belts, on condition of wrestling for them 
 with any challenger. It is a perfectly legitimate position 
 to say, We hold a ground of certitude, from which none 
 of this strife of tongues is able to dislodge us. We have 
 heard Him ourselves, and know that this is the Christ 
 The Scriptures which we have received, not without 
 knowledge of the grounds on which controversialists 
 defend them, have proved themselves to us by their own 
 witness. The light is its own proof. We have the experience 
 of Christ and His law. He has saved our souls ; He has 
 changed our lives. We know in whom we have believed ; 
 and we are neither irrational nor obstinate when we avow 
 that we will not pretend to suspend these convictions on 
 the issue of any debate. We decline to dig up the piles 
 of the bridge that carries us over the abyss because voices 
 tell us that is rotten. It is shorter and perfectly reason- 
 able to answer : " Rotten, did you say ? Well, we have tried 
 it, and it bears ; " which, being translated into less simple 
 language, is just the assertion of certitude built on facts 
 and experience which leaves no place for doubt All the 
 opposition will be broken into spray against that rock 
 bulwark: "Thy words were found, and I did cat them, 
 and they are the joy and rejoicing of my heart" 
 
 So I venture to think that, speaking to Christian men 
 and women, I have a right to speak on the basis of oui 
 common beUef, and to encourage them to cherish it not- 
 withstanding gainsayers. I am not counselling stolid 
 
^ **T/M£ FOR THEE TO WORK." [serm. 
 
 indifference to the course of modern thought, nor desertion 
 of the duty of defence. We are not to say, " God will 
 interfere ; I need do nothing." But the task of con- 
 troversy is not for all Christians, ror the duty of follow- 
 ing the flow of opinion. There is plenty of more profit- 
 able work than that for most of us. The temper whicb 
 our text enjoins is for us all ; and this calm confidence, 
 that at the right time God will work for His word, ii its 
 first element 
 
 This confidence rests upon our belief in a divine Provi- 
 dence that governs the world, and on the observed laws 
 of its working. It is ever His method to send His suc- 
 cour after the evil has been developed, and be/ore it has 
 triumphed. Had it come sooner, the priceless benefits of 
 struggle, the new perceptions won in controversy of the 
 many-sided meaning and value of His truth, the vigour 
 from conflict, the wholesome sense of our weakness, had 
 all been lost Had it come later, it had come too late. 
 So He times His help, in order that we may derive the 
 greatest possible benefit from both the trial and the aid. 
 We have all been dealt with so in our personal histories, 
 whereof the very motto might be, " When I said my foot 
 slippeth. Thy mercy, O Lord, held me up." The same 
 law works on the wider platform. The enemy shall be 
 allowed to pass through the breadth of the land, to 
 spread dread and sorrow through village and hamlet, to 
 draw his ranks round Jerusalem, as a man closes his hand 
 on some insect he would crush. To-morrow^ and the as- 
 sault will be made ; but to-night " the angel of the Lord 
 went forth and smote the camp ; and when they arose in 
 
iv.l •• TIME FOR THEE TO WORK? 87 
 
 the morning," expecting to hear the wild war-cry of the 
 conquerors as they stormed across the undefended walls, 
 " they were all dead corpses. " Then, aa it would appear, 
 a psalmist,, moved by that mighty victory, cast it into 
 words, which remain for all generations the law of the di 
 vine aid, and imply all that I am urging now : " The Lord 
 is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved ; the Lord 
 shall help her at the dawning of the morning. " True, 
 we arc no judges of the time. Our impatience is ever 
 outrunning His calm deliberation. An illusion besets us 
 all that our conflicts with unbelief are the severest the 
 world has ever seen ; and there is a great deal of exag- 
 geration on both sides at present as to the real extent 
 and importance of existing antagonism to God's rcvc 
 lation. A widespread literature provides so many — I 
 would not say empty — spaces for any voice to reverbi»- 
 rate in, that both the shouters and the listeners are apt to 
 fancy the assailants are an army, when they are only 
 a handful, armed mainly with trumpets and pitchers. 
 There have been darker days of antagonism than these. 
 He that believeth shall not make haste. This confidence 
 in the punctual wisdom of His working involves the other 
 beUef, that if He does not " work," it is because the time 
 is not yet ripe ; the negations and contradictions have 
 still an office to fulfil, and no hurt that cannot be repaired 
 has been done to the faith of th« Church or the power of 
 the word. 
 
 Nor can we forecast the manner of His working. He 
 can call forth from the solitary sheepfolds the defenderi 
 of His word, as has ever been His wont, raising the man 
 
88 ** TIME FOR THEE TO WORK:' [serm. 
 
 when the hour had come, even as He sent His Son in the 
 fulness of time. He can lead science on to deeper truth ; 
 He can quicken His Church into new life ; He can guide 
 the spirit of an age. We believe that the history of the 
 world is the unfolding of His will, and the course of 
 opinion guided in its channel by the Voice which the 
 depths have obeyed from of old. Therefore we wait for 
 His working, expecting no miracle, prescribing no time, 
 hurried by no impatience, avoiding no task of defence 
 or confession ; but knowing that, unhasting and unresting 
 He will arise when the storm is loudest, and somehow 
 will say, " Peace ! be still. " Then they who had not 
 cast away their confidence for any fashion of unbelief that 
 passeth away will rejoice as they sing, " Lo 1 this is our 
 God ; we have waited for Him, and He will save us." 
 
 This confidence is confirmed by the history of aU the 
 past assaults on Scripture. 
 
 The whole history of the origin, collection, preservation, 
 transmission, diffusion, and present influence of the Bible 
 involves so much that is surprising and unique, as to 
 amount to at least a strong presumption of a divine care. 
 Among all the remarkable things about the Book, nothing 
 is more remarkable than that there it is, after all that has 
 happened. When we think of the gaps and losses in 
 ancient literature, and the long stormy centuries that lie 
 between us and its earlier pages, we can faintly estimate 
 the chances against their preservation. It is strange that 
 the Jewish race should have so jealously preserved books 
 which certainly did not flatter national pride, which put 
 t mortifying explanation on national disasters, which 
 
IV.] « TIME FOR THEE TO WORK,"* 89 
 
 painted them and their fathers in dark colours, which 
 proclaimed truths they never loved, and breathed a spirit 
 they never caught. It is stranger still, that in the long 
 years of dispersion the very vices and limitations of the 
 people subserved the same end, and that stiff pedantry 
 and laborious trifling — the poorest form of intellectual 
 activity — should have guarded the letter of the word, as 
 the coral insects painfully build up their walls round some 
 fair island of the Southern Sea. When one thinks of the 
 great gutf of language between the Old and New Testa- 
 ments, of the variety of authors, periods, subjects, literary 
 form, the animosities of Christian and Jew, it is strange 
 that we have the Book here one, and that all these parts 
 should blend into unity, unless the source and theme 
 were one, and One Hand had shaped each, and cared for 
 the gathering together of all. 
 
 It has been demonstrated over and over agna to have 
 no pretensions to a divine revelation ; and yet here it is, 
 believed by millions, and rooted so firmly in European 
 language and thought, that no revolution short of a return 
 to barbarism can abolish it. It has been proved to be a 
 careless, unauthenticated collection of works of different 
 periods, styles, and schools of thought, having no unity 
 but what is given by the bookbinder : and lo ! here it is 
 still, not disintegrated, much less dissolved. Each age 
 brings its own destructive criticism to play on it, confess- 
 ing thereby that its predecessors have effected nothing ; 
 for, as the Bible says about sacrifices, so we may say about 
 assaults on Scripture, " If they had done their work, would 
 they not have ceased to be offered ? * And the effect of 
 
90 ** TIME FOR THEE TO WORK:" [serm. 
 
 the heaviest artillery that can be brought into position is 
 as transient as the boom of their report and the puflf of 
 their smoke. Why, who knows anything about the 
 world's wonders of books that a hundred years ago made 
 good men's hearts tremble for the ark of God ? You may 
 find them in dusty rows on the top shelves of great 
 libraries. But if their names had not occurred in the 
 pages of Christian apologists, flies in amber, nobody in 
 this generation would ever have heard of them. And 
 still more conspicuously is it so with earlier examples of 
 the same kind. Their work is as hopelessly dead as 
 they. And the Book seems none the worse for all the 
 shot — like the rock that a ship fired at all night, taking 
 it for an enemy, and could not provoke to answer nor 
 succeed in sinking. Surely some dim suspicion of the 
 hopelessness of the attempt might creep into the hearts 
 of men who know what has been. Surely the signal 
 failure and swift fading away of all former efforts to de- 
 throne the Bible might lead to the question, " Does it not 
 lay its deep foundations in the heart of man and the 
 purpose of God, too deep to be reached by the short 
 tools of mere criticism, too massive to be overthrown by 
 all the weight of materialistic science ? " It is with the 
 Bible as it was with the apostle, on whose hand, as he 
 crouched over the newly-lit flame, the viper fastened, 
 " and he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no 
 harm." The barbarous people, who changed their 
 minds after they had looked a great while and saw no 
 harm come to him, were not altogether wrong, and might 
 teach a lesson to some modem wise men, if, among 
 
IV.] « TIME FOR THEE TO WORK* 91 
 
 the otl er facts which they deal with, they would try to 
 estinate this fact of the continued existence and influence 
 of Scr'pture, and the failure thus far of all attempt! to 
 shake its throne or break the sweet influences of its 
 bands. 
 
 Brethren, we, at all events, should learn the lesson of 
 historical experience. The gospel, and the Book which 
 is its record, have met with eager, eloquent, learned 
 antagonists before to-day, and they have passed. Little 
 more than a generation has sufficed to sweep them to 
 oblivion. So it will be again. The forms of opinion, the 
 tendencies of thought, which now seem to some of its 
 enemies so certain to conquer, will follow these forgotten 
 precursors into the dim land. May we not see them — 
 these ancient discrowned kings that ruled over men and 
 rebelled against Christ, these beliefs that no man now 
 believes — rising from their shadowy thrones in the under- 
 world to meet the now living and ruling unbelief, when it, 
 too, shall have gone down to them? "All they shall 
 speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak 
 as we ? art thou become like unto us ? " Yes, each in 
 its turn " becomes but a noise " when he " passes the time 
 appointed" — the time when God arises to do His act 
 and vindicate His word. 
 
 Wc have here, secondly, Earnest prayer which hringt 
 that divine energy. 
 
 The confidence that God will work underlies and givei 
 energy to the prayer that God would work. The belief 
 that a given thing is in the line of the divine purpose 
 
92 " TIME FOR THEE TO WORK,"" [serm. 
 
 is not a reason for saying, "We need not pray; God 
 means to do it," but is a reason for saying on the contrary, 
 " God means to do it ; let us pray for it" And this 
 prayer, based upon the confidence that it is His will, is 
 the best service that any of us can render to the gospel 
 in troublous times. 
 
 I shall have a word to say presently on the sort of out- 
 flow of the divine energy which we should principally 
 expect and desire; but let me first remind you, very 
 briefly, how the prayers of Christian men do condition — 
 I had almost said regulate— that outflow. 
 
 I need not put this matter on its abstract and metaphy- 
 sical side. Two facts are enough for my present purpose 
 — one, a truth of faith, that the actual power wherewith 
 God works for His word remains ever the same ; one, a 
 truth of observation and experience, that there are 
 variations in the intensity of its operations and effects in 
 the world. Wherefore ? Surely because of the variations 
 in the human recipients and organs of the power. Here 
 at one end is the great fountain, ever brimming. Draw 
 from it ever so much, it sinks not one hair's-breadth in 
 vts pure basin. Here, on the other side, is an intermittent 
 flow, sometimes in scanty driblets, sometimes in painful 
 drops, sometimes more full and free on the pastures of 
 the wilderness. Wherefore these jerks and spasms ? It 
 must be something stopping the pipe. Yes, of course. 
 God's might is ever the same, but our capacity of receiv- 
 ing and transmitting that might varies, and with it varies 
 the energy with which that unchanging power is exerted 
 in the world. Our faith, our earnestness of desire, our 
 
IV.] « TIME FOR THEE TO WORK.'' 93 
 
 ardour and confidence of prayer, our faithfulness of stew- 
 ardship and strenuousness of use, measure the amount of 
 the unmeasured grace which we can receive. So long as 
 our vessels are brought, the golden oil does not cease to 
 flow. When they are full, it stays. The principle of 
 the variation in actual manifestation of the unvarying 
 might of God is found in the Lord's words : " According 
 to your faith be it unto you." So, then, we may expect 
 periods of quickened energy in the forth-putting of the 
 divine power. And these will correspond to, and be con- 
 sequent on, the faithful prayers of Christian men. Sec 
 to it, brethren, that you keep the channels clear, that the 
 flow may continue full and increase. Let no mud and 
 ooze of the world, no big blocks of sin nor subtler ac- 
 cumulations of small negligences, choke them again. 
 Above all, by simple, earnest prayer keep your hearts, as 
 it were wide open to the Sun, and His light will shine on 
 you, and His grace fructify through you, and His Spirit 
 will work in you mightily. 
 
 The tenor of these remarks presupposes a point on 
 which I wish to make one or two observations now, viz. 
 that the manner of the divine working which we should 
 most earnestly desire in a time of dififused unbelief is the 
 elevation of Christian souls to a higher spiritual life. 
 
 I do not wish to exclude other things, but I believe 
 that the true antidote to a widespread scepticism is a 
 quickened Church, We may indeed desire that in other 
 ways the enemy should be met We ought to pray that 
 God would work by sending forth defenders of the truth, 
 by estabhshing His Church in the firm faith of disputed 
 
94 * TIME FOR THEE TO WORKr [sirm. 
 
 verities, and by all the multitude of ways in which He 
 can sway the thoughts and tendencies of men. But I 
 honestly confess that I, for my part, attach but second- 
 ary importance to controversial defences of the faith. 
 No doubt they have their office : they may confirm a 
 waverer ; they may establish a believer ; they may show 
 onlookers that the Christian position is tenable \ they 
 may, in some rare cases of transcendent power, prevent 
 a heresy firom spreading and from descending to another 
 generation. But oftenest they are barren of result ; and 
 where they do their work, it is not to be forgotten there 
 may remain as true a making void of God's law by an 
 evil heart of unbeUef as by an understanding cased in the 
 mail of denial You may hammer ice on an anvil, or 
 bray it in a mortar. What then ? It is pounded ice still, 
 except for the little portion melted by heat of percussion, 
 and it will soon all congeal again. Melt it in the sun, 
 and it flows down in sweet water, which mirrors that light 
 which loosed its bonds of cold. So hammer away at 
 unbelief with your logical sledge-hammers, and you will 
 change its shape, perhaps ; but it is none the less unbelief 
 because you have ground it to powder. It is a mightier 
 agent that must melt it, — the fire of God's love, brought 
 close by a will itself ablaze with the sacred glow. 
 
 Therefore, while giving all due honour to other forms 
 of Christian opposition to the prevailing unbehef, I urge 
 the cultivation of a quickened spiritual life as by far the 
 most potent Does not history bear me out in that view ? 
 What, for instance, was it that finished the infidelity of 
 last century ? Whether had Butler's " Analogy " or Charles 
 
nr.] *^TIME FOR THEE TO WORK^ 95 
 
 Wesley's hymns, PaJc/s " Evidences " or Whitefield's 
 sermons, most to do with it ? A languid Church breeds 
 unbelief as surely as a decaying oak fungus. In a condi- 
 tion of depressed vitality, the seeds of disease, which a 
 full vigour would shake off, are fatal Raise the temper- 
 ature, and you kill the insect germs. A warmer tone of 
 spiritual life would change the atmosphere which unbelief 
 needs for its growth. It belongs to the fauna of the 
 glacial epoch, and when the rigours of that wintry time 
 begin to melt, and warmer days to set in, the creatures of 
 the ice have to retreat to arctic wildernesses, and leave a 
 land no longer suited for their hfe. A diffused unbelief, 
 such as we see around us to-<iay, docs not really arise 
 from the logical basis on which it seems to repose. It 
 comes from something much deeper, — a certain habit 
 and set of mind which gives these arguments their force. 
 For want of a better name, we call it the spirit of the age. 
 It is the result of very subtle and complicated forces, 
 which I do not pretend to analyze. It spreads through 
 society, and forms the congenial soil in which these seeds 
 of evil, as we believe them to be, take root Does any- 
 body suppose that the growth of popular unbelief is owing 
 to the logical force of certain arguments ? It is in the 
 air ; a wave of it is passing over us. We are in a condi- 
 tion in which it becomes epidemic. That is a doctrine 
 which one influential school of modem disbehevers, at 
 all events, cannot but admit What then ? Why, this 
 —that to change the opinions you must change the at- 
 mosphere ; or, in other words, the true antagonist of 
 ft diffused scepticism is a quickened Christian life 
 
96 « TIME FOR THEE TO WORKP [serm. 
 
 Brethren, if we had been what we ought, would such an 
 environment have ever been possible as that which pro- 
 duces this modern unbelief? Even now, depend upon 
 it, we shall do more for Christ by catching and exhibiting 
 more of His spirit than by many arguments — more by 
 words of prayer to God than by words of reasoning to 
 men. A higher tone of spiritual hfe would prove that 
 the gospel was mighty to mould and ennoble character. 
 If our own souls were gleaming with the glory of God, 
 men would believe that we had met more than the 
 shadow of our own personality in the secret place. If 
 the fire of faith were bright in us, it would communicate 
 itself to others, for nothing is so contagious as earnest- 
 ness. If we believed, and therefore spoke, the accent 
 of conviction in our tones would carry them deep into 
 some hearts. If we would trust Christ's cross to stand 
 firm without our stays, and, arguing less about it, would 
 seldomer iiy to prop it, and oftener to point to it, it would 
 draw men to it. When the power and reaUty of Scripture 
 as the revelation of God are questioned, the best answer 
 in the long-run will be a Church which can adduce itseli 
 as the witness, and can say to the gainsayers ; " Why, 
 herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from 
 whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes." 
 Bretliren, do you see to it that your life be thus a witness 
 that you have heard His voice j and make it your con- 
 tribution to the warfare of this day, that if you do not 
 bear a weapon, you lift your hands and heart to God. 
 Moses on the mount helped the struggling ranks belo^ 
 in their hacd-to-hand combat with Amalek. Hezekiah'y 
 
nr.] « TIME FOR THEE TO WOREJ* 97 
 
 prayer, when he spread the letter of the invader before 
 the Lord, was more to the purpose than all his munitions 
 of war. Let your voice rise to heaven like a fountain. 
 Blessings will fall on earth. "Arise, O Lord, plead 
 Thine own cause. The tumult of those that rise up 
 against Thee increaseth continually." 
 
 in. We have here, thirdly, as the fitting attitude in 
 times of widespread unbelief, a love to God's word made 
 more fervid by antagonism. 
 
 There may be a question what reason for the Psalmist's 
 love is pointed at in this " therefore." We shall hardly 
 be satisfied with the slovenly and not very reverent ex- 
 planation, that the word is introduced, without any par- 
 ticular meaning, because it begins with the initial letter 
 proper to this section; nor does it seem enough to 
 suppose a mere general reference to the excellences of 
 the law of the Lord, which are the theme of the whole 
 psalm. Such an interpretation blunts the sharp edge of 
 the thought, and has nothing in its favour but the general 
 want of connection between the separate verses. There 
 are, however, one or two other instances where a thought 
 is pursued through more than one verse, and the usual 
 mere juxtaposition gives place to an interlocking, so that 
 the construction is not unexampled. It is most natural 
 to take the plain meaning of the words, and to suppose 
 that when the Psalmist said, " They have made void Thy 
 law, therefore I love Thy commandments," he meant, 
 •* The prevailing opposition is the reason why I, for mv 
 part, grasp Thy law more strongly." The hostility of 
 
98 * TIME FOR THEE TO WORK?* [serm 
 
 others evokes my warmer love. The thought, so under- 
 stood, is definite, true, and important, and so I venture 
 to construe it, and enforce it as containing a lesson for 
 the day. 
 
 And here I would first observe, that I desire not to be 
 understood as urging the substitution of feeling for reason, 
 nor as trying to enlist passion in a crusade against the 
 opponent's logic. Still less do I desire to counsel the 
 exaggeration of opinions because they are denied — that 
 besetting danger of all controversy. 
 
 But, surely, the emotions have a place and an office, it 
 not indeed in the search for, and the submission to, the 
 truth of God, yet in the defence and adherence to that 
 truth when found. The heart may not be the organ for 
 the investigation and apprehension of truth, though it has 
 a part to play even there ; but the tenacity with which I 
 cleave to it, when apprehended, is far more an aftair of the 
 will than of the understanding—it is the heart's love 
 steadying the mind, and holding it fixed to the rock. And 
 love has a place in the defence of the truth. It gives 
 weight to blows, and wings to the arrows. It makes 
 arguments to be wrought in fire rather than in frost. It 
 lights the enthusiasm which cannot despair, the diligence 
 that will not weary, the fervour that often goes faither to 
 sway other minds than the sharpest dialectics of a pas- 
 sionless understanding. There are causes in which an 
 unimpassioned advocacy is worse than silence ; and this 
 is one of them. The word of the living God, which has 
 saved our souls and brought to us all that makes our 
 natures rich and strcr.g, and all that peoples the great 
 
IV.] " TIME FOR THEE TO WORK,"" 99 
 
 darkness with fair hopes solid as certainties, demands and 
 deserves fervour in its soldiers, and loyal love in its 
 subjects. 
 
 And while it is weakness to over-emphasise our beliefs 
 merdy because they are denied, and one of the saddest 
 issues of controversy, that both sides are apt to be hurried 
 into exaggerated statements which calmer thoughts would 
 repudiate ; on the other hand, there is a legitimate pro- 
 minence which ought to be given to a truth precisely 
 because it is denied. The time to underline and accen- 
 tuate strongly our convictions is, when society is slipping 
 away from them, provided it be done without petulance, 
 passion, or the falsehood of extremes. 
 
 If ever there was a period when such general consider- 
 ations as these had a practical application, this is the time. 
 Would that all such as my voice reaches now would take 
 these grand words for theirs : " They make void Thy law, 
 therefore I love Thy commandments above gold; yea, 
 above fine gold I ** 
 
 Such increase of affection because of gainsayers is the 
 natural instinct of loyal and chivalrous love. If your 
 nj other's name were detiled, would not your heart bound 
 to her defence ? When a prince is a dethroned exile, his 
 throne is fixed deeper in the hearts of his adherents 
 " though his back be at the wall " and common souls 
 become heroes because their devotion has been height- 
 ened to sublimity of seif-sacrifice by a nation's rebeUion. 
 And when so many voices are proclaiming that God has 
 never spoken to men, that our thoughts of His Book are 
 dreams, and its long empire over men's spirits a waning 
 
 H S 
 
lOO •« TIME FOR THEE TO WORK."* [serm. 
 
 tyranny, does cool indifference become us? Will not 
 fervour be sobriety, and the glowing emotion of our whole 
 nature our reasonable service ? 
 
 Such increase of affection because of gainsayers is the 
 fitting end and main blessing of the controversy which 
 is being waged. We never fully hold our treasures till 
 we have grasped them hard, lest they should be plucked 
 from us. No truth is established till it has been denied 
 and has survived. Antagonism to the word of God 
 should have, and will have, to those who use it rightly, a 
 blessing in its train, in bringing out yet more of the pre- 
 ciousness and manyfoldness, the all-sufficiency and the 
 universality of the Book. " The more 'tis shook, the more 
 it shines." The fiercer the blast, the firmer our confidence 
 in the inexpugnable soUdity of that tower of strength 
 that stands four square to every wind that blows. " The 
 word of the Lord is tried, therefore Thy servant loveth it." 
 Such increase of attachment to the word of God 
 because of gainsayers, is the instinct of self-preservation. 
 The sight of so many making void the law makes a man 
 bethink himself of what his own standing is. We, as they, 
 are the children of the age. The tendencies to which they 
 have yielded operate on us, too, and our only strength is, 
 " Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe." The present 
 condition of opinion remands us all to our foundations, 
 and should teach us that nothing but firm adherence to 
 God revealed in His word, and to the word which reveals 
 God, will prevent us, too, from drifting away to shoreless, 
 solitary seas of doubt, barren as the foam, and changeful 
 u the crumbling, restless wave. 
 
IV.] « TIME FOR THEE TO WORK:" loi 
 
 Such strength of affection in the presence of diffused 
 doubt is not to be won without an effort All our 
 Churches afford us but too many examples of men and 
 women who have lost the warmth of their first love, if not 
 their love itself, for no better reason than because so 
 many others have lost it. The effect of popular unbelief 
 stretches far beyond those who are directly affected by its 
 arguments, or avowedly adopt its conclusions. It is hard 
 to hold by a creed which so many influential voices tell 
 you it is a sign of folly, and being behind the age to 
 believe. The consciousness that Christian truth is 
 denied, makes some of you falter in its profession, and 
 fancy that it is less certain simply because it is gainsaid 
 The mist wraps you in its folds, and it is difficult to keep 
 warm in it, or to believe that love and sunshine are above 
 it all the same. " Because iniquity shall abound, the love 
 of many shall wax cold." 
 
 Therefore, brethren, do you consciously endeavour that 
 the tempest shall make you tighten your hold on Christ 
 and His word. He appeals to us, too, with that most 
 pathetic question, in which yearning for our love and 
 sorrow over the departed disciples blend so wondrously, 
 as if He cast Himself on our loyalty : " Will ye also go 
 away?" Let us answer, not with the self-confidence 
 that was so signally put to shame : " Though all should 
 forsake Thee, yet will not I ** ; but with the resolve that 
 draws its firmness from His fulness and from our know- 
 ledge of the power of His truth : " Lord, to whom shall 
 we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal hfe," 
 
loa « TIME FOR THEE TO WORK!" [serm, 
 
 rV. And, lastly, we have here, as the final trait in the 
 temper which becomes such times, healthy opposition to 
 the ways which make void the word of the Lord. 
 
 That is the Psalmist's last movement of feeling, and 
 you see that it comes second, not first, in the order of his 
 emotions. It is the consequence of his love, the recoil of 
 his heart from the practices and theories which contra- 
 dicted God's law. 
 
 Now, far be it from me to say a word which should fan 
 the embers of the odium theologicum into a blaze against 
 either men or opinions. But there is a truth involved 
 which seems to be in danger of being forgotten at present, 
 and that to the detriment of large interests as well as ol 
 the forgetters. The correlative of a hearty love for any 
 principle or belief is — we may as well use the obnoxious 
 word — a healthy hatred for its denial and contradiction. 
 They are but two aspects of one thing, like that pillar of 
 old which, in its single substance, was a cloud and dark- 
 ness to the foes, and gave light by night to the friends, 
 of Him who dwelt in it Nay, they are but two names 
 for the very same thing viewed in the very same motion, 
 which is love as it yearns towards and cleaves to its 
 treasure; and hatred, as by the identical same act it 
 recoils and withdraws fi"om . the opposite : " He will 
 hold to the one, and therefore and therein despise the 
 other.** 
 
 Much popular teaching as to Christian truth seems to 
 me to ignore this plain principle, and to be working harm, 
 especially among our younger cultivated men and women, 
 whom it charms by an appearance of liberality, which, in 
 
IV.] " TIME FOR THEE TO WORK,"" 103 
 
 their view, contrasts very favourably with the narrowness 
 of us sectarians. I am free to admit that in our zeal 
 about small matters (and in a certain " provincialism," so 
 to speak, which characterised the type of English Christi- 
 anity till within a recent period) we needed, and still 
 need, the lesson, and I will thankfully accept the rebuke 
 that reminds me of what I ever tend to forget, that the 
 golden rod, wherewith the divine Builder measures from 
 jewel to jewel in the walls of the New Jerusalem, takes 
 in wider spaces than we have meted with our lines. But 
 that is a very different matter from the tone which 
 vitiates and weakens so much modem adherence to 
 Christ's Gospel and Christ's Church. The old principle, 
 "in essential unity, in non-essential liberty," made no 
 attempt to determine what belonged to these two classes, 
 and in practice their bounds may often have been 
 \iTongly set, so as to include many of the latter among 
 the former ; but it at all events recognised the distinction 
 as the basis of its next clause, ** in all things charity." 
 But now-a-days, to listen to some liberal teachers, one 
 would think that nothing was necessary, except the great 
 sacred principle, that nothing is necessary; and that 
 charit> could not exist, unless that distinction were 
 eflfaceA 
 
 I pray you, and if I may venture so far, I would 
 especially pray my younger hearers, to take note, that 
 however fair this way of looking at varying forms of 
 Christian opinion may be, it really reposes on a basis 
 which they will surely think twice before accepting, the 
 denial that there is such a thing as intellectual certitude 
 
I04 " TIME FOR THEE TO WORK^ [SERM. 
 
 in religion which can be cast into definite propositions. 
 If there be any truth at all, to confess it is to deny its 
 opposite, to cleave to this is to reject that, to love the 
 one is to hate the other. I fear, I know, that there arc 
 many minds among us who began with simply catching 
 this tone of tolerance, and who have been insensibly 
 borne along to an enfeebled belief that there is such a 
 thing as religious truth at all, and that that truth lies in 
 the word of God: Dear friends, let me beseech you to 
 take heed lest, while you are only conscious of your 
 hearts expanding with the genial glow of liberality, by 
 Uttle and little you lose your power of discerning between 
 things that differ, your sense of the worth of the Scrip- 
 ture as the depository of divine truth, and fi-om your 
 slack hand the hem of the vesture in which is healing 
 should fall away. 
 
 As broad a liberality as you please within the limits 
 that are laid down by the very nature of the case. 
 "These things are written that ye might believe that 
 Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye 
 might have life through His name." Wheresoever that 
 record is accepted, that divine name confessed, that faith 
 exercised, and that life possessed, there, with all diver- 
 sities, own a brother. Wheresoever these things arc not, 
 loyalty to your Lord demands that the strength of your 
 love for His word should be manifested in the strength of 
 your recoil from that which makes it void. " I love Thy 
 commandments, and I hate every false way." 
 
 I am much mistaken if times are not rapidly coming 
 on us when a decisive election of Ilis side will be forced 
 
IV.] « TIME FOR THEE TO WORK* 105 
 
 on every man. The old antagonists will be face to face 
 once more. Compromises and hesitations will not serve. 
 The country between the opposing forces will be stript of 
 every spot that might serve as cover for neutrals. On the 
 one side a mighty host, its right the Pharisees of 
 ecclesiasticism and ritual, with their banner of authority, 
 making void the law of God by their tradition ; its left, 
 and never far away from their opposites on the right, 
 with whom they are strangely leagued, working into each 
 other's hands, the Sadducees denying angel and spirit, 
 with their war-cry of unfettered freedom and scientific 
 evidence ; and in the centre, far rolling, innumerable, the 
 dusky hosts of mere animalism, and worldliness, and self, 
 making void the law by their sheer godlessness. And on 
 the other side, ** H« was clothed with a vesture dipped in 
 blood, and His name is called The Word of God, and 
 they that were with Him were called, and chosen, and 
 faithful." The issue is certain from of old. Do you see 
 to it that you are of those who were valiant for the truth 
 upon the earth. 
 
 Let not the contradiction of many move you from your 
 faith ; let it lift your eyes to the hills from whence cometh 
 our help. Let it open your desires in prayer to Him who 
 keeps His own word, that it may keep His Church and 
 bless the world. Let it kindle into fervent enthusiasm, 
 which is calm sobriety, your love for that word. Let it 
 make decisive your rejection of all that opposes. Drift- 
 wood may swim with the stream ; the ship that holds to 
 her anchor swings the other way. Send that word far 
 and wide. It is its own best evidence. It will correct 
 
io6 ** TIME FOR THEE TO WORK^ [serm. nr. 
 
 all the misrepresentation of its foes, and supplement the 
 inadequate defences of its friends. Amid all the changes 
 of attacks that have their day and cease to be, amid all 
 the changes of our representations of its endless fulness, it 
 will live. Schools of thought that assail and defend it pass, 
 but it abides. Of both enemy and friend it is true, " The 
 grass withereth, and the flower thereof passeth away." 
 How antique and ineffectual the pages of the pasf^ene- 
 rations of either are, compared wdth the ever-fresh youth 
 of the Bible, which, like the angels, is the youngest and 
 is the oldest of books. The world can never lose it ; 
 and notwithstanding all assaults, we may rest upon His 
 assurance, whose command is prophecy, when He says, 
 " Write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, 
 that it may be/^r the titne to come for ever and erter,^ 
 
SERMON V. 
 
 THE EXHORTATION OF BARNABAS.* 
 
 Acts xi. 23. 
 
 Wko, when he came, and had seen the grace of Grod, was glad, tad 
 exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would deare 
 unto the Lord. 
 
 OEFORE coming to the mere immediate consideration 
 of these words, I may be allowed a brief reference 
 to the innovation on the customary arrangements of your 
 meetings, which gives me the honour of addressing you 
 here. This is, I believe, the first occasion on which a 
 member of another communion has preached before the 
 Congregational Union. And though I unleignedly wish 
 that the task had fallen to some more worthy representa- 
 tive of other Churches, I rejoice that you have set us all 
 the example of thus recognising, in your most denomina- 
 tional gatherings, your nearest ecclesiastical kindred. In 
 our several localities and labour side by side, and on the 
 whole, shoulder to shoulder, why should we ignore one 
 another in our respective theories, conferences, and 
 
 * Preached before the Congregational Union of England and 
 Wales. 
 
io8 THE EXHOR TA TION OF BARNABAS, [SERM 
 
 general assemblies, even if for the present we may not 
 add " convocations," to the list ? May your example be 
 imitated ! It does not become me to speak here of my 
 own sense of the honour which you have done me, or of 
 the extreme gratification with which I accept the re- 
 sponsible duty of addressing an audience, including many 
 from whom I would more gladly learn — a gratification 
 shaded only by the feeling of my inability to speak words 
 level with the occasion. And, now, let me turn to my text 
 The first purely heathen converts had been brought into 
 the Church by the nameless men of Cyprus and Cyrene, 
 private persons with no office or commission to preach, 
 who, in simple obedience to the instincts of a Christian 
 heart, leaped the barrier which seemed impassable to the 
 Church in Jerusalem, and solved the problem over which 
 apostles were hesitating. Barnabas is sent down to see 
 into this surprising new phenomenon, and his mission, 
 though, probably, not hostile, was, at all events, one of 
 inquiry and doubt But like a true man, he yielded to 
 facts, and widened bis theory to suit them. He saw the 
 token of Christian life in these Gentile converts, and 
 that compelled him to admit that the Church was wider 
 than some of his friends in Jerusalem thought A preg- 
 nant lesson for modem theorists who, on one ground or 
 another of doctrine or of orders, narrow the great con- 
 ception of Christ's Church I Can you see ** the grace of 
 God in the people"? Then they are in the Church, what 
 ever becomes of your theories, and the sooner you let them 
 out so as to fit the facts, the better for you and for them. 
 Satisfied as to theif true Christian character, he sets 
 
T.J THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS. loy 
 
 himself to help them to grow. Now, remember how 
 recently they had been converted ; how, from their Gentile 
 origin, they can have had next to no systematic instruction, 
 how the taint of heathen morals, such as were common in 
 that luxurious corrupt Antioch, must have clung to them ; 
 how unformed must have been their loose Church organi- 
 sation — and remembering all this, think of this one 
 exhortation as summing up all that Barnabas had to 
 say to them. He does not say, Do this, or Believe that, 
 or Organise the other j but he says. Stick to Jesus Christ 
 the Lord. On this commandment hangs all the law ; it 
 is the one all-inclusive summary of the duties of the 
 Christian life. 
 
 So, brethren and fathers, I venture to take these words 
 now, as containing large lessons for us all, appropriate at 
 all times, and especially in a sermon on such an occasion 
 as the present. 
 
 We may deal with the thoughts suggested by these 
 words very simply, just looking at the points as they lie 
 —what he saw, what he/;//, what he said. 
 
 L What He saw. 
 
 The grace of God here has very probably the specific 
 meaning of the miracle-working gift of the Holy Spirit. 
 That is rendered probable by the analogy of other in- 
 stances recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, such as 
 Peter's experience at Caesarea, where all his .hesitations 
 and reluctance were swept away when " the Holy Ghost 
 fell on them as on us at the beginning, and they spake 
 with tongues." So, what convinced Barnabas that these 
 
no THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS, [serm. 
 
 uncircumcised Gentiles were Christians like himself, may 
 have been their equal possession of the visible and audible 
 effects of that gift of God. But the language does not 
 compel this interpretation; and the absence of all dis- 
 tinct reference to these extraordinary powers as existing, 
 there, among the new converts at Antioch may be intended 
 to mark a difference m the nature of the evidence. At 
 any rate, the possibly intentional generality of the expres- 
 sion is significant and fairly points to an extension of the 
 principle involved much beyond the limits of miraculous 
 powers. There are other ways by which the grace oi 
 God may be seen and heard, thank God ! than by speak- 
 ing with tongues and working miracles; and the first 
 lesson of our text is that wherever that grace is made 
 visible by its appropriate manifestations there we are to 
 recognise a brother. 
 
 Augustine said, " where Christ is there is the Church,** 
 and that is true, but vague ; for the question still remains, 
 " and where is Christ ? " The only satisfying answer is, 
 Christ is wherever Christlike men manifest a life drawn 
 from, and kindred with, His life. And so the true form of 
 the dictum for practical purposes comes to be : Where 
 the grace of Christ is visible, there is the Church. 
 
 That great truth is sinned against and denied in many 
 ways. Most chiefly, perhaps, by the successors in modem 
 garb of the more Jewish portion of that Church at 
 Jerusalem who sent Barnabas to Antioch. They had no 
 objection to Gentiles entering the Church, but they must 
 come in by the way of circumcision ; they quite believed 
 that it wai Christ who saved, and His grace which 
 
v.] THE EXHORTATION OF BARNABAS, iii 
 
 sanctified, but they thought that His grace would only 
 flow in a given channel; and so their modem repre- 
 sentatives, who exalt sacraments, and consequently priests, 
 to the same place as the Judaizers in the early Church 
 did the rite of the old Covenant Such teachers have 
 much to say about the notes of the Church, and have 
 elaborated a complicated system of identification by 
 which you may know the genuine article, and unmask 
 impostors. The attempt is about as wise as to try to 
 measure a network fine enough to keep back a stream. 
 The water will flow through the closest meshes, and when 
 Christ pours out the Spirit He is apt to do it in utter 
 disregard of notes of the Church, and of channels of 
 sacramental grace. 
 
 We Congregationalists, who have no orders, no sacra- 
 ments, no apostolic succession ; who in order not to break 
 loose from Christ and conscience have had to break 
 loose from " Catholic tradition," and have been driven to 
 separation by the true schismatics, who have insisted on 
 smother bond of Church unity than union to Christ, are 
 denied now-a-days a place in His Church. 
 
 The true answers to all that arrogant assumption and 
 narrow pedantry which confines the free flow of the 
 water of life to the conduits of sacraments and orders, 
 and will only allow the wind that bloweth where it listeth 
 to make music in the pipes of their organs, is simply the 
 homely one which shivered a corresponding theory to 
 atoms in the fair open mind of Barnabas. 
 
 The Spirit of Christ at work in men's hearts, making 
 them pure and gentle, simple and unworldly, refining 
 
112 THE EXHORTA TION OF BARNABAS. [SERM. 
 
 their characters, elevating their aims, toning their whole 
 being into accord with the music of His life, is the true 
 proof that men are Christians, and that communities of 
 such men are Churches of His. Mysterious efficacy is 
 claimed for Christian ordinances. Well, the question is a 
 fair one. Is the type of Christian character produced 
 within these sacred limits which we are hopelessly outside 
 conspicuously higher and more manifestly Christlike than 
 that nourished by no sacraments, and grown not under 
 glass, but in the unsheltered open ? Has not God set His 
 seal on these communities, to which we belong ? With 
 many faults for which we have to be, and are, humble be- 
 fore Him, we can point to the lineaments of the family 
 likeness, and say ''Are they Hebrews? so are we. Are 
 they Israelites ? so are we. Are they the seed of Abraham ? 
 so are we. " 
 
 Once get that truth wrought into men's minds that the 
 true test of Christianity is the visible presence of a grace 
 in character which is evidently God's, and whole moun- 
 tains of prejudice and error melt awa)f. We are just as 
 much in danger of narrowing the Church in accordance 
 with our narrowness as any '• sacramentarian " of them all. 
 We are tempted to think that no good thing can grow up 
 under the baleful shadow of that tree, a sacerdotal Christi- 
 anity. We are tempted to think that all the good people 
 are dissenters, just as Churchmen are to think that nobody 
 can be a Christian who prays without a prayer-book. 
 Our own type of denominational character^and there is 
 such a thing — comes to be accepted by u? as the all but 
 exclusive ideal of a devout man; and we have not 
 
v.] THE EXHORTATION OF BARNABAS, 113 
 
 imagination enough to conceive, nor charity enough to 
 believe in, the goodness which does not speak our dialect, 
 nor see with our eyes. Dogmatical narrowness has 
 built as high walls as ceremonial Christianity round th 
 fold of Christ And the one deliverance for us all frca 
 the transformed selfishness, which has so much to do 
 with shaping all these wretched narrow theories of the 
 Church, is to do as this man did — open our eyes with 
 sympathetic eagerness to see God's grace in many an 
 unexpected place, and square our theories with His 
 deahngs. 
 
 It used to be an axiom that there was no life in the 
 sea beyond a certain limit of a few hundred feet. It was 
 learnedly and conclusively demonstrated that pressure 
 and absence of light, and I know not what beside, made 
 Hfe at greater depths impossible. It was proved that in 
 such conditions creatures could not live. And then 
 when that was settled, " The Challenger " put down her 
 dredge five miles, and brought up healthy and good- 
 sized living things, with eyes in their heads, from that 
 enormous depth. So, then, the savant had to ask, how 
 can there be Hfe? instead of asserting there cannot 
 be ; and, no doubt, the answer will be forthcoming 
 some day. 
 
 We have all been too much accustomed to draw arbitrary 
 limits to the difi'usion of the life of Christ among men. 
 Let us rather rejoice when we see forms of beauty, which 
 bear the mark of His hand, drawn from depths that we 
 deemed waste, and thankfully confess that the bounds of 
 our expectation, and the framework of our institution!, 
 
 1 
 
1 14 THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS, [serm 
 
 do not confine the breadth of His working, nor the 
 sweep of His grace. 
 
 *i. What he felt— he ''was glad!* 
 It was a triumph of Christian principle to recognise the 
 grace of God under new forms, and in so strange a 
 place. It was a still greater triumph to hail it with re- 
 joicing. One need not have wondered if the acknow- 
 ledgement of a fact, dead in the teeth of all his prejudices, 
 and seemingly destructive of some profound convictions, 
 had been somewhat grudging. Even a good, true man 
 might have been bewildered and reluctant to let go so 
 much as was involved in the admission — '' Then hath God 
 granted to the Gentiles also repentance unto life/* — and 
 might have been pardoned if he had not been able to do 
 more than acquiesce and hold his peace. We are scarcely 
 just to these early Jewish Christians when we wonder at 
 their hesitation on this matter, and are apt to forget the 
 enormous strength of the prejudices and sacred con- 
 viction which they had to overcome. Hence the context 
 seems to consider that the quick recognition of their 
 Christian character on the part of Barnabas, and his glad- 
 ness at the discovery, need explanation, and so it adds, 
 with special reference to these, as it would seem, " for he 
 was a good man full of the Holy Ghost and of faith,*' as il 
 nothing short of such characteristics could have sufficiently 
 emancipated him from the narrowness that would have 
 refused to discern the good, or the bitterness that would 
 have been offended at it 
 
 So, dear brethren, we may well test ourselves with thu 
 
y.] THE EXHOR TA TJON OF BARN A BAS. 115 
 
 question : Does the discovery of the working of the grace 
 of God outside the limits of our own Churches and com- 
 munions excite a quick spontaneous emotion of gladness 
 in our hearts ? It may upset some of our tiieories ; it 
 may teach us that things which we thought very impor- 
 tant, distinctive principles and the like, are not altogether 
 as precious as we thought them ; it may require us to give 
 up some pleasant ideas of our superiority, and of the 
 necessary conformity of all good people to our type. Are 
 we willing to let them all go, and without a twinge of 
 envy or a hanging back from prejudice, to welcome the 
 discovery that God fulfils Himself in many ways ? Have 
 we schooled ourselves to say honestly, " Therein I do 
 rejoice, yea, and will rejoice " ? 
 
 There is much to overcome if we would know this 
 Christlike gladness. The good and the bad in us may 
 both oppose it. The natural deeper interest in the well- 
 being of the Churches of our own faith and order, the 
 legitimate ties which unite us with these, our conscientious 
 convictions, our friendships, the aprit de corps bom of 
 fighting shoulder to shoulder, will, of course, make our 
 sympathies flow most quickly and deeply in denomina- 
 tional channels. And then come in abundance of 
 less worthy motives, some altogether bad and some 
 the exaggeration of what is good, and we get swallowed 
 up in our own individual work, or in that of our " denomi- 
 nation,** and have but a very tepid joy in anybody else's 
 prosperity. 
 
 In almost every town of England, your Churches, and 
 those to which I belong, with Presbyterians and Wesleyani, 
 
 I fl 
 
1 16 THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS, [serm. 
 
 stand iide by side. The conditions of our work make 
 some rivalry inevitable, and none of us, I suppose, object 
 to that It helps to keep us all diligent : a sturdy adherence 
 to our several " distinctive principles," and an occasional 
 hard blow in fair fight on their behalf we shall all insist 
 upon. Our brotherhood is all the more real for frank 
 speech, and " the animated no " is an essential in all inter- 
 course which is not stagnant or mawkish. There is much 
 true fellowship and much good feeling among all these. 
 But we want far more of an honest rejoicing in each 
 other's success, a quicker and truer manly sympathy with 
 each other's work, a fuller consciousness of our solidarity 
 in Christ, and a clearer exhibition of it before the 
 world. 
 
 And on a wider view, as our eyes travel over the wide 
 field of Christendom, and our memories go back over 
 the long ages of the story of the Church, let gladness, 
 and not wonder or reluctance, be the temper with which 
 we see the graces of Christian character hfting their 
 meek blossoms in corners strange to us, and breathing 
 their fragrance over the pastures of the wilderness. In 
 many a cloister, in many a hermit's cell, from amidst the 
 smoke of incense, through the dust of controversies, we 
 should see, and be glad to see, faces bright with the 
 radiance caught from Christ Let us set a jealous watch 
 over our hearts that self-absorption, or denomination- 
 aUsm, or envy do not make the sight a pain instead of 
 a joy ; and let us remember that the eye salve which 
 will purge our dim sight to behold the grace of God in 
 all its forms is that grace itself, which ever recognises its 
 
v.] THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS, 117 
 
 own kindred, and lives in the gladness of charity, and 
 the joy of beholding a brother's good. If we are to have 
 eyes to know the grace of God when we see it, and a 
 heart to rejoice when we know it, we must get them 
 as Barnabas got his, and be good men, because wc are 
 full of the Holy Ghost, and full of the Holy Ghost be- 
 cause we are full of faith. 
 
 III. What kg said: he exhorted them ally that with 
 purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord, 
 
 The first thing that strikes one about this all-sufficient 
 directory for Christian life is the emphasis with which 
 it sets forth " the Ix)rd " as the one object to be grasped 
 and held. The sura of all objective Religion is Christ — 
 the sum of all subjective Religion is cleaving to Him. A' 
 living person to be laid hold of, and a personal relation to 
 that person, such is the conception of Religion, whether 
 considered as revelation or as inward life, which under- 
 lies this exhortation. Whether we listen to His own 
 words about Himself^ and mark the altogether unpre- 
 cedented way in which He was His own theme, and the 
 unique decisiveness and plainness with which He puts His 
 own personaUty before us as the Incarnate Truth, the 
 pattern for all human conduct, the refuge and the rest for 
 the world of weary ones ; or whether we give ear to the 
 teaching of His apostles ; from whatever point of view wc 
 approach Christianity, it all resolves itself into the person 
 of Jesus Christ. He is the Revelation of God; theology 
 properly so called is but the formulating of the facts 
 which He gives as ; and for the modem world th« alter- 
 
1 18 THE EXHORTA TION OF BARNABAS, [serm. 
 
 native is, Christ the manifested God, or no God at all, 
 other than the shadow of a name. He is the perfect 
 exemplar of humanity ! The law of life and the power 
 to fulfil the law are both in Him ; and the superiority of 
 Christian morahty consists not in this or that isolated 
 precept, but in the embodiment of all goodness in His 
 life, and in the new motive which He supplies for keep- 
 ing the commandment Wrenched away from Him, 
 Christian morality has no being. He is the sacrifice /or 
 the worlds the salvation of which flows from what He 
 does, and not merely from what He taught, or was. His 
 personality is the foundation of His work, and the gospel 
 of forgiveness and reconciliation is all contained in the 
 name of Jesus. 
 
 There is a constant tendency to separate the results of 
 Christ's life and death, whether considered as revelation, 
 ethics, or atonement, from Him, and unconsciously to 
 make these the sum of our Religion, and the object of our 
 faith. Especially is this the case in times of restless 
 thought and eager canvassing of the very foundations of re- 
 ligious belief Hke the present. Therefore it is wholesome 
 for us all to be brought back to the pregnant simplicity of 
 the thought which underhes this text, and to mark how 
 vividly these early Christians apprehended a living Lord 
 as the sum and substance of all which they had to grasp. 
 
 There is a whole world between the man to whom 
 God's revelation consists in certain doctrines given to us 
 by Jesus Christ, and the man to whom it consists in that 
 Christ Himself Grasping a living person is not the 
 tame as accepting a proposition. True, the propositions 
 
v.] THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS. 1 19 
 
 are about Him, and we do not know Him without them. 
 But equally true, we need to be reminded that He is our 
 Saviour and not they, and that God has revealed Himself 
 to us not in words and sentences but in a life. 
 
 For, alas ! the doctrinal element has overborne the 
 personal among all Churches and all schools of thought, 
 and in the necessary process of formulating and systema- 
 tising the riches which are in Jesus, we are all apt to 
 confound the creeds with the Christ, and so to manipulate 
 Christianity until, instead of being the revelation of a 
 person and a gospel, it has become a system of divinity. 
 Simple, devout souls have to complain that they cannot 
 find even a dead Christ, to say nothing of a living one, 
 for the theolggians have taken away their Lord, and they 
 know not where they have laid Him. 
 
 It is, therefore, to be reckoned as a distinct gain that 
 one result of the course of the more recent thought, both 
 among friends and foes, has been to make all men feel 
 more than before, that all revelation is contained in the 
 living person of Jesus Christ. So did the Church believe 
 before creeds were. So it is coming to feel again with a 
 consciousness enriched and defined by the whole body of 
 doctrine, which has flowed from Him during all the ages. 
 That solemn, gracious figure rises day by day more clearly 
 before men, whether they love Him or no, as the vital 
 centre of this great whole of doctrines, laws, institutions, 
 which we call Christianity. Round the storj^ of His life the 
 final struggle is to be waged. The foe feels that, so long as 
 that remains, all other victories count for notliing. We 
 feel that if that goes, there is nothing to keep. The 
 
I20 THE EXHORTA TION OF BARNABAS, [serm 
 
 principles and the precepts will perish alike, as the fair 
 palace of the old legend, that crumbled to dust when its 
 builder died. But so long as He stands before mankind 
 as He is painted in the Gospel, it will endure. If all 
 else were annihilated, Churches, creeds and all, leave us 
 these four gospels, and all else would be evolved again. 
 The world knows now, and the Church has always known, 
 though it has not always been true to the significance of 
 the fact, that Jesus Christ is Christianity, and that because 
 He lives, it will live also. 
 
 And consequently the sum of all personal religion is 
 this simple act described here as cleaving to Him, 
 
 Need I do more than refer to the rich variety of symbols 
 and forms of expression under which that thought is put 
 alike by the Mastw: and by His servants ? Deepest of all 
 are His own great words, of which our text is but a feeble 
 echo, " Abide m Me, and I m you." Fairest of all is this 
 lovely emblem of the vine, setting forth the sweet mystery 
 of our union with Him. Far as it is from the outmost 
 pliant tendril to the root, one life passes to the very ex- 
 tremities, and every cluster swells and reddens and 
 mellows because of its mysterious flow. So also is Christ 
 We remember how often the invitation flowed from His 
 lips, CofM unto Me ; how He was wont to beckon men 
 away from self and the world with the great command, 
 Follow Me ; how He explained the secret of all true life to 
 consist in eating Him. We may recall, too, the emphasis 
 and perpetual reiteration with which Paul speaks of being' 
 " in Jesus " as the condition of all blessedness, power, and 
 righteousness; and the emblems which he so often 
 
v.] THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS. 121 
 
 employs of the building bound into a whole on the 
 foundation from which it derives its stability, of the body 
 compacted and organised into a whole by the head from 
 which it derives its life. 
 
 We begin to be Christians, as this context tells us, 
 when we " turn to the Lord." We continue to be Chris- 
 tians, as Barnabas reminded these ignorant beginners, 
 by " cleaving to the Lord." Seeing, then, that our great 
 task is to preserve that which we have as the very founda- 
 tion of our Christian life, clearly the truest method of so 
 keeping it will be the constant repetition of the act by 
 which we got it at first. In other words, faith joined us 
 to Christ, and continuously reiterated acts of faith keep 
 us united to Him. So, if I may venture, fathers and 
 brethren, to cast my words into the form of exhortation, 
 even to such an audience as the present, I^woulc^ earnestly 
 say. Let us cleave to Christ by continual renaval of our 
 first faith in Him, 
 
 The longest line may be conceived of as produced 
 simply by the motion of its initial point So should our 
 lives be, our progress not consisting in leaving our early 
 acts of faith behind us, but in repeating them over and 
 over again till the points coalesce in one unbroken line 
 which goes straight to the Throne and Heart of Jesus. 
 True, the repetition should be accompanied with fuller 
 knowledge, with calmer certitude, and should come from 
 a heart ennobled and encircled by a Christ-possessing 
 post As in some great symphony the theme which was 
 griven out in low notes on one poor instrument recurs 
 over and over again embroidered with varying harmonies, 
 
122 THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS, [serm. 
 
 and unfolding a richer music till it swells into all the 
 grandeur of the triumphant close, so our lives should be 
 bound into a unity, and in their unity bound to Christ by 
 the constant renewal of our early faith, and the fathers 
 come round again to the place which they occupied when 
 as children they first knew Him that is from the Begin- 
 aing to the End one and the same. Such constant 
 reiteration is needed, too, because yesterday's trust has no 
 more power to secure to-day's union than the shreds of 
 cloth and nails which hold last year's growth to the wall 
 will fasten this year's shoots. Each moment must be 
 united to Christ by its own act of faith, or it will be 
 separated from Him. So living in the Lord we shall be 
 strong and wise, happy and holy. So dying in the Lord 
 we shall be of the dead who are blessed. So sleeping in 
 Jesus^ we shall at the last be found in Him at that day, 
 and shall be raised up together, and made to sit together 
 in heavenly places in Christ /esus. 
 
 But more specially let us cleave to Christ by habitual 
 contemplation. There can be no real continuous closeness 
 of intercourse with Him, except by thought ever recurring 
 to Him amidst all the tumult of our busy days. I do not 
 mean professional thinking, or controversial thinking, of 
 which we ministers have more than enough. 
 
 There is another mood of mind in which to approach 
 our Lord than these, a mood sadly unfamiliar, I am afraid, 
 in these days : when poor Mary has hardly a chance of a 
 reputation for " usefulness " by the side of busy bustling 
 Martha — that still contemplation of the truth which we 
 possess, not with the view of discovering its foundations, 
 
v.] THE EXHORTA TION OF BARNABAS. 123 
 
 or investigating its applications, or even of increasing our 
 knowledge of its contents, but of bringing our own souls 
 more completely under its influence, and saturating our 
 being with its fragrance. The Church has forgotten how 
 to meditate. We are all so occupied arguing and dedu- 
 cing and elaborating, that we have no time for retired still 
 contemplation and, therefore, lose the finest aroma of the 
 truth we profess to believe. Many of us are so busy 
 thinking about Christianity that we have lost our hold of 
 Christ Sure I am that there are few things more needed 
 by our modem Religion than the old exhortation, ** Come, 
 My people, enter into thy chambers and shut thy doors 
 about thee." Cleave to the Lord by habitual play of 
 meditative thought on the treasures hidden in His name, 
 and waiting like gold in the quartz, to be the prize of our 
 patient sifting and close gaze. 
 
 And when the great truths embodied in Him stand 
 dear before us, then let us remember that we have not 
 done with them when we have seen them. Next must 
 come into exercise the moral side of faith, the voluntary 
 act of trust, the casting ourselves on Him whom we be- 
 hold, the making our own of the blessings which He 
 holds out to us. Flee to Christ as to our strong habita- 
 tion to which we may continually resort Hold tightly 
 by Christ with a grasp which nothing can slacken (that 
 whitens your very knuckles as you clutch Him), lean on 
 Christ all your weight and all your burdens. Cleave to 
 the Lord with full purpose of heart 
 
 Let us cleave to the Lord by constant outgoings §/ »ur 
 l$ve U Him. That is the bond which unitei humas 
 
124 THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS, [skrm. 
 
 spirits together in the only real union, and Scripture 
 teaches us to see in the sweetest sacredest closest tie 
 that men and women can know, a real thongh faint 
 shadow of the far deeper and truer union between Christ 
 and us. The same love which is the bond of perfectness 
 between man and man, is the bond between us and 
 Christ In no dreamy semi-pantheistic fusion of the 
 believer with His Lord do we find the true conception of 
 the unity of Christ and His Church, but in a union which 
 preserves the individualities lest it should slay the love. 
 Faith knits us to Christ, and faith is the mother of love, 
 which maintains the blessed union. So let us not be 
 ashamed of the emotional side of our religion, nor deem 
 that we can cleave to Christ unless our hearts twine their 
 tendrils round Him, and our love pours its odorous 
 treasures on His sacred feet, not without weeping nor em- 
 braces. Cold natures may carp, but Love is justified of 
 her children, and Christ accepts the homage that has a 
 heart in it Cleaving to the Lord is not merely love, 
 but it is impossible without it The order is Faith, 
 Love, Obedience, that threefold cord knits men to Christ, 
 and Christ to men. For the understanding a continuous 
 grasp of Him as the object of thought For the heart 
 a continuous out-going to Him as the object of our love. 
 For the will a continuous submission to Him as the 
 Lord of our Obedience. For the whole nature a 
 continuous cleaving to Him as the object of our faith 
 and worship. 
 
 Such is the true discipline of the Christian life. Such is 
 the all-sufficient command; as for the newest co&Ttrt 
 
V,] THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS. 125 
 
 from heathenism, with little knowledge and the taint ol 
 his old vices in his soul, so for the saint fullest of wisdom 
 and nearest the Light 
 
 It is all-sufficient If Barnabas had been like some of 
 us, he would have had a very different style of exhorta- 
 tion. He would have said, This irregular work has been 
 well done, but there are no authorised teachers here, and 
 no provision has been made for the due administration of 
 the sacraments of the Church. The very first thing of all 
 is to give these people the blessing of bishops and priests. 
 Some of us would have said, A good work has been done, 
 but these good people are terribly ignorant The best 
 thing would be to get ready as soon as possible some 
 manual of Christian doctrine, and in the meantime pro- 
 vide for their systematic instruction in at least the 
 elements of the faith. Some of us would have said, No 
 doubt they have been converted, but we fear there has 
 been too much of the emotional in the preaching. The 
 moral side of Christianity has not been pressed home, 
 and what they chiefly need is to be taught that it is not 
 feeling but righteousness. Plain practical instruction in 
 Christian duty is the one thing they want 
 
 Barnabas knew better. He did not despise organi- 
 sation, nor orthodoxy, nor practical righteousness, but he 
 knew that all three, and everything else that any man 
 needed for his perfecting, would come, if only they kept 
 near to Christ, and that nothing else was of any use if 
 they did not That same conviction should for us 
 settle the relative importance which we attach to these 
 subordinate and derivative things, and to the primary 
 
126 THE EXHORTA TION OF BARNABAS, [serm. 
 
 and primitive duty. Obedience to it will secure them. 
 They, without it, are not worth securing. 
 
 We spend much pains and effort now-a-days in perfect- 
 ing our organisations and consolidating our resources ; 
 and I have not a word to say against that But heavier 
 machinery needs more power in the engine, and that 
 means greater capacity in your boilers and more fire in 
 your furnace. The more complete our organisation, the 
 more do we need a firm hold of Christ, or we shall be 
 overweighted by it, shall be in danger of burning incense 
 to our own net, shall be tempted to trust in drill rather 
 than in courage, in mechanisjti rather than in the life 
 drawn from Christ On the other hand, putting as our 
 first care the preservation of the closeness of our union 
 with Christ, that life will shape a body for itself; and to 
 every seed its own body. 
 
 True conceptions of Him, and a definite theology^ are good 
 and needful Let us cleave to Him with mind and heart, 
 and we shall receive all the knowledge we need, and be 
 guided into the deep things of God. In Him are hid all 
 the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and the basis of 
 all theology is the personal possession of Him who is the 
 wisdom of God, and the light of the world. Every one 
 that loveth is bom of God and knowcth God. Pectus 
 facit Theologum, 
 
 Plain straightforward morality, and every-day right- 
 eousness are better than all emotion and all dogmatism 
 and all churchism, says the world, and Christianity says 
 much the same ; but plain straightforward righteousness 
 and every-day morality come most surtly when a man ii 
 
T.] THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS. 117 
 
 keeping close to Christ In a word, everything that can 
 adorn the character with beauty, and clothe the Church 
 with glorious apparel, whatsoever things are lovely and of 
 good report, all that the world or God call virtue and 
 crown with praise, they are all in their fulness in Him, 
 and all are most surely derived from Him by keeping 
 fast hold of His hand, and preserving the channels clear 
 through which His manifold grace may flow into our 
 souls. The same life is strength in the arm, pliancy in the 
 fingers, swiftness in the foot, hght in the eye, music on 
 the lips ; so the same grace is Protean in its forms, and to 
 His servants who trust Him Christ ever says, " What would 
 ye that I should do unto you ? Be it even as thou wik." 
 The same mysterious power Uves in the swa3dng branch, 
 and in the veined leaf, and in the blushing clusters. With 
 like wondrous transformations of the one grace, the Lord 
 pours Himself into our spirits, fiUing all needs and fitting 
 for all circumstances. Therefore for us all, individuals 
 and Churches, this remains the prime conmiand. With 
 purpose of heart cleave unto the Lord. Dear brethren, 
 in the ministry how sorely we need this exhortation I Our 
 very professional occupation with Christ and His truth is 
 full of danger for us, we are so accustomed to handle 
 these sacred themes as a means of instructing or impres- 
 sing others that we get to regard them as our weapons, 
 even if we do not degrade them still further by thinking of 
 them as our stock-in-trade and means of oratorical effect 
 We must keep very firm hold of Christ for ourselves by 
 much solitary communion, and so retranslating into the 
 Qutriment of our own souls the message we bring to men, 
 
128 THE EXHORTATION OF BARNABAS, [serm. 
 
 else when we have preached to others we ourselves may 
 be cast away. All the ordinary tendencies which draw 
 men from Him work on us, and a host of others peculiar 
 to ourselves, and all around us run strong currents of 
 thought which threaten to sweep many away. Let us 
 tighten our grasp of Him in the face of modem doubt; 
 and take heed to ourselves that neither vanity, nor world- 
 liness, nor sloth ; neither the gravitation earthward common 
 to all, nor the temptations proper to our office; neither 
 unbelieving voices without nor voices within seduce us 
 from His side. There only is our peace, there our wisdom, 
 there our power. 
 
 Subtly and silently the separating forces are ever at 
 work upon us, and all unconsciously to ourselves our 
 hold may relax and the flow of this grace into our spirits 
 may cease, while yet we mechanically keep up the round of 
 outward service, nor even suspect that our strength is 
 departed from us. Many a stately elm that seems full of 
 vigorous life, for all its spreading boughs and clouds of 
 dancing leaves is hollow at the heart, and when the storm 
 comes goes down with a crash, and men wonder as they 
 look at the ruin, how such a mere shell of life with a core 
 of corruption could stand so long. It rotted within and 
 fell at last because its roots did not go deep down to 
 the rich soil, where they would have found nourishment, 
 but ran along near the surface among gravel and stones. 
 If we would stand firm, be sound within, and bring forth 
 much fruit, we must strike our roots deep in Him Who 
 is the anchorage of our souls, and the nourisher of all 
 our being. 
 
v.] THE EXHORTA HON OF BARNABAS, 139 
 
 Hearken, beloved brethren, in this great work of the 
 ministry, not to the exhortation of the servant, but to the 
 solemn command of the Master, ** Abide in Me, and I 
 in you. As the branch cannot bear truit of itself, except 
 it abide in the vine, no tt/ore can ye, except ye abide in 
 Me." And let us, knowing our own weakness, take heed 
 of the self-confidence that answers, " Though all should 
 forsake Thee, yet will not I,** and turn the vows, which 
 spring to our lips into the lowly prayer *' My soul cleaveth 
 unto the dust, quicken Thou me according to Thy word." 
 Then, thinking rather of His cleaving to us, than of our 
 cleaving to Hira, let us, resolutely, take as the motto of our 
 lives the grand words : " I follow after if that I may lay 
 hold of that, for wliich also X am laid hold of byChrist. 
 Jesuib* 
 
SERMON VI. 
 
 MKASURELESS POWER AND ENDLESS GLORY. 
 
 Ephksians iii. 20^ 31. 
 
 Now uto Him that b able to do exceeding abundaatlj abore all 
 that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in vi, 
 Unto Him be glory in the Church bj Christ Jesns throughout 
 all ages, world without end. Amen. 
 
 /^N£ purpose and blessing of faithful prayer it to eii- 
 ^-^ large the desires which it expresses, and to make 
 us think more loftily of the grace to which we* appeal So 
 the apostle, in the wonderful series of supplications which 
 precedes the text, has found his thought of what he may 
 hope for his brethren at Ephesus grow greater with every 
 clause. His prayer rises like some songbird, in ever 
 widening sweeps, each higher in the blue, and nearer the 
 throne ; and at each a sweeter, fuller note. 
 
 " Strengthened with might by His Spirit * ; " that Christ 
 may dwell in your hearts by faith " ; " that ye may be 
 able to know the lore of Christ " ; " that yc might be filled 
 with all the fulness of God. " Here he touches the very 
 throne. Beyond that nothing can be conceived. But 
 though that sublime petition may be the end of thought, 
 it is not tht end of faith. Though God can give us 
 
SKRM.VL] MEASURELESS POWER, 131 
 
 nothing more than it is, He can give us more than we 
 think it to be, and more than we ask, when we ask this. 
 Therefore the grand doxology of our text crowns and 
 surpasses even this great prayer. The higher true prayer 
 climbs, the wider is its view ; and the wider is its view, 
 the more conscious is it that the horizon of its vision is 
 far within the borders of the goodly land. And as we 
 gaze into what we can discern of the fulness of God, 
 prayer will melt into thanksgiving and the doxology for 
 the swift answer will follow close upon the last words of 
 supplication. So is it here : so it may be always. 
 
 The form of our text, then, marks the confidence of 
 Paul's prayer. The exuberant fervour of his faith, as 
 well as his natural impetuosity and ardour, comes out 
 in the heaped-up words expressive of immensity and 
 duration. He is like some archer watching, with parted 
 lips, the flight of his arrow to the mark. He is gazing on 
 God confident that he has not asked in vain. Let at 
 look with him, that we, too, may be heartened to expect 
 great tilings of God. Notice, then — 
 
 L Tfu Measure of the Power to which we trust 
 This Epistle is remarkable for its frequent references 
 to the Divine rule, or standard, or measure, in accor- 
 dance with which the great facts of redemption take place. 
 The "things on the earth" — the historical processes by 
 which salvation is brought to men and works in men 
 — are ever traced up to the "things in heaven;** the 
 Divine counsels from which they have come forth. 
 That phrase. " a^icording to," is perpetually occurring in 
 
 K t 
 
133 MEASURELESS POWER AND [skrm. 
 
 this connection in the Epistle. It is applied mainly in 
 two directions. It serves sometimes to bring into view 
 the ground, or reason, of the redemptive facts, as, foi 
 instance, in the expression that these take place " ac 
 cording to His good pleasure which He hath purposed 
 in Himself, It serves sometimes to bring into view 
 the measure by which the working of these redemptive 
 facts is determined ; as in our text, and in many other 
 places. 
 
 Now there are three main forms under which this 
 standard, or measure, of the Redeeming Power is set forth 
 in this Epistle, and it will help us to grasp the greatness 
 of the apostle's thought if we consider these. 
 
 Take, then, first, that clause in the earlier portion of 
 the preceding prayer, " that He would grant you aaor- 
 ding to the riches of His gloryr The measure, then, of 
 the gift that we may hope to receive is the measure of 
 God's own fulness. The " riches of His glory " can be 
 nothing less than the whole uncounted abundance of that 
 majestic and far-shining Nature, as it pours itself forth in 
 the dazzling perfectnesses of its own Self-manifestatioa 
 And nothing less than this great treasure is to be the 
 limit and standard of His gift to us. We are the sons of 
 the King, and the allowance which He makes us even 
 before we come to our inheritance is proportionate to 
 our Father's wealth. The same stupendous thought is 
 given us in that prayer, heavy with the blessed weight 
 of unspeakable gifts, " that ye might be filled with all the 
 fulness of God"; this, then, is the measure of the grace 
 that we may possess. This limitless Hnut alone boondf 
 
in.] ENDLESS GLORY, 133 
 
 the possibilities for every man, the certainties for every 
 
 Christian. 
 
 The effect must be proportioned to the cause. And 
 what effect will be adequate as the outcome of such a 
 cause as " the riches of His glory " ? Nothing short of 
 absolute perfectness, the full transmutation of our dark, 
 cold being into the reflected image of His own burning 
 brightness, the ceaseless replenishing of our own spirits with 
 all graces and gladnesses akin to His, the eternal growth 
 of the soul upward and Godward. Perfection is the sign- 
 manual of God in all His works, just as imperfection and 
 the falling below our thought and wish is our " token in 
 every Epistle " and deed of ours. Take the finest needle, 
 and put it below a microscope, and it will be all ragged 
 and irregular, the fine, tapering lines will be broken by 
 many a bulge and bend, and the point blunt and clumsy. 
 Put the blade of grass to the same test, and see how true 
 its outline, how delicate and true the spear-head of its 
 point God's work is perfect, man's is clumsy and in- 
 complete. God does not leave off till He has finished. 
 When He rests, it is because, looking on His work, He 
 sees it all " very good." His Sabbath is the Sabbath of 
 an achieved purpose, of a fulfilled counsel The palaces 
 which we build are ever like that in the story, where one 
 vindow remains dark and unjewelled, while the rest blaze 
 n beauty. But when God builds, none can say, " He 
 was not able to finish." In His great palace He makes 
 her " windows of agates * and all her " borders of pleasant 
 stones." 
 
 So we have a right to enlarge our desires and stretch 
 
134 MEASURELESS POWER AND [SlRM. 
 
 our confidence of what we may possess and become to 
 this, His boundless bound : " The riches of glory." 
 
 But another form in which the standard, or measure, 
 is stated in this letter is : " The working of His mighty 
 Power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised 
 Him from the dead " (L 19, 20) ; or, as it i% put with a 
 modification, " grace according to the measure of the gift 
 of Christ " (iv. 7). That is to say, we have not only the 
 whole riches of the Divine glory as the measure to which 
 we may lift our hopes, but lest that celestial brightness 
 should seem too high above us, and too far from us, we 
 have Christ in His Human-Divine manifestation, and 
 especially in the great fact of the resurrection, set before 
 us, that by Him we may learn what God wills we should 
 become. The former phase of the standard may sound 
 abstract, cloudy, hard to connect with any definite antici- 
 pations ; and so this form of it is concrete, historical, and 
 gives human features to the fair ideal His resurrection 
 is the high-water-mark of the Divine power, and to the 
 same level it will rise again in regard to every Christian. 
 That Lord, in the glory of His risen life, and in the 
 riches of the gifts which He received when He ascended 
 up on high, is the pattern for us, and the power which 
 fiilfils its own pattern. In Him we see what man may 
 become, and what His followers must become. The 
 limits of that power will not be reached until every 
 Chnstian soul is perfectly assimilated to that likeness, 
 and bears all its beauty in his face, nor till every Chris- 
 tian soul is raised to participation in Christ's dignity and 
 ats on His throne. Then, and not till then, shall the 
 
VI.] ENDLESS GLORY, 135 
 
 purpose of God be fulfilled and the gift which is measured 
 by the riches of the Father's glory, and the fulness of the 
 Son's grace, be possessed or conceived in its measureles.< 
 measure. 
 
 But there is a third form in which this same standard 
 is represented. That is the form which is found in our 
 text, and in other places of tht Epistle : " According to 
 the Power that worketh in us** 
 
 What power is that but the power of the Spirit of God 
 dwelling in us ? And thus we have the measure, or stand- 
 ard, set forth in terms respectively applying to the Father, 
 the Son, and the Holy Ghost For the first, the riches 
 of His glory; for the seccnd, His resurrection and ascen- 
 sion ; for the third. His energy working in Christian souls. 
 The first, carries us up into the mysteries of God, where 
 the air is almost too subtle for our gross lungs ; the second 
 draws nearer to earth and points us to an historical 
 fact that happened in this every-day world ; the third, 
 comes still nearer to us, and bids us look within, and see 
 wiiCiher what we are conscious of there, if we interpret 
 it by the light of these other measures, will not yield 
 results as great as theirs, and open before us the same 
 fair prospect of perfect holiness and conformity to the 
 Divine nature. 
 
 There is already a Power at work within us, if we be 
 Christians, of whose workings we may be aware, and from 
 them forecast the measure of the gifts which it can be- 
 stow upon us. We may estimate what will be by what 
 we know has been, and by what we feel is. That is to 
 say, in other words, the eflfects abready produced, and the 
 
136 MEASURELESS POWER AND [serm. 
 
 experiences we have already had, cany in them the 
 pledge of completeness. 
 
 I suppose that if the mediaeral dream had ever come 
 true, and an alchemist had ever turned a grain of lead 
 into gold, he could have turned all the lead in the world 
 in time, and with crucibles and furnaces enough. The 
 first step is all the difficulty, and if you and I have been 
 changed from enemies into sons, and had one spark of 
 love to God kindled in our hearts, that is a mightiei 
 change than any that remains to be effected in order to 
 make us perfect One grain has been changed, the 
 whole mass will be in due time. 
 
 The present operations of that power carry in them the 
 pledge of their own completion. The strange mingling 
 of good and evil in our present nature, our aspirations so 
 crossed and contradicted, our resolution so broken and 
 falsified, the gleams of light, and the ecHpses that follow 
 — ^all these, in their opposition to each other, are plainly 
 transitory, and the workings of that Power within us, 
 though they be often overborne, are as plainly the stronger 
 in their nature, and meant to conquer and to endure. 
 Like some half-hewn block, such as travellers find in long 
 abandoned quarries whence Egyptian temples, that were 
 destined never to be completed, were built, our spirits are 
 but partly " poUshed after the simiUtude of a palace, " 
 while much remains in the rough. The builders of these 
 temples have mouldered away, and their unfinished handi- 
 work will lie as it was when the last chisel touched it 
 centuries ago, till the crack of doom ; but stones for God's 
 temple will be wrought to completeness and set in their 
 
VI.] ENDLESS GLORY. I37 
 
 places. The whole threefold Divine cause of our sal- 
 vation supplies the measure, and lays the foundation for 
 our hopes, in the glory of the Father, the grace of the 
 Son, the power of the Holy Ghost Let us lift up our 
 cry: "Perfect that which concemeth me, forsake not 
 the works of Thme own hands," and we shall have for 
 answer the ancient word, fresh as when it sounded long 
 ago from among the stars to the sleeper at the ladder's 
 foot," I will not leave thee, until I have done that which 
 I have spoken to thee oV* 
 
 IL Notice the relatim tf the Divine Working U our 
 thoughts and desires. 
 
 The apostle in his fervid way strains language to ex- 
 press how far the possibility of the Divine working ex- 
 tends. He is able, not only to do all thmgs, but " beyond 
 all thmgs " — a vehement way of putting the boundless 
 reach of that gracious power. And what he means by 
 this " beyond all things '* is more fully expressed in 
 the next words, in which he labours by accumulating 
 synonyms to convey his sense of the transcendent energy 
 which waits to bless : ** exceeding abundantly above what 
 we ask." And as, alas I our desires are but shrunken 
 and narrow beside our thoughts, he sweeps a wider orbit 
 when he adds "above what we think," He has been 
 asking wonderful things, and yet even his farthest-reach- 
 ing petitions fall far on this side of the greatness of God's 
 power. One might think that even it could go no further 
 than filling us " with all the fiilness of God." Nor can 
 it ; but it may far transcend our conceptions of what 
 
138 MEASURELESS POWER AND [serm. 
 
 that is, and astonish us by its surpassing our thoughts, no 
 less than it shames us by exceeding our prayers. 
 
 Of course, all this is true, and is meant to apply, only 
 about the inward gifts of God's grace. I need not re- 
 mind you that, in the outer world of Providence and 
 earthly gifts, prayers and wishes often surpass the answers ; 
 that there a deeper wisdom often contradicts our thoughts 
 and a truer kindness refuses our petitions, and that so the 
 rapturous words of our text are only true in a very modi- 
 fied and partial sense about God' s working /^r us in the 
 world. It is His work in us concerning which they are 
 absolutely true. 
 
 Of course, we know that in all regions of His working 
 He is able to surpass our poor human conceptions, and 
 that, properly speaking, the most famiUar, and, as we 
 insolently call them, " smallest " of His works holds in it 
 a mystery — were it none other than the mystery of Being 
 — against which Thought has been breaking its teeth ever 
 since men began to think at alL 
 
 But as regards the working of God on our spiritual 
 Uves, this passing beyond the bounds of thought and 
 desire is but the necessary result of the fact already dealt 
 with, that the only measure of the power is God Himself, 
 in that Threefold Being. That being so, no plummet of 
 our making can reach to the bottom of the abyss, no 
 strong-winged thought can fly to the outermost bound of 
 the encircUng heaven. Widely as we stretch our reverent 
 conceptions, there is ever something beyond. After we 
 have resolved many a dim white cloud in the starry sky, 
 and found it all ablaze with suns and worlds, there will 
 
▼L] ENDLESS GLORY. I39 
 
 still hang, faint and far before us, hazy magnificences 
 which we have not apprehended. Confidently and boldly 
 as we may offer our prayers and largely as we may expect, 
 the answer is ever more than the petition. For in- 
 deed, in every act of His quickening grace, in every God- 
 given increase of our knowledge of God, in every bestow- 
 ment of His fiilness, there is always more bestowed than 
 we receive, more than we know even while we possess it 
 Like some gift given in the dark, its true preciousness is 
 not discerned when it is first received. The gleam of the 
 gold does not strike our eye all at once. There is ever 
 an unknown margin felt by us to be over after our capa- 
 city of receiving is exhausted. " And they took up of 
 the fragments that remained, twelve baskets full" 
 
 So, then, let us remember that while our thoughts and 
 prayers can never reach to the full perception, or recep- 
 tion either, o! the gift, the exuberant amplitude with which 
 it reaches far beyond both is meant to draw both after it 
 And let us not forget either that, while the grace which 
 we receive has no limit or measure but the fiilness of God, 
 the working limit, which determines what we receive of 
 the grace, is these very thoughts and wishes which it sur- 
 passes. We may have as much of God as we can hold, 
 as much as we wish. All Niagara may roar past a man's 
 door, but only as much as he diverts through his own 
 sluice will drive his mill, or quench his thirst That grace 
 is like the figures in the Eastern tales, that will creep into 
 a narrow room no bigger than a nutshell, or will tower 
 heaven high. - Our spirits are like the magic tent whose 
 walls expanded or contracted at the owner's wish — we 
 
I40 MEASURELESS POWER AND [SERll. 
 
 may enlarge them to enclose far more of the grace than 
 we have ever possessed. We are not straitened in God, 
 but in ourselves. He is " able to do exceeding abun- 
 dantly above what we ask or think," Therefore let us 
 stretch desires and thoughts to their utmost, remcmber- 
 mg that while they can never reach the measure of His 
 grace in itself, they make the practical measure of our 
 possession of it. " According to thy faith, " is a real 
 measure of the gift received, even though " according to 
 the riches of His glory" be the measure of the gift 
 bestowed. Note, again. 
 
 IIL The Glory that springs from the Divine Work, 
 
 ** The glory of God " is the lustre of His own perfect 
 character the bright sum total of all the blended brilliancies 
 that compose His name. When that light is welcomed 
 and adored by men, they are said to " give glory to God " 
 and this doxology is at once a prophecy that the work- 
 ing of God's power on His redeemed children will issue 
 in setting forth the radiance of His name yet more, and a 
 prayer that it may. So we have here the great thought 
 expressed in many places of Scripture, that the highest 
 exhibition of the Divine character for the reverence and 
 love — of the whole universe, shall we say ? — lies in His 
 work on Christian souls, and the effect produced thereby 
 on them. God takes His stand, so to speak, on this 
 great fact in His dealings, and will have His creatures 
 estimate Him by it He reckons it His highest praise 
 that He has redeemed men, and by His dwelling in them, 
 fills them with His own fulness. And this chiefest praise 
 
VI.] ENDLESS GLORY. 
 
 141 
 
 and brightest glory accrues to Him " in the Church in 
 Christ Jesus." The weakening of the latter words into 
 " by Christ Jesus, " as in the English version, is to be 
 regretted, as substituting another thought, Scriptural no 
 doubt and precious, for the precise shade of meaning ''n 
 the apostle's mind here. As has been well said, " the firsi 
 words denote the outward province ; the second, the in- 
 ward and spiritual sphere in which God was to be praised" 
 His glory is to shine in the Church, the theatre of His 
 power, the standing demonstration of the might of re- 
 deeming love. By this He will be judged, and this He 
 will point to if any ask what is His Divinest work, which 
 bears the clearest imprint of His Divinest sel£ His gloiy 
 is to be set forth by men on condition that they arc *' in 
 Christ," living and moving in HQm, in that mysterious 
 but most real union without which no fruit grows on the 
 dead branches, nor any music of praise breaks from dead 
 lips. 
 
 So, then, think of that wonder that God sets His glory 
 in His dealings with us. Amid all the majesty of His 
 works and all the blaze of His creation, this is what He 
 presents as the highest specimen of His power — the 
 Church of Jesus Christ, the company of poor men, wearied 
 and conscious of many evils, who follow afar off the foot- 
 steps of their Lord, How dusty and toil-worn the little 
 group of Christians that landed at Puteoli must have 
 looked as they toiled along the Appian Way and entered 
 Rome ! How contemptuously emperor and philosopher 
 and priest and patrician would have curled their ipi, 
 if they had been told that in that little knot of Jewish 
 
143 MEASURELESS POWER AND [SERM. 
 
 prisoners lay a power before which theirs would cower and 
 fiually fade ! Even so is it stilL Among all the splend- 
 ours of this great universe, and the mere obtrusive taw 
 drin esses of earth, men look upon us Christians as poor 
 enough ; and yet it is to His redeemed children that God 
 has entrusted His praise, and in their hands He has 
 lodged the sacred deposit of His own glory. 
 
 Think loftily of that office and honour, lowly of your- 
 selves who have it laid upon you as a crown. His 
 honour is in our hands. We are the " secretaries of His 
 praise." This is the highest function that any creature 
 can discharge. The Rabbis have a beautiful bit of 
 teaching buried among their rubbish about angels. They 
 say that there are two kinds of angels : the angels of 
 service and the angels of praise, of which two orders the 
 latter is the higher, and that no angel in it praises God 
 twice, but having once lifted up his voice in the psalm of 
 heaven, then perishes and ceases to be. He has per- 
 fected his being, he has reached the height of his great- 
 ness, he has done what he was made for, let him fade 
 away. The garb of legend is mean enough, but the 
 thought it embodies is that ever true and solemn one, 
 without which life is nought ; " Man's chief end is to 
 glorify God." 
 
 And we can only fulfil that high purpose in the 
 measure of our union with Christ. " In Him" abiding, 
 we manifest God's glory, for in Him abiding we receive 
 God's grace. So long as we are joined to Him, we 
 partake of His life, and our lives become music and 
 praise. The electric current flows fi-om Him through all 
 
VI.] ENDLESS GLORY. 143 
 
 souls that are " in Him," and they glow with fair colours 
 which they owe to their contact with Jesus. Interrupt 
 the communication, and all is darkness. So, brethren, 
 let us seek to abide in Him, severed from Whom we are 
 nothing. Then shall we fulfil the purpose of His love. 
 Who " hath shined in. our hearts," that we might give to 
 others " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
 in the face of Jesus Christ" Notice, lastly, 
 
 IV. The Eternity of the Work and of the Praise, 
 
 As in the former clauses, the idea of the transcendent 
 greatness of the power of God was expressed by aeon- 
 mulated synonyms, so here the kindred thought of its 
 eternity, and consequently of the ceaseless duration of 
 the resulting glory, is sought to be set forth by a similar 
 aggregation. The language creaks and labours, as it 
 were, under the weight of the great conception. Lite- 
 rally rendered, the words are — " to all generations of the 
 age of the ages " — a remarkable fusing together of two 
 expressions for unbounded duration, which are scarcely 
 congruous. We can understand " to all generations" as 
 expressive of duration as long as birth and death shall 
 last We can nnderstand "the age of the ages" as 
 pointing to that endless epoch whose moments are 
 " ages "; but the blending of the two is but an uncon- 
 scious acknowledgment that the speech of earth, saturated, 
 as it is, with the colouring of time, bieaks down in the 
 attempt to express the thought of eternity. Undoubtedly 
 that solemn conception is the one intended by tlui 
 strange phrase. 
 
144 MEASURELESS POWER. [SBKM. VL 
 
 The work is to go on for ever and ever, and with it 
 the praise. As the ages which are the beats of the 
 pendulum of eternity come and go, more and more of 
 God's power will flow out to us, and more and more of 
 God's glory will be manifested in us. It must be so. 
 For God's gift is infinite, and man's capacity of reception 
 is indefinitely capable of increase. Therefore eternity 
 will be needful in order that redeemed souls may absorb 
 all of God which He can give or they can take. The 
 process has no limits, for there is no bound to be set to 
 the possible approaches of the human spirit to the Divine, 
 and none to the exuberant abundance of the beauty and 
 glory which God will give to His child. Therefore we 
 shall live for ever : and for ever show forth His praise and 
 blaze out like the sun with the irradiation of His glory. 
 We cannot die till we have exhausted God. Till we 
 comprehend all His nature in our thoughts, and reflect all 
 His beauty in our character ; till we have attained all the 
 bliss that we can think, and received all the good that 
 we can ask; till Hope has nothing before her to reach 
 towards, and God is left behind : we " shall not die, but 
 live, and declare the works of the Lord." 
 
 Let His grace work on you, and yield yourselves to 
 Him, that His fulness may fill your emptiness. So on 
 earth we shall be deUvered from hopes which mock, and 
 wishes that are never fiilfilled. So in heaven, after 
 " ages of ages " of growing glory, we shall have to say, as 
 each new wave of the shoreless, sunlit sea bears us 
 onward, " It doth not yet appear what we shall be ' 
 
SERMON VII. 
 
 LOVE'S TRIUMPH, 
 
 Romans Tiii 38, 39. 
 
 NeiUier daith, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powen^ 
 nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, 
 uot any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the lore 
 of God. 
 
 'X'HESE rapturous words are the climax of the apostle's 
 long demonstration that the Gospel is the revela- 
 tion of " the righteousness of God from faith to faith," 
 and is thereby " the power of God unto salvation." What 
 a contrast there is between the beginning and the end of 
 his argument I It started with sombre, sad words about 
 man's sinfulness and aversion from the knowledge of God. 
 It closes with this sunny outburst of triumph ; like some 
 stream rising among black and barren cliffs, or melancholy 
 moorlands, and foaming through narrow rifts in gloomy, 
 ravines, it reaches at last fertile lands, and flows calm, the 
 sunlight dancing on its broad surface, till it loses itself at 
 last in the unfathomable ocean of the love of God. 
 
 We are told that the Biblical view of human nature is 
 too dark- Well, the important question is not whether it 
 be dark, but whether it be true. But, apart from tlut| 
 
 I. 
 
146 LOVE'S TRIUMPH. [serm, 
 
 the doctrine of Scripture about manVmoral condition is 
 not dark, if you will take the whole of it together. 
 Certainly, a part of it is very dark. The picture, for 
 instance, of what men are, painted at the beginning of 
 this Epistle, is black like a canvas of Rembrandt's. The 
 Bible is " Nature's sternest painter but her best." But 
 to get the whole doctrine of Scripture on the subject, we 
 have to take its confidence as to what men may become, 
 as well as its portrait of what they are — and then who 
 will say that the anthropology of Scripture is gloomy? 
 To me it seems that the unrelieved blackness of the view 
 which, because it admits no fall, can imagine no rise, 
 which sees in all man's sins and sorrows no token of the 
 dominion of an alien power, and has, therefore, no reason 
 to believe that they can be separated from humanity, is 
 the true " Gospel of despair," and that the system which 
 looks steadily at all the misery and all the wickedness, 
 and calmly proposes to cast it all out, is really the only 
 doctrine of human nature which throws any gleam of 
 light on the darkness. Christianity begins indeed with, 
 " There is none that doeth good, no, not one," but it 
 ends with this victorious paean of our text 
 
 And what a majestic close it is to the great words that 
 have gone before, fitly crowning even their lofty height 1 
 One might well shrink from presuming to take such words 
 as a text, with any idea of exhausting or of enhancing 
 them. My object is very much more humble. I simply 
 wish to bring out the remarkable order, in which Paul 
 here marshals, in his passionate, rhetorical amplification, 
 all the enemies that can be supposed to seek to wrench 
 
ni.) LOVE'S TRIUMPH. 147 
 
 us away from the love of God ; and triumphs over them 
 all. We shall best measure the fulness of the words by 
 simply taking these clauses as they stand in the text 
 
 I. The love of God is unaffected hy the extremest 
 changes of our condition. 
 
 The apostle begins his fervid catalogue of vanquished 
 foes by a pair of opposites which might seem to cover 
 the whole ground — " neither death nor life." What more 
 can be said? Surely, these two include everything. 
 From one point of view they do. But yet, as we shall 
 see, there is more to be said. And the special reason for 
 beginning with this pair of possible enemies is probably 
 to be found by remembering that they are a pair, that 
 between them they do cover the whole ground, and 
 represent the extremes of change which can befall us. 
 The one stands at the one pole, the other at the other. 
 If these two stations, so far from each other, are equally 
 near to God's love, then no intermediate point can be far 
 from it. If the most violent change which we can ex- 
 perience does not in the least matter to the grasp which 
 the love of God has on us, or to the grasp which we 
 may have on it, then no less violent a change can be of 
 any consequence. It is the same thought in a somewhat 
 modified form, as we find m another word of Paul's 
 " Whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; and whether 
 we die, we die unto the Lord." Our subordination to 
 Him is the same, and our consecration should be the 
 same in all varieties of condition, even in that greatest 
 of all variations. His love to us makes no account of 
 
 L 2 
 
148 LOVE'S TRIUMPH, [serm 
 
 that mightiest of changes. How should it be affected by 
 slighter ones ? 
 
 The distance of a star is measured by the apparent 
 change in its position, as seen from different points of the 
 earth's surface or orbit But this great Light stands 
 steadfast in our heaven, nor moves a hair's breadth, nor 
 pours a feebler ray on us, whether we look up to it from 
 the midsummer day of busy life, or from the midwinter 
 of death. These opposites are parted by a distance to 
 which the millions of miles of the world's path among the 
 stars are but a point, and yet the love of God streams 
 down on them alike. 
 
 Of course, the confidence of immortality is implied m 
 this thought Death does not, in the slightest degree, 
 affect the essential vitality of the soul ; so it does not, in 
 the slightest degree, affect the outflow of God's love to 
 that souL It is a change of condition and circumstance, 
 and no more. He does not lose us in the dust of death. 
 The withered leaves on the pathway are trampled into 
 mud, and indistinguishable to human eyes ; but He sees 
 them even as when they hung green and sunlit on the 
 mystic tree of life. 
 
 How beautifully this thought contrasts with the saddest 
 aspect of the power of death in our human experience ! 
 He is Death the Separater, who unclasps our hands from 
 the closest, dearest grasp, and divides asunder joints and 
 marrow, and parts soul and body, and withdraws us from 
 all our habitude and associations and occupations, and 
 loosens every bond of society and concord, and hales us 
 away into a lonely land. But there is one bond which 
 
ni.] LOVE'S TRIUMPH. 149 
 
 his " abhorred shears " cannot cut Their edge is turned 
 on //. One Hand holds us in a grasp which the fleshless 
 fingers of Death in vain strive to loosen. The separator 
 becomes the uniter ; he rends us apart from the world 
 that he may " bring us to God." The love filtered by 
 drops on us in life is poured upon us in a flood in death ; 
 " for I am persuaded, that neither death nor life shall be 
 able to separate us from the love of God." 
 
 IL The love of God is undiverUd from us by any piAer 
 
 order of beings, 
 
 " Nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,** says Paul 
 Here we pass from conditions affecting ourselves to living 
 beings beyond ourselves. Now, it is important for under- 
 standing the precise thought of the apostle to observe that 
 this expression, when used without any qualifying adjec- 
 tive, seems uniformly to mean good angels, the hierarchy 
 of blessed spirits before the throne. So that there is no 
 reference to " spiritual wickedness in high places ** striving 
 to draw men away from God. The supposition which 
 the apostle makes is, indeed, an impossible one, that 
 these ministering spirits, who are sent forth to minister 
 to them who shall be heirs of salvation, should so forget 
 their mission and contradict their nature as to seek to bar 
 us out from the love which it is their chiefest joy to bring 
 to us. He knows it to be an impossible supposition, and 
 its very impossibility gives energy to his conclusion, just 
 as when in the same fashion he makes the other equally 
 impossible supposition about an angel from heaven 
 
I50 LOVE'S TRIUMPH, [serm. 
 
 preaching another gospel than that which he had 
 preached to them. 
 
 So we may turn the general thought of this second 
 category of impotent efforts in two different ways, and 
 suggest, first, that it implies the utter powerlessness of 
 any third party in regard to the relations between our 
 souls and God. 
 
 We alone have to do with Him alone. The awful fact 
 of individuality, that solemn mystery of our personal 
 Being, has its most blessed or its most dread manifes- 
 tation in our relation to God. There no other Being has 
 any power. Counsel and stimulus, suggestion or tempt- 
 ation, instruction or lies, which may tend to lead us 
 nearer to Him or away from Him, they may indeed give 
 us ; but after they have done their best or their worst, all 
 depends on the personal act of our own innermost being. 
 Man nor angel can affect that, but from without The 
 old mystics called prayer " the flight of the lonely soul to 
 the only God." It is the name for all religion. These 
 two, God and the soul, have to "transact," as our 
 Puritan forefathers used to say, as if there were no 
 other beings in the universe but only they two. Angels 
 and principalities and powers may stand beholding 
 with sympathetic joy; they may minister blessing and' 
 guardianship in many ways; but the decisive act of 
 union between God and the soul they can neither effect 
 nor prevent 
 
 And as for them, so for men around us ; the limits of 
 their power to harm us are soon set They may shut us 
 out from human love by calumnies, and dig deep gulfs of 
 
VII.] LOVE'S TRIUMPH, 151 
 
 alienation between us and dear ones ; they may hurt and 
 annoy us in a thousand ways with slanderous tongues, 
 and arrows dipped in poisonous hatred. But one thing 
 they cannot do. They may build a wall around us, and 
 imprison us from many a joy and many a fair prospect. 
 But they cannot put a roof on it to keep out the sweet 
 influences from above, or hinder us from looking up to 
 the heavens. Nobody can come between us and God 
 but ourselves. 
 
 Or, we may turn this general thought in another 
 direction, and say, These blessed spirits around the throne 
 do not absorb and intercept His love. They gather 
 about its steps in their " solemn troops and sweet 
 societies ;" but close as are their ranks, and innumerable 
 as is their multitude, they do not prevent that love from 
 passing beyond them to us on the outskirts of the crowd. 
 The planet nearest the sun is drenched and saturated with 
 fiery brightness, but the rays from the centre of hfe pass 
 on to each of the sister spheres in its turn, and travel 
 away outwards to where the remotest of them all rolls in 
 its far-ofif orbit, unknown for millenniums to dwellers closer 
 to the sun, but through all the ages visited by warmth and 
 light according to its needs. Like that poor sickly 
 woman who could lay her wasted fingers on the hem of 
 Christ's garment, notwithstanding the thronging multitude, 
 we can reach our hands through all the crowd, or rather 
 He reaches His strong hand to us and heals and blesses us. 
 All the guests are fed full at that great table. One's gain 
 i& not another's loss. The multitudes sit on the green 
 grass, and the last man of the last fifty gets as much as 
 
152 LOVE'S TRIUMPH, [seril 
 
 the first : " They did all eat, and were filled " ; and more 
 remains than fed them all 
 
 So all beings are " nourished from the King's country," 
 and none jostle others out of their share. This healing 
 fountain is not exhausted of its curative power by the 
 early comers. " I will give unto this last, even as unto 
 thee." " Nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, shall 
 be able to separate us from the love of God." 
 
 III. The love of God is raised above the power of Time, 
 "Nor things present, nor things to come," is the 
 apostle's next class of powers impotent to disunite us 
 from the love of God. The rhythmical arrangement of 
 the text deserves to be noticed, as bearing not only on 
 its music and rhetorical flow, but as affecting its force. 
 We had first a pair of opposites, and then a triplet ; " death 
 and life : angels, principalities, and powers." We have 
 again a pair of opposites; "things present, things to 
 come," again followed by a triplet, " height nor depth, 
 nor any other creature." The effect of this is to divide 
 the whole into two, and to throw the first and second 
 classes more closely together, as also the third and fourth. 
 Time and Space, these two mysterious ideas, which work 
 so fatally on all human love, art powerless here. 
 
 The great Revelation of God, on which the whole of 
 Judaism was built, was that made to Moses of the name 
 " I Am that I Am." And parallel to the verbal revela- 
 tion was that symbol of the Bush, burning and uncon- 
 sumed, which is so often misunderstood. It appears 
 wholly contrary to the usage of Scriptural visions, which 
 
TIL] LOVERS TRIUMPH, 153 
 
 are ever wont to express in material form the same truth 
 which accompanies them in words, that the meaning of 
 that vision should be, as it frequently taken as being, the 
 continuance of Israel, unharmed by the fiery furnace of 
 persecution. Not the continuance of Israel, but the 
 eternity of Israel's God is the teaching of that flaming 
 wonder. The burning Bush and the Name of the Lord 
 proclaimed the same great truth of self-derived, self-deter- 
 mined, timeless, undecaying Being. And what better sym- 
 bol than the bush burning, and yet not burning out, could 
 be found of that God in Whose life there is no tendency 
 to death, Whose work digs no pit of weariness into whidi 
 it falls. Who gives and is none the poorer, Who fears no 
 exhaustion in His spending, no extinction in His continual 
 shining ? 
 
 And this eternity of Being is no mere metaphysical 
 abstraction. It is eternity of love, for God is luv e. That 
 great stream, the pouring out of His own very inmost 
 Being, knows no pause, nor does the deep fountain from 
 which it flows ever sink one hair's breadth in its pure basin. 
 
 We know of earthly loves which cannot die. They 
 have entered so deeply into the very fabric of the soul, 
 that like some cloth dyed in grain, as long as two threads 
 hold together they will retain the tint. We have to 
 thank God for such instances of love stronger than death, 
 which make it easier for us to believe in the unchanging 
 duration of His. But we know, too, of love that can 
 change, and we know that all love must part Few of us 
 have reached middle life, who do not, looking back, see 
 our track strewed with the gaunt skeletons of dead friend- 
 
154 LOVE'S TRIUMPH, [SERM. 
 
 ships, and dotted with " oaks of weeping," waving green 
 and mournful over graves, and saddened by footprints 
 striking away from the line of march, and leaving ui the 
 more solitary for their departure. 
 
 How blessed then to know of a love which cannot 
 change or die ! The past, the present and the future 
 are all the same to Him, to Whom " a thousand years," 
 that can corrode so much of earthly love, are in their 
 power to change " as one day," and " one day," which can 
 hold so few of the expressions of our love, may be " as a 
 thousand years " in the multitude and richness of the gifts 
 which it can be expanded to contain. The whole of 
 what He has been to any past. He is to us to-day. " The 
 God of Jacob is our refuge." All these old-world stories 
 of loving care and guidance may be repeated in our lives. 
 
 So we may bring the blessedness of all the past into 
 the present, and calmly face the misty future, sure that 
 it cannot rob us of His love. 
 
 " Do whate'er thou wOt, swift-footed Time, 
 To this wide world and all her fading sweets," 
 
 it matters not, if only our hearts are stayed on His love, 
 which neither things present, nor things to come, can alter 
 or /emove. Looking on all the flow of ceaseless change, 
 the waste and fading, the alienation and cooling, the de- 
 crepitude and decay of earthly aflfection, we can lift up 
 with gladness, heightened by the contrast, the triumphant 
 song of the ancient Church : " Oh, give thanks unto the 
 Lord : for He is good : because His mercy mdureth fof 
 
VII.] LOVE*S TRIUMPH. 155 
 
 rV. The love of God '\% present everywhere. 
 
 The apostle ends his catalogue with a singular trio of 
 antagonists ; " nor height, nor depth, nor any other crea- 
 ture," as if he had got impatient of the enumeration of 
 impotencies, and having named the outside boundaries in 
 space of the created universe, flings, as it were, with one 
 rapid toss, into that large room the whole that it can 
 contain, and triumphs over it all 
 
 Aa the former clause proclaimed the powerlessness of 
 Time, so this proclaims the powerlessness of that other 
 great mystery of creatural life which we call Space. 
 Height or depth, it matters not. That diffusive love 
 diffuses itself equally in all directions. Up or down, it 
 is all the same. The distance from the centre is equal to 
 Zenith or to Nadir. 
 
 Here, we have the same process applied to that idea of 
 Omnipresence as was applied in the former clause to 
 the idea of Eternity. That thought, so hard to grasp 
 with vividness, and not altogether a glad one to a sinful 
 soul, is all softened and glorified, as some solemn Alpine 
 cliff of bare rock is when the tender morning light glows 
 on it, when it is thought of as the Omnipresence of Love. 
 ** Thou, God, seest me," may be a stem word, if the God 
 Who sees be but a mighty Maker or a righteous Judge. 
 As reasonably might we expect a prisoner in his solitary 
 cell to be glad when he thinks that the jailer's eye is on 
 him from some unseen spy -hole in the wall, as expect 
 any thought of God but one to make a man read that 
 grand one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm with jojr : *' If 
 
H6 LOVE'S TRIUMPH, [serm. 
 
 I ascend into heaven, Thou art there ; if I make my bed 
 in Sheol, behold, Thou art there." So may a man say 
 shudderingly to himself, and tremble as he asks in vain, 
 " Whither shall I flee from Thy Presence?" But how 
 different it all is when we can cast over the marble white- 
 ness of that solemn thought the warm hue of life, and 
 change the form of our words into this of our text : " Nor 
 height, nor depth, shall be able to separate us from the 
 love of God." 
 
 In that great ocean of the Divine love we live and 
 move and have our being, floating in it like some sea 
 flower which spreads its filmy beauty and waves its long 
 tresses in the depths of mid-ocean. The sound of its 
 waters is ever in our ears, and above, beneath, around 
 us, its mighty currents run evermore. We need not 
 cower before the fixed gaze of some stony god, looking 
 on us unmoved like those Egyptian deities that sit pitiless 
 with idle hands on their laps, and wide-open Udless eyes 
 gazing out across the sands. We need not fear the 
 Omnipresence of Love, nor the Omniscience which 
 knows us altogether, and loves us even as it knows. 
 Rather we shall be glad that we are ever in His 
 Presence, and desire, as the height of all felicity and the 
 power for all goodness, to walk all the day long in the 
 light of His countenance, till the day come when we 
 shall receive the crown of our perfecting in that we shall 
 be " ever with the Lord." 
 
 The recognition of this triumphant sovereignty of lov« 
 over all these real and supposed antagonists makes us, 
 too, lords over them, and delivers us from the tempta- 
 
TIL] LOVE'S TRIUMPH, 157 
 
 tions which some of them present us to separate oiir- 
 selves from the love of God. They all become our 
 servants and helpers, uniting us to that love. So we are 
 set free from the dread of death and from the distrac- 
 tions incident to life. So we are delivered from super- 
 stitious dread of an unseen world, and from craven fear 
 of men. So we are emancipated from absorption in the 
 present and from carefid thought for the future. So we 
 are at home everywhere, and every corner of the universe 
 is to us one of the many mansions of our Father's house. 
 "All things are yours, . . . and ye are Chrisfs; and 
 Christ is God's." 
 
 I do not forget the closing words of this great text I 
 have not ventured to include them in our present 
 subject, because they would have introduced another 
 wide region of thought to be laid down on our already 
 too narrow canvas. 
 
 But remember, I beseech you, that this love of God is 
 explained by our apostle to be " in Christ Jesus oiu" 
 Lord." Love illimitable, all-pervasive, eternal; yes, but 
 a love which has a channel and a course ; love which 
 has a method and a process by which it pours itself over 
 the world. It is not, as some representations would 
 make it, a vague, nebulous light diffused through space 
 as in a chaotic, half-made universe, but all gathered in 
 that great Light which rules the day — even in Him Who 
 said I " I am the Light of the World." In Christ the 
 love of God is all centred and embodied, that it may be 
 imparted to all sinful and hungry hearts, even as burning 
 coals are gathered on a hearth that they may give warmth 
 
IS8 LOVE'S TRIUMPH, [serm. VIL 
 
 to all that arc in the house. " God so loved the world" 
 - -not merely so muchy but in such a fashion — " that ** — 
 that what ? Many people would leap at once from the 
 first to the last clause of the verse, and regard eternal 
 life for all and sundry as the only adequate expression of 
 the universal love of God. Not so does Christ speak. 
 Between that universal love and its ultimate purpose and 
 desire for every man He inserts two conditions, one on 
 God's part, one on man's. God's love reaches its end, 
 namely, the bestowal of eternal life, by means of a Divine 
 act and a human response. " God so loved the world, 
 that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever 
 bdieveth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 life." So all the universal love of God for you and me 
 and for all our brethren is " in Christ Jesus our Lord," 
 and faith in Him unites us to it by bonds which no fo^ 
 can break, no shock of change can snap, no time can 
 rot, no distance can stretch to breaking. " For I am 
 persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor 
 principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things 
 to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creatxire, 
 shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which 
 if ui Christ Jesus our Lord." 
 
SERMON VIIL 
 
 mm GRAYS OF THE DEAD JOHN AND TH? GRAVl 
 
 OF THE LIVING JESUS. 
 
 St. Matthew xW. is. 
 
 Aad John*! diidplet came, and took up the bodj, and bviltd 
 it, and went and told Jesus. 
 
 St. Matthew xxriii 8. 
 
 And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with 
 fear and great joy. 
 
 'T*HERE is a remarkable parallel and still more re- 
 markable contrast between these two groups of 
 disciples at the graves of their respective masters. John 
 the Baptist's followers venture into the very jaws of the 
 lion to rescue the headless corse of their martyred teacher 
 from a prison grave. They bear it away and lay it 
 reverently in its unknown sepulchre, and when they have 
 done these last offices of love they feel that all is over. 
 They have no longer a centre, and they disintegrate. 
 There was nothing to hold them together any more. 
 The shepherd had been smitten, and the flock were 
 icattered. As a " school " or a distinct community they 
 rease to be. and are mostly absorbed into the ranks of 
 
i6o THE GRAVE OF THE DEAD JOHN [serm. 
 
 Christ's followers. That sorrowful little company that 
 turned from John's grave, perhaps amidst the grim rocks 
 of Moab, perhaps in his native city amongst the hills of 
 Judah, parted, then, to meet no more, and to bear away 
 only a common sorrow that time would comfort, and a 
 common memory that time would dim. 
 
 The other group laid their martyred Master in his 
 grave with as tender hands and as little hope as did 
 John's disciples. The bond that held them together was 
 gone too, and the disintegrating process began at once. 
 We see them breaking up into little knots, and soon they, 
 too, will be scattered. The women come to the grave to 
 perform the woman's office of anointing, and they are left 
 to go alone. Other slight hints are given which show 
 how much the ties of companionship had been relaxed, 
 even m a day, and how certainly and quickly they would 
 have &llen asunder. But all at once a new element 
 comes in, all is changed. The earliest visitors to the 
 sepulchre leave it, not with the lingering sorrow of those 
 who have no more that they can do, but with the quick 
 buoyant step of people charged with great and glad 
 tidings. They come to it wrapped in grief— they leave 
 it with great joy. They come to it, feeling that all wag 
 over, and their union with the rest who had loved Him 
 was little more than a remembrance. They go away 
 feeHng that they are bound together more closely than 
 ever. 
 
 The grave of John was the end of a " school " The 
 grave of Jesus was the beginning of a Church. Why ? 
 The only answer is the message which the womta 
 
nil.] AND THE GRA VE OF THE LIVING JESUS, 161 
 
 •-./ought back from the empty sepulchre on that Easter 
 iay : " The Lord b risen." The whole history of the 
 Christian Church, and even its very existence, is unintel- 
 ligible, except on the supposition of the resurrection. 
 But for that, the fate of John's disciples would have been 
 the fate of Christ's — they would have melted away into 
 the mass of the nation, and at most there would have 
 peen one more petty Galilean sect, that would have lived 
 on for a generation and died out when the last of his 
 fsompanions died. 
 
 So from these two contrasted groups we may fairly 
 gather some thoughts as to the Resurrection of Christ, as 
 Attested by the very existence of a Christian Church, 
 And as to the joy of that resurrection. 
 
 L Now the first point to be considered is, That the 
 conduct of Christ's disciples after His death was exactly 
 ^e opposite of what might have been expected. 
 
 They held together. The natural thing for them to do 
 would have been to disband ; for the one bond was gone ; 
 and if they had acted according to the ordinary laws of 
 human conduct they would have said to themselves, Let 
 us go back to our fishing-boats and our tax-gathering, and 
 seek safety in separation, and nurse our sorrow apart 
 A few lingering days might have been given to weep to- 
 gether at His grave, and to assuage the first bitterness 
 of grief and disappointment ; but when these were over, 
 nothiMg could have prevented Christianity and the Church 
 from being buried in the same sepulchre as Jesus. Ai 
 certainly as the stopping up of the fountain would emp^ 
 
 II 
 
i6a THE GRA VE OF THE DEAD JOHN [serm. 
 
 the river's bed, so surely would Christ's death have 
 scattered His disciples. And that strange fact, that it did 
 not scatter them, needs to be looked well into and fairly 
 accounted for in some plausible manner. The end cA 
 John's school gives a parallel which brings the singularity 
 of the fact into stronger relief ; and looking at these two 
 groups as they stand before ui in these two texts, the 
 question is irresistibly suggested, Why did not the one 
 fall away into its separate elements, as the other did? 
 The keystone of the arch was in both cases withdrawn 
 — ^why did the one structure topple into ruin while the 
 other stood firm ? 
 
 Not only did the disciples of Christ keep united, but 
 their conceptions of Jesus underwent a remarkable 
 change, on His death. We might have expected indeed 
 that, when memory began to work, and the disturbing 
 influence of daily association was withdrawn, the same 
 idealising process would have begun on their image of 
 Him, which reveals and ennobles the characters of our 
 dear ones who have gone away from us. Most men have 
 to die before their true beauty is discerned. But no 
 process of that sort will suffice to account for the change 
 and heightening of the disciples' thoughts about their 
 dead Lord. It was not merely that, as they remembered, 
 they said. Did not our hearts bum within us by the way 
 while He talked with us ? — ^but that His death wrought 
 exactly the opposite eflfect from what it might have been 
 expected to do. It ought to have ended their hope that 
 He was the Messiah, and we know that within forty-eight 
 lM>uri it was beginnmg to do fo, as we learn from tk« 
 
viii] AND THE GRA VE OF THE LIVING JESUS, 163 
 
 plaintive words of disappointed and fading hope ; " We 
 trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed 
 Israel" If, so early, the cold conviction was stealing 
 over their hearts that their dearest expectation was 
 proved by His death to have been a dream, what could 
 have prevented its entire dominion over them, as the days 
 grew into months and years ? But somehow or other that 
 process was arrested, and the opposite one set in. The 
 death that should have shattered Messianic dreams con- 
 firmed them. The death that should have cast a deeper 
 shadow of incomprehensibleness over His strange and 
 lofty claims poured a new light upon them, which made 
 them all plain and clear. The very parts of His teaching 
 which His death would have made those who loved Him 
 wish to forget, became the centre of His followers' faith. 
 His cross became His throne. Whilst He lived with 
 them they knew not what He said in His deepest words, 
 but, by a strange paradox, His death convinced them that 
 He was the Son of God, and that that which they had 
 seen with their eyes, and their hands hid handled, was 
 the Eternal Life. The cross alone could never have 
 done that Something else there must have been, if the 
 men were sane, to account for this paradox. 
 
 Nor is this alL Another equally unlikely sequel of the 
 death of Jesus is the unmistakable moral transformation 
 effected on the disciples. Timorous and tremulous before, 
 something or other touched them into altogether new bold- 
 ness and self-possession. Dependent on His presence 
 before, and helpless >% hen He was away from them for an 
 hour, the> become all at once strong and calm ; they stand 
 
 M a 
 
i64 THE GRA VE OF THE DEAD JOHN [serm. 
 
 before the fury of a Jewish mob and the threatenings of 
 the Sanhedrim, unmoved and victorious. And these brave 
 confessors and saintly heroes are the men who, a few 
 weeks before, had been petulant, self-willed, jealous, 
 cowardly. What had lifted them suddenly so far above 
 themselves ? Their Master's death ? That would more 
 naturally have taken any heart or courage out of them, 
 and left them indeed as sheep in the midst of wolves. 
 Why, then, do they thus strangely blaze up into grandeur 
 and heroism ? Can any reasonable account be given of 
 these paradoxes ? Surely it is not too much to ask of 
 people who profess to explain Christianity on naturalistic 
 principles, that they shall make the process clear to us 
 by which, Christ being dead and buried, His disciples 
 were kept together, learned to think more loftily of Him 
 and sprang at once to a new grandeur of character. 
 Why did not they do as John's disciples did, and dis- 
 appear ? Why was not the stream lost in the sand, when 
 the head-waters were cut off! 
 
 IL Notice then, next, that the disciples' immediate 
 belief in the Resurrection furnishes a reasonable, and the 
 only reasonable, explanation of the facts. There is no 
 better historical evidence of a fact than the existence 
 of an institution built upon it, and coeval with it The 
 Christian Church is such evidence for the fact of the 
 resurrection ; or, to put the conclusion in the most mod- 
 erate fashion, for the belief in the resurrection. For, as 
 we have shown, the natural effect of our Lord's death 
 would have been to shatter the whole fabric : and if that 
 
yiil.] AND THE GRA VE OF THE LIVING JESUS, 165 
 
 effect were not produced, the only reasonable account of 
 the force that hindered it is, that His followers believed 
 that He rose again. Since that was their faith, one can 
 understand how they were banded more closely together 
 than ever. One can understand how their eyes were 
 opened to know Him who was " declared to be the Son of 
 God with power by the resurrection from the dead." 
 One can understand how, in the enthusiasm of these new 
 thoughts of their Lord, and in the strength of His victory 
 over death, they put aside their old fears and littlenesses 
 and clothed themselves in armour of light " The Lord 
 is risen indeed " was the belief which made the continuous 
 existence of the Church possible. Any other explanation 
 of that great outstanding fact is lame and hopelessly in- 
 sufficient 
 
 We know that that belief was the belief of the early 
 Church. Even if one waived all reference to the gospels 
 we have the means of demonstrating that in Paul's undis- 
 puted epistles. Nobody has questioned that he wrote 
 the First Epistle to the Corinthians. The date most 
 generally assumed to that letter brings it within about 
 five-and-twenty years of the crucifixion. In that letter, 
 in addition to a multitude of incidental references to the 
 Lord as risen, we have the great passage in the fifteenth 
 chapter, where the apostle not only declares that the 
 Resurrection was one of the two facts which made his 
 " gospel," but solemnly enumerates the witnesses of the 
 risen Lord, and alleges that this gospel of the resurrection 
 was common to him and to all the Church. He tells us 
 Df Christ's appearance to himself at his conversion, which 
 
i66 THE GRA VE OF THE DEAD JOHN [seru. 
 
 must have taken place within six or seven years of the 
 crucifixion, and assures us that at that early period he 
 found the whole Church believing and preaching Christ's 
 resurrection. Their belief rested on their alleged inter- 
 course with Him a few days after his death, and it is in- 
 conceivable that within so short a period such a belief 
 should have sprung up and been universally received if 
 it had not begun when and as they said it did. 
 
 But we are not left even to inferences of this kind to 
 ghow that from the beginning the Church witnessed to 
 the resurrection of Jesus. Its own existence is the great 
 witness to its faith. And it is important to observe that, 
 even if we had not the documentary evidence of the 
 Pauline epistles as the earliest records of the gospels, and 
 of the Acts of the Apostles, we should still have sufficient 
 proof that the belief in the resurrection is as old as the 
 Church. For the continuance of the Church cannot be 
 explained without it If that faith had not dawned on 
 their slow sad hearts on that Easter morning, a few weeks 
 would have seen them scattered : and if once they had 
 been scattered, as they inevitably would have been, no 
 power could have reunited them, any more than a 
 diamond once shattered can be pieced together again. 
 There would have been no motive and no actors to frame 
 a itory of resurrection when once the little company had 
 melted away. The existence of the Church depended on 
 their belief that the Lord was risen. In the nature of 
 the case that belief must have followed immediately on 
 his death. It, and it only, reasonably accounts for the 
 fiicti. And 80, over and above apostles, and gospels. 
 
VIII.] AND THE GR. J VE OF THE LIVING JESUS, 167 
 
 and epistles, the Qiarch is the great witness, by its very 
 being, to its own immediate and continuous belief in the 
 resurrection of oir Lord. 
 
 III. Agair^ re may remark that such a belief could 
 noi have nrir^inated or maintained itself unless it had 
 been trie. 
 
 Our previous remarks have gone no farther than to 
 estabhsh the belief in the resurrection of Christ, as the 
 basis of primitive Christianity. It is vehemently alleged, 
 and we may freely admit, that the step is a long one 
 from subjective behef to objective reality. But still it is 
 surely perfectly fair to argue that a given belief is of such 
 a nature that it cmnot be supposed to rest on anything 
 less solid than a fact ; and this is eminently the case in 
 regard to the belief in Christ's resurrection. There have 
 been many attempts on the part of those who reject that 
 belief to account for its existence, and each of them in 
 succession h/.s " had its day, and ceased to be." Un- 
 belief devi^urs its own children remorselessly, and the 
 succession to the throne of anti-christian scepticism is 
 won, r.s in some barbarous tribes, by slaying the reigning 
 sovereign. The armies of the aliens turn their weapons 
 again:»t one another, and each new assailant of the 
 historical veracity of the gospels commences operations 
 by showing that all previous assailants have been 
 wrong, and that none of their explanations will hold 
 water. 
 
 For instance, we hear nothing now of the coarse old 
 explanation th&r the story of the resurrection was a li«^ 
 
i68 THE GRA VE OF THE DEAD JOHN [serm. 
 
 and became current through the conscious imposture of 
 the leaders of the Church. And it was high time that 
 such a solution should be laid aside. Who, with half an 
 eye for character, could study the deeds and the writings 
 of the apostles, and not feel that, whatever else they 
 were, they were profoundly honest, and as convinced as 
 of their own existence, that they had seen Christ ** alive 
 after His passion, by many infallible proofs " ? If Paul 
 and Peter and John were conspirators in a trick, then 
 their lives and their words were the most astounding 
 anomaly. Who, either, that had the faintest perception 
 of the forces that sway opinion and frame systems, could 
 believe that the fair fabric of Christian morality was built 
 on the sand of a lie, and cemented by the slime of deceit 
 bubbling up from the very pit of hell ? Do men gather 
 grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? That insolent 
 hypothesis has had its day. 
 
 Then when it was discredited, we were told the myth- 
 ical tendency would explain everything. It showed us 
 how good men could tell hes without knowing it, and 
 how the religious value of an alleged fact in an alleged 
 historical revelation did not in the least depend on its 
 being a fact And that great discovery, which first con- 
 verted soHd historical Christianity into a gaseous condi- 
 tion, and then caught the fumes in some kind of retort, 
 and professed to hand us them back again improved by 
 the sublimation, has pretty well gone the way of all hy- 
 potheses. Myths are not made in three days, or in three 
 years, and no more time can be allowed for the formation 
 of the myth of the resurrection. What was the Church 
 
nn.^AND THE GRAVE OF THE LIVING JESC/S. 169 
 
 to feed on while the myth was growing ? It would have 
 been starved to death long before. 
 
 Then, the last new explanation which is gravely put 
 forward, and is the prevailing one now, sustains itself by 
 reference to undeniable facts in the history of religious 
 movements, and of such abnormal attitudes of the mind 
 as modem spiritualism. On the strength of which ana- 
 logy we are invited to see in the faith of the early Chris- 
 tians in the resurrection of the Lord a gigantic instance of 
 "hallucination." No doubt there have been, and still 
 arc, extraordinary instances of its power, especially in 
 minds excited by religious ideas. But we have only to 
 consider the details of the facts in hand to feel that they 
 cannot be accounted for on such a ground. Do halluci- 
 nations lay hold on five hundred people at once ? Does a 
 hallucination last for a long country walk, and give rise 
 to protracted conversation ? Does hallucination explain 
 the story of Christ eating and drinking before His dis- 
 ciples ? The uncertain twilight of the garden might have 
 begotten such an airy phantom in the brain of a single 
 sobbing woman ; but the appearances to be explained 
 are so numerous, so varied in character, embrace so 
 many details, appeal to so many of the senses — to the ear 
 and hand as well as to the eye — were spread over so 
 long a period, and were simultaneously shared by so large 
 a number, that no theory of such a sort can account for 
 them, unless by impugning the veracity of the records. 
 And then we are back again on the old abandoned 
 ground of deceit and imposture. It sounds plausible to 
 say, Hallucination is a proved cause of many a supposed 
 
I70 THE GRA VE OF THE DEAD JOHN [SERM. 
 
 supernatural event — why not of this? But the plausi- 
 bihty of the solution ceases as soon as you try it on the 
 actual facts in their variety and completeness. It has 
 to be eked out with a length of the fox's skin of deceit 
 before it covers them j and we may confidently assert 
 that such a belief as the belief of the early Church in the 
 resurrection of the Lord was never the product either of 
 deceit or of illusion, or of any amalgam of the two. 
 
 What new solutions the fertility of unbelief may yet 
 bring forth, and the credulity of unbelief may yet accept, 
 we know not : but we may firmly hold by the faith which 
 breathed new hope and strange joy into that sad band 
 on the first Easter morning, and rejoice with them in 
 the glad wonderful fact that He is risen from the dead. 
 
 rV. For that message is a message to us as truly as to 
 the heavy-hearted unbelieving men that first received it 
 We may think for a moment of the joy with which we 
 should return from the sepulchre of the risen Saviour. 
 
 How httle these women knew that, as they went back 
 from the grave in the morning twilight, they were the 
 bearers of " great joy which should be to all people ! " 
 To them and to the first hearers of their message there 
 would be litde clear in the rush of glad surprise, beyond 
 the blessed thought, Then He is not gone firom us alto- 
 gether. Sweet visions of the resumption of happy com- 
 panionship would fill their minds, and it would not be 
 until calmer moments that the stupendous significance 
 of the fact would reveal itsel£ 
 
 Mary's rapturous gesture to clasp Him bj the feet. 
 
Tin.] AND THE GRA VE OF THE LIVING JESUS. 171 
 
 when the certainty that it was in very deed He, flooded 
 her soul with dazzling light, reveals her first emotion, 
 which no doubt was also the first with them all, " Then 
 we shall have Him with us again, and all the old joy of 
 companionship will be ours once more." Nor were they 
 wrong in thinking so, however httle they as yet under- 
 stood the future manner of their fellowship, or antici- 
 pated His leaving them so soon. Nor are we without a 
 share even in that phase of their joy ; for the resurrec- 
 tion of Jesus Christ gives us a living Lord for our love, 
 an ever present Companion and Brother for our hearts 
 to hold, even if our hands cannot clasp Him by the feet 
 A dead Christ might have been the object of faint his- 
 torical admiration, and the fair statue might have stood 
 amidst others in the halls of the world j but the risen, 
 living Christ can love and be loved, and we too may 
 be glad with the joy of those who have found a heart to 
 rest their hearts upon, and a companionship that can 
 never fail 
 
 As the early disciples learned to reflect upon the fact 
 of Christ's resurrection, its riches unfolded themselves by 
 degrees, and the earliest aspect of its " power " was the 
 light it shed on His person and work. Taught by it, as 
 we have seen, they recognised Him for the Messiah 
 whom they had long expected, and for something more 
 — the Incarnate Son of God. That phase of their joy 
 belongs to us too. If Christ, who made such avowals of 
 His nature as we know He did, and hazarded such 
 assertions of His claims, His personality and His ofllce, 
 as fill the gospels, were really laid in the grave aad taw 
 
172 THE GRA VE OF THE DEAD JOHN [serm. 
 
 corruption, then the assertions are disproved, the claims 
 unwarranted, the office a figment of His imagination. 
 He may still remain a great teacher, with a tremendous 
 deduction to be made from the worth of His teaching. 
 But all that is deepest in His own words about Himself, 
 and His relation to men, must be sorrowfully put on one 
 side. But if He, after such assertions and claims, rose 
 from the dead, and rising, dieth no more, then for the 
 last time, and in the mightiest tones, the voice that rent 
 the heavens at His baptism and His transfiguration 
 proclaims: "This is My beloved Son; hear ye Him." 
 Our joy in His resurrection is the joy of those to whom 
 He is therein declared to be the Son of God, and who 
 see in Christ risen their accepted Sacrifice, and their 
 ever-living Redeemer. 
 
 Such was the earliest effect of the resurrection of 
 Jesus, if we trust the records of apostolic preaching. 
 Then by degrees the joyful thought took shape in the 
 Church's consciousness that their Shepherd had gone 
 before them into the dark pen where Death pastured his 
 flocks, and had taken it for His own, for the quiet resting- 
 place where He would make them He down by still 
 waters, and whence He would lead them out to the lofty 
 mountains where His fold should be. The power of 
 Christ's resurrection as the pattern and pledge of ours is 
 the final source of the joy which may fill our hearts as 
 we turn away from that empty sepulchre. 
 
 The world has guessed and feared, or guessed and 
 hoped, but always guessed and doubted the life beyond. 
 AzulogieSy poetic adumbrations, probabilities drawn from 
 
VIII.] AND THE GRA VE OF THE LIVING JESUS. 173 
 
 consciousness and from conscience, from intuition and 
 from anticipation, are but poor foundations on which to 
 build a soHd faith. But to those to whom the resurrec- 
 tion of Christ is a fact their own future Kfe is a fact. 
 Here we have a sohd certainty, and here alone. The 
 heart says as we lay our dear ones in the grave, "Surely 
 we part not for ever." The conscience says, as it points 
 us to our own evil deeds, " After death the judgment." 
 A deep indestructible instinct prophesies in every breast 
 of a future. But all is vague and doubtful. The one 
 proof of a life beyond the grave is the resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ Therefore let us be glad with the gladness 
 of men plucked from a dark abyss of doubt and un- 
 certainty, and planted on the rock of solid certainty ; 
 and let us rejoice with joy unspeakable, and laden with 
 A prophetic weight of glory, as we ring out the ancient 
 Easter morning's greeting, " The Lord is risen indeed I " 
 
SERMON IX. 
 
 THB TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH AND THE 
 ASCENSION OF CHRIST. 
 
 3 Kings ii ii. 
 
 And it came to past, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, 
 there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted 
 them both asunder ; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into 
 heaven. 
 
 St. Luke xxIt. 51. 
 
 And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted 
 from them, and carried up into heaven. 
 
 HTHESE two events, the Translation of Elijah and the 
 •*• Ascension of our Lord, have sometimes been put 
 side by side in order to show that the latter narrative is 
 nothing but a " variant " of the former. See, it is said, 
 the source of your New Testament story is only the old 
 legend shaped anew by the wistful regrets of the early 
 disciples. But to me it seems that the simple comparison 
 of the two narratives is sufficient to bring out such funda- 
 mental difference in the ideas which they respectively em- 
 body as amount to opposition, and make any such theory 
 of the origin of the later absurdly improbable. I could 
 wish no better foil for the history of the ascension than 
 the history of Elijah's rapture. The comparison brings 
 
SKRiL IX.] THE TRANSLA TION OF ELIJAH, 17s 
 
 out contrasti at every step, and there is no readier way of 
 throwing mto strong relief the meaning and purpose of the 
 former, than holding up beside it the story of the latter. 
 The real parallel makes the divergences the more remark- 
 able, for likeness sharpens our perception of unlikeness, 
 and no contrast is so forcible as the contrast of things that 
 correspond. I am much mistaken if we shall not find al- 
 most every truth of importance connected with our Lord's 
 ascension emphasised for us by the comparison to which 
 we now proceed. 
 
 I. The first point which may be mentioned ii the con- 
 trast between the manner of Elijah's translation, and that 
 of our Lord's ascension. 
 
 It is perhaps not without significance that the place of 
 the one event was on the uplands or in some of the rocky 
 gorges beyond Jordan, and that of the other, the slopes 
 of Ohvet above Bethany. The lonely prophet, who had 
 burst like a meteor on Israel from the solitudes of Gilead, 
 whose fervour had ever and again been rekindled by re- 
 turn to the wilderness, whose whole career had isolated 
 him from men, found the fitting place for that last wonder 
 amidst the stem silence where he had so often sought 
 asylum and inspiration. He was close to the scenes of 
 mighty events in the past There, on that overhanging 
 peak, the lawgiver whose work he was continuing and 
 with whom he was to be so strangely associated on the 
 Mount of Transfiguration, had made him ready for his 
 lonely grave. Here at his feet, the river had parted for 
 the victorious inarch of Israel Away down oa hb 
 
176 THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH [serm. 
 
 horizon the sunshine gleamed on the waters of the Dead 
 Sea ; and thus, on his native soil, surrounded by memo- 
 rials of the Law which he laboured to restore, and of the 
 victories which he would fain have brought back, and of 
 the judgments which he saw again impending over Israel, 
 tiie stem solitary ascetic, the prophet of righteousness, 
 whose single arm stayed the downward course of a nation, 
 passed from his toil and his warfare. 
 
 What a different set of associations cluster round the 
 place of Christ's ascension — " Bethany," or, as it is more 
 particularly specified in the Acts, " Olivet 1 " In the 
 very heart of the land, close by and yet out of sight of 
 the great city, in no wild solitude, but perhaps in some 
 dimple of the hill, neither shunning nor courting spec- 
 ators, with the quiet home where he had rested so often 
 m the little village at their feet there, and Gethsemane 
 a few furlongs off, in such scenes did the Christ whose 
 delights were with the sons of men, and His life lived in 
 closest companionship with His brethren, choose the place 
 whence He should ascend lo their Father and His Father. 
 Nor perhaps was it without a meaning that the Mount 
 which received the last print of His ascending footstep 
 was that which a mysterious prophecy designated as 
 destined to receive the first print of the footstep of the 
 Lord coming to end the long warfare with evil at a future 
 day. 
 
 But more important than the localities is the contrasted 
 manner of the two ascents. The prophet's end was like 
 the man. It was fitting that he should be swept up the 
 skies in tempest and fire. The impetuosity of bis nature, 
 
IX.] AND THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST, ip 
 
 and the stormy energy of his career had already been 
 symboUsed in the mighty and strong wind which rent the 
 rocks, and in the fire that followed the earthquake ; and 
 similarly nothing could be more appropriate than that 
 sudden rapture in storm and whirlwind, escorted by the 
 flaming chivalry of heaven. 
 
 Nor is it only as appropriate to the character of the 
 prophet and his work that this tempestuous translation 
 is noteworthy. It also suggests very plainly that Ehjah 
 was lifted to the skies by power acting on him from 
 without He did not ascend; he was carried up; the 
 earthly frame and the human nature had no power to 
 rise. " No man hath ascended into heaven." The two 
 men of whom the Old Testament speaks were aUke in 
 this, that " God took them," The tempest and the fiery 
 chariot tell us how great was the exercise of Divine power 
 which bore the gross mortality thither, and how unfamiliar 
 the sphere into which it passed. 
 
 How full of the very spirit of Christ's whole life is the 
 contrasted manner of His ascension I The silent gentle- 
 ness, which did not strive nor cry nor cause His voice to 
 be heard in the streets, marks Him even in that hour of 
 lofty and transcendent triumph. There is no outward 
 sign to accompany His slow upward movement through 
 the quiet air. No blaze of fiery chariots, nor agitation 
 of tempest is needed to bear Him heavenwards. The 
 out-stretched hands drop the dew of His benediction on 
 the little company, and so He floats upward. His own will 
 and indweUing power the royal chariot which bears 
 him, and calmly ** leaves the world and goes unto the 
 
 M 
 
178 THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH [serm. 
 
 Father.** The slow continuous movement of ascent is 
 emphatically made prominent in the brief narratives, both 
 by the phrase in Luke, " He was carried up," which 
 expresses the continuous leisurely motion, and by the 
 picture in the Acts, of the disciples gazing into heaven 
 " as He went up," in which latter word is brought out, 
 not only the slowness of the movement, but its origin in 
 His own will and its carrying out by His own power. 
 
 Nor is this absence of any vehicle or external agency 
 destroyed by the fact that " a cloud " received Him out of 
 their sight, for its purpose was not to raise Him heaven- 
 ward, but to hide Him from the gazers* eyes, that He 
 might not seem to them to dwindle into distance, but 
 that their last look and memory might be of His clearly 
 discerned and loving face. Possibly too, we may be 
 intended to remember the cloud which guided Israel, the 
 glory which dwelt between the cherubim, the cloud which 
 overshadowed the Mount of Transfiguration, and to see 
 in this a symbol of the Divine Presence welcoming to 
 itself, His battle fought, the Son of His love. 
 
 Be that as it may, the manner of our Lord's ascension 
 by His own inherent power is brought into boldest relief 
 when contrasted with Elijah's rapture, and is evidently 
 the fitting expression, as it is the consequence, of His sole 
 and singular Divine nature. It accords with His own 
 manner of reference to the ascension, while He was on 
 earth, which ever represents Him not as being taken^ but 
 as going: *'I leave the world and go to the Father." 
 " I ascend to my Father and their Father," The highest 
 lM)pc of the devoutest souls before Him had been, '' Thou 
 
DL] AND THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST. 179 
 
 wilt afterwards take me to glory." The highest hope of 
 devout souls since Him has been, " We shall be caught 
 up to meet the Lord." But this man ever speaks of 
 Himself as able when He will, by His own power, to rise 
 where no man hath ascended. His Divine nature and 
 pre-existence shine clearly forth, and as we stand gazing 
 at Him blessing the world as He rises into the heavens, 
 we know that we are looking on no mere mysterious 
 elevation of a mortal to the skies, but are beholding the 
 return of the Incarnate Lord, that willed to tarry among 
 our eartlily tabernacles for a time, to the glory where 
 He was before, ** His own calm home, His habitation from 
 etemitj." 
 
 n. Another striking point of contrast embraces tht 
 relation which these two events respectively bear to thi 
 lifis work which had preceded them. 
 
 The falling mantle of Elijah has become a symbol 
 known to all the world, for the transference of unfinished 
 tasks and the appointment of successors to departed 
 greatness. Elisha asked that he might have a double 
 portion of his master's spirit, not meaning twice as much 
 as his master had had, but the eldest son's share of the 
 father's possessions, the double of the other children's 
 portion. And, though his master had no power to 
 bestow the gift, and had to reply as one who has nothing 
 that he has not received, and cannot dispose of the grace 
 that dwells in him, the prayer was answered, and the 
 feebler nature of Elisha was fitted for the continuance of 
 the work which Elijah left undone. 
 
i8o THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH [serm. 
 
 The mantle that passed from one to the other was the 
 symbol of office and authority transferred ; the functions 
 were the same, whilst the holders had changed. The sons 
 of the prophets bow before the new master ; " the spirit 
 of Elijah doth rest on Eiisha." 
 
 So the world goes on. Man after man serves his 
 generation by the will of God, and is gathered to his 
 fathers; and a new arm grasps the mantie to smite 
 Jordan, and a new voice speaks from his empty place, 
 and men recognise the successor, and forget the pre- 
 decessor. 
 
 We turn to Christ's ascension, and there we meet with 
 nothing analogous to this transference of office. No 
 mantle falling from His shoulders lights on any of that 
 group, none are hailed as His successors. What He has 
 done bears and needs no repetition whilst time shall roll, 
 whilst eternity shall last His work is one ; " the help 
 that is done on earth, He doeth it all Himselfl" His 
 ascension completed the witness of heaven begun at His 
 resurrection that ** He has offered one sacrifice for sins, 
 for ever." He has left no unfinished work which another 
 may perfect He has done no work which another 
 may do again for new generations. He has spoken all 
 truth, and none may add to His words. He has fulfilled 
 all righteousness, and none may better His pattern. He 
 has borne all the world's sin, and no time can waste the 
 power of that sacrifice, nor any man add to its absolute 
 sufficiency. This king of men wears a crown to which 
 there is no heir. This priest has a priesthood which 
 passci to no other. This ^* prophet ** does "live for 
 
IX.] AND THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST. i8i 
 
 ever." The world sees all other guides and helpers pass 
 away, and every man's work is caught up by other hands 
 and carried on where he drops it, and the short memories 
 and shorter gratitudes of men turn to the rising sun ; but 
 one name remains undimmed by distance, and one work 
 remains unapproached and unapproachable, and one man 
 remains whose office none other can hold, whose bow none 
 but He can bend, whose mantle none can wear. Christ 
 has ascended up on high and left a finished work foi 
 all men to trust, for no man to continue, 
 
 III. Whilst our Lord's ascension is thus marked as the 
 seal of a work in which He has no successor, it is also 
 emphatically set forth, by contrast with Elijah's translation, 
 as the transition to a continuous energy for and in the 
 world. 
 
 Clearly the other narrative derives all its pathos from 
 the thought that Elijah's work is done. His task is over, 
 and nothing more is to be hoped for from him. But that 
 same absence from the history of Christ's ascension, o! 
 any hint of a successor, to which we have referred in the 
 previous remarks, has an obvious bearing on His present 
 relation to the world as well as on the completeness of 
 His unique past work. 
 
 When He ascended up on high. He rchnquished 
 nothing of His activity for us, but only cast it into a new 
 form, which in some sense is yet higher than that which 
 it took on earth. His work for the world is in one 
 aspect completed on the cross, but in another it will 
 never be completed until all the blessings which that 
 
x82 THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH [serm. 
 
 cross has lodged in the midst of humanity, have reached 
 their widest possible diffusion and their highest possible 
 development Long ages ago He cried, '* It is finished," 
 but we may be far yet from the time when He shall say, 
 " It is done ; " and for all the slow years between His own 
 word gives us the law of his activity, " My father worketh 
 hitherto, and I work." 
 
 That ascension is no withdrawal of the Captain of our 
 salvation from the field where we are left to fight, nor 
 has He gone up to the mountain, leaving us alone to tug 
 at the oar, and shiver in the cold night air. True, there 
 may seem a strange contrast between the present condi- 
 tion of the Lord who " was received up into heaven, and 
 sat on the right hand of God," and that of the servants 
 wandering through the world on His business ; but the 
 contrast is harmonised by the next words, " the Lord 
 also worketh with them." Yes, He has gone up to sit at 
 the right hand of God. That session at God's right hand 
 to which the ascension is chiefly of importance as the 
 transition, means the repose of a perfected redemption^ 
 the communion of Divine worship, the exercise of all the 
 omnipotence of God, the administration of the world's 
 history. He has ascended that He might fill all things, 
 that He might pour out His spirit upon us, that the path 
 to God may be trodden by our lame feet, that the whole 
 resources of the Divine nature may be wielded by the 
 hands that were nailed to the cross, and for the further- 
 ance of the same mighty purpose of salvation. 
 
 Elijah knew not whether his spirit could descend upon 
 his follower. But Christ, though as we have said, He 
 
IX.] AND THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST. 183 
 
 left no legaqr of falling mantle to any, left His spirit to 
 His people. What Elisha gained, Elijah lost What 
 Elisha desired, Elijah could not give nor guarantee. 
 How firm and assured beside Elijah's dubious "Thou 
 hast asked a hard thing," and his " If thou see me, it shall 
 be so** is Christ's "It is expedient for you that I go away. 
 For if I go not away the Comforter will not come, but if 
 I depart, I will send him unto you." 
 
 So manifold are the forms of that new and continuous 
 activity of Christ into which He had passed when He left 
 the earth : and as we contrast these with the utter help- 
 lessness any longer to counsel, rebuke or save, to which 
 death reduces those who love us best, and to which even 
 his glorious rapture into the heavens brought the strong 
 prophet of fire, we can take up, with a new depth of 
 meaning, the ancient words that tell of Christ's exclusive 
 prerogative of succouring and inspiring from within the 
 veil : " Thou hast ascended on high ; thou hast led 
 captivity captive ; thou hast received gifts for men." 
 
 IV. The ascension of Christ is still further set forth, 
 in its very circumstances, by contrast with Elijah's 
 translation, as bearing on the hopes of humanity for the 
 future. 
 
 The prophet is caught up to the glory and the rest 
 for himself alone, and the sole share which the gazing 
 follower or the sons of the prophets, straining their eyes 
 there at Jericho, had in his triumph, was a deepened con- 
 viction of this prophet's mission, and perhaps some 
 clearer faith in a future life. Their wonder and soitp^. 
 
134 THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH [serm. 
 
 Elisha's immediate grasping of his new power, the 
 prophets' immediate transference of their allegiance to 
 their new head, show that on both sides it was felt they 
 had no interest in the event beyond that of awe-struck 
 beholders. No light streamed from it on their own 
 future. The path they had to tread was still the common 
 road into the great darkness, as solitary and unknown as 
 before. The chariot of fire parted their master fi-om the 
 common experience of humanity as from their fellowship, 
 making him an exception to the sad rule of death, which 
 frowned the grimmer and more inexorable by contrast 
 with his radiant translation. 
 
 The very reverse is true of Christ's ascension. In Him 
 our nature is taken up to the throne of God. His resur- 
 rection assures us that " them which sleep in Jesus will 
 God bring with him." His passage to the heavens 
 assures us that " they who are alive and remain shall be 
 caught up together with them," and that all of both 
 companies shall with Him Uve and reign, sharing His 
 dominion, and moulded to His image. 
 
 If we would know of what our manhood is capable, if 
 we would rise to the height of the hopes which God 
 means that we should cherish, if we would gain a living 
 grasp of the power that fulfils them, we have to stand 
 there gazing on the piled cloud that sails slowly upwards, 
 the pure floor for our Brother's feet As we watch it 
 rising with a motion which is res^, we have the right to 
 think, ** Thither the forerunner is for us entered." We 
 see there what man is meant for, what men who love Him 
 Attain. T^e, the world is still full of death and sonow. 
 
IX.] AND THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST. 185 
 
 man's dominion seems a futile dream and a hope that 
 mocks, but we see Jesus, ascended up on high, and in 
 Him we too are made to sit together in heavenly places.' 
 " The breaker is gone up before them. Their king shall 
 pass before them, and the Lord at the head of them." 
 
 There is yet another aspect in which our Lord's ascen- 
 fion bears on our hopes for the future, namely, as con- 
 nected with His coming again. 
 
 There, too, the contrast of Elijah's translation may 
 scrre for emphasis. Prophecy, indeed, in its latest 
 voice, spoke of sending Elijah the prophet before the 
 coming of the day of the Lord, and rabbinical legends 
 delighted to tell how he had been carried to the Garden 
 of Eden, whence he would come again, in Israel's sorest 
 need. But the prophecy had no thought of a personal 
 reappearance, and the dreams are only dreams such as 
 we find in the legendary history of many nauons. As 
 EHisha recrossed the Jordan, he bore with him only a 
 mantle and a memory, not a hope. 
 
 "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing np into 
 heaven ? This same Jesus, which is taken up firom you 
 into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have 
 seen him ^^o into heaven.** How grand is the use in 
 these mighty words of the name Jesus, the name that 
 8p>eaks of His true humanity, with all its weakness, limita- 
 tions, and sorrow, with all its tenderness and brotherhood ! 
 The man who died and rose again, has gone up on high. 
 ** He will so come as He has gone." " So "—-that is to 
 say, personally, corporeally, visibly, on clouds, perhaps 
 10 that vexy spot, *^ and bis feet shall stand in that day 
 
i86 THE TRANSLA TION OF ELIJAH, [serm. ix. 
 
 upon the Mount of Olives." Thus Scripture teaches us 
 ever to associate together the departure and the coming 
 of the Lord, and always when we meditate on His as- 
 cension to prepare a place for us, to think of His real 
 presence with us through the ages, and of His coming 
 again to receive us to Himself. 
 
 That parting on Olivet cannot be the end. Such a 
 leave-taking is the prophecy of happy greetings and an 
 inseparable reunion. The king hag gone to receive a 
 kingdom, and to return. Memory and hope coalesce, as 
 we think of Him who is passed into the heavens, and the 
 heart of the church has to cherish at once the glad 
 thought that its Head and helper has entered within the 
 veil, and the still more joyous one, which lightens the 
 days of separation and widowhood, that the Lord will 
 come again. 
 
 So let us take our share in the great joy with which 
 the disciples returned to Jerusalem, left Uke sheep in 
 the midst of wolves as they were, and "let us set oui 
 affections on things above, where Christ is^ sitting at 
 the right hand of God." 
 
SERMON X. 
 
 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW I 
 
 A NEW YEAR'S SERMON. 
 
 Isaiah Ivi. 12. 
 To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant. 
 
 'X'HESE words, as they stand, are the call of boon 
 companions to new revelry. They are part of the 
 prophet's picture of a corrupt age when the men of influ- 
 ence and position had thrown away their sense of duty, 
 and had given themselves over, as aristocracies and pluto- 
 cracies are ever tempted to do, to mere luxury and good 
 living. They are summoning one another to their coarse 
 orgies. The roystering speaker says, " Do not be afraid 
 to drink; the cellar will hold out To-day's carouse 
 will not empty it; there will be enough for to-morrow." 
 He forgets to-morrow's headaches ; he forgets that on 
 some to-morrow the wine will be finished ; he forgets that 
 the fingers of a hand may write the doom of the rioters 
 on the very walls of the banqueting chamber. 
 
 What have such words, the very motto of insolent pre- 
 sumption and short-sighted animalism, to do with New 
 Year's thoughts ? Only this, that base and foolish aa 
 they are on such lips, it is possible to lift them from the 
 mud, and ^e them as the utterance of a lofty and calm 
 
i88 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW t\S^KV., 
 
 hope which will not be disappointed, and of a firm and 
 lowly resolve which may ennoble life. Like a great many 
 other sa)rings, they may fit the mouth either of a sot or of 
 a saint All depends on what the things are which we 
 are thinking about when we use them. There are things 
 about which it is absurd and worse than absurd to say this, 
 and there are things about which it is the soberest truth 
 to say it So looking forward into the merciful darkness 
 of another year, we may look at these words as either the 
 expressions of hopes which it is folly to cherish, or of 
 hopes that it is reasonable to entertain. 
 
 I, This expectation, if directed to any outward things, 
 is an illusion and a dream. 
 
 These coarse revellers into whose lips our text is put 
 only meant by it to brave the future and defy to-morrow 
 in the riot of their drunkenness. They show us the vul- 
 garest, lowest form which the expectation can take, a form 
 which I need say nothing about now. 
 
 But I may just note in passing that to look forward 
 principally to anticipate pleasure or enjoyment is a very 
 poor and unworthy thing. It is weakening and lowering 
 every day, to use our faculty of hope mainly to paint the 
 future as a scene of delights and satisfactions. We spoil 
 to-day by thinking how we can turn it to the account of 
 pleasure. We spoil to-morrow before it comes, and hurt our 
 selves, if we are more engaged with fancying how it will 
 minister to our joy, than how we can make it minister to 
 our duty. It is base and foolish to be forecasting our plea- 
 sures, the true temper is to be forecasting our work. 
 
X.] CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW f 189 
 
 But, leaving that consideration, let us notice how use- 
 less such anticipation, and how mad such confidence, as 
 that expressed m the text is, if directed to anything short 
 of God. 
 
 We are so constituted as that we grow into a persuasion 
 that what has been will be, and yet we can give no suffi- 
 cient reason to ourselves of why we expect it 
 
 " The uniformity of the course of nature" is the comer- 
 stone, not only of physical science, but, in a more homely 
 form, of the wisdom which grows with experience. We 
 all believe that the sun will rise to-morrow because it rose 
 to-day, and for all the yesterdays. But there was a to- 
 day which had no yesterday, and there will be a to-day 
 which will have no to-morrow. The sun will rise for the 
 last time. The uniformity had a beginning and will have 
 an end. 
 
 So, even as an axiom of thought, the anticipation that 
 things will continue as they have been because they have 
 been, seems to rest on an insufficient basis. How much 
 more so, as to our own little hves and their surroundings ! 
 There the only thing which we may be quite sure of about 
 to-morrow is that it will not be " as this day." Even for 
 those of us who may have reached, for example, the level 
 plateau of middle life, where our position and tasks are 
 pretty well fixed, and we have little more to expect than 
 the monotonous repetition of the same duties recurring at 
 the same hour every day — even for such each day has its 
 own distinctive character. Like a flock of sheep they seem 
 4II alike, but each, on closer inspection, reveals a physiog- 
 nomy of iu own. There will be so many small changes 
 
190 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORRO W t [serm. 
 
 that even the same duties or enjoyments will not be quite 
 the same, and even if the outward things remained abso- 
 lutely unaltered, we who meet them are not the same. 
 Little variations in mood and tone, diminished zest here, 
 weakened power there, other thoughts breaking in, and 
 over and above all the slow silent change wrought on us 
 by growing years, make the perfect reproduction of any 
 part impossible. So, however familiar may be the road 
 we have to traverse, however uneventfully the same our 
 days may sometimes for long spaces in our lives seem to 
 be, though to ourselves often our day's work may appear 
 a mill-horse round, yet in deepest truth, if we take into 
 account the whole sum of the minute changes in it and in 
 OS, it may be said of each step of our journey, " Ye have 
 not passed this way heretofore.** 
 
 But, besides all this, we know that these breathing-times 
 when " we have no changes,** are but pauses in the storm, 
 landing-places in the ascent, the interspaces between the 
 shocks. However hope may tempt us to dream that the 
 future is like the present, a deeper wisdom lies in all our 
 souls which says No. Drunken bravery may front that 
 darkness with such words as these of our text, but the 
 least serious spirit, in its most joyous moods, never quite 
 succeeds in forgetting the solemn probabilities, possibili- 
 ties, and certainties which lodge in the unknown future. 
 So to a wise man it is ever a sobering exercise to look 
 forward, and we shall be nearest the truth if we take due 
 account, as we do so to-day, of the undoubted fact that 
 the only thing certain about to-morrow is that it will not 
 be M tiiif daf. 
 
X.] CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW 9 191 
 
 There are the great changes which come to some one 
 every day, which may come to any of us any day, which 
 will come to all of us some day. Some of us will die 
 this year ; on a day in our new diaries some of us will 
 make no entry, for we shall be gone. Some of us will 
 be smitten down by illness; some of us will lose our 
 dearest; some of us will lose fortune. Which of us 
 it is to be, and where within these twelve months the 
 blow is to fall, is mercifully hidden. The only thing that 
 we certainly know is that these arrows will fly. The 
 thing we do not know is whose heart they will pierce. 
 This makes the gaze into the darkness grave and solemn. 
 There is ever something of dread in Hope's blue eyes. 
 True, the ministry of change is blessed and helpful ; true, 
 the darkness which hides the future is merciful, and need- 
 ful if the present is not to be marred. Bit helpful and 
 merciful as they are, they invest the unknown to-morrow 
 with a solemn power which it is good, though sobering, 
 for us to feel, and they silence on every lip but that of 
 riot and foolhardy debauchery the presumptuous words, 
 *' To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abun- 
 dant* 
 
 IL But yet there is a possibility of so using the words 
 as to make them the utterance of a sober certainty which 
 will not be put to shame. 
 
 So long as our hope and anticipations creep along the 
 low levels of earth, and are concerned with external and 
 crcatural good, their language can never rise beyond, 
 ** To-morrow may be as this day." Oftenest it reaches 
 
192 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROIV f\sis.KyL. 
 
 only to the height of the wistful wish, " May it be as this 
 day I " But there is no need for our being tortured with 
 such shppery possibilities. We may send out our hope 
 like Noah's dove, not to hover restlessly over a heaving 
 ocean of change, but to light on firm, solid, certainty 
 and fold its wearied wings there. Forecasting is ever 
 close by foreboding. Hope is interwoven with fear, the 
 golden threads of the weft crossing the dark ones of the 
 warp, and the whole texture gleaming bright or glooming 
 black according to the angle at which it is seen. 
 
 So is it always until we turn our hope away from earth 
 to God, and fill the future with the light of His presence 
 and the certainty of His truth. Then the mists and 
 doubts roll away ; we get above the region of " per- 
 hapses " into that of " surelys ; " the future is as certain 
 as the past : hope as assured of its facts as memory, 
 prophecy as veracious as history. 
 
 Looking forward then, let us not occupy ourselves 
 with visions which we know may or may not come true. 
 Let us not feed ourselves with illusions which may make 
 the reality, when it comes to shatter them, yet harder 
 to bear. But let us make God in Christ our hope, and 
 pass from peradventures to certitudes ; from " To-morrow 
 may be as this day — ^would that it might," to " It shall 
 be, it shall be, for God is my expectation and my 
 hope." 
 
 We have an unchanging and an inexhaustible God, 
 and He is the true guarantee of the future for us. The 
 more we accustom ourselves to think of Him as shaping 
 all that is contingent and changeful in the nearest and 
 
X.] CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW f 193 
 
 in the remotest to-morrow, and as being Himself the 
 immutable portion of our souls, the calmer will be our 
 outlook into the darkness, and the more bright will be 
 the clear light of certainty which bums for us in it. 
 
 To-da/s wealth may be to-morrow's poverty, to-day's 
 health to-morrow's sickness, to-day's happy companion- 
 ship of love to-morrow's aching solitude of heart, but 
 to-day's God will be to-morrow's God, to-day's Christ 
 will be to-morrow's Christ Other fountains may dry up 
 in heat or freeze in winter, but this knows no change, 
 ** in summer and winter it shall be." Other fountains 
 may sink low in their basins after much drawing, but this 
 is ever full, and after a thousand generations have drawn 
 from it iU stream is broad and deep as erer. Other 
 fountains may be left behind on the march, and the wells 
 and palm-trees of each EUim on our road be succeeded 
 by a dry and thirsty land where no water is, but this 
 spring follows us all through the wilderness, and makes 
 music and spreads freshness ever by our path. We can 
 forecast nothing beside. We can be sure of this, that 
 God will be with us in all the days that lie before us. 
 What may be round the next headland we know not; 
 but this we know, that the same sunshine will make a 
 broadening path across the waters right to where we 
 rock on the unknown sea, and the same unmoving 
 mighty star will bum for our guidance. So we may let 
 the waves and currents roll as they Ust — or rather as He 
 wills, and be little concerned about the mcidents or the 
 companions of our voyage, since He is with us. We 
 can front the unknown to-morrow, even when we moit 
 
 • 
 
194 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORRO Wf [serm. 
 
 keenly feel how tolenm and sad are the things it may 
 bring. 
 
 ''It CMi bring with it nothing 
 But He will bear u through.** 
 
 If only our hearts be fixed on God and we are feeding 
 our minds and wills on Him, His truth and His will, 
 then we may be quite certain that, whatever goes, our 
 truest riches will abide, and whoever leaves our little 
 company of loved ones, our best Friend will not go 
 away. Therefore, lifting our hopes beyond the low 
 levels of earth, and making our anticipations of the 
 future the reflection of the brightness of God thrown on 
 that else blank curtain, we may turn into the worthy 
 utterance of sober and saintly faith, the folly of the 
 riotous sensualist when he said, " To-morrow shall be as 
 tills day.* 
 
 The past is the mirror of the future for the Christian ; 
 we look back on all the great deeds of old by which God 
 has redeemed and helped souls that cried to Him, and we 
 find in them the eternal laws of His working. They are 
 all true for to-day as they were at first ; they remain true 
 for ever. The whole history of the past belongs to us, 
 and avails for our present and for our future. " As we 
 have heard, so have we seen in the city of our God.** 
 To-day's experience runs on the same lines as the stories 
 of the " years of old," which are " the years of the right 
 hand of the Most High." Experience is ever the parent 
 of hopc> and the latter can only build with the bricks 
 which the former gives. So the Christian has to lay 
 
X.] CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW t 19$ 
 
 hold on all that God's mercy has done to the ages that 
 arc gone by, and because He is a " faithful Creator " to 
 transmute history into prophecy, and triumph in that 
 " the God of Jacob is our refuge." 
 
 Nor only does the record of what He has been to 
 others come in to bring material for our forecast of the 
 future, but also the remembrance of what* He has been 
 to ourselves. Has He been with us in six troubles? 
 We may be sure He will not abandon us at the seventh. 
 He is not in the way of beginning to build and leaving 
 His work unfinished Remember what He has been to 
 you, and rejoice that there has been one thing in your 
 lives which, you may be sure, will always be there. Feed 
 your certain hopes for to-morrow on thankful remem- 
 brances of many a yesterday. " Forget not the works 
 of God," that you may " set your hopes on God." Let 
 our anticipations base themselves on memory, and utter 
 themselves in the prayer, " Thou hast been my help ; 
 leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation." 
 Then the assurance that He whom we know to be good 
 and wise and strong will shape the future, and Himself 
 be the future for us, will take all the fear out of that 
 forward gaze, will condense our light and unsubstantial 
 hopes into solid realities, and set before us an endless 
 line of days, in each of which we may gain more of Him, 
 whose face has brightened the past and will brighten the 
 future, till days shall end and time shall open into 
 eternity. 
 
196 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW t [serm. 
 
 IIL Looked at in another aspect, these words may be 
 taken as the row of a firm and lowly resolve. 
 
 There is a future which we can but very slightly in- 
 fluence, and the less we look at that the better every way. 
 But there is also a future which we can mould as we wish 
 — the future of our own characters, the only future which 
 is really ours at all — and the more clearly we set it before 
 ourselves, and make up our minds as to whither we wish 
 it to be tending the better. In that region, it is eminently 
 true that " to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more 
 abundant" The law of continuity shapes our moral and 
 spiritual characters. What I am to-day, I shall increas- 
 ingly be to morrow. The awful power of habit solidifies 
 actions into customs, and prolongs the reverberation of 
 every note once sounded, along the vaulted roof of the 
 chamber where we live. To-day is the child of yesterday 
 and the parent of to-morrow. 
 
 That solemn certainty of the continuance and increase 
 of moral and spiritual characteristics works in both good 
 and bad, but with a difference. To secure its full 
 blessing in the gradual development of the germs of good 
 there must be constant effort and tenacious resolution. 
 So many foes beset the springing of the good seed in 
 our hearts — what with the flying flocks of light-winged 
 fugitive thoughts ever ready to swoop down as soon as 
 the sower's back is turned and snatch it away, what with the 
 hardness of the rock which the roots soon encounter, what 
 with the thick-sown and quick-springing thorns — that if 
 we trust to the natural laws of growth and neglect our 
 
t] CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW t 197 
 
 careful tending, we may sow much but we shall gather 
 little. But to inherit the full consequences of that same law 
 working in the growth and development of the evil in us 
 nothing is needed but carelessness. Leave it alone for 
 A year or two and the " fruitful field will be a forest," a 
 jungle of matted weeds, with a struggling blossom where 
 cultivation had once been. 
 
 But if humbly we resolve and earnestly toil, looking for 
 His help, we may venture to hope that our characters will 
 grow in goodness and in likeness to our dear Lord, that 
 we shall not cast away our confidence, nor make ship- 
 wreck of our faith, that each new day shall find in us a 
 deeper love, a pcrfecter consecration, a more joyful ser- 
 vice, and that so, in all the beauties of the Christian soul 
 and in all the blessings of the Christian life, " to-morrow 
 shall be as this day, and much more abundant" "To 
 him that hath shall be given," " The path of the just is 
 as the shining light, that shineth more and more until the 
 noon tide of the day." 
 
 So we may look forward undismayed, and while we 
 recognise the darkness that wraps to-morrow in regard to 
 all munda»e affairs, may feed our fortitude and fasten our 
 confidence on the double certainties that we shall have 
 God and more of God for our treasure, that we shall have 
 likeness to Him and more of likeness in our characters. 
 Fleeting moments may come and go. The uncertain 
 days may exercise their various ministry of giving and 
 taking away, but whether they plant or root up our earthly 
 props, whether they build or destroy our earthly houses, 
 they will increase our riches in the heavens, and give uf 
 
198 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW f [serm. 
 
 fuller possession of deeper draughts from the inexhaustible 
 fountain of living waters. 
 
 How dreadfully that same law of the continuity and 
 development of character works in some men there is 
 no need now to dwell upon. By slow, imperceptible, 
 certain degrees the evil gains upon them. Yesterday's 
 sin smooths the path for tcnia/s. The temptation once 
 yielded to gains power. The crack in the embankment 
 which lets a drop or two ooze through is soon a hole 
 which lets out a flood. It is easier to find a man who ha« 
 done a wrong thing than to find a man who has done it 
 only once. Peter denied his Lord thrice, and each time 
 more easily than the time before. So, before we know it, 
 the thin gossamer threads of single actions are twisted 
 into a rope of habit, and we are " tied with the cords of 
 our sins." Let no man say, "Just for once I may 
 venture on evil ; so far I will go and no farther." Nay, 
 "to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more 
 abundant" 
 
 How important, then, the smallest acts become when 
 we think of them as thus influencing character 1 The 
 microscopic creatiires, thousands of which will go into a 
 square inch, make the great white cliffs that beetle over 
 the wildest sea and front the storm. So, permanent and 
 lolid character is built up out of trivial actions, and this 
 is the solemn aspect of our passing days, that they are 
 makmg us. 
 
 We might well tremble before such a thought, whick 
 would be dreadful to the best of us, if it were not for 
 pardoning mercy and renewing grace. The law o^ 
 
X.] CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW t 199 
 
 reaping what we have sown, or of continuing as we have 
 begun, may be modified as far as our sins and failures 
 arc concerned. The entail may be cut off, and to-morrow 
 need not inherit to-day's guilt, nor to-day's habits. The 
 past may be all blotted out through the mercy of God iD 
 Christ No debt need be carried forward to another page 
 of the book of our lives, for Christ has given Himself for 
 js, and He speaks to us all — " Thy sins be forgiven thee." 
 No evil habit need continue its dominion over us, nor are 
 ^e obhged to carry on the bad tradition of wrong-doing 
 into a future day, for Christ lives, and " if any man be in 
 Christ, he is a new creature ; old things are passed away, 
 all things are become new." 
 
 So then, brethren, let us humbly take the confidence 
 which these words may be used to express, and as we 
 stand on the threshold of a new year and wait for the 
 curtain to be drawn, let us print deep on our hearts the 
 uncertainty of our hold of all things here, nor seek t© 
 build nor anchor on these, but lift our thoughts to Him, 
 who will bless the future as He has blessed the past, and 
 will even enlarge the gifts of his love and the help of his 
 right hand. Let us hope for ourselves not the continuance 
 or increase of outward good, but the growth of our souls 
 in all things lovely and of good report, the daily advance 
 in the love and likeness of our Lord. 
 
 So each day, each succeeding wave of the ocean of 
 time shall cast up treasures for us as it breaks at our 
 feet 
 
 As we grow in years, we shall grow in the grace and 
 knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, n&til 
 
200 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW t [ser. x. 
 
 the day comes when we shall exchange earth for heavea 
 That will be the sublimest application of this text, when, 
 dying, we can calmly be sure that though to-day be on this 
 side and to-morrow on the other bank of the black river, 
 there will be no break in the continuity, but only an 
 infinite growth in our life, and heaven's to-morrow shall 
 be as earth's to-day, and much more abundant 
 
SERMON XL 
 
 THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST IN HIS 
 TEMPTATIONS. 
 
 St, Luke xxii. 28. 
 Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations. 
 
 w 
 
 /E wonder at the disciples when we read of the nn- 
 seemly strife for precedence which jars on the 
 tender solemnities of the Last Supper. We think them 
 itrangely unsympathetic and selfish ; and so they were. 
 But do not let us be too hard on them, nor forget that 
 there was a very natural reason for the close connection 
 which is found in the gospels between our Lord's an- 
 nouncements of His sufferings aad this eager dispute as to 
 who should be the greatest in the kingdom. They dimly 
 understood what He meant, but they did understand this 
 much, that His *' suflferings " were immediately to precede 
 His " glory " — and so it is not, after all, to be so much 
 wondered at if the apparent approach of these made the 
 settlement of their places in the impending kingdom seem 
 to them a very pressing question. We should probably 
 have thought so too, if we had been among tiiem. 
 
 Perhaps, too, the immediate occasion of this strife who 
 
2oa THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST [smM. 
 
 should be accounted the greatest, which drew from Christ 
 the words of our text, may have been the unwillingness of 
 each to injure his possible claim to pre-eminence by doing 
 the servant's tasks at the modest meal. May we not 
 suppose that the basin and the towel were refused by one 
 after another, with muttered words growing louder and 
 angrier ; ** It is not my place," says Peter ; " you, Andrew, 
 take it" — and so from hand to hand it goes, till the 
 Master ends the strife and takes it Himself to wash their 
 feet Then, when He had sat down again. He may have 
 spoken the words of which our text is part — in which He 
 tells the wrangling disciples what is the true law of 
 honour in His kingdom, namely, service^ and points to 
 Himself as the great example. With what emphasis the 
 pathetic incident of the foot-washing invests the clause 
 before our text : " I am among you as he that serveth." 
 On that disclosure of the true law of pre-eminence in His 
 kingdom there follows in this and following verses the 
 assurance, that, unseemly as their strife, there was re- 
 ward for them, and places of dignity there, because in all 
 their selfishness and infirmity, they had still clung to 
 their Master. 
 
 This being the original purpose of these words, I venture 
 to use them for another. They give us, if I mistake not, 
 a wonderful glimpse into the heart of Christ, and a most 
 pathetic revelation of His thoughts and experiences, all 
 the more precious because it is quite incidental and, we 
 may say, unconscioua. 
 
XI.] IN HIS TEMPTATIONS, S03 
 
 L See then, here, th^ tempttd Christ 
 
 In one sense, our Lord is His own perpetual theme. 
 He is ever speaking of Himself, inasmuch as He is ever 
 presenting what He is to us, and what He claims Of us. 
 In another sense, He scarcely ever speaks of Himself, 
 Inasmuch as deep silence, for the most part, lies over His 
 own inward experiences. How precious, therefore, and 
 how profoundly significant is that word here — "in My 
 temptations " 1 So He summed up all his life. To feel 
 the full force of the expression, it should be remembered 
 that the temptation in the wUdemess was past before His 
 first disciple attached himself to Him, and that the conflict 
 in Gethsemane had not yet come when these words were 
 spoken. The period to which they refer, therefore, lies 
 altogether within these limits, including neither. After 
 the former, " Satan," we read, " departed from Him for 
 a season." Before the latter, we read, " the prince of 
 this world cometh." The space between, of which people 
 are so apt to think as free from temptation, is the time of 
 which our Lord is speaking now. The time when His 
 followers " companied with Him " is to His conscious- 
 ness the time of His " temptations." 
 
 That is not the point of view from which the Gospel 
 narratives present it, for the plain reason that they are 
 not autobiographies, and that Jesus said little about the 
 continuous assaults to which He was exposed. It is 
 not the point of riew from which we often think of it 
 We are too apt to conceive of Christ's temptations as all 
 gathered together — curdled and clotted, as it were, at the 
 
304 THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST [serm. 
 
 two ends of His life, leaving the space between free. But 
 we cannot understand the meaning of that life, nor feel 
 aright the love and help that breathe from it, unless we 
 think of it as a field of continual and diversified temptations. 
 
 How remarkable is the choice of the expresiion ! To 
 Christ, His life, looking back on it, does not so much 
 present itself in the aspect of sorrow, difficulty or pain, as 
 in that of temptation. He looked upon all outward things 
 mainly with regard to their power to help or to hinder 
 His life's work. So for us, sorrow or joy should mattei 
 comparatively little. The evil in the evil should be felt 
 to be sin, and the true cross and burden of life should be 
 to us, as to our Master, the appeals it makes to us to 
 abandon our tasks, and fling away our filial dependance 
 and submission. 
 
 This is not the place to plunge into the thorny ques- 
 tions which surround the thought of the tempted Christ 
 However these may be solved, the great fact remains, 
 that His temptations were most real and unceasing. It 
 was no sham fight which He fought The story of the 
 wilderness is the story of a most real conflict ; and that 
 conflict is waged all through his life. True, the traces 
 of it arc few. The battle was fought on both sides in 
 grim silence, as sometimes men wage a mortal struggle 
 without a sound. But if there were no other witness 
 of the sore conflict, the Victor's shout at the close would 
 be enough. His last words, " I have overcome the 
 world," sound the note of triumph, and tell how sharp 
 had been the strife. So long and hard had it been that 
 He cannot forget it even in heaven, and from the throne 
 
XI.] IN HIS TEMPTATIONS. 305 
 
 holds forth to all the churches the hope of overcoming, 
 "even as I also overcame." As on some battle-field 
 whence all traces of the agony and fury have passed 
 away, and harvests wave, and larks sing where blood ran 
 and men groaned their lives out, some grey stone raised 
 by the victors remains, and only the trophy tells of the 
 forgotten fight, so that monumental word, " I have over- 
 come" stands to all ages as the record of the silent, life- 
 long conflict. 
 
 It is not for us to know how the sinless Christ wat 
 tempted. There are depths beyond our reach. This we 
 can understand, that a sinless manhood is not above the 
 reach of temptation ; and this besides, that, to such a 
 nature, the temptations must be suggested from with- 
 out, not presented from within. The desire for food is 
 simply a physical craving, but another personality than 
 His own uses it to incite the Son to abandon dependence 
 for his physical life on God, The trust in God's pro- 
 tection is holy and good, and it may be truest wisdom 
 and piety to incur danger in dependence on it, when 
 God's service calls, but a mocking voice without suggests, 
 under the cloak of it, a needless rushing into peril at no 
 call of conscience, and for no end of mercy, which is not 
 religion but self-wilL The desire to have the world for 
 His own lay in Christ's deepest heart, but the enemy of 
 Christ and man, who thought the world his already, used 
 it as giving occasion to suggest a smoother and shorter 
 road to win all men unto Him than the " Via dolorosa * 
 of the Cross. So the sinless Christ was tempted at the 
 beginning, and so the sinless Christ was tempted, in 
 
2o6 THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST [serm. 
 
 yarious fomis of these first temptations, throughout His 
 life. The path which He had to tread was ever before 
 Him, the shadow of the Cross was flung along His road 
 from the first. The pain and sorrow, the shame and 
 spitting, the contradiction of sinners against Himself, the 
 easier path which needed but a wish to become His, the 
 shrinking of flesh — all these made their appeal to Him, and 
 every step of the path which He trod for us was trodden 
 by the power of a fresh consecration of Himself to His 
 task and a fresh victory over temptation. 
 
 Let us not seek to analyse. Let us be content to 
 worship, as we look. Let us think of the tempted Christ, 
 that our conceptions of His sinlessness may be increased. 
 His was no untried and cloistered virtue, pure because 
 never brought into contact with seducing evil, but a 
 militant and victorious goodness, that was able to with- 
 stand in the evil day. Let us think of the tempted Christ 
 that our thankful thoughts of what He bore for us may be 
 warmer and more adequate, as we stand afar oflf and look 
 on at the mystery of His battle with our enemies and His. 
 Let us think of the tempted Christ to make the lighter 
 burden of our cross, and our less terrible conflict easier 
 to bear and to wage. So will He " continue with us in 
 our temptations," and patience and yictory flow to ui 
 from Him. 
 
 IL See here the lonely Christ 
 
 There is no aspect of our Lord's life more pathetic 
 than that of His profound loneliness. I suppose the most 
 utterly solitary man that ever lived was Jesus Christ I 
 
XL] IN HIS TEMPTATIONS. ao; 
 
 we think of the facts of His life, we see how His nearest 
 kindred stood aloof from Him, how " there were none to 
 praise, and very few to love ; " and how, even in the 
 small company of His friends, there were absolutely none 
 who either understood Him or sympathised with Him. 
 We hear a great deal about the solitude in which men ot 
 genius live, and how all great souls are necessarily lonely. 
 That is true, and that solitude of great men is one of the 
 compensations which run through all life, and make the 
 lot of the many little, more enviable than that of the few 
 great " The little hills rejoice together on every side," 
 but far above their smiling companionships, the alpine 
 peak lifts itself into the cold air, and though it be 
 " visited all night by troops of stars," is lonely amid the 
 silence and the snow. Talk of the solitude of pure 
 character amid evil, like Lot in Sodom, or of the loneli- 
 ness of uncomprehended aims and unshared thoughts — 
 who ever experienced that as keenly as Christ did? 
 That perfect purity must needs have been hurt by the 
 sin of men as none else have ever been. That loving 
 heart yearning for the solace of an answering heart must 
 needs have felt a sharper pang of unrequited love than 
 ever pained another. That Spirit to which the things 
 that are seen were shadows, and the Father and the 
 Father's house the ever-present, only realities, must have 
 felt itself parted from the men whose portion was in this 
 life by a gulf broader than ever o[)encd between any 
 other two souls that shared together human life. 
 
 The more pure and lofty a nature, the more keen its 
 sensitiveness, the more exquisite its delights, and the 
 
2ot THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST [SERM. 
 
 sharper Its pains. The more loving and unselfish a heart 
 the more its longing for companionship : and the more 
 its aching in loneliness. 
 
 Very significant and pathetic are many points in the 
 Gospel story bearing on this matter. The very choice of 
 the twelve had for its first purpose, " that they should be 
 with Him," as one of the evangelists tells us. We know 
 how constantly He took the three who were nearest to 
 Him along with Him, and that surely not merely that 
 they might be "eyewitnesses of His majesty" on the 
 holy mount, or of His agony in Gethsemane, but as having 
 a real gladness and strength even in their companionship 
 amid the mystery of glory as amid the power of darkness. 
 We read of His being alone but twice in all the gospels, 
 and both times for prayer. And surely the dullest ear 
 can hear a note of pain in that prophetic word : " The 
 hour cometh that ye shall be scattered, every man to his 
 own, and shall leave Me alone ; " while every heart must 
 feel the pitiful pathos of the plea, " Tarry ye here, and 
 watch witii Me." Even in that supreme hour, He longs 
 for human companionship, however uncomprehending, 
 and stretches out His hands in the great darkness, to feel 
 the touch of a hand of flesh and blood — and, alas, for poor 
 feeble love ! — He gropes for it in vain. Surely that horror 
 of utter solitude is one of the elements of His passion 
 grave and sorrowful enough to be named by the side of 
 the other bitterness poured into that cup, even as it was 
 pain enough to form a substantive feature of the great 
 prophetic picture : " I looked for some to take pity, but 
 there was none ; and for comforters, but I found none." 
 
XL] IN HIS TEMPTATIONS. 909 
 
 So here, a deep pain in His loneliness is implied in 
 these words of our text which put the disciples' partici- 
 pation in the glories of His throne as the issue of their 
 loyal continuance with Him in the conflict of earth. 
 These, and these only, had been by His side, and so much 
 does He care for their companionship, that therefore they 
 shall share His dominion. 
 
 That lonely Christ sympathises with all solitary hearts. 
 If ever we feel ourselves misunderstood and thrown 
 back upon ourselves; if ever our hearts' burden of 
 lore is rejected; if our outward lives be lonely ind 
 earth yields nothing to stay our longing for companion- 
 ship ; if our hearts have been filled with dear ones and 
 are now empty, or but filled with tears, let us think of 
 Him and say, "Yet I am not alone." He lived alone, 
 alone He died, that no heart might ever be solitary any 
 more. " Could ye not watch with Me t " was His gentle 
 rebuke in Gethsemane. " Lo, / am with you always," is 
 His mighty promise fi"om the throne. In every step of 
 life we may have Him for a companion, a friend closer 
 than all others, nearer us than our very selves, if we may 
 so say — and in the valley of the shadow of death we need 
 fear no evil, for He will be with us. 
 
 III. ^t\i^xt the grateful ChrisU 
 
 I almost hesitate to use the word, but there seems a 
 distinct ring of thanks in the expression, and in the 
 connection- And we need not wonder at that, if we 
 rightly understand it There is nothing in it inconsistent 
 with our Lord't character and relations to His disdplet. 
 
 r 
 
2IO THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST [serm. 
 
 Do you remember another instance in which one seems 
 to hear the same tone, namely, in the marked warmth 
 with which He acknowledges the beautiful service of 
 Mary in breaking the fragrant casket of nard upon his 
 head ? 
 
 All true love is glad when it is met, glad to give, and 
 glad to receive. Was it not a joy to Jesus to be waited 
 on by the ministering woman ? Would He not thank 
 them because they served Him for love ? I trow, yes. 
 And if any one stumbles at the word " grateful " as applied 
 to Him, we do not care about tlie word so long as it is 
 seen mat His heart was gladdened by loving friends, and 
 that He recognised in their society a ministry of love. 
 
 Notice, too, the loving estimate of what these disciples 
 had done. Their companionship had been imperfect 
 enough at the best. They had given Him but blind 
 affection, dashed with much selfishness. In an hour or 
 two they would all have forsaken Him and fled. He 
 knew all that was lacking in them, and the cowardly 
 abandonment which was so near. But He has not a 
 word to say of all this. He does not count jealously the 
 flaws in our work^ or reject it because it is incomplete. 
 So here is the great truth clearly set forth, that where 
 there is a loving heart, there is acceptable service. It is 
 possible that our poor, imperfect deeds shall be an odour 
 of a sweet smell, acceptable, well-pleasing to Him. 
 Which of us that is a father is not glad at his children's 
 gifts, even though they be purchased with his own money, 
 and be of little use? They mean love, so they are 
 precious. And Christ, in Hke manner, gladly accepts 
 
XI.1 IN HIS TEMPTATIONS, an 
 
 what we bring, even though it be love chilled by selfish- 
 ness, and faith broken by doubt, and submission crossed 
 by self-wiU. The living heart of the disciples' acceptable 
 service was their love, far less intelligent and entire than 
 ours may be. They were joined to their Lord, though 
 with but partial sympathy and knowledge, in His tempta- 
 tions. It is possible for us to be joined to Jesus Christ 
 more closely and more truly than they were during His 
 earthly hfe. Union with Him here is union with Him 
 hereafter. If we abide in Him amid the shows and 
 shadows of earth, He will continue with us in our tempta- 
 tions, and so the fellowship begun on earth will be per- 
 fected in heaven : " If so be that we suffer with Him, that 
 we may also be glorified togethec* 
 
SERMON XII. 
 
 THE WELLS OF SALVATION. 
 
 Isaiah ziL 3. 
 With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salratioB. 
 
 'X'WO events, separated from each other by fifteen 
 "■■ hundred years^ bear upon these words. One wag 
 the origin of the peculiar form of this prophecy, the othei 
 contains its interpretation and claims to be its fulfil- 
 ment 
 
 The wandering march of the children of Israel had 
 brought them to Rephidim, where there was no water. 
 Their parched lips opened to murmur and rebel against 
 their unseen Leader and his visible lieutenant At his 
 wits' end, Moses cried to God, and the answer is the 
 command to take with him the elders of Israel, and with 
 his rod in his hand to go up to Horeb ; and then come 
 grand words, " Behold, I will stand before thee there upon 
 the rock, and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall 
 come water out of it" It is not the rock, nor the rod, 
 nor the uphfted hand, but it is the presence of God which 
 makes the sparkling streams pour out. How the thirsty 
 men would drink, how gladly they would fling themselvei 
 
SKRM. xiL] THE WELLS OF SAL VA TION. S13 
 
 on the ground and glue their lipi to the glandng bleising 
 or dip their cupi and skins into it, as it flashed 
 along ! 
 
 Many a psalm and prophecy refer to this old story, 
 and clearly Isaiah has it in his mind here, for the whole 
 context is full of allusions to the history of the Exodus, 
 as a symbol of the better deliverance from a worse 
 bondage, which the " Root of Jesse " was to eflfect The 
 lyric burst of praise, of which the text is part, carries on 
 the same allusion. The joyful band of pilgrims returning 
 from this captivity sing the ' Song of Moses," chanted 
 first by the banks of the Red Sea, " The Lord is my 
 strength and song, and he is become my salvation." 
 This distinct quotation, which immediately precedes our 
 text, makes the reference in it which we have pointed 
 out, most probable and natural. 
 
 The connection of these words with the story in the 
 Exodus was recognised by the Jews at a very early period, 
 as is plain from their use in the remarkable ritual of the 
 Feast of Tabernacles. That festival was originally ap- 
 pointed to preserve the remembrance of Israel's nomad 
 life in the wilderness. In the later days of the nation, a 
 number of symbolical observances were added to those of 
 the original institution. Daily, amidst loud jubilations, 
 the priests wound in long procession down the slope from 
 the Temple to the fountain of Siloam in the valley be- 
 neath, and there drew water in golden urns. They bore 
 it back, the crowd surging around them, and then amidst 
 the blast of trumpets and a tumult of rejoicing, they 
 poured it or the altar, while tkoiuands of voices chanted 
 
214 THE WELLS OF SALVATION. [serm 
 
 Isaiah's words, " With joy shall ye draw water out of the 
 wells of salvation." 
 
 So much for the occasion of the prophecy, now for 
 its meaning and fulfilment Nearly eight hundred years 
 have passed. Again the festival has come round For 
 seven days the glad ceremonial had been performed 
 For the last time the priestly procession has gone down 
 the rocky road; for the last time the vases have been 
 filled at the cool fountain below; for the last time the 
 bright water has been poured out sparkling in the sun- 
 light ; for the last time the shout of joy has risen and 
 (alien, and as the words of the ancient chant were dying 
 on the ear, a sudden stir began among the crowd, ayul 
 6*0011 the midst of them, as they parted for his passage, 
 came a yoimg man, rustic in appearance, and there, before 
 all the silence-stricken multitude, and priests with their 
 empty urns, " In the last day, that great day of the feast, 
 Jesus stood and cried. If any man thirst, let him come 
 nnto me," and drink. Surely such words, in such a con- 
 nection, at such a time, from such Ups, are meant to 
 point the path to the true understanding of the text 
 
 So then, consider what we have to understand by thi 
 wells of salvation. 
 
 We are not to be content with any shallow and narrow 
 interpretation of either idea in that phrase. No doubt 
 " salvation " in the Old Testament often means merely 
 outward deliverance from material peril But there ii 
 surely a perceptible deepening of the meaning of the 
 word in the mouth of this prophet, to whom was granted 
 
xil] the wells of salvation. 115 
 
 a nearer approximation to the light of the gospel both 
 in respect of the Saviour and of His salvation, than had 
 previously been given. We shall not strain his meaning 
 here, if we take salvation almost in the fully developed 
 New Testament sense, as including negatively the de- 
 liverance from all evil, both evil of sin and evil of sorrow, 
 and positively the endowment with all good, good both of 
 holiness and happiness, which God can bestow or man 
 receive. 
 
 Then if so, God himself is, in the deepest truth, the 
 Well of Salvation, We need only remind you that the 
 figure of our text does not point to a well so much as to 
 % spring. It is a source, not a reservoir. So we have 
 but to recall the deep and wonderful words of the 
 psalmist : " With thee is the fountain of life," and others 
 not less profound, of the prophet, " They have forsaken 
 me, the fountain of living waters," in order to be led up 
 to the essential meaning of this text All the springs 
 from which salvation, in any measure and in any form, 
 flows to the thirsty lips of men are in God Himself. What 
 grand truths that thought involves 1 It declares that 
 salvation has its origin in the depths of God's own nature. 
 It wells up as of itself, not drawn forth by anything in us, 
 but pouring out as from an inner impulse in His own deep 
 heart God is His own motive, as His own end. As His 
 Being, so His Love (which is His Being) is determined by 
 nothing beyond Himself, but ever streams out by an energy 
 from within, like the sunlight whose beams reach the limits 
 of the system and travel on through dim dark distances, 
 not because they are drawn by the planet, but because they 
 
3i6 THE WELLS OF SALVATION, [serm. 
 
 arc urged from the central light Surely, too, if God be 
 the fountain of salvation, the essence of salvation must be 
 His communication of Himselfl The water is the same 
 in the fountain as in the pitcher. So, while salvation 
 includes and gives rise to many another blessing both in 
 this life and in the next, the very core and heart of it if, 
 the possession of God Himself, fiUing our spirits and 
 changing our whole nature into His own image. 
 
 But, God being the true fountain of salvation, notice 
 that Jesus Christ plainly and decisively puts Himself in 
 the place that belongs to God : " If any man thirst, let 
 him come unto me, and drink." Think of the extrar 
 ordinary claims involved in that invitation. Here is a 
 man who plants Himself over against the whole of the 
 human race, and professes that He can satisfy every 
 thirst of every soul through all the ages. Every craving 
 of heart and mind, all longings for love and wisdom, for 
 purity and joy, for strength and guidance, He assumes to 
 be able to slake by the gift of Himselt 
 
 Moses sinned when he said, " Must we fetch water out 
 of this rock ? " and expiated that sin by death. But his 
 presumption was modesty compared with the unheard-of 
 assumptions of the " meek and lowly " Christ There is 
 but one hypothesis by which the character of Jesus can 
 be saved, if He ever said anything like these words — ^and 
 that is that He who speaks them is God manifest in the 
 flesh, the everlasting Son of the Father. 
 
 One other remark may be made on this part of our 
 subject The first word of our text carries us back to 
 something preceding, on which the drawing water with 
 
XII.] THE WELLS OF SALVATION, 317 
 
 joy is founded. That something is expressed immediately 
 before : " The Lord Jehovah is my strength and song : 
 He also is become my salvation." These words are 
 quoted from Moses' song at the Red Sea, and there 
 point to the one definite act by which God had saved the 
 people from their pursuers. In like manner, we have to 
 look to a definite historical act by which the fountain of 
 salvation has been opened for us, and our glad drawing 
 therefrom has been made possible. The mission and 
 work of Jesus Christ, His incarnation, passion and death, 
 are the means by which the sealed fountain has been 
 opened. In these, or more truly in this, as one great 
 whole, God becomes to us what in the depths of his 
 Being He always was. The living stream is brought 
 near. For men, Jesus Christ is as the river which flows 
 from the closed and land-locked sea of the infir ite Divine 
 nature. He is for us the only source, the inexhaustible 
 source, the perennial source — like some spring never hot 
 or muddy, never frozen, never walled in, never sinking one 
 hair's-breadth in its basin, though armies drink, and ages 
 pass. " They drank of that Rock which followed them, 
 and that Rock was Christ" So all the files of this moving 
 host of men find the same spring beside them, where- 
 soever they pitch, and the last of all the generations shall 
 draw joy from the eternal fountain, Jesus Christ I 
 
 Consider, again, what is the way of drawing from the 
 well of salvation. 
 
 It is not difficult to come to a right understanding 
 of the act which answers to this part of the metaphor. 
 
2i8 THE WELLS OF SALVATION, [skrm. 
 
 People have given many answers to the question, If God 
 be the fountain of salvation, how are we to get the water? 
 If I may say so, pumps of all sorts have been tried, and 
 there has been much weary working of arms at the 
 handles, and much jangling of buckets and nothing 
 brought up. The old word is true, with a new application 
 to all who try in any shape to procure salvation by any 
 work of their own : " Thou hast nothing to draw with, 
 and the well is deep." But there is no need for all this 
 profitless work. It is as foolish as it would be to spend 
 money and pains in sinking a well in some mountainous 
 country, where every hill-side is seamed with watercourses, 
 and all that is needed is to put one end of any kind of 
 wooden spout into the " bum " and your vessels under 
 the other. The well of salvation is an Artesian well that 
 needs no machinery to raise the water, but only pitchers 
 to receive it as it rises. 
 
 Christ has taught us what "drawing" is. To the 
 Samaritan woman He said, " Tnou wouldst have asked of 
 him, and he would have given thee living water." So, 
 then. Drawing is Asking. To the crowds in the Temple 
 courts He said, " Let him come unto me and drink." 
 So, then. Drawing is Coming. To the hsteners by the 
 Sea of Gahlee He said, " He that cometh to me shall 
 never hunger ; and he that believeth on me shall never 
 thirst" So Coming, Asking, Drawing, are all explamed 
 by Beheving. To trust Christ is to come to Him. To 
 trust Christ is to draw, and to trust Christ is to drink. 
 Simple faith draws all God's goodness into the souL 
 
 Now that faith whidi is thus powerAil, must fix 
 
XII.] THE WELLS OF SALVATION. 219 
 
 and fasten on a definite historical act Tht fiiith 
 which draws from the fountain of salvation is not a 
 vague faith in generaUties about God's goodness and the 
 like, but it grasps God a^ revealed and becoming our 
 salvation in the person and work of Jesus Christ Nor 
 is it a vague faith which has regard to Christ in his 
 lovely character and perfect purity only, but one which 
 lays hold on that great miracle of love perfected on 
 the Cross where He bore our sins. In that wonderful 
 discourse in which Christ proclaims Himself the Bread 
 of Life, it is very instructive to note that He advances 
 from the more general statement that life comes from 
 eating of that bread which is Himself, to the more 
 special and defined one, "Whoso eateth my flesh and 
 drinketh my blood hath eternal life." Not merely 
 Christ, but Christ crucified, is the food of our souls, 
 the water of life. So then the drawing is faith, and 
 that a faith which grasps the great sacrifice which Christ 
 has made, as the channel whereby God's salvation comes 
 near to each thirsty lip and drooping souL 
 
 The words preceding our text suggest another charac- 
 ,teristic of the faith which really draws water from the 
 fountain : " He is become my salvation," That is to say, 
 this believing grasp of Christ manifested in a definite 
 historical act is an intensely personal thing. We are not 
 merely to say " He is the Saviour of the world," but 
 " He is my Saviour, He loved mcy and gave Himself for 
 nuT We must lay hold of that love as embracmg our- 
 selves, and make our very own the treasure which 
 belongs to aU. No general faith ia Christ's mercy, or ia 
 
220 THE WELLS OF SALVATION. [serm 
 
 the atoning power of His Cross, will suffice to make us 
 glad and to bow our souls in quick and quickening love. 
 It must be something a great deal more personal than 
 that : even the faith that His heart has love m it for me^ 
 that I am not lost in the crowd, nor forgotten in that 
 abstraction, " the world," but that I had a place in His 
 thought when He died, that I have a place in His heart 
 while He lives. Thus making our own " the common 
 salvation," and filling our own vessel at the great fountain. 
 we shall have our own joy in the common gladness. 
 
 Consider too, the joy of the water drawers. 
 
 The well is the meeting-place in these hot lands, 
 where the solitary shepherds from the pastures and the 
 maidens from the black camels' hair tents meet in the 
 cool evening, and ringing laughter and cheery talk go 
 round. Or the allusion may be rather to the joy, as of 
 escape from death, with which some exhausted travellers 
 press towards the palm trees on the horizon that tell 
 of a spring in the desert, and when they have reached it, 
 crowd to the founUin and drink greedily, no matter how 
 hot and muddy it may be. 
 
 So jubilant is the heart of the man whose soul is filled 
 and feasted with the God of his salvation, and the salva- 
 tion of his God. True Christianity is a joyful thing, not 
 indeed with foolish laughter like the crackling of thorns 
 under a pot, but with a joy too deep to be loud, too pure 
 to be transient Such a man has all the sources and 
 motives for joy which the heart can ask. Salvation 
 
XII.] THE WELLS OF SALVATION. sai 
 
 unfolds into manifold gladnesses — rare and profound 
 There is in it forgiveness, which makes us " hear joy and 
 gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may 
 rejoice." There is companionship with God and Christ, 
 and such society makes " our hearts bum within us." 
 There is obedience to His will, and then His statutes 
 become the " joy of our hearts." There is a bright hope 
 beyond, and " in that hope of the glory of God we can 
 •ejoice." We are independent of externals, possessing 
 Jiat which no change can affect and of which nothing 
 can bereave us. So we can sing the old song : " Though 
 the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the 
 vines, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the 
 God of my salvation." How different the false and 
 fleeting joys of earth, when men resort to their broken 
 cisterns that can hold no water. The grim words of 
 the prophet are only too true about all other springs of 
 gladness : " They came to the pits, and found no water ; 
 they istumed with their vessels empty. They were 
 ashamed and confounded, and covered their heads." 
 
 That ^Teat Lord and Lover of all our souls calls to 
 each of ui; now, as He did to the men of His generation, 
 when He was on earth. To them He stretched out His 
 hospitable irms as He stood in the Temple court and cried^ 
 " If any m m thirst, let him come unto me and drink." 
 To us He speaks from heaven, in the great words which 
 all but clo.^ the volume of revelation : " Let him that 
 is athirst come, and whosoever will, let him take the 
 walei of life freely." May each of us answer, " Sir, give 
 me this water, that I «hirst not, neither come to earth'i 
 broken cisterns to divw." 
 
SERMON XIII. 
 
 SEEKING THE FACE OF GODt 
 
 Psalm xxrii. 8, 9. 
 
 When dwu saidst, Seek ye my face ; my heart said onto fhee^ Thy 
 face, Lord, will I seek. Hide not Thy face far from me. 
 
 T^HERE appears to be a good deal of autobiography 
 -*- in this psahn. The writer, whom we take to be 
 David, travels back in thought to the past of his life, and 
 his backward glance fixes on two distinct objects. At 
 ®ne time he thinks of the past as God's past, all illumined 
 by the radiance of His favour, and helped by the might 
 of His imparted strength ; and at another, he thinks of it 
 as his own past, wherein he strove to love and serve his 
 keeper God ; and from both of these aspects of the dayg 
 that are gone he draws encouragement to hope that God 
 will be the same, and humbly resolves that he, for his 
 part, will continue the habit of trust and obedience. For 
 instances of the remembrance of God's past, we may take 
 the words which follow this text, " Thou hast been my 
 help ; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my 
 salvation," and the other reference to the signal deliver- 
 ance ot his early years, which is often unnoticed by 
 
SERM. XIII.] SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD, 133 
 
 ordinary readers, " When the wicked, even mine enemies 
 and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they 
 stumbled and fell " (ver. 2). The expressions recall the 
 braggart boast of Goliath, ** I will give thy flesh unto the 
 fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field," and the 
 vivid picture of the end of the fight, when the stones went 
 crashing into the thick skull of the bully, " and he fell 
 upon his face to the earth," As instance of his retrospect 
 of the past as his^ take such words as these, " One thing 
 have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after," or, " 1 
 had fainted; unless I had believed to see the goodness of 
 the Lord in the land of the living." Here, in these words 
 of our text, these two ways of looking at the past are 
 woven into one strong cord, that the Psalmist may hang 
 his confidence and his prayers thereon. What God has 
 been saying to him in days that are no more, and what he 
 has been saying to God, are planted like the two piers of 
 an arch, that from them may rise heavenwards the prayer 
 and the hope, " Hide not thy face far from me ; " " Leave 
 me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation." 
 Happy they who can look back on years made fair by 
 God's recognised gifts and their own loving obedience, 
 and who can feel that what God has been to them, and 
 what they have been to God, has stamped their lives with 
 an impress to which all the future will be true 1 Happy 
 they if their forward look is a prayer offered in lowliness, 
 and not a boast made in presumption ! We have here 
 then God's voice to the heart, the heart's echo to that 
 voice, and the heart's cry to God, founded on both tht 
 Divine voice and the human echo. 
 
224 SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD, [SERM. 
 
 There is here, first, Gocts voice to the heart. 
 
 There may be some difficulties about the rendering 
 of our text, which, however, need not concern us now. 
 Our English version is sufficient for our present purpose, 
 and, according to it, we have here, as it were, summed 
 up in a kind of dialogue of two phrases, the whole speech 
 of God to us men, and the inmost meaning of all that 
 devout souls say to God. **Seek ye my face" — such is 
 the essential meaning of all God's words and works. 
 "Thy face, Lord, will I seek" — such is the essential 
 meaning of all prayer, worship, and obedience. 
 
 But let us observe a little more closely what the 
 Psalmist means by that phrase, "Seeking God's face." 
 It needs to be translated into a more modem dialect, in 
 order to convey much meaning to some of us. We may 
 begin then by asking the significance of that expression, 
 "the face of God" 
 
 It is one of those strong Scripture phrases which escape 
 any danger of misconstruction by the very boldness of 
 their corporeal metaphors. The highest and most 
 spiritual conception of God is reached, not by a pedantic 
 scrupulosity in avoiding material representations, but by 
 an unhesitating use of these, and the remembrance that 
 they are representations. The unsubstantial abstraction 
 of the metaphysical God, described only in terms as far 
 removed as may be fi'om human analogies, for fear d 
 being guilty of "anthropomorphism," never helped or 
 gladdened any human soul It is but a bit of mist through 
 which you can see the stars shining. But the God whom 
 
XIII.] SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD, 32$ 
 
 men need and can know and love, the God who if a 
 Spirit, comes near to us in descriptions cast in the mould 
 of humanity, and loses none of His purely Spiritual 
 essence, nor any of His Infinitude, because we have 
 learned to speak of the eye, and arm, and the hand, and 
 the heart, and the face of the Lord. The more unmis- 
 takably " gross " and " carnal " the representations, the 
 more do they proclaim their true character, and the less 
 danger of their being misunderstood. The eye of the 
 Lord is His all-seeing knowledge ; the arm and the hand 
 of the Lord are substantially the same, though with certain 
 shades of difference in the ideas which they suggest, and 
 may be said to express the active energy of the Divine 
 nature. The face of the Lord, we may say, is that 
 aspect or side of the divine nature which is turned to 
 man, and is perceptible by him. It is, roughly speaking, 
 almost equivalent to "the name of the Lord." That 
 expression has a much profounder meaning than is 
 ordinarily felt to belong to it It means the manilested 
 character of Gk)d, the net result of all His self-revelation 
 by word and work. And so these two phrases — the face 
 of the Lord and the name of tht Lord^ come to nearly the 
 same thing. Both of them are worth noting for one 
 reason besides others — namely, that they bring out into 
 clear prominence the twin facts, that there is that in God 
 which may be known, and also that which cannot be. 
 Whilst once or twice in the Old Testament " the face of 
 God " is used to express the dazzHng brightness of His 
 essential being, which no man can look on, it more 
 usually means the knowable part of the Divine nature, 
 
 Q 
 
226 SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. [serm, 
 
 and, like the other phrase which we have compared with 
 it, draws a broad distinction between that and the un- 
 knowable depths — the unspeakable in God. We see the 
 radiant brightness of the full moon, but no eye has ever 
 beheld the other side of that pure silver shield. So the 
 simple expression of our text keeps us from the twin 
 errors of supposing that we can know nothing of God, 
 and of forgetting that we can know but an aspect and a 
 side of His nature. 
 
 It may be further noticed that another idea is usually 
 connected with the expression — namely that of light 
 The face of God is thought of as the sun, and so we read 
 *' Lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us," and 
 other similar passages, in which the two ideas of the rising 
 of the sun on an else dark world, and the rising of the 
 Divine countenance on else dark and wintry hearts are 
 paralleled. All thoughts, then, of brightness, of clear 
 illumination, of gladness and knowledge, of favour and 
 warmth, cluster round the emblem ; and of the Jehovah 
 of the Old Testament, as of the glorified Christ of the 
 New, it may be said, " His countenance was as the sun 
 shineth in his strength." 
 
 If these things be true, then we may learn what it is 
 to " seek His face." We do not need long and painful 
 search, as for something lost in dim darkness, in order to 
 find the sun. We do not need to seek the sun with 
 lanterns j nor to grope after God if haply we may find 
 Him. A man need only come out of his dark hiding-place 
 to find it If he will but turn his face to the Hght, the 
 glory will brighten his features and make glad his eyes. 
 
XIIL] SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. tXf 
 
 And in like manner, to seek God's face is no long, 
 dubious search, nor is He hard to be found. We have 
 only to desire to possess — and to act in hannony with 
 the desire — and we shall walk all the day in the light of 
 His countenance. Count the knowledge of God and the 
 experience of His sunny favour as more than all other 
 treasures of wisdom or delights of love or lower things. 
 " There be many that say, Who will show us any good ? " 
 and the search is vain, even because it has no clear 
 knowledge of what is good, and seeks to make up for the 
 Umitations of its possessions by their multitude. " Lord, 
 lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us." That 
 is the one pearl of great price, for which all the frag- 
 mentary and partial preciousnesses of many goodly pearls 
 arc wisely exchanged. Endeavour to keep vivid the 
 consciousness of that face as looking always in on you. 
 like the solemn frescoes of the Christ which Angelico 
 painted on the walls of his convent cells, that each poor 
 brother might feel His Master ever with him. Make Him 
 your companion, and then, though you may feel the awe 
 of the thought, " Thou hast set our secret sins in the light 
 of Thy countenance," you will find a joy deeper than the 
 awe, and learn the blessedness of those, sinful though 
 they may be, who walk in the full brightness of that face. 
 Let Him be the object of your thoughts, and more and 
 more of your whole nature. Let feeling and desire, 
 affection and will, mind and work, all turn to Him, taking 
 Him for motive and end, for strength and means, and 
 turning all your being towards Him as the sunflower tumi 
 to follow the sun. Scrupulously avoid whatever might 
 
228 SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. [SKRii. 
 
 dim the vision of His face. An invisible vapour may 
 hide a star, and we only know that the film is in the 
 nightly sky because Jupiter, which was blazing a moment 
 ago, has become dim or has disappeared. So fogs and 
 vapours from the undrained swamps of our own selfish, 
 worldly hearts may rob the thought of God of all its genial 
 lustre, and make it an angry ball of fire, or may hide 
 Him altogether from us ; and we cannot be seeking Him 
 and earthly things any more than we can serve God and 
 Mammon. 
 
 If this be the meaning ot seeking God's face, then note 
 that this invitation is God's mercifiil voice to us alL 
 Whether the Psalmist is thinking about any special time 
 or way in which God so spoke to him does not appear. 
 Rather, we may suppose that he is summing up the 
 meaning of the whole of God's dealings with him in the 
 past However that may be, it is true that God thus 
 speaks to each of us, and that we may even say He speaks 
 thus only to us. By the revelation to us of His own 
 beauty and wonderful fitness to satisfy the hunger of our 
 souls. He is wooing us to seek His face. So infinitely 
 fair and good is He, that to make Himself visible is to 
 draw us to Himself. To know Him is to love Him, and 
 the heart of all His self-revelation by speech and deed is 
 the gracious call to come to His brightness and be at rest 
 By the very make of our spirits, which bear on them 
 alike in their weakness and their strength the sign that 
 they are His, and can only be at rest in Him, He says, 
 ' Seek ye my face." By all I£s providences of joy or 
 sorrow, by disappointments and fulfilments, by hopes and 
 
xiiL] SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. 229 
 
 fruitions, by losses and gains, by all the altemationi which 
 ** toss us to His breast," He says, " Seek ye my fecc." 
 In all that befalls us our purged ears may hear ** the great 
 voice saying, Come up thither." And most of all in 
 Jesus Christ, the true " angel of His face," in whom all 
 the lustre of His radiance is gathered, does He beckon us 
 to Himself. The highest, most loving, most beseeching 
 form of that wonderful invitation, " Seek ye my face,* is 
 the call of Him in whose face we see the glory of God as 
 we see it nowhere besides : ** Come unto me, all ye that 
 labour and are heavy laden," So He speaks to the whole 
 world. So He speaks to each of us. So He speaks to 
 me by Christ, who is the dearest utterance of His love 
 and the express image of His person. 
 
 IL We have here the hearts echo to the voice of God, 
 " My heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek." 
 Swift and immediate, as the thunder to the Hghtning, the 
 answer follows the invitation. If the resolve to seek 
 God's face be not made by us at the very moment when 
 we become aware of His loving call, it is very unlikely to 
 be made at all The first notes of that low voice fall on 
 the heart with more persuasive power than they retain 
 after it has become familiar with them, even as the first- 
 heard song of the thrush in spring-time, that breaks the 
 long wintry silence, has a sweetness all its own. The 
 echo answers as soon as the mother voice ceases. But 
 how many of us hesitate and delay, and content ourselves 
 with intentions to answer, and so by lapse of time lose 
 our very consciousness that God is speaking to us at aU. 
 
230 SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD, [serm. 
 
 Some of us are as dead to the perception of His gracious 
 call, just because it has been sounding on uninterruptedly, 
 as are the dwellers by the waterfall to its unremitting 
 voice. And it is always dangerous to delay for one 
 moment the uprising of the heart in any resolution which 
 we know to be right. Any unnecessary interval inter- 
 posed between the perception of duty and the doing of 
 duty weakens the perception and the resolution as well, 
 and lowers the whole tone of a man. So do not let us 
 tolerate any lingering hesitation in ourselves in yielding 
 to the Divine summons. The only safety, the only peace 
 lies in prompt obedience and in an immediate answer. 
 
 There is also brought out here very plainly the complete 
 correspondence between the Divine command and the 
 devout man's resolve. Word for word the invitation is 
 repeated in the answer. This man's obedience is no 
 partial obedience. He does not take part of God's call 
 and yield to that, leaving the rest to be dispersed in 
 empty air, but all the breadth and depth of the message 
 ♦hat comes to him from God is contained in his an- 
 nouncement of his purpose. Like the sailor at the tiller, 
 he answers his captain's directions by repeating them. 
 " Port," says the officer. " Port it is," says the steersman. 
 "Seek ye my face." **Thy face will I seek." The 
 correspondence in words means the correspondence in 
 action and the thorough-going obedience. How unlike 
 the half-and-half seeking, the languid search, as of people 
 listlessly looking for something which they do not much 
 expect to find, and do not much care whether they find 
 or no, which characterises so many so-called Christians I 
 
XIII.] SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. 231 
 
 They are seekers after God, are they? Yes, with less 
 eagerness than they would seek for a sovereign if it rolled 
 from their fingers into the mud. And so need we 
 wonder that so may of us have but little consciousness 
 of a found God to brighten our lives ? " Seek, and ye 
 shall find" is ever true, thank God, but it must be a 
 whole-hearted seeking, and not the feeble, flickering desire 
 and the listless action which mark so many of us. 
 
 Note, too, the firm and decisive resolution shining 
 through the very brevity of the words. The original 
 gives that brevity even more strongly. Three words 
 suffice to hold the law which the man has made for the 
 pole-star of his life. Fixed resolves need short professions. 
 A Spartan brevity, as of a man with his lips tightly locked 
 together, is fitting for such purposes. It is the waverers, 
 who have more than one end in view, or the feeble-willed 
 who try to brace themselves up by talking, making a 
 fence of words around them, who are profuse in their 
 vows. The sober temperament, that measures difficulties 
 and knows the tenacity as well as the gravity of its 
 determination, keeps its breath for the struggle, and does 
 not waste it on blowing the trumpet beforehand. If we 
 are quite resolved that our life's business is to be seeking 
 God's face, we shall for the most part say little about it 
 
 What a contrast that clear, self-conscious, firm reso- 
 lution is to the hesitations and indecisions so common 
 among us I How few of us could honestly crystallize the 
 aims that guide our life into any single sentence! 
 How much fewer there are who could do it in thai sen- 
 tence 1 We tiy the impossible feat of riding on two horses 
 
232 SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD, [serm. 
 
 at once. We resolve and retract, and hesitate and com- 
 promise. The ship heads now one way and now another, 
 and that not because we are wisely tacking — ^that is to say, 
 seeking to reach one point by widely-varying courses — 
 but because our hand is so weak on the helm that we 
 drift wherever the wash of the waves and the buffets of 
 the wind carry us. 
 
 Further, we have in this heart's echo to the voice of 
 God the amvtrsum of a general invitatum into a personal 
 resolution. 
 
 The call is, ** Seek^^." The answer is, " /will seek." 
 That is what we have all to do with God's words. He 
 sows His invitations broadcast ; we have to make them 
 our own. He sends out His mercy for a world ; we have 
 to claim each our portion. He issues His commands to 
 allj I have to make them the law for my life. The 
 stream flows deep and broad from the throne of God, 
 and parts into four heads, the number expressive of 
 universal diffusion throughout the world ; but I have to 
 bring it into my own garden by my own trench, and to 
 carry it to my own hp in my own cup. The gospel tells 
 as iat Christ died for the world; I have to "appro- 
 priate " that, as our fathers used to name it, by sa)ring 
 He gave Himself for me. So when that merciful voice 
 comes to us there must be, each for himself^ a personal 
 response to it " Seek ye my face.** Let us each reply, 
 " Thy face, Lord, wiU /seek." 
 
 Nothing in all the world is so blessed as to hear that 
 wonderful beseeching call sounding in every providence, 
 mvcUing to ui from eveiy comer of the universe, speak- 
 
XIII.] SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD, 333 
 
 ing to us in the light of setting suns and in the hush of 
 midnight skies, sounding in the break of waves on the 
 beach and in the rustle of leaves in the forest depths, 
 whispering to us in the depths of our own hearts and 
 wooing us by all things to our rest Everything assumes 
 a new meaning and is appareled in celestial light when 
 we are aware that everything is a messenger from God to 
 guide us to HimselC And nothing is so joyous as to 
 yield to that most tender summons, while on the other 
 hand, its non-acceptance breeds and brings discord and 
 unrest into our whole being. To stifle it whoUy is im- 
 possible, conscience will ever and again stir. When wc 
 feel most secure, and have deadened our cars most 
 effectually, as we think, some word or look, a chance 
 line in a book, a sunset, a phrase in a sermon, the 
 meeting of a funeral, some fleeting gladness, sets the 
 chords vibrating again. So there is constant inward 
 strife, or, if not, so much the worse; for the man who 
 has lost the capacity of discerning God's voice has lost 
 the most of what ennobles his nature. But that is heaven 
 on earth, nobleness, peace, and power, to stand as at the 
 point of some great eUipse, to which converge from all 
 sides the music of God's manifold invitations, and listen- 
 ing to them to say, I hear, and I obey. Thou dost call, 
 and I answer, Lo I here am L 
 
 III. The third bend in the stream of thought here is the 
 hearts cry to God founded on both the Divine voice and the 
 human echo. 
 
 ♦' Hide not thy fiicc far from me" is clearly a prayei 
 
234 SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. [skrm. 
 
 built upon both these elements in the past God's in- 
 vitation, and my acceptance of it, both give me the right 
 to pray thus, and are pledges of the answer. 
 
 As to the former, " Thou saidst. Seek ye my face ** — 
 " hide not thy face from me " is but the vivid way of 
 putting the thought that God cannot contradict Himself. 
 His commandments are promises. " Thou shalt " is but 
 the hard, rough shell which covers a sweet " I will " from 
 His lips. If He bids us seek His face, He thereby 
 pledges Himself to show us His face. He binds Himself 
 to us by His commandments ; and, in that sense too, as 
 well as in others, His law is a covenant, placing Him 
 under obligations, even as it does us. He recognises the 
 force of the plea upon our Ups, and owns that we prevail 
 when we urge it He can point with majestic self-vindi- 
 cation to all the records of the past, and assert, " I have 
 never said to the seed of Jacob, Seek ye my face in 
 vain." So we may build an unshaken confidence on His 
 unchangeable fidehty to the obligation under which He 
 comes by sendmg forth such a summons. Be sure that 
 God never calls us to a feast and sets before us an empty 
 table, when we take Him at His word and come. His 
 past is the guarantee and pattern for His future. Has 
 He bid me seek His face ? Then He cannot hide His 
 face from me, nor say me nay when I beseech Him to 
 lift up its light upon me. 
 
 As to the second ground of this prayer, it rests on my 
 past as well as on God's. " Thy face will I seek — hide 
 not thy face from me." That is the confidence that 
 because we seek we shall find. My feeblest desire brings 
 
XIII.] SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. 235 
 
 answers correspondent to its strength and purity. It 
 cannot be that any man ever truly longed to know Goc' 
 and was balked of his wish. You may have exactly a^ 
 much of Glod as you want ; as much, that is, as you can 
 hold, as much as the ordering of your lives makes it 
 possible that we should possess. There is no limit to 
 our consciousness of God's loving presence and help, 
 except that drawn by ourselves. He fills the vessels we 
 bring, be they large or small And there is no possibility 
 of any longing after Him remaining unsatisfied. No 
 hunger of heart, no aching emptiness, no eyes failing 
 with looking for the visitor who never cornes, no pining 
 away in sick disappointment, have any place in the 
 relation of the soul to God. So sufficient is He, so near, 
 so infinitely desirous to impart Himself, that He needs 
 but the narrowest opening to pour His fulness into the 
 heart Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after 
 God, for they shall be filled. He does not hold out a 
 gift with one hand and then twitch it away with the 
 other when wc try to grasp, as children do with light 
 reflected from a looking-glass on a waU. That fair face 
 does not elude us when we try to look on it, but to seek 
 is to find, to wish for God is to have God. 
 
 " Seek His face evermore," and your life will be bright 
 because you will walk in the light of His countenance 
 always. That face will brighten the darkness of death, 
 and " make a sunshine in that shady place." As you 
 pass through the dark valley it will shine in upon you, 
 as the sun looks through the savage gorge in the 
 Himalayas, above which towers that strange mountain 
 
236 SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. [serm. xiil 
 
 which is pierced right through with a circular aperture ; 
 and when you reach the land beyond you will enter it 
 with the wonderful hope on your lips, *' As for me, I 
 shall behold X\y face in righteousness," and heaven's 
 heaven will b« that ** His servants serve Him and see 
 His faca." 
 
SERMON XIV. 
 
 CITIZENS OF HEAYBM. 
 
 Philip. L 27, aS. 
 
 Only let yonr conTenation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ t 
 that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear 
 of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind 
 striving together for the faith of the gospel ; and in nothing 
 terrified by yonr adversaries. 
 
 \ 1 rE read in the Acts of the Apostles that Philippi 
 was the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and 
 a "colony." Now, the connection between a Roman 
 colony and Rome was a great deal closer than that 
 between an Enghsh colony and England. It was, in 
 fact, a bit of Rome on foreign soil 
 
 The colonists and their children were Roman citizens. 
 Their names were enrolled on the lists of Roman tribes. 
 They were governed not by the provincial authorities, 
 but by their own magistrates, and the law to which they 
 owed obedience was not that of the locality, but the law 
 of Rome. 
 
 No doubt some of the Phihppian Christians possessed 
 these privileges. They knew what it was to live in 1 
 commimity to which the;- were less closely bound than 
 
238 CITIZENS OF HE A VEN, [skrm. 
 
 to the great city beyond the sea. They were members 
 of a mighty polity, though they had never seen its 
 temples nor trod its streets. They lived in PhiUppi, but 
 they belonged to Rome. Hence there is a peculiar 
 significance in the first words of our text. The render- 
 ing, "conversation,** was inadequate even when it was 
 made. It has become more so now. The word then 
 meant " conduct** It now means little more than words. 
 But though the phrase may express loosely the Apostle's 
 general idea, it loses entirely the striking metaphor under 
 which it is couched. The Revised Version gives the 
 literal rendering in its margin — " Behave as citizens **— 
 though it adopts in its text a rendering which disregards 
 the figure in the word, and contents itself with the less 
 picturesque and vivid phrase — " let your manner of life 
 be worthy." But there seems no reason for leaving out 
 the metaphor ; it entirely fits in with the purpose of the 
 apostle and with the context 
 
 The meaning is, Play the citizen in a manner worthy 
 of the gospel Paul does not, of course, mean. Dis- 
 charge your civic duties as Christian men, though some 
 Christian Englishmen need that reminder ; but the city of 
 which inese Philippians were citizens was the heavenly 
 Jerusalem, the metropoUs, the mother city of us all He 
 would kindle in them the consciousness of belonging 
 to another order of things than that around them. He 
 would stimulate their loyalty to obedience to the city's 
 laws. As the outlying colonies of Rome had sometimes 
 entrusted to them the task of keeping the frontiers and 
 extending the power of the imperial city, so he stirs them 
 
XIV.] CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. 239 
 
 up to aggressive warfare ; and as in all their conflicts the 
 little colony felt that the Empire was at its back, and 
 therefore looked undaunted on shoals of barbarian foes, 
 so he would have his friends at Phihppi animated by lofty 
 courage, and ever confident of final victory. 
 
 Such seems to be a general outline of these eager 
 exhortations to the citizens of heaven in this outlying 
 colony of earth. Let us think of them briefly in order 
 now. 
 
 I. Keep fresh the sense of belonging to the mother city, 
 
 Paul was not only writing to Philippi, but from Rome, 
 where he might see how, even in degenerate days, the 
 consciousness of being a Roman gave dignity to a man, 
 and how the idea became almost a religion. He would 
 kindle a similar feeling in Christians. 
 
 We do belong to another polity or order of things than 
 that with which we are connected by the bonds of flesh 
 and sense. Our true affinities are with the mother city. 
 True, we are here on earth, but far beyond the blue 
 waters is another community, of which we arc truly 
 members, and sometimes in calm weather we can see, if 
 we climb to a height above the smoke of the valley where 
 we dwell, the faint outline of the mountains of that other 
 land, lying dream-like on the opal waves, and bathed in 
 sunlight 
 
 Therefore it is a great part of Christian discipline to 
 keep a vivid consciousness that there is such an unseen 
 order of things at present in existence. We speak 
 popularly of " the future life," and are apt to forget that 
 
340 CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. [SKRM. 
 
 it is also the present life to an innumerable company. 
 In fact, this film of an earthly life floats in that greater 
 sphere which is all around it, above, beneath, touching it 
 at every point 
 
 It is, as Peter says "ready to be unveiled.** Yes, 
 behind the thin curtain, through which stray beams of 
 the brightness sometimes shoot, that other order stands, 
 close to us, parted from us by a most slender division, 
 only a woven veil, no ^ great gulf or iron barrier. And, 
 before long His hand will draw it back, rattling with its 
 rings as it is put aside, and there will blaze out what has 
 always been, though we saw it not It is so close, so 
 real, so bright, so solemn, that it is worth while to try to 
 feel its nearness; and we are so purblind, and such 
 foolish slaves of mere sense, shaping our lives on the 
 legal maxim that things which are non-apparent must be 
 treated as non-existent, that it needs a constant effort 
 not to lose the feeling altogether. 
 
 There is a present connection between all Christian 
 men and that heavenly City. It not merely exists, 
 but we belong to it in the measure in which we are 
 Christians. All these figurative expressions about our 
 citizenship being in heaven and the Hke, rest on the 
 simple fact that the life of Christian men on earth and 
 in heaven is fundamentally the same. The principles 
 which guide, the motives which sway, the tastes and 
 desires, affections and impulses, the objects and aims, 
 are substantially one. A Christian man's true afl!inities 
 are with the things not seen, and with the persons there, 
 however the surface relationships knit him to the earth. 
 
XIV.] CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. 241 
 
 In the degree in which he is a Christian, he is a stranger 
 here and a native of the heavens. That great City is, 
 like some of the capitals of Europe, built on a broad 
 river, with the mass of the metropolis on the one bank, 
 but a wide-spreading suburb on the other. As the 
 Trastevere is to Rome, as Southwark to London, so is 
 earth to heaven, the bit of the city on the other side the 
 bridge. As Philippi was to Rome, so is earth to heaven, 
 the colony on the outskirts of the empire, ringed round 
 by barbarians, and separated by sounding seas, but 
 keeping open its communications, and one in citizenship. 
 Be it our care, then, to keep the sense of that city 
 beyond the river vivid and constant Amid the shows 
 and shams of earth look ever onward to the reahties, 
 " the things which ar<;," while all else only seems to be. 
 The things which are seen are but smoke wreaths, 
 floating for a moment across space, and melting into 
 nothingness while we look. We do not belong to them 
 or to the order of hings to which they belong. There 
 is no kindred between us and them. Our true relation- 
 ships are elsewhere. In this present visible world all 
 other creatures find their sufficient and home-like abode. 
 " Foxes have holes, and birds their roosting-places ;" but 
 man alone has not where to lay his head, aor can he 
 find in all the width of the created unive-se a place in 
 which and with which he can be satisfied. Our true 
 habitat is elsewhere. So let us set our thoughts and 
 affections on things above. The descendants of the 
 original settlers in our colonies talk stul of coming to 
 England as going " home," though they were bom in 
 
 E 
 
24a CITIZENS OF HE A VEN, [serm. 
 
 Australia, and have lived there all their lives. In like 
 manner we Christian people should keep vigorous in our 
 minds the thought that our true home is there where we 
 have never been, and that here we are foreigners and 
 wanderers. 
 
 Nor need that feeling of detachment from the present 
 sadden our spirits, or weaken our interest in the things 
 around us. To recognise our separation from the order 
 of things in which we "move," because we belong to 
 that majestic unseen order in which we really " have our 
 being," makes life great and not small. It clothes the 
 present with dignity beyond what is possible to it if it be 
 not looked at in the light of its connection with ** the 
 regions beyond." From that connection life derives all 
 its meaning. Surely nothing can be conceived more 
 unmeaning, more wearisome in its monotony, more 
 tragic in its joy, more purposeless in its efforts, than 
 man's life, if the life of sense and time be all Truly it 
 is " like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
 signifymg nothing." " The white radiance of eternity " 
 streaming through it from above gives all its beauty to 
 the " dome of many-coloured glass " which men call life. 
 They who feel most their connection with the city which 
 hath foundations should be best able to wring the last 
 drop of pure sweetness out of all earthly joys, to under- 
 stand the meaning of all events, and to be interested 
 most keenly, because most intelligently and most nobly, 
 in the homeliest and smallest of the tasks and concerns 
 of the present 
 
 So, fn all things, act as citizens of the great Motiicr of 
 
xnr.] CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. 243 
 
 heroes and saints beyond the sea. Ever feel that you 
 belong to another order, and let the thought, " Here we 
 have no continuing city," be to you not merely the bitter 
 lesson taught by the transiency of earthly joys and 
 treasures and loves, but the happy result of " seeking for 
 the city which hath the foundations." 
 
 II. Another exhortation which our text gives is. Live 
 by the laws of the city. 
 
 The Philippian colonists were governed by the code 
 of Rome. Whatever might be the law of the province 
 of Macedonia, they owed no obedience to it So 
 Christian men are not to be governed by the maxims 
 and rules of conduct which prevail in the province, but 
 to be governed from the capital. We ought to get from 
 on-lookers the same character that was given to the Jews, 
 that we are " a people whose laws are different from ail 
 people that be on earth," and we ought to reckon such a 
 character our highest praise. Paul would have these 
 Philippian Christians act " worthy of the gospel'' That 
 is our law. 
 
 The great good news of God manifest in the flesh, and 
 of our salvation through Christ Jesus, is not merely to be 
 believed, but to be obeyed. The gospel is not merely a 
 message of deliverance, it is also a rule of conduct It 
 is not merely theology, it is also ethics. Like some of 
 the ancient municipal charters, the grant of privileges 
 and proclamation of freedom is also the sovereign code 
 which imposes duties and shapes life. A gospel of 
 laziness and mere exemption from hell was not Paul'i 
 
244 CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. [SERM. 
 
 gospel. A gospel of doctrines, to be investigated, spun 
 into a system of theology, and accepted by the under- 
 standing, and there an end, was not Paul's gospel He 
 believed that the great facts which he proclaimed con- 
 cerning the self-revelation of God in Christ would unfold 
 into a sovereign law of life for every true believer, and 
 so his one all-sufficient precept and standard of conduct 
 arc in these simple words, " worthy of the gospeL" 
 
 That law is all-sufficient In the truths which con- 
 stituted Paul's gospel, that is to say, in the truths of the 
 life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, lies all that 
 men need for conduct and character. In Him we have 
 the " realised ideal," the flawless example, and instead of 
 a thousand precepts, for us all duty is resolved into one 
 — ^be like Christ In Him we have the mighty motive, 
 powerful enough to overcome all forces that would draw 
 us away, and like some strong spring to keep us in 
 closest contact with Right and Goodness. Instead of a 
 confusing variety of appeals to manifold motives of 
 interest and conscience, and one knows not what beside, 
 we have the one all-powerful appeal, " If ye love me, 
 keep my commandments," and that draws all the 
 agitations and fluctuations of the soul afler. it, as the 
 rounded fullness of the moon does the heaped waters in 
 the tidal wave that girdles the world. In Him we have 
 all the helps that weakness needs, for He Himself will 
 come and dwell with us and in us, and be our righteous- 
 ness and our strength. 
 
 Live " worthy of the gospel," then. How grand the 
 unity and simplicity thus breathed into our duties and 
 
XIV.] CITIZENS OF HE A VEN, 245 
 
 through our lives I All duties are capable of reduction 
 to this one, and though we shall still need detailed 
 instruction and specific precepts, we shall be set free 
 from the pedantry of a small scrupulous casuistry, which 
 fetters men's Hmbs with microscopic bands, and shall 
 joyfully learn how much mightier and happier is the life 
 which is shaped by one fruitful principle, than that which 
 is hampered by a thousand regulations. 
 
 Nor is such an all-comprehensive precept a mere 
 toothless generality. Let a man try honestly to shape 
 his life by it ; and he will find soon enough how close it 
 grips him, and how wide it stretches and how deep it 
 goes. The greatest principles of the gospel are to be 
 fitted to the smallest duties. Indeed that combination — 
 great principles and small duties — is the secret of all 
 noble and calm life, and nowhere should it be so beauti- 
 fully exemplified as in the life of a Christian man. The 
 tiny round of the dew-drop is shaped by the same lawk 
 that mould the giant sphere of the largest planet You 
 cannot make a map of the poorest grassfield without 
 celestial observations. The star is not too high nor too 
 brilliant to move before us and guide simple men's feet 
 along their pilgrimage. "Worthy of the gospel" is a 
 most practical and stringent law. 
 
 And it is an exclusive commandment too, shutting out 
 obedience to other codes, however common and fashion- 
 able thry may be. We are governed from home, and we 
 give no submission to provincial authorities. Never mind 
 what prople say about you, nor what may be the maxims 
 and ways of men around you. These are no guides iat 
 
246 CITIZENS OF HE A VEN, [serm 
 
 you. Public opinion (which only means for most of us the 
 hasty judgments of the half-dozen people who happen 
 to be nearest us), use and wont, the customs of our set, 
 the notions of the world about duty, all these we have 
 nothing to do with. The censures or the praise of men 
 need not move us. We report to headquarters, and 
 subordinates' estimate need be nothing to us. 1 et us 
 then say, " With me it is a very small matter that I should 
 be judged of men's judgment He that judgeth me is 
 the Lord." When we may be misunderstood or harshly 
 dealt with, let us lift our eyes to the lofty seat where the 
 Emperor sits, and remove ourselves from men's sentences 
 by our " appeal unto Caesar," and, in all varieties of 
 circumstances and duty, let us take the gospel which is 
 the record of Christ's life, death, and character, for our 
 only law, and labour that, whatever others may think of 
 us, we " may be well pleasing to him." 
 
 III. Further, our text bids the colonists fight for the 
 advance of the dominions of the city, — Like the armed 
 colonists whom Russia and other empires had on their 
 frontier, who received their bits of land on condition of 
 holding the border against the enemy, and pushing it 
 forward a league or two when possible, Christian men 
 are set down in their places to be ** wardens of the 
 marches," citizen soldiers who hold their homesteads on 
 a military tenure, and are to " strive together for the faith 
 ofthegospeir 
 
 There is no space here and now to go into details o! 
 the exposition of this part of our text Enough to say in 
 
XIV.] CITIZENS OF HE A VEN, 247 
 
 brief that we are here exhorted to " stand fast ; " that is, 
 as it were, the defensive side of our warfare, maintaining 
 our ground and repeUing all assaults; that this successful 
 resistance is to be " in one spirit," inasmuch as all resis- 
 tance depends on our poor feeble spirits being ingrafted 
 and rooted in God's Spirit, in vital union with whom we 
 may be knit together into a unity which shall oppose a 
 granite breakwater to the on-rushing tide of opposition ; 
 that in addition to the unmoved resistance which will not 
 yield an inch of the sacred soil to the enemy, we are to 
 carry the war onwards, and, not content with holding 
 our own, are with one mind to strive together for the 
 faith of the gospel There is to be discipline, then, and 
 compact organisation, like that of the legions whom Paul, 
 from his prison among the Praetorian guards, had often 
 seen shining in steel, moving like a machine, grim, irre- 
 sistible. The cause for which we are to fight is the faith 
 of the gospel, an expression which almost seems to justify 
 the opinion that " the faith " here means, as it does in 
 later usage, the sum and substance of that which is 
 believed. But even here the word may have its usual 
 meaning of the subjective act of trust in the gospel, and 
 the thought may be that we are unitedly to fight for its 
 growing power in our own heart and in the hearts of 
 others. In any case the idea is plainly here that Christian 
 men are set down in the world, like the frontier guard, to 
 push the conquests of the empire, and to win more groimd 
 for their King. 
 
 Such work is ever needed, never more needed than 
 A)w. In this day when a wave of unbelief seems pnsing 
 
248 CITIZENS or HE A VEN. [serm. 
 
 over society, when material comfort and worldly prosperity 
 are so dazzlingly attractive to so many, the solemn duty 
 is laid upon us with even more than usual emphasis, and 
 we are called upon to feel more than ever the oneness 
 of all true Christians, and to close up our ranks for the 
 fight All this can only be done after we have obeyed 
 the other injunctions of this text The degree in which 
 we feel that we belong to another order of things than 
 this around us, and the degree in which we live by the 
 Imperial laws, will determine the degree m which we can 
 fight with vigour for the growth of the dominion of the 
 dty. Be it ours to cherish the vivid coLfCiousness that 
 we are here dwelling not in the cities of th« Canaanites, 
 but; like the father of the faithfiil, in tents pitched at their 
 gates, nomads in the midst of a civic life to which we do 
 not belong, in order that we may breathe a hallowing 
 influence through it, and win hearts to the love of Him 
 whom to imitate is perfection, whom to serve is fireedom. 
 
 IV. The last exhortation to the colonists is, Be sun of 
 vtiUffy* 
 
 ** In nothing terrified by your adversaries," says Paul 
 He uses a very vivid; and some people might think, a 
 very vulgar metaphor here. The word rendered terrified 
 properly refers to a horse shymg or plunging at some 
 object It is generally things half seen and mistaken for 
 something more dreadful than themselves that make 
 horses shy ; and it is usually a half-look at adversaries, 
 and a mistaken estimate of their strength, that make 
 <;^fi«t'anf afiraid. Go up to your fears and speak to 
 
xiyj CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. 349 
 
 them, and as ghosts are said to do, they will generally 
 fade away. So we may go into the battle, as the rash 
 French minister said he did into the Franco-German war, 
 "with a light heart," and that for good reasons. We 
 have no reason to fear for ourselves. We have no 
 reason to fear for the ark of God. We have no reason 
 to fear for the growth of Christianity in the world. Many 
 good men in this time seem to be getting half-ashamed 
 of the gospel, and some preachers are preaching it in 
 words which sound like an apology rather than a creed. 
 Do not let us allow the enemy to overpower our imagi- 
 nations in that fashion. Do not let us fight as if we 
 expected to be beaten, always casting our eyes over our 
 shoulders, even while we are advancing, to make sure of 
 our retreat, but let us trust our gospel, and trust our 
 King, and let us take to heart the old admonition, '* Lift 
 up thy voice with strength ; lift it up, be not airjid." 
 
 Such courage is a prophecy of victory. Such courage 
 IS based upon a sure hope. *'Our citizenship is in 
 heaven, from whence also we look for the Lord Jesus as 
 Saviour." The little outlying colony in this far-off edge 
 of the empire is ringed about by wide-stretching hosts 
 of dusky barbarians. Far as the eye can reach their 
 myriads cover the land and the watchers from the 
 ramparts might well be dismayed if they had only their 
 own resources to depend on. But they know that the 
 Emperor in his progress will come to this sorely beset 
 outpost, and thcii eyes are fixed on the pass in the hills 
 where they expect to see the waving banners and the 
 gleaming spears. Soon, like our countrymen in I^cknow, 
 
25© CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. [serm. xnr. 
 
 they will hear the music and the shouts that tell that He 
 is at hand. Then when He comes, He will raise the 
 siege and scatter all the enemies as the chaflf of the 
 threshing-floor, and the colonists who held the post will 
 go with Him to the land which they have never seen, 
 but which is their home, and will, with the Victor, sweep 
 in triumph " through the gates into the citf." 
 
SERMON XV. 
 
 MOSES AND HOBAa 
 
 NUMBhRS X. 39, 31. 
 
 Vnd Moses said onto Hobab . . . Leave us not, I pray thee ; for* 
 asmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, 
 and thou mayest be to us instead of eyes. 
 
 nPHE fugitives whom Moses led reached Sinai in three 
 -^ months after leaving Egypt They remained there 
 for at least nine months, and amidst the solitude of these 
 wild rocks they kept the first Passover — the anniversary 
 of their deliverance. " On the twentieth day of the 
 second month " they began again their march through the 
 grim, unknown desert 
 
 One can fancy their thoughts and fears as they looked 
 forward to the enemies and trials which might be await- 
 ing them. In these circumstances this story comes in 
 most naturally. Some time before the encampment 
 broke up from Sinai, a relative of Moses by marriage, 
 whose precise connection with him need not trouble us 
 now, Hobab by name, had come into camp on a visit 
 He was a Midianite by race, one of the wandering tribes 
 from the south-east of the Arabian peninsula. He knew 
 every foot of the ground, as such men do. He knew 
 
2S2 MOSES AND HOBAB. [SBRM. 
 
 where the springs were and the herbage, the campine 
 places, the short cuts, and the safest routes. So Moses, 
 who had no doubt forgotten much of the little desert 
 skill he had learned in keeping Jethro's flock, prays 
 Hobab to remain with them and give them the benefit 
 of his practical knowledge — '* to be to us instead of 
 eyes." 
 
 The free, wild wanderer does not care to leave the 
 black tents of his tribe to link his fortunes with those of 
 the unwieldy hosts of fugitives, and flatly refuses. Then 
 Moses presses the proposal oq him, with judicious 
 compliments and large promises of sharing in all their 
 prosperity. 
 
 It is noteworthy that the narrative does not tell whether 
 the persistent request succeeded or not We find, indeed, 
 his descendants enrolled in the great Dooms(];iy Book of 
 the Conquest as possessing land and probably incorporated 
 among the IsraeUtes. It may, therefore, be supposed 
 that either then or afterwards Hobab forsook his country 
 and his father's house to shelter himself beneath the 
 wings of the God of Jacob. 
 
 But, at all events, the silence of the record is significant, 
 especially if taken in connection with the verses imme- 
 diately following. The historian does not think it worth 
 while to tell whether Moses* attempt to secure the help 
 of a pair of sharp Bedouin eyes succeeded or failed, but 
 passes on to describe at once how " the ark of the 
 covenant of the Lord went before them to search out a 
 resting-place for them," and how " the cloud was upon 
 Ihem when they went out of the camp." He puts tNt 
 
XV.] MOSES AND HOBAB, 153 
 
 two things side by side, not calling on us to notice the 
 juxtaposition, but surely expecting that we shall not miss 
 what b so plain. He would teach us that it mattered 
 little whether Israel had Hobab or not, if they had the 
 ark and the cloud. Perhaps he meant us to ask ourselves 
 whether it was not a wavering of faith in Moses to be so 
 anxious to secure a human guide when he had a Divine 
 leader. So, at least, it appears to us, and from that point 
 of view we purpose to view the incident now. 
 
 L There are times and moods in which our forward 
 look brings with it a painful sense of the unknown 
 wilderness before us. 
 
 The general complexion of the future may be roughly 
 estimated We soon outUve the illusions which dance 
 before us at the beginning, and cease to expect such 
 surprising delights and radiant flashes of unexpected 
 good fortune as young dreams spread before us. We 
 know very early in life, unless we are wonderfully 
 frivolous and credulous, that the thread of our da)rs is a 
 mingled strand, and the prevailing tone a sober, neutral 
 tint The main characteristics of what we shall meet we 
 know well enough. " That which is to be hath already 
 been." But the particular events are hid, and it is 
 strange and impressive when we come to think how 
 Providence, working with the same uniform materials in 
 all human lives, can yet, like some skilful artist, produce 
 endless novelty and surprises in each life. All men 
 tread substantially the same road. ^ There hath nothing 
 
254 MOSES AND HOBAB, [SERlL 
 
 befallen us but such as is common to men," and yet for 
 every one of us the road is new day by day. Some of us 
 go on for years in an unbroken monotony of the same 
 duties and circumstances, and know that in all pro- 
 bability we shall be doing the same things till we die, 
 and yet every morning we come to our work with some 
 feeling of novelty which is not all illusion. *' We have 
 not passed this way heretofore," is always true of each 
 new day's tasks and incidents ; for even if they be the 
 game as those of a thousand days before, yet we who 
 tread the road are not quite the same, and the bearing 
 of the events on us is somewhat different 
 
 The solemn ignorance of the next moment is &ome- 
 times stimulating and joyous. To young life it gives 
 zest and buoyancy, and secures many a joyful surprise. 
 But to all there come times — and perhaps they are more 
 frequent as life goes on, and the consciousness increases 
 that changes now will generally be losses — when the 
 blank curtain between us and the next beat of the 
 pendulum is felt to be very near us and very thick, and 
 when the ignorance is saddening, and when the shapes 
 that we paint on its black folds are gloomy and threaten- 
 ing. Terrors come to us all, and we are apt to clasp 
 our treasures with a spasmodic grasp, as much anguish 
 as love, when we think of what must be some day, and 
 may be any day. In some moods, and thinking of some 
 things which are certainties as to the fact, and contin' 
 gencies only as to the time, each of us must say — 
 
 "Forward though I cannot im^ 
 I gaess and fear." 
 
XV.] MOSES AND HOBAB, 155 
 
 It is a libel on God's goodness to speak of the world 
 as a wilderness. He has not made it so ; and if anybody 
 finds that " all is vanity and vexation of spirit," it is his 
 own fault But still one aspect of Hfc is truly represented 
 by that figure. There are dangers and barren places, 
 and a great solitude in spite of love and companionship, 
 and many marchings and lurking foes, and grim rocks, 
 and fierce suns, and parched wells, and shadeless sand 
 wastes enough in every life to make us quail often and 
 look grave always when we think of what may be before us. 
 Who knows what we shall see when we top the next hill, 
 or round the shoulder of the cliff that bars our way? 
 What shout of an enemy may crash in upon the sleeping 
 camp ; or what stifling gorge of barren granite — blazing 
 in the sun and trackless to our feet — shall we have to 
 march through to-day ? 
 
 The great crises and trials of our lives mostly come 
 unlooked for. There is nothing so certain as the un- 
 expected. The worst thunder comes on us out of a clear 
 sky. Our Waterloos have a way of crashing into the 
 midst of our feasts, and generally it is when all goes 
 " merry as a marriage bell " that the cannon shot breaks 
 in upon the mirth, which tells that the enemy have 
 crossed the river and the battle is begun. 
 
 II. We have here an illustration of the weakness thai 
 'lings to human guides. 
 
 Most commentators excuse, or even approve of this 
 efibrt by Moses to secure Hobab*s help, and draw from 
 
256 MOSES AND HOBAB. [skrm. 
 
 the story the lesson that supernatural guidance does not 
 make human guidance unnecessary. That, of course, 
 is true in a fashion ; but it appears to us that the true 
 lesson of the incident, considered, as we have already 
 remarked, in connection with the following section, is 
 much rather that for men who have God to guide them, 
 it argues weakness of faith and courage to be much 
 solicitous of any Hobab to show them where to go and 
 where to camp. 
 
 Of course we are meant to depend on one another. 
 No man can safely isolate himself, either intellectually or 
 in practical matters. The self-trained scholar is usually 
 incomplete. Crotchets take possession of the solitary 
 thinker, and peculiarities of character that would have 
 been kept in check, and might have become aids in the 
 symmetrical development of the whole man, if they had 
 been reduced and modified in society, get swollen into 
 deformities in solitude. The highest and the lowest 
 blessings for life both of heart and mind — blessedness 
 and love, and wisdom and goodness — are ministered to 
 men through men, and to live without dependence on 
 human help and guidance is to be either a savage or an 
 angel God's guidance does not make man's needless, 
 for a very large part of God's guidance is ministered to 
 ns through men. And wherever a man's thoughts and 
 words teach us to understand God's thoughts and words 
 more clearly, to love them more earnestly, or to obey 
 them more gladly, there human guidance is discharging 
 its noblest function. And wherever the human guide 
 turns us away from himself to God, and says, '* I am b- 
 
XT.] MOSES AND HOBAB. ni 
 
 a voice, I am not the light that guides,** there it b blessed 
 and safe to cherish and to prize it 
 
 But we are ever apt to feel that we cannot do without 
 the human leader. Our hearts crave for earthly love, 
 and that craving is, as it were, an open channel, through 
 which the purest water of life which this world can yield 
 is poured into our hearts. But how close to the joy and 
 the blessedness does the temptation he! Are we not 
 ever in danger of giving the very choicest of our love to 
 the dear ones of earth, lavishing on them the precious 
 juice which flows from the freshly-gathered grapes, and 
 putting God off with the last impoverished and scanty 
 drops which can be squeezed from the husks ? How we 
 rejoice over the love of earth, and cherish it, and feel 
 ourselves rich and strong by reason of it I How we sink 
 in utter despair and hopeless sorrow when it passes from 
 us, and feel " they have taken away my gods, and what 
 have I more?** How we follow the counsel of those 
 whom we love, cherishing their lightest word, and feeling 
 glad and free when we are carrying out their faintest wishes t 
 And, alas, how often, in a very real and tragical sense, 
 " a man's foes are they of his own household," and their 
 love and tenderness more deadly than their hate could 
 ever be, because it keeps us back from God, and blinds 
 our eyes to the pointing finger of our true Guide and 
 Lover! 
 
 We are meant to get much of our belief and practice 
 from human teachers and examples. But our weakness 
 of faith in the unseen is ever tending to pervert the 
 relation between teacher and taught into practical lor- 
 
 • 
 
358 MOSES AND HOBAB, [skrm. 
 
 getfulness that the promise of the new covenant is, " They 
 shall all be taught of God." So we are all apt to pin our 
 faith on some trusted guide, and many of us in these 
 days will follow some teacher of negations with an 
 implicit submission which we refuse to give to Jesus 
 Christ. We put the teacher between ourselves and God, 
 and give to the glowing colours of the painted window 
 the admiration that is due to the light which shines 
 through it The teacher, be he preacher or author, has 
 succeeded in his work when he has taught his pupils to 
 do without him, having led them to the place where they 
 can draw at first hand from the depths of God ; and the 
 highest eulogium that he can receive is when his scholars 
 say to him, ** Now we believe, not because of thy saying, 
 for we have heard him ourselves." 
 
 There are a thousand ways in which our poor weak 
 hearts cry out in their sense-bound unbelief for visible 
 stays to lean upon, and guides to direct us. In so 
 fjair as that is a kgitimate longing, God, who never 
 " sends mouths, but He sends meat to feed them," will 
 not leave us to cry unheard. But let us guard against 
 that ever-present weakness which clings tremblingly to 
 creatures and men for help and guidance, and, in pro- 
 portion as it is rich when it possesses them, trembles at 
 the prospect of losing them, and is crushed and desolate 
 when they go. Do not put them as barriers between 
 you and God, nor yield your own clearness of vision to 
 them, nor say to any, " Be to us mstead of eyes," nor be 
 over anxious to secure any Hobab to show you where to 
 camp or how to march 
 
XV.] MOSES AND HOBAB, 259 
 
 IIL The contrast which is brought into prominence 
 by the juxtaposition of this section and that which 
 follows it, makes emphatic the thought of the true leader 
 of our march. 
 
 The true leader of the children of Israel in their 
 wilderness journey was not Moses, but the Divine 
 Presence in the cloud with a heart of fire, that hovered 
 over their camp for a defence and sailed before them for 
 a guide. " The Lord went before them by day in a pillar 
 of cloud to lead them the way." When it lay on the 
 tent, whether it were for " two days, or a month, or a 
 year," the march was stayed, and the moment that the 
 cloud lifted " by day or by night," the encampment was 
 broken up and Ae long procession was got into marching 
 order without an instant's pause, to follow its gliding 
 motion wherever it led and however long it lasted. 
 First to follow was the ark on the shoulders of the 
 Levites, and behind it, separated by some space, came 
 the " standard of the camp of the children of Judah, and 
 then the other tribef in their order." Surely there was 
 no place here for Hobab's skill, and if Moses had re- 
 membered how their marching and their encampments 
 were fixed, he need not have been so anxious to secure 
 his sharp eyes. 
 
 We have the same Divine guidance, if we will ; in 
 sober reality we have God's presence; and waiting 
 hearts which have ceased from self-will may receive 
 leading as real as ever the pillar gave to Israel 
 
 God's providence does still shape our paths, and GocTi 
 
 • f 
 
26o MOSES AND HOBAB, [SERlL 
 
 Spirit will direct us within, and God*s word will counsel 
 us. If we will wait and watch we shall not be left un- 
 directed. It is wonderful how much practical wisdom 
 about the smallest perplexities of daily life comes to men 
 who keep both their feet and their wishes still until 
 Providence — or, as the world prefers to call it, " circum- 
 stances " — clears a path for them. No doubt in all our 
 lives there come times when we seem to have been 
 brought into a blind alley, and cannot see where we are 
 to get out ; but it is very- rare indeed that we do not see 
 one step in advance, the duty which lies next us. And 
 be sure of this, that if we are content to see but one step 
 at a time, and take it, we shall find our way made plain. 
 The river winds, and often we seem on a lake without an 
 exit Then is the time to go half-speed, and, doubtless, 
 when we get a little farther, the overlapping hills on either 
 bank will part, and the gorge will open out We do not 
 need to see it a mile off; enough if we see it when we 
 are close upon it It may be as narrow and grim, with 
 slippery black cliffs towering on either side of the narrow 
 ribbon of the stream, as the canons of American rivers, 
 but it will float our boat into broader reaches and onwards 
 to the great sea. 
 
 Do not seek to outran God's guidance, to see what 
 you are to do a year hence, or to act before you are sure 
 of what is His will ; do not let your wishes get in advance 
 of the pillar and the ark, and you will be kept firom many 
 a mistake, and led into a region of deep peace. Our 
 blunders mostly come from letting our wishes interpret 
 our duties, or hide from us plain indications of unwelcome 
 
xv.l MOSES AND HOBAB. a6i 
 
 tasks. We arc all apt to do like Nelson, and put the 
 telescope to the blind eye when a signal is flying that we 
 dislike. No doubt sometimes even docile hearts make 
 mistakes, but no man who has not tried it would conceive 
 how many of the highest results of practical wisdom are 
 secured by the simple in heart, whose only skill is to wait 
 on the Lord and be guided by Him. 
 
 The old injunction is still our duty and our wisdom : 
 " Go after the ark, yet there shall be a space between it 
 and you ; come not near it, that ye may know the way ye 
 ought to go." If we impatiently press too close on the 
 heels of our guide we lose the guidance. There must be 
 a reverent following, which allows indications of the way 
 full time to develop themselves, and does not fling itself 
 into new circumstances on the first blush of apparent duty. 
 The merely worldly virtues of prudence, caution, judgment 
 unbiassed by inclination, and the like, have all a Christian 
 side, and are all included and glorified in the elements of 
 that temper which religion enjoins as certain to be re- 
 warded with the Divine guidance : " The meek will he 
 guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way." 
 
 In the strength of that confidence let us turn away 
 from dependence upon human guides, and lift our eyes 
 to Him with the voice which is at once a prayer and a 
 TOW : '* Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel." Better 
 to take Moses for our example when he prayed, as the 
 ark set forward and the march began, " Arise, Lord, and 
 let thine enemies be scattered," than to follow him in 
 eagerly seeking some Hobab or other to show us where 
 we should go. Better to commit our resting times to 
 
263 MOSES AND HOBAB. [siRM. 
 
 God with Moses' prayer when the ark halted, " Return, 
 O Lord, unto the many thousands of Israel/' and so to 
 repose under the shadow of the Almighty, than to seek 
 safety in haying some man with us '* who knows how we 
 are to encamp in this wilderness." God's presence is 
 enough for toil and enough for rest. If He journey with 
 us by the way, He will abide with us when nightfall 
 comes; and His companionship will be sufficient for 
 direction on the road, and for solace and safety in the 
 evening camp. 
 
 We have often to travel by solitary ways. Some of us 
 have to journey all alone, with no fellow-travellers for 
 society or for succour. Some of us have perplexed paths 
 to tread. Some of us have sad memories of times when 
 we journeyed in company with those who will never share 
 our tent or counsel our steps any more, and, as we sit 
 lonely by our watchfire in the wUdemess, have aching 
 hearts and silent nights. Some of us may be, as yet, 
 rich in companions and helpers, whose words are wisdom, 
 whose wishes are love to us, and may tremble as we 
 think that one day either they or we shall have to tramp 
 on by ourselves. But for us all, cast down and lonely, 
 or still blessed with dear ones and afraid to live without 
 them, there is a presence which departs never, which 
 will move before us as we journey, and hover over us as 
 a shield when we rest ; which will be a cloud to veil the 
 sun that it smite us not by day, and will redden into fire 
 as the night falls, being ever brightest when we need it 
 most, and burning clearest of all in the valley at the end, 
 where its guidance will only cease because then "the 
 
XV.] MOSES AND HOBAB, 263 
 
 Lamb that is in the midst of the throne will lead them.'' 
 " This God is our God for ever and ever ; he will be oui 
 guide even unto death." 
 
 IV. A final thought suggested by this incident is, that 
 our craving for a human guide has been lovingly met in the. 
 gift of Christ. 
 
 Moses sought to secure this Midianite guide because 
 he was a native of the desert, and had travelled all over 
 it His experience was his qualification. We have a 
 brother who has Himself travelled every foot of the road 
 by which we have to go, and His footsteps have marked 
 out with blood a track for us to follow, and have trodden 
 a footpath through the else pathless waste. He knows 
 " how to encamp in this wilderness," for He Himself has 
 " tabernacled among us," and by experience has learned 
 the weariness of the journey and the perils of the 
 wilderness. 
 
 His life is our pattern. Our marching orders are brief 
 and simple ; Follow your leader, and plant your feet in 
 His footprints. 
 
 That is the sum of all ethics, and the vade mecum for 
 practical life. However diverse our duties and circum- 
 stances are, the principles which come out in the Divine 
 record of that fair life and wondrous death will fit with 
 equal closeness to us all ; and so Divine and all com- 
 prehensive is it that it abides as the sufficient pattern foi 
 every class, for every stage, for every variety of character, 
 for every era, and every land, till the end, and beyond 
 the end. 
 
264 MOSES AND HO BAB. [serm. xv. 
 
 Our poor weak hearts long for a brother^s hand to hold 
 us up, for a brother's voice to whisper a word of cheer, 
 for a brother's example to animate as well as to instruct 
 An abstract law of right is but a cold guide, like the stars 
 that shine keen in the polar winter. It is hard even to 
 find in the bare thought of an unseen God guiding us 
 by His unseen Spirit within and His unseen Providence 
 without, the solidity and the warmth which we need. 
 Therefore we have mercifully received God manifest in 
 the flesh, a Brother to be our guide and the Captain of 
 our salvation. 
 
 To Him then transfer all those feelings of confidence 
 and affection too often lavished on men. The noblest 
 use for the precious ointment of love, which the poorest 
 of us bears in the alabaster-box of the heart, is to break 
 it on His head. 
 
 Thus loving and following Him, we shall be set free 
 from undue dependence on human helpers whilst they 
 are with us, from eagerness to secure them, from dread of 
 losing them, from despair when they depart Perplexities 
 will disappear. Duty will become plain. Life will not 
 be a weary march through an unknown land where we 
 have to choose our path by our own poor wisdom, and 
 death is often the penalty of a blunder. All our duty and 
 joy lie in the one command, " Follow me ; " and if we 
 only ask Him to be with us " instead of eyes " and accept 
 His gentle leading, we shall not walk in darkness, but 
 may plunge into thickest night and the most unknown 
 land, assured that He will *' lead us by a right way to the 
 city of habitation." 
 
SERMON XVI. 
 
 THE OBSCURE APOSTLE& 
 
 St. Matthew z. 5. 
 Tbfese twelve Jesus sent forth. 
 
 AND half of " these twelve " are never heard of again at 
 doing any work for Christ Peter and James and 
 John we know ; the other James and Judas have possibly 
 left us short letters ; Matthew gives us a Gospel ; and of 
 all the rest no trace is left. Some of them are never so 
 much as named again, except in the list at the beginning 
 of the Acts of the Apostles ; and none of them except the 
 three who " seemed to be pillars " appear to have been 
 of much imporUnce in the early dififusion of the gospel 
 
 There are many instructive and interesting points in 
 reference to the Apostolate. The number of twelve, in 
 obvious allusion to the tribes of Israel, proclaims the 
 eternal certainty of the Divine promises to His people, 
 and the dignity of the New Testament Church as theii 
 true heir. The ties of relationship which knit so many 
 of the Apostles together, the order of the names varying, 
 but within certain Hmits, in the different catalogues, the 
 uncultivated provincial rudeness of most of them, would 
 
266 THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. [skrm. 
 
 all afford material for important reflections. But, 
 perhaps, not the least important fact about the Apostolatc 
 is that one which we have referred, which like the names 
 of countries on the map, escapes notice because it is 
 " writ " so " large " — namely, the small place which the 
 Apostles as a body fill in the subsequent narrative, and 
 the entire obUvion into which so many of them pass fi-om 
 the moment of their appointment 
 
 It is to that fact that we wish to turn attention now. It 
 may suggest some considerations worth pondering, and 
 among other things, may help to show the exaggeration 
 of the functions of the office by the opposite extremes of 
 priests and rationalists. The one school makes it the 
 depositary of exclusive supernatural powers; the other 
 regards it as a master-stoke of organization, to which the 
 early rapid growth of Christianity was largely due. The 
 facts seem to show that it was neither. 
 
 L The first thought which this peculiar and unexpected 
 silence suggests is of the Tru< Worker in the Churcfis 
 progress. 
 
 The way in which the New Testament drops these 
 Apostles is of a piece with the whole tone of the Bible. 
 Throughout, men are introduced* into its narratives and 
 allowed to slip out with well-marked indifference. No- 
 where do. we get more vivid, penetrating portraiture, but 
 nowhere do we see such carelessness about following the 
 fortunes or completing the biographies even of those who 
 have filled the largest space in its pages. 
 
 Recall, for example, the way in which the New 
 
XVI.] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES, ^ 
 
 Testament deals with " the very chiefest ** Apostles, the 
 illustrious triad of Peter, James, and John. The first 
 escapes from prison ; we see him hammering at Mary's 
 door in the grey of the morning, and after brief, eager 
 talk with his friends he vanishes to hide in " another 
 place," and is no more heard of, except for a moment in 
 the great council, held in Jerusalem, about the admission 
 of Gentiles to the Church. The second of the three is 
 killed off in a parenthesis. The third is only seen twice 
 in the Book of the Acts, as a silent companion of PetCJ 
 at a miracle and before the Sanhedrim. Remember how 
 Paul is left in his own hired house, within sight of trial 
 and sentence, and neither the original writer of the book 
 nor any later hand thought it worth while to add three 
 lines to tell the world what became of him. A strange 
 way to write history, and a most imperfect narrative, 
 surely. Yes, unless there be some peculiarity in the 
 purpose of the book, which explains this cold-blooded, 
 inartistic, and tantalising habit of letting men leap upon 
 the stage as if they had dropped from the clouds, and 
 vanish from it as abruptly as if they had fallen through a 
 trap-door. 
 
 Such a peculiarity there is. One of the three to whom 
 we have referred has explained it in the words with which 
 he closes his Gospel, words which might stand for the 
 motto of the whole book, " These are written that ye 
 might believe that Jesus is the Son of God." The true 
 purpose is not to speak of men except in so far as they 
 ** bore witness to that light " and were illuminated for a 
 moment by contact with Him. From the beginning the 
 
268 THE OBSCURE APOSTLES, [serm. 
 
 true " Hero " of the Bible is God ; its theme is His self- 
 revelation culminating for evermore in the Man Jesus 
 All other men interest the writers only as they are 
 subsidiary or antagonistic to that revelation. As long as 
 that breath blows through them they are music; else 
 they are but common reeds. Men are nothing except 
 as instruments and organs of God. He is all, and His 
 whole fulness is in Jesus Christ Christ is the sole 
 worker in the progress of His Church. That is the 
 teaching of all the New Testament The thought is 
 expressed in the deepest, simplest form in His own 
 unapproachable words, unfathomable as they are in their 
 depth of meaning, and inexhaustible in their power to 
 strengthen and to cheer : ** I am the vine, ye are the 
 branches, without me ye can do nothing." It shapes 
 the whole treatment of the history in the so-called ^* Acts 
 of the Apostles," which by its very first sentence pro- 
 claims itself to be the Acts of the ascended Jesus, " the 
 former treatise" being declared to have had for its 
 subject " all that Jesus began to do and teach " while on 
 earth, and this treatise being manifestly the continuance 
 of the same theme, and the record of the heavenly 
 activity of the Lord. So the thought runs through all 
 the book : *' The help that is done on earth, He does it 
 all himselt" 
 
 So let us think of Him and of His relation to us as 
 well as to that early Church. His continuous energy is 
 pouring down on us if we will accept it In us, for us, 
 by us He works. "My father worketh hitherto," said 
 Ht when herc^ ''and I work;** and now, exalted on 
 
XVI.] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. 269 
 
 high, He has passed into that same Divine Repose, 
 which is at the same time the most energetic Divine 
 Activity. He is all in all to His people. He is all their 
 strength, wisdom, and righteousness. They are but the 
 clouds irradiated by the sun and bathed in its brightness ; 
 He is the light which flames in their grey mist and turns 
 it to a glory. They are but the belts and cranks and 
 wheels; He is the power. They are but the channel, 
 muddy and dry ; He is the flashing life that fills it and 
 makes it a joy. They are the body ; He is the soul 
 dwelling in every part to save it from corruption and 
 give movement and warmth. ^ 
 
 "Thou art the organ, whose full breath it thunder | 
 I am the keys, beneath thy fingers pressed." 
 
 If this be true, how it should deliver us from all ovei 
 estimate of men, to which our human afFoctions and oui 
 feeble faith tempt us so sorely 1 There is one man, and 
 One man only, whose biogrnphy is a " Gospel," who owes 
 nothing to circumstances, and who originates the power 
 which He wields — One who is a new beginning, and has 
 changed the whole current of human history, One to 
 whom we are right to bring offerings of the gold, and 
 incense, and myrrh of our hearts, and wills, and minds, 
 which it is blasphemy and degradation to lay at the feet 
 of any others. We may utterly love, trust, and obey 
 Jesus Christ We dare not do so to any other. The 
 inscription written over the whole book, that it may be 
 transcribed on our whole nature, is, " No man any more 
 save Jesus only." 
 
t/o THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. [serm. 
 
 If this thought be true, what confidence it ought to 
 give us as we think of the tasks and fortunes of the 
 Church ! If we think only of the difficulties and of the 
 enormous task before us, so disproportioned to our weak 
 powers, we shall be disposed to agree with our enemies, 
 who talk as if Christianity was on the point of perishing, 
 as they have been doing ever since it began. But the 
 outlook is wonderfully different when we take Christ into 
 the account We are very apt to leave Him out of the 
 reckoning. But one man with Christ to back him is 
 always in the majority. He flings his sword clashing 
 into one scale, and it weighs down all that is in the other. 
 The walls are very lofty and strong, and the besiegers 
 few and weak, badly armed, and quite unfit for the 
 assault; but if we lift our eyes high enough, we, too, 
 shall see a man with a drawn sword over against us, and 
 our hearts may leap up in assured confidence of victory 
 as we recognise in Him the Captain of the Lord's Host, 
 who has already overcome, and will make us valiant in 
 fight and more than conquerors. 
 
 When conscious of our own weakness, and tempted to 
 think of our task as heavy, or when complacent in our 
 own power, and tempted to regard our task as easy, let 
 us think of His ever-present work in and for His people 
 till it braces us for all duty, and rebukes our easy-going 
 idleness. Surely from that thought of the active 
 ascended Christ may come to many of His slothful 
 followers the pleading question, as from His own lips, 
 "Dost thou not care that thou hast left me to serve 
 •lo&e ?** Surely to us all it should bring inspiration and 
 
XVL] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. 271 
 
 strength, courage and confidence, deliverance from man, 
 and elevation above the reverence of blind impersonal 
 forces. Surely we may all lay to heart the grand lesson 
 that union with Him is our only strength, and oblivion 
 of ourselves our highest wisdom. Surely he has best 
 learned his true place and the worth of Jesus Christ who 
 abides with unmoved humility at His feet, and, like the 
 lonely lowly forerunner, puts away all temptations to 
 self-assertion while joyfully accepting it as the law of his 
 life to 
 
 «' Fade in the light of the planet he lorei^ 
 To fiide in his lore and to die." 
 
 Blessed is he who is glad to say, ^ He must increase, 
 I must decrease 1 " 
 
 IL This same silence of Scripture as to so many of 
 the Apostles may be taken as suggesting what the real 
 work of these delegated workers was. 
 
 It certainly seems very strange that if they were the 
 possessors of such extraordinary powers as the Sacra- 
 mentarian theory implies, we should hear so little of 
 them in the narrative. The silence of Scripture about 
 them goes a long way to discredit such ideas, while it is 
 entirely accordant with a more modest view of the 
 Apostolic office. 
 
 What was an Apostle's function during the life of 
 Christ? One of the evangelists divides it into three 
 portions — " to be with Jesus, to preach the kingdom, to 
 cast out devils and to heal" There is nothing in these 
 offices peculiar to them. The seventy had miracukms 
 
27a THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. [serm. 
 
 powers too, and some at least were our Lord's com- 
 panions and preachers of His kingdom who were simple 
 disciples. What was an Apostle's function after the 
 resurrection ? Peter's words, on proposing the election 
 of a new apostle, lay down the duty as simply " to bear 
 witness " of that resurrection. Not supernatural channels 
 of mysterious grace, not lords over God's heritage, not 
 evtn leaders of the Church, but bearers of a testimony 
 to the great historical fact, on the acceptance of which 
 all belief in an historical Christ depended then and 
 depends now. Each of the greater of the apostles is 
 penetrated with the same thought. Paul disclaims 
 anything beside in his ** Not I, but the grace of God in 
 me." Peter thrusts the question at the staring crowd, 
 ** Why look ye on us as though by our power or holiness 
 we had made this man to walk ? '* John, in his calm 
 way, tells his children at Ephesus, ** Ye need not that 
 any man teach you." 
 
 Such an idea of the Apostolic office is far more 
 reasonable and accordant with Scripture than a figment 
 about unexampled powers and authority in the Church. 
 It accounts for the qualifications as stated in the same 
 address, which merely secure the validity of their testi* 
 mony. The one thing that must be found in an Apostle 
 was that he should have been in familiar intercourse 
 with Christ during his earthly life, both before and after 
 His resurrection, in order that he might be able to say, 
 I knew Him well ; I know that he died ; I know that 
 He rose again ; I saw Him go up to heaven. For such 
 a work there was no need for men of commanding 
 
XVI.] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES, 273 
 
 power. Plain, simple, honest men who had the requisite 
 eye-witness were sufficient The guidance and the 
 missionary work of the Church need not necessarily be 
 in their hands, and, in fact, does not seem to have been. 
 In harmony with this view of the office and its requisites, 
 we find that Paul rests the validity of his Apostolate on 
 the fact that " He was seen of me also," and regards 
 that vision as his true appointment which left him not 
 " one whit behind the very chiefest apostles." Miracu- 
 lous gifts indeed they had, and miraculous gifts they 
 imparted; but in both instances others shared their 
 powers with them. It was no apostle who laid his hands 
 on the blinded Saul in that house in Damascus and said, 
 " Receive the Holy Ghost." An apostle stood by passive 
 and wondering when the Holy Ghost fell on Cornelius 
 and his comrades. In reality Apostolic succession is 
 absurd, because there is nothing to succeed to, except 
 what cannot be transmitted, personal knowledge of the 
 reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ To establish 
 that fact as indubitable history is to lay the foundation of 
 the Christian Church, and the twelve plain men who did 
 that needed no superstitious mist around them to 
 magnify their greatness. 
 
 In so far as any succession to them or any devolution 
 of their office is possible, all Christian men inherit it, for 
 to bear witness of the living power of the risen Lord is 
 still the office and honour of every believing soul It is 
 still true that the sharpest weapon which any man can 
 wield for Christ is the simple adducing of his own 
 personal experience. *'That which we have letn and 
 
274 THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. [SIRM. 
 
 handled we declare ** is still the best form into which oui 
 preaching can be cast And such a voice every man and 
 woman who has found the sweetness and the power of 
 Christ filling their own souls, is bound — rather let us say 
 is privileged — to lift up: "This honour have all the 
 saints." Christ is the true worker, and all our work is 
 but to proclaim Him, and what He has done and is 
 doing for ourselves and for all men. 
 
 IIL We may gather too the lesson of how often faith- 
 ful work is unrecorded and forgotten. 
 
 No doubt those Apostles who have no place in {he 
 history toiled honestly and did their Lord's commands 
 and oblivion has swallowed it alL Bartholomew and 
 " Lebbseus, whose surname was Thaddaeus," and the rest 
 of them, have no place in the record, and their obscure 
 work is faded, faithful and good as certainly it was. 
 
 So it will be sooner or later with us all. For most of 
 us, our service has to be unnoticed and unknown, and 
 the memory of our poor work will live perhaps for a year 
 or two in the hearts of some few who loved us, but will 
 fade wholly when they follow us into the silent land. 
 Well, be it so; we shall sleep none the less sweetly, 
 though none be talking about us over our heads. The 
 world has a short memory, and, as the years go on, the 
 list that it has to remember grows so crowded that it is 
 harder and harder to find room to write a new name on 
 it, or to read the old. The letters on the tombstones are 
 soon erased by the feet that tramp across the church- 
 yard. All that matters very little. The notoriety of oiu 
 
XVL] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES, 275 
 
 work is of no consequence. The earnestness and ac- 
 curacy with which we strike our blow is all important ; 
 but it matters nothing how far it echoes. It is not the 
 heaven of heavens to be talked about, nor does a man's 
 life consist in the abundance of newspaper or other para- 
 graphs about him. " The love of fame " is, no doubt, 
 sometimes found in " minds " otherwise ** noble," but in 
 itself is very much the reverse of noble. We shall do 
 our work best, and be saved from much festering anxiety 
 which corrupts our purest service and fevers our serenest 
 thoughts, if we once fairly make up our minds to working 
 unnoticed and unknown, and determine that whether our 
 post be a conspicuous or an obscure one we shall fill it 
 to the utmost of our power ; careless of praise or censure 
 because our judgment is with our God ; careless whether 
 we are unknown or well known, because we are known 
 altogether to Him. 
 
 The magnitude of our work in men's eyes b as little 
 important as the noise of it Christ gave all the Apostles 
 their tasks — to some of them to found the Gentile 
 churches, to some of them to leave to all generations 
 precious teaching, to some of them none of these things. 
 What then ? Were the Peters and the Johns more highly 
 favoured than the others ? Was their work greater in 
 His sight ? Not so. To Him all service done from the 
 same motive is the same, and His measure of excellence 
 b the quantity of love and spiritual force in our deeds, 
 not the width of the area over which they spread. An 
 estuary that goes wandering over miles of shallows may 
 have less water in it, and may creep more languidly, than 
 
276 THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. [serm. 
 
 the torrent that thunders through some narrow gorge. 
 The deeds that stand highest on the records in heaven 
 are not those which we vulgarly call great. Many "a 
 cup of cold water only " will be found to have been rated 
 higher there than jewelled golden chalices brimming 
 with rare wines. God's treasures, where He keeps His 
 children's gifts, will be like many a mother's secret store 
 of relics of her children, full of things of no value, what 
 the world calls " trash," but precious in His eyes for the 
 love's sake that was in them. 
 
 All service which is done from the same motive in the 
 same force is of the same worth in His eyes. It does not 
 matter whether you have the gospel in a penny Testament 
 printed on thin paper with black ink and done up m 
 cloth, or in an illuminated missal glowing in gold and 
 colour, painted with loving care on fair parchment, and 
 bound in jewelled ivory. And so it matters little about 
 the material or the scale on which we express our devotion 
 and our aspirations ; all depends on what we copy, not 
 on the size of the canvas on which, or on the material 
 in which, we copy it ** Small service is true service 
 while it lasts," and the unnoticed insignificant servants 
 may do work every whit as good and noble as the tr>ost 
 widely known, to whom have been intrusted by Christ 
 tasks that mould the ages. 
 
 IV. Finally we may add that forgotten work is re- 
 membered, and unrecorded names are recorded above. 
 
 The names of these almost anonymous apostles have 
 QO place in the records of the advancement of the Church 
 
XVL] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. 177 
 
 or of the development of Christian doctrine. They drop 
 out of the narrative after the list in the first chapter of the 
 Acts. But we do hear of them once more. In that last 
 vision of the great city which the seer beheld descending 
 from God, we read that in its "foundations were the 
 names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb." All were 
 graven there — the inconspicuous names carved on no 
 record of earth, as well as the familiar ones cut deep in 
 the rock to be seen of all men for ever. 
 
 At the least that grand image may tell as that when 
 the perfect state of the Church is realised, the work 
 which these twelve men did when their testimony laid its 
 foundation, will be for ever associated with their names. 
 Unrecorded on earth, they are written in heaven. 
 
 The forgotten work and workers are remembered by 
 Christ His faithful heart and all-seeing eye keep them 
 ever in view. The world, and the Church whom these 
 humble men helped, may forget, yet will not He forget 
 From whatever muster-roll of benefactors and helpers 
 their names may be absent, they will be in His list The 
 Apostle Paul, in his epistle to the Phihppians, has a 
 saying in which his delicate courtesy is beautifully con- 
 ipicuous, where he half apologizes for not sending his 
 greetings " to others my fellow-workers " by name, and 
 reminds them that however their names may be unwritten 
 in his letter, they have been inscribed by a mightier hand 
 on a better page, and " arc in the Lamb's book of hfe." 
 It matters very little from what record ours may be absent 
 80 long as they are found there. Let us rejoice that, 
 though we may live obscure and die fozgotten, we may 
 
27S THE OBSCURE APOSTLES, [serm. 
 
 have our names written on the breastplate of our High 
 Priest as He stands in the Holy Place, the breastplate 
 which lies close to His heart of love, and is fixed ^o His 
 arm of power. 
 
 The forgotten and unrecorded work lives too in the 
 great whole. The fruit of our labour may perhaps not be 
 separable from that of others, any more than the sowers 
 can go into the reaped harvest-field and indentify the 
 gathered ears which have sprung from the seed that they 
 sowed, but it is there all the same ; and whosoever may 
 be unable to pick out each man's share in the blessed 
 total outcome, the Lord of the Harvest knows, and his 
 accurate proportionment of individual reward to individual 
 service will not mar the companionship in the general 
 gladness, when " he that soweth and he that reapeth shall 
 rejoice together." 
 
 The forgotten work will live, too, in the blessed results 
 to the doers. Whatever of recognition and honour we 
 may miss here, we cannot be robbed of the blessing to 
 ourselves, in the perpetual influence on our own character, 
 of every piece of faithful even if imperfect service. 
 Habits are formed, emotions deepened, principles con- 
 finned, capacities enlarged by every deed done for Christ, 
 which make an over-measure of reward here, and in their 
 perfect form hereafter are heaven. Nothing done for 
 Him is ever wasted. " Thou shalt find it after many days." 
 We are all writing our lives, histories here, as if with one 
 of these *' manifold writers " — a black blank page beneath 
 the flimsy sheet on which we write, but presently the 
 black page will be taken away, and the writing will stand 
 
xn.] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES, 979 
 
 out plain on the page behind that we did not see. . Life 
 is the filmy unsubstantial page on which our pen rests ; 
 the black page is death ; and the page beneath is thai 
 indehble transcript of our earthly actions, which we shall 
 find waiting for us to read, with shanie and confusion of 
 face, or with humble joy, in another world. 
 
 Then let us do our work for Christ, not much careful 
 whether it be greater or smaller, obscure or conspicuous, 
 assured that whoever forgets us and it He will remember, 
 and however our names may be unrecorded on earth they 
 will be written in heaven, and confessed by Him btfere 
 His Father and the holy angeliL 
 
SERMON XVII. 
 
 THE SOUL'S PERFECTION. 
 
 Philip. iiL 15. 
 
 Let iu therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded ; and if ia 
 anything ye be otherwise minded, God slull rereal •▼en this 
 uito you. 
 
 ** A S m&ny as be perfect ; " and how many may they 
 •^^ be ? Surely a very short bede-roll would contain 
 their names ; or would there be any other but the Name 
 which is above every name upon it ? Part of the answer 
 to such a question may be found in observing that 
 the New Testament very frequently uses the word to 
 express not so much the idea of moral completeness as 
 that of physical maturity. For instance, when Paul says 
 that he would have his converts to be " mm in under- 
 standing," and when the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks 
 of ** them that are of full age," the same word is used 
 as this " perfect " in our text. Qearly in such cases it 
 means "full grown," as in contrast with "babes,** and 
 expresses not absolute completeness, but what we may 
 term a relative perfection, a certain maturity of character 
 and advanced stage of Christian attainment, far removed 
 from the infantile epoch of the Christian life. 
 
SERM. XVII.] THE sows PERFECTION, 381 
 
 Another contribution to the answer may be found 
 in observing that in this very context these " perfect " 
 people are exhorted to cultivate the sense of not having 
 " ah-eady attained," and to be constantly reaching forth 
 to unattained heights, so that a sense of imperfection and 
 a continual effort after higher life are parts of Paul's 
 " perfect man." And it is to be still further noticed that 
 on the same testimony ** perfect " people may probably 
 be "otherwise minded;" by which we understand not 
 divergently minded from one another, but " otherwise " 
 than the true norm or law of hfe would prescribe, and so 
 may stand in need of the hope that God will by degrees 
 bring them into conformity with His will, and show them 
 "this," namely, their divergence from his Pattern for 
 them. 
 
 It is worth our while to look at these large thoughtg 
 thus involved in the words before us. 
 
 L Then there are people whom without exaggeration 
 
 the judgment of truth cdMis perfect. 
 
 The language of the New Testament has no scruple in 
 calling men '' saints " who had many sins, and none in 
 calling men perfect who had many imperfections ; and it 
 does so, not because it has any fantastic theory about 
 religious emotions being the measure of moral purity, 
 but partly for the reasons already referred to, and partly 
 because it wisely considers the main thing about a 
 character to be not the degree to which it has attained 
 completeness in its ideal, but what that ideal is. The 
 distance a man has got on his journey is of less con- 
 
283 THE sours PERFECTION, [serm. 
 
 sequence than the direction in which his face is turned 
 The arrow may fall short, but to what mark was it shot ? 
 In all regions of life a wise classification of men arranges 
 them according to their aims rather than their achieve- 
 ments. The visionary who attempts something high 
 and accomphshes scarcely anything of it, is often a far 
 nobler man, and his poor, broken, foiled, resultless life 
 far more perfect than his who aims at marks on the low 
 levels and hits them full. Such lives as these, full of 
 yearning and aspiration, though it be for the most part 
 vain, are 
 
 "Like the young moon with a ragged edge 
 E'en in its imperfection beaatiM." 
 
 If then it be wise to rank men and their pursuits 
 according to their aims rather than their accomplish- 
 ments, is there one class of aims so absolutely corres- 
 ponding to man's nature and relations that to take them 
 for one's own, and to reach some measure of approxi- 
 mation to them, may fairly be called the perfection of 
 human nature ? Is there one way of living concerning 
 which we may say that whosoever adopts it has, in so far 
 as he does adopt it, discerned and attained the purpose of 
 his being ? The literal force of the word in our text gives 
 pertinence to that question, for it distinctly means 
 " having reached the end." And if that be taken as the 
 meaning, there need be no doubt about the answer. 
 Grand old words have taught us long ago " Man's chief 
 end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever." Yes, 
 he who lives for God has taken that for his aim which all 
 his nature and all his relations prescribe, he is doing 
 
XVII.] THE SOWS PERFECTION. 383 
 
 wAat he was made and meant to do ; and however in- 
 complete may be its attainments, the lowest form of a 
 God-fearing, God-obeying life is higher and more nearly 
 "perfect" than the fairest career or character against 
 which, as a blight on all its beauty, the damning accu- 
 sation way be brought, " The God in whose hand thy 
 breath is, and whose are all thy ways, thou hast not 
 glorified." 
 
 People *»neer at " saints " and point at their failings. 
 They remind us of the foul stains in David's career, for 
 instance, and ,nock as they ask, " Is this your man after 
 God's own heart?" Yes, he is; not because religion 
 has a morality of its own different from that of the world 
 (except as being higher), nor because " saints " make up 
 for adultery and murder by making or singing psalms, 
 but because the main set and current of the life was 
 evidently tcwards God and goodness, and these hideous 
 sins were glaring contradictions, eddies and backwaters, 
 as it were, wept over with bitter self-abasement and 
 conquered by strenuous effort. Better a life of Godward 
 aspiration and straining after purity, even if broken by 
 such a fall, so recovered, than one of habitual earthward 
 grubbing, undisturbed by gross sin. 
 
 And another reason warrants the application of the 
 word to men whose present is full of incompleteness, 
 namely, rhe fact that such men have in them the germ of 
 a life which has no natural end but absolute completeness. 
 The small seed may grow very slowly in the climate and 
 soil which it finds here, and be only a poor little bit of 
 ragged green, very shabby and inconspicuous by the side 
 
284 THE SOUUS PERFECTION. [SSRli. 
 
 of the native flowers of earth flaunting around it, but it 
 has a Divine germinant virtue within, and waits but 
 being carried to its own clime and ** planted in the house 
 of the Lord " above, to " flourish in the courts of our 
 God," when these others with their glorious beauty have 
 faded away and are flung out to rot 
 
 II. We have set forth here very distinctly two of the 
 iharaderisiics of this perfection. 
 
 The apostle in our text exhorts the perfect to be '*M«i 
 minded." How is that? Evidently the word points 
 back to the previous clauses, in which he has been des- 
 cribing his own temper and feeling in the Christian race. 
 He sets that before the Philippians as their pattern, or 
 rather invites them to fellowship with hira in the estimate 
 of themselves and in their efibrts after higher attainments. 
 " Be thus minded " means, Think as I do of yourselves, 
 and do as I do in your daily life. 
 
 How did he think of himself? He tells us in the 
 sentence before, " Not as though I were aheady perfect 
 I count not myself to have apprehended." So then a 
 leading characteristic of this true Christian perfection is 
 a constant consciousness of imperfection. In all fields 
 of effort, whether intellectual, moral, or mechanical, as 
 faculty grows, consciousness of insufficiency grows with 
 it. The farther we get up the hill the more we see how 
 far it is to the horixon. The more we know the more 
 we know our ignorance. The better we can do the more 
 we discern how much we cannot do. Only people who 
 never have done and never will do anything, or else raw 
 
xni.] THE SOWS PERFECTION, 285 
 
 apprentices with the mercifully granted self-confidence of 
 youth, which gets beaten out of most of us soon enough, 
 think that they can do everything. 
 
 In morals and in Christian life the same thing is true. 
 The measure of our perfection will be the consciousness 
 of our imperfection — a paradox, but a great truth. It is 
 plain enough that it will be so. Conscience becomes 
 more sensitive as we get nearer right The worse a 
 man is the less it speaks to him, and the less he hears it 
 When it ought to thunder it whispers ; when we need it 
 most it is least active. The thick skin of a savage will 
 not be disturbed by lying on sharp stones, while a 
 crumpled rose-leaf robs the Sybarite of his sleep. So 
 the habit of evil hardens the cuticle of conscience, and 
 the practice of goodness restores tenderness and sensi- 
 bility ; and many a man laden with crime knows less of 
 its tingling than some fair soul that looks almost spotless 
 to all eyes but its own. One little stain of rust will be 
 conspicuous on a brightly polished blade, but if it be all 
 dirty and dull a dozen more or fewer wiU make little 
 difference. As men grow better they become like that 
 glycerine barometer recently introduced, on which a fall 
 or a rise that would have been invisible with mercury to 
 record it takes up inches, and is glaringly conspicuous. 
 Good people sometimes wonder, and sometimes are made 
 doubtful and sad about themselves by this abiding and 
 even increased consciousness of sin. There is no need 
 to be so. The higher the temperature the more chilling 
 would it be to pass into an ice-house, and the more our 
 lives axe Inrought into fellowship with the perfect life the 
 
286 THE SOWS PERFECTION. [serm. 
 
 more shall we feel our own shortcomings. Let us be 
 thankful if our consciences speak to us more loudly than 
 they used to do. It is a sign of growing holiness, as the 
 tingling in a frost-bitten limb is of returning life. Let us 
 seek to cultivate and increase the sense of our own 
 imperfection, and be sure that the diminution of a con- 
 sciousness of sin means not diminished power of sin, but 
 lessened horror of it, lessened perception of right, lessened 
 love of goodness, and is an omen of death, not a symptom 
 of life. Painter, scholar, craftsman all know that the 
 condition of advance is the recognition of an ideal not 
 attained. Whoever has not before him a standard to 
 which he has not reached will grow no more. If we see 
 no faults in our work we shall never do any better. The 
 condition of all Christian, as of all other progress, is to be 
 drawn by that fair vision before us, and to be stung into 
 renewed effort to reach it, by the consciousness of present 
 imperfection. 
 
 Another characteristic to which these perfect men are 
 exhorted is a constant striving after a further advance. 
 How vigorously, almost vehemently, that temper is put 
 b the context — " I follow after ; " "I press towards the 
 mark ; *' and that picturesque " reaching forth," or, as the 
 Revised Version gives it, " stretching*forward." The full 
 force of the latter word cannot be given in any one 
 English equivalent, but may be clumsily hinted by some 
 such phrase as "stretching one's self out over," as a 
 runner might do with body thrown forward and arms 
 extended in front, and eagerness in every strained muscle, 
 and eye outrunning foot, and hope clutching the goal 
 
XTii.] THE SOWS PERFECTION, 387 
 
 already. So yearning forward, and setting all the current 
 of his being, both faculty and desire, to the yet unreached 
 mark, the Christian man is to live. His glances are not 
 to be bent backwards, but forwards. He is not to be a 
 " praiser of the past," but a herald and expectant of a 
 Dobler future. He is the child of the day and of the 
 morning, forgetting the things which are behind, and 
 ever yearning towards the things which are before, and 
 drawing them to himself. To look back is to be stiffened 
 into a living death ; only with faces set forward arc we 
 safe and well 
 
 This buoyant energy of hope and eflfort is to be the 
 result of the consciousness of imperfection of which we 
 have spoken. Strange to many of us, in some moods, 
 that a thing so bright should spring up from a thing so 
 dark, and that the more we feel our own shortcomings, 
 the more hopeful should we be of a future unlike the 
 past, and the more earnest in our effort to make that 
 future the present There is a type of Christian expe- 
 rience not uncommon among devout people, in which the 
 consciousness of imperfection paralyzes effort instead of 
 quickening it ; men lament their evil, their slow progress 
 and so on, and remain the same year after year. They 
 are stirred to no effort There is no straining onwards. 
 They almost seem to lose the faith that they can ever be 
 any better. How different this from the grand, whole- 
 some completeness of Paul's view here, which embraces 
 both elements, and even draws the undying brightness of 
 this forward-looking confidence from the very darkness ol 
 his sense of present imperfection 1 
 
288 THE SOWS PERFECTION, [serm. 
 
 So should it be with us, "as many as be perfect" 
 Before us stretch indefinite possibilities of approximating 
 to the unattainable fulness of the Divine life. We may 
 grow in knowledge and in holiness through endless ages 
 and grades of advance. In a most blessed sense we may 
 have that for our highest joy which in another meaning 
 is a punishment of unfaithfulness and indocility, that we 
 shall be " ever learning, and never coming to the full 
 knowledge of the truth." No limit can be put to what 
 we may receive of God, nor to the closeness, the fulness 
 of our communion with Him, nor to the beauty of holi- 
 ness which may pass from Him into our poor characters, 
 and irradiate our homely laces. Then, brethren, let ua 
 cherish a noble discontent with all that we at present are. 
 Let our spirits stretch out all their powers to the better 
 things beyond, as the plants grown in darkness will send 
 out pale shoots that feel blindly towards the light, or the 
 seed sown on the top of a rock will grope down the bare 
 stone for the earth by which it must be fed Let the 
 sense of our own weakness ever lead to a buoyant con- 
 fidence in what we, even we, may become if we will only 
 take the grace we have. To this touchstone let us bring 
 all claims to higher holiness — they who are perfect arc 
 most conscious of imperfection, and most eager in theii 
 efforts after a further progress in the knowledge, love, and 
 likeness of God in Christ 
 
 IIL We have here also distinctly brought out the «^ 
 existence with these characteristics of their opposites, 
 
 ** If in anything ye are otherwise minded," says PauL 
 
xvn.] THE SOWS PERFECTION. 389 
 
 I have already suggested that this expression evidently 
 refers not to difference of opinion among themselves, but 
 to a divergence of character from the pattern of feeling 
 and hfe which he has been proposing to them. If in any 
 respects ye are unconscious of your imperfections, if there 
 be any " witch's mark " of insensibiUty in some spot of 
 your conscience to some plain transgressions ot law, if in 
 any of you there be some complacent illusion of your own 
 stainlessness, if to any of you the bright vision before you 
 seem faint and unsubstantial, God will show you what you 
 do not see. Plainly then he considers that there will be 
 found among these perfect men states of feeling and 
 estimates of themselves opposed to those which he has 
 been exhorting them to cherish. Plainly he supposes 
 that a good man may pass for a time under the dominion 
 of impulses and theories which are of another kind from 
 those that rule his life. 
 
 He does not expect the complete and uninterrupted 
 dominion of these higher powers. He recognises the 
 plain facts that the true self, the central Ufe of the soul, 
 the higher nature, " the new man," abides in a self which 
 is but gradually renewed, and that there is a long distance 
 so to speak, from the centre to the circumference. That 
 higher hfe is planted, but its germination is a work of 
 time. The leaven does not leaven the whole mass in a 
 moment, but creeps on from particle to particle. ** Make 
 the tree good " and in due time its fruit will be good. 
 But the conditions of our human hfe are conflict, and 
 these peaceful images of growth and unimpeded natural 
 development, " first the blade, then the ear, after that the 
 
290 THE SOWS PERFECTION, [serm. 
 
 full com in the car," are not meant to tell all the truth. 
 Interruptions from external circumstances, struggles of 
 desh with spirit, and of imagination and heart and will 
 against the better life implanted in the spirit, are the lot 
 of all, even the most advanced here, and however a man 
 may be perfect, there will always be the possibility that in 
 something he may be " otherwise minded." 
 
 Such an admission docs not make such interruptions less 
 blameworthy when they occur. The doctrine of averages 
 does not do away with the voluntary character of each 
 single act The same number of letters are yearly posted 
 without addresses. Does anybody dream of not scold- 
 ing the errand boy who posted them, or the servant who 
 did not address, because he knows that ? We are quite 
 sure that we could have resisted each time that we felL 
 That piece of sharp practice in business, or that burst of 
 bad temper in the household which we were last guilty 
 of — could we have helped it or not ? Conscience must 
 answer that question, which does not depend at all on 
 the law of averages. Guilt is not taken away by assert- 
 ing that sin cleaves to men, " perfect men." 
 
 But the feelings with which we should regard sin and 
 contradictions of men's truest selves in omrselves and 
 others, should be so far altered by such thoughts, that we 
 should be very slow to pronounce that a man cannot be 
 a Qiristian because he has done so and so. Are there 
 any sins which are clearly incompatible with a Christian 
 character? All sins are inconsistent with it, but that is 
 a very diflferent matter. The uniform direction of « 
 man's life being godless, sel^sh, devoted to the objecti 
 
XVII.] THE SOWS PERFECTION, 391 
 
 and pursuits of time and sense, is incompatible with his 
 being a Christian — but, thank God, no single act, how 
 ever dark, is so, if it be in contradiction to the main 
 tendency impressed upon the character and conduct 
 It is not for us to say that any single deed shows a man 
 cannot be Christ's nor to fling ourselves down in despair 
 saying, " If I were a Christian, I could not have done 
 that" Let us remember that "all unrighteousness is 
 sin," and the least sin is in flagrant opposition to our 
 Christian profession ; but let us also remember, and that 
 not to blunt our consciences or weaken our efforts, that 
 Paul thought it possible for perfect men to be "other- 
 wise minded ** from their deepest selves and their highest 
 pattern. 
 
 IV. The crowning hope that lies in these words is the 
 certainty of a gradual but compute attainment of all the 
 Christian's aspirations after God and goodness. 
 
 The ground of that confidence lies in no natural ten- 
 dencies in us, m no effort of ours, but solely in that great 
 name which is the anchor of all our confidence, the name 
 of God. Why is Paul certain that ** God will reveal even 
 this unto you " ? Because He is God. The apostle has 
 learned the infinite depth of meaning that lies in that 
 name. He has learned that God is not in the way of 
 leaving off" His work before He has done His work, and 
 that none can say of Him, that " He began to build, and 
 was not able to finish." The assurances of an unchange- 
 able purpose in redemption, and of inexhaustible re- 
 sources to effect it ; of a love that can never fade, and 
 
293 THE SOWS PERFECTION, [SERM. 
 
 of a grace that can never be exhausted — are all treasured 
 for us in that mighty name. And such confidence is 
 confirmed by the manifest tendency of the principles and 
 motives brought to bear on us in Christianity to lead on 
 to a condition of absolute perfection, as well as by the 
 experience which we may have, if we will, of the sancti- 
 fying and renewing power of His Spirit in our Spirit 
 
 By the discipline of daily life, by the ministry of sorrow 
 and joy, by mercifiil chastisements dogging our steps 
 when we stray, by duties and cares, by the teaching of 
 ffis word coming even closer to our hearts and quicken- 
 ing our consciences to discern evil where we had seen 
 none, as well as kindling in us desires afler higher and 
 rarer goodness, by the reward of enlarged perceptions of 
 duty and greater love towards it, with which Ete recom- 
 penses lowly obedience to the duty as yet seen, by the 
 secret influences of His Spirit of Power and of Love and 
 of a sound Mind breathed into our waiting spirits, by the 
 touch of His own sustaining hand and glance of His own 
 guiding eye. He will reveal to the lowly soul all that is 
 yet wanting in its knowledge, and communicate all that 
 is lacking in character. 
 
 So for us, the true temper is confidence in His power 
 and will, an earnest waiting on Him, a brave forward 
 yearning hope blended with a lowly consciousness of im- 
 perfection, which is a spur not a dog, and vigorous 
 increasing efforts to bring into life and character the fulness 
 and beauty of God. Presumption should be as far from 
 us as despair — the one because we have not already 
 attained, the other because *' God will reveal even thif 
 
XVII.] THE SOWS PERFECTION, 993 
 
 unto us." Only let us keep in mind the caution which 
 the apostle, knowing the possible abuses which might 
 gather round His teaching, has here attached to it, " Never 
 theless " — though aU which I have been saying is true, 
 it is only true on this understanding — "whereto we have 
 already attained, by the same let us walk." God will perfect 
 that which concemeth you if — and only if — you go on as 
 you have begun, if you make your creed a life, if you show 
 what you are. If so, then all the rest is a question of 
 time. A has been said, and Z will come in its proper 
 place. Begin with humble trust in Christ, and a process 
 is commenced which has no natural end short of that 
 great hope with which this chapter closes, that the change 
 which begins in tlie deepest recesses of our being, and 
 struggles slowly and with many interruptions, into partial 
 visibility in our character, shall one day triumphantly ir- 
 radiate our whole nature out to the very finger tips, and 
 " even the body of our humiliation shall be fashioned like 
 unto the body of Christ's glory, according to the working 
 whereby He is able even to subdue all things to Hin»- 
 
SERMON XVIII. 
 
 THE FIRST PREACHING AT ANTIOCH. 
 
 Acts zL 20, ai. 
 
 Amd' some of them were men of Cjrprus and Cyrene, which, when 
 they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching 
 the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them ; uad 
 a great number believed, and turned onto the Lord. 
 
 T^HUS simply does the historian tell one of the greatest 
 "*■ events in the history of the Church. How great it 
 was will appear if we observe that the weight of authority 
 among critics and commentators sees here an extension 
 of the message of salvation to Greeks, that is, to pure 
 heathens, and not a mere preaching to Hellenists, that 
 is, to Greek-speaking Jews bom outside Palestine. 
 
 If that be correct, this was a great stride forward in 
 the development of the Church. It needed a vision to 
 overcome the scruples of Peter, and impel him to the 
 bold innovation of preaching to Cornelius and his house- 
 hold, and, as we know, his doing so gave grave offence 
 to some of his brethren in Jerusalem. But in the case 
 before us^ some Cypriote and African Jews — men of no 
 note in the Church, whose very names have perished, 
 with no official among them, with no vision nor command 
 
SERM. xniii,] THE FIRST PREACHING. 295 
 
 to impel them, with no precedent to encourage them, 
 with nothing but the truth in their minds and tiie impulses 
 of Christ's love in their Learts — solve the problem of the 
 extension of Christ's message to the heathen, and, quite 
 unconscious of the greatness of their act, do the thing 
 about the propriety of which there had been such serious 
 question in Jerusalem. 
 
 This boldness becomes even more remarkable if we 
 notice that the incident of our text may have taken place 
 before Peter's visit to Cornelius. The verse before our 
 text, " They which were scattered abroad upon the perse- 
 cution that arose about Stephen travelled, , . . preaching the 
 word to none but unto the Jews only," is almost a verbatim 
 repetition of words in an earlier chapter, and evidently 
 suggests that the writer is returning to that point of time, 
 in order to take up another thread of his narrative co- 
 temporaneous with those already pursued. If so, three 
 distinct Unas of expansion appear to have started from 
 the dispersion of the Jerusalem church in the persecution 
 — namely Philip's mission to Samaria, Peter's to Cornelius, 
 and this work in Antioch. Whether prior in time or no, the 
 preaching in the latter city was plainly quite independent 
 of the other two. It is further noteworthy that this, the 
 cfifort of a handful of unnamed men, was the true 
 " leader " — the shoot that grew. Philip's work, and 
 Peter's so far as we know, were side branches, which 
 came to little ; this led on to a church at Antioch, and 
 so to Paul's missionary work, and all that came of 
 that 
 
 The incident naturally suggests some thoughts bearing 
 
396 THE FIRST PREACHING [skrm. 
 
 on the general subject of Christian work, which we now 
 briefly present 
 
 I. Notice the spontaneous impulse which these men 
 obeyed. 
 
 Persecution drove the members of the Church apart, 
 and, as a matter of course, wherever they went they took 
 their faith with them, and, as a matter of course, spoke 
 about it The coals were scattered from the hearth in 
 Jerusalem by the armed heel of violence. That did not 
 put the fire out, but only spread it, for wherever they 
 were flung they kindled a blaze. These men had no 
 special injunction " to preach the Lord Jesus." They do 
 not seem to have adopted this line of action deliberately, 
 or of set purpose. They believed, and therefore spoke. 
 A spontaneous impulse, and nothing more, leads them 
 on. They find themselves rejoicing in a great Saviour- 
 Friend. They see all aroimd them men who need Him, 
 and that is enough. They obey the promptings of the 
 voice within, and lay the foundations of the first Gentile 
 church. 
 
 Such a spontaneous impulse is ever the natural result 
 of our own personal possession of Christ In regard to 
 worldly good the instinct, except when overcome by 
 higher motives, is to keep the treasure to onesel£ But 
 even in the natural sphere, there are possessions which to 
 have is to long to impart, such as truth and knowledge. 
 And in the spiritual sphere, it is emphatically the case 
 tiiat real possession is always accompanied by a longing 
 to impart Hie old prophet spoke a universal truth when 
 
XVIII.] AT ANTIOCH, 997 
 
 he said : ** Thy word was as a fire shut up in my bones, 
 and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay." 
 If we have found Christ for ourselves, we shall un- 
 doubtedly wish to speak forth our knowledge of his 
 love. Convictions which are deep demand expression. 
 Emotion which is strong needs utterance. If our hearts 
 have any fervour of love to Christ in them, it will be as 
 natural to tell it forth, as tears are to sorrow or smiles to 
 happiness. True, there is a reticence in profound feeling, 
 and sometimes the deepest love can only ** love and be 
 silent," and there is a just suspicion of loud or vehement 
 protestations of Christian emotion, as of any emotion. 
 But for all that, it remains true that a heart warmed 
 with the love of Christ needs to express its love, and will 
 give it forth, as certainly as light must radiate from its 
 centre, or heat from a fire. 
 
 Then, true kindliness of heart creates the same impulse. 
 We cannot truly possess the treasure for ourselves with- 
 out pity for those who have it not Surely there is no 
 stranger contradiction than that Christian men and 
 women can be content to keep Christ as if He were their 
 special property, and have their spirits imtouched into 
 any likeness of his Divine pity for the multitudes who 
 were as sheep having no shepherd. What kind of 
 Christians must they be who think of Christ as "a 
 Saviour for me," and take no care to set Him forth as " a 
 Saviour for you ? " What should we think of men in a 
 shipwreck who were content to get into the life-boat, and 
 let everybody else drown? What should we think of 
 people in a (amine feasting sumptuously on their private 
 
298 THE FIRST PREACHING [serm. 
 
 stores, whilst women were boiling their children for a 
 meal and men fighting with dogs for garbage on the 
 dunghills ? " He that withholdeth bread, the people 
 shall curse him." What of him who withholds the Bread 
 of Life, and all the while claims to be a follower of the 
 Christ, who gave his flesh for the good of the world ? 
 
 Further, loyalty to Christ creates the same impulse. If 
 we are true to our Lord, we shall feel that we cannot but 
 speak up and out for Him, and that all the more where 
 His name is unloved and unhonoured. He has left His 
 good fame very much in our hands, and the very same 
 impulse whiclr- l*arries words to our Ups when we hear the 
 name of an absent friend calumniated should make us 
 speak for Him. He is a doubtfully loyal subject who, if 
 be lives among rebels, is afraid to show his colours. He 
 is already a coward, and is on the way to be a traitor. 
 Our Master has made us his witnesses. He has placed 
 in our hands, as a sacred deposit, the honour of his name. 
 He has entrusted to us, as His selectest sign of confidence, 
 the carrying out of the purposes for which on earth His 
 blood was shed, on which in heaven His heart is set. 
 How can we be loyal to Him if we are not forced by a 
 mighty constraint to respond to His great tokens of trust 
 in us, and if we know nothing of that spirit which said : 
 " Necessity is laid upon me ; yea, woe is unto me, if I 
 preach not the gospel ! " I do not say that a man cannot 
 be a Christian unless he knows and obeys this impulse. 
 But, at least, we may safely say that he is a very weak 
 and impel feet Christian who does not 
 
xviii.] AT ANTJOCH. S99 
 
 IL This incident suggests the universal obligatum on 
 ftU Christians to make known Christ 
 
 These men were not officials. In these early da3rs the 
 Church had a very loose organisation. But the fugitives 
 in our narrative seem to have had among them none even 
 of the humble office-bearers of primitive times. Neither 
 had they any command or commission from Jerusalem. 
 No one there had given them authority, or, as would 
 appear, knew an)rthing of their proceedings. Could there 
 be a more striking illustration of the great truth that 
 whatever varieties of function may be committed to 
 various officers in the Church, the work of telling Christ's 
 love to men belongs to every one who has found it for 
 himself or herself? " This honour have all the saints." 
 
 Whatever may be our differences of opinion as to church 
 order and offices, they need not interfere with our firm 
 grasp of this truth. " Preaching Christ," in the sense in 
 which that expression is used in the New Testament, 
 implies no one special method of proclaiming the glad 
 tidings. A word written in a letter to a friend, a sentence 
 dropped in casual conversation, a lesson to a child on a 
 mother's lap, or any other way by which, to any listeners, 
 the great story of the cross is told, js as truly — often more 
 truly — preaching Christ as the set discourse which has 
 usurped the name. 
 
 We profess to believe in the priesthood of all believers, 
 we are ready enough to assert it in opposition to sacer- 
 dotal assumptions. Are we as ready to recognise it as 
 laying a very real responsibihty upon us, and involving 
 
300 THE FIRST PREACHING [SERM, 
 
 a very practical inference as to our own conduct ? We 
 all have the power, therefore we all have the duty. For 
 what purpose did God give us the blessing of knowing 
 Christ ourselves? Not for our own well-being alone, 
 but that through us the blessing might be still farther 
 diflFused 
 
 "Heaven doth with as as men with tordies do, 
 
 Not light them for themselves." 
 
 ** God hath shined into our hearts that we might give 
 to others the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
 in the face of Jesus Christ" Every Christian is solemnly 
 bound to fulfil this Divine intention, and to take heed 
 to the imperative command, " Freely ye have received, 
 freely give." 
 
 IIL Observe, further, the simple message which they 
 proclaimed. 
 
 " Preaching the Lord Jesus,*' says the text — or, more 
 accurately perhaps — preaching Jesus as Lord. The 
 substance then of their message was just this — procla- 
 mation of the person and dignity of their Master, the story 
 of the human Ufe of the Man, the story of the Divine 
 sacrifice and self-bestowment by which He had bought 
 the right of supreme rule over every heart; and the 
 urging of His claims on all who heard of His love. And 
 this, their message, was but the proclamation of their 
 own personal experience. They had found Jesus for 
 themselves to be lover and Lord, friend and Saviour of 
 their souls, and the joy they had received they sought to 
 
xviii.] AT ANTIOCH, 301 
 
 share with these Greeks, worshippers of gods and lords 
 many. 
 
 Surely anybody can deliver that message who has had 
 that experience. All have not the gifts which would fit 
 for public speech, but all who have tasted that the Lord 
 is gracious can tell somehow how gracious He is. The 
 first Christian sermon was very short, and it was very 
 efficacious, for it " brought to Jesus " the whole congre- 
 gation. Here it is : " He first findeth his brother Simon, 
 and saith unto him, We have found the Messias." Surely 
 we can all say that, if we have found Him. Surely we 
 shall all long to say it, if we are glad that we have found 
 Him, and if we love our brother. 
 
 Notice, too, how simple the form as well as the sub- 
 stance of the message. " They spake."" It was no set 
 address, no formal utterance, but familiar, natural talk 
 to ones and twos, as opportunity offered. The form was 
 so simple that we may say there was none. What we 
 want is that Christian people should speak anyhow. 
 What does the shape of the cup matter ? What does it 
 matter whether it be gold or clay ? The main thing is 
 that it shall bear the water of life to some thirsty lip. All 
 Christians have to preach, as the word is here, that is, to 
 tell the good news. Their task is to cany a message — no 
 refinement of words is needed for that — arguments are 
 not needed. They have to tell it simply and faithfiiUy, 
 as one who only cares to repeat what he has had given to 
 hmi. They have to tell it confidently, as having proved 
 it true. They have to tell it beseechingly^ as loving the 
 «ouls to whom they bring it Surely we can all do that 
 
3oa THE FIRST PREACHING [serm. 
 
 if we ourselves are living on Christ and have drunk into 
 His spirin Let His mighty salvation, experienced by 
 yourselves, be the substance of your message, and let the 
 form of it be guided by the old words, " It shall be, when 
 the Spirit of the Lord is come upon thee, that thou shalt 
 io as occasion shall serve thee." 
 
 IV. Notice, lastly, the mighty Helper who prospereJ 
 their work. 
 
 ** The hand of the Lord was with thenL" The very 
 keynote of this book of the Acts is the work of the as- 
 cended Christ in and for his Church. At every turning 
 point in the history, and throughout the whole narratives, 
 forms of speech like this occur bearing witness to the 
 profound conviction of the writer that Christ's active 
 energy was with His servants, and Christ's hand the origin 
 of all their security and of all their success. 
 
 So this is a statement of a permanent and universal fact 
 We do not labour alone ; however feeble our hands, that 
 mighty Hand is laid on them to direct their movements 
 and to lend strength to their weakness. It is not our 
 speech which will secure results, but his presence with our 
 words which shall bring it about that even through them 
 a great number shall believe and turn to the Lord 
 There is our encouragement when we are despondent 
 There is our rebuke when we are self-confident There 
 is our stimulus when we are indolent There is our quiet- 
 ness when we are impatient If ever we are tempted to 
 think our task heavy, let us not forget that He who set 
 it h^w UB to do it, and from His throne shares in all our 
 
xvilL] AT ANTIOCH. 303 
 
 toils, the Lord still, as of old, working with us. If ever 
 we feel that our strength is nothing, and that we stand 
 solitary against many foes, let us fall back upon the 
 peacegiving thought that one man against the world, 
 with Christ to help him, is always in the majority, and let 
 us leave issues of our work in his hands, whose hand will 
 guard the seed sown in weakness, whose smile will bless 
 the springing thereof 
 
 How little any of us know what shall become of our 
 poor work, under His fostering care I How little these 
 men knew that they were laying the foundations of the 
 great change which was to transform the Christian 
 community from a Jewish sect into a world-embracing 
 Church 1 So is it ever. We know not what we do when 
 simply and humbly we speak His name. The far- 
 reaching issues escape our eyes. Then sow the seed, 
 and He will " give it a body as it pleaseth HinL" On 
 earth we may never know the results of our labours. 
 They will be among the surprises of heaven, where many 
 a soHtary worker shall exclaim with wonder as he looks 
 on the hitherto unknown children whom God hath given 
 him, " Behold, I was left alone ; these, where had they 
 been?" Then, though our names may have perished 
 from earthly memories, like those of the simple fugitives 
 of Cyprus and C)rrene, who " were the first that ever 
 burst " into the night of heathendom with the torch of 
 the gospel in their hands, they will be written in the 
 Lamb's book of life, and He will confess them in the 
 presence of His Father in heaven. 
 
SERMON XIX. 
 
 THE MASTER AND HIS SLAVES* 
 
 2 Peter ii. i. 
 Denying the Lord that bought them. 
 
 nPHERE were three great stains on the civilisation of 
 ■*• the world into which Christianity came : war, the 
 position of woman, and slavery. With the two first of 
 these we have nothing to do at present, but the relation 
 of the New Testament to the last of these great evils 
 naturally connects itself with the words before us. That 
 relation is at first sight very singular. There can be no 
 doubt that the atrocious system of slavery is utterly irre- 
 concileable with the principles and spirit of the Gospel. 
 It dies in the light of Christianity, like some foul fungus 
 that can only grow in the dark. And yet there is not a 
 word of condemnation of it in the book. The writers of 
 the New Testament found that evil institution which 
 makes the slaves chattels and their masters fiends in fiiU 
 force, and they said nothing against it Paul recognises 
 it in several of his letters, regulates it, gives counsels 
 to Christians standing to each other in the extraordinary 
 relation of owner and slave ; sends back the runaway 
 
XIX.] THE MASTER AND HIS SLAVES. 305 
 
 Onesimus to his master, and shows no consciousness of 
 the revolutionary force of his own words, " In Christ 
 Jesus there is neither bond nor free." Whether he fore- 
 saw the effect of the gospel in breaking every yoke or no, 
 the fact remains that Christianity at its beginning ran no 
 tilt against even the most execrable social iniquities, but 
 was guided by the wisdom which said, " Make the tree 
 good, and its fruit good." The only way to mend in- 
 stitutions is by mending individuals. Elevate the tone 
 of society by lifting the moral nature of the units, and 
 evil things will drop away and become impossible. Other 
 trays are revolutionary and imperfect 
 
 In like manner, this same wicked thing, slavery, is used 
 as an illustration of the highest, sacredest, noblest rela- 
 tionship possible to men — their submission to Jesus 
 Christ With all its vileness, it is still not too vile to be 
 Ufted from the mud, and to stand as a picture of the purest 
 ind loftiest tie that can bind the soul The aposdes 
 glory in calling themselves " slaves of Jesus Christ" That 
 title of honour heads each episde. And here in this 
 text we have the same figure expressed with Peter's 
 own energy, and carried out in detail The word in 
 our text for " Lord," is an unusual one, selected to put 
 the idea in the roughest, most absolute form. It is the 
 root of our word "despot," and conveys, at any rate, 
 the notion of unlimited, irresponsible authority. We 
 might read "owner" with some approach to the force of 
 the word. 
 
 Not is this all One of the worst and ugliest features 
 of slavery ii that of the market, where men and women 
 
 S 
 
3o6 THE MASTER AND HIS SLAVES, [serm. 
 
 and children are sold like cattle. And that has its 
 parallel too, for this Owner has bought men for His. 
 
 Nor is this all ; for, as there are fugitive slaves, who 
 "break away every man from his master," and when 
 questioned will not acknowledge that they are his, so 
 men flee from this Lord and Owner, and by words and 
 deeds assert that they owe Him no obedience, and were 
 never in bondage to Him. 
 
 So, then, there are these three points brought out in 
 the words before us : Christ's absolute ownership of men ; 
 iht purchase on which it depends; and the fugitives who 
 deny his authority. 
 
 I. The strong expression of the text asserts Christ s 
 absolute ownership. If a word had been sought to convey 
 the hardest possible representation of irresponsible, un- 
 limited authority, bound by no law but its own will, 
 the word in our text would have been chosen. Such 
 authority can never be really exercised by men over men. 
 For thought and will are ever free. To claim it would 
 be blasphemy, to allow it would be degradation. But such 
 an authority, in comparison with which the most absolute 
 that man can exercise over man is shght and superficial, 
 this peasant of Nazareth claims, and not in vain. Proud 
 hearts have bowed to his authority, and through the 
 centuries the whole being of thousands upon thousands 
 has gloried in submission — ^utter and aU-embracing — to 
 Him. '* What manner of man is this," it was said of old, 
 " that even the winds and the sea obey Him ? " But the 
 question opens a deeper depth of wonder, and a higher 
 
XIX.] THE MASTER AND HIS SLAVES, yvf 
 
 stretch of power i ** What manner of man is this that 
 even the hearts and wills of men obey Him?** His 
 autocratic lips spake, and it was done, when He was 
 here on earth — rebuking disease, and it fled; the wild 
 storm, and there was a great calm ; demons, and they 
 came out ; death itself, and its dull cold ear heard, and 
 Lazarus came forth. To material things and forces He 
 spake as their great Imperator and Commander, say- 
 ing to this one "Go," and he went, and showing his 
 Divinity, as even the pagan centurion had learned, by 
 the power of His word, the bare utterance of His will. 
 
 But His rule in the region of man's spirit is as absolute 
 and authoritative, and there too "His word is with power.** 
 The correlative ot Christ's ownership is our entire sub- 
 mission of will, our complete acceptance of the law of 
 his lips, our practical recognition that we are not our 
 own. Loyola demanded from his black-robed militia 
 obedience to the general of the order so complete that 
 they were to be " just like a corpse," or " a staff in a 
 blind man*8 hand." Such a requirement made by a man 
 is of course the crushing of the will, and the emasculation 
 of the whole nature. But such a demand yielded to from 
 Christ is the vitalising of the will and the ennobling of 
 the spirit To give myself up to Him is to become not 
 ** like a corpse " — but to be as alive from the dead. We 
 then first find our lives when we surrender them to Him. 
 
 The owner of the slave could set him to any work he 
 thought fit. So our Owner gives all His slaves their 
 several tasks. As in some despotic eastern monarchies 
 the sultan's mere pleasure makes of one slave his vizier, 
 
 X 2 
 
3o8 THE MASTER AND HIS SLAVES, [serm. 
 
 and of another his slipper-bearer, our King chooses one 
 man to a post of honour, and another to a lowly place ; 
 and none have a right to question the allocation of work. 
 What corresponds on our parts to that sovereign freedom 
 of appointment ? Cheerful acceptance of our task, what- 
 ever it be. What does it matter whether we are set to 
 do things which the vulgar world calls " great," or things 
 which the blind world calls " small ? " They are equally 
 set us by Him to whom all service is alike that is done 
 from the same motive, and all that we need care about 
 is to give glad obedience and unmurmuring honest work. 
 Nobody knows what is important service, and what not 
 We have to wait till another day far ahead, before we 
 can tell that. All work that contributes to a great end 
 is great ; as the old rhyme has it, " for the want of a nail 
 a kingdom was lost." So, whatever our tasks, let us say, 
 " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? " 
 
 The slave's hut, and Uttle patch of garden ground, and 
 few bits of furniture, whose were they — ^his or his master's ? 
 If he was not his own, nothing else could be his own. 
 And whose are our possessions ? If we have no property 
 in ourselves, still less can we have property in our pro- 
 perty. These things were His before, and are His stilL 
 The first claim on them is our Master's, not ours. We 
 have not the right to do what we like with our own. So, 
 if we rightly understand our position, we shall feel that we 
 are trustees, not possessors. When, like prodigal sons, 
 we "waste our substance," we are unfaithful stewards, 
 also, " wasting our Lord's goods." 
 
 Such absolute submission of will^ and reco^tion ol 
 
XIX.] THE MASTER AND HIS SLAVES. 309 
 
 Christ's absolute authority over us, our destiny, work, and 
 possessions, is ennobling and blessed. So to bow before 
 a man would be degrading were it possible, but so to bow 
 before Him is our highest honour, and liberates us from 
 all other submission. The king's servant is every other 
 person's master. We learn from historians that the 
 origin of nobility in some Teutonic nations is supposed 
 to have been the dignities enjoyed by the king's household 
 — of which you find traces stilL The king's master of 
 the horse, or chamberlain, or cupbearer, becomes noble. 
 Christ's servants are lords, free because they serve Him, 
 noble because they wear His livery and bear the mark of 
 Jesus as their Lord. 
 
 IL The text brings into view the purchase on which 
 that ownership is founded. 
 
 This master has acquired men by right of purchase. 
 That abomination of the auction-block may suggest the 
 better ** merchandise of the souls of men," which Christ 
 has made, when He bought us with His own blood as our 
 ransom. 
 
 That purchase is represented in two forms of expres- 
 sion. Sometimes we read that He has bought us with His 
 "blood;" sometimes that He has given "Himself" for 
 ns. Both expressions point to the same great fact — His 
 death as the price at which He has acquired us as His 
 own. 
 
 There are far deeper thoughts involved in this state- 
 ment than can be dealt with here, but let me note one or 
 two plain points. First, then, that is a vexy beautiful and 
 
3IO THE MASTER AND HIS SLA VES. [serm 
 
 profound one, that Christ's lordship over men is built 
 upon His mighty and supreme sacrifice for men. Nothing 
 short of His utter giving up of himself for them gives Him 
 the right of absolute authority over them ; or, as Paul 
 puts it, " He gave himself for us," that He might " pur- 
 chase for himself a people." He does not found His king- 
 dom on His Divinity, but on His suffering. His cross is 
 His throne. It seems to me that the recognition of 
 Christ's death as our ransom is absolutely essential to 
 warrant the submission to Him which is the very heart of 
 Christianity. I do not know why any man who rejects 
 that view of the death of Christ should call to Him, 
 •* Lord ! Lord ! ** We are justified in saying to ffim, " O 
 Lord, truly I am thy servant," only when we can go on to 
 say, " Thou hast loosed my bonds." 
 
 Then, consider that the figure suggests that we are 
 bought from a previous slavery to some other master. 
 Free men are not sold into slavery, but slaves pass firom 
 one master to another, and sometimes are bought into 
 freedom as well as into bondage. Hebrew slavery was a 
 very different thing from Roman or American slavery — 
 but such as it was, there was connected with it that pecu- 
 liar institution of the Gof/f by which, under certain cir- 
 cumstances, if an Israelite had sold himself into slavery, 
 he could be redeemed. As the law has it, " One of his 
 kinsmcp may redeem him." So our Kinsman buys us 
 back from our bondage to sin and guilt and condemna- 
 tion, from the slavery of our tyrant lusts, from the slavery 
 to men's censures and opinions, from the dominion of 
 evil and darkness, and making us His, makes us free. 
 
XIX.] THE MASTER AND HIS SLA VES, 31 1 
 
 He that committeth sin is the slave of sin. If the Son 
 therefore make you free, ye shall be free indeed. 
 
 IIL Our text also brings to view the Runaways. We 
 do not care to enquire here what special type of heretics 
 the apostle had in view in these solemn words, nor to 
 apply them to modern parallels which wc may fancy 
 we can find. It is more profitable to notice how all god- 
 lessness and sin may be described as denying the Lord. 
 All sin, I say, for it would appear very plain that the 
 people spoken of here were not Christians at all, and yet 
 the apostle believes that Christ had bought them by Hii 
 sacrifice, and so had a right over them, which their con- 
 duct and their words equally denied. 
 
 How eloquent that word " denying " is on Peter's lips. 
 Did the old man travel back in memory to that cold morn- 
 ing, when he was shivering beside the coal-fire in the high 
 priest's palace, and a flippant serving-maid could frighten 
 him into lying? Is it not touching to notice that he 
 describes the very worst aspect of the sin of these people 
 in the words that recall his own ? It is as if he were 
 humbly acknowledging that no rebellion could be worse 
 than his, and were renewing again his penitence and 
 bitter weeping after all those years. 
 
 All sin is a denial of Christ's authority. It is in effect 
 saj-ing, " We will not have this man to reign over us." 
 It is at bottom the uprising of our own self-will against 
 his rule, and the proud assertion of our own indepen- 
 dence. It is as foolish as it is ungratefiil, as ungrateful 
 as it is fooUsh. 
 
312 THE MASTER AND HIS SLA VES. [serm. xix. 
 
 That denial is made by deeds which are done in dc 
 fiance or neglect of his authority, and it is done too by 
 words and opinions. It is not for us to bring such a 
 grave charge against individuals, but at least we may 
 exhort our readers to beware of all forms of teaching 
 which weaken Christ's absolute authority or which remove 
 the very foundation of His throne by weakening the power 
 and meaning of His sacrifice. 
 
 Finally, let us beware lest the fate of many a runaway 
 slave be ours, and we be lost in trackless bogs and perish 
 miserably. Casting off His yoke is sure to end in ruin. 
 Rather, drawn by the cords of love, and owning the 
 blessed bonds in which willing souls are held by the love 
 of Christ, let us take Him for our Lord, who has given 
 himself for our ransom, and answer the pleading of His 
 cross with our glad surrender. Then shall He say, ** I 
 call you not servants but firienda." 
 
SERMON XX. 
 
 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 
 
 a Timothy It. 6-«. 
 
 I am BOW readj to be offered, and the time of mj departw It at 
 hand. I hare fought a good fight, I haye finished my course, I 
 hare kept the £uth : henceforth there is laid up for me a crown 
 of righteousness. 
 
 "pAUL'S long day*! work is nearly done. He is a 
 ■'• prisoner in Rome, all but forsaien by his friends, 
 in hourly expectation of another summons before Nero. 
 To appear before him was, he says, like putting his head 
 into " the mouth of the lion." His horizon was darkened 
 by sad anticipations of decaying faith and growing 
 corruptions in the church. What a road he had travelled 
 since that day when, on the way to Damascus, he saw 
 the living Christ, and heard the words of his mouth I 
 
 It had been but a failure of a life, if judged by ordinary 
 standards. He had suffered the loss of aU things, had 
 thrown away position and prospects, had exposed him- 
 self to sorrows and toils, had been all his dajrs a poor 
 man and solitary, had been hunted, despised, laughed at 
 by Jew and Gentile, worried and badgered even by so- 
 called brethren, loved the less, the more he loved. And 
 now the end is near. A prison and the headsman'i 
 
314 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, [serm. 
 
 sword are the world's wages to its best teacher. When 
 Nero is on the throne, the only possible place for Paul is 
 the dungeon opening on to the scaffold. Better to be 
 the martyr than the Csesar 1 
 
 These familiar words of our text bring before us a veiy 
 sweet and wonderful picture of the prisoner, so near his 
 end. How beautifully they show his calm waiting for 
 the last hour and the bright forms which lightened for 
 him the darkness of his cell ! Many since have gone to 
 their rest with their hearts stayed on the same thoughts, 
 though their lips could not speak them to our listening 
 ears. Let us be thankful for them, and pray that for 
 ourselves, when we come to that hour, the same quiet 
 heroism and the same sober hope mounting to calm 
 certainty may be ours. 
 
 These words refer to the past, the present, the future. 
 "I have fought — the time of my departure is come — 
 henceforth there is laid up." 
 
 I. So wc notice first The quid courage which looks 
 
 death full in the face without a tremor. 
 
 The language implies that Paul knows his death 
 hour is all but here. As the revised version more 
 accurately gives it, "I am already being offered" — 
 the process is begun, his sufferings at the moment are, 
 as it were, the initial steps of his sacrifice-—" and the 
 time of my departure is corned* The tone in which he 
 tells Timothy this is very noticeable. There is no sign 
 of excitement, no tremor of emotion, no affectation of 
 stoicism in the simple senunces. He is not playing up 
 
XX.] A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, 315 
 
 to a part, nor pretending to be anything which he is not 
 If ever language sounded perfectly simple and genuine, 
 this does. 
 
 And the occasion of the whole section is as remark- 
 able as the tone. He is led to speak about himself at 
 all, only in order to enforce his exhortation to Timothy 
 to put his shoulder to the wheel, and do his work for 
 Christ with all his might All he wishes to say is simply, 
 Do your work with all your might, for I am going off the 
 field. But having begun on that line of thought, he is 
 carried on to say more than was needed for his 
 immediate purpose, and thus inartificially to let us see 
 what was filling his mind. 
 
 And the subject into which he subsides after these 
 lofty thoughts is as remarkable as either tone or occasion. 
 Minute directions about such small matters as books and 
 parchments, and perhaps a warm cloak for winter, and 
 homely details about the movements of the httle group 
 of his friends immediately follow. All this shows with 
 what a perfectly unforced courage Paul fronted his fate, 
 and looked death in the eyes. The anticipation did not 
 dull his interest in God's work in the world, as witness 
 the warnings and exhortations of the context It did not 
 withdraw his sympathies from his companions. It did 
 not hinder him from pursuing his studies and pursuits, nor 
 from providing for small matters of daily convenience. 
 If ever a man was free from any taint of fanaticism or 
 morbid enthusiasm, it was this man waiting so calmly in 
 his prison for his death. 
 
 There is great beauty and force in the expression! 
 
3i6 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS. [SERM, 
 
 w^hich he uses for death here. He will not soil his lips 
 with its ugly name, but calls it an oflfering and a departure. 
 There is a wide-spread unwillingness to say the word 
 " Death." It falls on men's hearts like clods on a coffin 
 — so all people and languages have adopted euphemisms 
 for it, fair names which wrap silk round his dart and 
 somewhat hide his face. But there are two opposite 
 reasons for their use — terror and confidence. Some men 
 dare not speak of death because they dread it so much, 
 and try to put some kind of shield between themselves 
 and the very thought of it by calling it something less 
 dreadful to them than itself. Some men, on the other 
 hand, are famihar with the thought, and though it is 
 solemn, it is not altogether repellent to them. Gazing on 
 death with the thoughts and feelings which Jesus Christ 
 has given them concerning it, they see it in new aspects, 
 which take away much of its blackness. And so they do 
 not feel inclined to use the ugly old name, but had rather 
 call it by some which reflect the gentler aspect that it 
 now wears to them. So " sleep," and " rest " and the like 
 are the names which have almost driven the other out of 
 the New Testament — witness of the fact that in inmost 
 reality Jesus Christ " has abolished death," however the 
 physical portion of it may still remain master of our bodies. 
 But looking for a moment at the specific metaphors 
 used here, we have first, that of an offering^ or more 
 particularly of a drink offering, or libation^ " I am already 
 being poured out" No doubt the special reason for the 
 selection of this figure here is Paul's anticipation of a 
 violent death. The shedding of his blood was to be an 
 
XX.] A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 317 
 
 offering poured out like some costly wine upon the altar, 
 but the power of the figure reaches far beyond that 
 special application of it We may all make our deaths a 
 sacrifice, an offering to God, for we may yield up our 
 will to God's will, and so turn that last struggle into an 
 act of worship and self surrender. When we recognize 
 His hand, when we submit our wills to His purposes, 
 when ** we live unto the Lord," if we live, and *' die unto 
 Him," if we die, then Death will lose all its terror and 
 most of its pain, and will become for us what it was to 
 Paul, a true offering up of self in thankfiil worship. Nay 
 we may even say, that so we shall in a certain 
 subordinate sense be "made conformable unto his death " 
 who committed His spirit into His Father's hands, and 
 laid down His life, of His own will The essential 
 character and far-reaching effects of this sacrifice we 
 cannot imitate, but we can so yield up our wills to God 
 and leave life so willingly and trustfully as that death 
 shall make our sacrifice complete. 
 
 Another more famihar and equally striking figure is 
 next used, when Paul speaks of the time of his " depar- 
 ture." The thought is found in most tongues. Death 
 is a going away, or, as Peter calls it (with a glance, 
 possibly, at the special meaning of the word in the Old 
 Testament, as well as its use in the solemn statement 
 of the theme of converse on the Mountain of Transfigu- 
 ration), an Exodus. But the well-worn image receives 
 new depth and sharpness of outline in Christianity. To 
 those who have learned the meaning of Christ's resurrec- 
 tion, and feed their fouls on the hopes that it warrants, 
 
3i8 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, [serm 
 
 Death is merely a change of place or state, an accident 
 affecting locahty, and little more. We have had plenty 
 of changes before. Life has been one long series of 
 departures. This is different from the others mainly in 
 that it is the last, and that to go away from this visible and 
 fleeting show, where we wander aliens among things which 
 have no true kindred with us, is to go home, where there 
 will be no more pulling up the tent-pegs, and toiling 
 across the deserts in monotonous change. How strong 
 is the conviction, spoken in that name for death, that the 
 essential life lasts on quite unaltered through it all 1 How 
 sUght the else formidable thing is made. We may 
 change climates, and for the stormy bleakness of life 
 may have the long still days of heaven, but we do not 
 change ourselves. We lose nothing worth keeping when 
 we leave behind the body, as a dress not fitted for home, 
 where we are going. We but travel one more stage, 
 though it be the last, and part of it be in pitchy darkness. 
 Some pass over it as in a fiery chariot, like Paul and 
 many a martyr. Some have to toil through it with 
 slow steps and bleeding feet an4 fainting heart ; but all 
 may have a Brother with them, and holding His hand 
 may find that the journey is not so hard as they feared, 
 and the home from which they shall remove no more, 
 better than they hoped when they hoped the most 
 
 II. We have here too, the peaceful look backwards. 
 There is something very noteworthy in the threefold 
 aspect under which his past life presents itself to the 
 apostle, who is so soon to leave it He thinks of it as a 
 
XX.] A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, 319 
 
 contest, as a race, as a stewardship. The first suggests 
 the tension of a long struggle with opposing wrestlers 
 who have tried to throw him, but in vain. The world, 
 both of men and things, has had to be grappled with and 
 mastered. His own sinfiil nature and especially his 
 animal nature has had to be kept under by sheer force, 
 and every moment has been resistance to subtle omni- 
 present forces that have sought to thwart his aspirations 
 and hamper his performances. His successes have had 
 to be fought for, and everything that he has done has 
 been done after a struggle. So is it with all noble life ; 
 so will it be to the end. 
 
 He thinks of life as a race. That speaks of continuous 
 advance in one direction, and more emphatically still, 
 of eflfort that sets the lungs panting and strains every 
 muscle to the utmost He thinks of it as a stewardship. 
 He has kept the faith (whether by that word we are to 
 understand the body of truth believed or the act of 
 believing) as a sacred deposit committed to him, of which 
 he has been a good steward, and which he is now ready 
 to return to his Lord. There is much in these 
 letters to Timothy about keeping treasures entrusted to 
 one's care. Timothy is bid to "keep that good thing 
 which is committed to thee," as Paul here declares 
 that he has done. Nor is such guarding of a precious 
 deposit confined to us stewards on earth, but the apostle 
 is sure that his loving Lord, to whom he has entrusted 
 himself, will with like tenderness and carefulness " keep 
 that which he has committed unto Him against that day." 
 The confidence in that faithful Keeper made it possible 
 
320 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, [serm. 
 
 for Paul to be faithful to his trust, and as a steward who 
 was bound by all ties to his Lord, to guard His pos- 
 sessions and administer His affairs. Life was full of 
 voices urging him to give up the faith. Bribes and 
 threats, and his own sense-bound nature, and the 
 constant whispers of the world had tempted him all along 
 the road to fling it away as a worthless thing, but he had 
 kept it safe ; and now, nearing the end and the account, 
 he can put his hand on the secret place near his heart 
 where it lies, and feel that it is there, ready to be 
 restored to his Lord, with the thankful confession, " Thy 
 pound hath gained ten pounds." 
 
 So life looks to this man in his retrospect as mainly a 
 field for struggle, effort and fidelity. This world is not 
 to be for us an enchanted garden of delights, any more 
 than it should appear a dreary desert of disappointment 
 and woe. But it should be to us mainly a palaestra, or 
 gymnasium and exercising ground. You cannot expect 
 many flowers or much grass in the place where men 
 wrestle and run. We need not much mind though it be 
 bare, if we can only stand firm on the hard earth, nor 
 lament that there are so few delights to stay our eyes 
 from the goal. We are here for serious work ; let us not 
 be too eager for pleasures that may hinder our efforts 
 and weaken our vigour, but be content to lap up a hasty 
 draught from the brooks by the way, and then on again 
 to the fight 
 
 Such a view of life makes it radiant and fair while it 
 lasts, and makes the heart calm when the hour comes to 
 leave it all behind. So thinking of the past, there may 
 
XX.1 A PRISONER 'S D YING THO UGHTS, yii 
 
 be a sense of not unwelcome lightening from a load of re- 
 sponsibility when we have got all the stress and strain of 
 the conflict behind us, and have at any rate not been 
 altogether beaten. We may feel like a captain who has 
 brought his ship safe across the Atlantic, through foul 
 weather and past many an iceberg, and gives a great 
 sigh of relief as he hands over the charge to the pilot, 
 who will take her across the harbour bar and bring her 
 to her anchorage in the landlocked bay where no tem- 
 pests rave any more for ever. 
 
 Prosaic theologians have sometimes wondered at the 
 estimate which Paul here makes of his past services and 
 faithfulness, but the wonder is surely unnecessary. It is 
 very striking to notice the difference between his judg- 
 ment of himself while he was still in the thick of the 
 conflict, and now when he is nearing the end Then, 
 one main hope which animated all his toils and nerved 
 him for the sacrifice of life itself was " that I might finish 
 my course with joy." Now, in the quiet of his dungeon, 
 that hope is fulfilled, and triumphant thoughts, like 
 shining angels, keep him company in his solitude. Then 
 he struggles, and wrestles, touched by the haunting fear 
 lest after that he has preached to others he himself should 
 be rejected. Now the dread has passed, and a meek 
 hope stands by his side. 
 
 What is this change of feeling but an instance of what, 
 thank God, we so often see, that at the end the heart 
 which has been bowed with fears and self-depreciation is 
 filled with peace ? They who tremble most during the 
 conflict are most likely to look back with solid satisfac* 
 
 f 
 
322 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, [serm. 
 
 tion, while they who never knew a fear all along the 
 course will often have them surging in upon their souls 
 too late, and will see the past in a new lurid hght, when 
 they are powerless to change it Blessed is the man 
 who thus feareth always. At the end he will have hope. 
 The past struggles are jo5rful in memory, as the mountain 
 ranges, which were all black rock and white snow while 
 we toiled up their inhospitable steeps, lie purple in the 
 mellowing distance, and bum like fire as the sunset 
 strikes their peaks. Many a wild winter's day has a fair 
 cloudless close, and lingering opal hues diffused through 
 all the quiet sky. " At eventide it shall be light" 
 Though we go all our lives mourning and timid, there 
 may yet be granted us ere the end some vision of the 
 true significance of these lives, and some humble hope 
 that they have not been wholly in vain. 
 
 Such an estimate has nothing in common with self- 
 complacency. It coexists with a profound consciousness 
 of many a sin, many a defeat, and much unfaithfiilness. 
 It belongs only to a man who, conscious of these, is 
 "looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto 
 eternal life," and is the direct result, not the antagonist, 
 of lowly self-abasement, and contrite faith in Him by 
 whom alone our stained selves and poor broken services 
 can ever be acceptable. Let us learn too that the only 
 life that bears being looked back upon is a life of Christian 
 devotion and effort It shows fairer when seen in the 
 strange cross lights that come when we stand on the 
 boundary of two worlds, with the white radiance of 
 eternity beginning to master the vulgar oil lamps of 
 
XX.] A PRISONER'S D YING THOUGHTS. 323 
 
 earth, than when seen by these alone. All others have 
 their shabbiness and their selfishness disclosed then. 
 I remember once seeing a mob of revellers streaming out 
 from a masked ball in a London theatre in the early 
 morning sunlight ; draggled and heavy-eyed, the rouge 
 showing on the cheeks, and the shabby tawdriness of the 
 foolish costumes pitilessly revealed by the pure light. 
 So will many a life look when the day dawns, and the 
 wild riot ends in its unwelcome beams. 
 
 The one question for us all, then, will be. Have I lived 
 for Christ, and by Him ? Let it be the one question for 
 us now, and let it be answered. Yes. Then we shall have 
 at the last a calm confidence, equally far removed from 
 presumption and from dread, which will let us look back 
 on life, though it be full of failures and sins, with peace, 
 and forward with humble hope of the reward which we 
 shall receive from His mercy. 
 
 IIL The climax of all is the triumphant look forward, 
 " Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteous- 
 ness." In harmony with the images of the conflict and the 
 race, the crown here is not the emblem of sovereignity, 
 but of victory, as indeed is almost without exception the 
 case in the New Testament The idea of the royal 
 dignity of Christians in the future is set forth rather 
 under the emblem of association with Christ on his throne, 
 while the wreath on their brows is the coronal of laurel, 
 "meed of mighty conquerors," or the twine of leaves 
 given to him who, panting, touched the goal The 
 reward then which is meant by the emblem, whatever be 
 
324 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, [serm. 
 
 its essence, comes through effort and conflict " A man 
 is not crowned, except he strive." 
 
 That crown, according to other words of Scripture, 
 consists of" life," or " glory** — that is to say, the issue and 
 outcome of believing service and faithful stewardship here 
 is the possession of the true life, which stands in union 
 with God, in measure so great, and in quaUty so wonderous 
 that it lies on the pure locks of the victors like a flashing 
 diadem, all ablaze with light in a hundred jewels. The 
 completion and exaltation of our nature and characters by 
 the illapse of " life " so sovereign and transcendant that it 
 is** glory" is the consequence of all Christian effort here 
 in the lower levels, where the natural Ufe is always weak- 
 ness and sometimes shame, and the spiritual life is at the 
 best but a hidden glory and a strugghng spark. There 
 is no profit in seeking to gaze into that light of glory so 
 as to discern the shapes of those who walk in it, or the 
 elements of its lambent flames. Enough that in its 
 gracious beauty transfigured souls move as in their 
 native atmosphere ! Enough that even our dim vision 
 can see that they have for their companion " One like 
 unto the Son of Maa" It is Christ's own life which 
 they share ; it is Christ's own glory which irradiates them. 
 That crown is "a crown of righteousness" in 
 another sense firom that in which it is " a crown of life." 
 The latter expression indicates the material, if we may 
 say so, of which it is woven, but the former rather points 
 to the character to which it belongs or is given. 
 Righteousness alone can receive that reward. It is not 
 the struggle or the conflict which wins it, but the 
 
XX.] A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, 325 
 
 character evolved in the struggle, not the works of 
 strenuous service, but the moral nature expressed in 
 these. There is such a congruity between righteousness 
 and the crown of life, that it can be laid on none other 
 head but that of a righteous man, and if it could, all its 
 amaranthine flowers would shrivel and fall when they 
 touched an impure brow. It is, then, the crown of 
 righteousness, as belonging by its very nature to such 
 characters alone. 
 
 But whatever is the essential congruity between the 
 character and the crown, we have to remember too that, 
 according to this apostle's constant teaching, the 
 righteousness which clothes us in fair raiment, and has 
 a natural right to the wreath of victory, is a gift, as 
 truly as the crown itself, and is given to us all on 
 condition of our simple trust in Jesus Christ If we arc 
 to be "found of Him in peace, without spot and 
 blameless," we must be " found in Him, not having our 
 own righteousness, but that which is ours through faith 
 in Christ" Toil and conflict, and anxious desire to be 
 true to our responsibilities, will do much for a man, but 
 they will not bring him that righteousness which brings 
 down on the head the crown of life. We must trust to 
 Christ to give us the righteousness in which we are 
 justified, and to give us the righteousness by the working 
 out of which in our life and character we are fitted for 
 that great reward. He crowns our works and selves 
 with exuberant and unmerited honours, but what he 
 crowns is His own gift to us, and His great love must 
 bestow both the righteouimess and ** the crown.* 
 
326 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, [serm. 
 
 The crown is given at a time called by Paul " at thai 
 day," which is not the near day of his martyrdom, but 
 that of His Lord's appearing. He does not speak of the 
 fulness of the reward as being ready for him at death, 
 but as being "henceforth laid up for him in heaven.** 
 So he looks forward beyond the grave. The hnmediate 
 future after death was to his view a period of blessedness 
 indeed, but not yet full The state of the dead in Christ 
 was a state of consciousness, a state of rest, a state of 
 felicity, but also a state of expectation. To the full 
 height of their present capacity they who sleep in Jesus 
 are blessed, being still in his embrace, and their spirits 
 pillowed on his heart, nor so sleeping that, like drowsy 
 infants, they know not where they lie go safe, but only 
 sleeping in so much as they rest from weariness, and 
 have closed their eyes to the ceaseless turmoil of this 
 fleeting world, and are lapped about for ever with the 
 sweet, unbroken consciousness that they are ** present 
 with the Lord." What perfect repose, perfect fruition of 
 all desires, perfect union with the perfect End and Object 
 of all their being, perfect exemption from all sorrow, 
 tumult and sin can bring of blessedness, that they possess 
 in over measure unfailingly. And, in addition, they still 
 know the joy of hope, and have carried that jewel with 
 them into another world, for they wait for "the redemp- 
 tion of the body," in the reception of which, "at that day," 
 their life will be filled up to a yet fuller measure, and 
 gleam with a more lustrous " glory." Now they rest and 
 wait Then shall they be crowned. 
 
 Nor must self-absorbed thoughts be allowed to bound 
 
XX-] A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 327 
 
 our anticipations of that future. It is no solitary blessed- 
 ness to which Paul looked forward. Alone in his dun- 
 geon, alone before his judge when *' no man stood by " 
 him, soon to be alone in his martyrdom, he leaps up in 
 spirit at the thought of the mighty crowd among whom 
 he will stand in that day, on every head a crown, in every 
 heart the same love to the Lord whose life is in them all 
 and makes them all one. So we may cherish the hope 
 of a social heaven. Man's course begins in a garden, 
 but it ends in a city. The final condition will be the 
 perfection of human society. There all who love Christ 
 will be drawn together, and old ties, broken for a little 
 while here, be reknit in yet holier form, never to be 
 parted more. 
 
 Ah, friends, the all-important question for each of us 
 is how may we have such a hope, like a great sunset 
 light shining into the western windows of our souls? 
 There is but one answer — Trust Christ. That is enough. 
 Nothing else is. Is your Hfe built on Jesus Christ ? Are 
 you trusting your salvation to Him? Are you giving 
 Him your love and service ? Does your life bear looking 
 at to-day ? Will it bear looking at in death ? Will it 
 bear His looking at in Judgment ? 
 
 If you ean humbly say, To me to live is Christ, then 
 is it well. Living by Him we may fight and conquer, 
 may win and obtain. Living by Him, we may be ready 
 quietly to lie down when the time comes, and may have 
 all the future filled with the blaze of a great hope that 
 glows brighter as the darkness thickens. That peaceful 
 hope will not leave us till consciousness fails, and then 
 
328 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, [serm. xx 
 
 when it has ceased to guide us Christ himself will lead 
 us, scarcely knowing where we are, through the waters, 
 and when we open our half-bewildered eyes in brief 
 wonder, the first thing we see will be his welcoming smile, 
 and his voice will say, as a tender surgeon might to a 
 Uttle child waking after an operation, " It is all over." 
 We lift our hands wondering and find wreaths on our 
 poor brows. We lift our eyes, and lo I all about us a 
 trowned crowd of conquerors, 
 
 "And with the mom those angd faces smile 
 Which we have loved long since, and lost awhile'' 
 

 
 
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